Image Credit: AKM-GSI
This is way better than a sexy kitty. Emma Roberts went as Pretty Woman‘s pre-makeover Vivian (her aunt Julia Roberts) to a Halloween party on Friday night. Is it the best pop-culture-themed Halloween costume you’ve seen so far this year?
A few favorites we’ve spotted: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: WireImage
They wanted to move us. And oh, did they know how.
The highlight of the Stand Up to Cancer telethon helmed by Gwyneth Paltrow and a cast of A-list celebrities Friday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was Taylor Swift’s ode to a cancer victim, a 3-year-old boy named Ronan.
If you’re not getting emotional yet, Swift did it for you. The 22-year-old country singer struggled to hold back tears as she sang the touching ballad she wrote after reading a mom’s blog about losing her little boy to neuroblastoma last year. The song begins, “I remember your bare feet down the hallway, I remember your little laugh…”
The audience of Hollywood elite, cancer survivors, and fans choked up as they listened to this and other testimonies aimed at inspiring donors to give funds to the Stand Up to Cancer organization.
Image Credit: Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images
Kristen Stewart is Hollywood’s highest-paid actress, according to a Forbes magazine study of the industry in the last year. The 22-year-old star of the Twilight films bolstered her bank account with her role in last month’s action film Snow White and the Huntsman. All together, Stewart earned $34.5 million, half a million more than Cameron Diaz, who cleaned up when Bad Teacher performed well at the box office. Sandra Bullock and Angelina Jolie rounded out the $20 million club, and Stewart’s Snow White costar Charlize Theron ranked fifth with $18 million.
Overall, the list’s names were familiar, with Kristen Wiig the only newcomer from last year’s top 10 — replacing Reese Witherspoon. Click below for the entire list: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jan Thijs
Mirror Mirror – the Julia Roberts-Lily Collins-Armie Hammer Snow White story that is nowhere as charming as Ella Enchanted even if it, too, ends with a production number — opened to an estimated $19 million at the box office over the weekend. The movie earned a B+ CinemaScore grade from audiences, which, having seen the film myself, I can only attribute to the audience being largely made up of kids under 12 (37 percent), who’d enjoy anything, and their parents (23 percent), who finally perked up at the end when SPOILER ALERT! Game of Thrones‘ Sean Bean made a cameo as Snow White’s father. It turns out the King (Bean) hadn’t died years earlier. He’d been turned into a beast by Julia Roberts’ evil Queen. At the end of the movie, while the beast is attacking Snow White on the Queen’s command, Snow White cuts off the magic necklace around its neck and it changes back into its human form. (Sean Bean lives! Yay! But he has to hang around for that musical number over the credits? Boo!)
If you saw Mirror, Mirror, what was the best part of it for you? Vote in our poll below. And if you agree that a B+ grade is a little high (EW’s Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a C+), what was your issue with the film? For me, it wasn’t that the movie was awesomely bad, which would have been fun in its own way. It was just consistently flat. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jan Thijs
Once upon a time, Julia Roberts was America’s sweetheart. (Hell, at one point, she even starred in a movie called America’s Sweethearts.) But because nobody can stay an ingenue forever, the 44-year-old actress has officially aged into the next phase of her career — one that’s filled almost exclusively with Oscar bait (see the upcoming adaptations of The Normal Heart and August: Osage County) and campy roles like her turn in this weekend’s Mirror Mirror. Let’s call this stage “the Meryl Streep juncture.”
And as Mirror Mirror‘s evil queen, Roberts has some wicked shoes to fill. In live-action movies inspired by fairy tales, the role of villainous queen/stepmother is generally taken by an acclaimed, respected actress — one who’s clearly having a ball playing a baddie. Susan Sarandon’s Queen Narissa (Enchanted), Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen (Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland), and Anjelica Huston’s Baroness Rodmilla (Ever After) are all charter members of the Oscar Winners/Nominees Turned Vile Villains club. On June 1, Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna (Snow White and the Huntsman) will join their ranks; in 2013, Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent (Maleficent) will become a member as well.
But which of these heartless fiends is the most deliciously evil of them all? READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC
Judging by its record-setting opening weekend, the odds are ever more in your favor that you’ve seen The Hunger Games by now. Which means your schedule is that much more free to have it be overwhelmed by the DVR death-match looming next Sunday, when the second seasons of The Killing and Game of Thrones premiere, against the second episode of Mad Men‘s fifth season (and, oh right, there’s The Good Wife and The Amazing Race and The Simpsons and the final season of Desperate Housewives, too). It’ll be up to you to decide how the heck to navigate this scheduling minefield, but click here to see how EW TV critic Ken Tucker’s wading through it.
In between, Madonna’s newest studio album hits stores, Spock(‘s voice) comes to The Big Bang Theory, and Julia Roberts and Sam Worthington valiantly vie for second place against the Hunger Games juggernaut. But first things first, tonight marks the long-awaited, two-hour return of Mad Men. Enjoy your week!
SUNDAY, March 25
Mad Men season premiere — 9 p.m., AMC
We’ve waited 17 months, so the least Don, Peggy, Joan, Roger, and Pete can do is welcome us back with a two hour feast of gorgeous 1960s nostalgia and doleful glances into bottomless chasms of existential ennui, right? READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Joan Marcus
The boards had a busy week. The Book of Mormon won a Grammy. Broadway’s upcoming Once musical gave us a video sneak peak. Jeff Goldblum announced that he is replacing Alan Rickman in Seminar. Chris Colfer, Kevin Bacon, and John C. Reilly joined the star-studded cast reading of Dustin Lance Black’s Prop 8 play. Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark’s producers reached a settlement with the union that represents Julie Taymor. The film adaptation of August: Osage County finally secured leads Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. The stage version of The King’s Speech found a spot on the West End. The Bodyguard musical got closer to actually happening, while the Sleepless in Seattle musical was delayed. The Newsies cast asked Christian Bale to come see their show. And our critics reviewed five plays in New York and Los Angeles.
How I Learned to Drive: Film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gives a B- to this off-Broadway revival of Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-hander about a girl who is molested by her wayward uncle. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jean Baptiste Lacroix/FilmMagic.com
Despite some reported personal turmoil this week, Johnny Depp can rest easy that America’s still got his back. The Pirates of the Caribbean star has topped Harris Interactive’s “Favorite Movie Star” poll for a second year in a row. There were plenty of surprises on the list, like how the reclusive Depp beat out four of Hollywood’s most charismatic A-listers and a Westerns legend, the complete absence of Tinseltown’s ultimate power couple, and the demographic breakdown of Depp’s fan base that shows his supporters are truly a silent majority. See who Depp bested for the title and which Oscar-winning actresses dropped off the list entirely after the jump. READ FULL STORY »
Now that we’ve seen trailers for both Mirror, Mirror (the rom-com take on a battle-ready Snow White starring Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, and Armie Hammer) and Snow White and the Huntsman (the darker, more action-filled version starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Chris Hemsworth), which film’s release are you more eagerly awaiting? Let’s put it to a vote. If you need help, we’ll break it down for you. READ FULL STORY »
Snow White: The classic fairytale so nice, Hollywood made it twice. It’s true: In 2012 moviegoers will have not one, but two re-imaginings of the timeless tale to choose from and already, some strong opinions about Tarsem Singh’s yet-to-be-titled version (starring, among others, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Julia Roberts, Sean Bean, and Nathan Lane) and Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman (with Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, and Ian McShane) are being formed. Over the summer, we got our first glimpse of Snow White and the Huntsman at Comic-Con and comments from EW.com readers ranged from “This looks fantastic!” to “Looks like a Tim Burton rip-off.” But now that we’ve seen what the other Snow White film looks like, it’s time to decide once and for all, which looks the fairest of them all? READ FULL STORY »
