Eyes on the Bicycle

Bradley Cooper wants to play a villain.

Alright, alright – that was kinda way harsh, folks, but the actor does want to work with his old Alias boss J.J. Abrams on that Lance Armstrong biopic the latter is working on.

Like, for realsies.

“I would be interested [in playing the guy],” the Oscar-nominated star of Silver Linings Playbook has said. “I think he’s fascinating. What a fascinating character.”

Too bad the project won’t be featuring a dance sequence like his buzzed-about indie did now that Armstrong has passed on a surefire shot at redemption in the court of public opinion: The guy will eat humble pie in front of Oprah, but he will not do Dancing with the Stars.

Photo: CNN.com.

Update: Oh, oh, oh – we better slow our roll. Bradley Cooper is kinda sorta changing his tune about this one.

Actually, he has elaborated on just how interested he meant to sound when he said he’d be up for playing Lance Armstrong.

“Oh my god, that’s so nuts [that people are saying I want to do it]!,” Cooper’s told Access Hollywood. “I was in Manchester, doing the BBC morning show.... I had no idea what [the interviewer] was talking about. I didn’t even know that J.J. has the rights, I had no idea. I don’t know anything about it.”

Well, now ya do, dude. Alas, we are just gonna have to wait and see if anything comes of it. And, uh...I heart that you think this rumor is nuts.

Tee hee.

Bradley Cooper Wants to Have a Tiki

Cameron Crowe has found Emma Stone her next leading man.

The director has tapped Bradley Cooper – why not Ryan Gosling as I had suggested? – as the male lead of this forthcoming love story, Deep Tiki, a project that reportedly also includes Hawaiian mythical folklore and a war element

Mmm...I’m kinda digging this pairing.

And it is quite exciting to see Cooper working with directors that will continue to make me gasp when I think he once played like, second banana on TV’s Alias – not that there’s any shame in that (I hearted that show).

Just wait until you see him in next month’s Silver Linings Playbook.

Photo: HollywoodReporter.com.

The Honeymooner

Bradley Cooper is going to tell Robert DeNiro what to do.

No joke.

See, the American Sniper star is set to pop his cherry as a director by helming Honeymoon with Harry, a comedy that Dan Folgeman (Crazy, Stupid, Love) will be re-writing for him.

Cooper also will headline the movie, playing a reformed womanizer who changes his self-centered ways after he meets and falls for a new lady – a new lady who has a father that does not approve of the relationship (for he sees a lot of his old self in the new man in his daughter’s life).

DeNiro – Cooper’s co-star in films like Silver Linings Playbook and Limitless – will play the disapproving papa.

The title of the project, btw, comes from the fact that Cooper’s character loses his beloved right before their wedding and then runs into her father on her favorite beach, where they’ve both gone to mourn her.

So more of a dramedy then?

Photo: VanityFair.com.

Saddling Up, After All

My, my, Bradley Cooper – change your mind much?

As well you can, you Oscar nominee you. As well you can.

Hold up, hold up – lemme back up it up for a moment. See, last January, the American Hustle star was rumored to be circling a potential Lance Armstrong biopic – one of like, 72 that are in the works anyway. But then the Sexiest Man said he we all should just slow our roll, for he was not attached to any such project in any way.

Cut to now, a time in which Cooper is not only back in the Lance Armstrong movie rumor mill as a potential star but as a potential producer, too, of a story called Red Blooded American.

Except the actor may be more interested in playing Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of the disgraced cyclist’s and the man who came forward with Armstrong’s then-alleged doping on a 60 Minutes installment.

See – Cooper wa’n’t lying – he was not eyeing the part of America’s favorite former hero. Not necessarily, that is.

Photo: Hollywire.com.

Waking Up in Vegas

No matter what you think, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis aren’t the stars of Todd (Old School) Phillips’s hilarious The Hangover – debauchery is.

The movie follows the misadventures of a trio of guys who take their friend Doug (National Treasure’s Justin Bartha) to Las Vegas two days before his wedding, and then proceed to lose him after the first night of bachelor-partying – a night they’ll never forget.

Strike that: It’s a night they’ve forgotten all about.

When Phil (He’s Just Not That Into You’s Cooper), Stu (TV’s The Office’s Helms), and Alan (Galifianakis, a.k.a. comedy’s next It Boy, trust me) wake up the next morning, they don’t know anything other than their heads hurt.

The last thing they remember is standing on the roof of Caesars Palace, drinking shots of Jäger.

They’re back in their $4,200-a-night suite, which is now beyond-trashed. There’s a tiger in the bathroom, a chicken roaming around, and a crying baby in a closet. One of them appears to have been in the ER, another is missing a tooth and – Vegas, baby! – hitched, and the other now has a pierced belly button.

And Doug is nowhere to be found.

With no clue as to what transpired and little time to spare, Phil, Stu, and Alan must shake the glitter of their clothes and retrace their hazy steps and so they can figure out where it all went downhill, and hopefully find and get their friend back to L.A. in time to walk down the aisle.

Their quest gives The Hangover its strong spine, which it needs to sustain the very long, very amusing day ahead, which includes a fact-finding visit to a wedding chapel, a encounter with a small, yet very mean Chinese mobster, a sweet stripper played by Heather Graham, an interview with an ER doctor, and an tête-à-tête with Mike Tyson.

In the words of Katy Perry, “That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas.”

The Hangover is a must-see. It’s boys being boys, no-apologies fun. It’s great to see Cooper leading a movie, and I can’t wait to see him in something that’s all his own (although at a screening of the movie in Miami Beach last month he said he “can’t talk about” whether that something will be the Green Lantern movie). And Galifianakis is a scene-stealer if I ever saw one, and I sooo want to hang out with him.

If you enjoy this, you must be sure to rent the underwatched-at-the-theaters Observe and Report. Both movies are oh-so-wrong in the best ways.

My Rating ****

Photo: Warner Bros.

The New Deal

Once upon a time, the episode of HBO’s Sex and the City titled “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little” aired, and inspired the revolutionary self-help best-seller known as He’s Just Not That Into You.

Written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tucillo, a former executive story editor and writer on the show, the tome shone a light on the awful truths of dating, like if he’s not calling you…or marrying you…or sleeping with you, then – all together – he (or she) must not be that into you.

The movie by the same title is out today, and it’s a must-watch for two reasons.

First, the cast: When else are you going to watch such a good-looking ensemble, including Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore (an executive producer on it), Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly (HBO’s Entourage), Bradley Cooper (TV’s Alias), Ginnifer Goodwin (HBO’s Big Love), Scarlett Johansson, and Barrymore’s ex, Justin Long, in one movie?

Not soon enough.

And second, it’s given Saturday Night Live a reason to tap Cooper to host tomorrow night. Now, that little added extra is worth the price of the ticket.

But I know. I digress.

He’s Just Not That Into You tells the Baltimore-set interconnected stories of a group of people facing the challenges of reading or misreading human behavior.

For instance, there’s Gigi (a radiant Goodwin), a wallflower-type who puts herself out there, but still can’t find a man to call her back. Is she trying too hard, or is she just plain ol’ unlucky in love?

Then there’s Beth (Aniston), a woman who has been in a relationship with Neil (Affleck) for seven years, but he’s still not proposing. Is he stalling, or is it never going to happen?

And there’s also Anna (Johansson), a femme fatale-type who’s stringing along Conor (Connolly), a good-boy realtor, and flirting with Ben (Cooper), an exec married to Janine (Connelly), a tightly wound co-worker of Gigi and Beth’s.

Look, He’s Just Not That Into You is a rom-com, and unfortunately, it’s a phenomenal one because the rom in it is so…calibrated, so…clean, so…precise, that it just falls short of something we can actually relate to. And the com in it, while insightful, is not ha ha! enough.

I still liked it, though.

But in a post-Rules, post-Sex and the City world, in which we (women and men) are supposed to be able to talk about feelings, I just did not think it really brought anything new to the table. Still, some of us need to watch this movie. Perhaps it can point us in the right direction, or perhaps it will make us smile. Often, that’s all you need.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Warner Bros.

Just Like a Pill

Drugs are baaad, kiddos – just don’t tell Bradley Cooper’s character in the trippy Limitless (he won’t listen).

Cooper plays Eddie Morra in this oh-so-stylish executive produced-by-him movie.

Eddie’s a shaggy, kinda dirty-looking underachiever who somehow has a book contract and a pile of blank pages waiting at home. Otherwise unemployed, he’s managed to hold on to Lindy (Abbie Cornish), his beautiful girlfriend who – oh, wait...she’s done and out of his life shortly after we meet him. The guy’s pretty adrift in New York City, going nowhere fast.

So, of course he’ll have a chance encounter with his old brother-in-law, right, who comes back into his miserable life bearing a gift: NZT, a revolutionary, supposedly FDA-approved new pharmaceutical that promises to unlock it all (the drug, brother-in-law explains, allows the taker to access 100 percent of his/her brain, not just the usual 20 percent).

And that is how good ol’ Eddie’s life changes from one reluctant moment to the other: a pop of NZT rushes him with clarity, with knowledge...with purpose. In the hours after his first fix, he talks his way out of late rent and into his landlord’s wife’s pants, cleans his ew- filthy apartment, and bangs out like, 40 pages of his previously inexistent book (which his editor devours).

He’s hooked.

The next day, he’s gotta have more, so he pays brother-in-law a visit, but stuff happens and he begins to realize NZT is serious business and that people definitely will kill for it. I don’t want to spoil things, so let’s just say he gets his fix and then some, whaddya say?

Armed with a stash of infinite possibility, Eddie goes on a wild self-improvement bender – he gets a fancy haircut, he starts working out and learning languages...just absorbing and tapping into long-lost knowledge, he gets fancy suits custom made, he starts playing the stock market (catching the attention of many a big Wall Street player, including Carl Van Loon, a tycoon with questionable intentions played by one Robert De Niro), and he seduces Lindy back.

Drugs can’t be that bad, he figures as he keeps on climbing...as he keeps on living.

They do come at a high cost, though, which he realizes someone bad is following him, when people start dying...when he, uh, starts skipping freakin’ time. With his life in jeopardy and the drug’s brutal side effects starting to take their toll, not to mention the fact that he’s teetering on grody-junkie territory, Eddie has to smart up but fast if he wants to stay alive.

The Hangover is the movie that made Cooper a household name, but this one’s the one that could very well make him a star. It’s not a perfect offering – mind you, it’s a bit of a high itself, especially when it gets all dangerous – but if it hits, it will open up a limitless world of opportunity for the actor. He’s got the charisma for it, and a go-for-broke attitude that sets him apart, which makes him oh-so-special and watchable and, to borrow a Sheenism, winning.

My Rating ***

Photo: Relativity Media.

A New Star’s Officially About to Be Born

Lady GaGa’s Hollywood takeover is now beyond-cemented.

Let us me all deal with it.

Indeed, the singer-cum-Golden Globe-winning-actress is going to share the screen with Bradley Cooper in a long-in-the-works remake of A Star Is Born, which the War Dogs supporting player will direct in his feature-film debut in that capacity.

Clint Eastwood and Beyoncé previously had been attached to the project, which, one must admit and/or presume, will be super-different now that Cooper and Mother Monster are involved.

For one, the Academy Award-nominated Hunting Ground-song co-writer and performer is – of course – going to be quite involved. Her deal includes a composing and performing new music for the story of a rising ingenue and her declining lover/mentor. And for two, all eyes will be on Cooper, as folks – including yours truly – will look to see what kind of energy he has a big-time, yet untested helmer.

Production on this one is expected to kick off in California early in 2017.

Christmas 2017. How is that schedule looking for a potential release?

Photo: PopCrush.com.

Abscam Man

Jeremy Renner, whose summer is about to get interesting now that The Bourne Legacy is like, weeks away from opening date, is already looking ahead at the future.

The Oscar-nominated actor is talking to David O. Russell about joining Bradley Cooper in his new untitled drama f.n.a. American Bulls---.

Based on a true story, the project centers on a con man (to be played by the Sexiest Man Alive) compelled to work with the FBI agent (that’d be Renner) who captured him in a far-reaching sting op o.k.a. Abscam.

Evidently, Christian Bale was supposed to play Cooper’s role first, with Cooper taking on the part of the agent, but that all changed when Bale left the movie.

Photo: RockNRollGhost.com.

City of Blinding Lights

First, we went to Paris, and now, we’re off to New York – at the movies, at least thanks to New York, I Love You.

A couple of years ago, a group of talented writers and directors and actors delivered Paris, Je T’aime, a lovely film about life and love in the City of Lights.

New York, I Love You is also a series of vignettes – obviously set in the Big Apple – this time helmed by directors including Brett Ratner, Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, and Natalie Portman, who pulls double-duty by also acting in Nair’s segment as a Hasidic bride harboring secret longings.

Each entry in this travelogue is named after its director, as opposed to the neighborhood in which the action is set, like in Paris, Je T’aime, which I thought was kind of ill-advised.

But I’ll get to that.

The strength of the project lies in the infinite charm and appeal of the city they like to call Gotham. New York is a city so nice they named it twice, after all.

Wandering around its streets, from SoHo to the Upper West Side, you can run into the likes of, among others, Chris Cooper and Robin Wright Penn; Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo; Portman; Rachel Bilson, Hayden Christensen, and Andy Garcia; Ethan Hawke and Maggie Q; Anton Yelchin, Olivia Thirlby, and James Caan; and Orlando Bloom and Christina Ricci.

Isn’t it just swell?

The movie’s main weakness, though, is it feels a bit rushed, and surprisingly draggy in its middle, in its quieter moments. Also, by trying to have certain characters randomly appear as essentially passersby in others’ stories, the movie hammers home the notion that everyone in NYC is a potential Kevin Bacon with his or her own six-degrees-of-separation thing going. Which is not true – there’s only one Kevin Bacon.

Anyway, standouts are Ratner’s segment starring Yelchin, Thirlby, and Caan, and featuring a cameo by Gossip Girl star Blake Lively. As Yelchin got lucky with a more-than-meets-the-eye Thirlby, I was reminded of the city’s anything-can-happen vibe (except that which I mentioned a moment ago...although I look forward to being proven wrong one day), which was captured amusingly, nicely, and, above all, smartly.

Seeing Chris Cooper and Wright Penn flirt up a storm in Yvan Attal’s was super-sexy, full of possibility and just a little naughty. Just like the New York itself. And seeing Joshua Marston’s story, starring Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as old Brooklynites, was a pleasure that answered the age-old question of what it’s all about: love (and laughter-inducing oldies but goodies).

New York, I Love You is dedicated to director Anthony Minghella, who passed away shortly before he could shoot the stirringest segment of them all starring Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf, and John Hurt. Kapur replaced him “with Anthony in my heart and in presence of his soul.”

I think the late director would be pleased with the end result, but, perhaps, he would also have suggested to name each vignette after its neighborhood because it would’ve invited the movie’s audience in a bit more. Not everybody’s familiar with New York, but everybody wants to be. A little direction would’ve been nice.

My Rating ***

Photo: Vivendi Entertainment.

The Executioner is Coming

Who woulda thunk it.

Bradley Cooper is deep into the franchise game now.

I liked The A-Team – but not a lot of the people who actually count did to keep making more films of those guys. But I digress.

The point is not only did Cooper pretty much steal Guardians of the Galaxy by simply voicing Rocket Rackoon but, now, the two-tome Oscar-nominated actor (and three-time Hangover star – but let’s not hold that against the guy) is getting into the business of headlining a brand new series of action novels-to-screen potential adaptations.

Cooper is set to play Mack Bolan, a.k.a. The Executioner, in a first movie based on the Don Pendleton books.

Photo: GQ.com.

Still Limitless

Jake McDorman may be headlining the TV version of Limitless this fall, but the OG NZT taker, Bradley Cooper, will be on hand to ensure that the series is a success.

Yes, the three-time Oscar nominee and current Tony nominee, has signed on to recur on the adaptation of the 2011 sleeper hit that CBS is mounting for our enjoyment (Cooper is also executive producing the show).

The actor will return to TV (remember, he got his big break on Alias!), to reprise his role as struggling writer-cum-man wonder/senator/presidential hopeful Edward Mora for the tube.

Limitless, the show, will revolve around Brian Finch (McDorman), a (handsome) man who discovers the power of NZT, a mysterious drug with some pretty incredible side effects (it allows ya to tap into all of your brain’s potential) and who is, obviously, invited by the FBI to use his newfound abilities to help the bureau solve some cases on the weekly. Of course, Finch and Mora will become entangled, and something tells me Cooper may now be playing the Robert De Niro part on the show. Meaning, the nefarious one.

Jennifer Carpenter (Showtime’s Dexter) and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are set to co-star, btw.

Your move, Abbie Cornish.

Photo: TheFilmStage.com.

Writer Wannabe

I think Bradley Cooper is a frustrated writer at heart.

He played one on TV’s Alias.

He was quite underrated, yet rather good in his turn as one in last year’s The Words.

And, now, he is thinking about remaking the 2011 Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) film Kokowääh, in which he would play, yes...a writer.

Btw, Schweiger is so deserving of my urging you to Google him like, now. Go...you will be happy you did.

Anyway, Cooper’s so into an American version of the German film that he is mulling over directing the thing on top of starring in it and producing it.

The original told the story of a writer who finds out he has an 8-year-old daughter whilst exploring the relationship he forges with her and her foster dad, as well as his efforts to patch things up with his ex-girlfriend and writing partner.

Well...it must be said that Cooper is on a roll.

Photo: Zimbio.com.

Ryan and Bradley, Sitting on a Set...

Two of my favorite Hollywood male stars to watch, Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper (look at ’em hanging out together at right!), are set to play together.

The actors are teaming up for a new cop action/comedy. The untitled project follows a couple of San Francisco police officers forced to work with their retired former-police-office fathers to help solve a crime.

Reynolds (who will next be seen in Buried later this month) and Cooper’s partnership is expected “to have an updated Lethal Weapon flavor that plays into edgier R-rated territory.”

Photo: JustJared.BuzzNet.com.

Ben Foster Bikes Up

And the first actor to play Lance Armstrong will be...Bradley Cooper young character actor Ben Foster.

The Messenger star is poised to play the disgraced cyclist in one of three Armstrong biopics in the works – the one that’s set up at Working Title. The Queen’s Stephen Frears is set to direct from a script by Trainspotting’s John Hodge.

The movie would focus primarily on Armstrong’s doping scandal, and cameras are expected to roll in the fall.

Like I said: There are two other Armstrong movies in the works. Warner Bros. is also prepping som’in’; Cooper’s name was floated as a possibility for the project that J.J. Abrams is developing.

Guess it’s really a matter of time until we which one makes it to the finish line first.

Photo: Berlinale.de.

The Star Will Be GaGa?

Wait. What?

Lady GaGa is joining Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born remake?

Going for a bike ride together – that’s how her involvement in the Cooper-produced-and-led project got cemented-ish earlier this month.

Guess Beyoncé is no longer involved.

Well this has Annie remake written all over it now.

Photo: E! Online.

Deeper Than All Else

Four-time Oscar nominee (thrice as an actor, once as an American Sniper producer – but you knew that) Bradley Cooper will fall from grace in his new movie, Deeper.

But he will redeem himself.

See, Cooper is gonna play an astronaut who, for whatever reason, journeys into – get this – the bottom of a newly discovered oceanic trench that is believed the lowest point on Earth. There he comes across lots of exciting and new dangers, which create physical and psychological challenges for the guy.

Max Landis, the writer of American Ultra and Chronicle, is behind this one, and Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó (White God) is already on board to helm.

Photo: Time.com.

The Good Cop

And for his next role, Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper is getting historical.

Someone likes what he’s tasting....

The Silver Linings Playbook star is going to produce and star in Dark Invasion, a thriller based on the upcoming Howard Blum non-fiction book about the campaign to stop a crew of Germans sent stateside in 1915 from spying on the Americans to try and keep them from joining World War I.

Cooper won’t need to dust off an accent, for he would play Tom Tunney, the real-life New York police captain assigned thwart the Germans’ effort and the man the CIA thinks of as the first head of homeland security.

Blum’s book is set to arrive in stores this Sept. 11, btw.

Photo: TheStar.com.

All Four One and One Four All

I admit the moment I heard they were remaking The A-Team for the big screen I thought – still burned by the memory of Bewitched and The Dukes of Hazzard – that a movie adaptation would be a hot mess.

Thanks to co-writer-director Joe Carnahan, though, The A-Team is quite easily the best blockbuster so far this season.

Honestly, the movie’s totally rock ’n’ roll, relentlessly cheeky, and because of Liam Neeson, as Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, and Bradley Cooper, oh-so-studly.

Neeson and Cooper, who plays Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck (and sooo should’ve been re-nicknamed “The Body” the actor got so ripped), are joined by District 9’s Sharlto Copley, as H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdoch, and Ultimate Fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the role of B.A. Baracus.

The foursome slips into character effortlessly, perfectly cast and suited to complement one another. These men, like the plans they execute on screen, come together in a way audiences will love, trust.

The plot of the movie you know: Just as on the TV show upon which it’s based, it follows the members of an elite military unit looking to clear their names in the eyes of the military, which suspects them of a crime they didn’t commit.

They specialize in the ridikolous – like breaking out of maximum-security prisons in the most spectacular of ways, flying tanks, and being awesome 24/7 – so their considerable talents come in handy when they find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that may or may not involve Jessica Biel’s Capt. Charisa Sosa, a.k.a. an ex of Faceman’s, and/or Patrick Wilson’s shadowy CIA operative, Lynch.

The A-Team clocks in at almost two hours, but what a fun couple of hours it is. This is how you remake a TV show, smartly and with a touch or irreverence and just enough of a tip of the hat to the past. It so worked for Charlie’s Angels, and I’m beyond-glad Carnahan & Co. have a winning formula in their hands.

My Rating ****

Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Devil Inside

We all know Bradley Cooper is having one heckuva good time right now.

I mean, Limitless was quite the hit and The Hangover Part II is only going to do well at the box office.

Well, now the actor is eyeing the father of all hella good roles, that of Lucifer in a 3-D adaptation of the John Milton poem “Paradise Lost.”

Alex Proyas, the director of The Crow (the reboot of which could star Cooper, btw) is at the helm of the project.

Photo: ABC4.com.