Ellen DeGeneres aired her first show today since the Newtown shooting that claimed the lives of 26 individuals on Thursday. And although the hour itself featured Bradley Cooper and Bruno Mars and included the usual Ellen jokes (and dancing, of course), the host kicked off the outing with an emotional speech. Saying her goal everyday “is to make you happy and make you feel good for an hour,” Ellen concluded: “We’re gonna do the show today, but it’s gonna be a struggle cause my heart is broken for those families and for all the people in Newtown. We’re holding you in our hearts. And today’s show is dedicated to you.” Ellen DeGeneres Newtown Dedication
Bronson Pelletier, an actor who portrayed a werewolf in The Twilight Saga, was arrested yesterday in Los Angeles for getting drunker than Lindsay Lohan on a Tuesday night. According to TMZ, here’s what went down: Pelletier’s pants. The 25-year old was removed from an airplane in Los Angeles after passengers complained of his drunk behavior. From there, sources say officers left Pelletier by a nearby gate… only to receive a call two hours later that the actor was at the airport. And NOT in the bathroom. So they returned and placed Pelletier under arrest for public intoxication. He was released not long after booking.
David Letterman struck an uncharacteristically somber note Monday night, addressing the Newtown, Connecticut shooting for nearly seven minutes. Returning from commercial, the comedian, looking visibly saddened, noted the beauty of the Christmas decorations on CBS’ Late Show set. David Letterman Sandy Hook Statement He then touched upon the senseless massacre of 26 people – including 20 children – at Sandy Hook Elementary School, saying, “It makes me so sad.” “The lights … they’re really for kids. You think about this horrifying circumstance. What part of that do you think about that’s going to make any difference?” “Do you think about the kids in the class? That’s too awful to think about,” said Dave, himself the father of a little boy and a Connecticut resident for many years. “Do you think about the parents and their friends and getting that message from the school and finding out that their lives are irrevocably broken, ruined?” “You think about your own kid. I take him to school every now and then. Are we supposed to be worried about dropping our kids off at school now?” “I never worried about it before. I always thought, well here, school is a good place where my son will be free of the idiot decisions made by his father.” Letterman then addressed both gun control and mental health, areas that have become the focus of a fiery public debate over policy reform. “Believe me, I’m not dumb enough to think that this is a problem of guns,” Letterman said. “Before there were guns, people were killing one another.” “And you can’t just say that it’s mental health or emotional problems because people with all manner of problems don’t necessarily kill each other.” But citing a document prepared by the show’s researchers, Letterman did go on to acknowledge some frightening statistics about firearms. “Since 1994, there have been 70 episodes of school shootings, (all) after the Brady Bill had passed (in 1993). Good lord, does that surprise you?” he asked. Letterman acknowledged that listening to President Barack Obama’s Newtown speech at Sunday night’s memorial made him “feel a little bit better.” “He’s going on the record, (taking) some kind of action… In a small measure, I feel better that he’s looking out for us in that regard. It’s a sad, sad holiday season.” Indeed.
James Cameron will return to Pandora next year. The Avatar director, who attended the premiere of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in Wellington, New Zealand on Wednesday, told the West Australian (via Total Film ) that he hoped to have the scripts to Avatar 2 and 3 completed by February, and to begin shooting by the end of 2013. Cameron, who owns a farm in New Zealand, said he was working on the scripts there, but complained that the beauty of his surroundings was “too damn distracting.” Nonetheless, the filmmaker said, “I want to get these scripts nailed down, I don’t want to be writing the movie in post-production.” He added: “We kind of did that on the first picture, I ended up cutting out a lot of scenes and so on and I don’t want to do that again.” The blockbuster director behind Titanic, Terminator and Aliens has said that he’s writing Avatar 2 and 3 together and plans to shoot them back-to-back to complete one long story arc. (He’s also suggested that an Avatar 4 could happen and the sequels could conceivably be populated with Chinese Na’vi . Cameron also predicted that Jackson’s decision to shoot The Hobbit at 48 frames per second — 24 is the standard — would do for high-definition filmmaking what Avatar did for 3D movies. “We charged out ahead on 3D with Avatar , now Peter’s doing it with The Hobbit . It takes that kind of bold move to make change.” [ West Australian , Total Film ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
As Bella Swan goes, so goes Kristen Stewart . The Twilight saga star appeared on Today on Wednesday to talk a bit about her evolution from passive heroine to ass-kicking vampire in Breaking Dawn – Part 2 , and ended the interview with a quote which suggests that, like Bella, Stewart has learned to be more of a bad-ass when it comes to her fans’ and the media’s prying into her personal life. Stewart looks typically uncomfortable self in the clip below, and awfully tired. When the Today cameras first zoomed in on her, I thought the dark circle beneath her right eye looked like a shiner. But what made an even bigger impression was the way in which the actress handled the inevitable question about her off-screen relationship with Robert Pattinson . Keep in mind that, in the clip. Stewart is facing three interviewers by her lonesome: Savannah Guthrie, Matt Lauer and Natalie Morales. That’s not easy, though four people took part in Stewart’s 2009 Today interview for Eclipse . Guthrie gets the RPatz question in just as the Today theme music begins signaling that the interview segment is ending. “Kristen, you have so many fans, and they will be mad at us for not asking,” she says before asking if Stewart and Pattinson are back together. Watch Stewart’s face as she processes the question. She flashes a split-second expression of annoyance before responding with an answer that would probably meet the new Bella’s approval: “Funny you mention that,” Stewart replied in a deliciously deadpan manner before putting a nice sharp stake in heart of the off-screen romance story. “I’m just going to let people watch whatever little movie they think our lives are and go for it. Keep them guessing, I always say.” A little mystery goes a long way. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
In his half-century of cinematic existence, James Bond has been cast and recast, refined, reinvented and rebooted. He’s been declared a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and gotten his heart broken, and he’s been dragged into the present, where he’s had to find a new perch somewhere between gritty and ridiculous, between being a stoic modern action hero and a deliberately outsized fantasy remnant of, as one unamused minister puts it in Skyfall , a long gone “golden age of espionage.” Skyfall is American Beauty director Sam Mendes ‘ first turn at the wheel of this venerable spy franchise, and he and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan have managed what feels like the best possible thing that could have happened to Bond: They’ve made him fun again. When Daniel Craig was put in the lead role and the character was brought back to his beginnings in Casino Royale , it brought a vividly contemporary jolt to the character — this Bond wasn’t going to be off gathering information on al-Qaeda or anything, but his job was just as likely to involve messy killings as suave seductions, and the possibility of death and pain were much more real. It was a welcome revamp, if one that shifted the films into the orbit of the Bourne trilogy and risked stripping them of an essential element of Bond-ness. Chilly, rough-edged and not yet settled into his place at MI6, Craig’s Bond was a little busy with love and revenge to make quips. In Skyfall , Bond is literally reborn. During a mission-gone-wrong, he takes a hit that leaves everyone thinking he’s dead. It’s a misconception he’s happy to let stand while he takes a potentially permanent sabbatical involving beachside booze, sex and brooding over a vague sense of betrayal. He’s lured back by an attack on MI6 and on M ( Judi Dench ) masterminded by a computer genius named Silva (a terribly entertaining and menacingly flirtatious Javier Bardem). Bond ends his retirement because he knows he’s needed. And, oh, he is. Skyfall acknowledges that Bond isn’t a paragon of physical or martial arts perfection, or technologically savvy. In contrast to the newly minted agent he played in Casino Royale, he’s an old hand in this film, neither the fastest nor the youngest but still the best. Skyfall acknowledges our need for some humanity in Bond without overloading him with angst. The film fondly brings back familiar franchise elements, including an entertainingly young Q (a sly Ben Whishaw) and another character whose reveal is best left discovered, along with an exotically beautiful paramour named Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) who’s part victim and part femme fatale. Bond gets fewer silly gadgets these days, but he does have his awesomely fly car and a customized gun. And though he travels to such exotic locations as Shanghai, Macau and Istanbul, he also spends an unprecedented amount of time in his homeland, where he reintegrates himself with MI6, which is under political scrutiny, and returns to his native Scotland where a just-enough sliver of backstory is revealed. Skyfall makes explicit that Bond is a child of the United Kingdom. His only consistent relationship is with his country, even though that country is willing to sacrifice him for the greater good should it be necessary. It’s why, despite Bond’s dalliances with Sévérine and fellow field agent Eve (Naomie Harris), the film’s true Bond girl is M. The MI6 director’s complicated role as stern taskmaster and surrogate maternal figure gets played out as Silva, who shares a past with M, targets her and Bond tries to protect her. Like Bond, M is as much a concept as a character, but, beneath their bickering, Dench and Craig find a credible tenderness that suggests their is immense mutual affection behind the bone-dry sniping. Mendes isn’t an exceptional director of action, and many of the set pieces are lavish and forgettable. The car chases through crowded streets and pursuits across rooftops look a lot like other blockbuster sequences that recently graced screens. He’s better with character interactions and small touches: Bond straightening his cuffs after an improbable landing in a train; Bond watching a foe face a Komodo dragon and book-ending his adventure with unwilling dips in bodies of water. Working with the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, Mendes also presents some stunning sequences of beauty in a film where you might not expect such a thing. A fight high atop a Shanghai skyscraper takes place in the dark against the neon advertising backdrop of a shifting jellyfish projected on the building’s glass skin and ends with Bond meeting the gaze of someone in the building across the way, hundreds of feet up. Silva’s high-tech lair is set on an island that’s home to an abandoned city, while MI6 retreats with all its sleek gear to a historical location deep in London. The old and the new, the past and the ever-accelerating present — despite the body count, it’s not death that Bond has to worry about, it’s remaining recognizable and relevant. Skyfall manages to balance both in an uncommonly entertaining fashion. Related: Check out Movieline’s extensive coverage of Skyfall and the 50th anniversary of James Bond here. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
In his half-century of cinematic existence, James Bond has been cast and recast, refined, reinvented and rebooted. He’s been declared a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and gotten his heart broken, and he’s been dragged into the present, where he’s had to find a new perch somewhere between gritty and ridiculous, between being a stoic modern action hero and a deliberately outsized fantasy remnant of, as one unamused minister puts it in Skyfall , a long gone “golden age of espionage.” Skyfall is American Beauty director Sam Mendes ‘ first turn at the wheel of this venerable spy franchise, and he and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan have managed what feels like the best possible thing that could have happened to Bond: They’ve made him fun again. When Daniel Craig was put in the lead role and the character was brought back to his beginnings in Casino Royale , it brought a vividly contemporary jolt to the character — this Bond wasn’t going to be off gathering information on al-Qaeda or anything, but his job was just as likely to involve messy killings as suave seductions, and the possibility of death and pain were much more real. It was a welcome revamp, if one that shifted the films into the orbit of the Bourne trilogy and risked stripping them of an essential element of Bond-ness. Chilly, rough-edged and not yet settled into his place at MI6, Craig’s Bond was a little busy with love and revenge to make quips. In Skyfall , Bond is literally reborn. During a mission-gone-wrong, he takes a hit that leaves everyone thinking he’s dead. It’s a misconception he’s happy to let stand while he takes a potentially permanent sabbatical involving beachside booze, sex and brooding over a vague sense of betrayal. He’s lured back by an attack on MI6 and on M ( Judi Dench ) masterminded by a computer genius named Silva (a terribly entertaining and menacingly flirtatious Javier Bardem). Bond ends his retirement because he knows he’s needed. And, oh, he is. Skyfall acknowledges that Bond isn’t a paragon of physical or martial arts perfection, or technologically savvy. In contrast to the newly minted agent he played in Casino Royale, he’s an old hand in this film, neither the fastest nor the youngest but still the best. Skyfall acknowledges our need for some humanity in Bond without overloading him with angst. The film fondly brings back familiar franchise elements, including an entertainingly young Q (a sly Ben Whishaw) and another character whose reveal is best left discovered, along with an exotically beautiful paramour named Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) who’s part victim and part femme fatale. Bond gets fewer silly gadgets these days, but he does have his awesomely fly car and a customized gun. And though he travels to such exotic locations as Shanghai, Macau and Istanbul, he also spends an unprecedented amount of time in his homeland, where he reintegrates himself with MI6, which is under political scrutiny, and returns to his native Scotland where a just-enough sliver of backstory is revealed. Skyfall makes explicit that Bond is a child of the United Kingdom. His only consistent relationship is with his country, even though that country is willing to sacrifice him for the greater good should it be necessary. It’s why, despite Bond’s dalliances with Sévérine and fellow field agent Eve (Naomie Harris), the film’s true Bond girl is M. The MI6 director’s complicated role as stern taskmaster and surrogate maternal figure gets played out as Silva, who shares a past with M, targets her and Bond tries to protect her. Like Bond, M is as much a concept as a character, but, beneath their bickering, Dench and Craig find a credible tenderness that suggests their is immense mutual affection behind the bone-dry sniping. Mendes isn’t an exceptional director of action, and many of the set pieces are lavish and forgettable. The car chases through crowded streets and pursuits across rooftops look a lot like other blockbuster sequences that recently graced screens. He’s better with character interactions and small touches: Bond straightening his cuffs after an improbable landing in a train; Bond watching a foe face a Komodo dragon and book-ending his adventure with unwilling dips in bodies of water. Working with the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, Mendes also presents some stunning sequences of beauty in a film where you might not expect such a thing. A fight high atop a Shanghai skyscraper takes place in the dark against the neon advertising backdrop of a shifting jellyfish projected on the building’s glass skin and ends with Bond meeting the gaze of someone in the building across the way, hundreds of feet up. Silva’s high-tech lair is set on an island that’s home to an abandoned city, while MI6 retreats with all its sleek gear to a historical location deep in London. The old and the new, the past and the ever-accelerating present — despite the body count, it’s not death that Bond has to worry about, it’s remaining recognizable and relevant. Skyfall manages to balance both in an uncommonly entertaining fashion. Related: Check out Movieline’s extensive coverage of Skyfall and the 50th anniversary of James Bond here. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Jesus take the casket ! We really intend no disrespect to the dead by posting this, but somethings are just undeniably ridiculous and have to be shared with the world. We wish ol’ girl some comfort during her time of grief and mourning. Have you ever been to a funeral where you almost died trying to hold laughter in at something inappropriate but funny?
