Full Speed Ahead

Denzel Washington is on a train funk.

The actor, who starred in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 last year, is hopping on another one in November – and he’s taking Chris Pine with him when he goes.

The two are starring in Unstoppable, an upcoming action movie from Tony Scott, about a runaway train carrying a cargo of toxic chemical and the two men who are going to “run this bitch down,” a.k.a. stop it...or die trying to:



Unstoppable races into theaters on Nov. 12.

Rebound Guy

Looks like we shan’t see Calista Flockhart’s Kitty grieve too much next season on TV’s Brothers & Sisters.

In fact, her first significant love interest since the death of her husband, Robert (the departing Rob Lowe, who is now on Parks and Recreation full time), has been cast and will be played by Jeremy Davidson from Lifetime’s Army Wives.

The fella will “very different than Robert, and a very different guy than the kind of men Kitty’s been with her whole life.”

Not to mention, ruggedly handsome, no?

Photo: Zap2It.com.

The Woman Within

Some people say what matters most isn’t the destination but the journey, while others say the exact opposite is true.

Ryan Murphy’s Eat Pray Love – starring Julia Roberts, a.k.a. Hollywood’s last true movie star (right?) – says both are important...especially when you get to indulge in some pasta; find your center, if not yourself, at the source of all that is; and fall in love in paradise.

Eat Pray Love, a “big, juicy movie” by all expectations, telegraph-tells the story of Liz Gilbert, a thriving writer-eventually-turned-Oprah-approved-literary-sensation.

Before she became an Official Book Club Selection, though, Liz was just another New York City career-woman succeeding in some areas of her life but not in others – and as the movie begins (well, after a 20-minute-or-so prologue), a divorcée embarking on a year-long journey that takes her to Italy, India, and Bali to essentially find herself. The woman who would be....

The movie, with its built-in audience of eaters, prayers, and lovers, is going to be a hit.

That Roberts – luminous, wonderful, Oscar-winning Roberts – stars in it is just the parmesan on top of the spaguetti, the enlightenment at the end of the meditation, the sun-drenched kiss at the end of the courtship. I say this because, as a movie this adaptation doesn’t succeed.

Not completely...not the way it could have, and certainly not the way fans such as myself would want for Roberts.

I never read the book upon which the movie is based, and a couple of friends who did totally didn’t endorse that I do, so I can only judge what I saw on the big screen, which was entertaining, but not at all... that profound.

Why did Liz turn around one night and told her husband (Billy Crudup) – whom we were asked to assume was a bit of a what, a nitwit? a flake? – that she didn’t want to be married anymore? Why was she so quick to sour on her rebound romance with a younger guy (James Franco)? And who paid for her trip, anyway?

These are details that were brushed over at best and ignored at worst. I can appreciate that Eat Pray Love, and Murphy, for that matter, has great aspirations, but it is hindered by them as well, by this need to put Roberts and us there, where it all happened for Gilbert. But then it kinda just leaves us there...to assign motivation to action.

The movie eats a bit more than it probably should, cannot bring us inward with Roberts as she prays, and almost kinda sorta rushes into love without offering anything in the way of an epilogue. It wants to be a motivational example for the women who devoured Gilbert’s story, a girl-power manifest gorgeously photographed for silver-screen consumption. It, however, ends up being a subpar one; scenic as can be, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Take the Eat portion of it, for instance. It’s much too long when you consider that, perhaps, the Love part would be more significant because that’s when Liz meets Felipe (Javier Bardem, playing the man who would become her second husband, I believe) and he journey begins (to end? to really begin?). The Pray section, a transitional stage, provides the most insight (by virtue of our heroine learning to talk her quest out), and, to boot, a tremendous turn by Richard Jenkins as Richard from Texas, a man who helps Liz understand the importance of what she’s doing.

Roberts is accessible as ever in the role of a woman lost, eagerly looking for herself. She is the reason, the real reason, this will be the blockbuster she needs it to be (Duplicity disappointed; Valentine’s Day was not hers to brag about at the end of the day). As much as an anchor as she is, though, she is weighed down by the uneveness of the product that Murphy has delivered.

While the movie may not be a winner, Murphy shouldn’t feel discouraged: I understand the book wasn’t all that, anyway. And like I said, this one, much like the woman who inspired it, is gonna do just fine.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Sony Pictures.

Questioning

James L. Brooks is back, people.

That would be the director of As Good as It Gets....

For his latest, the romantic comedy How Do You Know, Brooks recuited three of Hollywood’s buzziest stars and Jack Nicholson to help him tell a story following the love triangle between professional softball player (Reese Witherspoon), a major-league pitcher (Owen Wilson), and a corporate executive (Paul Rudd, whom I still love in spite of Dinner for Schmucks):

Cute, huh.

How Do You Know gives us the answers on Dec. 17.

New Stud on the Block

Brian Austin Green has arrived on Wisteria Lane.

The actor will be introduced in the seventh-season premiere of Desperate Housewives next month, as the hunky handyman that Bree (the delicious Marcia Cross, pictured at right with the BAG) hires to fix stuff around the house.

“She has an instant physical attraction to him, but then over time it turns into something more,” a producer said.

Also looking to bag a little BAG action? The show’s newest cougar, Renee (Vanessa Williams).

“Suddenly by episode 4 they’re both going after him. So there’s a little competition for Brian Austin Green.”

May the best bitch win – and I say that in the most endearing way.

Photo: EW.com.

McFinally!

Jesse Williams is going to show some skin on Grey’s Anatomy this fall.

At last!

“We felt that having a shirtless Dr. Jackson Avery would be a benefit to society,” show creator and runner Shonda Rhimes said of his handsome cast member, “so we’re going to see a little bit of that early on in the season.”

Rhimes also reveals that she’d been waiting for the right time to give Williams a love interest on the show – “we didn’t want to fire the gun too soon” – but that the time for a romance has come, alright.

Looking forward to it.

Photo: CarltonJordan.com.

The Last Hurrah

Katie Holmes, Josh Duhamel, Anna Paquin (HBO’s True Blood), Malin Akerman, Adam Brody, Dianna Agron (TV’s Glee), and Elijah Wood are The Romantics.

The seven play longtime close friends who share an “incestuous dating history” – which obviously means there’s gonna be some drama – and reunite for the wedding of Duhamel and Paquin’s characters, much to the chagrin of Holmes’:



Looks like an indie-ish, good-time, everything-that-could-go-wrong-does time, huh.

The Romantics is due out on Sept. 10.

He Smolders, He Acts…He Sings

Mark Salling, a.k.a. Glee’s Puck, will be dropping his debut album, Pipe Dreams, on Oct. 12.

He should drop his pan…nope, I’m not even going to finish sayin’ it….

The actor-cum-singer and all-around hottie premiered his first single, “Higher Power,” on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show this morning.

Hope there’s plenty of shirtlessness in the video.

Photo: GQ.com.

The It Lover

Kevin Alejandro is on a roll.

The actor is currently romancing Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) on HBO’s True Blood, and he soon will be doing to the same to Lauren Graham’s Sarah on TV’s Parenthood.

Ale-Alejandro is joining the NBC drama for a multi-episode arc as a possible love interest for Graham, who also will have Billy Baldwin as another option during the show’s sophomore season.

It’s official: This guy is on fire.

Photo: Gawker.com.

Simply Irresistible, Pt. 70

Great things are happening for David Lyons.

The Aussie – another fun-to-look-at import from Down Under…go figure, right? – had a role on ER as the show was winding down, makes an eye-catching appearance in Eat Pray Love, and is starring in the geekstastic upcoming fall NBC show The Cape.

Welcome to the big time, mate.

Photo: TVFodder.com (The Cape).

Pop Tart Cameo

I was just listening to Ryan Seacrest’s show on the radio – yeah, I know…but hey, it was on….

Anyway, the oh-so-sexy-voiced Ryan Murphy was on talking about this little Julia Roberts movie he’s got coming out on Friday when the talked turned to Glee, which Murphy co-created.

The director revealed that it’s pretty much a done deal that Britney Spears will appear in the episode they are putting together around her songs.

“Britney, I think 100 percent, is going to be on the episode” for a “couple of scenes,” he said.

I love it.

Photo: TheInsider.com.

Keeper of the Order

One of the most magnetic actors around – you just gotta watch him when he’s on screen – is about to close the deal on his next role.

Inception’s Cillian Murphy is in talks to co-star in I’m.mortal opposite Ir Girl Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake.

The project is set in a near-future where scientists have finally figured out how to stop aging.

The actor would play an officer for the Timekeepers organization, while Timberlake (who’s still negotiating his involvement) would take on the role of a poor man who suddenly becomes rich and snatches an heiress (Seyfried) while on the run from a murder investigation.

Photo: TinyPic.com.

Temperature Rise

I do declare, this news is giving me the right kind of “Fever.”

Reese Witherspoon may star in a biopic about jazz singer, songwriter, and actress Peggy Lee.

The Oscar winner, who already has secured the rights to Lee’s story from the late singer’s estate, will serve as one of the movie’s producers, while Julie & Julia’s Nora Ephron will write and direct.

Witherspoon, of course, gave her vocal chords a lovely workout in Walk the Line, so I am confident she would do a nice job in a Lee project, especially a layered one that will depict the highs and lows of her personal life and decades-spanning career.

So would Gwyneth Paltrow, but, clearly, she snoozed....

Photo: AceShowbiz.com.

BYOIdiot

The premise of Jay (the Austin Powers movies, Meet the Parents) Roach’s Dinner for Schmucks is so cruel, so mean-spirited, and so go-ahead-and-laugh-anyway it’s off-putting.

The movie, inspired by a French farce, tells the story of Tim Conrad, a rising exec played by the ever charming – and in this one, conflicted – Paul Rudd. His character is an ambitious lower-level pawn who’s rather dead-set on being promoted yay or yay to an upstairs, recently vacated corner office with a view.

Having made a ballsy splash at a board meeting, Tim is summoned by his boss (Bruce Greenwood) and invited to a special monthly dinner. Thrilled, he accepts, of course, but then he wants to back out once the rules are explained: This is a hush-hush dinner to which guests must bring a guest of their own…a person with a special ability of sorts – a complete idiot.

This, good ol’ Tim figures, is a distasteful but necessary evil, but his won’t-say-yes-to-his-proposal girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak) thinks it’s just terrible. In fact, her disapproval is so great, he agrees not go to the dinner and to heck with it.

But then...then he meets Barry Speck (Steve Carell).

Barry is an exceptional fellow. He’s an IRS employee who devotes his spare time to building elaborate taxidermy mouse dioramas that we eventually learn are a form of catharsis for the poor...uh...schmuck. He’s a toothy ball of obliviousness.

It’s like Tim has struck idiot gold.

This chance meeting must be a sign, one he rationalizes he simply cannot ignore, so Tim invites Barry to the dinner, not anticipating that the latter’s blundering good intentions will send his life into a frenzied downward spiral and a series of misadventures – including but not limited to threatening a make-it-or-make-it business deal with an eccentric Swiss investor, bringing stalker one night stand Darla (Lucy Punch) back into his life, and driving Julie into the arms of another man.

All of this happens, understandably, before the movie’s titular dinner, mind you, which, telling of the story-wise makes sense. We have to get to know Tim and Barry, especially, before the so-called fun begins, so that one doesn’t become a total a--hole and the other doesn’t descend into total patheticness.

Therein lies the movie’s biggest fault, I guess I can call it that.

For a movie called Dinner for Schmucks, we spend very little time around a dinner table. And we spend so much time developing a taste for Carell’s Barry, as he shows his mettle, that in the end it’s uncomfortable to watch when the joke is on him. Not that it really is – the guy’s like, all Teflon, so the joke really is on the morally bankrupt jerks who thought of such a crude exercise (ha!).

The more I think about it, clearly, that is precisely the point, but I cannot help but think that something got lost in translation.

Dinner for Schmucks is a funny movie, one that may sit better on DVD, as it ages, thanks to hilarious and likeable Carell and his brilliant performance. It just didn’t quite succeed on the big screen.

My Rating **

Photo: Paramount Pictures.

A Story of Suvival

Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire is a-comin’.

In 127 Hours, the director will tell the story American rock climber Aron Ralston, who in 2003 cut off the lower part of his right arm with a dull knife in order to free himself from a fallen boulder in a Utah canyon and save his life.

Boyle calls the movie opening on Nov. 5, starring James Franco, an “action movie where the hero can’t move.”

Kinda can’t wait to see it.

Photo: EW.com.

A Different Kind of Field to Play In

Friday Night Lights MVP Zach Gilford is joining ABC’s Shonda Rhimes new medical drama Off the Map, which is premiering this fall. He will play a plastic surgeon in the South America-set drama.

“The character is still being written, but I’ve heard him described as kind of an all-American frat boy,” the actor said.

So glad for the guy, who so should have been nominated for an Emmy this year.

Photo: Away.com.

Payback’s a Bee-yotch, Man

Any movie that requires the delectable Patrick Wilson to paunch it up had better be worth it.

Wilson had to pack on the poundage, as far as I can tell (and if you saw Little Children you know the fella is fine) for the decidedly indie-esque comedy Barry Munday, which features the amazing Judy Greer. In a plum role to boot!

Wilson plays a suburban heartbreaker (or so he thinks) whose douchebaggery costs him dearly. Let’s just say, it seems karma will have a man’s balls to set things right in the world.

Photo: Traction-Media.com.

The Thin Line Between

Eminem and Rihanna premiered the video for their super-hot collab “Love the Way You Lie” last night.

It’s a track that not only is burning up radio but the screen as well since it features Lost star Dominic Monaghan and Megan Fox as couple of lovebirds that loves/hates each other and are in this not-so-healthy situation:



The song, and now its video, is sparking all kinds of conversations, raising Qs of Is “Love the Way You Lie” Getting Overplayed Already? (I’m wondering that) to He Raps, She Sings: Does It Still Count As a Duet? to Is the video’s depiction of domestic violence too much?

Discuss.

Robin’s Time

Now, this is what you’re supposed to do post-divorce in Hollywood: star in a sure-to-be hit franchise.

Robin Wright Penn No Mo’ is in negotiations to play a major role in David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, that of Erika Berger, the editor-in-chief of Millennium magazine and the lover of Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist.

Love it – Wright needs to be in more movies, IMHO, and if she signs on she will. The part will only grow in the planned adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling Millennium Trilogy.

Photo: Elle.com.

Curtains Up

I very nearly had a gaygasm when I saw it.

I mean, really, it was Christina Aguilera, and Cher, and Kristen freakin’ Bell, and Stanley Tucci, and Alan Cumming, and Cam Gigandet – all together with a ribbon on it making up the gift to the friends of friends hat is going to be Burlesque.

It’s a tale of small-town dreams are made of big-city this, a tale of backstabbing, a tale of song and dance and sequins – lots of sequins!

There’s love, there’s an ingénue, and there’s a legend.

What more could you want, right – he said breathlessly:



Loves it, right?

The movie, due out on Nov. 24, also features Eric Dane, Julianne Hough, and Peter Gallagher.