FYI Alert!
Stevie Nicks has a new solo album coming out.
Pause to do a happy dance.
So, yeah...Nicks is back on the scene (once again), but before she and the whole of Fleetwood Mac hit the road, she wants to have a moment.
Cue in 24 Karat Gold – Songs From the Vault, a new album dropping on Oct. 7 that culls from an repertoire of unreleased songs that the Gold Dust Woman wrote between 1969 and 1987 (two other featured tracks are from the mid-’90s.
Here, listen to “The Dealer,” the first single off the album, and tell me you aren’t excited.
Photo: FleetwoodMacNews.com.
Coming up next month, Shailene Woodley and Eva Green will finally share the screen.
No joke, this is like, the pairing that you didn’t even know you wanted.
And in what can you see these two, you ask?
My, in indie director Gregg Araki’s White Bird In a Blizzard, an adaptation of Laura Kasischke’s recent novel.
A dramatic thriller, the film focuses on what happens after 16-year-old Kat Connors’ (Woodley) mom (that’d be Green) disappears one winter’s day.
Pretty sure the story also will take a look at what led to Mrs. Connors going MIA (including some possibly creeptastic business with her husband, played by Christopher Meloni). It definitely will busy itself with Kat’s sexual awakening, which is aided, in no small measure, by the character that Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood, The East) portrays.
Check out the trailer, and mark your calendars for this Sundance-approved title’ Sept. 25 release date.
Photo: FilmGuide.Sundance.org.
Sexy Aussie Chris Hemsworth is going on a Vacation.
The actor o.k.a. Thor already has tried his hand at drama (Rush), but, now...now he really wants to flex that acting muscle by giving comedy a go.
And not just with any simple project, but with a reboot of Vacation, which is sure to be scrutinized to within an inch of its life.
Ed Helms is starring in the project, as Rusty, the son of Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) from the original classic, and he, too, will be taking his family on a vacation, very much in the vein of the one he took once upon a time.
Hemsworth will be playing the (hot) husband of Rusty’s sister, Audrey.
Photo SantaBanta.com.
Agent Carter needs Enver Gjokaj.
The Dollhouse vet has landed a role on Marvel’s next TV experiment, Marvel’s Agent Carter, a coming-to-ABC Captain America: The First Avenger spin-off starring Hayley Atwell.
Set in 1946, a year after the events of the first movie blockbuster that saw Chris Evans play Cappie, the show will revolve around Atwell’s Peggy Carter – obviously – as she navigates a peaceful world run by men that has little use for her skills set. Nevertheless, she continues to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., specifically for its Strategic Scientific Reserve, where she balances boring admin work and secret missions for Howard (father of Tony) Stark (Dominic Cooper) while coping with a life without her beloved Steve Rogers.
Gjokaj will play an SSR agent Peggy meets in her new role, as will Chad Michael Murray, who also has joined the show to play a similar part.
Mmm...methinks at least one of them will turn out to be a Hydra mole....
Anyway, Marvel’s Agent Carter is set to air some time this next season, as a bridge show between the first and second half of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (exact premiere date TBA).
Photo: TVGuide.com.
Lucy is just an American girl studying in Taipei.
Naturally, she is prone to doing all the obviously dumb things that give American gals a certain rep ’round the world, like over-partying and mingling with questionable men.
In other words, she’s nothing special.
Except Scarlett Johansson plays this rather unremarkable individual, and since she is the focus of director Luc Besson’s aptly titled Lucy, it soon becomes apparent that she does have som’in’ goin’ on.
That would be a newly acquired, unparalleled ability to tap into an increasing amount of her brain capacity, thanks to these designer drugs the henchmen of a drug lord played by South Korean star Choi Min-Sik (Oldboy) have surgically hidden inside her taut tummy so she can mule ’em over to Europe.
What Lucy proposes is that these drugs – known in the movie as CPH4 – allow Lucy to tap into more than the 10 percent brain capacity at which she (and the rest of the world) operate. She didn’t mean to ingest any of the drug (see, drug lords: do not kick your unwitting pawns around before they’ve gone and done your bidding...), but we wouldn’t have a flying f--- to give if she didn’t become this limitless being, right?
Once this happens, Besson’s story encourages us – through some stylized images and a conveniently expository supporting turn by a scientist portrayed by the go-to guy for this kind of thing, Morgan Freeman – to dare imagine what one could do if one could play with, say, 20, 50, or even 100 percent of one’s brain power.
In the case of Johansson’s character, for starters, that would be exact revenge on those who have given her the most consuming high of her life.
And then...disappear into nothing, yet become everything at the same time.
For a quick nugget (the movie is barely an hour and a half) about such a lofty concept, simple-minded Lucy is a brain tease about evolution (?) that is also like, way more entertaining and palatable than Johnny Depp’s Transcendence, which explored a similar theme last spring.
Too bad the movie has this silly get-the-f----outta-he’ quality to it, on account of the pseudoscience that it’s shamelessly crafted to back every notion it sets forth.
Sometimes, though, that is all you need to go along for the ride. Just go and ask the French cop that my new crush, Egyptian actor Amr Waked, plays in the production. He is our proxy, and while he has many a question in the end – as will you – it is clear that the answers that we get will have to suffice.
Believe me. They’ll be more than enough.
My Rating ***
Photo: Blastr.com.
Madonna reportedly is going after Guy Ritchie and Lady GaGa...in song.
M is said to have recorded two tracks for her upcoming 13th album, the presumably titled Rebel Heart, that really cut to the core of her supposed disdain for the film director-ex, to whom she was married until 2008, and for Mother Monster, against whom the Queen of Pop has been pitted for more than half a decade now.
In “Heartbreak City,” Madonna supposedly regret-sings about letting Ritchie into her kingdom, only to later see him walk away having helped himself to everything, while in “Two Steps Behind Me,” La Ciccone rips into an unnamed woman (so let’s just regurgitate what others are saying and say it’s Lady Gaga) to accuse her of being a copycat and to ask for her royalties.
Oh, M....
Doesn’t she know she is better than this?
I mean, picking on those two is like going after the low-hanging fruit. Totally too easy. And, at this point in her life, totally unnecessary. Plus, completely been there, done that where Lady GaGa is concerned.
Come to think about it, we had all pretty much agreed “I Don’t Give A” was about Guy, so there was no need to go there again, either.
Them tunes better be catchy if I gotta listen to Madonna get her bitch on is all I gotta say.
Photo: Instagram.com/madonna.
The following is not meant to come off as glib.
Trendy ALS has gotten the viral-campaign treatment (click here to make a donation, no cold shower necessary – not unless you really want or need one!), and now, the progressive neurodegenerative disease is getting another plum spot in the limelight thanks to a new movie starring Hilary Swank.
Titled in You’re Not You, Swank’s latest bait for awards tells the story of a terminally ill woman, a former pianist, and the mutually inspiring bond she strikes up with the wayward twentysomething woman hired to care for her (Emmy Rossum).
Based on the 2007 novel of the same by Michelle Wildgen, You’re Not You – co-starring Josh Duhamel, Marcia Gay Harden, and Loretta Devine – will be available in theaters and On Demand on Oct. 10.
Remember how, last summer, Jon Stewart took a break from hosting his Comedy Central Daily Show?
The upcoming political thriller Rosewater is the reason why.
A based-on-true-story film, Rosewater (which Stewart also wrote) stars Gael García Bernal as Maziar Bahari, a Tehran-born Canadian broadcast journalist living in London who, in June 2009, returned to Iran to interview Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the prime challenger to, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the controversial incumbent.
Instead, Bahari was imprisoned – and tortured – for almost four months, on charges of espionage, an ordeal he recounted a couple of years later in his memoir, Then They Came for Me.
Check out the trailer for the film, and make a note of its Nov. 7 opening.
Photo: HuffingtonPost.com.
Jennifer Lopez is determined to make a hit outta her “Booty” – ha!
Which is why the hot mama has recruited Summer It Girl Iggy Azalea for a new remix of the song, which is already quite catchy on its own merit.
Have a listen:
And don’t forget and shake that!
Last night, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!...(half of) the Friends (finally) reunited.
For a little night of fan-fiction.
Huh?
See, Jennifer Aniston, was on her buddy Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show – to promote her latest, Life of Crime – when Kimmel decided to share with the actress how fond of Friends, that good ol’ Must See TV of yore (can you believe Friends premiered almost 20 years ago?!), he was...and is, right.
So, of course, the talk soon turn to this fan-fiction that the host had written....
Cut to Aniston her reprising her signature role as Rachel – and to Courtenex Cox and Lisa Kudrow gamely popping up for the bit, to play Monica and Phoebe one more time.
Hilary ensued.
Watch:
R.I.P. Joey and Chandler.
;)
After countless false starts (seriously, how many times have they been down this road?), Brangelina are finally married.
A rep for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie confirmed today that the couple went ahead and got hitched in a nondenominational civil ceremony in the small chapel of their Château Miraval in France last weekend.
Jolie reportedly walked down the aisle on Oct. 23, with her sons, Maddox and Pax, while Zahara and Vivienne threw petals and the Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers.
Guess the couple just couldn’t wait until everyone – straight and gay – could marry in America, as they once pledged. But you can’t really hold that against them. I mean, equality is well on its way to Florida, of all places, so....
On a totally unrelated, somewhat-bitchy note, Jennifer Aniston premiered her latest, Life of Crime, this week.
C’mon – you know one of the tabloids is bound to draw the parallel in 5...4...3....
Photo: TheWrap.com.
It’s gonna be from the sex pad to the doctor’s office for Jamie Dornan.
The Fifty Shades of Grey actor has signed on to play a doctor drawn into a thrilling mystery after a 9-year-old boy suffers a near-fatal fall under circumstances that test the limits between fantasy and reality, in The Ninth Life of Louis Drax.
The project, an adaptation of the 2008 Liz Jensen novel, will mark the screenwriting debut of Max Minghella (son of the late Anthony – may he rest).
Dornan is keeping busy, huh. He also recently landed The Siege of Jadotville – so no one’s gonna be getting put in a type box any time soon....
Photo: LovingMaleModels.tumblr.com.
Charlie Hunnam may not have gotten to play Christian Grey, but, whatever...the prince of FX’s Sons of Anarchy is gonna get to play a king.
Guy Ritchie’s king.
The director reportedly wants no one else to take on the role of King Arthur in the epic first film of a veritably epic proposed six-film franchise.
I approve. It’s about time Hunnam pulled the sword outta the stone and became the Hollywood big-screen leading man he needs to be.
Photo: TheFashionisto.com.
Five-time Emmy winner Modern Family is getting a little Zahn-y.
Steve Zahn.
The Joy Ride and Dallas Buyers Club actor has booked a recurring guesting role on the beloved TV comedy this coming season, during which he will play the Dunphys’ (Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen et al.) horrible new next-door neighbor.
And now we know.
Photo: Zap2It.com.
Darkness keeps a’callin’ on Matthew McConaughey.
The Oscar winner and True Detective Emmy nominee is being eyed to take on the role of the Dark Man himself, Randall Flagg, in a big-screen treatment of Stephen King’s The Stand.
This sounds like such a meaty part for the dude – but is he too winky-eyed-charistmatic to play a chaos-loving veritable demon as person?
Photo: DailyMail.co.uk.
They are making a movie outta the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and they want Mark Wahlberg to star in it, folks.
Indeed, the story of the oil rig’s final hour is coming to the silver screen, with J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost) at the helm.
Based on the New York Times December 2010 article that chronicled the disaster, the film will be a survival story that will highlight the courage shown by those working on the Deepwater Horizon that April 20, 2010, when everything shot to s--- and 11 people died and 16 others were injured and, you know, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history was accidentally produced.
Wahlberg will play the No. 2 manager on site that spring day.
Photo: MuscleAndFitness.com.
Academy Award winner Lord Richard Attenborough has died.
Best known to yours truly for his turn as John Hammond, the man with the idea, the man behind Jurassic Park, and as the Kris Kringle of the 1994 Miracle on 34th Street remake, Attenborough, perhaps, will be more familiar to a slightly older generation and more as the filmmaker who produced and directed the 1983 Best Picture winner Gandhi.
Attenborough passed away at lunchtime earlier today, in London, at the age of 90. He had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2008, but even after that he continued to work, at least until 2012, from what I read. It was then that he and Martin Scorsese evidently teamed up to develop a new project for the Brit to direct.
Alas, his health kept him from telling that story.
The man told stories, you see, and that’s how he wanted to be remembered: as a storyteller.
Attenborough’s body of work, as an actor alone, features almost 80 titles, including The Great Escape, 1967’s Doctor Doolittle (which earned him a Golden Globe), Rosebud, and Elizabeth.
Photo: Blogs.EGU.edu.
Anderson Cooper, comic-book hero?
It’s happening.
Kind sorta.
(Not really.)
The Coop is set to make a cameo in a November issue of Black Widow, in which the journalist will question whether the Marvelverse’s one and only leading lady-hero is “the right Avenger for us,” which was the question left on the table at the end of last spring’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Cooper’s query intensifies the heat on the new spotlight under which the Black Widow now stands and informs her journey moving forward.
The silver fox just can’t help it (that he’s so good at his job).
Photo: Marvel.com.
I think it’s safe to state that Matt Bomer must pray at the altar of Ryan Murphy, which is why the actor’s gonna do unto FX’s American Horror Story franchise as he once did unto TV’s Glee.
Meaning he’s going to guest on the upcoming American Horror Story: Freak Show.
Indeed, the Normal Heart scene-stealer – who is poised to pick up his first Emmy tomorrow (in no small measure thanks to, whaddya know, Murphy’s direction) for his work on the celebrated HBO film – has landed a guesting part on the anthology series. Murphy himself confirmed the casting news at a pre-Emmy party this weekend.
Bomer, the director said, gets, “First right of refusal” for anything he’s working on.
Good! That’s the way it should be. ’Cause the more Bomer we get, the better.
American Horror Story: Freak Show will premiere on Oct. 8. The actor is set to be part of only one episode, though – but there’s always next season....
Photo: JustJared.com.
Update: Whoa! Matt Bomer did not win that Emmy we all thought he was sure to win on Aug. 25.
Like...whoa.
