After scoring a book deal, selling several TV pilots, and making her name 140 characters at a time on Twitter , microblogging mom and Canadian wit Kelly Oxford has sold her first screenplay to Hollywood. Warner Bros. acquired her spec Son of a Bitch for a reported low- to mid-six figures; the story concerns a pothead party girl who tries to keep her image intact despite discovering she’s pregnant. The ringing sound you just heard is Anna Faris’s agent’s phone. [ Deadline ]
Posters are fine and all , but you can’t really get too breathlessly caught up in a movie’s hype until there are glimmering first images from the set. Especially when they feature one of the world’s biggest stars in in all his 19th-century slave-baron resplendence wielding a hammer. And sucking nefariously on a smoke. Yes, Leonardo DiCaprio, come on in! I’ll let you repair my morning. The first-look Django Unchained photos come by way of EW , which also gleaned some background from leading man Jamie Foxx while passing along your first glimpse of Foxx and Christoph Waltz as the freed slave Django and the German mercenary Dr. King Schultz. Needs more hammer. [via Movies.com ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“There’s this expression that it’s written three times: during the script, when you’re filming it and when you’re editing it. And I believe that’s wrong. I think it’s written once, in editing — and everything is clay for that. And I wanted to learn about it — I thought it would be neat . It’s like learning to play the piano and I need a lot of clay. And I thought if I did one movie out of these three … whatever. But I’m never going to show it to anyone. So I think that’s why they were cool with it. By the way: It doesn’t make fun of Star Wars at all.” Also: Close Encounters is apparently Grace’s next. Now you know. [ Huffington Post ]
Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! Topher Grace signs autographs and poses for photos with fans while leaving “Playing Lonely, I’m Not” At Second Stage Theatre
For the first time since Bridesmaids premiered this past spring, the comedy’s filmmakers and cast gathered last night in Hollywood for a special Screen Actors Guild Awards screening of their surprise box office smash. Afterward, Judd Apatow (who executive produced the film) moderated a Q&A panel comprised of stars Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy and Wendi McLendon-Covey as well as Annie Mumolo, who co-wrote the screenplay with Wiig. What transpired was an entertaining discussion about the movie “that changed female comedy.” The most exciting revelations follow.
Ralph Fiennes, honored at the BFI London Film Festival awards for his directorial debut — the Shakespeare adaptation Coriolanus — does not think in sound bites of 140 words or less. ‘We’re in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter… [Language] is being eroded — it’s changing. Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.” So hey, kids — go see Coriolanus next January and expand your (five syllables!) vo-ca-bu-la-ry! [ Daily Mail ]
American audiences came to love English actor Stephen Moyer as sexy, small-town vampire Bill Compton on HBO’ s hit show True Blood . But when the award-winning Alan Ball series goes on hiatus — as it is now between its fourth and fifth seasons — the accomplished stage actor fits in as many film projects as he can. The latest being The Double , Michael Brand’s directorial debut which co-stars Moyer as a Soviet psychopath assassin who is locked behind bars with only a gruesome facial scar and a secret — a secret that Richard Gere and Topher Grace try to wheedle out of him as they investigate the murder of a senator in this political thriller.
Benicio Del Toro, Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales are among the stars named in a protest of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new rule to block Puerto Rico from competing in the Foreign-Language Oscar race.
In the upcoming political thriller The Double , Topher Grace and Richard Gere star as an unlikely duo of intelligence agents paired to solve the mystery of a senator’s murder. The twisty plot leads them through a trail involving a psychopathic Soviet assassin (Stephen Moyer), Shakespearean code names and one double (get it) identity that culminates with a surprising ending in screenwriter Michael Brandt’s ( 3:10 to Yuma , Wanted ) directorial debut.
Anna Faris thinks of ‘big bangs, shoulder pads and jelly shoes’ when she looks back at the decade. By Kara Warner Anna Faris in “Take Me Home Tonight” Photo: Relativity Media In addition to being an entertaining and raunchy romantic comedy, “Take Me Home Tonight,” which features the acting and comedic talents of Topher Grace, Anna Faris, Teresa Palmer and Dan Fogler, is also a cinematic homage to the 1980s. When MTV News caught up with the cast, we asked them to explain to the younger generations what the ’80s were all about — check out the embedded video to really get a feel for their trip down memory lane. “It’s like ‘Glee,’ ” Faris said with a laugh. “Is it like ‘Glee’?” Fogler questioned his co-star. “I don’t know,” she said, second-guessing herself. “How would you describe that decade to them?” Fogler followed up, taking over the interviewer job. “It was a time when the music was so influential and the style, it was so specific to the ’80s,” Faris explained. “You know, the big bangs and the shoulder pads and the jelly shoes.” “It’s in your face!” Fogler interjected. “No one really apologized for what they were wearing or doing.” Faris agreed: “Yeah, women wore a lot of super high-waisted bikinis — which men, I think, still kind of like.” “They do, because you saw more of the pelvis than you normally would,” Fogler explained, adding that the trend should make a comeback. Grace and Palmer took a different track in describing the ’80s. Grace chose to call out several famous music videos from our MTV archives in order to “describe” what was happening during the decade. “Let’s play a couple of [music videos] right now,” Grace instructed, proceeding to name his favorite ’80s artists and their hit songs. “Duran Duran, ‘Girls on Film’ — go! OK, ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ go to that video,” he said. “That is the opening-credit scene [for ‘Take Me Home Tonight’]. OK, now we are back. Now, do ‘Video Killed the Radio Star,’ ” he said. “The first video ever played on MTV. This video was going on when I was watching MTV.” “He’s good!” Palmer added, not able to comment properly on the happenings back in the day, since she was born in 1986. What are your favorite ’80s videos or trends? Tell us in the comments! Check out everything we’ve got on “Take Me Home Tonight.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
