Despite a relatively healthy $223 million box-office take to date and some unflagging critical support, most of popular culture is just fine seeing the Shrek franchise wind to a close. It's time, really -- and if you don't believe that, maybe the cosmic coincidence of a Happy Meal tie-in that spouts lewd epithets at your kid will convince you. Video after the jump.
Back when Alfred Hitchcock filmed the famously long kissing scene for Notorious, the passionate clinch between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was in serious danger of violating the Production Code. I'd love to see what Hitch would make of the new lesbian film Elena Undone, which set out to break the record for the longest kiss in cinema history.
There are a number of reasons why the new trailer for Red -- about a retired CIA agent who calls his old team back together to stop an assassin -- looks derivatively boring, not the least of which being: Didn't Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman already make this movie? It was called Lucky Number Slevin, and it stunk of warmed over Tarantinoisms and madcap violence. Not even wild horses could drag me -- wait, is that Helen Mirren firing a massive machine gun at a moving car? One second, let me click over and pre-order tickets.
I really can't wait to see how a certain right-wing movie blog deals with this one -- who's smearable, who are the easy ideological targets in The Tillman Story. The trailer for the acclaimed Sundance alumnus has made its way online, offering moviegoers' first glimpse at the riveting, devastating expose about the cover-up surrounding the death of football player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman.
Tom Cruise is no longer cool, a truth he just can't face -- if he could, he'd be cooler. In the opening moments of Knight and Day, Cruise strides through an airport in a uniform of coolness that may as well have been assembled from a checklist: Distinctive Persol sunglasses, an obviously cashmere V-neck sweater layered over a surely-not-Hanes T-shirt, a Baracuta jacket -- I'm only checking off the brand names the same way he and his costume department must have. The ringtone on his character's phone is "Louie, Louie." And he actually does some of his own stunts, just to show he can. Cruise really may be the hardest-working man in show business right now, but on him (in direct contrast to James Brown), all that sweat just isn't cool. Once coolness leaves you, how do you get it back?
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Despite a litany of bad buzz, there were always two reasons to remain hopeful about The Green Hornet: Seth Rogen is -- for all intents and purposes -- very funny, and Michel Gondry is a genius. Like a legitimate genius. And so the preconceived notions that The Green Hornet has to be terrible -- which in large part derived from nothing more than the change of a date on the calendar -- get left behind within 30 seconds of watching the new trailer. Remember who you're dealing with here!
Somehow this all escaped me as a 12-year-old horror viewer and in the intervening decades since its mythology has burrowed its way into pop culture, but: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is just about the gayest mainstream film of the '80s. Hell, not "just about" -- it is, as the new documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy illustrates in specific, awesome detail. Click through for the proof in a mildly NSFW excerpt.
We've got good news for anyone who has spent the past twelve years praying for a new medium in which Norm Macdonald can laugh through crude punchlines early in the morning. The comedian is helping Saturday Night Live writer Fred Wolf launch Beyond the Comics, a series of raunchy, animated comic strips that will appear on the websites of seven newspapers this week. Depending on how popular the videos are (and this initial crop features the voices of David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Colin Quinn and others), other newspapers all over the country will have the opportunity to buy and post the animated shorts on their websites, effectively ushering the funnies into the 21st century. Now who's in the mood for a good Sarah Silverman one-liner about peg legs?
Summit on Sunday unveiled a collection of new videos pegged to next week's momentous release of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, showing off some of Bella and Edward's panty-soaking pillow talk and the latest 60-second TV spot to stir the Twihard masses to pulsating hormonal rage. But I'm especially fond of the featurette suggestively titled "Newborn Vampire Army," in which a bevy of Twilight stars attempt to explain the unholy alliance between the Cullenesque "good" vampires and Jacob's werewolf clan -- all to defeat the bad vampires of the title, who are coming for Bella. None of which would matter much in the grand scheme of things were it not kind of... hilarious.
Let's welcome back Movieline's Hollywood Kid Michael Musto, who appears to have found the audience for The A-Team and provides added info on the possible Oscar rematch shaping up between Hilary Swank and Annette Bening. Speaking of Oscars, sure it's only June, but a new batch of blind items raises the questions of which winning actress should not keep it in the family -- and which other actress is in trouble again, this time without even the aid of the bottle? Guess away!
You know that feeling of mild embarrassment you sometimes get while watching the more outlandish moments of True Blood? Well, that's nothing compared to Snoop Dogg's new music video "Oh Sookie," a tribute to the show that is vaguely mortifying and yet totally watchable. Here are the 7 best lines (and there were a lot to choose from).
Last year, we wondered whether Hilary Swank and Annette Bening were fated to have yet another Best Actress rematch at the Oscars... then Swank's Amelia bombed and Bening's Mother and Child wasn't even released in 2009 (instead, it made a negligible ripple earlier this year). Maybe we were just a little premature, since Bening's got The Kids Are All Right coming very soon and Swank has Conviction (formerly named Betty Anne Waters). Lets dig into the new Conviction trailer and guess at her odds.
And you thought Harry Potter was the only British children's book adaptation hitting theaters this year! The first trailer for the next chapter in the Chronicles of Narnia series has hit the Web, and amid all the talking lions and glowing swords, there is one thing that cannot be debated: Tilda Swinton will haunt your dreams.
Hope you didn't get your hopes up about that Smurfs teaser trailer: it has arrived (via Yahoo), and it has about two seconds more of Smurfage than could be gleaned via today's first still. But! There is a brief snatch of the new theme song, and it's been remixed with Tone Loc's "Wild Thing," because why wouldn't it be? (Here is why: because the Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel already took "Single Ladies.")
Luke Wilson is only 38, but his career's already gone through several phases. There was the indie phase where he played on-screen muse to Wes Anderson, the leading man phase where films like Old School tried to exploit his everyman appeal, the gotta-pay-the-rent phase where he ambled over a map of the Unites States recalling his sexual exploits for AT&T or something, and then the HBO phase, which is upcoming. So where does the new trailer for Middle Men fit into things?
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