Wentz denies Fall Out Boy split
Fall Out Boy star Pete Wentz has denied the rockers are set to go their separate ways – even though they have no plans to make any more albums.
The bassist shocked fans earlier this week by taking to his Twitter.com Internet page to admit the band’s last record, 2008’s Folie a Deux, may be their “swan song.”
But Wentz insists the band is set to continue – they just won’t be making any new music.
He tells MTV.com, “No, we’re not calling it quits, but we’ve no future album plans right now. We can’t quit, we’re waiting to get fired.
“I think it’s all in context. There aren’t any new Fall Out Boy songs because we don’t write for the sake of it. We will stop doing Fall Out Boy when it stops being fun.”
Month: June 2009
Neve Campbell rejects ‘Scream 4′
Scream creator Kevin Williamson has been forced to re-write his screenplay for a fourth SCREAM movie, after the franchise’s star Neve Campgell refused to reprise her role.
Director Wes Craven recently revealed Courteney Cox and her husband David Arquette were returning for a fourth instalment of the movie series, to shoot a screenplay written by Williamson.
The filmmakers hoped Campbell would reprise her role as Sidney Prescott for a fourth time – but the actress has turned down the offer.
Now Williamson has to go back to the drawing board.
He tells NYPost.com’s PopWrap blog, “I’ve had numerous conversations with Neve. She’s a friend. Nicest girl on the planet. It just ain’t workin’ out and it sucks for me. It was no cameo. I’d never play Sid out that way. And I ain’t got no Sid-less scenario. So, I don’t know yet what to do.”
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I guess this makes sense to them!
Star Trek for Oscar? Academy Expands Best Picture to 10
Los Angeles (E! Online) ñ It’s a year too late for The Dark Knight, but maybe those Hangover guys will have something extra special to celebrate.
This year’s Best Picture field will be expanded to 10 contenders, the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today.
The move could mean typically overlooked genres like sci-fi, comedy and animation could get a crack at the big prizeóand could spell good news for this year’s biggest hits, Star Trek, The Hangover and Up.
While the Best Picture category, like the rest of the Oscar fields, has traditionally been limited to five nominees in recent decades, it hasn’t always been so.
During the early years of the Oscars, there were 10 (and sometimes more) nominees, up until Casablanca beat back nine rivals at the 16th Academy Awards at the 1943 ceremony.
Today’s announcement comes as the Academy continues to mark the 70th anniversary of “Hollywood’s Greatest Year”ó1939 saw the release of such classic films as Best Picture winner Gone With the Wind, along with fellow Oscar nominees The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Love Affair, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards will be announced Feb. 2, 2010, with the ceremony set March 7.
Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
LOS ANGELES ñ Harmless comic characters or racist robots? The buzz over the summer blockbuster “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” only grew Wednesday as some said two jive-talking Chevy characters were racial caricatures. Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact hatchbacks, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They’re forced to acknowledge that they can’t read. One has a gold tooth.
As good guys, they fight alongside the Autobots and are intended to provide comic relief. But their traits raise the specter of stereotypes most notably seen when Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, broken-English speaking alien from “Star Wars: Episode I ó The Phantom Menace,” was criticized as a caricature.
One fan called the Transformers twins “Jar Jar Bots” in a blog post online.
Todd Herrold, who watched the movie in New York City, called the characters “outrageous.”
“It’s one thing when robot cars are racial stereotypes,” he said, “but the movie also had a bucktoothed black guy who is briefly in one scene who’s also a stereotype.”
“They’re like the fools,” said 18-year-old Nicholas Govede, also of New York City. “The comic relief in a degrading way.”
Not all fans were offended. Twin brothers Jason and William Garcia, 18, who saw the movie in Miami, said they related to the characters ó not their illiteracy, but their bickering.
“They were hilarious,” Jason said. “Every movie has their standout character, and I think they were the ones for this movie.”
In Atlanta, Rico Lawson said people were reading too much into the characters. “It was actually funny,” said Lawson, 25, who saw the movie with his girlfriend in Atlanta.
That was the aim, director Michael Bay said in an interview.
“It’s done in fun,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes ó they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”
Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”
Actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids.
Wilson said Wednesday that he never imagined viewers might consider the twins to be racial caricatures. When he took the role, he was told that the alien robots learned about human culture through the Web and that the twins were “wannabe gangster types.”
“It’s an alien who uploaded information from the Internet and put together the conglomeration and formed this cadence, way of speaking and body language that was accumulated over X amount of years of information and that’s what came out,” the 40-year-old actor said. “If he had uploaded country music, he would have come out like that.”
It’s not fair to assume the characters are black, he said.
“It could easily be a Transformer that uploaded Kevin Federline data,” Wilson said. “They were just like posers to me.”
Kenny did not respond to an interview request Wednesday.
“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay’s lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters aren’t integral to the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely, notes Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion.
“They don’t really have any positive effect on the film,” she said. “They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up and talk about how stupid each other is.”
Hollywood has a track record of using negative stereotypes of black characters for comic relief, said Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, who has not seen the “Transformers” sequel.
“There’s a history of people getting laughs at the expense of African-Americans and African-American culture,” Boyd said. “These images are not completely divorced from history even though it’s a new movie and even though they’re robots and not humans.”
American cinema also has a tendency to deal with race indirectly, said Allyson Nadia Field, an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s a persistent dehumanization of African-Americans throughout Hollywood that displaces issues of race onto non-human entities,” said Field, who also hasn’t seen the film. “It’s not about skin color or robot color. It’s about how their actions and language are coded racially.”
If these characters weren’t animated and instead played by real black actors, “then you might have to admit that it’s racist,” Robinson said. “But stick it into a robot’s mouth, and it’s just a robot, it’s OK.”
But if they’re alien robots, she continued, “why do they talk like bad black stereotypes?”
Bay brushes off any whiff of controversy.
“Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything,” he said. “It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.”
Gone with the Wind gets a big fancy box
Following the upcoming Wizard of Oz Blu-ray box set, Gone with the Wind will also come from Warner in a similar large box filled with goodies.
It’s unknown what those goodies are, but if they’re comparible to The Wizard of Oz, it should be quite a set. The box arrives on November 30th with a suggested retail price of $84.99.
Soundgarden in talks for reunion?
Soundgarden are in talks to launch a comeback, according to Shinedown rocker Brent Smith.
The band split in 1997 and former frontman Chris Cornell recently admitted he would “never count out” the idea of a reunion, after previously insisting there was no chance they would get back together because it would never live up to his expectations.
He said, “My fear would be that we wouldn’t tap into the greatness we felt when we were on our game.”
However, a mini-reunion of former bandmates Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd, and Matt Cameron at a gig in Seattle, Washington, in March forced Cornell to rethink his future – and now Smith reveals plans have been set in motion.
He tells Britain’s Kerrang! magazine, “There’s talk of a reuniting of Soundgarden in the States soon. I know actually someone specific who told me that, who is actually specifically in their organisation. Kinda told me that they’re talking about it.”
Cornell went on to form Audioslave after Soundgarden split, before carving out a solo career for himself.
Beastie Boys’ ‘Hot Sauce’ Due Sept. 15
The Beastie Boys have confirmed that their eighth studio album, ” Hot Sauce Committee Part 1,” will be released Sept. 15 by Capitol. The set will include 17 tracks, including “Donít Play No Game That I Canít Win” featuring Santigold and “Too Many Rappers” featuring Nas, which the artists performed together at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. on June 12. The album will be available in multiple configurations, including a 5.1 surround mix.
The first Beastie Boys headline date confirmed to follow the album’s release, Sept. 24 at Hollywood Bowl, has sold out. Further dates will be announced as they are confirmed.
Meanwhile, the band has a busy summer ahead on the U.S. festival circuit, with headlining slots at events including Lollapalooza, All Points West, Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits. Prior to the Lollapalooza appearance, the Beastie Boys will perform at Chicagoís Congress Theater on August 6.
The Beasties have also announced they will release a remastered and expanded version of 1998 album “Hello Nasty,” available as a 2-CD/vinyl box set beginning with an August 17 pre-order/digital release. The set will be in stores August 25.
A deluxe edition of 1994ís “Ill Communication” will be available for pre-order on July 6, with physical release on July 14.
Here is the “Hot Sauce Committee Part 1” track list:
1. Tadlock’s Glasses
2. B-Boys In The Cut
3. Make Some Noise
4. Nonstop Disco Powerpack
5. OK
6. Too Many Rappers (featuring NAS)
7. Say It
8. The Bill Harper Collection
9. Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win (featuring Santigold)
10. Long Burn The Fire
11. Bundt Cake
12. Funky Donkey
13. Lee Majors Come Again
14. Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
15. Pop Your Balloon
16. Crazy Ass Shit
17. Here’s A Little Something For Ya
‘Tonight’ sidekick Ed McMahon dies in LA at 86
LOS ANGELES ñ Ed McMahon, the loyal “Tonight Show” sidekick who bolstered boss Johnny Carson with guffaws and a resounding “H-e-e-e-e-e-ere’s Johnny!” for 30 years, died early Tuesday. He was 86.
McMahon died shortly after midnight at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center surrounded by his wife, Pam, and other family members, said his publicist, Howard Bragman.
Bragman didn’t give a cause of death, saying only that McMahon had a “multitude of health problems the last few months.”
McMahon had bone cancer, among other illnesses, according to a person close to the entertainer, and had been hospitalized for several weeks. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.
McMahon broke his neck in a fall in March 2007, and battled a series of financial problems as his injuries preventing him from working.
McMahon and Carson had worked together for nearly five years on the game show “Who Do You Trust?” when Carson took over NBC’s late-night show from Jack Paar in October 1962. McMahon played second banana on “Tonight” until Carson retired in 1992.
“You can’t imagine hooking up with a guy like Carson,” McMahon said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1993. “There’s the old phrase, hook your wagon to a star. I hitched my wagon to a great star.”
McMahon, who never failed to laugh at his Carson’s quips, kept his supporting role in perspective.
“It’s like a pitcher who has a favorite catcher,” he said. “The pitcher gets a little help from the catcher, but the pitcher’s got to throw the ball. Well, Johnny Carson had to throw the ball, but I could give him a little help.”
“And now h-e-e-e-e-e-ere’s Johnny!” was McMahon’s trademark opener for each “Tonight” show, followed by a small, respectful bow toward the star. McMahon’s style was honed during his youthful days as a carnival hawker.
The highlight for McMahon came just after the monologue, when he and Carson would chat before the guests took the stage.
“We would just have a free-for-all,” he said in the AP interview. “Now to sit there, with one of the brightest, most well-read men I’ve ever met, the funniest, and just to hold your own in that conversation. … I loved that.”
When Carson died in 2005, McMahon said he was “like a brother to me,” and recalled bantering with him on the phone a few months earlier.
“We could have gone on (television) that night and done a ‘Carnac’ skit. We were that crisp and hot.”
His medical and financial problems kept him in the headlines in his last years. It was reported in June 2008 that he was facing possible foreclosure on his Beverly Hills home.
By year’s end, a deal was worked out allowing him to stay in his home, but legal action involving other alleged debts continued.
Among those who had stepped up with offers of help was Donald Trump.
“When I was at the Wharton School of Business I’d watch him every night,” Trump told the Los Angeles Times in August. “How could this happen?”
McMahon even spoofed his own problems with a spot that aired during the 2009 Super Bowl promoting a cash-for-gold business. Pairing up with rap artist MC Hammer, he explained how easy it is to turn gold items into cash, jokingly saying “Goodbye, old friend” to a gold toilet and rolling out a convincing “H-e-e-e-e-e-ere’s money!”
Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr. on March 6, 1923, in Detroit, McMahon grew up in Lowell, Mass. He got his start on television playing a circus clown on the 1950-51 variety series “Big Top.” But the World War II Marine veteran interrupted his career to serve as a fighter pilot in Korea.
He joined “Who Do You Trust?” in 1958, its second year, the start of his long association with Carson. It was a partnership that outlasted their multiple marriages, which provided regular on-air fodder for jokes.
While Carson built his career around “Tonight” and withdrew from the limelight after his retirement, McMahon took a different path. He was host of several shows over the years, including “The Kraft Music Hall” (1968) and the amateur talent contest “Star Search.”
He was a longtime co-host of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, a Labor Day weekend institution, and was co-host with Dick Clark of “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.”
McMahon and Clark also teamed up as pitchmen for American Family Publishers’ sweepstakes, with their faces a familiar sight on contest entry forms and in TV commercials. McMahon was known for his ongoing commercials for Budweiser as well.
He had supporting roles in several movies, including “Fun With Dick and Jane” (1977) and “Just Write” (1997). He took on his first regular TV series job in the 1997 WB sitcom “The Tom Show” with Tom Arnold.
McMahon released his autobiography, “For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times,” in 1998. In it, he recounts the birth of “Tonight.”
“Let’s just go down there and entertain the hell out of them,” Carson told him before the first show. Wrote McMahon: “That was the only advice I ever got from him.”
In 1993, he recalled his first meeting with Carson after they left “Tonight.”
“The first thing he said was, ‘I really miss you. You know, it was fun, wasn’t it?'” McMahon recalled. “I said, ‘It was great.’ And it was. It was just great.”
Besides his wife, Pam, McMahon is survived by children Claudia, Katherine, Linda, Jeffrey and Lex.
Bragman said no funeral arrangements have been made.
Categories
That was a film I would have gone to!!
‘Moneyball’ can’t find a place in Hollywood’s lineup
At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.
Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book “Moneyball” at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film’s high budget and limited commercial appeal.
Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt’s production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the “Ocean’s 11” movies at Warner.
On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony’s Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh’s rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were “substantial changes.”
Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn’t agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh’s plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.
She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.
By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as “State of Play,” “Duplicity” and “The International,” have all fared poorly at the box office this year. “Moneyball” has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film’s total sales.
As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.
“In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren’t going to make the movie,” said Pitt’s manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt “totally supports Steven all the way” in his vision for the movie.
Soderbergh’s manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.
One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.
Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.
Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.
Categories
I suspect that this will be awful!!
‘Scrubs’ to change its name & location next season, former TV star to be recruited
“Scrubs,” the beloved series we said goodbye to last month when J.D. (Zach Braff) made his exit from Sacred Heart, will return to the schedule this winter, but it won’t be the same show… not at all.
“Scrubs” e.p. Bill Lawrence told EW.com last week that when the sitcom comes back, it’ll no longer take place in the hospital, but in a medical school with professors Cox (John C. McGinley) and Turk (Donald Faison) instead.
Sacred Heart won’t disappear completely though. Dr. Cox and Dr. Turk’s students will end up seeing several familiar faces while doing rotations there every now and then… Braff, Sarah Chalke (Elliot), Judy Reyes (Carla) and Ken Jenkins (Dr. Kelso) have signed on to appear as guest stars throughout the season.
The med students will be comprised of actors new to the “Scrubs” family, though casting has not yet begun. Lawrence did, however, mention that ABC is encouraging them to hire one big name, someone recognizable.
Sources close to the series tell me “Gilmore Girls”‘ Lauren Graham is currently at the top of their wish list.
As for last season’s newbies, Eliza Coupe, Betsy Beutler, Sonal Shah and Todd Bosley, the interns who were once rumored to be “Scrubs” future, I’m told Coupe will likely be the only one considered to return in some regular capacity.
Neil Flynn (The Janitor) and Christa Miller (Jordan) have both landed series regular roles on new sitcoms, however Christa can do double duty on “Scrubs” since her new gig is Lawrence’s other show, “Cougar Town,” which will film right next door.
No, not next door to the abandoned hospital in the Valley. “Scrubs” has actually packed up shop, its sets will be built on a studio lot in Culver City.
Insiders tell me the producers are busy brainstorming a new name for the show as well… something that will probably include “Scrubs,” but somehow distinguish that it’s different from the show we’ve watched for the last eight years.