Twilight movie sets pre-release records
Being a teenager sucks. Being a teenage vampire? Now that's the sort of misery worthy of an obtusely titled album. But if you just happen to be an adolescent bloodsucker on a Washington peninsula poised to cash in on the (lucrative) intersection of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King, life is actually pretty good right now.... read more
O.C. and Gossip Girl creator to pen X-Men reboot
Although it will doubtlessly inflame fans, Fox has hired Josh Schwartz, the man who brought us Gossip Girl and The O.C., to write the script for a youthful reboot of the X-Men franchise. ... read more
John Malkovich making a documentary on illegal migration
John Malkovich is known for a lot of things (good acting, his self-effacing sense of humor, baldness) but less so as an activist or film director. Still, he's done his fair share of both, being a longtime outspoken Libertarian and directing the 2002 feature The Dancer Upstairs. So the announcement in Variety that he plans to fim a documentary on the plight of migrant children wasn't totally out of the blue...but it was pretty close. ... read more
Philip Seymour Hoffman animated film to open Sundance
Despite recent controversies, preparations for the Sundance Film Festival are in full swing, prompting the announcement of the annual event's Jan. 15 opening night film: the Aussie animated import Mary and Max, featuring the voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette and Eric Bana. The selection is a major coup for the film, considering the attention lavished on recent opening night films, like this year's rather slept-on tragicomedy In Bruges. ... read more
Update: Ron Howard confirms Arrested Development movie
During a press junket for Universal's upcoming Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard told Maxim that the much-ballyhooed Arrested Development movie was, in fact, on its way to the silver screen. ... read more
Johnny Cash Christmas DVD box set out now
Available now, Shout! Factory has released a 4-DVD set of The Johnny Cash Christmas Specials 1976-1979. While '76 and '77 were released last year, the '78 and '79 specials are new and are available separately or as part of the box set. Included on the new set are Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman, amongst others.... read more
Joan Didion penning a Katharine Graham biopic for HBO
Outside of journalists, Katharine Graham still isn't that well-known. But for those in the industry, she remains a hero if only for her Washington Post leadership during the Watergate Scandal and her support of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their investigation.... read more
Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa to produce Jerry Garcia biopic
According to the Hollyood Reporter, Little Miss Sunshine producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa are set to join their fellow Hamlet 2 producer Eric Eisner in the production of a biopic about Jerry Garcia. The three have just signed on to produce the as-yet unnamed project, which promises a revealing look at the Grateful Dead frontman's youth.... read more
HBO readies comedy set against 1987 Wall Street crash
HBO has finally figured out a way to tackle the recession: make fun of it. The network has paired with author Andy Bellin to produce The Review, a comedy series set in 1987 at a literary magazine at the height of that era’s Wall Street meltdown. ... read more
Stan Lee adapts gay-superhero series for Showtime
Stan Lee’s influence has come to tower over the contemporary surge in comic-book adaptations, but even his expansive oeuvre has some underdeveloped patches. The 85-year-old touchstone has teamed with Showtime to develop a series, Hero, centered on the emergence of a gay superhero icon. ... read more
Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live going film
If the inherently morbid 6,557 mile cross-country trek in Killing Yourself to Live had one lesson for Chuck Klosterman, it was the old trope that the journey is more important than the destination. Still, the destination has been pretty nice for Klosterman; five books into his career, he's the reigning king of pop-culture addicts. He'll be adding another feather to his cap (probably a Kiss hat) soon too: Half Shell Entertainment has nabbed film production rights to Klosterman's rock memoir/romantic confessional.... read more
Marvel signs Joe Johnston to direct Captain America
After years of talks, Marvel Studios has officially hired Joe Johnston to direct First Avenger: Captain America, part of an ambitious slate of major comic adaptations the studio is set to finance over the next several years. ... read more
Ennio Morricone scoring Inglorious Basterds
For his past two movies, Kill Bill and Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino appropriated some of the music by noted film composer Ennio Morricone. No actual collaboration ever occurred, even though Tarantino was requesting that people write Morricone-esque music for his next film. It's not like this was the first time he'd tried for Morricone, either, since the Italian composer refused to work on Pulp Fiction.... read more
Saturday Night Live to add to new female cast members
Maybe it was the fact that Tiny Fey as Sarah Palin gave Saturday Night Live one of its most-discussed skits since "Dick In A Box," but the ever-changing sketch-comedy program is choosing to reestablish a respectable X-to-Y chromosome ratio. Last week it was announced that comedians Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott will join the show to fill the gap left by new mother Amy Poehler and 30 Rock-helming Fey. Despite news that they were to debut in this weekend's episode (hosted by Paul Rudd), it seems they will appear later this month.... read more
Clint Eastwood in talks to direct supernatural thriller
Although some have pegged his latest, Changeling, as more or less a horror movie, Clint Eastwood is in talks to direct Hereafter, a new supernatural thriller to be produced by Steven Spielberg. ... read more
California's Prop 8 protests may affect Sundance Film Fest
Even as the left-leaning majority in Hollywood celebrated the outcome of the presidential election, many in the industry protested the passage of Proposition 8, a ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California after a court ruling had legalized it last May. As gay-marriage supporters react, many have turned their attention to one of the proposal's biggest proponents, the Mormon church, and an annual fête held on its Utah doorstep: the Sundance Film Festival. ... read more
NBC cancels Lipstick Jungle and My Own Worst Enemy
The cancellations for the Fall TV season are slowly rolling in, and now NBC is getting in on the action. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed the network has axed two of its dramas, sophomore Lipstick Jungle and freshman series My Own Worst Enemy.... read more
Inexplicable Karate Kid remake to feature Will Smith's son
Some things date a movie horribly: rear projection, clearly hand-drawn animation for special effects, Shelley Duvall in a starring role, etc. But there are some films that contain none of these elements but are still, in and of themselves, a piece of pop-culture ephemera from another time and place. This is where Karate Kid firmly lands. Its premise is ridiculous, and pretty much everything about the film seems to exist more for the pleasure of lousy VH1 Remember the __s programs than as an actual attempt at making a movie. That being said, it sure is a fun and quotable... read more
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reveal details for road-trip comedy
In Sept. 2007, we reported on the first news of the next Simon Pegg/Nick Frost collaboration, to be called Paul. At the time, all we knew about the film was that the Hot Fuzz stars' typical roles would be reversed: Frost would take the lead role and Pegg plays the incompetent sidekick. Or, as Pegg put it in an interview with MTV's movies blog, "It's different actually. I'm the bitch in this one."... read more
Kidman to play transsexual, Theron to play wife
You have to hand it to Nicole Kidman. In her career, the Aussie actress has juxtaposed standard Hollywood fare (often box-office disasters) with challenging, non-traditional roles in independent films with little to no commercial appeal. For every Cold Mountain, there's a Birth, where she played a woman convinced her dead husband had been reincarnated into the body of a 10-year-old boy; or a Dogville, the Lars Von Trier's three-hour melodrama on human nature at its worst; or a Fur, an "imaginary portrait" of famed photographer Diane Arbus that saw her lover, Robert Downey Jr., covered head-to-toe in hair. Even her... read more
The 50 Best Movies on Netflix Instant
The 25 Best Movies of 2012 (So…
The 50 Best Movies of 2011
The 30 Best TV Shows on Netflix…
The 50 Best Movies of the Decade…
