Friends 4ever, alright.
At long last, the reunion everyone has been clamoring for (especially those tabloids that have had to cut their Jennifer Aniston covers in half since the Cake/Unbroken days – you noticed that something shifted, too, right?) is going to happen.
L’Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer will come together on Feb. 21 to fête Gunther legendary TV comedy director James Burrows and his long and robust helming career. FYI: Burrows recently shot his 1,000th episode of television, and he was behind the Friends pilot.
You know, it simply had to be the right occasion....
Photo: Glamour.com.
Update: Looks like the reunion will not happen quite the way we want it to: Matthew Perry might not make the celebration.
See, Perry is rehearsing his playwriting debut in London (click on his name if ya don’t believe me), and, in any case, the six...pals were never a sure thing to turn for Jimmy Burrows ensemble. Like, Lisa Kudrow might do something with Debra Messing, y’ see.
Oh yeah, the casts of other shows, like Cheers and Will & Grace (which Burrows helmed in its entirety, if memory serves), also will be on hand at the event.
Kristen Bell to NBC’s rescue!
Well, kinda sorta.
The Showtime star (House of Lies) has been cast opposite Ted Danson on Good Place, a new straight-to-series 13-ep comedy that the Peacock has commissioned from Mike Schur, the co-creator of Parks and Recreation. Fret not, though, House of Lies fans: The actress will remain a part of that show.
Phew.
On Good Place, though, Bell will play a woman from New Jersey – look who’s having a moment, America! – who realizes that she pretty much has been sucking as a person all her life. The funny comes from her trying to change by finally learning the difference between good and bad.
Danson will play her reluctant mentor during this journey toward self-betterment.
Sounds earnest enough to work.
Photo: Slate.com.
Here she comes again.
Courteney Cox is making yet another play at sitcom superstardom following the demise of her ABC comedy-turned-TBS comedy Cougar Town.
The Friend emerita has boarded an untitled comedy for Fox that centers on a woman that comes into her late billionaire’s charity only to find out that changing the world is hard, y’all.
Photo: Indiewire.com.
Kylo Ren is taking Saturday night this week (GTS), and then he’s getting to work on Jim Jarmusch’s next film.
Indeed, Adam Driver has been cast in the multi-hyphenate filmmaker’s Paterson, a comedy described as wry.
The project will be set in and around Paterson, N.J., and tell the tale of a bus driver and a poet.
New York gets Brooklyn, Jersey gets this. Democracy at work, kids. Democracy at work.
Photo: PasteMagazine.com.
Nina Dobrev may not have gotten the Baywatch movie reboot, but she may get some Diesel.
Some Vin Diesel, that is.
See, the Vampire Diaries actress is circling xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, the threequel in the xXx franchise starring the Furious Seven man.
Samuel L. Jackson is also looking to reprise his franchise-spanning role, while Ruby Rose (Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black) is said to be considering a part as well.
Photo: PopSugar.com.
Cinemax is so yesterday for Kiwi Antony Starr.
Good for him.
The erstwhile star of Banshee is going network to appear on American Gothic, a new murder mystery premiering on CBS this summer.
American Gothic will revolve around a supposedly good Boston family as it tries to distance itself from a recent discovery that links its just-died patriarch to a string of murders spanning decades. The drama comes from the potential fact that one of them may have acted as papa’s accomplice.
Starr will play the eldest son who left the nest without explanation 17 years before and who returns home at the news of his father’s passing.
The plot shall thicken. That I will bet.
Photo: Elle.com.
Wow.
Virtually no sooner had the last Golden Globe been handed out last night that news broke that David Bowie has died. Our Hero, our Rebel, Rebel, our Ziggy Stardust was 69.
The Grammy winner had been battling cancer – liver cancer, evidently – the last year and a half.
In spite of it, Bowie had been working, still making music and breaking the rules as he went along, having just released a jazzy new record titled Blackstar on his birthday last Friday.
Bowie had two children, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom he shared with his wife of 24 years, Iman.
Photo: UrbanMilwaukee.com.
Update: Click here to see how Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, Ricky Gervais, Linda Perry, and Kanye West, among others, remembered the Thin White Duke.
Kids these days. So nonchalant.
Hollywood player Colton Haynes (The CW’s Arrow) may have cracked open the door the perceived closet a little bit as the year begun, by Tumblring back to a fan who suggested his so-called gay past must have been a total secret kept from the world.
“Was it a secret?” the actor wrote in his reply.
How you like them apples.
And did the gay stay in the past, or is it still part of his life in the present. ’Cause you know that’s the next logical question.
Photo: Hollywire.com.
Ahem. Yaass!
That is why Balmain designer and Kim BFF Olivier Rousteing enlisted original supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, and Naomi Campbell to work it for the fashion house he runs. The women are bringing it – and It – to the Steven Klein-shot campaign, are they not.
It. Is. The ultimate flashback.
And I love it, because I heart it when the old come out of hiding to reclaim their rightful place in the spotlight and show all the young little bitches how it is done and who’s still boss.
Photo: Vogue.com.
OK. What the what.
Matthew Morrison, the Emmy-nominated star of TV’s Glee, is circling back to TV after Finding Neverland on Broadway, to play yet another love interest for Julianna Margulies’ Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife.
Not!
You guys, she’s Saint Alicia, not Slutty Alicia.
M2 will come into contact with Alicia, though, for he will portray an assistant U.S. attorney with an impeccable record for prosecuting Illinois governors and landing them behind bars.
Morrison is expected to recur during the second half of the show’s ongoing seventh season, which kicks off again this Sunday, don’t you forget.
He better not glance at our girl with flirt in his eyes once.
Photo: TheaterMania.com.
Big Duh Alert!
Beyoncé is going to join Coldplay at Super Bowl 50.
Of course Queen B (pictured here with Chris Martin) will be there: She features on the NFL’s choice for entertainment’s “Hymn for the Weekend,” one of the tracks off of A Head Full of Dreams, the band’s most recent release. Not to mention, they are all trying to ride that TIDAL wave together.
Your move, Gwyneth.
Photo: Onclef.com.
Yes!
Which, no need to worry, is definitely not about some girl named Harley and her band.
Huisman will star was Walter Davidson, one half of the Milwaukee schoolyard pals that built and rode the machines that rule the road.
Meaning one of the guys that started Harley-Davidson, you guys!
British up-and-comer Robert Aramayo (who is set to play the Game of Thrones next season) will play Arthur Davidson.
Harley and the Davidsons will premiere later this year.
Photo: Vogue.com.
Creed girl woman Tessa Thompson is about to blow up.
The actress is joining Natalie Portman and Gina Rodriguez (TV’s Jane the Virgin) in director Alex Garland’s follow-up to Ex Machina, a project titled Annihilation.
The movie will be based on a novel by Jeff VaderMeer (you guys, he wrote a trilogy!) and revolve around a quartet of women dangerously journeying into a land ungoverned by the laws of nature.
Ooh, I wonder who will the fourth lead on this one.
Photo: IntoTheGloss.com.
But what about Lauren Graham?!
Emmy nominee Christina Hendricks (Comedy Central’s Another Period, AMC’s Mad Men) is going to feature quite prominently in Bad Santa 2, kids.
The actress is set to play the runner of a charitable organization with whom you just know Billy Bob Thornton will come into contact.
Bitch better not be stepping on Mrs. Santa’s man is all I gotta say.
Photo: CelebMafia.com.
Jake Gyllenhaal is thinking TV.
But just as a producer. For now.
See, the Gyllen-yum is helping to develop a new anthology series for A&E, of all places. The project will focus on a different American cult persona with each passing season, because why not: Let’s keep revisiting all these bad seeds that were good for a show, you know (hey, O.J., hey!), rather than educate audiences on the virtues of folks who have had or are having a positive impact on society.
Season 1 will center on a Jim Jones, the man who led more than 900 people to take their own lives in the Jonestown Massacre of ’78.
He sounds like a peach that I simply must Google.
Not.
Photo: Lifestyle, Yahoo.co.au.
Nicole Kidman’s husband’s a hottie.
And, no, I ain’t talkin’ about Keith Urban. Although he OK, OK.
Legend of Tarzan star Alexander Skarsgård is revisiting HBO, the home of his eye-catching True Blood, to play the Oscar winner’s husband on Big Little Lies. The David E. Kelley-led eight-ep TV adaptation of the Liane Moriarty comic novel will center on three mothers of kindergartners whose seemingly perfect lives mask a desperation that will even lead them to murder.
Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley will portray the other two desperate housewives.
Zoë Kravitz, Adam Scott, James Tupper (TV’s Revenge), and Laura Dern are also on board.
You know the Skars-gaze is totally gonna steal the show.
Photo: Vulture.com.
So SPECTRE was like, this moody, mythological outing. The Bourniest of the James Bond movies.
Parts of it worked, parts of it didn’t.
And some of it was over-the-top, yet not enough. I’m thinking of Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld and his foster-sibling issues when I say that, don’t you know, don’t you know.
Now that some time has passed since the movie started bustin’ dem blocks comes word that the two-time Academy Award-winning actor is itching to play Blofeld in not one but two more movies (supposedly). That is, of course, provided that Daniel Craig signs up for more, too.
While Craig got a little dramatic about the idea of playing 007 again before the release of SPECTRE, I do believe he is contractually obligated to one more adventure. So the powers that be would have to shower him in money and work with him to secure other fun projects if they actually want to deliver a bubble trilogy revolving around Bond and Blofeld.
Which sounds quite entirely boring, come to think of it.
Hey. Perhaps, this is simply a first-week-of-the-year rumor, right?
Photo: WordPressNews.tk.
Fox’s take on The Rocky Horror Picture Show starring Laverne Cox will have a little Spider-Man.
Not really.
Reeve Carney (Showtime’s Penny Dreadful), the original star of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has landed the part of Riff Raff, one of Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s (Cox) minions, in the upcoming two-hour re-invent-y TV event.
Meanwhile, Victoria Justice (MTV’s Eye Candy) has been cast as Janet Weiss.
Photo: ENSTARZ.com.
Ronda Rousey is so gunning to pull a Rock.
The UFC fighter-turning-actress (Entourage) is going to show off just how much of a four-quadrant star now that she is set to host TV’s Saturday Night Live on Jan. 23. Selena Gomez will be the musical guest for the evening.
Rousey is positioned to transition into worldwide stardom by Hollywood, with a biopic based on her autobiography, My Fight/Your Fight, and a remake of Road House in the works.
I’d suggest she should get it – but it looks to me like she already has it.
Photo: Twitter.com.
Lily Collins is determined to happen.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones star – who has been trying since sort of breaking out in 2009’s The Blind Side – is joining Matt Bomer on Amazon’s The Last Tycoon, a drama centering on a wunderkind-studio-executive-character inspired by film mogul Irving Thalberg.
The actress will portray the young-and-rich-with-a-crush daughter of Kelsey Grammer’s character, a studio head based on Louis B. Mayer. Rosemarie DeWitt will play her mother.
Photo: CelebssLife.blogspot.com.
Pamela Anderson is officially over.
Well...ish.
Kelly Rohrbach, a model and now former Leo conquest (boy, do they add up!), is jumping into the acting fray by taking on Anderson’s iconic role as C.J. Parker in the forthcoming Baywatch movie reboot starring Bill Hader Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, and Alexandra Daddario as Summer. Rorhbach has a handful of small TV credits, and, clearly, a certain look.
But does she have what it takes to fill Anderson’s red bathing suit?
Maybe.
Photo: HNGN.com.
So sorry, Jennifer Connelly and Michelle Williams, but Nicholas Ghesquière has a new muse.
And that new source of inspiration is Jaden Smith.
Indeed, the Louis Vuitton designer has included the 17-year-old son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith in the new campaign for his latest womenswear collection.
Because gender fluidity will be so It in spring/summer, you guys.
And because skirts for men must finally happen, OKRRR.
Photo: Pursuitist.com.
As we officially, enthusiastically/reluctantly kick off the first work week of 2016, Ricky Martin wants us to remember in the new year that hard work pays off.
And the singer’s doing so by Instagramming a hot-bod pic from his Puerto Rican vacation spot of choice that is just like wow.
Someone is so fuego at age 44.
Do as the bon bon shaker, kids, and don’t forget about your “#goals”!
I know I shan’t.
Photo: Twitter.com/ricky_martin.
Third time’s not the charmed...est for David O. Russell and Jennifer Lawrence.
See, their Joy – the purported early ’90s-set biopic of Joy Mangano, the inventor the Miracle Mop – is not the commercial and critical hit that their previous efforts, American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, were, and here’s the reason: Those films felt cohesive, and this comes off as a puzzle.
Written and directed by Russell (who shares a story by credit with Annie Mumolo, the Academy Award-nominated co-writer of Bridesmaids), the production opens with the disclaiming dedication that it is inspired by the true stories of daring women. One in particular: Mangano – although her last name never factors into the plot.
That revelation took me out of the film almost immediately because it suggested that, much like Steve Jobs, Joy wasn’t going to be strict about relating Mangano’s story, an incredible rags-to-riches yarn about a single mom from Long Island who, in a way, revolutionized the world. Why Russell would choose to pepper in details about the lives of other women, to skimp on Mangano’s story, completely escapes me. After all, she sounds like she was more than enough.
Alas, the Joy in Joy is, perhaps, a bit too much. Those surrounding her definitely are.
J. Law’s heroine is a divorced mother of three (her ex, played by Point Break’s Édgar Ramírez, lives in her basement and has become her best friend) who bears the brunt of having to support her loving grandmother (hello, screen legend Diane Ladd!), shut-in mother (Virginia Madsen), and look-out-he’s-moving-in father (played as a discounting ne’er-do-well by Robert De Niro) on an airline-clerk salary (aww...Eastern).
Life’s not ideal for the woman, and it’s not working out.
Nearing the end of her already tenuous rope, Joy, ever the inventive one, comes up with a self-ringing mop while out sailing with her dad’s new gf’s (Isabella Rossellini, chewing on scenery som’in’ fierce). She mortgages her entire life in the hope that a gamble on her novelty will pay off big.
Obviously, it did.
What Joy aims to do is chronicle the familial and societal struggle Joy endured on the road to success. The struggle was beyond-real, given that she was surrounded by emotional vampires (including a jealous half-sister portrayed by Elisabeth Röhm, an American Hustle alumna) and shady characters that wanted to steal from her. Except her fight comes off cartoonish because the drama of it all is so heightened.
Joy feels forced. It meanders. Bradley Cooper pops up for a cameo/supporting role as a QVC kingmaker (the real Joy became a sensation for the then-fledgling network) that is ultimately pointless since his character’s professional relationship with Joy is underdeveloped. I guess he serves his purpose, though: He is there to show us that Joy probably would have made it regardless of whether she’d ever met him. That she did only set her on a path toward a multi-million dollar empire.
Lawrence acquits herself nicely playing far older than she is at the end there because she’s a movie star. Her performance is that charismatic, that magnetic and effective, and yet, Russell fails to give her Joy much of any, and worse, he doesn’t provide his partner in moviemaking a showy moment of like, I won’t take it anymore!
Joy’s big moment is subdued. Lawrence can do subdued, but it’s like watching a declawed lioness tear into an attacker.
It’s mesmerizing stuff, not amazing. And I was expecting to be blown away by this one.
My Rating **
Photo: 20th Century Fox.
