By Jason Apuzzo. • The Affleck movie won the weekend at the box office. I’ve generally been pro-Affleck, but The Town didn’t grab my attention at all. Also, I didn’t like the advertising for it; even though my Catholic days are long in the past, the ugly nun masks really turned me off, in so far as they were being used as an advertising ploy. In any case, Affleck’s career now appears to be resuscitated, so now we can look forward to that Daredevil sequel we’ve all been waiting for.
• There’s always James Cameron news, isn’t there? And so today we’re learning more details about the new Avatar DVD, with its 5,000 hours of extra bonus features, 900 deleted scenes, new sequences set in the Amazon rainforest, etc. Who has time for this? There might even be a plan to halt global warming in the box set, for all I know. In any case, I only wish there was this type of set available for Aliens, which is still Cameron’s best film in my book (the Blu-ray for Aliens is coming out soon, btw, and apparently looks fabulous). And guess what? This Avatar content-dump will all get re-released again at some point down the line in 3D for Blu-ray, so get used to the fact that this film is never going away.
• In related Avatar news, Stephen Lang has been cast as the lead in a new sci-fi TV series called Terra Nova, which is apparently about “a colony of humans from 2149 who take a second chance at building a civilization by going back 85 million years.” That sounds like what Congress will be doing after the November elections. Finally, on the Cameron front, ABC has apparently picked up his True Lies TV series. As a side note, ABC also just picked up a series called Good Christian B*****s, which has the distinction of being the first network series the title of which I can’t even put on this site. Nice work, ABC – you’re breaking important new ground, there.
• Mad Men star Jon Hamm apparently believes that the Tea Party has a secret “racist” agenda. This is so disappointing to report, for all the obvious reasons. Thanks, Jon! The illusion is now shattered. One gets the sense that you’ve completely missed the point of your own show. [Sigh.]
• As usual, there’s a lot of news on the ‘alien invasion’ front: if you can believe it, it looks like we may be getting a Voltron movie – a Voltron movie, for goodness sake! … so check out some of the production art for this project at the top of this post; there’s also some new Iron Sky casting news; plus there are some intriguing new set photos out from the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg alien-on-the-loose thriller Super 8, which is slated for next year. I’m expecting that film to be the best of this new alien invasion wave, chiefly because the guys doing it have a lot of practice at this sort of thing. Based on the set photos, the setting for this film is obviously supposed to be ‘middle America,’ which used to be where Spielberg set all his stories. It’s nice to see him return there, as I think that’s where he’s at his best.
• Perhaps the most unusual news on the ‘alien invasion’ front, however, is that there’s apparently a new version of the old Space Invaders video game coming out – and even that’s now been redesigned for 3D. See the Wall Street Journal’s report on this subject, plus we’ve put the trailer for the game above. The ‘alien invasion’ trend is obviously cross-platform at this point. [Footnote: did you know that Halo: Reach made $200 million on its first day on sale … although even that was still shy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which made $310 million on its first day last year. I’m in the wrong profession.]
• The Jack Ryan reboot Moscow starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine apparently has a new screenwriter … and we’re learning a few more details about the project. Not surprisingly, the movie is set in Moscow, and will feature “terrorist acts as a backdrop.” It is also apparently about Ryan’s early career – I don’t know if that means it’s set in the past, though, or in the ongoing present a lá Bond. We’ll keep an eye on this one.
• We now have a Psycho Hottie College Roommate From Hell Movie coming out (The Roommate, see the trailer here), complete with shower scenes and subtextual lesbianism. Perfect for the start of the academic school year! [Jess Franco retired too early.] This should give parents a lot of confidence as they pack their young daughters off to college. Academia sure isn’t what it used to be! Footnote: saucy Aly Michalka from Hellcats is one of the co-stars, so that’s a plus.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Monica Cruz, Spanish TV star and younger-sister-of-Penelope made a splash the other day at the new Aire collection event in Madrid, and some wags are now asking whether she’s better looking than her famous sister. Even my trained eye isn’t sure, but I’ll bet double-dating with those sisters must’ve really be something back in the day … En Fuego!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on September 20th, 2010 at 6:38pm.
With the into-screen gameplay, wire-frame graphics and pounding techno/trance soundtrack, that looks more like an update of Rez than Space Invaders.
I hear you.
John Hamm ought to just keep his mouth shut. A large portion of Mad Men’s audience is conservatives who’ve been pulling for him and for that show for years. Now he goes and insults them all. I hope their ratings plummet.
He’s obviously living in a bubble, and understands none of this. Frankly he’s a fool to go on Bill Maher’s show in the first place. [He made the comments on Maher’s “Real Time.”] Maher’s M.O. is to bait people into making statements like that, in order to preserve the show’s ‘heat.’ What a disappointment. [Sigh.]
I can go with Voltron, but it seems a little late for that with the “Transformers” series already in overdrive. That production art looks pretty impressive, by the way.
Voltron?!
In response to today’s most important news –
Monica looks like a cross between her sister and Jennifer Love Hewitt from that picture – which is fine by me. I like Penelope, but I did once read somebody describe her as looking like a moth, which she sort of does when you think about it.
Govindini and I ran into Penelope Cruz at the Four Season Hotel in Beverly Hills once. She’s very pretty, quite short – and looks a bit older in person.
Jon Hamm…….another empty headed pretty boy.
That’s about the sum of it.
Jon Hamm did come off sounding like a male bimbo. On the other hand, I think Hamm has learned a thing or two about how to go along to get ahead in Hollywood. He has just proved his bona fides to the crowd that control most of the jobs in that town.
On a personal level, his comment makes me less enthusiastic for the only show I watch on TV. I think he & we need a real life Ida Blankenship to put things in their proper perspective. A shame they killed her off in the last episode. Her line about “you are either a sadist or a masochist in this business” is so apt here.
‘Male bimbo’ – that’s so true. The irony here is that he was also recently criticizing people who go into porn, essentially because they exploit their looks. Does he think his own soap opera-star looks weren’t relevant to his getting his Mad Men gig?
The dancer who wrote Mao’s Last Dancer to be on TV this weekend.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/maoslastdancer
Thanks for that, Pat!
Jason… he should really keep his mouth shut and try to retain some sense of mystery and distance, otherwise he will become too Clooney like and overexposed. More so when he says stupid things like you mentioned.
I see him getting lots of future movie roles. He was perfectly cast in “Mad Men,” as he does evoke a 60’s aesthetic in a James Bond in a way…though he is more Lazenby than Connery.
Certainly more Lazenby. It’s the chin.