FROM MTV.COM: Wes Anderson is comfortable with his crew of Hollywood buddies, a bunch he started cobbling together along with college roommate Owen Wilson for his debut feature, "Bottle Rocket." In subsequent movies, Anderson's hipster squad grew to encompass Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and others, as he continued to cast them in films like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Darjeeling Limited."
So when it comes to his first animated film, the stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation "Fantastic Mr. Fox," no one should be surprised that Wilson, Murray and Schwartzman lend their voices to the animal characters. But was it always going to be this way? Did Anderson have these actors in mind from the beginning, or did the decision to cast them develop later on? And how did Oscar winners like George Clooney and Meryl Streep sneak into this tight-knit group?
Continue reading How Were George Clooney And Bill Murray Cast In 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'?
1. "A Christmas Carol" ($8.9 million)
2. "The Fourth Kind" ($5 million)
3. "The Men Who Stare At Goats" ($4.6 million)
4. "Michael Jackson's This Is It" ($4.1 million)
5. "Paranormal Activity" ($2.8 million)
The opening day for Robert Zemeckis' "A Christmas Carol" wasn't exactly worthy of a "bah humbug" reaction, though the folks at Disney might be lacking some Christmas spirit this morning. The 3-D holiday film, which stars Jim Carrey as the infamous grouch Ebenezer Scrooge and a whole slew of other characters, opened to $8.9 million on Friday with a projected $31 million weekend, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke. Read more...
FROM MTV.COM: What went wrong with this movie? The subject — the U.S. military's apparently actual flirtation with paranormal warfare — has rich comic promise. And the cast — George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges — couldn't be much stronger. But while the trailer for "The Men Who Stare at Goats" suggests a quirky, Coen-esque romp, the picture itself lacks the Coen brothers' sardonic intelligence and deft pacing. It wanders and wilts and very quickly falls apart.
The story begins in 2003, with aspiring combat reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor) waiting in Kuwait for clearance to cross over into Iraq. Biding his time, he encounters Lyn Cassady (Clooney), a man with a strange tale to tell. Cassady says he's a "Jedi warrior" (wink, wink) in the New Earth Army, a sub-rosa military unit dedicated to psychic battle strategies — mind-reading, "remote viewing," the whole new-age imaginarium. He says he's been reactivated to locate Bill Django (Bridges), the ponytailed Vietnam vet who founded the NEA back in the early '70s and has now gone missing. Wilton senses a story here, and decides to tag along.
Continue reading 'The Men Who Stare At Goats': Destination Nowhere, By Kurt Loder
George Clooney is about to go from staring at goats to looking up his relatives in "The Descendants," a new family dramedy from Fox Searchlight.
Variety reports that Clooney is in talks to headline "The Descendants" for director Alexander Payne, the filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed "Sideways" and "Election." The screenplay, penned by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, is based on a novel of the same name written by Kaui Hart Hemmings. The movie will start shooting in Hawaii this February. Read more...
Robert Zemeckis, Jim Carrey and Disney join forces this week in what is likely to be the box office-topping release of the performance capture-animated retelling of "A Christmas Carol." Expect the same, old story beats in a fresh new format. And there are plenty of options available for those who crave different degrees of face-meltingly awesome visuals: in addition to vanilla theatrical showings, there are also 3-D and IMAX options!
Those who crave something with a bit more bite have several options to choose from. First is "The Box," from "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly. Kelly was kind enough to invest his time in a week-long guest editorship on MTV Movies Blog last week, and he got us very hyped for the "Box" release in the process. The story follows a married couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) who receive a mysterious package in the mail, containing a box equipped with a large red button. A stranger (Frank Langella) shows up to inform them that they'll receive $1 million if they press the button, though a stranger somewhere in the world will be killed as well. Sounds perfectly weird to me and like yet another cult-friendly winner for Kelly. Read more...
In the clip below, we see the natural evolution of a young boy's pursuit of video game high scores to a career man's pursuit of frequent flyer high scores. "Up in the Air," directed by Jason Reitman, stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a hard-traveling corporate soldier who has a singular goal. In the clip below, he shares that dream -- of earning 10 million frequent flyer miles -- with fellow traveler Natalie, played by "Twilight actress Anna Kendrick. Natalie wisely characterizes the pursuit as a grown man's pissing contest, which is exactly what it is when you get right down to it.
Soon, very soon now, we'll all get to check out director Wes Anderson's debut foray into feature length animation with his adaptation of the Roald Dahl kiddie classic, "Fantastic Mr. Fox." The movie hits theaters on November 25, and I couldn't be more excited.
I have a treat for you fellow "Mr. Fox" fans today, an excerpt from a recent press conference for the movie. Stars George Clooney and Bill Murray were both in attendance, and the good-natured actors reveled in letting some banter fly across the stage that lay between them. We've got the highlight on video, which you can check out below.
"Star Trek" star Chris Pine appears to have lined up another new job this week, in addition to nailing down a starring role in D.J Caruso's "The Art of Making Money." Pine has already reshaped William Shatner's role as James T. Kirk in the "Star Trek" franchise. Now it looks like he'll be stepping into the shoes previously worn by Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck as Tom Clancy's hard-nosed CIA analyst Jack Ryan. Pine's name floated out as the potential leading man to revamp Clancy's novels, such as "Patriot Games" and "The Sum of All Fears" for new releases, and Paramount has now confirmed his status as their pick.
"Tom Clancy created an unforgettable character with Jack Ryan," Paramount Film Group president Adam Goodman said in a statement, according to Variety. "With Chris in this role, we've taken our first step in creating a re-boot that lives up to the successful lineage of the franchise." Read more...
Call them "cult classics." "Guilty pleasures." "Comfort movies." We all have a mental rolodex of flicks that may not be terribly popular but, for one reason or another, they resonate in a very special way. Maybe you saw it at the right moment. Maybe you just see gold where everyone else sees feces. Whatever the case, these are the special favorites that you keep stashed away for sick days. Here are some of ours.
I saw "A Serious Man" last night. It was excellent. Better than that even. Joel and Ethan Coen have wrangled quite a few star-powered talents into quirky, offbeat roles over the years, but "Serious" excels even without a George Clooney or a Jeff Bridges in your face for the whole time. It is easily my favorite effort from the brothers Coen since "The Big Lebowski."
What's funny to me now is, I didn't even care for "Lebowski" the first time I saw it. Welcome to this week's Sick Day Stash. Read more...
by Nuzhat Naoreen, the intern (not the celebrity)
As an MTV intern you get to see a lot of things, but today, I didn't just get to see something...I got to experience it. Today, I was a celebrity.
The whole thing came about somewhat unexpectedly, when my fellow interns and I received an e-mail requesting our attendance at a roundtable discussion on new media -- digital abuse, texting, Facebooking, cyber bullying etc. -- hosted by Joel Schumacher. That's right Joel Schumacher, you know, the guy who directed "Batman & Robin" and "The Lost Boys"? It was already kind of a big deal. Read more...
