A Wednesday chock full of fun news

There's a lot of movie stuff that caught my eye this morning, but the two best bits come from Fox's fall TV schedule, so let's just start there.

Along with killing off five shows that I never bothered to tune in for, the network also added two that I'll definitely give a chance to next fall at its upfronts.

First up is "Alcatraz," which comes from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot company and is a crime drama revolving around a team investigating the mysterious reappearance of the prison's 1960 inhabitants in the present. Sounds like a pretty serious mindf%$#, and it will star Jorge Garcia of "Lost."

Perhaps even better, Fox has also picked up something called "The New Girl," a comedy starring Zooey Deschanel, who I'll certainly watch in just about anything. This show is about a "quirky female teacher" (Zooey, natch) who becomes roommates with three guys: A man-child, a player and a cynic. Bring it on.

And in one final bit of TV news, I saw a few reports this morning that led with the headline "Martin Freeman leaving 'The Hobbit'," but reading into it just a bit revealed it's just for a short while and so he can work on more "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch. Bully, because the three episodes they showed a short while back on PBS with Cumberbatch as the titular detective and Freeman as his pal Watson were fantastic.

OK, like I said, a pretty busy day of good movie news, so I'll just get to it briskly before some fun videos, and at least one that's simply bizarre.

First up, now that, thankfully, Darren Aronofsky won't be wasting his time on yet another movie about "The Wolverine," he's now hitched up with George Clooney for something that sounds much more interesting.

According to Vulture, he's now at work on a science fiction movie titled "Human Nature," which will star Clooney as a man who is cryogenically frozen, only to wake up in a future where humanity has become pets to another species. That's all I know about that, but it certainly sounds like a perfect Aronofsky mind-bender.

In other news, Niels Arden Oplev, who made one of my favorite recent thrillers with his take on Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," has now set his sights on a genre thriller with a great cast.

The movie, called "The Last Photograph," is a revenge story starring one Sean Penn as a special ops soldier who goes to Afghanistan to track down who murdered his brother, and Christian Bale as a photographer who documented the killing. Sounds like juicy stuff.

Moving quickly (I do have an actual job that still pays me something, after all), there are few genres of movie I love more than boxing flicks, and it sounds like "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" director Jeff Feuerzeig is putting together a potentially sweet one.

Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber and Christina Hendricks will star in "The Bleeder," based on the true story of former New Jersey heavyweight boxer and womanizer Chuck Wepner, who boxed 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali and apparently inspired Sylvester Stallone to pen 'Rocky.' " Fun stuff, that, and I assume Schreiber would play the fighter.

And in a final bit of news before we move on to the videos, it's already known that, in a more-than-slightly odd change up, Tyler Perry will be playing Alex Cross, the role already played twice by Morgan Freeman, in "I, Alex Cross." And now comes very welcome word that Frenchy Jean Reno is joining the cast too.

This time out, James Patterson's creation is squaring off against a psychotic mob hitman to be played by Matthew Fox. No word yet on what role Reno will play, but he can class up just about anything except that remake of "The Pink Panther," so this could be fairly great.

OK, now on the videos. Not surprisingly, what Pedro Almodovar has cooked up now looks as bizarre as it will hopefully be entertaining, as I almost always find his movies to be. "The Skin I Live In" reunites the director with Antonio Banderas, and is a revenge tale that tells the story of a plastic surgeon (Banderas, I have to assume) on the hunt for the men who raped his daughter. It's in competition this year at Cannes, but for now enjoy this very short clip to whet your appetite.



Next up comes a bit of fun courtesy of MTV News. As everyone probably knows, there's another pirate movie starring Johnny Depp coming out soon (May 20), called "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." I'm still on the fence about seeing it, although the presence of Penelope Cruz cutting up is certainly a plus. What I did like, at least, was this bit of Legos fun. Enjoy.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

I assumed that this week's "South Park" would be all about Osama Bin Laden, but it seems I'm wrong once again (don't worry, I'm used to it). Instead, in something that could be wickedly funny, they take on the royal wedding, which in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's warped minds actually involves a Canadian princess. By the way, NPR is streaming the "Book of Mormon" soundtrack here, and it's just perfectly profane entertainment. Enjoy that and this brief clip from tonight's episode.

Royal Pudding
Tags: SOUTH
PARKIke Broflovski,Terrance,Phillip,more...

And finally today, how better to start Wednesday than with a free movie? I know it has its detractors, but "O Brother Where Art Thou" is still my favorite Coen Brothers' movie, and you can now watch it in its entirety on YouTube. This looks good at full frame, and watching it certainly sounds like a lot more fun than working. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

Catching up with some news and clips

Many of these things may have indeed happened while I was on vacation with mi hermano in New York and Philly, but they're all fascinating to me, so if you want to, please feel free to read on.

Easily the best news, and fresh I think, is that HBO has set the return dates for two of my favorite TV comedies, and is in fact packaging them back to back this September. "Bored to Death" and "Eastbound & Down" will indeed premiere as a block beginning at 10 p.m. Sept. 26, and I can only say bring it on.

If you've never seen "Bored to Death," and I'm sure there's many more than a few of you who haven't, I really can't recommend many TV comedies higher. The show from novelist Jonathan Ames (if you haven't read his "Wake Up, Sir!", do so right away) is about a struggling writer (Jason Schwartzman) who decides to list himself as a private eye on Craig's List. As he goes on various misadventures in New York City, he's often joined by co-star Zach Galifianakis and, even better, Ted Danson, who steals every minute he's in as a crazed magazine editor.

"Eastbound & Down," from the Southern-fried comedy shop of Jody Hill and friends, is a more bitter pill to swallow, but in its own way almost as funny. At the end of season one, Danny McBride's Kenny Powers had burned all his bridges in his pathetic attempt to return to the big leagues as a pitcher, and if I'm not mistaken, the new season will at least in part have him hurling in Mexico. That should be a hoot, so if you've never seen this little odd show, give it a chance.

In another bit of TV news, though I'm now thoroughly convinced there will never be an "Arrested Development" movie, two of its funniest actors will be reuniting on creator Mitch Hurwitz's new show, "Running Wilde," starting Sept. 20 on Fox.)

In the show, Gob Bluth plays a rich callow dude (sound familiar?) who falls in love with a crusading environmentalist played by Keri Russell. And now comes word that in a casting change, the extremely funny David Cross will play a radical environmentalist who competes for her affections for at least seven episodes. Nothing but funny there (or at least here's hoping, because Hurwitz's last show, "Sit Down, Shut Up," was just a flaming turd.)

And finally, both because this is nominally supposed to be about movies and because I love Sam Raimi at his best, he's attached to direct something that could be all kinds of fun (and I'm not talking about that "Oz" prequel, which even with Robert Downey Jr. as the wiz himself should just be terminated with extreme prejudice.)

After that, I suppose, Raimi has set his sights on adapting the graphic novel "Earp: Saints for Sinners," from a script by the novel's author, Matt Cirulnick. As the title implies, this would indeed be about the Western hero Wyatt Earp, but transport him into a future in which he takes on outlaws in a ravaged society where the only boomtown left is Las Vegas. Now, having sat through "Spider-Man 3" I know Raimi can fall as much as anyone, but this just sounds like fun to me.

OK, from here on out it's all about clips, the first two of which come directly from Roger Ebert's newsletter, which really is a must-read if you love movies (and at $4 a year, it's a real steal too.)

First up comes the first proof that this fall and winter are going to be all about James Franco, and as a devoted "Freaks and Geeks" fan, that's just fine by me. Later, in December (I think), he'll star in Danny Boyle's next flick, "127 Hours," as mountain climber Aron Ralston, who became trapped while climbing in Utah and had to go to desperate measures to survive. You can count that as one of the very few flicks I'm most looking forward to for the rest of the year, but before that, on Sept. 24 if you live in one of America's bigger cities, you'll be able to see him as the poet Allen Ginsberg in "Howl." Here, courtesy of the Ebert crew, is the first trailer I know of. Enjoy.



I thoroughly enjoyed Ben Affleck's directing debut with "Gone Baby Gone," so you can certainly count me as psyched for his sophomore effort, "The Town," based on the novel "Prince of Thieves" by Chuck Hogan and set to come out Sept. 10. The rather stellar cast includes Gossip Girl Blake Lively, Jeremy Renner, Reel Fanatic fave Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm and Chris Cooper in a Boston flick about a bank robber and his contacts with the FBI, amorous, contentious and otherwise (sounds more than a little like "Out of Sight," which is fine with me.) Enjoy the first trailer I know of.



Next up comes the first American trailer for Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," which, even with the awful narration that also was the only blemish on his sublime "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," looks like it should be another winner. The cast includes, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and the simply stunning Freida Pinto, so we at least know there will be a lot of pretty people, hopefully doing very funny work when this comes out (and hopefully everywhere) Sept. 22. Enjoy the trailer.

And where better to finish up today than with more silliness from the Muppets? We'll have to wait until Christmas 2011 for the new Muppet movie, "The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made," being cooked up by Jason Segel, Nicholas Stoller and James Bobin. In the meantime, thankfully, Jim Henson's creations keep popping up in new YouTube creations like this latest clip of the Swedish chef cooking up some popcorn shrimp, with predictably disastrous results. Enjoy the clip, and have perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

Now here's a comic-book movie that should truly kick a**

As a very small part of my paying job, I have to compile the "movie caps," or summaries of those movies that are still surviving in Middle Georgia multiplexes, which brought me to this sad fact yesterday: Matthew Vaughn's "Kick-Ass" has already left Macon theaters.

Now, just to put that in perspective, I see a good deal (probably way too many) of movies, but outside the festival circuit I've seen exactly three very good to great ones this year: "A Prophet" (which damn well should have won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language flick), "That Evening Sun" with Hal Holbrook and Vaughn's sublimely silly "Kick-Ass" (actually, you should probably make that four, because I enjoyed Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" IN 2-D quite a bit too.) Which just makes it thoroughly depressing that "Kick-Ass" is gone in no more than a month.

Just to make it even odder, still vying for viewers' attention (though not mine) is "Death at a Funeral," quite possibly the most thoroughly unnecessary remake of all time (with stiff competition from the upcoming redo of "Let the Right One In.") Hell, even "Furry Vengeance" gets at least one more week.

Which finally brings us to today's rather glorious news: 20th Century Fox has signed a deal with Vaughn to direct "X-Men: First Class," with the mutant prequel already getting a release date of June 3, 2011. Bryan Singer, who had been originally booked to direct the flick and is still a producer, apparently made the case for Vaughn, so bully for him.

Though "Wolverine" was nothing but average, and that was unfortunately a massive improvement on Brett Rather's abortion that was "X-3," I'm still extremely confident that Vaughn can make magic from the origin stories of Professor X, Magneto and all their fellow young cohorts. As I've said here before, with "Kick-Ass" Vaughn created the best comic-book movie I've seen quite in many a year, so this should be nothing but tons of fun.

And when it comes to "Kick-Ass" the comic by Mark Millar, there's actually even better news on that front. Millar is teaming up with fellow funnypeople Jonathan Ross, Frankie Boyle and others to launch CLiNT, a new anthology magazine that I will certainly be subscribing to as soon as I can figure out how, especially since the first issue will featuring nothing less cool than "Kick-Ass Volume 2: Balls to the Wall."

Here's how Millar described his new venture in an interview with Bleedingcool.com:

“I want this to be edgy and irreverent, the kind of thing guys will be passing around lunch-halls and common rooms, and there’s nobody I’d rather have creating new characters for CLiNT than Jonathan and Frankie. They’re both brilliant writers and will surprise a lot of people with this stuff. The last thing you’d expect from Jonathan, for example, is a vampire strip, but he pulls it off amazingly. People are going to love this.”

OK, I'm officially in. Best as I can tell, the first issue of this will be available Sept. 2 in the UK and then will be available later by subscription in the U.S.A.

And now for something completely different ...

Though 2009's "Broken Embraces" wasn't one of Pedro Almodovar's best movies, it was certainly one of his funnest to watch, and the film noir works nearly perfectly as a valentine to moviemaking (well, more specifically, a valentine to making Almodovar movies, but the man's certainly earned the right to brag a bit by now, right?) If you haven't seen it, I recommend it very highly, and you can indeed rent it now.

And today comes word about Almodovar's next movie, which won't feature regular muse Penelope Cruz, but will mark a reunion with Antonio Banderas, who got his start way back when in Almodovar flicks like "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" (man, do I love that movie.)

Their new project is called "La Piel que Habito" (literally translated "The Skin I Live In.") It's based on the novel "Tarantula" by Thierry Jonquet, which I'll now have to read, and is scheduled to shoot this summer in Spain and elsewhere. Ever the enigmatic one, Almodovar really didn't reveal much at all about what it's about when he first spoke of this to the Spanish daily El Pais (for you kids, that means daily newspaper, of course):

"The film will be a terror film, without screams or scares. It's difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre -- something that appeals to me that I've never done -- I won't respect any of its rules. It's the harshest film I've ever written and Banderas' character is brutal."

An Almodovar "horror" film? I'm already there. More specifically, it's apparently about a plastic surgeon's revenge on the man who raped his daughter, but if you know any more than that, please do let me know.

OK, all I have after that is two videos via my Facebook friends that are indeed just perfect for a Wednesday because they're guaranteed to make you nothing but smile and laugh (and if not, please do get yourself checked out as soon as possible.) First, courtesy of a head's up from Movie Mom Nell Minow comes the first teaser trailer for a movie called "Easy A." Coming in September, it will be an update on the classic "The Scarlet Letter," and as you'll see below it will star easily one of my favorite comediennes working today, Emma Stone. I won't tell you anything else about the teaser except that the Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher called it and Stone both rightly "adorkable." Enjoy.



And what could possibly top that? The tagline for this last one, which came to my attention courtesy of Bob, just sums it up perfectly: "Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers at Poet's House." It's a bit long at six minutes plus, but it really is a joy to watch man of the people Murray cutting up with all the working folk and reading, among other things, a poem by Emily Dickinson. Just the perfect thing to get you and me through even the most dreary of Wednesdays. Peace out.