Woody Allen sues American Apparel.

From CHUD, a little more info on Jason Segel and Nick Stoller's muppet movie.

Apparently their Muppet film is going to be incredibly old fashioned, with the familiar Muppet characters putting on a show to save an old theater (the theater from The Muppet Show?). The danger? An evil character wants to tear the place down to get at the oil underneath. It's sort of current!

I have no idea what is going on in this poster.

UPDATE: Looks like the video is no longer available. You can see the Smart People trailer here instead.

UPDATE 2: Maybe the video is available after all. Either way, go here to view the director of this films reel. He has been responsible for some of the best commercials in recent years.

Mos Def has been cast as Chuck Berry in writer-director Darnell Martin's Cadillac Records. Gabrielle Union (Ugly Betty) has also been added to the cast as Geneva Wade, the girlfriend/wife of Muddy Waters, who is being played by Jeffrey Wright. The 1950s period film is about the seminal Chicago record label Chess Records and its founder, Leonard Chess, who started out selling albums out of his Cadillac. Berry, Etta James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf are among the legends who recorded on the label. Adrien Brody has already been cast as Chess, and Cedric the Entertainer (Willie Dixon), Columbus Short (Little Walter), and Beyonce Knowles (who is portraying James) are also on board.

A new, pocket sized trailer for David Mamet's Redbelt. This one plays down the fighting competition that the last clip featured, instead focusing on the usual David Mamet trademarks such as his snappy dialogue and a plot filled with too many twists and turns to even count.

Jason Bateman is directing Fox's multicamera comedy pilot The Inn, starring Niecy Nash (Deputy Raineesha Williams on Reno 911) and written by fellow Arrested Development alum Abraham Higginbotham. The project is described as an Upstairs/Downstairs comedy set at a hip New York hotel.

Will Arnett has joined Josh Duhamel, Jon Heder, and Kristen Bell in the romantic comedy When in Rome, which Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider, Simon Birch) is directing from a screenplay he co-wrote. The movie, which also features Anjeica Huston and Dax Shepard, is about a successful, single New York real estate agent (Bell) who flies to Rome for her sister's wedding and, after picking up magical coins from the Trevi Fountain, is barraged by male suitors when she gets back home. Arnett will play an Italian artist suitor who follows Bell's character home from Rome. Heder plays a street magician who courts Bell, while Shepard plays a self-absorbed suitor also chasing after her.

Paranoid Park

Remember checking out books from the school library, sometime before high school when going to libraries still meant something, and finding what you consider the perfect book to spend the next week with? These were never important works of literature or even anything that delved deeply into the human soul but it was something you were interested in and sometimes these stories hid deeper truths about something you were experiencing. This is exactly how Paranoid Park is. It helps that it is based on a Young Adult novel but writer/direct Gus Van Sant has taken something that is on the surface a fairly basic story and turned into something a bit deeper and with a little more resonance.

I guess you could call this an expansion of Van Sants "Death Trilogy" (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) since this is still a story line based around a passing. The film also features long, laborious takes in slow motion but Van Sant has sort of melded his more European aesthetic (I call it European because I can't think of another description to the almost plot less, minimal films he has been making) with his early film about street punks and hustlers. He seems to take all of his cinematic tricks he has learned throughout his career and throw them into this picture, even using not one, but two Elliot Smith songs on the soundtrack. And like the trilogy before it, there is a dreamlike presence, almost as if the central character is asleep as he walks through his life, dealing with the terrible accident he has been a part of.

Van Sant tends to cast young non-professionals who seem natural and a bit stiff, relaxed and guarded at the same time. He captures the inexperience of real adolescents, who are many times way over their heads, even if they aren't aware of it. There is not on recognizable name or face in the cast and the film better for it. The teenagers sound like teenagers and the parents come across just as confused as the kids.

The main problem with this film is that like his other three films of the trilogy, Paranoid Park is good but you don't really want to see it again. While this is the most accessible of the group (and the shortest at just under 80 minutes) it can still border on becoming tiresome to someone who is not a fan of this kind of film, I just happen to be one.

Ice Cube is starring in and producing the urban comedy Janky Promoters, which will be developed from a script he wrote. This is the first script Ice Cube has writte since he penned the final installment of the Friday movies. The story is about two music promoters who get the chance to book a top-tier hip hop artist at a California venue , but their ineptitude causes everything to go wrong. Cube will star with another actor as the promoters, and they would like to get a big name hip-hop artist to star as himself. Although Cube has found success of late with family comedies (Are We Done Yet?, Are We There Yet?), this apparently will be an R-rated affair.

Director Oliver Stone has now cast James Cromwell to play George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn to play former first lady Barbara Bush in W, the drama about the formative years of their son, President George W. Bush.

Josh Brolin is playing the title character, and Elizabeth Banks will play first lady Laura Bush.

Cromwell will now have played a prince (Philip alongside Helen Mirren in The Queen) and a president. As well as a farmer who teaches a pig to be a sheepdog.

Tron
by freres-hueon

I came across this over at Ricky Gervais' blog for This Side of the Truth.

From last nights Mavs game against the woeful Los Angeles Clippers. Stick around at least until you hear Dirk issue the unknown (to me anyway) basketball term, shortbus.

Elizabeth Banks (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) is in final negotiations to play First Lady Laura Bush in director Oliver Stone's George W. Bush biopic, W. Josh Brolin is already on board to play Bush. Stone, who wrote the screenplay with his Wall Street co-writer Stanley Weiser, has said the biopic will present a fair and accurate portrait, focused on things like his relationship with his father, President George H.W. Bush, his wild younger days, and his conversion to Christianity.

Probably the best Tom Cruise impression I've ever seen. It goes on a little too long though. I guess it is a clip from that Superhero Movie.

Watch the trailer for Eddie Murphy's next film, Meet Dave, and tell me it doesn't look like the worst movie of the year. I dare you.

Yahoo has the domestic trailer for Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely. It features the first view of Werner Herzog (though still no info on his part in the film) as well as the first look at skydiving nuns.

Sigourney Weaver, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and J.K. Simmons (who was great in Juno) have joined the cast of actor Tim Allen's directorial debut, the comedy Crazy on the Outside. Allen stars as an ex-con who tries to get his single-mom parole officer (Tripplehorn) to date him. Weaver plays his loving but manipulative older sister, and Simmons is her sarcastic, taunting husband. Ray Liotta, Kelsey Grammer, and Julie Bowen also star.

Learn and see more here.

JoBlo is introducing a new series called The Money Shot, highlighting the best scenes in movie history. First up for them is this scene from Boogie Nights:

Paramount Vantage has optioned the Sudhir Venkatesh book Gang Leader for a Day and set Craig Brewer to direct and Sopranos scribe Michael Caleo to write the script.

Venkatesh is a Columbia U. professor, and Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets recounted years he spent chronicling a crack-dealing gang in Chicago for a research project. He befriended the Black Kings and their leader and was invited to observe close up. Venkatesh found a close-knit group whose corporate culture was much like that of a successful legitimate business. Venkatesh was given the job of calling the shots of the criminal enterprise for a day.

James Gandolfini will play the mayor of New York City in the remake The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, directed by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta.

Gandolfini will play a politican under incredible pressure to end a crisis when a packed subway car is ransomed by a criminal (Travolta) and his gang.

James Marsden, Catherine Keener and Tracy Morgan (that is a strange trio of names to be mentioned together) are in final negotiations to star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel in David O. Russell's romantic comedy Nailed, written by Russell and Kristen Gore.

The Hollywood Reporter says Marsden will play small-town the boyfriend of Biel's character Alice, a naive waitress who gets a nail shot into her head, causing erratic and outrageous behavior. She heads to Washington to fight for better health care and ends up falling for a clueless new congressman (Gyllenhaal) who must summon the political courage to save her.

Keener will play a self-serving Congresswoman. The filmmakers are finalizing details on Morgan's character, who will likely be an injured compatriot of Alice's who has given up on love.

From Ricky Gervais' blog again, Jason Bateman has been cast in This Side of the Truth. Joining Gervais, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Rob Lowe, Louis CK, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Garner, Jeffrey Tambor, and pretty much anyone else that has ever been funny at any point in their lives.

A nice UK poster for Lars and the Real Girl that makes Ryan Gosling's feet look gigantic.

Henry Cavill ("The Tudors") has joined the cast of Woody Allen's untitled romantic comedy, which has started production in Queens.

Cavill plays a man who is set up with Evan Rachel Wood's character by her mother. Larry David also stars as Wood's love interest (Ha!).

The script, written by Allen, is being kept under wraps. Allen also is co-starring and directing.

Leonardo DiCaprio is reteaming with producer-director Ridley Scott for the dark thriller The Low Dweller. The duo will produce the movie, with DiCaprio also attached to star and Scott eyeing it as a directing vehicle. Relativity Media acquired the project from a spec script by first-time writer Brad Ingelsby that launched a heated bidding war. The story, set in mid-1980s Indiana, is about a man (DiCaprio) who tries to assimilate into society after being released from prison but has to contend with someone from his past chasing after him to settle an old score.

From Hollywood Elsewhere:

The most reasonable-sounding plot rumor so far concerning Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (certainly more palatable than yesterday's near-ridiculous return-of-Dirty-Harry idea, which was floated by an AICN guy who claimed a certain inside knowledge due to a car deal that went south) has been posted by Film Jerk's Edward Havens.

He's heard it will be "a simple, quiet and compelling drama about Walt (Eastwood), a rural bigot who finds his outlook on life changed after a family of Hmong immigrants move in to the home next to his own, striking up a friendship with Tao, the family's teenaged son, over the older man's classic car."

Right off the top this sounds like a near-perfect Eastwood film -- quiet, soulful, moralistic, dealing with redemption -- and exactly the sort of thing that will do well in the '08 awards derby. I love the fact that the fast-moving Eastwood hasn't even shot this thing yet, and yet plans to have it out by December a la Million Dollar Baby.

The terms Hmong and Mong refer to an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of southern China. Hmong currently live in several countries in Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.

I also liked this, posted in the comments section on the very same story.

Eastwood is doing a live-action version of "King of the Hill?"

I am posting this photo from Zac Efron's next film 17 Again for one reason, which you will see below.




It's like I'm looking in a mirror.

Adam Brody and J.K. Simmons have joined the cast of Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody's follow up to Juno.

Karyn Kusama is directing the dark comedy/horror film starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox.

Cody's script centers on Jennifer (Fox), a cheerleader possessed by a demon who starts feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. Her bookish best friend (Seyfried) must take drastic measures to protect the town.

William Monahan (The Departed) will write a fact-based thriller based on an article that will appear in Playboy later this year.

It's the story of a drug dealer who traded a prison sentence to go undercover at a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, where he tried to get a serial killer to divulge the whereabouts of his victims.

The son of a police chief, Jim Keene fell from grace after he was caught dealing drugs. As an alternative to a 10 years-to-life sentence, he was allowed to cozy up to a man authorities believed murdered 25 young women. Only the prison psychiatrist knew Keene was undercover, plus a visiting "girlfriend" who was actually an FBI agent.