The Jonas Flaunt

Give Nick Jonas you best catcall, yo.

The singer/hard body/actor (the youngest Jonas is starring on the new DirecTV drama Navy St. Kingdom) is on the cover of the latest Flaunt magazine doing just that.

’Cause, clearly, he’s got it.

Photo: Towleroad.com.

Update: Click here to see pics from Jonas’ Flaunt situation, which includes a little crotch-grabbing and some good ol’ butt crack.

One More Thing About the Clooney Wedding...

You still weeping about the fact that George Clooney went ahead and married that pretty, smart lawyer?

Well then do not look at their wedding pics. They gon’ make you wanna cry the rest of the week away.

Btw. Amal Alamuddin’s dress? It was designed by Oscar de la Renta. Custom, of course.

Pretty.

Now pass the tissues.

Photo: People.com.

Snowdend?

Ready to leak all over the place, Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

Ew, that sounds wrong.

But JG-L just kinda may.

The Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For star is talking to director Oliver Stone about headlining his project about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, after all.

Stone is hard at work writing the film based on Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, and Anatoly Kucherena’s Time of the Octopus (Kucherena, incidentally, is the whistleblower’s Russian lawyer).

Smells like awards bait to me.

Photo: RockefellerNews.com.

Phelps DUId It Again

Looks like when it rains...lots of people get arrested.

First it was Amanda Bynes, and now look, there goes Michael Phelps doing like he did once before.

Oh. Kids.

So, yeah, evidently, the Olympic swimmer was arrested in Baltimore earlier today, also for a DUI (his second; the first was in 2004), crossing double lane lines, and excessive speeding (he was going 84 mph in a 45 zone).

Phelps issued a statement taking full ownership and responsibility for his faux pas, and as well he should. He was 19 when he messed up the first time. Ten years later, he should know better.

Photo: SwimSwam.com.

Crouching Tiger, Unstoppable Netflix

In case there was any doubt, Netflix is here to stay.

The streamer has, is, and will continue to revolutionize the entertainment industry in ways no one could have imagined. DVD deliveries have given way to making binging a thing, and all that is giving way to...the distribution of major feature films.

And the game gets changed again.

Here’s the latest: Netflix will be handling the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend for The Weinstein Company.

Whoa.

Not to worry if you don’t have Netflix for some crazy reason, though (how do you watch Orange Is the New Black?): The film – starring returning stars Michelle Yeoh (pictured here) and Ziyi Zhang and Donnie Yen – also will be released on IMAX when it debuts next August.

Photo: Recode.net.

Update: Wanna know who is not into this move?

The big theater chains of America, like Regal Cinemas and Cinemark. They have no interest (right now) in participating in this “day-and-date movie release.”

Following a Lead

Paul Thomas Anderson is back.

And not only that, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are back together.

What ever could have made this possible?

Inherent Vice, the adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s comedic noir about a junkie detective’s investigation into the mysterious disappearance of an ex-girlfriend.

Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, British up-and-comer Katherine Waterston, and a host of familiar faces like Eric Roberts, Sasha Pieterse (ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars), and Jena Malone (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), among others co-star in the film, which, from the looks of the trailer, could be like, this year’s American Hustle, vibe-wise.

Inherent Vice will be in theaters on Dec. 12.

Photo: Collider.com.

That Lucky Elizabeth Banks Just Got Luckier

Some girls get to have all the fun.

Three years after she got to play on screen with Big Dick Richie (thanks to MTV), Elizabeth Banks is set to reunite with his portrayer, Joe Manganiello (and Channing Tatum), in the Magic Mike sequel, next summer’s Magic Mike XXL.

Indeed, the actress will be joining most of the original strippers (as you probably know, Matthew McConaughey will not be involved, and neither will be Alex Pettyfer), in an unspecified role. Together with franchise newcomers Jada Pinkett Smith, Amber Heard, and Andie MacDowell, though, Banks is sure to shoot up the film’s estrogen to a nice level.

The sequel, a road-trip movie to “one last blowout performance,” is scheduled for release come July 1.

Be there or be there.

Photo: Zimbio.com.

Time to Raise the WHM Alert

And here we were thinking that, perhaps, she had gotten it together.

Alas, it’s time to raise the Walking Hot Mess (WHM) Alert again, to orange, at the very least: Amanda Bynes has been arrested again.

For a DUI.

Like, weeks after the year-long conservatorship that her parents had had over her affairs expired.

Bynes was pinched in L.A. yesterday after she stopped for a red light...in the middle of an intersection in the Valley.

The arresting officer conducted a bunch of field sobriety tests, and she was taken in on suspicion of driving under the influence when she failed ’em all. Marijuana is widely believed to be the cause of her woes.

Damn.

Damn because, for a year, Bynes had not let it get – to borrow one of her phrases – ugly. She (well, her parents) had avoided a Lohan-style string of back-to-back stoopid in her life (allegedly throwing her bong out the 36th-floor window of her Manhattan apartment, if not later being held on a 5150, was to be the peak of the crazy...or so we thought). She reportedly had been taking classes at the FIDM Fashion Institute in the O.C. Things were looking up.

Now, though, she is in big-time trouble (or in as much trouble as a Hollywood starlet can get), for girlfriend is still on probation from a 2012 DUI.

Fingers crossed this will be only a minor personal setback, big picture-wise. It should be fairly major, legally speaking....

On a related note, this is also a big bummer for all who are pro-marijuana, huh. Bynes and her antics sure ain’t helping matters.

Damn for them, too.

Photo: E! Online.

Accused Papa

Jamie Dornan’s gonna have some Emmy-winning company in his forthcoming The Ninth Life of Louis Drax.

Aaron Paul has been tapped for a role in the movie, the story of a 9-year-old boy who suffers a near-fatal fall under circumstances that test the limits between fantasy and reality.

Paul will play the boy’s father, a man who is accused of trying to bring harm to his kid.

Dornan is starring as a doctor drawn into a thrilling mystery, while Alexandra Aja (Horns) is directing for a 2015 release.

Photo: DigitalSpy.co.uk.

Fergie’s Back

The Black Eyed Peas are taking their sweet ol’ time coming out with some new music – Fergie is gonna do what she do on her own again.

Indeed, the singer is back on the scene as a solo act with a new single titled “L.A. Love (La La),” a DJ Mustard-produced song that, thanks to its call-outs to numerous cities around the world, is just begging for play.

Have a listen.

The title and drop date for Fergie’s sophomore solo effort remains TBD, but her new ditty is now on the iTunes, so go and get, if it’s your cup of musical tea.

Photo: GotCeleb.com.

It’s a Brad Good Abs Situation

Well, clearly, now we know what Brad Goreski has been up to ever since his Bravo show, It’s a Brad, Brad World, was sent packin’.

He has been packing on the muscle.

And loving his Ralph Lauren jeans.

Dayum, boy! You fixing to get cast in a Marvel movie or som’in’? Or, at the very least, to give the powers that be a whopping eight good reasons why should get back on the telly?

I mean, here’s to you and your penchant for shirtless flexing.

Photo: Instagram.com/mrbradgoreski.

Great Wall of China Man

Matt Damon is thinking China.

The man who probably will be Bourne again is circling a starring role in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall, a project that was once meant for Henry Cavill under the direction of Ed Zwick.

The supernatural adventure is a mystery surrounding the construction of the Great Wall of China – duh – and is also working hard to lure in one Bryan Cranston.

So, y’ know...approved!

Photo: HuffingtonPost.com.

Let’s Get So Conscious

Long before we knew about The Hunger Games, and even longer before we learned that a person could be Divergent, there was The Giver.

Written by virtual original young-adult future-dystopia novelist Lois Lowry  back in ’93, The Giver – a pet project of Jeff Bridges’ – arrived on the silver screen last month. Sterilely helmed by Phillip Noyce, the movie floundered at the box office, unable to connect to the material’s big ideas, evidently, and, worse, with audiences (so far, Americans have helped it recoup its admittedly, obviously modest $25 million budget by less than double as much).

This in spite of it starring the world’s favorite Dude, Bridges, Meryl friggin’ Streep, and Brenton Thwaites.

The hot PYAussieT plays Jonas, a young man (an underserved Alexander Skarsgård and a slightly less so Katie Holmes portray his parents) living in a seemingly ideal post-war community (the year, I understand, is 2048). We meet the curious boy on the eve of his 18th birthday (the character’s 11 in the book), a.k.a. the time in which he is picked by his elders to become his community’s new Receiver of Memory.

Bridges plays the Giver, the lone and lonely man with all the world’s answers that those in power (primarily Streep’s grey streak-haired Chief Elder) turn to when they need counsel. This, y’ see, because Jonas & Co. exist in a society that fears freedom. The exacting rules under which they live forego historical tradition and knowledge, value a so-called precision of speech that contributes to order, and essentially eschew the feeling of feelings (i.e., emotions).

Free will has been eliminated so as not to give people the option of choosing wrong for themselves or for the community. Heck, even the weather is perfectly calibrated, nurtured where folks aren’t so as to ensure to ensure abundance for all.

How? We are never told.

The result is a grey microcosm in which everyone does as told, none the wiser of the incredibly high cost of this...peace – or of the larger world that may still be out there.

Except for Jonas, of course. Even before getting is assignment, he had already begun to see hints of life’s colors and, thus, the possibility of the more long negated to him, his family, and friends, which include – natch – a girl named Fiona (Odeya Rush). Now that he’s the next Receiver, he’s becoming increasingly determined to buck convention and to access that more about which he has been learning.

This makes him dangerous and a threat that the Chief Elder will not tolerate. Jonas must be lost and sent to the Elsewhere. Meaning, he’s gotta be taken care...put down. Killed.

Why Gabriel – this little baby that, it’s noted, one day could become Receiver, too (Jonas has bonded with him) – must be as well isn’t like, totally clear, and neither is just how much does that the Streep character know about things.

The more flagrant of faults? Why Noyce chose to end a movie that was elegantly turning into a nice thriller for a younger generation with every informational download that Jonas got (seeing how the consequences of his subsequent acts of defiance built was in’erestin’ fun...) with a boring third act in which suspense gave sorry way to obligatory adventure and action of the lamest order.

That was not fun. Or good.

My Rating **

Photo: The Weinstein Company.

Back to Sea

So Orlando Bloom may be bound for the Caribbean again.

Tired of kicking Bieber ass off screen, Bloom was said earlier this month to be mulling over a return to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, now that he knows for sure that Johnny Depp will be Sparrowing it up once more.

The fifthquel is titled Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and it is set for a July 2017 release, btw.

No word on whether his on-screen paramour, Keira Knightley, has been approached to rejoin the fold, too. Both were wise to skip the fourth movie, 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Photo: IMDb.com.

Update: For sure, though, Bloom will be co-starring opposite Michael Douglas and Noomi Rapace in Michael Apted’s Unlocked, the story of a CIA interrogator (Rapace) who accidentally gives information she should have kept secret to terrorists working on biological attack on London.

Whoopsies.

Just Another Night to Remember

I feel sooo relaxed now that I’ve seen the sequel The Purge: Anarchy.

Seriously. There’s som’in’ soothing about watching folks with carte blanche to commit like, just about any known crime (including murder), take advantage of their right to exercise this release for one night only, in order to ensure that the renewed peace (and lower unemployment and crime rates) achieved in the near future by the totalitarian New Founding Fathers of America is preserved the rest of the year.

Right....


Whereas last year’s sleeper – a micro-budgeted hit from the man who knows all about that kind o’ filmmaking, producer Jason Blum, that starred Ethan Hawke as the determined pater familias of a bunch being terrorized at home in the ’burbs – this follow-up is led by Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and mostly set in the dangerous downtown streets of what looks a heckuva lot like L.A.

The year is 2023, and the purge, which is meant to serve as a soul cleansing, is now in its sixth year.

As you can imagine, it is bloody business, and not at all the kind s--- you wanna be caught in the middle of, unwitting participant-style. Unless you’re purging, which Grillo’s unnamed-throughout character is. That is, until he’s not.

He gets sidetracked going against his instinct and his need to get his Purge on when he decides to assist a mother-daughter duo (Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul) targeted by some heavily armed (government?) goons, as well as a not-so-happy young couple (Zach Gilford, from TV’s Friday Night Lights, and Kiele Sanchez, from TV’s Lost) that has come into some trouble of their own after a car break.

Twelve long and frightful hours later, once the night of the Purge is over and done with for another successful year, only some of ’em will have made it, the bleak universe of the franchise will have been expanded, and you, we, the audience, will, perhaps, wish for a little more.

A little more context to the ritual – which may be coming soon, as a third Purge movie is in the works (as a prequel to the first one) – and a little more subversiveness. See, the first Purge was so, well...fun because it was a perfectly timed wish fulfillment on this revenge on the 1 percent.

The Purge: Anarchy, with its subplot about a group of anti-Purger citizen resistance on the rise (the new tradition, everyone seems to agree, is designed to target the poor), ends up coming across as a Hunger Games sans political commentary...even though the political commentary is in the mix.

If the powers that be will insist on producing further installments of this new wave of torture porn, they need to remember to play with the politics of the the plot. Otherwise, they’ll just lazily asking us that we fork over our dough for a more mayhem-y, violent sort of big-screen Survivor.

And I won’t be up for that, Grillo (a character actor in a commanding turn) or no Grillo.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Indiewire.com.

George Clooney Is Officially Off the Market

Sorry, ladies and gents that were hoping the guy liked gents: George Clooney is married again (and not to any of y’all).

Yes, the actor went ahead and went through with marrying British international-law attorney Amal Alamuddin, in a star-studded ceremony in Venice, Italy, today.

The groom reportedly wore custom Armani, while Alamuddin more than likely rocked a beautiful dress...and that chuffed-with-herself look she has been wearing as of late (GTS, if you care).

#nohate, though.

Congrats, you two! Now...share some deets. Like who did the bride wear?

Photo: LaineyGossip.com.

Chelsea’s a Mom!

Clinton, not Handler.

Natch.

Indeed, Chelsea Clinton and her husband Marc Mezvinsky announced the birth of their first daughter – hey there! – shortly after midnight, via Twitter.

“[We] are full of love, awe and gratitude as we celebrate the birth of Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky,” the couple said.

No word from Bill or Hillary Clinton yet, but you just know those two are somewhere out there doing cartwheels about the happy news.

Photo: DailyMail.co.uk.

Update: Charlotte was born in the evening yesterday, btw. Check out the first pics of the littlest Clinton, some of which have her in the arms of her proud grandparents.