The nominations are out for the 69th Golden Globe Awards, and they favored pretty much everyone front-and-center in the awards race to date, with the requisite snubs, surprises and other laughable curios (they had to wedge War Horse in there somewhere , right?) with which Ricky Gervais will no doubt have a fine time on Jan. 15.
Just when you thought that the future of pop culture couldn’t look more dismal , TMZ reports that Clint Eastwood’s family is planning a Kardashian-like reality series on which the screen legend has every intention of appearing.
What does it take to revive a passion for one’s work, years on, whether said vocation is saving the world or churning out sequels in a blockbuster franchise? How does one reclaim human contact in today’s isolating, gadget-dependent world? These are questions IMF agent Ethan Hunt and his portrayer Tom Cruise face in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol , Cruise’s fourth outing in the spy series, directed entertainingly enough by Pixar veteran Brad Bird . If the hoodied Cruise evokes a touch of Eminem-level moodiness in the posters, it’s with good reason: Stopping a maniacal supervillain may be on the docket yet again, but this time around Ethan Hunt has gone emo.
The new 60-second teaser for The Expendables 2 isn’t quite as LOL -splosive as the poster we all saw a few weeks back, but it’s still pretty great in its own sort of testosterrific way. What’s its secret? Let’s try breaking the magic down by the numbers:
In Roman Polanski’s Carnage , two couples square off in a 4-way — or is it a 48-way? — skirmish involving parenting issues, class resentment, the self-centered nature of our society, and both sexual politics and the other kind. This is a drawing-room comedy set in what just may be one of the outer circles of hell: The well-appointed (but just shabby enough) Brooklyn apartment of a persnickety couple who advertise their liberal ideals perhaps more obviously than they practice them. These two insufferable individuals are meeting with a matched set of same, the perhaps better-heeled (and equally smug) parents of a boy who struck their son with a stick, knocking out a tooth or two in the process. By the time each of these mini-nightmare characters has had a swing at each of the others — and by the time one of them has vomited on a valuable art book — the permutations of animosity and indignation have multiplied into an algebraic equation of headachey proportions.
Make like Katniss and sharpen those hunting skills, Hunger Games fans, because Lionsgate’s launching a scavenger hunt with a worthy payoff to count down the mere 100 days that remain until Suzanne Collins’ dystopian teen battle royale tale hits screens on March 23: Collect all 100 pieces in the Hunger Games 100 Poster Puzzle Hunt and be the first to get a peek at the full official first poster for the March flick. You can start with golden-flecked puzzle piece #78 (of 100), which Movieline hosts exclusively after the jump. (Hint: It’s a corner piece! Get to puzzling already!)
What is it with Hollywood trailers this week? Men in Black 3 looked like more like a mass grave than a summer confection, Rock of Ages drowned in music to grocery-shop to, and now the first look at Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator boldly takes on that most subversive and risky of subjects: Muslim despots of the Middle East. You know — the decadent self-parodies being overthrown, dragged out into the street and executed because they are so incredibly relevant in the 21st century! Oh, and Megan Fox. And the Kardashians. Sigh . Click through for your pick of low-hanging fruit.
It’s the little things that get us through one otherwise interminable awards season after another: Oscar-nominee trading cards , #ConsiderUggie , The Daldry … That kind of stuff. But perhaps the most remarkable development of the current awards cycle sprung immediately, kind of miraculously from the previous most remarkable development of the current awards cycle. And it all benefits Drive scene-stealer (and recent SAG Award snubbee ) Albert Brooks.
First came the real talk from Eric Idle revealing why he recently canned fellow Monty Python mate John Cleese from the touring production of Spamalot , the stage musical adapted from their 1974 comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail . “I fired John Cleese — surgically removed him,” Idle told the Telegraph. “It wasn’t mean — he’s had millions of dollars from it. He charges people a fortune for using his voice. He’s always been in financial crisis.” A miffed Cleese took to Twitter to strike back at “Yoko Idle.”
When Tom Cruise adapted the Mission: Impossible television series for the screen in the mid-’90s, he made an interesting decision: Instead of branding the spy franchise himself, he would let different directors customize each installment according to their unique strengths and visions. Following three distinct Mission: Impossible takes from Brian De Palma, John Woo and J.J. Abrams, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brad Bird — who, before Ghost Protocol , had never helmed a live action feature — stepped up to the plate for the fourth M:I installment.