Getting Them All Aflutter

Well, look at Gilles Marini, landing on this handsome feet after the untimely cancellation of TV’s Brothers & Sisters, and right in the middle of a sure-to-be-funny storyline on Modern Family.

The actor is set to guest on the Emmy-winning comedy as a new friend of Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell’ (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) whom they both presume is a friend of friends.

As in, gay.

Hilarity ensues when Cam and Mitch invite him out, as well as Claire (Julie Bowen), and the guy’s straightness flares up.

Photo: NYDailyNews.com.

Fresh Meat

Last year, Sylvester Stallone put forth The Expendables, an actioner starring a bunch of middle-aged vets of the genre.

The movie was a hit. (Right? I skipped it, and I don’t recall hearing many good things ’bout it....)

Obviously, Sly’s doing a sequel, and he reportedly has beefed up Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis’ tongue-in-cheek cameos from the original, as well as recruited Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris to join the likes of Jet Li, Jason Statham, and Mickey Rourke in the follow-up.

But he’s also looking to keep things fresh a bit and appear to a less AARP-friendly audience by casting some young blood in the thing, so he’s turned to Liam Hemsworth.

The Hunger Games star is set to play a (H-O-T) sniper, so look for him when The Expendables 2 shoots its way into theaters late next summer.

Photo: Crushable.com.

Going West

Looks like we’re in for a lot of Cam Gigandet in our lives – and I likey.

The Burlesque scene-stealer will play one of the leads a new TNT pilot titled Gateway, which is a.k.a. Tin Star.

The show, which is set in a Colorado town in the 1880s, will follow the story of three brothers who step in to keep their home safe after their father, the sheriff, is murdered. The task pits them against a corrupt cattle baron who wants to take over the town.

Gigandet in chaps? This has to get a green light!

Photo: FanPop.com.

A New Bonnie

Well, it’s true what they say: Everyone’s replaceable, especially in Hollywood.

Now that Hilary Duff is off The Story of Bonnie and Clyde – her pregnancy got in the way of production...although, if memory serves, she still collected a cool $100,000 because her contract was a smart play-or-pay one – her vacancy has been filled by that duplicitous werepanther from True Blood, Lindsay Pulsipher.

A casting for Clyde has yet to be announced.

Photo: FanPix.net.

The Man

If you’re anything like me then you’ve been anticipating Clint Eastwood’s upcoming J. Edgar because that’s the Dustin Lance Black-written film that will give us a Leonardo DiCaprio-Armie Hammer.

Check out the trailer here.

The star-studded affair promises to pore over every detail of controversial FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, from his childhood until well into the twilight of his life, and DiCaprio is said to be – and looks like he’ll be – fantastic in the biopic.

J. Edgar also features Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, and Judi Dench as Hoover’s mother.

Photo: ScreenCrave.com.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Could Not, Would Not Lose!

Kyle Chandler is an Emmy winner.

And now one more thing is right in the world.

Yes, folks – Emmy voters did the right thing and chose the Friday Night Lights star as the best actor in a drama for the season that was (the show’s creator, Jason Katims, also scored some gold for writing the series’ finale).

Sure, Chandler’s on-screen wife didn’t get a much-deserved trophy (Julianna Margulies walked away the winner for her outstanding performance on The Good Wife), but the actor’s win was a sweet surprise. That he got the award from the hands of his old co-star Minka Kelly was the cherry on top of the win.

And the love that was bestowed upon Friday Night Lights...well, it made me happy. Very, very happy.

Click here for a full list of winners.

Photo: TimesUnion.com.

Hugh Elevation

That Cloud Atlas is sure a star-studded affair.

Hugh Grant has joined the award-winning likes of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Jim Broadbent in the adaptation of the David Mitchell novel the Wachowski sibling are working on with Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run).

The project is Grant’s first since 2009’s Did You Hear About the Morgans?, which not a lot of people...uh...did.

Admittedly, it’s not like the guy has been slacking off somewhere: He has been rather busy helping to bring down the News of the World, after all.

Production on Cloud Atlas began this week in Europe.

Photo: listal.com.

Crazy Town

Holy f---, people – I so cannot believe how friggin’ brilliant the non-ending of Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs, a violent remake of the violent 1971 revenge thriller of the same name, was, y’all (I didn’t see the original, so if you wanna know what’s different I will suggest you GTS).

The wha?

The non-end....

Oh, just allow me to explain.

No, please, let me.

I saw the movie – starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, and that oh-so-hottest dish from Sweden, Alexander Skarsgård – last night, and just as it was about to end, it...did. Only it didn’t. There was a technical malfunction that cut the movie short in the most abrupt, most brilliant fashion.

The whole theater erupted in disbelief.

Could Lurie had written the thing in such a wonderfully bold way? I eventually found that, no, that wasn’t the ending, that we missed a couple more minutes, and that the resolution is a bit more, say, conventional. I was assured of as much, at least.

But, man, would Straw Dogs been really, really som’in’ had the cutaway I saw been it, y’ know. Because it certainly had me all kinds of bothered for all the wrong reasons, and by that I mean how good Skarsgård is at being bad. Dayum, is he ever.

His Charlie is a former football quarterback who now work construction with a motley crew of washouts in their hometown of Blackwater, Miss. He’s a big-deal redneck who does some pretty despicable things to the Sumners (Marsden and Bosworth), a couple from Hollywood that’s returned to the rural, deep-South town to take care of her daddy’s place, get it ready for sale. The True Blood hunk has an intensity that it so stoopid-effortless, and he is just so good to look at, that I found myself thinking things I shouldn’t have.

But I digress.

So, yeah, Bosworth’s Amy is a local...a beautiful girl who got out and lost her accent for work. She’s an actress who once starred on an NBC show that, had the ratings been measured only in Blackwater, probably would still be on. David, her husband, is a screenwriter, and Marsden plays him a chumpness that I never would attribute to him, which only makes his awakening in the final act all the more riveting.

Ah, yes, I circle back to that ending.

By the time we inch closer to the credits, you know Straw Dogs is going to, can only end one of two ways. Charlie and his gang have taken to imposing themselves on the Sumners (did I mention that he and Amy were sweethearts in high school?), quite subtly at first, and rather overtly for the most part of the movie: Hired to fix the roof on the property’s barn, they show up super-early for work and wake David and Amy up, leave whenever they like to go hunting of because it’s too hot, question David’s everything (his job, his taste in music...his manhood, in essence), and leer at Amy. In one of the movie’s most upsetting sequences, they trick him into a hunt, and two of them rape her, one more savagely than the other.

It all escalates quickly and it drives a wedge between the couple, who, to make matters worse, is drawn into a secondary drama that brings a vicious attack on the Sumners, who must fight back should they want to survive to die another day.

It’s all pretty gruesome, alright, and like many movies of its kind that came before it, you will not be able to look away from this one. Not when there’s a hot Swede walking around all sweaty and shirtless and s---, and definitely not when the villains’ comeuppance is so well served. Who says you can’t go home, huh.

My Rating ***

Photo: Screen Gems.

Bella + Edward 4ever

Hey, Twihards – this one’s for you...here’s the first full trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1:

There is going to be a wedding! Some bed-breakin’ sex! And a human-vampire baby in such the fast making it makes everyone shake in their supernatural boots.

Oy with the drama....

Look to see how it all plays out on Nov. 18, y’all.

Funny, Sexy, Hunk

Alexander Skarsgård recently told Men’s Journal a bunch of things.

Some in jest, some in all seriousness.

Like, he first joked about losing his virginity in 2008: “Best 8 seconds of my life.”

Ha! Funny....

Then he reflected on being named Sexiest Man five times running in his native Sweden, and on how being so ridiculously good-looking can get in the way of his work.

“You tend to get a lot of offers that are like, the hot guy,” the actor said. “And those parts aren’t very fun. I hope there’s something more to me than my pecs.”

Oh, darling Alex, of course there is.

There’s your long, lean body (those arms!)...and your fantastic abs...and that Skars-gaze that won’t quit. Plus, anyone who’s ever watched True Blood just knows your tush is the bomb.

In all seriousness, though, the guy needn’t worry. He definitely has all the goods, talent-wise, to fall back on once his looks fade away in never.

Photo: UsMagazine.com.

Just Because, Pt. 77

Alright, say what you will about my beloved Gwyneth Paltrow (an Emmy winner for guesting work on Glee) – you know who you are, haters – but didn’t she just look beyond, with nary a stitch of make-up on her punum, at Lenny Kravitz’s show in London last night.

I mean, G.P.’s still got it goin’ on!

Photo: UsMagazine.com.

R.I.P. Spartacus

Andy Whitfield was on top of the world when cancer hit.

The handsome Aussie had only had a taste of what surely would’ve been a long career stateside after one season on Starz’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He had to leave the show, retreat, and focus on his health.

Sadly, cancer won the battle, and the actor passed in Sydney yesterday. He was 39.

It hardly seems fair.

Photo: Deadline.com.

A New Anna

Keira Knightley better get ready to polish off the Russian accent she worked on for this fall’s A Dangerous Method.

The Oscar nominee is set to reunite with her Pride & Prejudice director, Joe Wright, for the third time, to work on Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Jude Law will play her husband, Aleksei Karenin, while Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) is set to take on the role of her lover, Count Vronsky.

Photo: SocialiteLife.com.

Outbreak

Today, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion makes the wishes of Gwyneth Paltrow haters everywhere – I know...who could ever! – come true.

That’s because the Hollywood golden girl dies fairly early into the medical thriller (that’s not a spoiler since the trailer pretty much gave away that particular plot point), but do not worry: its cast is star-studded, so familiar faces won’t be in short supply in this one.

Not by a long shot, which is part of the fun of it all.

The movie’s awesome ensemble includes G.P.’s Talented Mr. Ripley co-stars Matt Damon and Jude Law, as well as other celebrated A-Listers like Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, and John Hawkes, among others.

Quite the cast, huh, especially for a movie about an insidious virus that threatens everyone on the planet.

Yeah, it’s not the fare these folks usually partake on, but it works rather nicely because Soderbergh has delivered a movie that’s – I should hope – such a fantasy (albeit one grounded by plausibility) that y’all should be happy to go along for the ride with him.

Like I said, Paltrow is among the first to succumb to this unknown and oh-so-lethal airborne virus. Her character picked it up during a business trip to Hong Kong and brought it back stateside and into the Minneapolis home she shares with her husband, played by Matt Damon (well, she left it behind in Chicago, where she stopped for a booty call with an ex – the cheatin’ heart!).

Soon, thousands of cases begin popping up around the globe, and virus’ spread becomes unstoppable.

Damon’s character turns out to be immune, but he quarantines himself at home with his daughter (his stepson also has died) to keep her safe.

Meanwhile, down in Atlanta, the Department of Homeland Security dispatches CDC suits and scientists, including Fishburne and Winslet, to contain the situation (the action takes place around Thanksgiving, so the fear is that this is some sort of bio-attack to derail the country while everyone’s at ease).

Elsewhere, a professor/CDC consultant (Elliott Gould) goes against CDC orders and keeps working on a possible cure after a CDC doctor (Ehle, whom you so should be getting to know on TV’s A Gifted Man) shuts him down. But his work proves useful, and she continues working on IDing the makings of the virus, and Contagion gets all fascinating and s---.

Anyway, elsewhere still, in London, a shady blogger (Law) sees the sickness as an opportunity to make a name for himself, getting his alarmist pants on in order to profit from the pandemic, while back in Asia, an epidemiologist (Cotillard) works diligently to track down the genesis of the virus, until she runs into unexpected trouble.

It’s unsettling how realistic and scary Contagion gets – it goes without saying everyone will make a dash for the nearest washroom as soon as they leave the movie theater.

It’s all very Outbreak-meets-Ocean’s Eleven, a what’s not to like about that, right (even if some of the plot strains seem a bit unresolved in the end)?

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: Warner Bros.