Archive for February, 2009

• Jessica Capshaw will continue playing Arizona Robbins on Grey’s Anatomy through the end of the season and may return next year. – E! Online
• A Total Recall remake is in the works. – ComingSoon
• Also on the way: a followup to the most recent Friday the 13th. – The Hollywood Reporter
• Jerry Seinfeld is producing a reality series called The Marriage Ref. - AP
• The final Harry Potter movie has a release date of July 15, 2011. - Zap2it
• Warner Bros. will release Guy Ritchie’s Robert Downey Jr.-Jude Law movie, Sherlock Holmes, on Dec. 25 of this year, instead of Nov. 13. – Variety
• Two more editions of Survivor are on the way for the 2009-10 TV season. – The Futon Critic
• Samuel L. Jackson has signed on to play the role of Nick Fury in Iron Man 2, and potentially many other films. – Variety

Photo copyright 2009 ABC, Inc.

Ha, I guess we picked a good time to talk about big-screen musical adaptations, because there’s news about a new one heading our way. Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carrey will star in a modernized film adaptation of Damn Yankees, produced by the folks behind Hairspray.

The musical – which was produced for the first time in 1955 - centers on Joe Boyd, a married man “whose devotion to a hapless pro baseball team prompts him to make a Faustian bargain with the devil to help the team.” Varitey continues:

He’s transformed into slugger Joe Hardy, in exchange for Boyd’s soul. Boyd can break the deal, but the deadline occurs during the World Series. For good measure, the devil engages Lola, a gorgeous lost soul, to seduce the slugger and seal his fate.

Gyllenhaal will play Boyd, while Carrey’s the devil. It’s the first time either of them has done a big-screen musical, though Gyllenhaal’s showed us his singing chops on SNL before and Carrey had that whole Cuban Pete number in The Mask. What do you make of the news? Is Damn Yankees one of the musicals you think could be well-suited for film? And who should be their Lola?

Source

So, wow. This week’s episode of Ugly Betty is filled with intrigue, mystery, work dilemmas for Betty and Marc, and even love! It’s also awfully intense and pretty sad by the end.

It’s a decent followup to last week’s amazing runway birth (I mean, it’s not like anything was going to top that). It’s especially dramatic where the Daniel/Molly and Willi/Connor relationships are concerned, because I’ve been feeling for a while now that they need to be more than just lovey-dovey . All in all, it’s a satisfying hour of TV. So let’s talk about it! Just read more.

• Daniel’s feeling under the weather, so he checks himself into a luxury hotel to watch cartoons like any publishing scion would do. He also goes on and on about how he thinks he’s dying, which I immediately took to be sad foreshadowing of what was to come with Molly.
• More foreshadowing: Connor rocking the baby and talking to Wilhelmina about running away together as a family to a tropical location.
• I love how much YETI there is these days, and Bernadette Peters is cracking me up. She informs her class that Tina Brown would not be the special presenter because the night before, drinks may have been had and “somebody’s husband may or may not have grabbed someone’s boob.”
• Instead the class gets an accounting and budget homework. Uh, woohoo! Marc and Betty don’t really understand numbers but “Sports Guy” Matt chimes in that he has an MBA. And half a law degree!
• So Matt totally hits on Betty in front of Marc, which is hysterical. I love when Marc chimes in with “Smooth!” after Matt asks Betty out with a line about grabbing drinks and talking budgets. Sexy!
• Also, later, Marc uses some dog-show metaphor about how Matt’s a dog and Betty’s a chihuahua and they’re going to mate or something.
• Betty’s just now getting into Facebook – is she 80 years old? Anyway, she finds out that Henry has a new girlfriend and can’t decide whether to be his Facebook friend or not. Seriously, she talks about Facebook the way my great-aunt would.
• Poor Matt – Betty spends the whole night on their little date talking about Henry. But he still likes her afterward, even when she ditches him with the bill.
• Maybe he likes her because of her great Eve impression. And how funny is Matt’s Wall-E? Aw.



• In nonromantic news, Betty spots a big discrepancy in the Mode budget (millions of dollars are missing) and from there the show speeds up into shady territory.
• All signs eventually point to Connor, who is stealing money from the company. After a super-creepy elevator showdown with Connor, Betty tells Daniel and they try to figure out what to do (Daniel: “I’ve never been embezzled from before!”)
• And then Willi gets involved and everyone thinks she’s stealing too (even Marc!), but she chooses good over evil (or in her words, career over love) by calling the cops – and still, Connor manages to avoid the law.
• So everyone is super depressed and there’s sad music in the background and Willi’s told Betty yet again that so-called “career girls” can’t have it all . . .
• . . . and then we get Molly’s news. Man, it’s so sad and comes right when Daniel is feeling pretty low too (what with the no money and stuff). She has cancer, she’s had it before, and now it’s back and she needs to be with her family.

It’s a bit of a bummer of an episode, but it’s full of good stuff - especially with Mode plotlines being back in the spotlight where they belong. Did you find Connor’s evilness jarring or expected? And do you think Betty and Matt are as cute together as I do?

Photos copyright 2009 ABC, Inc.

How is it possible that of all the over-the-top characters Will Ferrell has played on the big screen, he’s never been a policeman? That’s about to change, though, as Sony has just picked up the rights to The B Team, a buddy comedy about a pair of cops.

The other cop? Mark Wahlberg. It’s an interesting choice because a lot of his recent comedy experience has been as the butt of jokes on Saturday Night Live (though he was pretty amusing poking fun at himself for it later). But I could see him playing the uptight, serious cop to Ferrell’s swaggerin’ man who doesn’t care about the rules.

Not much is known about the story yet, but Adam McKay is back as Ferrell’s director. A while back, a lot of you said you had Will Ferrell fatigue, but does the idea of pairing him with Wahlberg seem like a refreshing change?

Source

On Thursday night, American Idol said farewell – at least temporarily – to the year’s most divisive contestant. Nick Mitchell (and his alter ego, Normund Gentle) didn’t advance into the top 12, despite support from the Web site Vote for the Worst and reviews that called him “a fiercely entertaining presence” performing with “self-aware irony.”

But there may yet be another chance for our Normund: Next week is the show’s Wild Card round, where eliminated contestants will get a chance to sing their way back onto the show. Previously, the producers had said some contestants would advance automatically, but now it seems they’ve changed it so it’s totally up to the judges. Simon oozes contempt every time he’s in the presence of Nick, but could one of the other three bring him back?

On the one hand, I’d hate to see Nick take the place of a singer who really deserved a spot in the top 12, and his voice isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, to put it mildly. On the other hand, he can be entertaining, and I might rather watch someone who’s bad on purpose than someone who’s just . . . bad. So, what do you think? Do you want to see Normund again?

Photo courtesy of Fox

     Canadian comedian/actor Jim Carrey and fellow actor Jake Gyllenhaal are set to star in a remake of the 1955 musical “Damn Yankees“.

Joe Boyd, a happily married man who suffers from a lifelong devotion to a losing baseball team. One night, Joe meets the Devil, who convinces him to sell his soul and become Joe Hardy, the all-star slugger the team is desperate for. Boyd can escape the deal, as long as he does it before the World Series — but to keep him tempted, the Devil hires the gorgeous Lola to seduce him.”- MTV

Both actors are apparently going to sing in the film!!?…

Hello, Buzz Book Club readers. I hope you enjoyed the end of Watchmen! I think it’s an especially good idea to read the book before you see the movie in this case, because a huge part of the fun will be seeing how close the film gets to the look and feel of the artwork. But we’ll talk about that more in a second.

First, here’s a reminder of how the book club works: Every week I’ll suggest chapters to complete by the next post (which, in this case, went up every Friday in February). In these weekly Book Club posts, I’ll posit a few questions to prompt discussion in the comments section.

After the jump you’ll find some questions that struck me as I read this section. And tune in next week for my March selection announcement.

To discuss the final section of Watchmen, in which we read from the start of chapter 10 through the end, read more.

1. Overall, the book got me thinking about the common themes of superhero works - and about heroes in general. After reading Watchmen, what do you think about heroes as symbols? Do we need them? Does Watchmen have a different effect on you than, say, a Superman or Iron Man story?
2. We don’t learn much about Ozymandias until very late in the book. Do you think it’s effective to hold his story back for so long? Do you think he’s evil? Or just misguided?
3. Speaking of which, how do you feel about all of the characters by the end? Is Rorschach a noble martyr or someone whose views are too rigid to survive in society? What about Dan/Nite Owl?
4. The story is set in an alternate universe of 1985, with Nixon as president, and some of the political themes feel a little bit tied to that time. But overall, do you think it’s still relevant today?
5. Do you think this book is “filmable” as a movie? What do you think the biggest challenges would be in adapting it for the screen?

Did you guys hear? The screen musical is back! Well, at least according to Hugh Jackman, who kicked off his Oscar ceremony musical medley on Sunday by talking about the box office success of Mamma Mia!.

It does seem like we get a good on-screen musical every few years, between Dreamgirls and Hairspray and even Chicago a while back.

I would love to see Mr. Jackman himself singing and dancing in the movies very soon, which got me thinking about musicals that should get a big-screen adaptation while the iron is apparently hot. I think Spring Awakening would be pretty great as a movie, and there’s been some buzz for a while about getting Wicked on the big screen as well.

What musicals do you think would make good movies? And do you agree with Jackman that this is a trend worth rooting for?

Source