Also in Monday morning’s round-up of news briefs, Red Hook Summer and 2 Days In New York lead an unspectacular weekend in the specialty box office. The Dark Knight Rises leads the way for another weekend overseas. And remembering Al Freeman Jr. Jesse Eisenberg Eyes Night Moves for Old Joy Eisenberg is in talks to play the leader of a group of eco-terrorists who plot to blow up a dam in the thriller, directed by Kelly Reichardt. Dakota Fanning is also in talks to play the wealthy girl who funds the destructive scheme, The Guardian reports . Mary Steenburgen Joins Las Vegas Steenburgen joins the comedy from CBS Films and Good Universe in which she’ll be the object of affection in a love triangle. In the film, a group of friends throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the one remaining single member of their group, Deadline reports . Red Hook Summer , 2 Days In New York Debuts So-So: Specialty Box Office A pair of New York-centric limited releases debuted in exclusive runs in NYC over the weekend and the numerical results were decent at best. Red Hook Summer and 2 Days In New York lead specialty openers with limited runs. Spike Lee’s latest Brooklyn tale Red Hook Summer bowed in four locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, averaging $10,525. The film doesn’t have major stars and its distributor touted its opening on four screens instead of the “safer route” of two locations as many specialty openings do, Deadline reports . Foreign Box Office: Dark Knight Rises Still Tops The box office was down overall with summer heat and the Olympics blamed for a suppression of the numbers. The Dark Knight Rises took the top spot overseas, taking in $34.2 million, down 50% from the prior week, from 58 offshore markets, THR reports . R.I.P. Al Freeman Jr. The son of African American stage actor Al Freeman (1884-1956), and star of stage, TV and film, Al Freeman Jr., has died at the age of 78 years old. In 1967, Freeman Jr. co-starred with Shirley Knight in the film version of Leroi Jones’ (Amiri Baraka’s) off-Broadway play Dutchman , which earned him critical kudos, and further attention for his portrayal of a black subway passenger victimized by a frantic white woman, Shadow and Act reports .
Well, Ms. Vergara, you were never known for your huge a$$ soooo…?? Sofia Vergara Covers Allure Magazine Sofia Vergara has never hidden the fact that she’s a woman with curves, but in a recent magazine interview, the “Modern Family” vixen reveals that it’s not just about having a voluptuos figure – it’s about the attitude you have that really completes the look. “The guys I know love it,” she told Allure magazine of exhibiting her sultry feminine side. “You don’t have to win Miss Universe, but you have to feel attractive, and you have to feel wanted. “I have so many friends that are Latin, and they’re not Miss Universe, but they have something, and they get more guys than the really tall, blonde, perfect model that is just standing there. So I think it is the attitude of you believing that you can get whatever you want.” The busty bombshell Colombian actress goes on to address the two massive, jiggly, elephants in…her bra. Vergara, 40, also revealed that she has a bra size of 32F, something that she knows is unusual in Hollywood, but not so unusual for Latin women in general. “Nobody with real boobs usually has those measurements,” she laughed, adding that she dislikes working out. “My a$$ gets smaller, and my boobs get smaller,” she explained to the magazine. “I don’t mind when the boobs get smaller. I don’t like when the a$$ gets smaller. In Latin America, if you don’t have a big ass, you’re nothing. “We’re loud. We’re passionate. We’re coloful. We’re voluptuous … I am not scared of the stereotype of the Latin woman, because I think that’s fantastic.” We think you’re fantastic too Sofia, for at least two reasons, but we’re not sure how some of your fellow ironing-board a$$ed latinas will feel about being called “nothing”. Image via SplashNews Source
By the power of Grayskull, get ready for this: The Masters of the Universe reboot is back on the docket, with news that Jon M. Chu ( Step Up 2 The Streets , Justin Bieber: Never Say Never , G.I. Joe: Retaliation ) is in talks to helm the He-Man flick. Per Deadline, “the film revolves around He-Man, a prince who transforms into a warrior and becomes the last hope for a magical world that has been ravaged by the sinister Skeletor.” Well, duh . Chu, who revitalized and set the pace for the Step Up franchise post-Channing Tatum then handily served up Bieber Fever with a well-conceived flick of that mop-top in 3-D, is currently converting G.I. Joe to 3-D for Paramount and directing Bieber’s live concert tour. On top of that, the success of his superhero webseries The LXD gave way to an entire YouTube channel ( DS2DIO ) dedicated to dance. He’s a busy guy with his hands in a number of youth-oriented projects and in his last three features has demonstrated a visionary knack utilizing dimensionalized space, although post-converting Joe wasn’t his first choice . Will his Masters of the Universe also go 3-D? I wouldn’t be surprised, but Sony Pictures and Escape Artists had better give Chu the time and money he needs up front if they’re even thinking of putting MoTU out in a souped-up format. Although we’ve got months to go to see if fans embrace or revolt against Chu’s version of G.I. Joe , Masters of the Universe devotees should take this as a good thing: Chu is nothing if not mindful of paying fan service to beloved properties. Besides, someone’s already mucked up He-Man on the big screen, and how . And it won’t be like this (probably): The next question is: Who could play He-Man? (And then: If MoTU is a hit, could She-Ra follow ?) Discuss! [ Deadline ]
With rumors continuing to circulate regarding the death of Sage Stallone – did he overdose? Was his corpse lying around for three days prior to being found? – the 36-year old’s famous father has released a new statement. “When a parent loses a child there is no greater pain,” Sylvester Stallone tells TMZ. “Therefore I am imploring people to respect my talented son’s memory and feel compassion for his loving mother Sasha.” As pictured above, the Stallones starred in 1990’s Rocky V as father and son and, by all accounts, were close in real life. Sage’s cause of death remains unknown, while sources say his case has been moved to the Robbery Homicide because it is so high profile. “This agonizing loss will be felt for the rest of our lives,” the actor concludes. “Sage was our first child and the center of our universe and I am humbly begging for all to have my son’s memory and soul left in peace.”
Fela! is back on Broadway and the show returned to a pretty eclectic audience, whose members included actress/musician Zoe Kravitz, Miss Universe Leila Lopes and soul singer Amel Larrieux. If you had to choose between these three beauties, Who Looked More Bangin ? Amel brought along her beautiful daughter. Isn’t she lovely? Questlove, Zap Mama, Michael K. Williams and Zoe’s boo Penn Badgley were also in attendance. Peep more photos below: WENN
Red Lights , the new film from Buried director Rodrigo Cortés, weds an earnest, simplified exploration of the nature of faith with a goofy, gussied-up B-movie plot about a pair of academics who travel around debunking extrasensory phenomenon. As marriages go, it’s a troubled one, but it certainly makes for some interesting fights across the dinner table. Red Lights has formidable resources at its disposal, including an almost preposterously talented cast made up of Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro (showing rare flickers of life), Elizabeth Olsen and others, as well as Cortés’s own undeniable filmmaking talent. This is a man who managed to draw suspense out of an hour and a half of Ryan Reynolds trapped in a box without even letting the guy take off his shirt . Set free to wander through a genre-inflected landscape filled with would-be clairvoyants summoning spirits in creaky buildings and alleged mystics calling people out of audiences to heal them, he manages to sustain an unsettling tension that lasts until you realize it’s a misdirect. As the film moves from a wry but jolt-filled journey with a pair of professional skeptics to a clash between one of them and the world’s foremost self-proclaimed psychic, it loses momentum and the sense of the unexpected that gave it fuel. Its most operatic moments are actually its weakest. That battle escalates between academic Tom Buckley (Murphy) and Simon Silver (De Niro), a famous phenom who’s returned to the public eye after years of retirement. Tom is a physicist who, for personal reasons, has ended up as the protégé and sort-of surrogate child of Dr. Margaret Matheson (Weaver), a psychologist and paranormal investigator. Such is the lightly warped reality the film inhabits that the two work in an underfunded branch of a university department called the Scientific Paranormal Research Center, an endeavor more interested in supporting the research led by Paul Shackleton (Toby Jones) to prove the existence of telepathic abilities. The underlying theme of Red Lights is that the frauds and hustlers Margaret and Tom encounter succeed in duping people because we want to believe them, to see in them evidence that there is something beyond the world as we perceive it. The film generally steers clear of religion (though it contains a nod to phony faith healer Peter Popoff), allowing, for better and worse, table-levitating mediums and spoon-bending telekinetics to augur the potential mysteries of the universe. It’s a decision that frees the movie from heavier metaphysical obligations, but it also sets the story wackily off-balance by having as its primary symbols of faith musty ESP stunts like the reading of Zener cards or thoughtography. When Margaret reveals to Tom that the reason she’s kept her long-comatose son alive despite the near-impossibility of his waking is that she doesn’t believe there’s anything beyond death, it feels flimsy that the way she channels this is by proving to the gullible that their houses aren’t really haunted. Weaver and Murphy are good together, their characters’ interactions belying fondness, familiarity and trust under the professional reserve. They share a sincere drive to disprove claims of psychic phenomena, though because of what they do they’re perceived as wet blankets — “I just hope he shows those smart-ass college know-it-alls,” one Silver follower spits when the telepath agrees to let Shackleton and his coworkers test his abilities in a lab. Before Silver swallows the second half of the movie, Margaret and Tom travel around to different sites of reported paranormal activity, scenes Cortés winkingly stages as convincing brushes with the beyond — a seance, a child who can channel spirits, a man with the power to cure illness — before allowing our protagonists to reveal the prosaic reality of what’s underneath. Cortés’s restless, circling camera (the cinematographer is Xavi Giménez) gives the film a sense of tension even when little actually comes of it — a jump scare in a scene of Margaret at home seems to exist mainly to show that even a skeptic can be vulnerable to the willies. And Silver, who’s blind and escorted everywhere by a smirking assistant played by Joely Richardson, understands that weakness and targets it. Whether or not Silver has actual power is an open question throughout the latter part of the film — he left the public eye after one of his foremost detractors died ominously of a sudden heart attack at one of his shows — but what’s certain is that he’s a master manipulator. The “red lights” of the title are the signs Margaret searches for that indicate trickery — hidden motivations, advanced groundwork, glimpses of susceptibility. Silver doesn’t seem to show any red lights, though as Tom becomes the film’s focus and obsesses with unveiling the man as a fraud, he seems himself less a reliable agent and more one with his own biases to prove. De Niro, preening and smug in his sunglasses, makes for an enigmatically despicable antagonist, but Tom’s unbalanced need to take him down feels dictated not by motivation but by the movie itself. Dead birds turn up outside his house, electronics short out in sprays of sparks — coincidence or evidence of Silver’s paranormal aggression? The movie muddles to a rug-pulling ending that doesn’t, despite its efforts, shed new light on what’s come before. Instead, it feels like an unsuccessful attempt to yank the two diverging aspects of the film — its thoughts on faith versus its psychic explorations — together for some finality when they’ve actually drifted even further apart. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This iconic image from Star Trek ‘s “Amok Time” (Season 2, Episode 1) represents a moment of great internal conflict. When two of our heroes are battling to the death, for whom do we cheer? Luckily, in this case, Bones was on hand with a neuroparalyzer, allowing Kirk to feign death until the mind-altering effect of pon farr drained away from Spock, thus ending the koon-ut-kal-if-fee ritual. But who will be on hand with the hydrospray this week in San Diego? Whoooooo? The 2012 edition of nerd prom brings not one but two feature length documentaries that ought to be of interest to convention-going, costume-wearin’, social anxiety-havin’ fans – specifically, two documentaries about Star Trek enthusiasts. From Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod Roddenberry, comes the long-in-development Trek Nation . The film is a mixture of talking head interviews from Trek notables (and others like George Lucas), behind-the-scenes footage and gawking at fans who create their own Andorian antennae. Its hook is the “son in search of his father” schtick, making it something of an interplanetary My Architect . Trek Nation will have a fan screening Thursday night, and “Roddenberry Presents” has a panel on Saturday. There is also an official Roddenberry booth on the showroom floor. Trek Nation trailer: In the other corner is Captain Kirk himself. William Shatner, whose directorial skill is very much of a piece with his Elton John covers, is presenting his latest work, Get A Life . Whereas poor Rod Roddenberry has been schlepping bits of footage of Trek Nation to Cons for years, Shatner’s first person film about “encountering the fans” is another of his dashed-off productions made with the EPIX cable network. (Note: EPIX isn’t really a network, it’s more like Hulu except you watch it on your TV and not your laptop. I don’t really know how to describe EPIX and it isn’t available in New York, which is why no one I know watches EPIX.) Get a Life trailer: Last year Shatner delivered an EPIX production called The Captains . While ostensibly a string of interviews with all who sat in Star Trek ‘s center seat, it ended up being a remarkable piece of outsider art. The sequence of Shatner and Avery Brooks scat-singing about death and “listening to the Universe” just a few months before the Deep Space Nine star got hit with a DUI is like something from Cassavetes’ Love Streams . But, you know, awful. Avery Brooks/William Shatner mash-up: Get A Life will show footage at a panel on Saturday. Mr. Shatner will share the stage with Roger Corman and Kevin Smith. Of the two films, I’m sure Trek Nation is the more polished and the more positive. Get A Life (whose title is a riff of Shatner’s old Saturday Night Live sketch admonishing obsessed fans) is no doubt the more entertaining. The joke is, of course, that both of these films are far too late. Obsessed fandom is hardly news anymore. (I mean, there was a documentary ABOUT Comic-Con that came out this year.) While one could argue that Star Trek fans dwarf all other fans, we shouldn’t forget that there was a theatrically released film in 1997 called Trekkies . It was successful enough that in 2003 there was a Trekkies 2 . What this means, of course, is that it is only a matter of time until a documentary is made about people obsessed with Star Trek documentaries. I’ll be furiously refreshing Kickstarter and will inform you as soon as I hear anything. Saturday Night Live “Get a Life” sketch:
San Diego Padres fan Travis Decker learned the hard way over the weekend that Facebook and baseball don’t always mix. At least not live baseball. He was struck hard by a foul ball in the upper deck of the right field stands at Petco Park while attempting to “check in” to the stadium on his phone. Decker was too busy trying to update the universe that he was at Petco, he failed to pay attention to the exciting action at Petco. To his own detriment. That’s gotta hurt, but give Travis credit for being a good sport at least: Your browser does not support iframes. Padres Fan Hit By Foul Ball This is the second most embarrassing video to come out of America’s Finest City in the past week, with the first being the epic San Diego fireworks fail. Pull it together, SD!
Rebooting the Spider-Man franchise just five years after Sam Raimi completed his own $2.4 billion trilogy was a controversial move in itself, let alone the idea of revisiting Spidey’s origin story , one of the most familiar and popular beginnings in comic book lore, yet again. But whatever qualms you might have about The Amazing Spider-Man treading familiar ground — this time with Andrew Garfield as a skate-boarding high-schooler/vigilante nursing abandonment issues — director Marc Webb himself wrestled with the very same issues from the start. Webb rang Movieline to answer a barrage of questions about this week’s Spider-Man re-do, which re-frames the Marvel superhero’s journey as a teenage Peter Parker’s struggle with responsibility — not necessarily springing from great power so much as from choosing between doing good, and doing otherwise. Relationships are key here, not only between Peter and his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), but between the orphaned hero and Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a newfound mentor and scientist with murky ties to the parents who left young Peter behind years ago. But the heart of The Amazing Spider-Man , and that of Peter Parker himself, belongs to Gwen Stacy, Spidey’s first love, brought to life with crackling energy by Emma Stone . Fans of the comics know where Peter and Gwen’s story eventually leads — and while Webb remains amusedly mum on the future of his would-be Spider-Man trilogy, he acknowledges that some parts of Marvel canon cannot be tinkered with. “It’s a very controversial part of the comics,” he teased of Gwen’s fate, “but let me tell you, I’m a fan of the comics.” Read on as Webb addresses criticisms of his reboot, discusses the importance of the Gwen Stacy-Peter Parker relationship, explains why some questions raised in The Amazing Spider-Man were left deliberately unanswered, and talks about that eyebrow-raising post-credits scene. [ Beware: Some spoilers follow. ] The marketing campaign for The Amazing Spider-Man has been attempting to court female audiences, and the romantic element is a significant part of the film. How important did you feel it was to explore and emphasize that side of the Spider-Man story? Spider-Man is of course this huge action film — there’s a boy behind the suit. But one thing that’s different in Spider-Man comics from many other comics is how important the relationships are, in particular female relationships. You can talk a lot about villains, but Spider-Man’s relationships with women are as iconic, if not more iconic, than the villains. You have Mary Jane, and you have Gwen Stacy, and Gwen is very different than what we’ve seen before. One of the reasons why I wanted to use Gwen — first and foremost, she’s his first love in the comics. Let’s just set the record straight, it’s not Mary Jane. But I like the idea of following somebody who is as smart, if not smarter, than Peter Parker. And Emma Stone is the perfect woman to play somebody who is much more proactive, much more intelligent and feisty. I just like that dynamic in relationships in movies where they’re kind of lovers as rivals, you know? There’s this back and forth that I love, in the laboratory, and there’s just this great bond that you feel between them. She’s not just a prize, she’s not just a damsel in distress. She’s a confidante, and that was a really important thing. And their relationship is so different because of this — it’s like they’re the only two people in the world. I thought that, you’re 17 years old and falling in love for the first time, some part of the thrill of that is openness, and you get to express a part of yourself and confide in somebody the things about you that no one else knows. It’s such a thrilling part about being in a relationship at a young age, and all your feelings are apocalyptic, all your emotions are so huge, that I felt that was an interesting and new foundation to lay for the character. It also raises the stakes of that relationship. So it becomes more meaningful when he has to let it go. For those people who are familiar with Gwen’s fate in the comics, the depth and pull of their emotions makes it even more bittersweet. You even include a shot in the film in which Peter throws her out of a window that seems like foreshadowing of a sort… [Laughs] Well, we’ll have to see. It’s a very controversial part of the comics, but let me tell you, I’m a fan of the comics. But Gwen’s story is kind of one of those things, among other developments and plot specifics, that you kind of have to stay faithful to canon on. Right? Honor, yes. I mean, Marvel has certain hard and fast rules, like about the spider bite — you have to have Peter get bitten by a radioactive spider, and Uncle Ben’s death has to transform Peter Parker into Spider-Man, you know what I mean? He has to learn a lesson by that. But I’m trying to find new inflections and new context so that the story feels new. Because I do think the character is different; you want to honor the iconic elements of Spider-Man but you also want to reinvent the world around him so that it feels interesting and new, and that’s a tricky line to walk. It seems even trickier for you in this instance more than other folks rebooting a familiar franchise, just because it hasn’t been very long since the last Spider-Man movies and you’re also starting with an origin story. It’s tricky. We have seen the origin of Spider-Man, but we haven’t seen the origin of Peter Parker and that was my entrée into it. It does feel like more of a Peter Parker story than a Spider-Man story, which a lot of fans of the comics might get hung up on. How do you respond to those criticisms? For me, I thought about it a lot when I was building this up and I really felt like the Peter Parker that I was creating was a different reflection of the character. And in order for the audience to understand that, I thought I needed to build that from the ground up. To me, the most definitive moment in his life — way more important than the spider bite — is the moment he was left behind by his parents. It had a huge emotional impact on his character. That’s where the narrative begins, but it’s also where the character is defined in a very significant way. I mean, anybody who’s left behind by their parents at that age is going to be distrustful of authority because authority has let him down before – so that’s part of the dramatic texture of his relationship with Captain Stacey, and the conflict he has with Uncle Ben and Aunt May. It’s also that he has this attitude, this sort of trickster, sarcastic quality, which is in some ways a defense mechanism that comes from that moment in his life. He’s an outside, but he’s an outsider by choice; he’s a smart kid but he just wants to keep everybody at a distance. That’s why I think the relationship with Gwen works so well; he can trust her. We look at this as a reboot, so can we assume the story here will continue into at least a trilogy, but there are a number of plot points and questions raised in the film that don’t necessarily get answered within the span of this film. How intentional was it to plant those seeds here? I wanted a universe that could sustain a larger story, and the broader arcs I worked out with Jamie Vanderbilt early on. Obviously you want the movie to work on its own, but because so many of these movies typically have sequels, I wanted us to do a little bit of groundwork that could pay off in later movies. The mystery that surrounds Peter Parker’s parents is the long shadow that’s cast over all of the story, and there’s a relationship between Peter’s parents and Norman Osborne, and Oscorp, all that stuff… so much of the story is in and around Oscorp; Oscorp is the place from which all crazy shit emerges in this universe, and I like that idea, that simple notion that this obelisk, this Tower of Babel, is like a splinter in the side of the universe. All of the stories come out of there. NEXT: Webb on Gwen’s future, his stars’ chemistry, Curt Connors and that post-credits scene
I follow Aubrey O’Day on Instagram, so I saw these pics as she posted them, and I commented on them calling her out for being a pig rolling in the mud and other fun, mean spirited jokes that don’t represent the fact that I’d totally let her smother me to death with her fat ass, even if I find her fat ass a disappointment as far as asses go, because I am used to disappointment, and the fact that she’s been on TV makes her relevant enough to be a good story….I mean pretty much the same reason I’d bang Oprah, Rosie, Whoopi Goldberg and all other gross pussy that’s been labeled a celebrity for whatever glitch in the universe reason…. I do dig that she’s giving some half naked low quality pics to her fan base and haters like me….cuz it is more interesting than her not being half naked….especially when she was destined to be a hooker, she just got side tracked.
