Ready to Jump onto the Street

Jonah Hill is getting some studly company in his 21 Jump Street remake.

Channing Tatum is eyeing a role in the project, the story for which Hill conceived. Emma Stone is also rumored to be circling the movie.

Of the tone of the remake Hill has said, “We’re doing a full-on action movie, blowing s--- up.”

Sounds like fun.

Fingers crossed Johnny Depp will make a cameo, huh.

Photo: OhLaLaParis.com.

Runaway Train

Denzel Washington…an out-of-control speeding train…and director Tony Scott.

That combination just screams of a some summer blockbuster, right, but each of those elements actually is a key ingredient of one of the fall season’s most excting offerings, Unstoppable.

Making everything even better: the movie co-stars Chris Pine (Star Trek). Hello!

The conceit of the inspired-by-true-events Unstoppable is fairly easy: Everything that could go wrong with a train has gone wrong, and now it’s up to a couple of regular Joes to save the day.

Washington plays Frank Barnes, a veteran engineer who on the fateful day of the edge-of-your-seat action is partnered with Pine’s Will Colson, a young conductor that all the oldtimers aren’t too welcoming of out on the yard (there’s some behind-the-scenes drama about people getting fired and whatnot).

Frank’s a good guy, though, so he decides to make lemonade and teach Will the ropes, making sure he understands that, “This ain’t training...out here you get killed.”

It’s an important lesson since pretty soon that train I mentioned earlier...it’s gonna be coming straight at them.

This is an unmanned choo-choo, traveling at high velocity, lugging several cars – including eight freight cars of hazardous chemicals – headed through town after town for Stanton, Pa.

“We’re talking about a missile,” Rosario Dawson’s yard master tells us, “the size of the Chrysler Building.”

Together, though, Frank and Will are going to attempt an unprecedented heroic and “run this bitch down.”

OK – what they do is way more technical than that, but the fun of Unstoppable isn’t in me telling you how they do it, but in you seeing them pull it off. Yes, you’ll know they’ll make it – the movie is loosely based on a similar incident that took place in Ohio in 2001 – and you know that Denzel, well...he’s the man.

Plus, Scott sure knows how to deliver the thrills, and his trademark brand of filmmaking is well-suited for this one.

Hang on tight (the way you would to, say, one of Pine’s guns) and enjoy.

My Rating ***

Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Yee-haw, G.P.!

Gwyneth Paltrow nailed her live-singing debut at last night’s CMAs.

Nailed. It, I tell ya, nerves and all.

Just like I’ve been sayin’ for months now, her Oscar campaign for Country Strong (what with the title song she performed getting love in country radio and, I’m pretty sure, being eligible for a Grammy, the CMAs performance last tonight, and her guesting turn on TV’s Glee next week) should pay off and get her an invite to the party, alright.

Photo: EW.com.

Update 1: People agree with me.

Update 2: Click here to check out The Performance.

Career Girl

Rachel McAdams’ latest, the J.J. Abrams-executive-produced comedy Morning Glory, gets it.

The movie (the actress’ first starring-solo vehicle, IMHO, no matter the fact that she gets top-shelf support from Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton) gets the struggle of a twentysomething up-and-comer in the competitive world of communications.

I think.

This is a world, after all, that everyone likes to look into and dismiss at the same time, especially when the, say, region on which someone like McAdams’ character – the hard-working, driven, and, yes, breezy morning-show producer Becky Fuller – has claimed a stake is that of of entertainment.

Folks sometimes don’t get that, these days...with the so-called 24-hour news cycle...it’s eat or be eaten out there.

The job can turn into so much more than that – it can turn into a lifestyle. People like Becky, they sleep with their BlackBerrys on by their pillow, and are always on the lookout for scoop, for an idea they hope viewers/reader/listeners will find compelling. It’s, if I may, quite the thankless task when you think about it.

Nevertheless, this is the world Becky always has dreamt of conquering, and why wouldn’t she: it can be a tremendously fun, exciting, challenging environment in which to be and thrive. For some, like her, it’s a lifelong goal to be a part of that world in a well-regarded way. Becky’s been dreaming of working for the Today show, for instance, since she was 8 years old.

With Rockefeller Center in her sights, she’s rising through the ranks steadily for years working across the river for a New Jersey station. She’s so close to the first of many big breaks she can almost taste it, and so can those around her, all whom support her. One day, she’s called into her boss’ office for what everybody thinks it’s a promotion chat.

It isn’t.

Back on square one, Becky is unflappable. Sure, she panics for a sec, but what’s the good in that, Morning Glory tells us, when you have the goods? She bucks up and keeps going, more determined than ever to make it.

She ends up getting hired at the unfortunately named IBS network to run its fourth-place morning show Daybreak.

No one there expects her to make any sort of mark, much less succeed, and that includes Colleen Peck (Keaton), the show’s longtime anchor. That’s exactly what Becky’ll do, though, if it’s the last thing she ever does. She quickly makes some radical changes to revitalize the show, none more so than bringing on legendary news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Ford) as the new co-host.

Unfortunately for her, Pomeroy thinks the job is beneath him – he’s really doing it for the money and that’s it – refuses to banter with Colleen, whom he dismisses as a nothing more than a former beauty queen, or cover morning-show staples like celebrity stories, cooking segments, human-interest stories (anything he deems to be “fluff,” in other words).

Nobody said it’d be easy, and to see Becky, as played with winning pluck by McAdams, rise to the occasion is one of Morning Glory’s considerable joys.

Another is the sight of Patrick Wilson as a fellow producer (for another show) who shows our heroine that, perhaps, she can have a love life, too, if she can strike the right balance between work and play. This relationship business gives the movie a bit of a generic sheen at times, but it’s a necessary evil to attract a wider audience, I get it....

Kudos to director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) for not dwelling on the subplot and letting this be the Becky Fuller show.

My Rating ***

Photo: Paramount Pictures.

RSVPing to the Biggest Party of the Year

Garry Marshall’s follow-up to last winter’s Valentine’s Day is shaping up nicely.

Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer (yay!), Hilary Swank, and Valentine’s Day’s own Ashton Kutcher are in talks to appear in New Year’s Eve, another ensemble-cast love story, this time following a group of New Yorkers as they navigate their way through their lives and loves over the course of one packed Dec. 31.

De Niro would play a bitter dying man in a hospital, while Pfeiffer would take on the role of a frustrated executive secretary tackling her unfulfilled resolutions.

Swank is being courted for the part of a producer of the famed Times Square NYE show. No word on whether Kutcher will reprise his Valentine’s Day role.

Glee star Lea Michele and Abigail Breslin reportedly are already on board.

Photo: MakeMeHeal.com.

Boyfriend’s Doing It for Himself

David Beckham is getting smart and getting in your pants himself.

The footballer was a big hit as a spokesbody for Emporio Armani Underwear as we all know, so now he’s going into the undies business.

Makes sense to me and to a lot of people in the loop.

Becks also is said to be contemplating a men’s grooming products line.

I’d tap that.... I mean, buy that.

Photo: Fashr.com.

A Journey to Remember

They say in Hollywood actors should avoid one if not all of the following...uh...options: working with kids, animals, and/or anyone who could upstage them.

In Todd (The Hangover) Phillips’ latest, Due Date, Robert Downey Jr. gamely interacts with a couple of aggroying children, puts up with quite the randy pooch, and is partnered with Zach Galifianakis, a scene-stealer if we ever saw one, alright.

And boy, does he get to do things to each...things that are so wish-fulfilling it’ll make you go oh no they did!

Downey plays Peter Highman, a high-strung architect and an expectant first-time father on his way from Atlanta to L.A. for his wife’s schedule C-section later in the week.

The guy has some a--hole-esque qualities in him: he’s very driven, neurotic, and tightly wound, but he means well in his own way.

As he hurries to catch a flight home one morning, his travel plans start to go awry even before he’s met the thorn that will be at his side for days – he’s dreamt that som’in’ was coming, y’ see.

And then he meets him...Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis), a Kabbalah-Red String-wearing, French bulldog-toting aspiring actor on his way to “Hollywood,” and pretty much the ying to Peter’s reluctant yang.

Where the latter is uptight to a fault, the former is loose and then some (must be all that medical marijuana), not to mention kinda...clueless, I guess, or, better, socially inept, but, y’ know, a total individual at the same time who also means well in his own way.

Long story short, the two are on the same flight, but, as it would happen, Peter gets bounced from the plane thanks to Ethan and is forced – forced, I tell ya but won’t spill for ya as to how – to road-trip it in a hurry to California if he wants to be there for the birth of his first son.

What follows is an often hilarious journey during which the unlikely pair will learn a little bit about each other, that is when they’re not detouring to get some more “glaucoma medication” for Ethan (meeting pharmacist Juliette Lewis and her piece-o’-work kids along the way), or driving off the side of a bridge, or getting into trouble at the Mexican border, just to mention but a few of the shenanigans they get into together.

The problem with Due Date – and it’s a minor problem if you take the movie for what it is: a pretty absurd, heightened slice of life – is it’s all surface.

We don’t get to meet these guys, really, see who they are, what makes them act the way they do aside from each other (some father issues are a bit too telegraphed for my taste and, ultimately, didn’t really shine a light on their inner lives).

In that context, in the context of the movie, it works, and it elicits great laughs. I almost chocked on my Diet Coke quite a few times. Which is fun, obviously.

Once you add the lack of balance between the tone of the movie and its humor, though, Due Date and Downey and Galifianakis’ tremendous chemistry – which is rumored to have taken a hit in recent days because of Mel Gibson, btw – gets bogged down a bit and the whole thing kinda seems pointless, in a way, because you know these two ifs on the road aren’t destined to become BFF...or a timeless cinematic pairing.

Theirs was to get to there, to entertain the audience for a couple of hours, and that’s what they do – nothing more, nothing less.

My Rating ***

Photo: Warner Bros.

Pick-Up Artist

Jennifer Aniston hasn’t had the best box-office lately – The Bounty Hunter was critically panned and The Switch was pretty much DOA.

A bad, bad Team Aniston member, I didn’t see either at the theater, after all the fuzz I made about ’em. I hope they don’t take my card away for that. I’d be sad if they did.

Anyway, perhaps all she needed all along was a little Sandler. Adam Sandler, that is.

The two are teaming up for the upcoming Just Go with It, a comedy in which he pretends to be unhappily married to pick up the ladies, and she gives him a hard time for it, especially when she has to assume the role of his on-her-way-out wife so this girl he really likes (Brooklyn Decker) will continue seeing him.

Just Go with It, which features a Nicole Kidman cameo, as well as a star-making turn by one Heidi Montag, arrives in theaters on Feb. 11.

A Big Ol’ “F--- You” from Gwyn

Gwyneth Paltrow’s guest-starring turn on TV’s Glee just got a little profane.

Ish.

G.P. will be singing Cee Lo Green’s “F--- You” when she makes her debut on the show on Nov. 16, although the song will be cleaned up to “Forget You,” otherwise parent groups will be up in arms or som’in’.

There’s that buzz I’ve been talking about, which will only draw more attention to Paltrow’s Country Strong, which opens on Dec. 22.

Photo: People.com.

Update 1: For whatever reason, some of friends cannot stand my Gwyn, but Jane Lynch can.

“She’s a quadruple threat,” the Emmy winner recently said at the BAFTA L.A. Britannia Awards. “We knew she could act, we knew she was gorgeous, but she sings and dances amazingly well, too!”

And I love it.

Update 2: Click here for a look-see at G.P. in Glee action. She’s mashing up “Umbrella” and “Singin’ in the Rain”! And lookin’ good at it.

Alien Chef

We all know Scarlett Johansson is otherworldly, but this is taking it a whole ’nother level.

The actress is set to star in director Jonathan (Sexy Beast, Birth) Glazer’s Under the Skin as a sexy – natch! – space alien who kidnaps human hitchhikers and sends them back to her home planet to be served as delicacies.

The project is described as dark sci-fi comedy.

Sounds interesting, and with a Brit at the helm it should make good on its promise.

Photo: People.com.

Shut. It. Down!

Be still the teen-pop lovin’ fan within.

The New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys are embarking on the “NKOTBSB Tour” next summer. Lucky New York audience members got a tease of the goodness when the two boy bands came together on stage for a performance at Radio City Music Hall just last summer.

They Kids and the Boys will reunite, and continue whetting their fans’ appetite, on Nov. 21 at the American Music Awards.

Sooo wanted it that way ever since the rumor first got going....

Now, if only Kevin Richardson would join the tour. Boys will be Boys, but they’re not the same without him.

Photo: EW.com.

Time for a Toast

Pink is the coolest pop star out there, period – end o’ story.

A consistent force in the music industry for the past decade, she’s one of the few acts that can be cool and badass and sensitive and political, totally in your face, and always one heckuva lot of fun.

So it’s not surprising that she’s at a place in her career where she rightfully can go and release a greatest hits CD that, in true oh-so-Pink fashion, she’s titled Greatest Hits…So Far!!! (the album is due out on Nov. 16).

The compilation – which goes all the way back to “There You Go” and includes her rousing new song-for-the-underdogs “Raise Your Glass” (check out the video!) – is a celebration, and I for one cannot wait to be a part of it.

P!nk - New Music - More Music Videos

Anyone who can combine a stance for individuality and self-love, and advocate for animal rights and marriage equality, all in one video, while staying true to herself, is one ever...in one word...amazing.

Update: Also included in Pink’s greatest hits CD is “F---in’ Perfect,” another love-thy-self-type of anthem that could not have been titled anything else more appropriate.

The Handsome Mobster

The Ocean’s movies and Burn After Reading have shown us Brad Pitt can do comedy, so the actor is going back for more.

Pitt is reteaming with his Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford director for Cogan’s Trade, a comedic crime story in which he will play a professional enforcer who investigates a heist during a high-stakes poker game under protection of the mob.

Jesse James co-stars Casey Affleck and Sam Rockwell are being courted for roles, as are Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo.

Photo: BuzzPirates.com.

Opening Up

Ricky Martin’s autobiography, Me, is coming out today, so the multi-hyphenate is going on Oprah to promote it.

Martin will be on the show later this afternoon, where he will open up about his decision to come out of the closet and how he’s liking being a dad to two adorable twin boys.

“I couldn’t take it anymore, Oprah,” he reportedly told his hostess with the mostest at the taping of the show. “I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too painful. But I guess the most important thing is my children.

“When I was holding them in my arms, I was like, what am I gonna teach them – how to lie? Whoa, that is my blessing right there. And I said hold on a second.

“Before I decided to become a father, I [had] already accepted who I was and I was happy with who I was. Then, when I was I was holding my children, I said, OK, it’s time to tell the world.”

And so Martin did, by simply tweeting last spring that he is “proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man.”

Photo: FashionFame.com.

A Time to Kill

Leonardo DiCaprio has beaten Tom Cruise to the playing-a-serial-killer punch.

The Inception star has lined up the story of one the most notorious murderers in U.S. history as the next entry in his résumé.

DiCaprio will play Herman Webster Mudgett, a.k.a. H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who confessed to having introduced 27 people to their maker – and may have killed as many as 200 – during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, in the big-screen adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 best-seller Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.

Cruise had initially optioned the book and planned to play Holmes, but DiCaprio’s reported determination went the distance on the project.

Photo: GQ.com.

It’s Tintin!

Hergé’s Tintin is ready for his close-up.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have revealed the first images from their upcoming collaboration, the 3-D, motion-captured Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Based on the books by Belgian writer-illustrator, the movie, due out next fall, revolves around young reporter Tintin (Jamie Bell), Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and the nefarious pirate Red Rackham (Daniel Craig).

And, yes, Tintin’s most loyal sidekick, his dog, Snowy, also will be featured, natch.

Photo: EmpireOnline.com.

MC for the Holidays

Yes, she’s pregnant, and, to boot, Mariah Carey is putting on a ABC holiday special airing Dec. 13.

The songbird’s Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You will feature her doing what she does best at the historic Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A., where she’ll perform classics and other songs from her new holiday album, Merry Christmas II You.

And this being an MC special, it also will see her surprising her “lambs” by granting their special wishes.

Photo: PynkCelebrity.com.

Forever Young and Pretty and Amazing

Matt Bomer has found a role that’s tailor-made for him.

The White Collar star will join Amanda Seyfried, Justin Timberlake, and the impossibly gorge Olivia Wilde in Andrew Niccol’s Now, f.n.a. I’m.mortal.

Also joining the dystopian drama set in a future where people can live forever and time is a currency that prevents overpopulation is the studly Alex Pettyfer, the star of the upcoming I Am Number Four.

Movies don’t get any better looking than this, huh.

Photo: EW.com.

Crazy Kwanten Leap

Ryan Kwanted is getting too big for his HBO britches – and that’s a good thing.

The Aussie o.k.a. Jason Stackhouse from True Blood has landed the plum part of infamous serial killer and cult leader Charles Manson in The Family.

Well, you can’t say the guy’s not up for a challenge. Manson a cuddling type he ain’t. And audiences know that.

Cant wait to get a fixin’ of Kwanten on the big screen? Well, if you live in one of them so-called selected cities you may see the actor leading the Australian movie Red Hill later this week.

Photo: SMH.com.au.

The Twang of the Ingénue

We all know Gwyneth Paltrow’s Country Strong (which is due out on Dec. 22) is at the very top of my list, and now so is Leighton Meester.

Well, the Gossip Girl star already was, but since she’s co-starring with G.P. in the fading-country star-on-the-comeback-road-themed movie that goes double.

Meester, who’s been flirting with a pop-music career for a bit, also has a song, a downtempo ballad titled “Words I Couldn’t Say,” on the movie’s soundtrack, y’ see, for she plays the pretty young thing setting the country world on fire while Paltrow’s character figures herself out.

And just like Gwyn’s “Country Strong” I’m kinda feeling this one, too.

Yep, I’ve gone country. Movie country, but country nonetheless.

Photo: FanPop.com.