So much awards news! And it’s not all good for J. Edgar , the latest high-profile Oscar hopeful to see its balloon deflate as the Academy rolled out its Best Makeup short list. High-fives are in order, meanwhile, for the teams behind Albert Nobbs , Hugo , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and four other awards contenders. Read on for the complete list. The group below will be pared to three when the Academy announces its nominations on Jan. 24. Good luck to all! Albert Nobbs Anonymous The Artist Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 Hugo The Iron Lady [ AMPAS ]
If Yoda shilling for cup noodles made your skin crawl and your soul cry “Nooooo,” get ready to feel the Force sell-out even harder, and weirder, with a recent spate of George Lucas -approved shameless Star Wars marketing tie-ins. First, there’s Darth Maul and Yoda stumping for Lipton iced tea . Embarrassing, but that’s nothing compared to the super disgusting idea of a Darth Vader-themed hamburger featuring black-dyed buns. Blech. These are not the burgers you’re looking for, at least not to eat. The Vader burger is offered at French-Belgian fast food chain Quick, along with two other new sandwiches, the Dark Burger on dyed red buns a la Darth Maul, and the Jedi Burger, topped with diced mozzarella cheese cubes. The special Star Wars fare will be available for a limited time from January 31 to March 1, though the Vader burger, which is comprised of “two minced beef patties topped with one slice of melted pepper Cheddar cheese, pepper sauce, endives and rings of red pepper all between black-colored buns sprinkled with black pepper and poppy seeds” and is inexplicably spelled “Vador” burger in this Quick ad, will get an extended run through March 5. You can thank the upcoming 2012 release of Star Wars Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3D for the upsurge in shameless cross-branding, which is fine and a part of the business, especially when reintroducing a film to newer audiences and older fans who are now old enough to drink iced tea and order gross burgers at the drive-through. Still, that doesn’t excuse Lucas from the real problem: These burgers look completely disgusting. Who in their right mind will be ordering the Vader burger? French diehard Star Wars fans, I’m sure, and the kind of perversely curious fast foodies who thought the Double Down sounded intriguing. Oh, and maybe the members of the International Church of Jediism , followers of a new faith whose quest for recognition was immortalized this week by the Taiwanese animators at NME. According to the NME news video, these real life Jedis hang out drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos. Substitute the Quick Jedi Burger for Communion bread and everybody wins, no? [ MintinBox , Topless Robot , International Business Times ]
“Smokin’” Joe Carnahan ( Narc , Smokin’ Aces , The A-Team ) has endured his fair share of ill-fated projects and setbacks, but his passion project Killing Pablo remains a priority. And while the fate of White Jazz remains opaque, Carnahan shared optimism for his long-gestating Pablo Escobar biopic while promoting his existential survival pic The Grey last weekend in Los Angeles. If all goes well and the Liam Neeson-led The Grey takes off upon release later this month, he says he hopes to make Pablo his next project. The characteristically candid Carnahan, who recently dropped out of the director’s chair on Umbra , expressed hope that a successful debut for The Grey will allow him to finally bring Killing Pablo to the screen after years of research. “I feel like Pablo ’s the undernourished orphan that I’ve been looking after for years,” he said. “I’ve got to get this kid a meal. Yes, [ Killing Pablo ] would be, in a perfect world, the film that I’d want to make next. I still think it’s the best script I’ve written and I see these other kinds of things ramping up, and I just can’t get beat by these other movies.” Adapted from Mark Bowden’s book of the same name, Killing Pablo chronicles the efforts of the United States and Colombian governments to wage war against drug lord Escobar, who was killed by Colombian forces in 1993. Escobar’s legend, and a lingering fascination with his death, kept Carnahan fixated on making the film even through years of development hell that saw his creative struggle mirrored on HBO’s Entourage . “As much as The Grey is about attrition and going out and earning it, you know, I’ve been to Colombia three times, Medellin and Bogotá, I’ve done all this research,” Carnahan said. “I think what kind of crystallized it for me is I went to Los Olivos where he was killed, in Medellin, which is kind of a very modest middle-class neighborhood, and I was interviewing this 78-year-old man through an interpreter.” “I was talking to him, because Pablo was killed December 2, 1993,” he continued. “I said to him, ‘Can you tell me about that day?’ Because I’d gone up on the roof where he was killed and it was very undramatic, where he wound up dying; it was like a terra cotta box that he died in. And the guy said to me, and I’ll never forget this: ‘The day it happened I thought it was an early winter thunderstorm,’ because the level of gunfire was so constant he could not discern individual shots. And I thought, ‘Fuck me, I’ve got to make this movie.’” As for Carnahan’s career, which has traversed a range of projects from the modest, well-received Narc to the high-octane Smokin’ Aces , the big-budgeted A-Team , the cop drama Pride and Glory (which he co-wrote) and the sci-fi pic The Fourth Kind (which he produced), he sees no need to take a turn for the serious, necessarily, despite the philosophical and even metaphysical themes in the otherwise action-oriented The Grey . Doing the mainstream studio flick, The A-Team , for example, allowed Carnahan to scratch a certain itch while giving him the platform to make more personal films like The Grey , which he’s called his best film to date. “I realized, especially after A-Team , ‘Wait a minute — am I being viewed as a schmuck?’” he recalled. “Because my reasons for doing A-Team … there were a number of reasons, not the least was which I couldn’t make this or White Jazz or Killing Pablo . I couldn’t make those movies. And after Mission Impossible III , which again I left before I was fired, I had unfinished business. With The A-Team it was like, ‘Alright I’m going to do a big popcorn movie and see how that feels.’” If all goes well Pablo might finally come to fruition, but in the meantime Carnahan’s currently at work on a project at Fox called Continue , which the filmmaker describes as “ Groundhog Day as an action movie.” “As much as I love Antonioni films, I love the Three Stooges,” he explained. “I think [ Continue ] is funny as shit. It’s completely, from DNA to bone structure, different from The Grey but that doesn’t mean it’s something I wouldn’t do because now [I’ve] got to make serious films. I think I made this film to kind of prove to myself and whatever people are going to hire me in the future and the public at large that there’s a lot of different things I can do. If I can do a romantic comedy with women, that’s Everest to me.” The Grey is in theaters January 27. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
We can all agree that Lindsay Lohan is in dire need of a comeback, and this might just do it — well, it’ll certainly help: Deadline reports that the 25-year-old starlet is in talks to play screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in Lifetime’s biographical romance Elizabeth & Richard: A Love Story . The pic will chronicle the legendary relationship between Taylor and Richard Burton ; no word yet on who’ll play Dick to Lohan’s Liz, which means it’s a perfect time to play a round of Fantasy Casting! I’ll start by throwing a few names out there: – Ed Westwick, who’s vaguely got a young Burton thing going on in his face, but is probably too young to play Burton, who was 7 years Taylor’s senior… – Armie Hammer, because why not? – Sebastian Stan, the underrated sidekick to Chris Evans’ Captain America and, coincidentally, another Gossip Girl alum… mostly because I’m intrigued by the thought of him setting off sparks onscreen with Lohan. Then again, I’d also vote to wait for Martin Scorsese’s take on Dick ‘n’ Liz , based on Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s Furious Love … Have any better suggestions? Leave ’em in the comments section below. • Lindsay Lohan In Talks To Play Elizabeth Taylor In Lifetime Movie [Deadline]
Valentine is from the Ukraine, and he wants to be as popular as Britney Spears. That chorus will certainly help him. Contribute: Add an image, link, video or comment
