Milla Jovovich has squared off against many insidious adversaries in her career, including zombies ( Resident Evil ), evil itself ( The Fifth Element ), and critics ( The Messenger ). So why is it that her latest foe, a real-life affliction known as prosopagnosia — which confuses a person’s ability to recognize the faces of friends and loved ones (or, in Jovovich’s case in Faces in the Crowd , the face of her would-be killer) — seem like the silliest and most far-fetched enemy of all?
Illustrator/writer Lisa Hanawalt saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes over the weekend, and came away feeling a bit overwhelmed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this movie, it’s that apes are CONSTANTLY jumping through glass windows. The shattering glass must feel good on their fur?” [ The Hairpin ]
Jonathan Levine has directed two feature films ( The Wackness and next month’s 50/50 ) since seeing his 2006 directorial debut, the indie horror pic All the Boys Love Mandy Lane , infamously go from a Weinstein Co. pick-up to a Weinstein Co. cast-off sold to Senator Entertainment, who then went out of business themselves. So what’s the latest status of the Amber Heard starrer (which also features Anson Mount, Whitney Able, and Twilight ‘s Michael Welch)?
Big, bad news, Lone Ranger fans: According to Deadline, Disney has decided to halt production on Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger , which was to star Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the titular masked crusader. The pricey blockbuster was to begin filming this October, but too many other $200M+ projects set up at the studio may have led to the project’s demise.
Oh, great. Just when we thought Armie Hammer’s kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming J. Edgar Hoover biopic was going to be explosive, Eastwood himself is confirming that he’s leaving the first FBI director’s sexual orientation “open to interpretation.” I know a certain TV personality who might have damning evidence to the contrary.
It’s been ten years since Mike Myers last donned international man of mystery Austin Powers’s teeth swingin’ ‘tude, perhaps for good reason — by the time Myers rolled around the 1970s with Beyonce’s Foxxy Cleopatra in 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember , the series had lost some of its driving mojo. But after a taking a decade to recharge, the franchise is said to be headed back to the spotlight with a new sequel, according to a report by HitFix’s Drew McWeeny.
Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves are ‘the right team’ to bring Stephen King’s novel to the screen, expert tells MTV News. By Terri Schwartz, with reporting by Josh Wigler “Harry Potter” Director David Yates Photo: Stephen Lovekin/ Getty Images Hot off the success of the “Harry Potter” franchise, director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves are teaming up again to adapt another major literary property: Stephen King’s “The Stand,” for Warner Bros. For the uninitiated, “The Stand” is a post-apocalyptic novel that follows a group of survivors after 99.4 percent of the human race is wiped out by the effects of a biological weapon. The remaining survivors break off into two camps, one based in Boulder, Colorado, which represents good, and the other in Las Vegas, which represents evil. The two camps eventually face off in a stand that determines the future of mankind. When it comes to bringing a beloved novel to the big screen, Yates and Kloves certainly seem like the go-to pair, but “The Stand” is a different beast than “Harry Potter” in many ways. For one, the adult-oriented material is much darker than “Potter.” Drew McWeeny of HitFix , who broke the news, told MTV News he thinks the way Yates and Kloves treated the darker aspects of the “Potter” movies is a mark in their favor as they gear up for the “Stand” collaboration. “I think they’ve demonstrated as a team that they are capable of making extreme darkness palatable and ably depicting the struggle between good and evil,” McWeeny said. “It might not have been the first team I thought of to adapt that book, but it’s a damn good team.” MTV Movies Blog editor and “The Stand” fan Josh Wigler doesn’t think the movie can be made with anything less than an R rating. Similarly, McWeeny said the film won’t be an easy project for Warner Bros. to move through the studio. When McWeeny first broke the story , he said it didn’t make sense to bring “The Stand” to the screen again if it didn’t expand upon the 1994 TV miniseries — and he offered that the new element should be the very disturbing material that made the novel a hit. The novel, which features a massive cast of characters, is divided into three “books,” and the assumption is that Yates and Kloves wouldn’t attempt to adapt the story into just one movie. The larger question is whether Warner Bros. would make two movies or a trilogy out of “The Stand.” McWeeny thinks it could go either way. “I’ve been hearing that three is the magic number, creatively, and they want a trilogy,” he said. “[But] two films may just make better economic sense for them. I do think there’s a way to pull it off in two films, but that’s when you really start cutting this to the bone and that may not be best for the story itself.” With Universal having passed on Ron Howard’s ambitious attempt to adapt another King classic, “The Dark Tower,” it seems fair to presume that Yates and Kloves may worry about making “The Stand” too big. But there are many elements of “The Stand” that make it more adaptable than “Dark Tower” ever was, McWeeny said. “Even though [‘The Stand’ is] very big and has a ton of characters, there is a much more linear storytelling shape, and a simple film trilogy is something that Hollywood understands,” he explained. “Coming off the final ‘Potter’ film, I think Yates and Kloves are the right team to get almost anything made.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Photos ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2’
Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in 30 Minutes or Less is like a mirror of something you’ve seen before in a movie you’ve seen before: As an unambiguously unambitious pizza-delivery guy who’s forced to rob a bank, is he riffling through the deck and pulling out the same old cards, perhaps in a slightly different order? Or is he adding subtle variations to a type of character he’s played many times previously, biding his time until he can get another role like the perfectly calibrated one he played in The Social Network ?
Ashanti once sang, “I wanna be like those girls in the movies, to have a man so in love it makes him drop to his knees.” And who can really blame the girl? Unless you’ve lucked up and snagged yourself a die-hard romantic man, for many of us, the big screen is the only place where we’ll get to experience flamboyant, over-the-top and maybe even a tad bit cheesy declarations of affection. The next time your man gets into a habit of forgetting that you’re a female with feelings who likes to be treated as such, pop in one of these flicks to be reminded how it’s done. And for the fellas, just take notes… ( Continue )
Citizens of Pittsburgh, your local authorities have a message for you: If you hear gunshots, carnage, or superhero antics in your streets this weekend, do not assume that it’s because The Dark Knight Rises is filming. According to a report, Pittsburgh police want the city’s residents to dial 911 any time a mysterious noise disturbs them — even if it’s clearly just Christian Bale hollering about craft services and commanding Anne Hathaway to step away from his finger sandwich. The authorities have Pittsburgh’s best interest in mind, but still — I hope they aren’t deluged with reports of a rowdy thug who keeps claiming to be through with batsuits professionally. [ WTAE via Vulture ]
