Kicking off Jay Leno's final week of Tonight Show broadcasts was guest Mel Gibson, who slipped his old friend a headline-grabbing scoop before waving him off to an uncharted future in prime time. Not that Leno didn't work for it: Seconds after Gibson's ass made upholstery contact, the host went in for the kill, bringing up the topic of the prominent actor/director/judeotheorist's recent divorce from his wife of 28 years. Looking tan and relaxed, and free from the psycho-eyed intensity and unruly facial outcroppings that accompanied his precipitous drop from the public's good graces, Gibson was impressively forthcoming with his thoughts on the matter: "Look. When it's all said and done, I did a pretty good hatchet job on my marriage myself," he bluntly admitted. "I'm to blame. If you're inclined to judge, put it here."
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It was bound to happen eventually: The tense relationship between tweens and a Twilight idol has erupted into violence. Or at least a fantasy of violence, thrusting actor Cam Gigandet into self-defense (and self-promotion) mode against a bloodthirsty gang of girls bent on payback for his character's mistreatment of Edward Cullen. The video -- and a taste of Gigandet sightings to come, perhaps -- is after the jump.
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You've already heard what Movieline thought about the Cannes sensation without snipped genitals, but for a second opinion, we thought we'd refer you to Ann Curry. The daffy Today correspondent cornered Brad Pitt on live television this morning, then proceeded to grill the superstar about the WWII revenge fantasy as only Cannes Ann could:
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After more than a year of negotiations, internecine squabbles and pity parties, Screen Actors Guild leadership will finally issue ballots Tuesday asking members to vote on a new contract. While it's likely to find the simple majority required to pass the deal, the "Vote Yes" crowd isn't taking any chances with their wily enemies. Hence the new video gathering 34 of the contract's most vocal proponents -- if not necessarily it's best known proponents. And because Monday morning is far too important to do actual work, play along for a few minutes and test your recognition skills against your fellow Movieline readers. The video and scoring key are after the jump.
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Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is a journo-political thriller poised for an early fall release, where it will kick off Hollywood's prestige season with a steady, flatulent trumpeting sound. Before you watch the trailer, however, you'll need to take several leaps of faith.
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It's not exactly news (or a spoiler) that the new Star Trek and original Star Wars share uncannily similar narrative and thematic arcs. But there's something to be said for the person who went to the trouble of diagramming those arcs in one convenient video after the jump (Warning! The footage does include spoilers.)
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Try, for a moment, to conceive of an alternate reality, where events as we know them unfold in completely unpredictable patterns due to creases in the time-space continuum. Now picture this being explained to you by a facially obscured figure who, in a dramatic reveal, winds up being Leonard Nimoy. If that sounds like Star Trek, you are correct. But it also describes the fantastically perplexing Season One finale to the best supernatural detective show since The X-Files, Fringe. It's no coincidence both were brought to you by the powerhouse creative team of J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci, who -- like the viral video that liquefies the brains of anyone who watches it in the episode called "The No-Brainer" -- refuse to let up until your neural circuits are turned into a plate of runny scrambled eggs.
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"That's a pretty expensive joke!" writes a commenter at MTV Movies, which this week unleashed the trailer for a Z-grade monster flick known as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. The mini-sensation has grown formidably on the strength (or, rather, the weakness) of spellbindingly primitive CGI and a redoubtable power-tandem of Lorenzo Lamas and Deborah Gibson. And while there can be no doubt about the inspiration-by-the-ounce that went into the rendering of a great white gnawing on the Golden Gate Bridge, are we in the minority who will doubt it's anything but an MTV stunt? But for what?
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For a while there, despite years' worth of anticipation around Hollywood, the Web and, well, everywhere, it looked like Spike Jonze's live-action adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are might die of neglect in some Warner Bros. utility closet. Studio boss Alan Horn said Jonze still needed to get the hang of the material; Jonze said Warners misunderstood his vision. But today, an unlikely observer may have the key insight into what's wrong with Wild Things. It's caught on tape after the the jump.
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Finally exhumed after more than year in Lionsgate's climate-controlled junk drawer, Gamer will finally make its way to theaters this fall. And now, a week after its poster debut and a couple months after its overseas trailer was leaked (and yanked) from the Web, the studio finally seems ready to show audiences what they have to look forward to with Gerald Butler's mind-control shoot-'em-up. Hint: Less mind, more shooting.
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More than two decades ago, Saturday Night Live guest host William Shatner leveled the shot heard 'round the pop-culture world (or at least a few thousand mothers' basements) when he told visitors to a Star Trek convention to "get a life." Over the weekend, with the updated film achieving maximum warp speed at the box office, it was Leonard Nimoy's turn to admonish potential haters.
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We here at Movieline support all kinds of filmmaking, from big budget space spectacles like Star Trek (a must see!) to esoteric art house fair to insanely involved Michael Bay spoofs that must have taken eight zillion hours to make and involve spraypainted, actual ponies galloping through a high school corridor. As such, for our latest installment of The 2-Minute Verdict, we present My Little Pony: Reign of Buttercup Sprinkles, in which the planet is overrun by an alien species of hostile dwarf equines. Only through the courageous intervention of a Megan Fox-type, polishing a motorcycle with her ass hiked up in the air, can we hope to survive. This blows Tommy and the Cool Mule out of the water.
PETA Verdict: Arrest these people.
Our Verdict: Giddeeeeeeeyup!
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As mentioned here before, the Movieline house was a popular place at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Among our many visitors with movies on the way, Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron were perhaps the only filmmaking brothers we hosted. Their collaboration (and Carlos's directorial debut) Rudo y Cursi opens this weekend; in a pair of exclusive video interviews after the jump, they talk about the inspiration, ambition and influences for the sibling soccer fable.
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· We'd like to ask that all Robert Pattinson's impressionable young fans ("SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAL!") kindly turn away for a moment that we might share this tender love scene opposite Javier Beltran in Little Ashes. [via Towleroad]
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Megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer's honorable life's mission to bring us the most spectacular chase sequences, slo-mo explosions, and ham-fisted dialogue $150 million of Disney's money can buy resulted yesterday in dire circumstances: A Times Square location shoot for The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- which stars Nicolas Cage in a modern retelling of the classic conjuring tale that somehow involves speeding Ferraris -- went horribly awry when a stunt driver crashed into a Sbarro's.
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