The A.V. Club - Newswire

Film: Newswire: Denzel Washington may take a break from being an agent or cop or something to play Thelonious Monk

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:54:00 -0600

Perhaps sensing that his career choices of late had lapsed into self-parody, Denzel Washington has begun considering projects that could find him briefly stepping away from being an agent or cop or something who plays by his own rules and butts heads with a younger guy. For starters, there’s the upcoming Robert Zemeckis drama Flight, in which Washington puts on a different kind of uniform and breaks some different kinds of rules by playing a Sully-like hero pilot who's revealed to also have a drinking problem. Now he tells The Observer—shortly after insisting that he would be ...

Film: Newswire: Ben Stiller hires people who are not Ben Stiller to help Ben Stiller remake The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:25:00 -0600

Ben Stiller is making some serious progress on his remake of 1947’s The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty—with director Ben Stiller workshopping daily with star Ben Stiller, giving him honest advice, Stiller to Stiller, and offering the sort of constructive criticism that Ben Stiller knows will get the best performance out of Ben Stiller. But as there are limits even to the capacity of Stiller, Ben Stiller has hired some non-Ben Stillers to join the story of a nebbishy man who slips into a fantasy life where he can do anything, and also co-star in The Secret Life ...

Film: Newswire: Rambo 5 might be happening after all

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:42:00 -0600

In 2010, Sylvester Stallone said that he was “99 percent sure” that he was done hiding the graying Rambo franchise behind an increasingly musty headband of contrived mercenary subplots, despite rumors that Rambo might once again be called from retirement to dispense mumbly justice to human traffickers or even genetically engineered mutants. But as recent protests have shown us, we are ruled by the 1 percent, and thus Rambo 5 is still apparently a possibility—at least, according to self-pitying Conan The Barbarian writer Sean Hood, who recently tweeted that he’s working on a Rambo 5 screenplay that is ...

Film: Newswire: Saoirse Ronan to play non-Snow White in Disney's Snow White movie that isn't a Snow White movie, it swears

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:45:00 -0600

The great Snow White war of 2012 has yet to begin, but it already claimed its first casualty (besides all of those production assistants that Julia Roberts strangled for kicks): Back in August, Disney officially modified its long-gestating Snow And The Seven—a kung fu-inflected version of the tale in which the dwarfs were also Shaolin monks—into the less-obvious Order Of The Seven, dropping the dwarfs entirely and remaking it as a standalone action film about an Englishwoman in 19th-century Hong Kong who seeks the protection of a group of seven warriors turned outlaws. (A group that also bears ...

Music: Newswire: The Grammys draw largest television audience since 1984

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:17:00 -0600

Whether it was due to curiosity seekers drawn in by Whitney Houston's death the night before, or the fact that Adele's 21 is the first genuine music-industry blockbuster in years, Sunday's Grammy telecast drew huge ratings, attracting the show's largest audience since 1984 and its second biggest overall. In all, 39 million people tuned in, which is actually more people than watched the Oscars last year. Score one for Team Music. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

Books: Newswire: The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman being sued by original illustrator and former best friend

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:34:00 -0600

Last week was an unusually contentious one in the world of comics (even for the normally contentious world of comics), and Friday evening brought news of one more legal battle that we saw but were like, “Damn, not another one. Let’s just talk about it on Monday.” And that’s today, so: The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman is being sued by original series illustrator Tony Moore, who claims that he has not received his appropriate share of royalties, thanks to being duped by Kirkman into signing away his rights to the now very lucrative franchise. Compared to the ...

Film: Newswire: The BAFTA Awards give everything to The Artist, proving that British people are aware it's a silent film

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:11:00 -0600

Still mortified by the actions of certain Liverpool ruffians, the BAFTA Awards went out of their way to celebrate The Artist last night, allowing the film to sweep more than half of the dozen categories in which it was nominated, even when it faced exceedingly British competitors such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Iron Lady. Through pursed lips and punctuated by plenty of embarrassed harrumphing, the red-faced presenters awarded Michel Hazanavicius’ ode to silent films best picture, director, actor, screenplay, music, cinematography, and costume design—thus proving that one is well aware that The Artist is a silent ...

Film: Newswire: Weekend Box Office: Valentine's Day belongs to the hunks

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:05:00 -0600

Apparently, mid-February is the new summer. There was enough audience to go around for all four of the week’s top openers, despite a spate of negative reviews for each of them. Having already coughed up $30.5 million to boost the opening weekend of his last big romantic drama, the Nicholas Sparks adaptation Dear John, viewers were powerless to resist the leaden charms of Channing “The Big Brisket” Tatum in The Vow, as he wrapped his beefy arms around Rachel McAdams and $41.7 million. And with a modest $30 million budget, massive profits are assured, especially in the ...

Music: Newswire: No official cause of death after Whitney Houston's autopsy

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:50:00 -0600

Officials conducted an autopsy on Whitney Houston's remains Sunday, but the cause of death officially remains unknown, and won't be determined until toxicology results come back in several weeks. Houston's body was discovered in the bathtub of her Beverly Hills hotel room, and the singer had water in her lungs when she died, prompting initial reports that she drowned after taking Xanax and drinking alcohol to calm her nerves before a performance Saturday night at an event honoring record executive Clive Davis. TMZ is reporting that the L.A. coroner's office has already told Houston's ...

Music: Newswire: R.I.P. Whitney Houston

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:37:00 -0600

A pop music superstar whose fame was once nearly as big as her once-in-a-generation voice, Whitney Houston died today at the age of 48. Police are investigating the cause of death, though there are no obvious signs of criminal intent. Houston died in a Beverly Hills hotel room, where she was staying while in town to perform at a musical tribute for her mentor, music executive Clive Davis, which still went on as scheduled this evening. Also moving forward is tomorrow’s Grammy telecast, a show Houston once owned and once again will overshadow, only this time for horribly shocking ...

TV: Newswire: John Goodman and Roseanne Barr are getting back together

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:21:00 -0600

Roseanne Barr’s Downwardly Mobile is already essentially a rehash of Roseanne—what with its focus on finding the funny in poor people, its setting among the even lower-rent digs of a trailer park, and of course, all that Roseanne—and suddenly that's even more official. Deadline reports that John Goodman is in final negotiations to join the NBC pilot, thus reuniting with his former TV wife, former Roseanne executive producer Eric Gilliland, and former role as that guy whose lovably teddy-bearish persona softens Roseanne’s natural abrasiveness and makes her seem human, even almost likable. Of course, this ...

TV: Newswire: Melissa McCarthy helps get her husband his own CBS sitcom

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:00:00 -0600

Melissa McCarthy and her writer-actor husband, Ben Falcone—recently seen as McCarthy’s make-out partner Air Marshall Jon in Bridesmaids—have co-written a comedy pilot for CBS. The show would be a starring vehicle for Falcone, so if the network picks it up, not only will the other guys in the writing room at The Looney Tunes Show have to stop calling him "Mr. Melissa McCarthy,” the two of them could lunch together every day at the CBS commissary and hold hands while talking about how things are going on their respective sets. That wouldn't be enough to get ...

Books: Newswire: Marvel forces Ghost Rider creator to stop saying he's Ghost Rider creator

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:45:00 -0600

After nearly five years of bitter and depressing legal back-and-forth only slightly ameliorated by the fact that it concerned a biker with a flaming skull, Marvel has won a lawsuit that forces Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich to stop identifying himself as “Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich,” simply because he is the creator of Ghost Rider. The oddly existentialist decision brings an end to a court battle first launched back in 2007, when Friedrich sued Marvel claiming that rights to the character had reverted back to him in 2001, and were subsequently being exploited by the company’s Ghost Rider ...

TV: Newswire: Bradley Whitford to bring the worlds of Parks And Recreation and The West Wing even closer together

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:41:00 -0600

The Huffington Post has a whole bunch of potential spoilers for the rest of the Parks And Recreation season (which you can read here if so inclined), but perhaps the one of greatest interest—especially to that Venn diagram overlap of Parks and West Wing fans that surely exists—is that Bradley Whitford has an upcoming guest spot. The Aaron Sorkin muse will turn up as the departing city councilman whose seat Leslie is running for, inspiring an episode that’s reportedly crammed with West Wing homages—most obviously its title, “Live Ammo,” which intentionally recalls one of Rob Lowe ...

TV: Newswire: John Stamos returning to sitcoms, finally

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:09:00 -0600

It’s been a good week for the Stamos-aholics amongst us. First the word came down from the Grammy gods on high that sometimes-drummer John Stamos would be a part of the upcoming Beach Boys reunion at the Grammys, and today Deadline reports that the erstwhile Uncle Jesse and his dimples could be coming back to sitcoms full-time. Stamos has signed on to star in Little Brother, a Fox comedy pilot about a man who finds out he has an ex-con half-brother played by comedian T.J. Miller—the mad scientist-haired cameraman from Cloverfield (and our fellow “Spa Weekend with ...

Film: Newswire: Syfy-caliber movie Legion to become actual Syfy series

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:52:00 -0600

Finding inspiration, like so many networks seem to be doing these days, in its Netflix queue, Syfy has begun developing a TV adaptation of 2010’s Legion—a series that would potentially join the channel’s adaptation of The Adjustment Bureau, as well as the dozen other movie-to-TV shows pitched this development season that were most recently compiled here, because we’re tired of digging up the links to all of them over and over again. So just go look at that list. According to Deadline, Legion’s writer-director Scott Stewart is set to direct and executive produce the small-screen ...

TV: Newswire: Elliott Gould and Jon Voight are moving to Showtime

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:34:00 -0600

Aiming to outdo HBO’s recent recruiting of Alan Alda with their own unconventional ’70s sex symbols, Showtime has drafted both Elliott Gould and Jon Voight to join the cast of the upcoming Ray Donovan, which stars modern-day “thinking woman’s sex symbol” Liev Schreiber. Indeed, there will be a whole lot of thinking women thinking, “As a thinking woman, I regard these men as a symbol of sexy things and feelings.” Anyway, as previously reported, the show stars Schreiber in the very au courant role of (in the words of the press release) a “professional troubleshooter” to an elite ...

Film: Newswire: Yet another version of Beauty And The Beast in the works

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:52:00 -0600

Because the best stories are those that can be told again and again, preferably in competing versions and all at once, Beauty And The Beast is making inroads toward becoming the next Snow White in terms of fairy tales that producers believe in their heart can sustain multiple simultaneous updates, if only they clap loudly enough. Joining that growing chorus today is Christophe Gans, with the Silent Hill director now shopping his own version of the story with Vincent Cassel as the Beast and Lea Seydoux as the woman who loves him. Did Gans have an appropriately grandiose statement to ...

TV: Newswire: NBC's The Munsters show has been put on hiatus for retooling

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:21:00 -0600

Demonstrating just how much NBC apparently has riding on a reboot of The Munsters, the network has taken Bryan Fuller’s darker, edgier, more geographically aware update Mockingbird Lane off of its fall schedule, likely pushing it to a midseason start date. Variety reports that the production has now been delayed until summer, as NBC dedicates itself to giving the project the “extra attention” it needs to “get the elements just right”—sharpening the edges and darkening the dark stuff, as it were. Presumably this will also give them time to overcome the greatest hurdle facing what could otherwise be ...

Film: Newswire: New version of Rebecca to be haunted by the memory of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:18:00 -0600

Alfred Hitchcock won his only Best Picture Oscar for 1940’s Rebecca, suggesting that anyone who would attempt their own adaptation of Daphne du Marier’s novel—as DreamWorks and Working Title are now planning—would be haunted by the lingering spirit of their predecessor, with everyone cruelly comparing this would-be replacement to the original Rebecca and forever finding it wanting. And then cinephilia's various housekeepers, who have preserved Hitchcock's room in their hearts just as he left it, would encourage this new film to commit suicide, and other referential metaphors. But this younger, updated version of Rebecca ...