Latest Movie News From Moviefone |
- Apple, Dr. Dre Team Up For Scripted TV Series About His Life
- Cameron Crowe's 'Roadies' Trailer Takes You Behind the Music
- Oscars 2016: Does 'Revenant' Really Have a Shot at Best Picture?
- Netflix Renews Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' for Season 2
- Paris and Doyle Forever! See the 'Gilmore Girls' Reunion Pic
- 'Deadpool' Sets Thursday Box Office Record With $12.7 Million
- 24 Oscar Winners and Nominees Who Started Out on Soap Operas
- 'Transformers' 5, 6, and 7 Get Release Dates
- 8 Times Monica and Chandler From 'Friends' Were Ultimate #RelationshipGoals
- Every J.J. Abrams TV Show, Ranked From Worst to Best
- The 5 Best Stephen King Adaptations Ever Made, Ranked
- 'The Silence of the Lambs': 25 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the Serial Killer Classic
| Apple, Dr. Dre Team Up For Scripted TV Series About His Life Posted:  "Straight Outta Compton" ... and into Apple.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dr. Dre (aka Andre Young) is teaming up with Apple for its first original television show. It's based on his life and will star the rap mogul. Sources tell THR that the scripted series, titled "Vital Signs," consists of six half-hour episodes, "with each episode focusing on a different emotion and how Dre's character deals with it." And despite the episodic length, "Vital Signs" is a dark drama filled with violence and sex, including an extended orgy scene. All six episodes will debut at once, a la Netflix. The show would likely stream on Apple Music; the service has already experimented with video, such as a Taylor Swift music video. Apple has been eyeing entree into the world of scripted television, though it has no studio or TV development arm. THR notes that Dr. Dre conceived of the project himself, and pitched it to partner Jimmy Iovine. The two men sold Beats Electronics to Apple in 2014 for $3 billion. It's been a good year for Dr. Dre — he executive-produced "Straight Outta Compton," which achieved stunning box office success, and he released his first album in 15 years. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Cameron Crowe's 'Roadies' Trailer Takes You Behind the Music Posted:  "The music is good. And you meet some great people."That line, uttered by Carla Gugino in the first trailer for Showtime's "Roadies," essentially sums up the drama created by Cameron Crowe. The writer/director returns to his "Almost Famous" roots to depict the lives of the crew supporting a fictional band. The roadies are the people who build the stage, set up the lighting and sound, and keep the equipment in good shape so that the band can make musical magic. "Roadies" stars Gugino, Luke Wilson, Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Luis Guzman as eclectic crew members who form an unconventional, but tight-knit family, with all the squabbling, shenanigans, and genuine warmth that entails. Crowe hasn't made a well-received movie in awhile, but perhaps he will receive the acclaim he had earlier in his career with this "Almost Famous"/"Singles" mashup. The series debuts Sunday, June 26 on Showtime. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Oscars 2016: Does 'Revenant' Really Have a Shot at Best Picture? Posted:  How unpredictable is this year's Oscar race? We are two weeks out and Best Picture still remains a three-way race. Last weekend's Directors Guild Awards -- which analysts thought might bring some clarity to the race -- resulted in an unprecedented repeat victory for "The Revenant" director Alejandro González Iñárritu, meaning Oscarologists are just as confused as ever. Especially since Best Picture still remains a three-way race. Iñárritu is the first person ever to win two DGA prizes in a row; he won last year for "Birdman" as well. If he goes on to win the Best Director Oscar -- and the DGA win makes him the front-runner in that category -- he'll be only the third person ever to win two directing Oscars in a row, and the first to do it in 65 years.  But does that mean "Revenant" is going to win Best Picture? Not necessarily, though the signs are encouraging. It has 12 nominations, more than any other contender. Besides the DGA, it won the Golden Globe for Best Drama. Star Leonardo DiCaprio seems certain to win Best Actor. And it doesn't hurt that the movie is a big box office hit.On the other hand, it failed to win a number of other Important precursor awards. It wasn't even nominated for Best Ensemble (the equivalent of Best Picture) at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The Best Director Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar haven't always matched up in recent years. No director's movies have ever won Best Picture two years running. And the film's top rivals, "The Big Short" and "Spotlight," remain strong. "Spotlight" did win the SAGs' top prize, meaning it's the favorite of the actors, the largest branch of Academy voters. It also won Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards, along with Best Ensemble and Best Original Screenplay. In fact it was the early favorite of many critics' groups -- which put the film on the Academy's short list, if not all the way in the winner's circle. Its early momentum was thought to have stalled when "Revenant" came along, but its SAG victory two weeks ago put it back in the running.  "Big Short" was the only other Best Picture contender even nominated for SAG's Best Ensemble award. It won the American Cinema Editor's ACE Eddie award for Best Editing (tied with "Mad Max: Fury Road,") often a strong Best Picture precursor. Most important, "Big Short" won the Producers Guild of America Award.The PGA prize has been the most accurate predictor of the Best Picture Oscar over the last decade. 19 of the last 26 films to win the PGA's highest honor also went on to win the Academy's. This year's top contenders are movies that are easier to admire than to love. You can respect Iñárritu for making a difficult movie under adverse conditions and still think "The Revenant" is punishing to sit through. You can consider "Spotlight" worthy for getting impeccable performances out of a great ensemble in order to tell an important story and still think the movie is conventional and un-cinematic. And you can marvel at "The Big Short" for finding an entertaining way to explain a complex catastrophe and still find the movie too light-hearted and comical to take seriously as a Best Picture contender.  That said, "Big Short" and "Spotlight" are more consensus-appeal movies than "Revenant." At Rotten Tomatoes, "Revenant" has a lot more negative reviews (50) than the other two films (29 for "Big Short," nine for "Spotlight"). And despite "Revenant's" multiple Academy Award nominations, its failure to win any of the guild awards except the DGA suggests that its support among the Hollywood craftspeople who make up the bulk of the Academy is broad but not very deep.How deep? Maybe the BAFTAs this weekend will offer a clue, but there's only so much overlap in membership between the American and British Academies. Still, there's one BAFTA quirk that has held value as a predictor over the years: no film without a BAFTA screenwriting nomination wins a Best Picture Oscar. That stat would seem to spell doom for "Revenant," whose screenplay wasn't nominated by either country's Academy. Then again, Iñárritu doesn't have the problem in England that he does here: that voters might think it's too soon for him or his film to win again, since "Boyhood" and Richard Linklater beat him for the BAFTA last year. If "Revenant" does sweep at the BAFTAs -- it's up for eight prizes in London -- we'll know that the movie's momentum has gone global. Same if "Spotlight" wins a Best Film BAFTA, especially since it's only up for three awards there, and Best Director isn't one of them. But if "Big Short," which is up for five BAFTAs, takes the crown, it'll confirm the promise suggested by all the precursor awards the movie has been nominated for or won. At this point, it's plausible that we'll see an Oscar split: "Big Short" for Best Picture, "Revenant" for Best Director. But so far, all we can say for sure is that Oscar voting begins on February 12 and ends on the 23rd. If individual Academy voters are as torn between the three front-runners as the guilds have been, they don't have much more time to make up their minds. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Netflix Renews Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' for Season 2 Posted:  More Aziz Ansari is coming to Netflix: The streaming service has renewed the comedian's "Master of None" for a second season.Ansari announced the news himself on Thursday, revealing the season two pickup on Twitter, and telling fans that the show would be back sometime in 2017. He also thanked his followers for supporting him and the series.
Season one of "Master of None" debuted to deafening critical praise back in November, and went on to secure a spot on many year-end best-of lists (including ours). Its popularity among both critics and fans made its renewal seem all but a certainty, though Netflix took its time making the news official. According to Variety, Ansari had previously said that, regardless of a potential pickup timeline, he wanted to take a breather between seasons to "refill [his] head" with new story ideas. The first season of the show was largely inspired by the comedian's own life (his real-life parents even played his folks on the series), including his experiences as an Indian-American actor. Stay tuned for a specific release date for "Master of None" season two. 2017 can't come soon enough. [via: Aziz Ansari, Variety] Photo credit: Netflix This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Paris and Doyle Forever! See the 'Gilmore Girls' Reunion Pic Posted:  We're still pinching ourselves over the upcoming "Gilmore Girls" revival, which will head to Netflix for four brand new episodes later this year. And part of our joy comes from knowing just who is coming back to Stars Hollow (hint: a LOT of former cast members), and thus will be reuniting soon.One such reunion took place earlier this week, when Liza Weil and Danny Strong -- a.k.a. Paris and Doyle -- returned to the set to reprise their roles for the new episodes. Now, the one of the best couples in "Gilmore" history has shared photographic evidence of their time together, and it's making us happier than we thought was possible.
Strong posted a pic on Twitter of him alongside Weil, all smiles as they slip back into their old characters. Paris and Doyle first hooked up in season five when they were working together at the Yale Daily News, and remained (mostly) together until the end of the series, when Doyle pledged his lifelong devotion to Paris, and vowed to follow her wherever her lofty career goals took her. Weil revealed earlier this week that she would be appearing in two of the four new 90-minute "Gilmore" episodes, and we can only imagine that Strong will be right there with her in those installments. According to castmate Kelly Bishop, Paris's season eight storyline is "unbelievable." Could Paris have perhaps actually gone on to a career as both a doctor *and* a lawyer, as she originally envisioned? We'll have to wait and see. A release date for the new episodes is TBA. [via: Danny Strong] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Deadpool' Sets Thursday Box Office Record With $12.7 Million Posted:  "Deadpool" has come out swinging: The violence and nudity-filled Marvel flick -- starring Ryan Reynolds as the Merc With a Mouth -- has earned a whopping $12.7 million in Thursday preview screenings, the highest total ever for both a February release and an R-rated film.That record-breaking night foretells big things for the flick's future throughout the rest of the weekend, with some optimistic industry analysts suggesting "Deadpool" could wind up making between $70 million and $80 million throughout its first three days of release. Studio Fox is hedging its bets, estimating a lower haul between $60 million and $65 million, but based on Thursday's performance, that may be more than modest. It's already bagged $12 million from international markets, bumping up its current worldwide total to more than $25 million in preview receipts alone. "Deadpool's" impressive domestic Thursday numbers take down previous R-rated preview box office champ "The Hangover Part II," which hauled in $10.4 million back in 2011. And it also bested fellow high-grossing R-rated flick "Fifty Shades of Grey," which was the previous February release preview record holder, scoring $8.6 million just last year. "Deadpool" is in theaters now -- and it looks like you better see it this weekend, before all your friends spoil its big surprises. [via: Deadline] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 24 Oscar Winners and Nominees Who Started Out on Soap Operas Posted: Everybody's got to start somewhere. For some people, it's theater or commercials, but for many, many actors, their first job was on a soap opera. Julianne Moore played dual characters on "As the World Turns," Laurence Fishburne played a teen drug dealer on "One Life to Live" and Susan Sarandon played a murderous drifter on "Search for Tomorrow," a soap that was also among the first gigs for Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, and Viggo Mortensen. Who else got a boost from the soap opera world? Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Vikander, and Bryan Cranston are just a few of these performers who now call themselves Oscar nominees.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Transformers' 5, 6, and 7 Get Release Dates Posted:  There will be at least three more movies in the money-printing "Transformers" series, with studio Paramount announcing on Friday release dates for the fifth, sixth, and seventh installments in the franchise.Fans of the series should be pleased, since they're guaranteed a new film in the franchise every year for at least three years, beginning in 2017. "Transformers 5" is slated for release on June 23, 2017, followed by "Transformers 6" on June 8, 2018, and then "Transformers 7" on June 28, 2019. Like Marvel and DC before them, it seems that Paramount is rolling out an ambitious "Transformers" schedule in an effort to establish itself as an anticipated annual presence at the summer box office. The series will face some big competition from the DC camp and Warner Bros. when "Transformers 5" opens against "Wonder Woman" next summer. It will then go head-to-head with "Godzilla 2" (another Warner Bros. property) when "Transformers 6" hits in 2018. The first four "Transformers" flicks have earned a combined $3.8 billion at the worldwide box office, and Paramount no doubt hopes that there's plenty more where that came from. Director Michael Bay will be back at the helm for his fifth outing with the franchise, though he's said it will be his last "Transformers" flick. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" star Mark Wahlberg is also set to return. [via: The Hollywood Reporter] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 8 Times Monica and Chandler From 'Friends' Were Ultimate #RelationshipGoals Posted: Monica (Courteney Cox) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) couldn't BE more of a perfect couple. Even when they're bickering, they're still giving us the epitome of relationship goals. It just goes to show that friends really can fall in love -- at least on TV. These are the eight times these "Friends" gave us all the feels.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Every J.J. Abrams TV Show, Ranked From Worst to Best Posted: Is J.J. Abrams a character from one of his own shows or movies? He must be a being from another dimension, capable of mysterious time-jumping feats. How else do you explain his prolific output? While he's busy directing or producing movies like "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and next month's "10 Cloverfield Lane," he's also overseeing new TV series -- three of them due this year, including a mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's time-travel novel "11.22.63," debuting Feb. 15 on Hulu. For all his vaunted reputation as the king of fanboy epics with complicated mythologies (not to mention real-world dramas of ordinary people with soap-opera-complicated lives), Abrams has had a surprisingly mixed track record on TV. About half of his shows have become long-running critical and popular successes, and half have barely lasted a season. Still, all of his shows are pretty fascinating, whether they deal with arcane conspiracies or bad haircuts. Here are his small-screen offerings to date, from the forgettable to the we'll-never-stop-arguing-about-them.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The 5 Best Stephen King Adaptations Ever Made, Ranked Posted: Stephen King is one of the most popular and successful horror writers of all time. You'd think Hollywood wouldn't have such a hard time translating his many novels and short stories to film, but for every "The Shining" there seem to be five "Maximum Overdrives" or "Silver Bullets." Still, King's work has spawned some legitimate Hollywood classics. As Hulu's "11/22/63" is about to launch, and as we wait to see the long-gestating adaptation of his "Dark Tower" saga, here are the top five Stephen King adaptations of all-time, on both the small and big screens.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'The Silence of the Lambs': 25 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the Serial Killer Classic Posted:  It's hard to think of a movie less suitable for Valentine's Day than "The Silence of the Lambs."Yet that's the day the unforgettable thriller debuted 25 years ago, on February 14, 1991. The creepy, gory adaptation of Thomas Harris's bestseller was an enormous hit, made an enduring pop culture figure of sophisticated flesh-eater Hannibal Lecter, transformed Anthony Hopkins into a star, and became only the third (and so far, the last) movie to win the top five Oscars -- Best Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, and Screenplay. As many times as you've seen Hopkins's Lecter casually mention how well human liver goes with fava beans and a nice Chianti, there's still much you may not know about "Silence." Quid pro quo -- we'll reveal the movie's secrets, if you read on.  1. Hopkins wasn't the first actor to play Hannibal Lecter; that honor went to Brian Cox (above), in Michael Mann's 1986 "Manhunter," the first screen adaptation of Thomas Harris's novel "Red Dragon."2. After "Manhunter" flopped at the box office, its producer, Dino De Laurentiis, wanted nothing to do with Harris' sequel and didn't even read it. But he still owned the film rights to the Lecter character. In fact, he was so disenchanted with the property that when Orion Pictures asked if they could license Lecter so that Orion could make "Silence," he gave Orion the rights for free. "Big mistake," De Laurentiis said later. 3. When "Silence" became a bestseller, Jodie Foster tried to option the film rights, but Gene Hackman beat her to it. He wanted to make the film his directing debut and co-star in it as FBI agent Jack Crawford. He envisioned Michelle Pfeiffer as Clarice Starling and John Hurt as Hannibal Lecter. Ultimately, however, he passed on the picture because he didn't want to make another grim, violent thriller so soon after "Mississippi Burning."  4. After Hackman dropped out, Orion Pictures hired Jonathan Demme to direct. He still wanted Pfeiffer, who had just headlines his "Married to the Mob," but Foster met with him and pleaded to be his second choice. Pfeiffer, too, was repulsed by the project's darkness and gore, and her withdrawal cleared the path for Foster.5. Demme's first choice for Lecter was Sean Connery, but he turned down the role, as did Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis. So did Jeremy Irons, who felt the role would be too similar to the performance he'd just completed as Claus Von Bulow in "Reversal of Fortune." 6. The director ultimately chose Hopkins because he remembered him from "The Elephant Man" and imagined that Hopkins could take the kindly doctor he played in that movie and turn him evil.  7. Hopkins also took credit for having Lecter dress in white. He thought it would look more clinical, and therefore more frightening. Part of his inspiration came from his own fear of dentists.8. Foster's insulted reaction when Lector mocks Clarice's backwoods accent was apparently real, since she claimed Hopkins ad-libbed the remark. 9. Another Hopkins invention that wasn't in the script: that disgusting slurping sound Lector makes. You know the one. For your convenience, we've placed it here in GIF form. You're welcome.  10. Paradoxically, despite all he brought to the character, Hopkins said he didn't feel the role was a challenge because it was all there on the page in Ted Tally's screenplay.11. Unlike Hopkins, Ted Levine found it a torment to play the film's killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb. He studied serial killer lore, looking for patterns of behavior. "I drove myself nuts with this character. I lived with this son of a bitch," he recalled. "Something that is very consistent with serial killers is they look at a lot of pornography, and I did that too. That will make you f---ing crazy." 12. Catherine Martin, the senator's daughter who struggles bravely to survive after Gumb kidnaps her, was only the second screen appearance for Brooke Smith. She gained 25 pounds for the role. Off-camera, she became friends with Levine, leading Foster to joke about her supposed Stockholm Syndrome by nicknaming Smith "Patty Hearst."  13. Harris based Jack Crawford on real-life FBI serial-killer profiler Jack Douglas. To develop his performance as Crawford, Scott Glenn (above) met with Douglas -- so did Foster. Douglas provided him an audiotape he thought would help, a recording two serial killers made of themselves torturing a teenage victim. After listening to less than a minute of the tape, Glenn could bear it no more.14. Among the real-life serial killers who inspired the creation of Jame Gumb: Ted Bundy (the fake arm cast meant to lull victims into a false sense of security), Gary Heidnik (torturing female victims in a pit in his basement), and Ed Gein (wearing the hides of skinned corpses). 15. The moth cocoons may have looked gruesome, but they probably tasted good; they were made of Tootsie Rolls and Gummi Bears. The filmmakers wanted them to be edible in case the actresses playing the victims accidentally swallowed them.  16. The skull that appears on the moth on the "Silence" promotional poster is not the actual figure from a death's-head hawk moth. It's a tiny reproduction of the 1951 photograph titled "In Voluptas Mors," created by Salvador Dalí and Philippe Halsman. It's a picture of seven naked women lying in a pattern to form the shape of a skull.17. The live moths were impostors as well. They were actually tobacco horn worm moths. They wore costumes, of a sort. The movie's prop artists painted the death's-head pattern onto fake manicure nails and glued them onto the moths' wings. 18. Ted Levine improvised Jame Gumb's transformational nude dance, which was not in the script. He prepared for the scene, he said, by downing a couple shots of tequila.  19. Clarice's monologue about the lambs was supposed to be accompanied by a flashback sequence of her childhood on the ranch, which the filmmakers were prepared to shoot in Montana, thousands of miles away from the Pittsburgh sets where most of "Silence" was shot.20. But after watching Foster deliver the speech, Demme realized that her face alone was powerful enough to tell the story and scrapped the flashback. 21. The house that the "Silence" location scouts chose as Gumb's home was not only in Levine's hometown of Bellaire, Ohio, but it was next door to the home of the actor's third-grade girlfriend.  22. The film cost a reported $19 million to make. It earned back $131 million in North America and another $142 million abroad.23. The film famously won the top five Oscars, a feat previously achieved only by "It Happened One Night" (1934) and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975). It was also nominated for sound and editing. 24. Hopkins has less than 25 minutes of screen time, making his one of the shortest performances ever to win a Best Actor Oscar. The only shorter Best Actor performance may be David Niven's in "Separate Tables" (1958), which is only about 17 minutes.  25. Despite the back-to-back successes at the box office, and at the Oscars for "Dances With Wolves" and "Silence," Orion went bankrupt by the end of 1991. Nonetheless, the studio drummed up $200,000 in early 1992 for what turned out to be the film's wildly successful awards campaign.This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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