Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe played a crazily estranged couple in Lars von Trier ‘s erotic/thriller/surreal Antichrist in 2009. And now, Dafoe is set to return to Von Trier’s latest, Nymphomaniac along with Gainsbourg, Shia LaBeouf , Christian Slater , Stellan Skarsgard and Uma Thurman . Others are joining the cast, while one big name has pulled out. Nicole Kidman had been rumored as another possible addition to the cast, but she has more regal obligations and cannot join, according to THR. Kidman, who played the lead role in von Trier’s Dogville is currently busy playing Grace Kelly in Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco . Dafoe, meanwhile, will play a supporting role in the two-part erotic Nymphomaniac , which will be released in both a hardcore and soft core version. Dafoe is currently in Hamburg, starring in Anton Corbijn’s drama A Most Wanted Man . Von Trier veteran Udo Kier, who has taken part in a number of von Trier’s films including his most recent Melancholia has also joined the cast along with French actor Jean-Marc Barr ( Dogville ), Caroline Goodall ( Schindler’s List ), Kate Ashfield ( Shaun of the Dead ), Saskia Reeves ( Butterfly Kiss ) and Danish actor Omar Shargawi ( R ). In the film, Gainsbourg stars as Jo, a self-described nymphomaniac who reveals her story to an older bachelor played by Stellan Skarsgard. Rumors have flown over the summer whether named actors would take part in sexually explicit scenes, though porn-star “stand-ins” have also been rumored to be engaged on camera. Shia LaBeouf fueled the rumor when he said he was ready to “go all the way” in Nymphomaniac . [ Source: THR ]
The council’s mortality and Elena’s immortality are among the question marks remaining after Thursday’s episode. By Amy Wilkinson The season four cast of “The Vampire Diaries” Photo: The CW
‘I’m very excited to be a part of that Wes Anderson family,’ actor tells MTV News about joining the cast of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel.’ By Kevin P. Sullivan, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Jude Law Photo: MTV News
Jersey Shore is going out on a high note, according to MTV, which is speaking out about its rationale behind canceling the hit show after six seasons. Executive VP of Programming Chris Linn says the cost of the cast was not factor, but “we always said we’d do the show as long as it made sense.” Long story short, that’s no longer really the case. “We noticed what was going on in their lives, with [ Snooki having her baby ], the relationships, etc. it felt like the right time to bring it to a close.” “The show still dominates, it’s the No. 1 show in our core demo, and it’s still incredibly successful. It’s really just about their lives evolving and changing in a way that moves everyone away from the original conceit of the show.” “We made what we think is the right, tough choice to end the show on top.” With Jersey Shore canceled after the coming season (debuting October 4), what kinds of things can we expect from the gang’s farewell tour? “What I think is most exciting about this season are the changes that have happened. This is the longest the cast has been apart between seasons,” Linn says. “There was time for new events to develop in their lives. Mike went into rehab and is coming back sober. Nicole is pregnant. Deena is in a different relationship.” “Sammi and Ronnie’s relationship has evolved. Their lives are at different stages and how they react and adapt to that is really fascinating to watch.” How much time did Snooki actually stay in the house? “It was really a matter of her wanting to be able to get proper rest at night and have a place she could go and relax. She moved into a place right next door, she spent the bulk of her time in the main [Jersey Shore] house,” he says. “The cast also came over to her place, so it gave us another place to go to. She’s very much present. It’s not in her character to not be in the middle of everything.” So what’s the major tension or storyline this fall? “The tension between Mike and Nicole definitely is a key storyline. My experience watching it, knowing it’s the last season, you see it through a different lens.” “It has a certain poignancy to it.” “In addition to the main 13 episodes, we have a significant amount of after-show content. We’ll have eight after-shows to give more context.” “We have the special look-back special the night of the VMAs (Sept. 6), it’s a ton of fun to look back at the biggest moments through the lens of ‘this is it.'” Is it possible the cast could be replaced with a new crop of guidos? “There are no plans for that … we’ve always been clear that this cast is lightning in a bottle. It’s not about the format, for us it’s always been about this cast.” What about a Snooki- Jionni LaValle wedding spectacular? “She’s been really focused on having a baby. We haven’t had any conversations about that. If and when she and Jionni are ready to tie the knot, my door is wide open and I’d love to talk to her about it.” Will you watch Jersey Shore Season 6?
Hip-hop mogul rose from carrying record crates for DJ Red Alert to guiding the careers of the biggest names in music. By Rob Markman LL Cool J and Chris Lighty Photo: Jamie McCarthy/ Getty Images
With a whole year until ‘Catching Fire’ blazes into theaters, we look at the cast’s other upcoming projects. By Amy Wilkinson Jennifer Lawrence in “The House at the End of the Street” Photo: Relativity Media
Speaking of old…. Dax Shepard deployed one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book on the Conan show on Monday when he diverted attention from the lame box-office performance of his movie Hit and Run by poking fun at the aging action stars who kicked his cinematic ass, the cast of The Expendables 2 . Shepard told host Conan O’Brien that the cast of the Sylvester Stallone-directed The Expendables 2 were “all show and no go” when it came to their collective well-muscled appearance. “It looks like the zombie apocalypse is saving the earth,” Shepard said in reference to the veteran ensemble. Alas, Hit and Run might have benefited from scenes of a zombie apocalypse, or something that would have raised moviegoer interest. The picture, which also starred Bradley Cooper and Shepard’s real-life girlfriend Kristen Bell grossed just $5.9 million in its initial five-day opening. The movie ranked 10th for the weekend, well behind The Expendables 2 , which saw a $13.5 million weekend and a 15-day domestic box-office take of $52.3 million. Feeling a little insecure there, Dax? Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Like the Paranormal Activity films and their cinematic ancestor Poltergeist , The Apparition takes place in what may be the least naturally atmospheric setting out there — suburban California. There’s something welcomingly off-kilter about dropping a supernatural tale in a location so inherently mundane. It’s straightforward enough to spin scares out of creaky mansions in remote areas, cavernously empty hotels and abandoned asylums, but sunny tract housing doesn’t naturally lend itself to spookiness, which makes it all the more immediate and unsettling when a movie manages to make such a thing work. It doesn’t, unfortunately, work in The Apparition , an incomprehensibly garbled, derivative attempt at a horror flick from first-time writer-director Todd Lincoln. The setting may actually be the most interesting aspect of the film, a sparsely occupied, recently constructed planned community in the Los Angeles suburb of Palmdale, where young couple Kelly ( Twilight- er Ashley Greene) and Ben (Sebastian Stan) have just taken up residence in a new house purchased as an investment by Kelly’s mother. With its shiny appliances, pre-installed flatscreen and near-identical exterior to neighboring buildings on the block, the Overlook Hotel it is not, but then it needn’t be, because the pair may have brought their haunting with them. The Apparition is inspired by the Philip Experiment, in which a group of Canadian parapsychologists in the ’70s invented a ghost, gave it a history and tried to imagine it into being by the force of their combined will and thoughts. The film presents a version of this experiment, done in faux aged stock, at its outset before skipping ahead to more modern footage of a recent, disastrous attempt to recreate the deed with scientific equipment, led by college student Patrick (Tom Felton — Draco Malfoy himself). The double framing story presents a captivating concept, of a spirit birthed entirely out of human belief, a self-reinforcing thing once it came into being and started scaring people. But the film essentially drops this idea after introducing it, as it does most of the elements it introduces. Whatever other problems The Apparition ‘s apparition has, bewildering inconsistency is its foremost. At first the spirit is flinging open doors and making banging sounds a la the aforementioned Paranormal Activity , then it’s causing dark stains to appear on the ceiling like Dark Water , then it’s sucking people into walls like Pulse , then it’s taking the form a jerkily crawling ghost woman right out of The Grudge . The apparition, it would seem, has no clear motivation and is of fuzzy origin, but it’s definitely a movie buff, especially when it comes to J-horror. That last scene in particular is such a carbon copy of Kayako, the ghost in Takashi Shimizu’s franchise, and so unlike what’s happened in the haunting thus far (everything has suggested it take the form of a tall, thin man) that it’s almost laughable, as if, having given up on more traditional scares, the apparition has decided to go international. Greene and Stan are both very pretty, and they’re fine actors who are required for the sake of the movie to do extremely silly things. Stan’s character, for instance, keeps his past connection to the spirit secret for no sensical reason, and tries to pretend the paranormal force that’s growing ghost mold on their ceiling and tying their clothes in knots has no interest in them. Greene’s character uncovers her boyfriend’s keepsake trove of videos and other evidence of the experiment gone wrong, and the first thing she asks him about is not why he helped summon some apparent demon thing but who the girl is in the photos with him — were they together ? The primary frightening scene in the film is also its biggest headshaker, in which Kelly is left alone in the house as the lights are shutting off by themselves, and rather than run outside or shriek for help, she uses a thermal imager to peer around the dark downstairs, the soundtrack running an accelerating, thumping heartbeat. It’s a good thing neither Kelly nor Ben are developed enough for the audience to invest in their safety as they heedlessly engage in such hazard-courting behavior, but without characters to latch on to, all that’s left are the scares and the story, neither of which amounts to anything. At only 82 minutes long, The Apparition is so lean you’d think it had to have been edited to bits somewhere, except that there’s no conceivable way that these pieces could have fit together to begin with. With no consistent mythology — at one point the characters drive and drive to take shelter in a Faraday cage that immediately stops working once they get inside — and few original thoughts, The Apparition is distinguished only in being what has to be the lone horror movie to set a climactic scene in a Costco. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Friday morning’s round-up of news briefs, Martha Marcy May Marlene director is heading for a TV gig. The Kids Are All Right director eyes her next project. And a British television star eyes joining the cast of August: Osage County . No More Lance Armstrong Biopic? News that the 7-time Tour de France winner will be stripped of his titles poses what will be the ultimate outcome of a planned biopic of Armstrong by Sony Pictures. The story might have been straightforward had it been made a few years ago, but now it could go forward – or not – in a different way, Deadline reports . Expendables 2 Set for Box Office Repeat There are no new superhero films newcomers Premium Rush and Hit and Run are not expected to take the top spot from last weekend’s top earner, Expendables 2 . The pic is expected to gross around $14 million, Reuters reports . Sean Durkin to Direct Channel 4 Mini Southcliffe Martha Marcy May Marlene director Sean Durkin will make his British TV debut with the U.K.’s Channel 4 drama Southcliffe based on a script by Tony Grisoni who wrote the Red Riding trilogy. The story revolves around the aftermath of a series of shootings in an English market town told through the p.o.v. of a journalist and the victims, Deadline reports . Lisa Cholodenko Eyes November Criminals The Kids Are All Right director is in talks to direct November Criminals for Santa Monica-based Indian Paintbrush. Set in Washington, D.C., the story revolves around a student who goes inside D.C. society while investigating the mysterious death of a fellow student, The Wrap reports . Benedict Cumberbatch Eyes August: Osage County The actor who stars on the BBC’s Sherlock is in talks to join the cast of The Weinstein Company’s adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play that stars Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and George Clooney, THR reports .
