BuzzSugar

Link Time! Taylor Swift Wins Entertainer of the Year at the CMAs

BuzzSugar — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:30:31 -0800

Taylor Swift is the youngest person ever to take the big CMAs prize - Watching TV
Where are all the women writers in late-night? - New York Times
Get to know the new guy on 30 Rock - Marc Malkin
Dawson's Creek scribe Kevin Williamson is working on a redo of The Bedroom Window - MTV Movies Blog
Harvey Keitel joins the cast of Little Fockers - ComingSoon
Sesame Street's five biggest controversies - TV Squad
Fright Night is getting a remake and the woman from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is behind it - Cinematical
Bill Clinton shares his thoughts on the ladies of Mad Men - TresSugar
Minnie Driver to guest star on Modern Family - Ausiello Files

First Look: Life on Mars

BuzzSugar — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:30:48 -0700

So far, we haven't seen too much of ABCs remake of Life on Mars. The show, which will begin airing after Grey's Anatomy on Oct. 9, had a pretty tricky road to TV, with nearly every actor being recast except for leading man Jason O'Mara. The cast now includes Michael Imperioli, Gretchen Mol, and Harvey Keitel, who are finally starting to show up in promos and clips.

The show, based on a British series, finds O'Mara's character - a New York City cop named Sam Tyler- mysteriously transported back to the 1970s. Keitel plays an older detective, Gene Hunt, who doesn't always follow protocol, while Imperioli plays another officer and Mol plays a woman trying to prove she deserves a shot at police work.

One clip of Sam and Gene meeting in a bar surfaced recently, and now there's a brief ABC promo showing shots of Imperioli and Mol as well. Still no pilot, but I'm hoping that will appear before too long. I enjoyed the British version of the show, but all the trouble this adaptation has run into has left me feeling wary. At least it's good to see some proof that there will be a show after all! To watch the new promo, just read more.

Actors Go Speechless to Support Writers

BuzzSugar — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:32:16 -0800

Negotiations in the writers' strike are resuming today, but for the moment, pencils are still down in Hollywood. What would a writerless TV and movie season look like? Several A-list actors are offering up their interpretations in a series of videos called Speechless.

The videos, which feature the cast of Ugly Betty, Harvey Keitel, Kate Beckinsale, Holly Hunter, David Schwimmer, and many more, premiered on the Deadline Hollywood Web site over the weekend and have now spread to various online video sites. Eleven have been posted so far, but there are many, many more to come.

The videos range from just a few seconds to several minutes long. Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy whistle in theirs, while Holly Hunter acts out a scene about the outsourcing of scripts to a call center in India. One of my favorites features David Schwimmer and Kate Beckinsale as a couple on the phone with nothing to say; another finds Laura Linney using Scene It cards as inspiration for a scene she decides to write herself. To watch a few of my favorites, just read more

Source

Bad Lieutenant: Good Cop Gone Nuts

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:49 -0800

Nicolas Cage has said, "There's a very fine line between Method actor and schizophrenic." In Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he teeters that line maniacally, with an ever-increasing slur and crooked swagger. Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating a drug-related murder and his personal threshold for cocaine and heroin.

The first news of Bad Lieutenant was puzzling: famously extreme director Werner Herzog re-imagining a 1992 cult movie, also called Bad Lieutenant, but shifting the action to New Orleans and casting Nic Cage in the Harvey Keitel role opposite his Ghost Rider costar Eva Mendes. Weird.

But in fact, Bad Lieutenant is Herzog's second surprisingly accessible movie in as many years, following 2007's Rescue Dawn. And Cage is brilliant in a role seemingly made for him, so read more.

The noirish, pulpy, desperate, and often hilarious film opens with a good deed: McDonagh dives into a Katrina-flooded jail cell to save a prisoner's life, in the process injuring his back and subsequently getting hooked on Vicodin and then far harder drugs.

As a degenerate cop in a washed-out city, Cage makes Denzel Washington's Training Day villain look like a Boy Scout. He slithers through the streets, confiscating drugs to snort with his prostitute girlfriend (Mendes), hooking up with a drug kingpin played by Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner, and fending off a rising tide of self-created trouble. "Being courteous is really getting in the way of my progress," he croaks before one of his more disturbing moral lapses.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Herzog has found the perfect setting. He never lets the city look pretty or even charmingly decayed, and he populates it with iguanas and alligators and snakes and fish. At every turn, McDonagh is confronted by cold-blooded animals, as he careens between the call of duty and the cold-blooded instinct of his addiction. It's impossible to ignore the reptilian symbolism, and the effect is perfectly bizarre. Despite its darkest moments, Bad Lieutenant is a remarkably good trip.

Photos Courtesy First Look Studios