Oh, we know Michael Sheen, who plays Aro, in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, is having a bit of a laugh in his new interview with Empire, which is why this first quote is so great: “It was quite intimidating being on the set with so many young, beautiful people. That was quite extraordinary being the old, ugly one amongst loads of young, beautiful ones. It’s not something I’m used to really. Not because I’m young and beautiful but usually there’s loads of old, ugly people around me. It was quite encouraging to see how Robert and Kristen are committed to it, how much they put into it and how serious they are about it. They don’t take it lightly at all so that was great to see.”
What’s even better, however: reading how seriously Sheen, who’s best known for starring in The Queen opposite Helen Mirren and Frost/Nixon opposite Frank Langella, took his role as the leader of the Volturi. This quote might explain why director Chris Weitz pursued him so aggressively: “It was nice to go in and not be playing the main part, just go in for a few days and play this really really extraordinary character. I remember I was thinking, ‘Oh, there’s a bit of a Child Catcher here [from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]; bit of the Blue Meanie fromYellow Submarine; bit of Olivier from Richard III. There was a bit of all kinds of stuff.” Not quite as inspired as Johnny Depp’s Keith Richards take on Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Capt. Jack Sparrow, but sounds promising, yes?
Model Miranda Kerr — you know her from Victoria's Secret, most likely — got her picture on the cover of a Rolling Stone by going naked for the its "green issue." Having policed mainstream mag nakedness a time or two before, I'm torn: Green = good, for sure. And there's nothing wrong with being proud of your body — not that she has even an ounce of reason not to. Incidentally, I also love that she says she did it, quite specifically, for the koalas: "Something like 80 percent of the koalas' habitat has been destroyed since Europeans arrived in Australia.'' Fair enough. However, I wonder more about the magazine: On the rare occasions when there happens to be a female on Rolling Stone's legendary cover, it's rare she isn't naked. (Just a few examples: here, here, and here. Implied girl-on-girl courtesy of shared ice cream cone doesn't count. Pretty much the only way to be female and not naked on RS is to be Taylor Swift — good girl! — or a mid- to post-breakdown Britney.) I say it'd get more attention for any given "cause" at this point if they put a lady out there wearing something more than underwear.
What do you think? Is green a good enough cause to go nude? Or do you even need one at all? Anyone else notice that Stone has a history of requiring nakedness for a female to appear on their cover?
According to Variety, Jack Nicholson is in talks to join James L. Brooks' upcoming untitled romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Owen Wilson. Nicholson would play Rudd's father, a role that Bill Murray was initially considering but has apparently abandoned.
If you ask me, Nicholson and Murray are both ridiculously cool choices to be anyone's dad. But which of the two more resembles Rudd? Take a look at these photos and judge for yourself.
June 7 is Super Bowl Sunday for show queens and theater geeks everywhere, with the broadcast of the 63rd annual Tony Awards from Radio City Music Hall (starting at 8 p.m. EST on CBS). But who will the big winners be? EW’s theater guru Melissa Rose Bernardo offers her sage Tony predictions on every single category. Much of her prognistication follows the conventional wisdom: For instance, expect a near sweep for Billy Elliot (pictured) in the musical categories, including a win for the three boys sharing the title role (sorry, Constantine Maroulis). She also expects Liza Minnelli’s concert-show Liza’s at the Palace to edge out Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush in the Special Theatrical Event category. Other A-listers should get more than their share of hardware: Geoffrey Rush is definitely the front-runner for Best Actor in a Drama, ahead of God of Carnage‘s James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels, among others. And Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden (God of Carnage) has the edge over Oscar winner Jane Fonda (33 Variations) and Oscar nominee Janet McTeer (Mary Stuart) for Best Actress in a Drama. My prediction: Neil Patrick Harris, the ever-versatile Broadway and Dr. Horrible alum, will knock ‘em dead in at least one musical number — take that, Hugh Jackman! What do you think, PopWatchers? What will be the biggest surprises and upsets of the Tonys?
For worse (Marilyn Monroe as a present-day video skank, left) or better (Dawson's Creek-era Katie Holmes as Girl With a Pearl Earring, right), artists at Worth1000.com have undergone some treacherous Adventures in Photoshop to bring us Telegraph.co.uk's excellent Celebrity Time Travel photo gallery. This is like that time EW.com image-doctoring superstar Jef Castro put Gokey's face on a lean-sirloin dancer's bod. But classy! Definitely check this out.
SOME NOTES: –Reese and J. Lo look great as polka-dot pinups and should work this look in 2009 –Simon Cowell as old-fashioned curmudgeon might actually be from 2009 –Tom Cruise must be the most important person in Britain's idea of Hollywood because he got two portraits –Whatever you do, keep clicking until you hit Justin Timberlake the 12-year-old soldier –Breaking! Eminem is hard at work on his new album –Mandi has already made this her wallpaper. Tile that s—, girl.
Blinding white time travel-y light: in 3…2..1….boom.
It's that time of the week again when we kindly ask you, our dear PopWatch readers, what is occupying your Must List. On ours? The expertly-acted drama Revolutionary Road, released on DVD yesterday. Fact: The film was one of the very best of last year. Another fact: Most people probably avoided it because a dark drama about a crumbling marriage didn't exactly look like a barrel of fun — even if it does star cinema's golden children, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. But now is the perfect time to discover it, from the comfort of your own home. EW's Chris Nashawaty says Rev Roaddeserved more Oscar love (its most high-profile nomination was for Michael Shannon's explosive supporting performance), a statement I will echo here: DiCaprio and Winslet both deserved acting nods, and an argument could even be made for a Best Picture nomination. It's a profound story that is difficult to shake afterward. Watch the haunting trailer below for a refresher.
So what's on your Must List this week? After you've rented Revolutionary Road, be sure to list your top three picks for this week in the comments below. Include your e-mail address in case we pick one of your submissions to use in the magazine. Now get to suggesting!
Han Solo and Magnum P.I. together at last! Well, together at last someplace other than my childhood fantasies! This awesome mash-up, via The Daily What, has totally made my day.
Do you not find that amazing? Perhaps a side-by-side with the original, after the jump, will illuminate how truly excellent this is.
Television actor Mike Doyle has been shot with a shotgun, blown up in a boat, burned in a submarine fire, electrocuted on a fence after being gang-raped, strangled, and most recently, stabbed. This last demise, after more than 50 appearances on Law & Order: SVU, was his seventh on-screen death, as the NY Times points out. (That leaves him only 19,993 behind Seizo Fukumoto, the 66 year-old Japanese actor who claims to have been killed 20,000 times on screen. Dude gives "Get busy living or get busy dying" a whole new meaning.)
But as ruthless dictator and noted Tarzan fan Josef Stalin once said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” I think he was referring to something else, but is there anything more moving than a good on-screen death? Take, for instance, Kevin Spacey, who provided two of the most memorable last gasps, in L.A. Confidential and American Beauty. Leonardo DiCaprio absolutely loves to die (Romeo + Juliet, Titanic (pictured), The Departed, et al), but has any actor ever captured those last fleeting moments of life as artfully as Andy Serkis and the animators who made King Kong?
Are there certain death scenes that took your own breath away, PopWatchers? And which actors and actresses seem to have mastered the art of dying?
Must we linger too long on ding dong Danielle and the dreaded BOOK. The book, Cop Without a Badge, that alleges our Housewife got nabbed in the '80s for committing crimes of kidnapping, extortion, prostitution, etc., etc. Sweet Danielle's excuse for the whole matter was impressively ridiculous: She was a model, recently returned from a fabulous shoot in Cozumel, and she went straightaway to see her boyfriend when she got back into town. "My boyfriend's house was really big," she told her gay best friend. "Like 30 rooms! I didn't always know what was going on in the house." Hmm, so like, this room was the pantry, this one held exercise balls, this one had strange men with scales and lots of plastic baggies, and when I peeked in, one of them slashed his finger across his throat, which was sort of weird, but who am I to judge?, and this room had a pole and I would practice my professional dance moves in there. What was my sin? Danielle, without ever addressing that nasty little mug shot, kept playing the victim and swearing revenge against her nemesis, Dina, who she somehow has decided is to blame for this whole matter that had stayed buried for 24 years.
Dina, whom I inexplicably love, acted her usual dry and nonplussed self. She doesn't trust or like Danielle, but doesn't seem to spend two figs worth of time thinking about her. Not when she had her baby Lexi to pack off for a two-week trip to Cyprus with her Father. Speaking of not knowing which room is which, I can't for the life of me figure out where in the house Lexi and Dina said goodbye. There was a banquette bench, chickens stenciled on the window, leopard spotted picture frames, large crystal candelbras — is this New Jersey's version of a mud room? Regardless, Lexi, who is so going to get her drink on in Greece, and Dina had a genuinely touching little goodbye. Dina's tears were snotty and messy and punctuated with weird bursts of laughter and, hey, that's how I cry! And that's one of the few times I've witnessed recognizable behavior on this series.
Nintendo and Sony announced nothing at their respective E3 gala presentations yesterday as omigod-if-this-works-I-think-I-may-have-just-glimpsed-the-future impressive as Microsoft's Spielberg-endorsed Project Natal. (Seriously, as a friend pointed out to me, the thing is like watching the earliest version of the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except actually frickin' real.) But that didn't stop Microsoft's competitors from trying super hard to top Natal.
Along with announcing games including Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini's March Again, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Nintendo trotted out what they're calling Wii Motion Plus, a small cube that plugs into the bottom of your Wiimote, allowing the controller extra sensitivity. Nintendo showed off the add-on doohickey by demo-ing a sequel-of-sorts to their insanely popular Wii Sports, called Wii Sports Resort, which lets players take on games requiring subtle, complex movement, like hitting some ping pong, slicing a sword and shooting an arrow. At the very least, the game (out July 26) looked enticing enough to get those who still only use their Wii's to play tennis and go bowling to actually shell out for another game. But the company's claims that the Wii Motion Plus will revolutionize videogaming would be slightly less dubious if they hadn't announced Wii Sports Resort and Wii Motion Plus at last year's E3. Weirder still, the Nintendo folks pretended like those announcements last year had never even happened.
And it's Sony's games that really, truly impressed. From the supple renaissance-era details of Assassin's Creed II to the haunting storybook scope of The Last Guardian to the epic brutality of God of War III, it's becoming more and more clear just why videogames make so much more money than even the most successful Hollywood blockbusters. Nintendo's games looked like they were super fun to play, but it was dry as toast watching other people play them. Not so Sony's games; shot and paced like top-of-the-line movies, I could happily watch someone else playing these (quite intimidatingly complex) games for hours. To wit, embedded below is the (slightly NSFW) demo for the PS3's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves — tell me by the end you aren't thinking it's more fun than Terminator Salvation and X-Men Origins: Wolverine combined. (For comparison, after the jump I've embedded the demo for Nintendo's new Super Mario Bros. Wii — tell me how long you lasted before clicking "stop.")
