Cute Chef Guy

Move, vampires – Paul Wesley is making some room in his life for a bunch of ladies not of the night.

Indeed, the Vampire Diaries star has booked a role in the long-gestating Mother’s Day, which is set to star Susan Sarandon, her daughter Eva Amurri Martino (Saved!), and Sharon Stone.

Guess Wesley is ready to start spicing things up now that his hit CW show is about to enter its sixth season, huh.

Anyway, the actor is going to play the artsy pastry chef-bf of Amurri Martino’s character in the forthcoming drama, which also will feature Christina Ricci, Laura Dern, and Andie MacDowell.

Up next for Wesley are the indie-sounding Before I Disappear and Sam & Amira.

Photo: Zastavki.com.

Good with a Computer

Chris Hemsworth’s Cyber Blackhat is almost ready to be seen.

The sexy Aussie will get serious once again in Michael Mann’s latest, a story about a world under the constant threat of cyberterrorism co-starring Viola Davis and virtual newcomer Wei Tang.

In the film, the star o.k.a. Thor plays Hathaway, a convicted coding genius from MIT who is serving a 15-year sentence but gets furloughed in order to assist a joint task force of Americans and Chinese agents in their world-crisscrossing hunt for an elusive and dangerous international cybercriminal.

You can see Hemsworth save the world when Blackhat opens on Jan. 16, if not sooner since the film may be given an award-qualifying release before 2014 is up.

Which would be fine by me – I enjoy him.

Photo: CityOfFilms.com.

Colony Man

Playing the Intelligence game may not have worked out for Lost fan fave Josh Holloway, but that don’t mean the actor has given up on returning to the tube.

Holloway is set to headline Colony, a new family drama/thriller that his former boss Carlton Cuse is working on for the USA Network.

Oscar winning director Juan José Campanella (The Secret In Their Eyes) will be helming the pilot for the show, which will revolve around life in L.A. after a mysterious “foreign” occupation, with the erstwhile Sawyer playing a former FBI agent who agrees to start working with the occupying forces to stop a growing resistance, all in the name of protecting his family.

How noble. And potentially kick-ass.

Photo: FanPop.com.

The Jumpers Are Back

Schmidt and Jenko are back, kids, in 22 Jump Street.

Well, yeah, OK...they came back this past summer, but whaddya want – the blockbuster just opened in Peru.

Anyway, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back in their winning roles as inappropriately aged undercover cops in this sequel to the commercial/critical success that was 21 Jump Street, the 2012 reboot of the late-’80s TV drama that starred Johnny Depp, Holly Robinson, and Richard Grieco.

And, lemme tell ya, it is the most homoerotically charged, self-aware, self-referential, funny bromance of the year.

Trust.

22 Jump Street once again has partners Schmidt and Jenko on a case that calls for a ridikolous set-up, this time as covert freshmen at Metro City State, even though they are pushing 30 (which the story, once again dreamt up in part by Hill, actually has Schmidt turning at the end of the second act).

Indeed, it is off to college for the pair this time around, thanks in no small measure to the success of their own again-all-odds-and-in-spite-of-themselves big-hit reboot of the 21 Jump Street program. Ah, but this time, they’re across the road, at 22 Jump St., and, maybe...just maybe, next year, they’ll be back on their original side of the street, at 23 Jump Street.

Which they will be.

The boys’ mission is simple, at least on paper: They need to go and infiltrate MCS – a taller order than last time ’round ’cause they look older now – and ID and locate the source of WHYPHY, a new drug that has begun killing kids on campus.

Except, of course, that because bumbling Schmidt and Jenko aren’t the most focused, this will prove most difficult as the former gets distracted wooing a hot, art-y girl he later will learn he probably shouldn’t have, and the latter gets wrapped up living out the college-jock experience he never had with his new BFF Zook (Wyatt Russell). That they spend the better part of the two-hour-on-the-dot movie working on their relationship – Shades of Unwitting Ambiguously Gay Duo-ness Alert! – helps us laugh, but it don’t help them appear anywhere as bright as they fancy themselves to be.

22 Jump Street – the powers that be blatantly tell us via our two central characters’ own meta admissions – is just a more expensive, gratuitous follow-up to its predecessor (itself a surprising lucky fluke).

In other words, a totally unoriginal flick.

Except one that is complete original in its smart and inspired irreverence.

My Rating ***

Photo: Sony Pictures.

Cowboying Up to the Edge

Comedy did not quite work out for Patrick Wilson (well, that’s not entirely true or fair – but his Stretch is getting just an Amazon and iTunes release on Oct. 7 and an On Demand platform the following week...), so the actor is trying his hand at a western that promises to be most violent.

See, Wilson has signed on to join Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins in Bone Tomahawk, the story of four men who try to rescue some captives, “from a band of cannibalistic troglodytes that live beyond the edge of civilization.” He will play a cowboy whose rise as the leader of a cattle outfit is interrupted by an accident.

Matthew Fox (TV’s Lost) also has boarded the project, as an eloquent, yet inscrutable gentleman of an outlaw.

Photo: NME.com.

True Criminal

Just like with Colin Farrell, the rumor turned out to be true.

Vince Vaughn will be a part of Season 2 of HBO’s True Detective.

Except Vaughn will play a man on the wrong side of the law. mmm, Dierks Bentley.

The actor will be playing a career criminal trying to go good on the second installment of the critically beloved anthology series. His drama will come from his inability to legitimize after his business partner is killed, though.

This coming second True Detective story will center on three cops and this criminal mind that find themselves navigating a web of conspiracy in the aftermath of this murder, right. Farrell is already confirmed to be portraying one of the officers – a morally compromised one – so that means that two police people have yet to be cast.

Taylor Kitsch and Elisabeth Moss are the ones everyone is thinking of as sure things for the parts, but just yesterday, some people got to buzzing about Keira Knightley being eyed for a role.

So, again, I guess we are just gonna have to wait and see what happens.

Photo: Metro.co.uk.

I Do, Dierks Bentley

Mmm, mmm, Dierks Bentley.

I...must go to the iTunes now and get his incredibly longing “Say You Do,” the latest single off his RISER album.

Check out the video, you guys. Bentley gives plenty of ruggedly handsome in it.

Like, oof.

Photo: UsMagazine.com.

It’s Peter Pan and Captain Hook!

It’s really happening: NBC’s Peter Pan Live! is really coming up soon now.

And Allison Williams and Christopher Walken are absolutely looking their parts as a Peter Pan and Captain Hook in this just-released first look at the production airing on Dec. 4.

I kinda can’t wait to watch this.

Photo: Deadline.com.

Eva Querida

Eva Longoria really is headed back to TV.

The erstwhile Desperate Housewife already is hard at on a guesting arc on Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s sophomore season, and now comes word that not one but two networks are vying for her favor.

NBC and her old home, ABC, reportedly are courting La Longoria. And they are courting her hard.

The Peacock – which already has helped the actress launch her UnbeliEVAble Entertainment producing shingle – wants her for Telenovela, a new show about a soap star balancing the drama she experiences on and especially off camera that will get an automatic 13-episode commitment if she agrees to star in it, not just produce it.

For its part, ABC is offering her a similar deal, for an untitled comedy from the brain trust behind the oh-so-funny, yet short-lived Trophy Wife. Except in order to get her producer’s credit, Longoria first has to sign on the dotted line as the star of the show, which would revolve around a successful home renovator who can’t help but keep solving problems even after she is done for the day at work, much to the chagrin of her bf, family, and friends.

The latter project sounds more friendly to physical comedy, which is something at which the actress is aces, IMHO.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see what she ends up picking.

Photo: GettyImages.co.uk.

Update: Well, it looks like NBC may have an edge.

Longoria is already set to co-executive produce Zachary Levi’s (TV’s Chuck) return to the Peacock. The project is called Tuned and centers on a driven New Yorker (that would be played by Levi) who starts experiencing all these musical hallucinations that eventually put him on a more fulfilling path in life.

Sounds kinda Eli Stone-ish to me.

Up to Bat

Richard Linklater is going to follow up Boyhood with a story about several boys.

That’s What I’m Talking About.

No, that’s the title of the project, but, yeah...y’ know.

Linklater has recruited Teen Wolf star Tyler Hoechlin for one of the parts in the film, a baseball-themed story set in 1980 and centering on a college freshman who moves into a baseball house on campus.

Blake Jenner (TV’s Glee) and 22 Jump Street’s Wyatt Russell also have been recruited for roles, but, really, to me, it’s all about Hoechlin.

Photo: SwoonWorthy.net.

The Return of Damien Rice

It has been a looong while since I’ve heard any new music from Damien Rice.

But now, the Irish troubadour/god is back, fixin’ to drop a new album, My Favourite Faded Fantasy, the first single off which will be the track titled “I Don’t Want to Change You.”

Loves it.

Dude – never stay away this long again.

My Favourite Faded Fantasy is set to arrive in stores in November.

Photo: EskimoFriends.com.

The Painter Behind the Paintings

There Amy Adams goes, courting Oscar once again.

The five-time nominee will be going for a sixth nod – and, fingers crossed, possibly her first win – with this Christmas’ Big Eyes, the Tim Burton-directed story of Margaret and Walter Keane.

The Keanes were the couple behind those paintings of large-eyed children that became a beyond-lucrative sensation back in the ’50s and ’60s, as the original paintings began to be mass-produced into pictures and postcards and whatnot.

Margaret was the woman with the brush, but Walter (two-time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz), her so-called blessing of a husband (Margaret was a divorcée with a child when they met), selfishly, greedily took credit for her work (’cause, “sadly, people don’t buy lady art”), which left her in the dark. Big Eyes focuses on her coming into her own and on the Keanes’ subsequent legal battle for creative acknowledgement.

Jason Schwartzman co-stars, as does Veronica Mars’ Krysten Ritter, as Margaret’s championing BFF.

Photo: HitFix.com.

Deadpool Is Finally Coming

Redemption is finally on the horizon for Ryan Reynolds.

The actor – who more than likely will not be asked to reprise his role as the Green Lantern in the forthcoming Justice League movie – will be playing Deadpool once again, in a stand-alone movie about the Marvel character that is officially on the fast track for a February 2016 opening date.

R2 first took on the Merc with a Mouth in the bombtastic X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Tim Miller, the guy behind the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo title sequence, will be doing the directing honors.

Photo: Metro.co.uk.

Nostalgia, Pt. 47

Aside from Friends, know what other seminal TV show is celebrating an anniversary (its 10th) today?

Lost.

Like...guys, remember how riveted we were when we first started discovering the Island?

Photo: GoPixPic.com.

Spy. London Spy

Ben Whishaw’s going from spy sidekick to spy proper.

The actor has landed the lead role on London Spy, a new BBC drama about a gay spy...a gregarious, hedonistic, but ill-equipped spy who falls in love with a man who later goes missing.

Whishaw will be reporting for his five-part assignment next month.

And then Bond 24, yeah?

Photo: NEWSMOV.com.

Nostalgia, Pt. 46

Happy 20th Anniversary, Friends!

OMG, can you believe it has been two decades since we met and fell in love with Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross?

Could they’ve been any more fun for us to spend the first 8 o’clock half-hour of NBC’s Thursday nights with? (Ah, put your lighters up for Must-See TV, too!)

Thank you, Friends, for always being there for me. Numerous times a day.

:)

Photo: FanPop.com.

A New True Detective

This was getting ridikolous – but now we finally know.

The rumor was right: Colin Farrell will be starring on the second season of HBO’s True Detective.

The actor reportedly confirmed the news when he told Ireland’s Sunday World over the weekend that he is, “doing the second series,” which will be eight episodes long again, and that he is, “so excited” about the gig.

Now...will Taylor Kitsch also be involved as the word on the street has it?

Photo: GeekTyrant.com.

Giving Victorian Chase to Zombies

The long-gestating Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is finally cooking with gas.

Natalie Portman Emma Stone Lily James is set to play Elizabeth Bennet in the movie, which is exactly about what the title suggests: zombies roaming the world of Jane Austen’s most famous heroine.

Maleficent’s Sam Riley will be playing Mr. Darcy, Jack Huston’s also on board, as Mr. Wickham, and now comes word that Matt Smith has signed on to portray the wife-seeking Mr. Collins.

Seems like this one took a while to come together, but, man, is it coming together nicely.

Photo: GettyImages.com.

’Cause #IFMI: RyGos Is a DILF!

It finally happened: Our savior was born.

Hey...the DILF dad is Ryan Gosling.

Get it?

In case not, what I mean, of course, is that #BabyMendesGosling – whose arrival I was tweet-wondering about probably as it was happening on Sept. 12 – was born, y’all. And that RyGos is a god.

Duh.

Anyway, ya gonna love this: The bouncing bundle of joy reportedly was a baby girl!

Like, hey girl...how perfect is that?

Photo: People.com.

Dallas Has Left the Strip Joint

Boo.

I guess winning an Oscar changes people.

Or, more than likely, his character just didn’t fit the story of the sequel.

Which is why you should not look for Matthew McConaughey in next summer’s Magic Mike XXL. Dallas will not be a part of it.

Sad.

Jada Pinkett Smith might be there, though. Amber Heard and Andie MacDowell definitely will be. As, of course, will be franchise star Channing Tatum, and Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello.

Photo: UsMagazine.com.