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We paid tribute to Roger Ebert and prepped for Mad Men this week on The A.V. Club
5 April 2013 4:00 PM, PDT
What’s new this week? We expanded our Random Roles feature as screenwriter Graham Yost discussed his work on Justified, Full House, and the classic bus-that-can’t-stop film Speed. Don’t Miss In a new installment of Undercover, Zz Ward covered Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin’ Bout You.” For Inventory, we listed several solo albums from artists who are members of famous bands. Some of these albums were successful, and effectively killed the band. Some, less so. Loud went out with a bang, as it premiered a video from Snakewing and reminded us how well Blue Öyster Cult holds up. In »
Jason Segel writes young-adult books now
5 April 2013 3:59 PM, PDT
Adult-sized child and How I Met Your Mother star Jason Segel has penned a new young-adult trilogy based on a script he wrote when he was 21. The news broke at a screening of 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall Thursday night in Pleasantville, New York, where Segel inexplicably appeared with director Jonathan Demme. The director—who was apparently privy to some sort of information the rest of the world wasn’t—said the books were the subject of a bidding war between publishing houses, none of whom can seem to get enough young-adult trilogies. Compound that with the fact that »
Steve Carell to star with James Gandolfini in HBO movie about paleontologists, once more snubbing our Dan In Real Life sequel
5 April 2013 3:55 PM, PDT
Having already delved into the world of stage magic together with The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Steve Carell and James Gandolfini are set to reunite in a movie about dinosaur fossils, the greatest illusion ever perpetrated by the devil. Carell and Gandolfini will play rival paleontologists in the HBO film Bone Wars, finally giving the network a use for its rejected title for Game Of Thrones, and bringing to life one of the science world’s most notorious feuds—the one between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh during the science boon immediately following the Civil War. That race between »
Hallmark Channel to launch Kitten Bowl in 2014, end the world's cat sports drought
5 April 2013 3:50 PM, PDT
The Hallmark Channel has purred its intentions to launch a three-hour-long Kitten Bowl in 2014. The super adorable and tiny sports event will run opposite Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl and will also include a cat agility contest during which teeny, tiny baby kitties will stumble and tumble their way through an obstacle course, spurred on only by shiny, scary things like laser pointers and toys on strings. There’s no purr yet on whether or not it will have a puppy halftime show, hedgehog cheerleaders, or a sassy referee. As with the Puppy Bowl, all contenders will be rescued »
Ohio judge tells production companies they can’t just sue everybody for piracy all at once, even if they really want to
5 April 2013 3:45 PM, PDT
In September, The A.V. Club reported that a New Jersey attorney was in the process of trying to sue several thousand BitTorrent users at once for downloading and sharing metal albums. Yesterday, in a similar case involving the illegal sharing of the 2011 film Puncture, U.S. District Judge James Gwin ruled that he wouldn’t allow Safety Point Productions, Picture Perfect Corporation, and Voltage Pictures to sue 197 people as a single defendant, even if it would make things waaaay easier. The news is significant both because it proves that at least 197 people have seen the 2011 »
Paul Reubens cast as white, chronically tardy lagomorph in ABC’s Once Upon A Time spinoff
5 April 2013 2:45 PM, PDT
While the folks at ABC are pretty late! (late!) in finally creating an Alice-centric Once Upon A Time spinoff, the announcement that Paul Reubens will voice the White Rabbit in the pilot presentation of Once Upon A Time In Wonderland is ironically punctual, seeing as production is set to start in two days. The Rabbit himself will be a CGI creation, as opposed to a “Pee-Wee as the White Rabbit” kind of deal, which is unfortunate, because some novelty casting would probably enliven what otherwise sounds like yet another dark, “edgy” retelling of Alice In Wonderland. This new version takes »
History Channel says, “Let there be Vikings,” and there is a second season of Vikings
5 April 2013 2:45 PM, PDT
With just four episodes left in its inaugural season, you need no longer fear for the future of History Channel’s series Vikings, which is about Vikings. The Viking-centric series featuring substantial amounts of Viking action was renewed for a second season by the network, which gave the second season a 10-episode order as well, boosting it by one over season one’s nine episodes. The many actors who play Vikings (okay, and a Christian monk) as well as series creator and writer Michael Hirst will be back for the second season, and in its first season, the show has »
R.I.P. Carmine Infantino, a legendary force in comic books
5 April 2013 12:30 PM, PDT
Carmine Infantino, a legendary figure in the Golden and Silver Ages of mainstream comic books, has died at 87. When Infantino was a high school student, he spent a summer working for Harry “A” Chesler, who ran one of the earliest comic book “packaging” studios. His first published work, inking Frank Giacoia’s pencils on a Jack Frost story for Timely (later Marvel) Comics, appeared in 1942, when Infantino was 16. The book’s editor, Joe Simon, offered him a staff job, but Infantino’s father wouldn’t let him quit school to take it. After graduating, Infantino worked as »
Kellan Lutz will star in that other Hercules movie, the one with the 3-D feelings
5 April 2013 10:00 AM, PDT
Cementing his legacy as the Toby Jones of CGI fantasies, Kellan Lutz has reportedly signed on to star in Hercules 3D—Renny Harlin’s previously acknowledged, inevitable competitor to the Brett Ratner-directed, Dwayne Johnson-starring Hercules: The Thracian Wars. Lutz has previously played the second shirtless fiddle by nesting himself within a motion-captured bodysuit, like a musclebound matryoshka doll, to star in a 3-D version of Tarzan that will similarly compete with Warner Bros.’ own Tarzan movie, because there must be two of everything now. And as Harlin has said before, the distinction between his and Ratner’s take is Harlin »
Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks are making a movie about Mikhail Gorbachev
5 April 2013 9:20 AM, PDT
Briefly turning away from World War II and the Kennedy assassination—and putting us all at risk at watching their horrors play out all over again—Tom Hanks has now become distracted by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which he was similarly powerless to stop the first time around. Hanks is partnering with his Catch Me If You Can co-star Leonardo DiCaprio to produce Gorbachev, an HBO film exploring the end of the Ussr as seen through the eyes of its reformer president, who at long last brought the promise of freedom to his nation’s pizza toppings. DiCaprio »
Adult Swim picks up another live-action detective comedy called Hole To Hole
5 April 2013 9:00 AM, PDT
In what is the raunchiest name for a detective show since Dick Spanner P.I. or Bones, Adult Swim has given a green light to Hole To Hole, a live-action spoof from South Park and Hot Rod writer Pam Brady and MADtv’s Arden Myrin that sounds like it will pair well with Eagleheart, at least. A play on 1980s shows like Hart To Hart, the series similarly concerns bored, wealthy people investigating things that in the real world would get them killed immediately. Here those bored wealthy people are Ashleigh and Amelia Dangerhole, “America’s sexiest billionaire detectives,” who »
FX issues disappointingly non-sinister explanation for why your DVR cut off The Americans
5 April 2013 8:45 AM, PDT
Some who watched the most recent episode of FX’s The Americans may have noticed that its final seven minutes were cut off by their DVRs, leaving most viewers to assume that those minutes contained sensitive information they were not cleared to see, because spy stuff. But, as it turns out, there is a far more boring answer, according to a network press release. “You Saw Nothing,” this statement disappointingly did not read, before launching into a drably straightforward explanation that FX’s publicity department had given incorrect info to cable and satellite providers, causing DVRs to fail to capture »
Jurassic Park 4 will resurrect another new dinosaur, clearly having never learned the lessons of Jurassic Park
5 April 2013 8:30 AM, PDT
In the spirit of playing God that has defined the films, Jurassic Park 4 is set to revive an all-new dinosaur when the Colin Trevorrow-directed film hits, having failed to learn the lessons of the last three times they did this. Jack Horner, paleontologist and Jurassic Park dinosaur adviser—and a scientist so preoccupied with whether or not he could, he didn’t stop to think if he should—says the sequel will prominently feature the return of some other, previously extinct species that will be marveled at just before it tries to kill everyone. “I can't actually tell »
Benedict Cumberbatch to be frightfully appalled in Guillermo del Toro's haunted house movie
5 April 2013 8:00 AM, PDT
Having so recently remained chin-up against the ghastly horror of an impudent maître d’, Benedict Cumberbatch will now face the terrors of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak—delightfully, a peak the same shade of that sputtering, toffee-nosed steward, once he saw Mr. Cumberbatch would be dining with the earl. Cumberbatch joins previously confirmed stars Emma Stone and Charlie Hunnam in del Toro’s “classically gothic” story, about which there are still as few details as there are people in this world whose sense of servitude is not absolutely horrid. However, we do know it concerns a haunted house »
Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts is working on Disney's The Black Hole remake
4 April 2013 2:31 PM, PDT
Strangely not abandoned once the studio acquired the actual Star Wars, which would seem to preclude the need to remake their own rip-off, The Black Hole is still on for a redo at Disney, still under the direction of Tron: Legacy’s Joseph Kosinski. And much as Kosinski has experience outfitting Disney’s early forays into science-fiction with shinier technology, newly hired Prometheus screenwriter Jon Spaihts brings with him the experience of grappling with religious themes and robots. That falls in line with what Disney apparently hopes to do with its new Black Hole, which is being described as “philosophical »
Some thoughts on the death of Roger Ebert, a man who meant a lot to us
4 April 2013 1:58 PM, PDT
Film critic Roger Ebert passed away today at age 70, following a recurrence of the cancer he had fought so bravely and publicly. His accomplishments are enormous and a matter of public record (and a memoir, Life Itself): Despite having the most famous right thumb in television history, he was a writer first, a journalist who started at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 and never left. He became a movie critic at the publication a year later and was rightly revered for his passion, scholarship, prolificacy, and accessibility, all of which made him the first in his field to win »
Even Justin Lin is tired of the Fast & Furious movies
4 April 2013 1:25 PM, PDT
After spending four different movies using all his filmmaking skills to devise different methods in which cars could chase each other, Justin Lin has decided he’s finally had enough of the Fast & Furious series, telling Universal it can find someone else to direct the upcoming seventh installment. Lin’s official reason is that the sequel’s timetable is simply too short, the targeted summer 2014 release meaning he would have to begin working on the seventh while still in the midst of post-production on the sixth—a situation that could easily leave a frazzled Lin unsure which driving sequence »
R.I.P. Roger Ebert
4 April 2013 12:39 PM, PDT
The Chicago-Sun Times is reporting the death of Roger Ebert, its longtime movie reviewer and one of the most famed and influential writers in the history of film criticism. “It is with a heavy heart we report that legendary film critic Roger Ebert has passed away,” the Times says via its Twitter account. The news comes only a day after Ebert announced that he would be taking a “leave of presence,” significantly reducing his workload after the cancer that took his jaw and ability to speak returned, forcing him to undergo radiation treatment. Ebert had been battling the disease since »
The Flaming Lips and Ke$ha are recording a full-length LP together, sharing menstrual blood
4 April 2013 11:20 AM, PDT
It’s not really news that The Flaming Lips and Ke$ha have both recorded and contemplated doing acid together, but it is news that the product of that musical merger is supposedly a full-length record. Or so says Coyne in a Reddit Ama yesterday, along with revealing the album’s name, Lip$ha, which sounds like some sort of cosmetic brand that never took off. Coyne also said that working with the pop star is a “blast on all levels,” and implied that the blood she contributed to be pressed into their collaborative Record Store Day 7-inch was, in »
Zoe Saldana may turn herself green this time for Guardians Of The Galaxy
4 April 2013 11:10 AM, PDT
With experience donning blue skin in Avatar and whatever you want to call this in the Nina Simone biopic, Zoe Saldana may soon be dipped in an all-new coat of paint to play the green-skinned Gamora in Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. Chris Pratt and WWE wrestler Dave Bautista have already been cast as Star-Lord and Drax The Destroyer, respectively, and now Saldana is negotiating to join them as the adopted daughter of Thanos—a relationship complicated by the self-doubt that maybe Thanos would love his real daughter more, and also because he’s a supervillain trying to kill »
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