The late night scape may be filled with hosts ready to declare themselves heroes but in Haiti there are a few CNN anchors actually saving lives. Among them, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who just last week was left to manage an entire hospital when United Nations ordered all of its doctors and nurses to evacuate (somehow, he frantically tweeted the whole experience here) and just yesterday, Anderson Cooper, who pulled an injured Haitian boy out from looting chaos. Click through for the graphic video.
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It's been ten long years since we've had a movie based on an SNL sketch (ah, The Ladies Man -- you were there for us in good times and in bad), so it's with no lack of fanfare and anticipation that MacGruber, based on Will Forte's MacGyver-like character with a bad habit of blowing his team up, arrives in theaters. Here, then, is your first glimpse: a red band trailer that makes surprisingly light use of its license to filth (we counted one f-bomb, one s-bomb, and one reference to an extremely puffy Val Kilmer's villainous Dieter von Cunth), but nonetheless does a nice job of setting up the essentials to this incredibly Byzantine tale of nuclear counter-terrorism and international espionage. (Just kidding -- an infant could crap this story into a fresh diaper.) Pluses? Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe lightening up, and Jorma Taccone -- one-third of The Lonely Island and Chaka in Universal's summer disaster (but funny!), Land of the Lost -- in the director's chair.
The Verdict: I'm torn. On the one hand, the jokes seem a little stale to me and Will Forte's ability to carry a movie alone seems doubtful; on the other hand, it seems to walk the perfect line betw- POWER PLANT DETONATES IN 20-STORY FIREBALL.
· I Am Rogue
As reported here Monday evening, Jay Leno finally took to the air to address the battle royale that has torn NBC to shreds over the last week. Though a close look at his comments about the Conan O'Brien debacle (which appear to be delivered off-the-cuff while cutting into Leno's almost-as-amusing "Headlines" segment) is essential reading for any student of late-night history, there is a riveting quality to the Leno's hand-waving, conversational style that really must be seen to be believed. When he says, "This is all business" -- the buck-passing, blame-mongering, the severe bruising and network cash hemorrhaging -- it's kind of haunting to sense that not only does he mean it, he's all right with it. It's just another day at NBC. And you know what? He'll be back to No. 1 before you know it. Click through to see the master at work.
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Hey, it's Boardwalk Empire, everybody! Based on Nelson Johnson's Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City , created by Terence Winter, who won multiple Emmys for his work on The Sopranos (he shared one nomination with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner), and boasting a pilot directed by Martin Scorsese, it's an impossibly well-pedigreed Prohibition epic set against the backdrop of the original Jersey Shore. Hey look -- it's Flapper Snooki. Everyone wave hello to Flapper Snooki!
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See, Mo'Nique? When you've got better things to do than drop by an awards ceremony to pick up your hardware, just find an animated stand-in who can express your gratitude. If you need to borrow one, check with Wes Anderson; he is on the practice's cutting-edge, having last night deployed his Fantastic Mr. Fox character Weasel to pick up the National Board of Review award for Special Achievement in Filmmaking. Click through for the video.
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Pardon the shamelessly salacious headline, but ever since viewing Chloe last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, I've been looking for even more ways to express the brilliant luridness of the lesbian-psychodrama-on-steroids that is Atom Egoyan's latest masterpiece. And now, thanks to the French (who else?), a new, NSFW trailer says everything in one dense, soft-focus burst of angst and lust. Are you prurient enough to see for yourself? Of course you are.
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Who'd have thought we'd ever find ourselves in a place where we'd be watching John Travolta, seated in an all-white room furnished only with 10-foot letters spelling out his daughter's name, as he intently listens to her describe her fantasy alternate universe (it involves unicorns and unlimited lattes)? Wait! There's more! He's also singing a Bobby Brown cover, and since it's from the soundtrack of Walt Disney ape-rape movie, Old Dogs, they've splice in scenes from the film! Hello, Justin Long! Hello, deformed Joker smile! Let's break for an instrumental, and discuss our fantasy worlds again: There's elephants riding airplanes, and lions are house pets, and skunks are men's hairpieces! This might be better than Up, Disney! Are you sure you want to make any serious changes to your roster? [via Film Drunk]
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"Looks good!" Those words, from my 4-year-old daughter, don't usually inspire horror, especially in this age of sublime children's movies, from Up! and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs to Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline. But when they're uttered in response to The Rock sprouting wings in the name of kiddie comedy, my only recourse is a silent resolution: We'll catch the Tooth Fairy when Ava's much, much older; when she's 50 and I'm sucking food through a straw and no longer able to summon the mental energy to use the Neural Changer on my old Sony Holograph. And glancing further down the list of coming "attractions," there are 10 more titles in 2010 I plan on avoiding as long as I can until, bad-movies sucker that I am, my curiosity gets the better of me. (Find conveniently, refreshingly brief trailers where available.)
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Sadly, that Save Better Off Ted! campaign is not gathering much steam. With only $490.42 in donations (nearly half of that contributed by a very big Ted fan, Jeffrey) that will go towards deluging ABC executive offices with 500 um, keychains, Better Off Ted needs all the help it can get before the network runs through its remaining season two episodes by the end of January. So watch this NSFW clip of outtakes from this week's episode and try to tell me that Better Off Ted is not the best show you have not been watching. Maybe even tune in tonight at 9:30 p.m. And if not, at least you will have increased your insult vocabulary tenfold, you "sister-f*cking hillbilly!"
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The cheeky, do-it-yourself awards-campaign engineers behind Moon have come up with their latest strategem in the long war to earn Sam Rockwell an Oscar nomination. And as with all overearnest TV appeals involving the humanitarian aid of disadvantaged children, it's kind of hilarious. But! Is it persuasive?
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Heading straight to video at the end of the month, The Donner Party features Crispin Glover in the latest cinematic recounting of one of the worst frontier tragedies of the 19th century. Except as a new trailer attests, this one's got an entirely unique, fresh angle for the 21st century. Or at least it's being sold that way -- and not necessarily in a good way.
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Sure, Sundance has its fair share of slit-your-wrists dramas, but that doesn't mean the festival has to be an experience full of doom and gloom. Quite the contrary! As part of our continuing Road to Sundance vlogs, I take you through five of the things that either already made me smile or will potentially make me laugh at this year's Sundance Film Festival:
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Oh hey, The A-Team! The Film Stage found a copy of the trailer leaked early by a Canadian newspaper for some reason, and you know what that means: The link will be taken down, 20th Century Fox will squash all copies for a few hours, and then they'll be forced to put up their official version a day earlier than they'd planned. So! If you're reading this, hit the jump and watch it before it gets pulled, and if it already has, then let me sum it up for you: A lot of narration and talking, a lot of really weird accents from Liam Neeson and Sharlto Copley, Bradley Cooper takes his shirt off, and there aren't as many explosions as you might think. No one pities the fool, but Neeson does love his quickly forming plans.
VERDICT: Kind of the B-minus team so far, to be honest.
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Let's say that three months ago you found yourself at the center of a national scandal when you convinced your son Falcon to hide in the attic so that you could report that he had flown away in your homemade flying saucer. It seemed like an airtight plan at the time -- guaranteed to reap a reality show or at least a book deal -- but during the back-to-back media interviews that followed, your son could not stomach the lies he was forced to tell, threw up on-camera and raised enough suspicion to warrant a criminal investigation. After pleading guilty and accepting a sentence of 90 days in jail, you have the opportunity to tell your story -- the real story on Larry King Live. What do you do?
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Having once attended the very ceremony at which Mariah Carey delivered this -- not speech, per se, so much as a series of incredulous moans -- I can hereby testify that the only way to survive the Palm Springs Film Festival opening gala is to drink yourself under a table. (It dulls the sounds of Mary Hart shooshing a crowd of 80-year-old plastic-surgeried socialites for three-and-a-half hours.) So this one's for you, Mariah. And congrats! [via PopEater]
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