Why yes, this is a video of the Jersey Shore cast reenacting The Hurt Locker, commissioned by George Lopez. And why wouldn't it be? Look, if Pauly D is going to die, he is going to die with his hair comfortable (i.e. gelled). And if there is one irresistible story of this Oscar season, it is the chance to make history by giving the Best Director Oscar to a Snooki for the very first time. The clip, after the jump:
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Roger Ebert is having a nice run lately, coming as he is off his stirring profile in this month's Esquire, his satisfying swats at the Hollywood Right, and now an audience with Oprah, his longtime friend and protege. Airing tomorrow, his appearance will debut the new computerized voice programmers have developed using the commentary tracks he provided for movies like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and his own Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. He calls the final product Roger Jr., and while it could be "smoother in tone and steadier in pacing... the little rascal is good."
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When it comes to movie ideas, there's high concept, and then there's "high" concept; one sells itself on its easy-to-grasp conceits, the other tends to die shortly after the weed wears off, and you begin to see the holes in your vision of a $100 million summer blockbuster in which a cat spends 90 minutes trying to get out of a bag. I think we can safely put The Joneses into the latter category, and yet it somehow still got made. If you saw the spoilerific poster, you might have already gathered what the very high concept at the center of The Joneses is. For the rest of you, watch the trailer and see if you can figure it out.
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Are we sick of Avatar trailer parodies yet? No, we aren't. Not since the bonanza that followed Brokeback Mountain has one trailer provided so many rich opportunities for creative hacking and pop-culture gene-splicing. There was the (still the best) Team America: World Police version, the all-babies version, and now the inevitable, and yet wholly satisfying Disney's Pocahontas version. Watch now as Captain John Smith arrives to plunder a brave new world inhabited by a spiritual tribe of deadly hunters known as the Powhatan; then falls in love with Pocahontas, daughter of the tribe Chief; then joins up with them to fight off the sinister Governor Ratcliffe, whose intention is to lay waste to their homes in search of precious metals. Yes, it's exactly the same plot as Avatar -- but answer me this: Did Disney's animators commit thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars towards the development of the perfect Pocahontasian breast?! Now that you mention it, it is pretty amazing what you can do with a pencil. [via Vulture]
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With its steady employment of throaty-voiced actresses who look great in chunky highlights and stylish power blouses, the Law & Order franchise has attracted a devoted lesbian fanbase -- but does it always make good on that following? The mothership series once attempted to shoehorn a deliciously out-of-left-field, last-minute lesbian revelation when Elisabeth Röhm left the show. The results? Awkward. Now, NBC has released video of a same-sex smooch between Mariska Hargitay and guest star Kathy Griffin on an upcoming episode of Law & Order: SVU. The results? Even more awkward.
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In a new trailer for Warner/New Line's "contemporary re-imagining" of A Nightmare on Elm Street, clocks tick backwards in a roadside Edward Hopper painting, as Kellan Lutz wanders past pig heads through an abandoned kitchen. "Hello?" he asks. "Anybody here?" YES! SOMEONE IS DEFINITELY THERE! He's wearing a cute, red-and-green-striped hipster sweater and fedora, has knives for fingers, and goes by the name Freddy Krueger.
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With only five days left between us and Jay Leno's return to the Tonight Show, NBC dispatched a camera crew to the underground garage where they've been keeping their trusty host hostage. Over the course of the past two weeks, the American public has hopefully forgiven the Peacock (one sensationalized Olympic athlete narrative at a time), and it was time to reintroduce them to their Tonight Show host by way of viral video. Leno used his allotted 40 seconds wisely by pulling himself away from his beloved Duesenberg to halfheartedly riff about finding a new Tonight Show desk at Ikea, then answering the single question that has been plaguing America since we learned of his move.
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The festival run for James Franco's student film The Feast of Stephen has stretched from Las Vegas (where Movieline had a look last June) to Berlin, where last week it won a Teddy Award for excellence in queer cinema. And now, finally, a taste of the film has arrived online, confirming for a vast new viewership what we privileged few had known all along: When it comes to depicting the NSFW, slow-motion collision of penises and basketball, Franco is without peer.
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Remember all the hand-wringing at Sony about its remake of The Karate Kid -- specifically whether to retitle it to something more reflective of the fact that, well, there's no karate in it? Not only did that concern disappear, but in the new trailer for the Jackie Chan-Jaden Smith crowd-pleaser, the studio is actually selling the contradiction.
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There are all sorts of toy-based movies in the works, from Battleship to Ouija, but where is the $100 million budget and auteurist sensibility assigned to My Little Pony? Until the fateful day when a particularly whimsical yoga teacher says to Brian Grazer, "And now, a little something I invented called 'downward horsie,'" sparking a green-lit bulb in the mega-producer that summarily leads to a heated conference call and the attachment of director Shawn Levy -- until that day -- I suppose we'll have to make do with this video that's been burning up the internet, wherein an enormous, anthropomorphic My Little Pony sings songs from Dreamgirls and Wicked in the most terrifyingly pleasurable way imaginable. Jennifer Hudson, call your voice-over agent!
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The far-reaching Onion News Network covers a new Denmark tourism campaign conceived and directed by Lars von Trier. In them, the Antichrist director artfully showcases that country's gorgeous natural terrain, rich cultural history, and prolificacy of genital mutilations and profound human suffering. According to the report, all were shot in keeping with the guidelines of the Dogme 95 movement, which limited them to "camera phones using only natural light and actors who were kept in sensory-deprivation chambers." Indeed, it's in von Trier's simple observations of Danish life -- two clubgoers arguing over who raped who, or the profound affection between a naked old man and the unseen wearer of the mud-coated combat boot he licks voraciously in a forest -- that the charms of Hans Christian Andersen's homeland come into picture-perfect, sun-kissed focus. [Onion News Network]
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Where did it all go wrong for Kirsten Dunst? The Film Experience theorizes that Dunst fell on hard times with the public by dating Jake Gyllenhaal, then daring not to date Jake Gyllenhaal; I'd argue that the corner was turned when an advance scene from Spider-Man 2 appeared to reveal chronic acting narcolepsy in all of Dunst's close-ups. Whether or not the cancellation of Spider-Man 4 means that Dunst is dunzo, a new McG-directed music video offers your first chance to watch Dunst act onscreen in quite some time.
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Instead of painting buildings in Jay Leno's likeness and polluting small-town movie theaters with popcorn tubs emblazoned with the comedian's mug, NBC is tiptoeing towards its Jay Leno premiere this time around. Last night, during the network's record-breaking Winter Olympics coverage, NBC premiered a single Tonight Show spot, a cheeky reference to its hundred-million dollar Jay Leno Show campaign last summer.
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This week, L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti popped by All My Children to express to devious Chandler family patriarch Adam Sr. his approval of the "green improvements you've made in your factory," just 2,500 miles away from his home in small-town Pennsylvania. Then yesterday, none other than famed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa popped up in the very same fictional municipality, demonstrating palpable chemistry with area vixen Erica Kane. What gives? Why are L.A.'s top politicians hanging out in Pine Valley, PA?
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Every so often, Hollywood gets behind a rising star and just tries to make him happen. We've got a Sam Worthington and a Taylor Lautner as proof, but we don't have anyone like a Russell Brand, the British dervish of comic energy that also comes with a valuable Judd Apatow imprimatur. Still, for as many projects as Brand has lined up, there's a definite wait-and-see sense surrounding this summer's Get Him to the Greek, where he costars with Jonah Hill. What does the new trailer reveal about whether Brand's star will be cemented?
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