In a one-two fanboy punch of historic proportions, Peter Jackson commenced production on The Hobbit this week while simultaneously launching a fan page on Facebook. Response to both has been about what you'd expect: frequent, fulsome, somewhat linguistically challenged yet ever loyal to the Oscar-winner, who replaced Guillermo del Toro on the long-delayed prequel to The Lord of the Rings. And in some spots, the reaction is also kind of... awesome?
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For some of you, March 17 is just another work day but for the Irish (and the Irish at heart), it's an excuse to wear head-to-toe green, blackout on cheap beer, and down enough Irish car bombs to either get you arrested for disorderly conduct or send you to the E.R. -- just like the patron saint of Ireland would want. With quitting time here and a night of debauchery ahead, let's remember nine film drunks would could liven up St. Patty's.
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Every moviegoer over the age of 18 has experimented with some kind of drug movie, and this weekend, Relativity Media rolls out another addition to this expansive genre of pharmaceutical films. In Limitless, Bradley Cooper stars as a downtrodden writer whose luck changes dramatically when he starts using an experimental drug called NZT. Before we embrace this new subgenre of substance cinema though, let's review the nine types of drug movies that have already been embraced by Hollywood.
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How bad are the reviews for Red Riding Hood? Well, Beastly -- which was so unanimously reviled it even got lampooned on Saturday Night Live last week -- scored a fresh rating three times higher than what Catherine Hardwicke's fairytale is currently rocking on Rotten Tomatoes. Yikes. Ahead, nine of the sharpest barbs against Red Riding Hood.
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Fairytales are meant to teach lessons -- and the older you get, the more twisted those lessons become. Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood -- featuring a virginal Amanda Seyfried in that iconic red cloak, enveloped in the crimson of sensuality and blood lust, a young woman inexplicably drawn to the big, bad wolf -- isn't the first film to take the fairytale's latent messaging to darker, and we mean really dark, places.
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Even though Miley Cyrus has a lifetime worth of experience (especially in the bong department), the former Disney star is still just 18 years old. And this weekend, like many more established actresses before her, Cyrus will publicly test her sketch comedy chops for the first time when she hosts Saturday Night Live. Before you give the multi-hyphenate a sympathy handicap for her young age though, let's take a look at the youngest Saturday Night Live hosts and see how they fared.
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You may not hear much about it today, but there is a school of thought purporting to redeem terrible Academy Awards ceremonies. "I actually like it when it's bad," one of its proponents wrote last night. "I like it when it chunders on and on and lasts all night. I like it when they accept that they will never be cool and just embrace their uncoolness." I offer that as a preemptive palate cleanser in advance of these nine Oscarcast critics who definitely don't like it when it's bad.
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Some actors are Method; others make up their own method. Like Nicolas Cage, who described his self-taught school of acting and held Movieline rapt with 8 other stories about crazy sex scenes, driving 180 mph on the highway, making the Oscars fair, and other Cage-y anecdotes only vaguely related to his latest vehicle Drive Angry 3D, a high-octane Southern-fried supernatural vengeance thriller disguised as homage to the car-obsessed exploitation flicks of the '70s.
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Believe it or not, there is an entire subset of the American population that does not look forward to snooty award shows like the Oscars because they have more important television obligations -- like Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, the Lifetime docudrama starring Hayden Panetierre that premiered on Monday night. Forget your "powerhouse actors" and "staggering direction," the annoyingly ambivalent Amanda Knox had forgettable performances, a mediocre actor dressed like -- and constantly referred to -- as "Harry Potter" and a few grisly images thrown in for good measure. Oh, and for "authenticity," it dictated a few life lessons that Movieline has dutifully culled for you below.
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We knew this day was coming: The day when Martin Lawrence's latest fat-suited outing, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, would cause global hysteria with its daring exploration of transgender issues, father-son dynamics, and the plus-size mystique. But not everyone managed their expectations like Movieline's own Michelle Orange; our critical colleagues (especially those across the pond in the U.K., where Big Mommas opened earlier this week) were not so forgiving. Behold, the nine most scornful take-downs of what just might be the worst-reviewed movie of the year:
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Liam Neeson continues his second career as a bone-crunching, gravelly-voiced action star in this week's Unknown, a Berlin-set thriller following a scientist (Neeson) who wakes up after a freak accident to find that his wife (January Jones) no longer recognizes him and another man has assumed his identity. Though it begins in a quietly eerie reverie, momentum builds as Neeson reclaims his life in a grand, explosive finale -- kind of like the film's Los Angeles junket, where the cheeky Neeson livened up an otherwise sedate press conference, quipped freely about his sex life, and gamely endured Movieline's own terrible Liam Neeson impression. More revelations after the jump:
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