Sunday, May 31, 2015

A Second Kimye Baby Is Coming

Brace yourselves, people: Kim Kardashian is pregnant again.

At last!

Indeed, the entertainer let it be known earlier this evening – via a teaser for the upcoming second half of this season’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E!, natch – that she and Kanye West are expecting a sibling for their almost-2-year-old daughter, North.

So far this season, the show has been touching not only on the whole Bruce Jenner thing but also on Kimye’s struggle to conceive another kid.

Looks like the struggle is over.

And now ours begins anew.

Oh, you know the tabs are gonna be all over this one week in and week out.

Photo: BET.com.

Going Deep (Undercover)

Also this week we got the first trailer for the upcoming Point Break remake.

And it looks so whoa, yo.

Aussie up-and-comer Luke Bracey (The Best of Me) and Gerard Butler Édgar Ramírez lead the way, in the Keanu and Swayze roles of yore, Johnny Utah and Bodhi...the extreme athlete-newbie FBI agent chasing the extreme athlete Robin Hood-type rebel who has been using his skills to disrupt the international financial markets.

Of course.

Naturally, and because bigger is better, this little movie will not be limited to the SoCal surfing scene but will go round the world, setting its action against the backdrop of many a thrill-seeking opportunity.

Check out the trailer for a taste.

The new Point Break – featuring Teresa Palmer, Ray Winstone, Delroy Lindo, Clemence Shick, Tobias Santelmann (Kon-Tiki), and a cameoing original-flavor cast member James Le Gros, among others – will be in theaters on Christmas Day.

Photo: UsMagazine.com.

Meet the Supreme Leader Snoke

Now that we know for sure the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens will definitely feature some new, motion-capture-rendered characters – hey, Lupita Nyong’o, hey... – you should know who Andy Serkis is playing, via his prefer acting method.

Serkis, the king of mo-cap, will be featured in the new trilogy’s first installment (if not the whole thing) as the Supreme Leader Snoke.

Obviously, not much else was revealed with that little nugget earlier this week – but that particular name does have some precedence in the Star Warsverse....

Time to GTS!

Photo: EW.com.

A Butt SoFine

Adam Levine is such a giver.

SoFine is no stranger to making a teasetastic video – hello, Love Somebody” – and so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise or shock that the Maroon 5 frontman would bare his butt for the band’s clip for their new single, This Summer’s Gonna Hurt Like a MotherF****r.

Check it:



Cute little flat ass, right? For a white guy on the go.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

A Hawaiian Indulgence


Aloha.

Sad but true, it isn’t what you should be saying to welcome Cameron Crowe’s Aloha. It’s what you should be screaming its way as you don’t buy a ticket for it or as you request a refund for it within the allowed 20 minutes to do so. Emphatically.

It’s not that Aloha is a terrible movie, although it is pretty bad wondering its a C2 joint starring Bradley Copper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, John Krasinski, and Bill Murray, for cryin out loud. It’s just that there’s an even better one, an acceptable one, hiding behind the surface. Behind what we’ve actually gotten.

That is to say a mess of a story.

Seriously, I got sooo tired of trying to wrap my head around it I actually fell asleep a little there in the middle. I did that, so now you don’t have to.

Cooper stars as Brian Gilcrest, a self-described f----up of an erstwhile Top Gun – OK, at least I think that’s how he described himself at one point (I could have dreamt it, I guess...) – with a background so hazy and a mission so confusing it’s not worth it getting into it too much, trust. Suffice it to say that he arrives in Hawaii in his new defense-contractor role (for Murray’s character, his new old still-shady boss) to do som’in under the guise of doing som’in else, which is why he goes and meets with the Hawaiian nationalist elder Dennis “Bumpy Kanahele (who plays himself), to assure him he’s not doing the first thing he’s doing.

See? So silly and convoluted. And jackass-y, which is why there’s more to Brian, and that more comes in the shape of complicated past and new romantic entanglements.

Brian, don’t you know, used to date McAdams’ Tracy, but for whatever reason he called it quits on their relationship 13 years ago. She never saw him again (until now), and she picked up the pieces and moved on with Krasinski’s oh-so-stoic manly man, another pilot who adores her silently (’cause he’s so stoic). Now that he’s back on the island (yes, he used to be based in Hawaii...I think), though, Brian is forced unto the company of Allison Ng, the hot-shot Air Force pilot that Stone was asked to portray. That Allison’s heritage is as complicated a sell as the movie’s plot – if memory serves she’s a Hawaii daughter whose background includes a quarter Chinese and Swedish (clearly lots of Swedish) – shouldn’t come as a surprise or without controversy. Worse, that the character’s boundless manic-puppy peppiness will make you reconsider your fondness of the actress is inexcusable.

Anyway, as Brian is pulled into doing whatever the f--- it is that he’s in Hawaii to do (satellites and sacred lands are involved), he also must grapple with his heart’s old drama as he maybe opens it up to some of a fresher variety.

Except there’s very little drama in Aloha.

Brian and Tracy have the most civilized, cool conversations about their shared history (does Cameron Crowe not believe in messy confrontation?) and Brian and Allison, they are so milquetoast together that I just don’t even know, you know.

No, the drama in this one comes from a complete lack of focus and direction. It’s a shame that we will never really get what Crowe was trying to do with this one because I tell ya, there was something there. Alas, just not enough for the combined charisma of Cooper & Co.

And here I thought Mortdecai had come outta the gate the worst movie of the year....

My Rating *1/2

Photo: Sony Pictures.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Her Debut

Someone was paying attention in class!

Rumor has it Bruce Jenner is planning on posing as his feminine alter ego for the cover of a summer issue of Vanity Fair....

You know Kris Jenner is jelly she didn’t yet get asked to do the same.

My money Jenner will be featured in the August issue. Just in time to plug into the promotion of his new E! show, the one that will chronicle his transition beginning on July 26.

Photo: People.com.

The Day the Earth Broke


It must be nice to be The Rock.

I say this with sincerity and admiration since the somewhat-anticipated release of the summer disaster flick San Andreas this weekend makes it 100 percent clear that theres a cadre of Hollywood executives that thinks so highly of the former wrestler’s acting alter ego, Dwayne Johnson, that they went and built an entire tentpole about a massive earthquake leveling California and are now selling it on the strength of...his mug (check out the movies poster).

Guess The Big One ain’t a match for The Rock....

And that, my friends, is some star power, which is exactly what a popcorn movie like this one needs to work, even when it sorta doesn’t.

Following the huge-as-him success of the not-his Furious Seven, Johnson toplines the blockbuster du jour as Ray Gaines, an L.A. Fire Department rescue-chopper pilot who has never encountered a dire situation he couldn’t get out of or make better for everyone else involved. Except for that one time he couldn’t save his own daughter, an incident that cost him his marriage to Carla Gugino’s Emma – don’t worry, they are in good terms, albeit separated, and their spare, an impossibly big-eyed stunner played by Alexandra Daddario (HBO’s True Detective), loves ’em both – and left him with nothing but his work and his manly, quiet guilt.

On the day of the event in question Ray is out flying the friendly L.A. skies when a series of quakes starts tearing into the West Coast, from the outskirts of Vegas through Tinseltown and Bakersfield and finishing up in my new home, San Francisco. The City by the Bay, it must be noted, dahlings, is having a plum 2015, with key roles in The Age of Adaline, San Andreas, and the upcoming Ant-Man. Good for her! Except, you know, not good for her (she gets it hard in this one).

But I digress.

Soon, everyone is listening to the warnings of a Caltech seismologist, the movie’s stock serious man played by stock serious actor Paul Giamatti, who has cracked a way to predict a quake by precious seconds. When, with an invaluable assist from Archie Panjabi’s (TV’s The Good Wife) TV journalist-character, Giamatti’s know-all deus ex machinas a warning to the world alerting that everyone in the Bay Area must get out of dodge and especially out of the much-more-cinematic SF, Ray and Emma go against the grain, for they just gotta save their daughter, Daddario’s Blake.

If only they can find her and get to her, of course.

Which, duh, they do.

It’s not like, on top of confining Johnson – one of the most kick-ass action stars working today – to a friggin’ moving vehicle of some sort for most of the movie, screenwriter Carlton Cuse (A&E’s Bates Motel, TV’s Lost) is also gonna have him lose another kid. Like, no. While it is quote-unquote cool to see s--- break (in this case, the Hoover Dam and, uh, California), it is indisputable that this project had one big fault: its main villain, the ultimate earthquake, isn’t punchable, and that is why the movie doesn’t feature, say, Zac Efron in the lead, racing to save his gf or som’in’.

Look, San Andreas is not an Oscar movie.

Heck, it’s barely a movie an MTV Movie Awards-worthy one.

It is a non-stop special effect shamelessly designed to make you buy some tickets and escape the real world and its quite-real disaster possibilities and into a fantasy that is much too ridikolous to be scary. Just ask Ioan Gruffudd; the way his stepfather figure is handled and dispatched is beyond-silly (and thanks for the bitchy cameo, Kylie!).

The only one, in this market, who could do that is Johnson – he may not be able to knock out a quake with his bare hands, but he will kick its butt in a matter of speaking and save the day, alright. So good for him.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Warner Bros.

A Beautiful Mind o’ Chess

Historical sport matches are all the rage in Hollywood these days.

No fewer than two different projects about the Battle of the Sexes are in the works, and here comes Pawn Sacrifice, the new Ed Zwick-directed film about the 1972 Icelandic showdown between American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, the Russian champ.

Tobey Maguire is playing the former in the long-gestating project, which is finally coming out on Sept. 18, while Liev Schreiber is portraying the latter. Peter Sarsgaard and Lily Rabe (TV’s The Whispers) co-star.

Check out the films trailer now.

Photo: EW.com.

The Controversial Survivor

Anne Hathaway is reportedly boarding The Lifeboat.

And Pan helmer Joe Wright may direct her in it.

Indeed, the Oscar-winning actress is circling the starring role in this Lifeboat project, in which she would play a young newlywed who is widowed and standing trial for murder in 1914. Her story recalls how she survived the sinking of a transatlantic ocean liner, with the help of her husband, only to end up on an overcrowded lifeboat that brings about a moral crisis with, clearly, many a consequence.

OMG, can you imagine?

Photo: OK.co.uk.

Lindsay’s Fresh Start

And how did y’all spend your twenties?

Lindsay Lohan, who spent the better year of hers in and out of lock-up situations and in countless probations days, is finally done with all of her legal obligations.

An L.A. Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that L2 has completed her 125-hour community-service sentence from a 2012 car crash, an impressive feat considering girlfriend was lagging there for a minute.

“Clean slate. Fresh star,” La Lohan said on Instagram after getting the good news.

Do not f--- this up, girl.

Photo: TooFab.com.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Natalie Becomes Jackie

So, hold the phone: Natalie Portman’s not just playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she’s also playing Jackie Kennedy?

Oh yes she is.

The Tale of Love and Darkness director and star is set to headline the Darren (Black Swan) Aronofsky-produced Jackie, a biopic about the first lady to be directed by the Chilean helmer Pablo Larraín (No). The project will center on Mrs. Kennedy’s life during the four days following the 1963 assassination of JFK.

Production on the film is will tentatively begin toward the end of the fall, so get ready for some stylish paparazzi shots of the actress before the new year.

Photo: TitresPresse.com.

Simply Irresistible, Pt. 97

Yeah, I’m like, a week late.

So? It can never be too late to ogle at admire the studliness that has become pal-of-Harry Potter Matthew Lewis. For realsies, yo.

Thank you, Instinct magazine!

Now. Marvel...can you fit Lewis into your plans, por favor?

Photo: InstinctMagazine.com.

Matt Damon of Mars

Among the news that I sort of missed while on Memorial Day holiday? The fact that Madonna pushed the start of her “Rebel Heart Tour” (perfection will require a little more prep time). The unsurprising fact that neither Olsen twin will take part on Netflix’s Fuller House. And the fact that the world needs to get ready to see Matt Damon lost in space (again).

Nah, Damon isn’t reviving NASA – but he is starring in The Martian.

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on the 2011 Andy Weir novel, the film will center on Mark Watney, an astronaut (Damon, of course) left for dead and behind in Mars, where he struggles to stay alive for 28 days...until rescue comes?

Everyone is in this one. Everyone from Jessica Chastain to Chiwetel Ejiofor to Fantastic Fours Kate Mara to the Winter Soldier himself, Sebastian Stan, to Kristen Wiig and Jeff Daniels and Ant-Man’s Michael Peña.

The Martian will be out on Nov. 25.

Photo: EW.com.

Mena Man

When Tom Cruise’s Mena is ready to be seen, Ex Machina’s Domhnall Gleeson will be in it.

The It Brit has joined the Doug Liman-directed Barry Seal biopic that’s already shooting out in Georgia, with Walk of Shame’s Sarah Wright, X-Men: First Class’ Caleb Landry Jones, Benito Martinez (FX’s Sons of Anarchy), and Jayma Mays (TV’s Glee) on board.

Mena will tell the improbably-hero story of Seal, a real-life drug smuggler who was recruited by the CIA to lead one of the country's largest covert operations.

’Cause America loves second chances.

Jesse Plemons (AMC’s Breaking Bad, TV’s Friday Night Lights) also has been cast in the movie, which is scheduled to open in January 2017.

Photo: TheWalworthFarce.com.

Tilda Getting Strange

That Doctor Strange movie is shaping up into quite the little art film.

Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton is thisclose to joining Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch in one of Marvels most eagerly awaited blockbusters.

Swinton would play the Ancient One, a Tibetan mystic who guides and mentors the Cumber-stud’s Stephen Strange – a selfish-type of neurosurgeon recovering from a near-fatal car crash – in the art of becoming the Sorcerer Supreme, a.k.a. the planet’s mystical defender.

Let’s note for a sec that the character was originally a dude in the comic books.

Doctor Strange is due in theaters on Nov. 4 next year.

Photo: TomAndLorenzo.com.

Cher’s Good Marc

So fierce.

The nasty rumors – GTS – are not to be believed, obviously: Cher is still around and in quite the style, no less.

’Cause, you know. She is Cher.

The Grammy- and Oscar-winning entertainer, the OG taker of fashion risks, is the first face of Marc Jacobs’ fall 2015 campaign.

So f---in fierce!

You best believe it is.

Photo: Instagram.com/marcjacobs.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Cleaning Up the FIFA

Just a little more than a month after she was (finally!) confirmed as attorney general, Loretta Lynch has made her first bold move.

She is going after the FIFA.

You know, FIFA...the massive international international that governs all of the matters pertaining to the sport of soccer. No big.

Lynch’s Justice Department launched a huge offensive against corruption within the FIFA when she announced today that she is charging 14 of the organization’s officials and corporate execs with criminal charges arguing that they took about $150 million in bribes and kickbacks for the better part of the last 25 years. Nine of these officials were arrested in Switzerland already, and the United States is working on extraditing em for trial (some reportedly already have admitted to their guilt...).

Sepp Blatter, the four-term-and-seeking-another FIFA president, was not charged – yet? – and the now-even-more-controversial World Cup tournaments in Russia (2018) and 2022 (Qatar) will remain in place and on schedule.

Photo: Demanjo.com.

Hotel Maxd!

Holiday time is over: Time to talk Max Greenfield.

The New Girl’s cutie-patootie friend has booked a room for the American Horror Story: Hotel this fall!

Ryan Murphy confirmed as much when he tweeted that the actor will be on the show, “like you’ve never seen him.

So...ahem...in the buff?

American Horror Story: Hotel will debut in October.

Photo: Zimbio.com.