The Sisters Are Coming Back

So Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants stars America Ferrera and Amber Tamblyn already have reunited, for X/Y, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend....

But now comes word that producers are hoping to get all four Sisters – Ferrera and Tamblyn, plus Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel – together for a threequel.

:)!

Oh yeah, kids: The actresses reportedly are keen to reprise their roles from the popular movies for Sisterhood Everlasting and already are in talks with the powers that be about it.

Franchise director Ken Kwapis is on board to helm the project (once again based on an Ann Brashares novel), which will find our four girls sort of estranged from one another as they’ve grown apart in the decade since the last movie. Tamblyn’s Tibby, though, fed up with that situation, will be trying to orchestrate a reunion for a life-altering trip.

Do not tell me they kill someone!

I keed, I keed.

Hope this happens. This has been of the most enjoyable from-the-aughts foursomes I’ve seen on screen, so, you know....

Photo: Zimbio.com.

Another Marilyn

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain has Marilyn Monroe on her mind these days.

That’s because the actress is thisclose to playing the Hollywood icon in Blonde, a reimagining of Norma Jean Baker’s life based on the 2001 novel by Joyce Carol Oates.

Brad Pitt will produce the project, which will be directed by his Killing Them Softly helmer Andrew Dominik, who also adapted the book for the screen, btw, and calls the film, “a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy tale-type movie.”

I smell more Oscar bait for Chastain – but not for Naomi Watts, who was attached to Blonde like, four years ago.

Photo: PageSix.com.

A Positive Way of Giving Back

The Ryan Lewis half of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis is doing something.

The Grammy-winning music producer has launched The 30/30 Project, and in doing so revealed that he is the son of an HIV-positive woman...and that, as you can see, he thinks health care is a human right.

Indeed, Lewis’ new nonprofit – co-created with his mother, Julie Lewis, and Macklemore – will seek to provide access to affordable health care around the world.

“[My mom’s status is] a huge part of what’s made me who I am,” Lewis said when he announced The 30/30 Project yesterday, nothing that his mother seroconverted in 1984 when she required a blood transfusion after giving birth to his older sister.

Up first for The 30/30 Project, which is working with the Seattle nonprofit Construction for Change? Raising $100,000 to build a healthcare center in the Neno District of Malawi (the same African country that Madonna loves!), where one in 10 people is HIV-positive.

People who give to the cause – that means you – will receive autographed Macklemore & Ryan Lewis merch and maybe even tickets to a future Macklemore & Ryan Lewis show, so get!

Photo: Instagram.com/ryanlewis.

Lovely Lupita

She came out of basically nowhere last fall.

She stole our attention with one winning red-carpet look after another this past awards season – and a smile that just would not quit.

And she walked away with an Academy Award for her supporting work in the Oscar-winning Best Picture 12 Years a Slave.

Is it any wonder then that Lupita Nyong’o is at the top of the top of People magazine’s Most Beautiful Issue? Something, btw, the most-gracious actress and new spokeswoman for Lancôme Paris has taken as “a major, major compliment.”

I mean...look at that face!

Almost making the cut for this year’s list? The gorge Keri Russell, Mindy Kaling, Pink, Gabrielle Union, and perennial fave Julia Roberts.

Photo: People.com.

Late Meet

As you probably know by now, Stephen Colbert is taking over the Late Show when David Letterman retires in 2015.

But why wait until “sometime next year” for the still-on-Comedy Central dude to get into the Ed Sullivan Theater, right?

That musta been the impetus for last night’s first official, on-air get-together between the two funny guys since the change was announced 13 days ago – a meeting that served as the perfect occasion for Colbert and Letterman to talk about...being boobs.

Take a look-see.

Photo: Twitter.com/Letterman.

Almost a Mother

Evidently, this coulda been the year Lindsay Lohan became...a mother?

That is, of course, if you believe La Lohan’s claim that she had a miscarriage last fall, something that she revealed on the finale of her OWN docu-series Lindsay last night.

“It’s a really long story, but that’s why on the show when it says [I didn’t] want to come down [and shoot...be on camera], I couldn’t move. I was sick.” 

Right. Alright then.

I mean...what do you say when someone plays that card, right?

Photo: CelebMafia.com.

Good to Have It Black

Are you ready for more Orange Is the New Black?

Good, because we are about to get some more real soon, and, more importantly, we are about to find out what happened to Pennsatucky – not to mention....

Oh just watch the first trailer for the Netflix show’s sophomore season, which is hitting the streamer on June 6:



Looks like Taylor Schilling’s Piper gonna have gotten punished for what she did, and Laura Prepon – who may or may not be dating her fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise in real life – will still be causing trouble as Alex Vause, and Red (Kate Mulgrew) is gonna have a bit of an unwelcome reunion with an old big-house mate played by Lorraine Toussaint.

I.

Cannot.

Wait!

Update 1: Btw, Laura Prepon will be back full time for Orange Is the New Black’s third season next year.

Update 2: And she is not dating the Cruiseter.

Just a Coach

Gwen Stefani is so back.

Hot on the heels of a scene-stealing performance at Coachella, it’s been announced that the No Doubt frontwoman has been – or is about to be – tapped to replace an expecting Christina Aguilera on the seventh season of TV’s The Voice.

Her contract reportedly is/will be for just one go at the gig. For now.

Change approved!

Photo: PopSugar.com.

The Clinton Name Will Live On

Congratulations go out to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

No, they are not moving back to the White House, no elections needed, and, no, they haven’t changed the law so he can run again.

The Clintons are gonna be grandparents.

Indeed, it was announced a couple of days ago that their daughter Chelsea Clinton is pregnant with her and husband Marc Mezvinsky’s first child.

So you know what that means. We gon’ have Clintons for decades to come.

Like, #thenewkennedys much?

Photo: JustJared.com.

MOBama Gets a Little Bit Country

Nashville is on a roll, y’all.

The stars of the TV show are going on tour, Michelle Obama is popping up for a guest turn....

Oh yeah – the friggin’ FLOTUS is gonna hang with Connie Britton’s Rayna Jaymes on an episode of the show next month.

MObama, of course, will be playing herself as she is recruited by Rayna to help throw a charity concert at Fort Campbell (whatever that is).

Good to see Nashville might just live to see a third season: I enjoy that show one heckuva lot. And, I mean, it’s not like Obama would board a sinking ship, right....

Photo: GuardianLV.com.

Storm Fixer

Aw...cute.

Gerard Butler is looking to entry that rarefied canon of actors who have played people with jobs they themselves would likely never perform (or be able to spell) – here’s looking at you, nuclear physicist Denise Richards! – as the lead in writer-producer Dean Devlin’s Geostorm.

Which is, surprisingly, not a Syfy title.

The Scot would play a bull-headed, yet charmer of a satellite designer who, together with his estranged brother, strives to prevent a veritable cataclysm when the world’s climate-control satellites fail to function.

’Cause...uh...they control the weather then?

Nah...because all of this will be happening while a man-made epic storm is brewing – oh, OK – and the POTUS is at the center of an assassination plot.

Seriously.

Kinda cannot wait to see how this one plays out.

Photo: FanPop.com.

Girl on the Brink

It is almost time for us to see Elizabeth Banks take her Walk of Shame.

The Hunger Games star’s new comedy – about a news anchor from L.A. who finds herself without her car or ID or any money whatsoever to get home after a one-night stand with James Marsden, and in a hurry to get to her dream job – is set to finally arrive in theaters and/or a viewing situation near you thanks to your On Demand feature on May 2.

Check out the trailer now.

Now, people. Now!

Photo: Collider.com.

Rise of the Machine

So...what do you do if you are Christopher Nolan’s longtime cinematographer and you are looking to make your directorial debut?

Something like Transcendence.

Working from a script by another rookie, screenwriter Jack Paglen, first-time director Wally Pfister examines whether man could or should trust a machine – a computer – if said machine were to become sentient.

They say that we fear that which we don’t know...that which we do not understand. And they are right, for the most part.

In Transcendence that that is Johnny Depp’s Dr. Will Caster, or, actually, his mind, which his wants-to-change-the-world fellow-scientist-wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall, from Iron Man 3), has uploaded onto a computer in the wake of a deadly attack by an anti-technology radical group led by Kate Mara (Netflix’s House of Cards), who, btw, trades in her trademark auburn locks for a badly burned-looking bleach-bond hairdo 20 minutes into the movie.

Prior to his turn of events (the attack, I mean, not Mara’s hair-don’t), which has left him on borrowed time, Will was on the brink of a breakthrough in his research of something called the Technological Singularity, a.k.a. the moment of transcendence in which a computer would, indeed, become sentient and start changing things forever.

Little did he know or expect that he himself would be the catalyst for this step.

Transcendence is an ambitious little movie. It’s stylish, but not like, super-spectacular. Full of big ideas like, Can we really trust a machine that is seemingly inhabited by someone we have trusted? How can anyone – or anything – prove self-awareness? And if machines surpass humans, is man doomed? Paul Bettany is on hand to raise such queries, as Max, a friend of the Casters and a more wary sort of researcher. He was unsure that Will’s mind could make the transition to a computer, and his skepticism is only heightened once the process is over and the uploaded Will asks to be given access to the Internet.

Such unlimited power, he fears, should be of concern Evelyn – but she is too busy wanting to hang onto Will to objectively weigh the pros and cons of moving forward with their little experiment.

Shame then that the movie’s storytelling stumbles along the way. It is interesting to ponder such questions, but it isn’t all that fun to see Depp confined to a box (he is mostly, boldly seen in screens for about two thirds of the movie). Hall and Bettany have the difficult tasks of carrying the bulk of the movie – with fine assists from Morgan Freeman’s government scientist and Cillian Murphy’s FBI agent – and hers is made especially so because she is also trying to remain likable while playing a woman blinded by her commitment, which morphs into a most annoying-looking case of buyer’s remorse.

It isn’t an easy subject the one with which Pfister decided to cut his teeth as a helmer. I kinda wish he’d had more room to spread his wings and soar much, much higher, especially because it sounds like the studio behind him on this one may have tried to clip ’em.

My Rating **

Photo: ScreenRant.com.

Directorial Faux Pas

Well. I can’t say this is exactly a shocker (I shall elaborate in a moment).

Putting a cramp on the otherwise-cheerful promotion for X-Men: Days of Future Past, celebrated director Bryan Singer is among a group of men that has been accused of sexually assaulting an underage dude back in the late 1990s. Fifteen years ago, to be somewhat precise.

Thirty-one-year-old actor Michael Egan III came forth in Hawaii yesterday – ahead of the statute of limitations running out – and pointed an accusatory finger at Singer, claiming the filmmaker promised him a break in Hollywood in exchange for what I can only imagine was just hanging out at first, something entirely different an more perverse later.

Egan’s legal camp describes a scene in which a former digital entertainment company exec, Marc Collins-Rector (a convicted sex offender), delivered him and other young men to boozy and drug-filled parties at which Singer and others allegedly forced themselves unto him, making him feel like “a piece of meat.”

Singer, of course, has no comment right now, and has pulled out of an appearance at this weekend’s WonderCon in Anaheim, Calif.

For its part, ABC has opted to drop his name from any promotion related to its new Kelly Reilly-starring show Black Box.

What...a Woody Allen-esque mess.

Although, like I said...this ain’t that surprising. I have always heard that Singer preferred the company of younger arm candy (nothing more – I am not suggesting anything more than that). And I have seen it: I spotted him having lunch at Hugo’s in West Hollywood once a few years ago, and the guy he was with was definitely a PYT.

Power is a funny thing, huh.

Photo: AceShowbiz.com.

Update: Bryan Singer says he was not there. That he could not have been at the scene of the alleged crime, for he was in Toronto working on the first X-Men movie.

Alien Fatale

Avant-garde cinema ain’t for everyone.

I think and know that, and Jonathan Glazer – the director of Sexy Beast, Birth, and today’s Under the Skin – definitely must believe in that wholeheartedly.

Because the guy has delivered an intriguing-looking, thoroughly art-y brain scrambler with his latest film, an unfaithful – from like, what I can read online – adaptation of the 2001 Michel Faber novel of the same name.

Taking a sharp break from from her Marvelverse queenhood, Scarlett Johansson stars as a beyond-beautiful alien fatale that cruises the streets of Scotland in search of a very specific type of men that she then seduces into joining her for a ride and into her creepy cottage/undercover spaceship (?) where very very bad things happen to them under the creep-like watch of another equally enigmatic alien who’s taken the shape of a male hooli-motorcyclist.

And what happens there is these unremarkable-looking lads with impossible accents enter but they don’t exit.

They literally get sucked into a pool of black goo as they undress for their temptress, following her in a trance, besotted with her luscious cherry lips and the way her unfortunately dated stonewashed jeans hug her curves, and thinking they are about to get the best booty of their lives, not knowing that soon they will be wasted into nothing.

It all plays out quite moodily and quietly a monotonously, though. Glazer’s direction is elegant, alright, but it is all so...surreal. And like, Basel-y. Meaning the film plays like some video installation rather than a narrative.

Thus, it is up to “Don’t Call Me ScarJo” to carry Under the Skin.

Which she does. Magnetically.

She is super-watchable. But the darn thing should test the patience of non-hipsters who will not eat it up, y’ know. Nothing is ever expressly explained: everything which I understand made Faber’s novel a well-received entry is diluted. The effect is frustratingly eery, and it’ll be only after much discussion with your fellow moviegoers that you may settle on a meaning for, say, her until-then-detached character’s illuminating interaction with a disfigured man or the moment she became more human.

But then again, you just may arrive at the conclusion that the very best thing about Under the Skin is that it was during its production that the funny Scarlett Johansson Falling Down meme was born.

My Rating **

Photo: TheGuardian.com.

R.I.P. Gabo

Gabriel García Márquez had died at age 87.

The Colombian-born Nobel winner – and all-around literary institution – had recently taken ill and, after seeking treatment in the hospital, was convalescing at his home in Mexico City.

Needless to say, Gabo, the author of such beloved novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love In the Time of Cholera, will be missed.

Photo: TheGuardian.com.

Rock Stars of Our Lives

Can a Song Save Your Life?

We shall never know – kinda – now that the new John Carney (Once) film by that name has been retitled Begin Again.

Ah, but we will see that film, which still stars Mark Ruffalo as a disillusioned A&R guy that forms a bond with a new-to-New York singer-songwriter played by Keira Knightley.

Hailee Steinfeld and Adam Levine are also featured in the film; she as Ruffalo’s daughter, he as Knightley’s tempted-by-fame longtime bf-turned-ex.

Check out the trailer for Begin Again, and pencil in watching the film as soon as it opens the first week of July.

Photo: HollywoodReporter.com.