Tyler Perry and Buster Bluth in Macon? Yes, really

Before I get into any of that, today, Natalie Portman, Jane Austen and zombies? Yeah, I'll be there.

When you set out to write a book called "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," you're really setting yourself up for a fall, because, well, who can deliver on a premise that good? Well, having read the book, I can tell you that Seth Grahame-Smith - with, of course, a big assist from Jane Austen - certainly did, because the book is a hoot.

And now it seems that Natalie Portman has signed to both produce and star as our zombie-fighting heroine Elizabeth Bennet in a movie version. That makes me giddy just writing it. Now, if they just could make zombies the new vampires, the world would certainly be a much better place.

And only something that good could knock this (admittedly somewhat old, but if you live here, still intriguing) news from the lead: Tyler Perry is coming to Macon (if anything deserves an exclamation point, that's it, but I just really don't like them.)

Yes, Madea herself will be taking to the stage at the Macon Centreplex on Feb. 9 as Perry unveils a new stage play, "Madea's Big Happy Family." As is the course with his ventures, I'm sure that if the audience eats this up it will become one of his movies someday soon.

Unfortunately, the tickets are rather insanely expensive, starting at $47.50 and ranging up to $77.50 - a little too rich for my blood, especially with the tickets on sale right before Christmas. I encourage anyone who can afford to, however, to check out this opportunity. Tickets (if there are indeed any left) are available at www.maconcentreplex or by calling (478) 751-9232.

In another Macon event that's much more within my budget and just as dear to my heart, the name just sums it up perfectly: "The Best of Buster Bluth with Tony Hale."

"Arrested Development" fans (and if you're not one, why not?) will certainly know what that means. It seems that Tony's parents live in Macon, and he's agreed to host this event at the Cox Capitol Theatre to benefit the Macon Film & Video Festival. At 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 18, he'll be screening his three favorite "Arrested Development" episodes, and then take questions from the audience (and one of them, perhaps from me, will surely be about the alluring possibility of an "AD" movie.)

And best of all, it's only $10, which doesn't count the couple of beers I'll consume during all this goodness.

And in a final bit of Macon news, the Macon Film Guild is showing a movie this Sunday that I've been waiting for most of the year to see, "Cold Souls" (which of course means I'll have to work that day, and not be able to go ... shark farts.) Paul Giamatti stars as an actor who, tired of his daily existence, jumps at the opportunity to have his soul removed. It's when he later decides he wants it back that the apparently very clever fun from writer/director Sophie Barthes really gets going.

For those who will actually be able to go, and I encourage anyone who loves good movies to do so, the showings are at 2, 5 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Douglass Theatre in downtown Macon.

Finally, since I know a great number of the few people who bother to read this don't live anywhere near Macon, I'll leave you today with a couple of video clips that caught my eye this morning.

The first, also related directly to "Arrested Development," is, as best as I can tell, the opening for a pilot called "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" that's being pitched for the UK's Channel 4. The premise it sets up - David Cross navigating the high-speed world of modern London - is great, and as you can see from the clip, it's also got Will Arnett at his blustery best. Enjoy, and if you're watching this at work, for God's sake do it with headphones on, because the language is more than a bit salty.



And what could be better than that? Six minutes of "Chuck," of course. The first half finale of "Glee" was indeed, as my friend and boss of sorts Stephanie Hartley says, "gleetastic," but now that most shows have gone dark for December, there's nothing I'm looking forward to more on TV than the return of our favorite bumbling now-apparently-super spy.

NBC has upped the season three order from 13 to 19 episodes, and the show is set to return with a two-hour episode Sunday, Jan. 10, before settling into its regular Monday night slot with another hour the next night. Great news all of that, and just to what your appetite a little further, here's a six-minute preview of season three from NBC, which shows some of Chuck's new skills and that, thankfully, all our Buy More buds (including Tony Hale) will be making a return too. Enjoy the clip, and have a perfectly enjoyable Thursday. Peace out.

An "Arrested Development" movie? Signed, sealed but not yet delivered

I suppose it's my duty to mention something about "Twilight," which I will bother to see Saturday afternoon, so here goes.

I was watching "Rocket Science" last night on the DVR, which is easily one of the most charming movies of 2007. My brother and I first saw it in Minneapolis, and if you haven't, just go ahead and rent this quirky teen anti-romance (I'm not really selling it very well, but trust me.)

I tell you all that to tell you this: Anna Kendrick, who starred in "Rocket Science" and apparently has the most microscopic of parts in "Twilight," has somehow managed to snag the female lead in Jason Reitman's next movie, "Up in the Air." It stars George Clooney as a "career transition counselor" - essentially one of the Bobs in "Office Space" - whose main goal in life seems to be to accumulate 1 million frequent flier miles. Not sure how Ms. Kendrick factors into all this, but congrats all the same.

But the real order of business here today is that murky realm where TV and film collide, and how Hollywood works so hard to tease the fans of dead shows with a cinematic afterlife. I had decided to swear off reporting on each slim ray of hope that there would ever be an "Arrested Development" movie, but after a few months or so going strong, today's news just makes me have to surrender to the urge.

In the latest development - and if I understand this the most solid one so far - series creator Mitch Hurwitz and backer Ron Howard have apparently signed some kind of deal for it with Imagine and Fox Searchlight. Hurwitz is apparently on board to write and direct the feature (again, if it ever happens), and Howard will be around to help out, and I assume narrate.

The actors (some of whom I'm sure could sorely use the work) have been teasing that this would happen ever since the show got canceled. I'd imagine even big movie star Michael Cera would come back to play George Michael Bluth again (and since I now mention "Chuck" every day, Tony Hale - whose parents reportedly live somewhere very near to or even in my town of Macon, Ga. - has been very funny as the new assistant manager of the Buy More.) Please, make this happen already!

Is "Pushing Daisies," well, pushing daisies?

It brings me no joy whatsoever to share this next bit of news.

The truly dismal facts are these: ABC has opted not to pick up three shows - "Dirty Sexy Money", "Eli Stone" and the only one of these I care about at all, "Pushing Daisies" - for a full season.

What does that mean for "Pushing Daisies" fans? Well, if I have this right, it means that after last Wednesday's "Oh, Oh, Oh, It's Magic," we have only seven more episodes left of TV's only primetime fairy tale for adults.

Given the rather poor ratings for season 2 so far I suppose you can't really blame ABC, but I'm gonna do it anyway. How in the world did they expect a show this odd - with an admittedly small but devoted following - to survive after only putting out nine episodes before the strike intervened and then none again until this October? Was there anything so compelling on ABC this summer that they couldn't have taken nine hours out of their primetime schedule to reintroduce viewers to this magical tale?

OK, that's enough from me on that, but here's what series creator Bryan Fuller had to say to the Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd:

"I can't help but feel immense pride when it comes to 'Pushing Daisies.' I'm grateful TO everyone and FOR everyone who brought the show to life and for the very loyal audience that embraced us. If we are indeed dead on ABC, we now have to convince DC Comics to let us tell the rest of the season's story lines out in comic book form and convince Warner Bros. features to let 'Pushing Daisies' live again as a movie."

I'd imagine that last bit is even more of a pipe dream than an "Arrested Development" flick, but I'll at least spring for the comic book. Just sad, sad news all around.

In the only bit of good news from ABC, however, "Scrubs" is about to come back to life, and I can only say welcome back. The hospital comedy returns beginning Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 9 p.m., in the time slot it started with way back before being moved all around (and pre-empted all the time) by NBC. We'll get two weeks of back-to-back episodes before it settles in for its regular half-hour run.

The full "Coraline" trailer

One of the more tedious of my weekly newspaper duties is to figure out what's playing at our three Middle Georgia movie theaters and compile capsule reviews from the wire. I say tedious, but I do enjoy seeing which movies manage to stick around way longer than what should be their shelf life.

The most recent example was the magical "The Nightmare Before Christmas," which was re-released in 3-D (which did very little to enhance it) just before Halloween and somehow managed to stick around in one of our theaters until this week. Very odd.

And I tell you all that to tell you this: Here's the full trailer for "Coraline," a coming collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman and animation director Henry Selick (the director of "Nightmare Before Christmas.") As you'll see, it's the story of a young girl who discovers a parallel universe in the crawlspace of her dingy apartment, and it's one of the movies I'm really looking forward to for 2009. Enjoy, and if you happen to see "Twilight" before I do, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Where are they now: The cast of "Arrested Development"

The inspiration for this post comes from Jason Bateman, who is on quite a roll of late.

Friday, of course, he'll star in "The Kingdom," which I'm looking forward to if only because it's directed by Peter Berg, in whom I have full faith. It looks like a pretty standard political thriller, but I'm still holding out hope that it will turn out to be more than that.

And this morning comes word, in French from the great froggy film site Cinempire.com, so bear with me, that he's joined the cast of Kevin MacDonald's next flick, "State of Play." Based on the British miniseries of the same name, it also stars Edward Norton and a certain actor you may have heard of named Brad Pitt.

Norton will play a police deputy who's charged with investigating the death of a politician's mistress, Pitt is the politician's old campaign manager who's called upon to hush everything up, and Bateman is a journalist who's trying to do the opposite (if you've seen the BBC miniseries and I have any of this wrong, please let me know.)

That all sounds great to me, and of course Bateman can be seen before that in a Bluth father-and-son reunion in "Juno," a flick I've mentioned here, well, at least 500 times or so. Michael Cera is on as good a role of late as his TV dad, so here's hoping that continues (and, just in case you've somehow missed it, please check out ClarkandMichael.com and be ready to laugh - a lot.)

And, as a tribute to the much-missed (by me, at least) "Arrested Development," here's a look at what's happened to the rest of the cast since Fox killed this utterly entertaining show:

Jason Bateman: Along with the aforementioned projects, Michael Bluth will also appear soon in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium." All I know about this is that it's about a magical toy store and it stars Natalie Portman, which is enough to get me at least a bit intrigued. Next summer he'll star in "Hancock" with very pretty people Charlize Theron and Will Smith.

Portia de Rossi: I'm sad to report that Lindsay Bluth Funke has nothing listed on her IMDB resume since "Arrested Development" except an appearance or two on her girlfriend's talk show. Surely there must be work out there for this rather funny lady.

Will Arnett: I would say that Gob Bluth's post-"AD" movie record has been nothing short of atrocious, but since I haven't bothered to see most of his flicks I can't say that with authority. Up next on his very busy resume (he has at least eight projects listed as announced or active on the IMDB) will be an appearance in "Semi-Pro," the next sports-oriented Will Ferrell flick about a struggling basketball team from Flint, Michigan. This looks like it could be very funny, but after that I'm sorry to have to say he'll be providing voice for the thoroughly unnecessary remake of "Horton Hears a Who." Oh well. I guess a man's gotta eat.

Michael Cera: After "Juno," in which he plays the rather fortunate young man who manages to impregnate young Ellen Page, he's set to star in a movie based on the very funny novel "Youth in Revolt" by C.D. Payne. I just finished reading this, and I can report that if you can handle yet another novel about a 14-year-old and his constant quest to have sex, this one is just a hoot from start to finish and should make a good flick in the right hands.

Alia Shawkat: George Michael Bluth's cousin Maeby, conveniently enough, also stars in a flick being released this week, something called "Prom Wars." As the title implies, this is a flick that's targeted at an audience just slightly younger than me, but I'll probably see it anyway at some point. The plot (courtesy of IMDB): The graduating class at Miss Aversham and Miss Cronstall's School for Girls find that they have all blossomed simultaneously. Capitalizing on their improbable hotness, they issue a challenge to the boys of rival private schools, Selby House and Lancaster College: The winner in a series of athletic and academic competitions will be awarded exclusive rights to the girls as prom dates. Oddly enough, this appears to be headed straight for DVD, since I can't even find it listed at Yahoo's movies site.

Tony Hale: Buster Bluth is next listed as having a bit part in "Rockett," some kind of romantic comedy set to star Jimmy Fallon (meh) in November. After that he's down for two movies I know absolutely nothing about, some kind of thriller called "In My Sleep" and "The Tale of Desperaux," a rather star-studded animated flick about a mouse, a rat and a servant girl. Who knew rats would become the new penguins?

David Cross: Tobias Funke was, for my money, the funniest cast member of "AD," with Michael Cera a close second. He's starring very soon, if you're lucky enough to be going to the New York Film Festival, as Allen Ginsberg in Todd Haynes' trippy Dylan biopic "I'm Not There," but after that things dont look too promising. After an appearance with Jason Lee in "Alvin and the Chipmunks" (no, I'm not kidding) he only has animated voice credits listed, although at least one of those will be in the upcoming "Futurama" (huzzah!) movie or episode (not sure which) "The Beast With a Billion Backs."

Jeffrey Tambor: George Bluth has already flamed out in one post-"AD" sitcom, "20 Good Years" (which didn't even last one bad one). He's currently listed for another pilot, "The Captain," but I couldn't manage to find out if this has even been picked up for this fall. After that, I have the pleasure to report he's set to reprise his role as Tom Manning in Guillermo del Toro's "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" and the displeasure to report he'll then star in yet another "spoof" movie, the thoroughly unnecessary "Superhero!"

Jessica Walter: Since "AD," Lucille Bluth has only made three one-shot appearances on TV shows I've never seen, "Rules of Engagement," "Saving Grace" and "The Land Before Time." Surely there must be more work out there for this very funny lady.

And there you have it. I hope that was enjoyable to at least one person, and that you all have an entirely suck-free Tuesday.