Plenty to Do, I Think

Joss Whedon was in the news this week, and for the sort of reason his fans heart him so: He’s gone and done something awesome.

The Avengers director has helmed an oh-so-Whedon-esque adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, starring some of his favorite actors/collaborators, including Alexis Denisof (TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel), Amy Acker (Angel), and Sean Maher (TV’s Firefly, Serenity) – in secret, right after wrapping production on his summer 2012 blockbuster, instead of going on vacation with his wife (don’t worry...she egged him on).

Toldja he was awesome.

I probably shoulda started this one with a Geekasm Alert, huh.

Photo: EW.com.

Update: OK, if I was Whedon’s wife I’d be thinking som’in’ was up.

The guy is not happy with idle hands, so he’s throwing himself into work again, this time on a so-called supernatural romance titled In Your Eyes.

The story reportedly will follow two seemingly polar opposites who are connected in ways neither could have predicted. Whedon wrote the script, but he will only oversee the project as executive producer while Brin Hill (Ball Don’t Lie) will call the shots.

In Your Eyes, much like Much Ado About Nothing, will be produced through the filmmaker’s new Bellwether shingle, which specializes in micro-budget indies.

Photo: EW.com.

Top-secret Role

Sarah Clarke is returning to TV, and making it a bit of a 24 reunion at that and a family affair.

The actress, who played that bitch Nina on the hit Fox show, has landed a role on The CW’s Nikita. She will appear during the show’s sophomore season’s second half next year...but that’s pretty much it when it comes to the particulars of her participation.

A little nepotism may have gone into Clarke’s casting (and thanks the heavens for that): She is married to Xander Berkeley, who plays the villainous Percy on the show.

Photo: TNT.

The (Un)limited

Time is of the essence in Andrew Niccol’s new thriller In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and that lucious creature known as Amanda Seyfried.

It is power, it is money, it is life. It. Is. Everything.

The futuristic movie tells the story of the lengths people go to in an era where people stop aging at 25. Not much of a reason is given for this marvel of bioengineering, really...something about crowd control, if memory serves.

The point is, once one turns 25, a neat Day-Glo green clocks lights up in people’s left arms, ticking down one year.

Timberlake, more leading-man-ish than ever, plays Will Salas, a 25-year-old going on 28 from the time-poor side of the tracks. (His 50-year-old mother is played by the beautiful Olivia Wilde.)

Will has always lived day to day ever since his time started running out, sprinting from one place to the other, making sure he has enough left on his clock to live to die another day.

One night at his local watering hole, he meets the morose Henry Hamilton, a handsome fellow played by Matt Bomer, who tells Will that even if he could live forever he may not want to. Time tends to catch up with the mind after a century.

Yeah, that’s about how much time Henry has on his clock (he is, in the way of In Time, rich), and after Will helps him get away from Fortis (Alex Pettyfer) and his gang of time thieves (much to the chagrin of the wealthy suicidal who had spent his evening flaunting his left arm around), Henry bequeaths his fortune to his golden-hearted Good Samaritan.

Henry carries out his plan to end it all on his own (he was pretty much asking Fortis to clean out his clock), timing out from the top of a bridge, leaving Will to appear as the prime suspect in his death.

A second passing (bye-bye, mama Salas) sends Will into an indignant quest to even out the scales. He heads to New Greenwhich, which is where people with a lot of time on their hands live (you know because everyone walks), and sets out to steal the time he feels they are taking away from everybody else.

He finds an unlikely ally in Sylvia Weis (Seyfried), the sheltered and unexcited daughter of one of the wealthiest men on Earth, banker Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), and, together, they go on an us-against-them crusade to even out the playing field.

Will and Sylvia put on their Robin Hood pants and go all Bonnie and Clyde (at first, she is his all-too-willing hostage, but after she saves him from a timekeeper...a cop, in essence, played by Cillian Murphy...she then becomes his more-than-a-sidekick accomplice).

In Time is an effective piece of entertainment, I think, that works because it subtly asks of its audience provocative questions without getting in the way of enjoyment.

I think that’s important, and I can’t imagine you will find any fault in that. Other than the hotties that star in it don’t spend a little more time showing us more than their arms as a way to tantalize not only one another but us, who, obviously, woulda preferred it if their secret time stamps had been placed somewhere sexier.

My Rating ***

Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Putting the Pieces Together

Anne Hathaway wants more control, and to that end, the Oscar-nominated actress is turning producer.

Oh yeah, babes....

Hathaway is set to produce and star in a psychological thriller titled Puzzler, but up first, though, she will be playing Fantine in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables opposite Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe.

Not mention, Catwoman....

Photo: Racked.com.

Officially A-List

Kristen Wiig, you’ve made it now.

The SNL scene-stealer and Bridesmaids breakthrough is joining Robert De Niro in Sean Penn’s next directorial effort, The Comedian.

The actress will play a dazzling and defiant redhead who turns the life of a past-his-prime-turned-punchline TV comic (De Niro) sideways.

Sounds very indie-esque and like it could potentially provide Wiig with a chance to stretch her acting muscle with the best of ’em.

Good for her.

Photo: Showbiz411.com.

One of the B Boys

Half of this news bugs me: Lost star Josh Holloway is hard at work on another movie (he’s featured in this December’s Mission: Impossible fourthquel)...with Chris Brown.

Guess which part ticks me off a little.

Oh, at least Holloway will be coming to a movie near us/me more often.

Production is currently underway on Planet B Boy, which is based on a doc of the same name about a crew of American street dancers training to compete in France’s Battle of the Year International Championships.

I presume Holloway – who is fine, but, you know...no spring chicken – is playing one of the adults in the movie.

And I am just A-OK with that.

Photo: FanPop.com.

Is Slavery In?

Brad Pitt is going to star in a slavery movie.

I guess Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained has started a bit of a trend in Hollywood, huh.

Pitt is set to join Chiwetel Ejiofor in Steve (Shame) McQueen’s next project, Twelve Times a Slave, the true story of a free black man who was tricked and lured into becoming a slave in the 1850s.

Tread carefully, y’all.

Photo: MTV.com.

Putting on the Bunny Ears

Lindsay Lohan has scored Playboy...or is it really the other way around?

The once-It Girl reportedly has inked a deal worth almost a cool mill to bare it all for Hugh Hefner’s magazine (many, many troubled years after she was first courted and worth the fantasy).

I thought I smelled desperation in the air....

Once upon a time this woulda been a major get – I mean, L2 was scorchin’ cute-hot six years ago, but now, now that she’s fallen on hard times with the law at so many turns, and her looks have either roughen up because of her lifestyle, or unnecessary work (you can’t tell me those are her original lips), a Playboy spread just doesn’t sound sexy.

Plus, it kinda sorta makes the magazine look like its taken advantage of a fallen mighty who, had she made smarter, healthier, better choices, would never have agreed to go nude for its pages.

Well...at least it’s not Hustler.

Photo: Examiner.com.

Update: I think I have figured out what else bothered me about this news: how lazy it was for Camp Lohan to go for it...and how nonchalant they are being about it, like it is a Hail Mary.

Linds has an image problem right now...has had one for a bit and a half. She is perceived as not being serious about her work and her career.

I think it would have gone a longer way for her to, say, do Dancing with the Stars than to take her clothes off.

At least that show requires she put her back into it, not just arch it, you know.

F---ing Dina Lohan....

Magic Guy

Friday Night Lights alumni are so fun to keeps tabs on (hey there, Matt Lauria).

Grey Damon, who didn’t say much during the cult fave’s last couple of seasons but was noticeable nonetheless, is set to join the The CW’s The Secret Circle – a show, I’m afraid to say, I’ve dropped the ball on a little – in a potentially recurring basis.

The up-and-comer will play a mysterious and sexy (duh!) grifter-type who knows a heckuva lot more than he lets on and pretty soon becomes entangled with Faye (I don’t know the actress’ name...yet), the circle’s resident bad girl.

Well, obviously, he’s got to stick around.

I mean, hello!

Photo: Marz-ThatsEntertainment.blogspot.com.

The Reunion Hollywood Was Awaiting

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are back together.

Professionally speaking, of course. I don’t know their lives.

The Oscar-winning BFF are reuniting for their biggest-profile joint gig since they broke through with Good Will Hunting, an untitled biopic about Whitey Bulger, the notorious and recently arrested mobster. Damon will star while Affleck will stay behind the camera as director.

Not to worry, though: An Affleck will appear on screen – Ben’s brother Casey will have a supporting role in the movie.

And surely Affleck will give Damon some directing tips, since the latter is set to make his debut as a helmer soon.

Photo: Moviefone.com.

What Goes Into Mounting a Show

Broadway’s abuzz with the return of Hugh Jackman to the New York stage this fall, but there’s another Hugh a-comin’, and he goes by the last name Dancy.

The Brit (pictured here with costar Nina Arianda) will be starring in Venus in Fur starting on Nov. 11, as a frustrated playwright who has been unsuccessfully trying to cast the female lead in his adaptation of the 19th century German erotic novella Venus in Furs.

Until he meets Arianda’s engrossing, and irritating, actress character.

What follows then is an intense, 90-minute backstage power struggle between the two.

And from what I can see in this first-look-see it looks like the pair will make for a fun and sexy time during the show, which I know audiences will enjoy (I would – these two are pretty gorge to look at).

Photo: EW.com.

As the King

Eric Bana’s gonna get all shook up.

The actor is set to star in Elvis & Nixon for first-time director Cary Elwes playing the King himself.

Danny Huston will play the former president in this bizarre-but-true story of the time Presley met Nixon in hopes of becoming a Federal Agent-at-Large in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Well, color me intrigued....

Photo: LisaPietsch.net.

You Go, S2

Sarah Silverman is using her mouth for good.

The comedian will take on Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry with Live from N*****head: Stripping the Paint Off of Good Ol’ Fashioned Racism on Nov. 1 in Perry’s home state of Texas.

The name of the controversially dubbed show refers to Perry’s West Texas hunting campground where the candidate reportedly has entertained pals and supporters. Its former name was “Niggerhead.”

“This is a never-forget moment,” said Silverman, who is recruiting other funny peeps to join her on stage. “The show’s provocative name holds a mirror up to an ugliness that seems to have become yesterday’s news without having barely even made news.”

Preach, girl.

S2 plans to donate all proceeds from the show to the NAACP.

Photo: AskMen.com.