BuzzSugar

Link Time! Rumer Willis to Romance a Major 90210 Character

BuzzSugar — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:30:34 -0700

Guess who Rumer Willis's character on 90210 is going to have a girl-on-girl relationship with? - Ausiello Files
Hulu will not start charging for content after all - PopWatch
Zooey Deschanel will make a guest appearance on Bones - The Futon Critic
Natalie Portman was the guest judge on Top Chef last night - test your knowledge! - YumSugar
Dave Eggers's novel Zeitoun is going to be made into an animated film - Vulture
The new Avatar trailer is a bit more exciting than the first - Cinematical
Keanu Reeves will star in romantic comedy Henry's Crime with Vera Farmiga - Coming Soon
Abigal Breslin will star as Helen Keller on Broadway, along with Alison Pill - Hollywood Crush
Will Twilight's Anna Kendrick get a supporting actress nomination for Up in the Air? - HitFix

Photos courtesy of The CW

Zombieland: The Feel-Good Zombie Flick of the Year

TresSugar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:30:23 -0700

A Note From Buzz: With so many new movies this week, my friend Très was nice enough to apply her scary-movie expertise to review the box office's newest zombie flick.

In the United States of Zombieland, zombies outnumber people. A mad-cow tainted burger tipped the population in favor of the drooling, limping, and grunting set, and now zombies roam a crashed-car littered, empty-minimall-blighted zombiescape.

Columbus (Adventureland's Jesse Eisenberg), the virginal antihero of horror-comedy Zombieland, has learned to survive this zombie apocalypse by keeping a list of necessary survival skills. Rule #1? Cardio. If you don't want zombies gnawing on you like an hors d'oeuvre, you'd better be fast and limber. In addition, beware of bathrooms, practice the "double tap" (make sure your zombie's actually dead after you kill him), and don't be a hero. (Regarding this last rule - some rules were made to be broken.)

When Columbus meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a swaggering cowboy type with a penchant for tank-like cars, shotguns, and Twinkies, and the spitfire sister duo of Wichita (Emma Stone) and Arkansas (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin), Zombieland takes off like a scary/fun amusement park ride. To find out what happens on this motley crew's wild road trip from hell, read more

There's something funny about zombies and the zombie genre, and in his first feature film, director Ruben Fleischer plays their comic possibilities to the hilt. Zombies don't have what you'd call well-rounded personalities; they're pretty predictable. They have bad attitudes, come out of nowhere, grunt, and see all nonzombies as food to feast on. They're the perfect foil (or straight men, even) to a cast of characters with more than enough personality to make up for the zombies' boorish one dimensionality.

Take nebbishy Columbus. The world changed for him, he tells us in an early voice-over, when a pretty neighbor he calls #406, asks to stay over because a crazed homeless man tries to bite her. Sadly, although she falls asleep on Columbus's shoulder, she wakes up as a rabid zombie and begins chasing him around his apartment, forcing him to repeatedly knock her over the head with a toilet lid. "The first time I let a girl in my life," deadpans Columbus, "and she tries to eat me."

This kind of witty dialogue abounds in Zombieland, and although fans of gore and violence against zombies will be more than satisfied (Tallahassee's scenes of zombie-killing, especially, have a Tarantinoesque choreography to them), it's really the mismatched goofball characters and how they bond and evolve, surprisingly, that hold the film together. A hilarious cameo from Bill Murray in the Beverly Hills sequence of Zombieland, also, is practically worth the price of admission.

Harrelson chews the scenery as Tallahassee, but as we find out, part of the reason he's hell-bent on killing zombies is because they took away his baby boy. As for the sisters, tough-girl Wichita just wants to take care of her little sister Arkansas (who, as a good shot, doesn't seem to need much help), but a beautiful girl has needs, too, and before long she develops feelings for Columbus. Will he or won't he finally be able to live out his nerd-boy fantasy of brushing the hair over a girl's ear?

You probably know the answer to that question, but just because Zombieland adheres to certain formulas doesn't mean that it doesn't revive them in witty ways. Although the zombie-killing gore fest may not be for everyone, Zombieland's amazing visuals, charming characters, and witty dialogue may leave a goofy grin on your face as you leave the theater.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures

Buzz News Roundup, 9/11

BuzzSugar — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:30:37 -0700

Jeff Bridges is in talks to star in a Coen Brothers remake of True Grit. - Variety
Abigail Breslin will star in Janie Jones, as a girl abandoned by her mother at a rock concert. - The Hollywood Reporter
Will Smith, Charlize Theron, and Jason Bateman will reunite for a Hancock sequel. - Variety
Texts From Last Night will be made into a TV show. - GeekSugar
Edward Norton will guest-star on ABC's Modern Family. - Entertainment Weekly
Barry Manilow's music is being made into a romantic comedy. - Variety
Casey Wilson dispelled the rumors that SNL fired her for being fat. - Zap2it
Members of Nirvana are not pleased with Kurt Cobain's appearance in Guitar Hero 5. - Billboard
Augusten Burroughs's novel, SelleVision, is being adapted into a one-hour comedy for NBC. - The Hollywood Reporter

Movie Preview: Zombieland

BuzzSugar — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:30:26 -0700

As I mentioned when I came back from Comic-Con, I'm not really big on zombie movies, generally speaking, but after attending the panel there for Zombieland, I'm pretty much sold on this particular zombie movie. They screened the trailer, of course, as well as some funny clips from the movie, including a great scene with Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone as sisters that actually made me kind of sad - before it turned funny. It's really the cast that makes me want to see the film: Jesse Eisenberg is the dorky little guy who gets paired up with the crazy, Southern-drawlin' Woody Harrelson, and the two make for a very fun zombie-fighting team as Eisenberg's character uses the movie to run through the rules for surviving "zombieland."

Zombieland opens Oct. 2. To check out the trailer, read more.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

My Sister's Keeper: Climb Aboard the Weepy Express

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:30:17 -0700

In My Sister's Keeper, young Anna knows that she was genetically engineered and brought into this world in order to serve as a donor for her ailing sister, Kate. Well, My Sister's Keeper was engineered to make people cry - over and over and over again, for two hours. Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation, and by the end of this movie I wanted to file for emotional emancipation.

Anna (played sweetly by Abigail Breslin) was conceived after her parents, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learned that their young daughter Kate (the teenage version played by Sofia Vassilieva) had leukemia and their other child, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), was not a perfect match to be a donor for his sister. Throughout her life Anna has been required to give all sorts of things from her body to help keep Kate alive and now, at the age of 11, Anna finds a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for medical emancipation. The lawsuit comes at a critical time: Kate's kidneys are failing, and without one of Anna's kidneys, Kate will die - soon. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that fill in some blanks about the family's journey up until this point. The flashbacks are interspersed with scenes of the present-day situation as Kate's condition worsens and Sara, a former lawyer, prepares to fight her youngest daughter in court. For more on this terribly sad movie, read more.

This drama is, of course, very moving. It centers around a kid with cancer! Of course there's inherent sadness just within that plot, and essentially, nothing more is really needed to make most people feel. But My Sister's Keeper takes this story and milks it for all its worth, stretching out heart-wrenching scene after heart-wrenching scene. I don't fault the movie for being sad, and I don't even think it's that poorly done, but it could have benefited greatly from some strong editing. Despite trying to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time (we hear perspectives from each character - including quite a bit from Kate herself), the movie drags on languorously in many parts, and I just wanted to yell at the screen that we get it. It's sad. We're crying. There's so much more to this story, please move on!

At first, it takes a little while to warm up to these people - particularly so with Diaz's Sara, not because her character is a tough cookie but because Diaz is so shrill at times it's hard to take her seriously. I wondered if this role was too heavy for her to handle; there's just something insubstantial about the way she portrays Sara. It doesn't ruin the movie, but I still wish they'd cast someone else in that role. Sofia Vassilieva's performance as Kate is well done and requires a delicate touch that Vassilieva capably displays - she's sympathetic as a cancer patient, of course, but she also convincingly plays another side of Kate: a giggly, sometimes insecure teenage girl who wants to date boys and look pretty.

I knew going into this that my emotions would be manipulated, and they really do pull out all the stops - including the use of a heartbreaking song every eight minutes or so (like Greg Laswell's slow, haunting version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"). But even with all the music and all the horrors of cancer, by the end of the film, the sweet and complex bonds between these parents and these siblings are what deliver the gut-punch that forces the tears to start flowing.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Movie Preview: My Sister's Keeper

BuzzSugar — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:30:15 -0700

Well, after a bit of casting drama and some commotion over the fact that the film's ending will differ from the book's, we're finally getting a real glimpse of My Sister's Keeper. The story follows a family in which one teenage daughter is very ill while the other one, learning a difficult truth about her birth, tries to become emancipated from her parents. There is, of course, much more going on in this layered, heavy family drama, and from this new trailer it looks like the film captures the intensity of the story quite well.

Only thing is, I was never a supporter of Cameron Diaz playing the role of the mother and I have to say the trailer isn't changing this opinion. I'll try to go in with an open mind when the movie opens June 26, but at the moment I can't shake the thought that this was a dreadful miscast. To check out the trailer for yourself, read more.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:30:30 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to the the titles below, you can get to know the presidential candidates a little better with election-edition A&E Biography docs on Obama and McCain.

The Counterfeiters
Winner of this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters tells the dramatic true story of Jewish forger Salomon Sorowitsch, who is sent to a concentration camp and becomes part of an assembly of counterfeiters whose work is aiding the Nazis and undermining the Allies' economies. The film centers on Sorowitsch's unthinkable choice between continuing to help the Nazis or face death. You can watch a preview of the movie here.

As is often the case with foreign cinema, the movie had a limited release and I missed it when it came out, so I'm excited to get this one in the mail.

Special features include commentary with director Stefan Ruzowitzky, deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, and interviews with real-life counterfeiter Adolf Burger and actor Karl Markovics.

One more (and more family friendly) title, so read more.

Nim's Island
Another movie I haven't seen is out on DVD today - yay! As you know, I watch a lot of movies so it's a fun rarity when I get to add something to my queue that I've never seen. Nim's Island is a good one because the trailer looks so adorable. Of course, I'm charmed by young Breslin, I love Jodie Foster, and I believe Gerard Butler is extremely attractive. As far as home-viewing goes, it doesn't get much better than that.

Foster plays successful children's book novelist Alexandra, whose main character, Alex Rover, is the hero to Nim (Breslin), a girl living on her magical Nim's Island with her scientist father (Butler). When her father goes missing, Nim desperately needs Alexandra's (and Alex Rover's - also played by Butler) help in conquering the mysterious island's challenges. Good old-fashioned family fun ensues.

Special features include adventure commentary with Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin.

Young Stars Who Grew Up to Be - Gasp! - Relatively Normal

BuzzSugar — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:30:02 -0700

Seeing all the publicity around Kit Kittredge: An American Girl has me thinking about how normal the film's young star, Abigail Breslin, seems. She's already got an Oscar nomination and some headlining roles under her belt, and so far it's hard to imagine her winding up like so many other young actors these days, getting attention for their downward spirals rather than their stellar performances. So, as a plea to keep Breslin on the up-and-up, I thought it would be fun to check out some young stars who made good. No, they didn't all win Oscars; some had dark years or briefly faded out of the spotlight. But overall, they grew into seemingly nice people with Hollywood careers to be proud of. To see some potential role models for Breslin, just hit "Start."

View Slideshow ›

Did You Ever Get Into the American Girl Series?

BuzzSugar — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:00:37 -0700

I've already declared my love of the American Girl books, which I enjoyed mostly because they incorporated interesting historical stuff into stories about girls who - aside from the differences in time periods - were just girls like me and my friends. Now, even though I'm an adult with no kids, I'm excited to see the adorable Abigail Breslin play Kit Kittredge in the movie adaptation heading to theaters just in time for the 4th of July.

Not only did I love the books, but I was the ecstatic recipient of a Kirsten doll at one point. My friend's mother even sewed us pajamas that matched our dolls (the white nightgown for me and Kirsten, the red-and-white striped two-piece PJs for my friend and her Molly doll). At that time, there were only three girls to learn about: Kirsten, Molly and Samantha. Now there are tons! And customizable dolls, too. It's crazy to think how far the American Girls have come over the years.

Was the American Girl series a part of your childhood, too?

Source

Box Office: Jumper Leaps Ahead

BuzzSugar — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:30:00 -0800

Despite mediocre reviews (including my own) audiences were still game for director Doug Liman's sci-fi movie Jumper which earned the top spot at the box office its first weekend out. Whether it was the combined star power of Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen or the craving for an action flick this Presidents Day weekend, audiences put Jumper ahead of the rest by a long shot, grossing nearly $33.8 million, according to Variety.

The other big surprise over the weekend was the No. 2 spot which belonged to neither the rom-com Definitely, Maybe nor family friendly The Spiderwick Chronicles but rather Disney's Step Up 2 the Streets. In fact, The Spiderwick Chronicles slid in at No. 3 and Definitely, Maybe came in fifth, behind Fool's Gold which has earned an estimated $42 million since hitting theaters last weekend. Juno, the only Oscar nominee in the top 10, came in behind Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins at No. 7.

Photos courtesy of 20th Century Fox