Archive for January, 2009

• ABC has ordered Lauren Graham’s comedy pilot, while CBS wants pilots from three dramas. – The Hollywood Reporter
• Over a month after Disney passed on The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 20th Century Fox has picked it up. – E! Online
• Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company will produce a biopic about James Bond creator Ian Fleming. – The Hollywood Reporter
• There’s a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror-thriller The Thing in the works. – Variety
• Emily Blunt and Jason Segel are joining Jack Black in Gulliver’s Travels. – ComingSoon
• Ellen Barkin will star in a half-hour comedy pilot for HBO. – Variety
• Oscar-nominee Viola Davis will join Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler in the psychological thriller Law Abiding Citizen. – ComingSoon
• Channing Tatum has been tapped to star in an adaptation of the David Morrell novel The Brotherhood of the Rose. – Variety
• Madonna will crank up her Sticky & Sweet tour again this Summer with about 25 more shows, which will add to the total of what’s already the top-grossing tour ever by a female or solo artist. – Billboard

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“How many cats can wear boots? Honestly!” – Shrek, Shrek 2

I know many people love Donkey in the Shrek movies, but my heart belongs to Puss in Boots, “the feline assassin/swordsman” voiced hilariously by Antonio Banderas. So this news delights me: There’s a Puss in Boots movie spinoff in the works, and it just got TV writer Tom Wheeler to do the script.

No plot details yet, but I don’t care. I could watch Puss – and the gingerbread man! – for hours. I certainly prefer this movie to yet another Shrek installment (the fourth is set to hit theaters in May of 2010). What do you think about a Puss in Boots movie? Totally adorable? Or unoriginal? To watch some of my favorite Puss moments, read more.

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He was sorta there last week, but on this week’s episode of Private Practice, Addison’s petulant older brother Archer is really back! He saddles up alongside “Addie” on a tough medical procedure by day, then saddles up on top of Naomi by night. Heh. Meanwhile Violet is still pregnant, unsure of herself as future mother, and really unsure of whether the possible fathers will want a role in the child’s life. That’s OK, though, because this kid will be raised by Cooper, right? Well, that’s what I’m hoping. Ready to chat about it? Just read more.

Right off the bat, Naomi needs someone to talk to about having sex with her best friend’s brother, so since her best friend is not an option, she goes to her ex-husband. They’re pretty cute at first as “friends” giving each other dating advice. But then things get a little . . .weird. I mean, Sam’s girlfriend undresses for him while he’s giving sex advice to Naomi and calling her an African queen on the phone. And when Naomi giddly asks if Sonya’s naked, I was officially weirded out.

Speaking of being weirded out: How do you all feel about a woman giving birth to her own grandchild? I know the whole point of this show is to always have someone play devil’s advocate (it’s amazing how you can have a group of people who get along so well fall on the exact opposite side of any given issue every. single. time.), but really? Is there another side to giving birth to your own grandchild, or is that just strange? I know Naomi’s goal is to get everyone who walks into her office preggers, but sheesh, lady, draw a line. Shouldn’t they have called in some sort of ethics specialist or something? Maybe I’m being too judgmental. The whole plot is there to help Violet sort through her fears about being a mother anyway.

For some reason, Cooper is still hellbent on making his relationship (if you can even call it that) with Charlotte work. He insists they should be able to work this current conflict out by talking, which forces her to lay out how humiliating it is to ask someone to marry you and for that person to say no. I know Charlotte is mostly mean to Coop, but this time around I felt like saying, “Dude. Give her space. She’s embarrassed.” But Cooper doesn’t give her space and even delivers a big speech about how they’re “so not a cute couple” but a couple nevertheless and he’ll never give up on her. Never! But then he does! Because Violet, who tries to assess the level of enthusiasm for children in both potential baby daddies by setting up manipulative hypothetical situations in casual conversation (Sheldon: “I’m not really a kid person”), says she’s falling apart. (She seems fine to me . . . ) Anyway. Charlotte takes Cooper’s speech to heart and declares she wants to move in with him and then he disses her again! D’oh!

A few more thoughts:

• One more thing about the grandmother/grandchild thing: The grandmother wants a re-do at motherhood since her first kid deeply resented her. I kept thinking about how much I might resent my mom if she revealed to me she was my grandmother. It just seems like she’s guaranteeing herself another kid who’ll have issues.
• Violet’s little passive-aggressive mind games on both Sheldon and Pete weren’t exactly fair. As a therapist, shouldn’t she have known better?
• I laughed when Addison says, “Is that what he’s calling himself?” when Naomi tells her about Archer being a “good-time guy.”
• Sam and Naomi’s daughter seems to conveniently be at sleepovers a lot. Her parents are getting away with a lot of sex these days.
• So, Wyatt’s just gone, I guess. He does have his own show to tend to. Still, that was abrupt.

What did you all think of this episode?

Photos copyright 2009 ABC, Inc.

Paul McCartney is making the rounds these days, what with promoting his latest album Electric Arguments – most hilariously on The Colbert Report, the uncomfortable video of which you can check out after the jump – and now there’s news that he’ll topline the the tenth Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival this April. The question becomes, however, is Coachella a good fit for this former Beatle?

LA Times blogger Geoff Boucher wonders “What remains to be seen is whether the choice will cost the festival credibility with its core clientele: young fans who are more likely to listen to the White Stripes than the White Album and who are far more familiar with Rage Against the Machine than Band on the Run.”

Some of the other acts of note on this year’s lineup include Morrissey, The Cure, Franz Ferdinand, Leonard Cohen, M. Ward, Amy Winehouse, The Killers, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine and Jenny Lewis. To see the full list of acts performing at this year’s festival, click here.

What do you think? Are you planning on going to Coachella this year? Would you be psyched to see Paul McCartney play live at that festival?

And to check out the very funny – and awkward – clip from McCartney’s appearance on The Colbert Report, read more.

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Thanks so much to everyone who’s already taken the BuzzSugar reader survey! I just need a few more people to join in, so to find out why taking the survey is good for you and me, just read on!

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The Super Bowl is on Sunday, and either the Arizona Cardinals or the Pittsburgh Steelers will be able to call themselves this year’s NFL champions.

But there’s another battle to be fought right here, right now, for the best fan-made fight song. On the left, we have the Cardinals’ “We Do This Together” by the hip hop group Golden Cousins. On the right, it’s “Steeler Ladies,” a “Single Ladies” parody by Christine Nangle and Addi Twigg. Both name-check lots of players, and both obviously show love for their team. So, in the Super Bowl of Fight Songs, who reigns supreme?

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New in Town is packed with a lot of bad, wrong-headed moves including small-town stereotypes, predictability, conventionality, and in one bizarre scene, hard nipples. Despite a talented and likable cast with wonderful character actors like J.K. Simmons and Frances Conroy, this romantic comedy was probably doomed from the start due to a script that can’t decide if it wants to be Fargo, Norma Ray, or Working Girl.

That said, there is something in this movie that no script can write in and that’s some honest-to-goodness chemistry between the two leads. Maybe I’m a sucker for Harry Connick Jr., maybe it’s rare to witness some genuine onscreen sparks, or maybe I’ve been suffering too long from generic rom-com fatigue. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t help but get a moderate case of the warm fuzzies after watching it.

To see some more of my thoughts on New in Town, read more.

Renée Zellweger plays Lucy Hill, a tough Miami executive at some kind of food-making corporation who storms around in sky-high heels as if they were running shoes. We see Lucy at a meeting full of suits and jogging on the shore, but beyond that we don’t really get any more insight into her character, which is one of the problems with this script. It makes it difficult later on to sympathize with her or even to understand why she does some of the things she does when she has to take over a processing plant located in the frozen tundra of New Ulm, Minnesota.

Lucy is sent to lay off a bunch of employees, but the longer she’s in town the more she sees how devastating her actions would be to the people of New Ulm who have been so gosh darn nice to her. The plight of the town folks is given voice through the local union rep, Ted (Harry Connick Jr.), who has lots of initial contempt for the new lady in town and sees Lucy as a corporate stooge. Until, of course . . . he doesn’t.

There are lots of tiresome homespun-isms by the sweet, down-to-earth townspeople, as well as much scrap-booking and tapioca-making, stuff like that. And at first Zellweger plays Lucy as a stiff “ice queen” (another extreme stereotype this movie can claim: that of the callous, powerful working woman). But once things heat up between her and Ted, she warms up and the performance takes on a more natural, playful tone. If fact, it’s right in the middle that the characters emerge as more than caricatures and things get charming. Lucy is especially fun to root for midway through because she’s smart and determined and also hilariously out of place on dates with Ted. The bottom line is that there is plenty to roll your eyes at, including an ending that’s silly and syrupy, but I’ll admit it: I laughed and I wanted these two opposite lovebirds to be together forever.

Photos courtesy of Lionsgate

We’ve reached the end of Amy and Isabelle and I found this final section gratifying. I feel so connected to these characters and Elizabeth Strout does a wonderful job illuminating the tensions between mother and daughter.

Before we chat about the end, here’s a recap of how the Book Club goes: Every week I’ll suggest chapters to complete by the next post (which, in this case, has been every Friday in January). In these weekly Book Club posts, I’ll posit a few questions to prompt discussion in the comments section.

Stay tuned for the announcement of my February book club selection, and to discuss the final section of Amy and Isabelle, in which we read from the start of chapter 19 to the end of the book, read more.

1. I was glad to finally hear all about Isabelle’s life before all this – how Amy was conceived, etc. It made me like her more, whereas before I sometimes considered her a little snobbish in the way she seemed to regard others. Did your feelings or opinions of the characters change over the course of the book?
2. I also loved the warm friendships that are formed between Isabelle, Bev and Dottie at the end. It felt very real and genuine to me, like the way friendships form in real life. What did you think of this part with the three women toward the end?
3. Do you like the way the book ended? Would you like to have read more about what happens when Amy finally meets her half-siblings, or about Isabelle’s marriage to the kind pharmacist? Or were you satisfied with the ending?
4. The book has been made into a TV movie starring Elisabeth Shue as Isabelle and Hannah Hall as Amy. I kept picturing Amanda Seyfried as Amy and either Holly Hunter or Patricia Clarkson as Isabelle. Who would you cast in these roles?