The pregnant Jessica Simpson is moving from reality to scripted TV, signing on to star in a new sitcom pilot for NBC , according to a new report. The show is said to be based on her life … which is apparently funny. Nick Bakay ( Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Zookeeper and ‘Til Death ) will pen the script and executive produce alongside Electus’ Ben Silverman and Jess’ dad, Joe Simpson. “I am so excited to work with Ben and NBC again,” Jessica said. “I often find myself thinking that no one could ever make up the things that actually happen in my life.” “Between the real-life elements and a great team of writers, I think we’ll have people laughing!” Electus founder and chairman Ben Silverman added: “We are thrilled to team up with the multitalented Jessica Simpson to bring this new sitcom to life on NBC as she is truly a modern-day Lucy with incredible comedic chops.” “From running a fashion empire to her public image as a new mom, Jessica’s character [will] approach a variety of ‘everyday’ circumstances that will get audiences laughing out loud.” Simpson’s life has largely been spent in the public eye, from her early pop music success to MTV reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica and beyond. Recently, the now 32-year-old has starred in to other reality shows, Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty on VH1 NBC/Electus’ Fashion Star . She signed on for an ABC pilot, Jessica , in 2004 that did not make it to series. What do you think? Will you give her new show a shot or pass?
The people’s choice awards were last night and I wasn’t invited because the mainstream media forgets how relevant I am…. I refused to watch the shit, cuz the idea of celebrities being celebrated by each other is disgusting….I did however go through some of the pics, none of them were exciting…. I think it is safe to say that the highlight of the night was when PERVERT LESBIAN ELLEN was caught staring at washed up Jennifer Aniston’s nipples…..even though both aren’t hot, and the idea of them fucking isn’t hot, it just brings up some real lesbian issues….like that they are allowed in public washrooms and gym changing rooms to gawk at girls naked….like they were dudes…only unlike dudes…they are allowed…in what is the biggest double standards in creepin’ and perversion…that kinda makes me wanna get a sex change to voyeur properly…I figure my penis is already an Inny and I have tits…I’m just a little body hair away and some spandex outfit away from pulling this off.. I am a genius. Ellen is a sex offender pervert. We all will survive. TO SEE THE REST OF THE PICS FOLLOW THIS LINK
I’ve never heard of Hannah Elizabeth…but apparently she’s just another one of those UK glamour models trying to get noticed…only stepping up her game…compared to the other girls…by pulling a Jordan Katie Price….and getting some stupid fucking tits….because the UK is obsessed with stupid fucking tits…whether they are real or not…and based on the girls coming out of the UK….tits are all they care about…ruggeteer gremlin faces and face asses don’t matter…just give us the titty… Either way, she’s got herself some 30G bra size, and is showcasing them, and you are supposed to celebrate them, to make her fucking matter in the world… My kind of girl..
Writer/director Chad Hartigan scored a coveted spot at the Sundance Film Festival with his sophomore effort This Is Martin Bonner . The festival is just under a month away, but images are trickling in including the debut of this poster for the drama screening in Sundance’s NEXT section. [ Related: Sundance Film Festival Reveals 2013 U.S. & World Competition and NEXT Slate ] NEXT is officially set for films that “stretch limited resources to create impactful art,” according to the festival. Only time will tell how these ten titles will do after they premiere, but some early word has been positive for this year’s crop… Official This Is Martin Bonner description follows. Who can guess what land mass that is? The striking sophomore film of writer/director Chad Hartigan, This Is Martin Bonner is a warm and perceptive meditation on friendship, human connection and getting a second chance at life. Fifty-something Martin Bonner (Paul Eenhorn) leaves his old life behind and relocates to Reno, where he finds work helping released prisoners transition to life on the outside, while trying his hand at speed dating and passing time as a soccer referee on weekends. Meanwhile, Travis Holloway (Richmond Arquette) has just been released from prison after serving 12 years. Surprising both of them, Travis and Martin form an unlikely friendship that offers them reciprocal support and understanding. Quietly observational and naturalistic, the film features noteworthy breakthrough performances from Eenhoorn and Arquette who approach their characters with a lived-in sense of low-key restraint.
“If you ride like lightning, you’re going to crash like thunder,” sounds like something Dennis Hopper would have said in the 1970s (and, actually, the 80s, too), but the always-compelling Ben Mendelsohn gets the line in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines . Although you only hear Mendelsohn deliver it in voiceover in this trailer for the feature, it’s a warning he delivers to his partner-in-crime motorcycle stuntman-turned-bank robber Ryan Gosling in the film. As you can piece together from the clip below (which comes via Yahoo! ), Gosling turns outlaw to support the surprise son he finds out he has (thanks to a fling with Eva Mendes’ character) and ends up on a collision course with a cop played by Bradley Cooper. (That tear Baby Goose sheds in the church is over his little boy, who’s played by a kid named Anthony Pizza, believe it or not.) But don’t be like the guy in Yahoo! comments section who thinks the trailer gives away the whole movie. The Place Beyond the Pines is way more complex than a heist flick. As the tag line in the trailer reads: “One moment defines your life. One decision becomes your legacy.” I’m curious to see whether Cianfrance has re-edited the film since I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival . I thought the way he structured the movie was daring and inspired, if a bit unwieldy in places, but there was some grumbling among the crowd that the movie’s three interlocking stories didn’t fit together so well. The movie opens theatrically March 20. RELATED: Ryan Gosling: ‘I’m Not Allowed to Have An Opinion’ About The Media’s Coverage Of My Life The Principals Behind The Pines : Gosling and Cianfrance On Robbing Banks, Fatherhood, Face Tattoos, And More [ Yahoo! ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Judd Apatow knows that in casting his real life wife and children in his latest film, the seriocomic Knocked Up spin-off/sequel This Is 40 , he’s inadvertently invited the world to peek into his own life, marriage, issues, and neuroses. Still, despite the many parallels one might draw between Paul Rudd ‘s Pete (now a struggling indie record label owner) and Leslie Mann ‘s Debbie (whose own small business and marital woes are nothing compared to impending big 4-0), Apatow insists most of This is 40 is fictionalized. Okay, much of it. Well, he doesn’t escape to the bathroom to play games on his iPad like Pete does. “I’m more about reading the Huffington Post ,” Apatow joked. Apatow may have built his comic empire on R-rated man-child tales rife with fart and dick jokes (not to mention sweet, sweet bromance) but with This is 40 the writer-director takes a considered look inward at marriage and relationships. They’re never perfect — even between Hollywood creatives like Apatow and Mann, whose daughters Maude and Iris play heightened versions of themselves in the film — but as Apatow mused in our conversation rife with relationship real talk, personal reflections, and necessary tangents about Maude’s real life LOST obsession and Apatow’s 1995 kids’ camp movie Heavyweights : “Imagine that you had to spend every second of the rest of your life with your best friend. How often do you think they would annoy you?” Out of all the characters you’ve created onscreen, you spun off Pete and Debbie into their own film — the two characters whose lives are closest to your own. What was the impetus for wanting to explore this particular relationship further? I have two interests; I’m trying to make funny movies and I also want to explore the human condition, and I want to be truthful about it. And the truth is in any relationship you have good times and loving times, and sometimes it goes really dark. And sometimes out of nowhere, something just blows. People bring a lot of baggage into their relationships and I think most people are pretty neurotic. Life is pretty overwhelming for most people. If you have any concern about being a good spouse and parent and having your job work out and your health — you’re just spinning too many plates. And once in a while we snap, so I was trying to show a truthful version of what happens when that occurs — sometimes that’s really funny and sometimes it’s just sad, and people’s fears come out. When you first began working up the seeds of This is 40 , was there any hesitation knowing that people out there might watch the film and wonder, ‘So that’s how it is in their family?’ about you and Leslie? For some reason I didn’t worry about because I thought we already did it with Knocked Up. And it is a mutated version of us. It’s very heightened — a lot of the moments, the worst moments, for dramatic and comedy purposes – but for the most part we’re pretty boring. Once in a while it does go the wrong way, but then you have to figure out how to get it back. That’s what a long-term commitment is about; sometimes you make mistakes and you have to apologize and be kind to each other again. I always say to my kids whenever they ask me, ‘Why do you guys fight?’ — I say, ‘Imagine that you had to spend every second of the rest of your life with your best friend. How often do you think they would annoy you?’ And, you know, that’s how we feel about it. We love each other but we’re complicated people — and it’s hard for me to know if part of it is this is why we’re in this business, because we’re sensitive, complicated, wounded people and we’re trying to get along with each other. [Laughs] But most of it is fabricated. Nothing in the movie feels specifically true, it didn’t happen to us, but the emotions are very truthful, the feelings and the conflicts are all based on things that we relate to. Even so, you know that some folks out there are going to imagine you sitting on the toilet playing Words With Friends on your iPad every morning. I’m more about reading the Huffington Post . [Laughs] I would sit on the toilet all day if my legs wouldn’t go numb. If I could create a toilet seat that didn’t lead to my legs going numb… This is 40 is also a rare opportunity to see Leslie front and center; she has this wonderful ability to play deep sadness and humor simultaneously. Do you have a favorite scene of hers from the films you’ve worked on together? My favorite scene that we’ve ever done together was the scene in Funny People where Adam Sandler’s character apologizes to her character for cheating on her when they were young, and ruining their chance at having a long-term relationship. We shot it with three cameras and it was very emotional, and I was proud of both of them. Of everything I’ve done it’s one of my two or three favorite scenes. She has a way of being very funny while also being deeply emotional, so she can be dramatic and show pain and get laughs at the same time. I’m not even really sure how she accomplishes that, it’s just some aspect of her vibe which allows her to do many different colors at once. That’s the fun of working with her. And she’s always willing to do whatever it takes to get to an honest moment. She never says, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ or ‘That would be embarrassing,’ if anything she pushes to go farther and wants to get to the core of her character. There were definitely moments when we were making [ This is 40 ] when we said, ‘What are we doing? This is crazy’ — especially if there was a day when we weren’t getting along. We’re making this movie about a couple and their love and their troubles, so on the days when we’re not liking each other it just feels like a complete waste of time. Did it also then help to be making this movie? You have entire scenes where the dialogue pokes fun at couples therapy-speak, and it’s hilarious to point out how much, in the heat of the moment in a fight with your significant other, no amount of preparedness or civility training helps. Yes! I know everything about therapy and so can break every rule of how you’re supposed to communicate in five seconds. You just have to learn to slow your brain down and be patient and not feel the need to win every moment, and I don’t know if there’s anything harder on Earth than doing that. Giving up your need to be correct is brutal, especially for me because I think I have to be very confident in my day job. All day long I’m making decisions very quickly and I have to be very strong about it, so for me to come home and be soft and open and not leap to pounce on a problem and come up with an answer and execute it is hard for me — and it’s truly annoying to Leslie. [Laughs] I can imagine! Any time a problem comes up, my thought is ‘Let’s solve this in the next five seconds and move on!’ And Leslie might want to explore the emotional life of some issue and tell me how she’s feeling for a really long time, and I just want to give her five seconds. That’s a big adjustment. This is 40 is also really about parents and children — every one of us is messed up because of our parents, and by the same token we’re great because of our parents. Pete and Debbie both deal with that burden. Whatever you didn’t get from your parents, you want more of from your spouse. So if you feel like you were abandoned, you’re going to be needy. If you feel like your parents were engulfing, you’re going to want to push your spouse away. It’s really hard to fight against that; I find that the imprinting you have when you’re a kid is really difficult to wipe away. Whenever I’m really upset about something it’s always a result of something from the past. But that’s a revelation that you really only have when you’re in your thirties, maybe. I don’t know that I would have really understood it so much when I was 20. Well, people are so busy trying to earn a living they put very little time into understanding themselves. That’s something that happens later in life, and partially what the movie’s about. I find myself embarrassed that I’m still neurotic about things that happened to me as a kid, because my memory’s disappearing so I don’t even remember the incidents, but I remember the neuroses are and they’re not going away. How do you think viewers of a younger generation will react differently to the film? A lot of it depends on what you’re looking for in a movie. Some people go to movies to escape. I like movies that make me think and feel and I don’t necessarily have to feel good the whole time. So I like movies to be as entertaining and hilarious as I can make them, but I’m also trying to stick in your craw a little bit and talk about some tougher ideas. If that’s what you want, I think it’s a movie you’d really enjoy. But if you really want to shut your brain down, then I have other movies that you can rent. [Laughs]
Earlier this week, Funny or Die tried to answer the question I hoped would never get asked this Oscar season: Who had it worse, slaves or poor, single mothers driven into prostitution? In a clever four-minute video, Samuel L. Jackson (Team Slaves) and Anne Hathaway (Team PSMDIP) campaigned for their respective sides in a “sad-off.” It’s a brilliant bit of movie promotion, with the actors selling their sad, sad movies ( Les Misérables and Django Unchained , respectively) through comedy. “My movie is literally called ‘The Miserable,’” throws down Hathaway. “Women get beaten in my movie,” boasts Jackson. “Same thing happens in mine,” Hathaway counters. “Guy gets his head blown off.” “Same.” “There’s a man ripped apart by dogs in my movie.” When Hathaway stays quiet, Jackson cackles in triumph. The two Oscar nominees eventually get into the yuletide spirit by cheerfully agreeing, “Nothing says Christmas like slaves and whores.” That’s cute and all, but it also smartly points out the paradox of the holiday movie season, that magical time of the year when, between maxing out our credit cards and stuffing our faces like it’s the Mayan apocalypse, we dutifully assign ourselves to watch “serious movies” about “important issues.” There seem to be way more of those this year, from the slavery-themed Django , the plebe-supporting Les Miz , the torture-approving Zero Dark Thirty , the dementia-sympathizing Amour , the insanity-forgiving Silver Linings Playbook , the FEMA-condemning Beasts of the Southern Wild , and the disability-sex-championing The Sessions . Looking at this group of politically weighty films, Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir stated last week that he’s looking forward to a “meaty” 2013 Oscars because of the “ideological throwdown” promised by the likely award nominees, especially after the win of last year’s lightweight The Artist . It’s of course great that so many special-interest groups will have their issues heard throughout Oscar season. But given the fractured, us-versus-them nature of America today, it’s hard not to feel pessimistic that the run-up to the Academy Awards will turn out to be one interminable lose-lose game of Who Suffered Most? There’s certainly precedent for this. Back in 2005, the Best Picture race rapidly narrowed down to Crash and Brokeback Mountain . In a particularly ugly turn, the media narrative twisted the Oscars into a contest between racism and homophobia, as if declaring racism to be the greater injustice eased the pain felt by bullied gay teens. When Brokeback lost, some commentators exacerbated the situation by blaming the outcome on the homophobia of Academy voters, who are still mostly old, white men . (For the record, they probably just have really bad taste.) That’s why the best part of Hathaway and Jackson’s video is its preemptive mockery of the tendency to hierarchize different kinds of oppression. In a bit that recalls the 2008 Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the sad-off briefly veers into black man vs. woman territory. “You try being a black man in the South in the 1800s. I bet you couldn’t handle being a black in the South right now ,” taunts Jackson. “When there’s a French whore in the White House, then we can talk,” Hathaway challenges. “You say that like there’s never been a French whore in the White House,” says Jackson in the best line of the video. Let’s hope that’s the last round of sad-off we have to play this holiday season, because justice and equality doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Inkoo Kang is a film critic and investigative journalist in Boston. She has been published in Salon, Indiewire, Boxoffice, Yahoo! Movies, Pop Matters, Screen Junkies, and MuckRock. Her great dream in life is to direct a remake of All About Eve with an all-dog cast.” Follow Inkoo Kang on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Music not only serves as the subject but informs the very fabric of Not Fade Away , David Chase’s savvy ’60s-set feature film debut. Aided immeasurably by his keen ear for dialogue, Chase filters a suddenly tumultuous, transformative decade through the restrictive prism of conservative suburbia in this story of a New Jersey boy’s coming of age, as political instability, class awareness and rock ‘n’ roll break in waves over the still-inchoate consciousness of several friends trying to form a band. Though starless, save for James Gandolfini’s knockout supporting perf, this dynamic pic should resonate with auds countrywide upon its Dec. 21 release. Not Fade Away injects the past with the nervous energy and exciting uncertainty of the present, devoid of nostalgia or biopic baggage, and infused with all the wicked wit that characterized Chase’s The Sopranos and his bygone standout episodes of The Rockford Files. The move from TV to a theatrical canvas is mirrored in the picture’s very conception, presenting the New Jersey microcosm as no longer a self-contained unit. Still, the film rarely leaves its setting, where Doug (John Magaro) lives with his looming, disapproving father (Gandolfini), his quasi-hysterical mother (Molly Price), and his little sister (Meg Guzulescu), who supplies voiceover narration and performs a wonderful curtain-dropper to boot. Macrocosm first meets microcosm when Doug returns to Jersey from college sporting longer hair, Cuban heels and anti-war indignation, quitting his studies to devote himself to the rock band he started in high school. Chase’s writing shines in this intricate relationship between world events and their impact on the everyday: Drawing from his own, decidedly more lackluster experience as a band drummer, the writer-helmer surrounds Doug with friends whose talents are not necessarily congruent with their ambitions and whose class differences manifest themselves erratically. Thus, after lead singer/guitarist Gene (Jack Huston) temporarily knocks himself out by swallowing a lit joint, Doug takes over as vocalist, wowing the local crowd with his rendition of “Time Is On My Side,” a glamorous position he soon assumes permanently, to Gene’s ongoing resentment. Meanwhile, well-off Wells (Will Brill) wrestles with the philosophical implications of imminent fame, always worrying they’ll “lose the mystique” they’ve built up with their barely existent fanbase. The group covers the Rolling Stones , the Kinks and Bo Diddley with varying degrees of fidelity, but Not Fade Away pointedly refuses to follow either a difficult-road-to-success or downward-spiral-to-failure scenario. Instead, the music feeds off surrounding chaos, anchoring Doug’s existence and coloring snapshots of various stages of his youth. His questioning whether to go for a more melodic or bluesier vocalization while listening to Leadbelly equates to his deciding on different attitudes toward life. Even movies and TV shows are defined through their music: The Twilight Zone announcing its presence to the protag through its signature theme, while Blow-Up confounds him with its silence. Doug’s evolving relationship with wealthier girlfriend Grace (Bella Heathcote) forms the film’s other throughline and, like his interaction with certain band brothers, brings up issues of economic disparity. But Chase excels at diverting attention from the obvious and foregrounding the particular, as in how Doug’s cramped kitchen contrasts with Grace’s Toulouse Lautrec-wallpapered rec room, where his band plays parties. And when Doug is shown digging ditches at Grace’s country club, the scene’s focus stays completely on Doug’s failed attempt to musically bond with Lander (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a conservative black co-worker who only likes church music. The young thesps play their characters, interestingly, as socially inept, with varying levels of self-assertion and intellectual pretension. Magaro’s Doug, maturing in fits and starts, contrasts strikingly with Gandolfini’s brilliant turn as a father undergoing a late-blooming epiphany. Chase often matches and sometimes even betters Cameron Crowe or Floyd Mutrux in granting present-tense immediacy to the rock ‘n’ roll on the soundtrack, never smothering it with hindsight. In this endeavor, he was undoubtedly greatly assisted by exec producer/music supervisor Steven Van Zandt. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If Rihanna can find time to stop Tweeting photos of herself pantsless , Simon Cowell may have a job for her. With L.A. Reid announcing his departure from The X Factor , at least one spot on next season’s judging table will be vacant – and The Sun says Cowell hopes it can be filled by Rihanna. “Simon is a huge admirer of Rihanna and knows she’s star quality,” a source tells the newspaper. “As well as bringing an aura to the panel thanks to her current standing in music, she is also feisty and will make great TV. Simon loves these sort of characters.” Rihanna is a Barbados native and Cowell often vacations there around the holidays, the insider adds. Expect a meeting to take place over the next few weeks. But should it? Do you think Rihanna would make a strong X Factor judge? Heck yes! No way! View Poll »
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