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Buzz News Roundup, 4/17

BuzzSugar — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:30:45 -0700

Elizabeth Banks and Leslie Mann will topline What Was I Thinking, a comedy that follows four female friends who take a hedonistic ski trip after one of the women gets dumped. - Zap2It
YouTube has a new special section for TV episodes and movies. - LA Times
Fox Searchlight has acquired screen rights to Jen Sacks's darkly humorous book Nice, which will be developed as a potential star vehicle for Reese Witherspoon. - Variety
Melanie Griffith will play Kimber's mom on Nip/Tuck. - TV Guide
Jennifer Jason Leigh will play Nancy's estranged sister on Weeds. - The Hollywood Reporter
Not surprisingly, The Amazing Race has been renewed. - TV.com
Thomas Dekker is reportedly in final negotiations to play the role of Jesse in director Samuel Bayer's A Nightmare on Elm Street. - ComingSoon
Fantasia Barrino and DJ AM both landed reality TV series. - The Hollywood Reporter
The Golden Girls will be remade - in Turkey! - Variety

Movie Preview: Synecdoche, New York

BuzzSugar — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:30:08 -0700

Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, has been generating positive buzz ever since it premiered at Cannes this year. Time Magazine calls it "A miracle movie," while Variety claims it is "a wildly ambitious and gravely serious contemplation of life. The picture exerts power and artistic mystery." If this new trailer is any indication, I am starting to see what all the fuss is about.

Philip Seymour Hoffman leads a hugely talented cast (including Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis and many more) in this story in which "[a] theater director (Hoffman) struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play."

Synecdoche, New York will start with a limited release on Oct. 24. To check out the trailer, read more.

trailer de Synecdoche new york
Uploaded by masalladeorion

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Buzz News Roundup, 2/13

BuzzSugar — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:32:50 -0800

Tina Fey will host the first post-strike episode of Saturday Night Live

The New York Times

John Legend and Isaac Hayes have joined the cast of the comedy Soul Men, which includes Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac, writes Billboard.
ComingSoon has news that Wes Craven's first horror project since 1994 will be 25/8, based on the 1972 George Romero film.
Benjamin Bratt will star in a new series for A&E about an interventionist, while Timothy Hutton will portray a modern-day Robin Hood in the TNT series Leverage; details on both are at The Futon Critic.
Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Jason Leigh will star together in the indie sex comedy titled Spread, reports Variety.
Aretha Franklin is not pleased with Beyonce after Beyonce's Grammy intro referred to Tina Turner, not Franklin, as "the queen," the Associated Press reports.
Zap2It writes that Joel Surnow, co-creator of 24, is leaving the show to pursue other projects.
According to Billboard, this summer's tour will be the last for The Police.
Fox is remaking a Japanese TV show in which people must fit into shapes like human Tetris pieces, according to Variety.

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Margot at the Wedding: Just Plain Bleak

BuzzSugar — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:45:35 -0800

At the end of writer/director Noah Baumbach's 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, I felt exhausted - but not in a bad way. That slice-of-life film focusing on a Brooklyn family in the midst of the parents' separation is at times depressing and hard to watch. At the end, however, there's a moment that feels redemptive and almost hopeful. Margot at the Wedding marks Baumbach's follow-up to Squid in the Whale and has extremely similar themes and characters with one key difference: there is no real redemption to this movie.

Nicole Kidman plays Margot, a Manhattan author and mother to a teenage boy named Claude (Zane Pais). Margot and Claude travel together to Margot's childhood home where her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) now lives and where she's about to marry the schlubby Malcolm (Jack Black). Once they're together again, the movie mostly centers on Margot and Pauline's relationship, Margot and Claude's relationship and Margot's strained relationship with her husband - and her relationship to men in general. That's basically it for plot, but there is still more to talk about so read more

Baumbach explores similar territory here as he does in Squid and the Whale, only this movie is way harder to enjoy. There's the selfish, hypocritical mother (Margot) who has a seemingly close relationship with her teenage son, though she often randomly slings insults his way. She and her sister examine their childhoods, their daddy issues, their sexual pasts, none of which is all that interesting for anyone else (audience included) to hear. The boy, attempting to navigate young adulthood and trying to grasp the rockiness of his parents' marriage, is an innocent. There are a few references to his sexual exploration, but nothing nearly so squirmy as what goes on in Baumbach's Squid.

Baumbach is clearly preoccupied with a few key topics in general: family dynamics at a turbulent juncture in the parents' marriage, and mother-son relationships (particularly when the mother is self-obsessed and rather heartless). In both films Baumbach also ridicules overeducated and snobbish - though not necessarily elite - members of New York society. These characters (both parents in Squid, Margot in Margot) are shown to be know-it-alls, deeply hypocritical and cold.

I patiently waited through the hour and a half with these characters, most of whom are either clueless (Malcolm), helpless (Pauline, Claude) or downright hateful (Margot), expecting some sort of golden ray of hope at the end. Just a glimmer would have done it, a speck of glitter stuck haphazardly to this story that is dreary despite there being no actual crisis. It really is simply an example of how bleak and pointless life is - even when nothing is really wrong.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Recast Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Win a Prize!

BuzzSugar — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:29:06 -0700

Every Wednesday on BuzzSugar, I post a Recast challenge, where I ask you to choose new actors for a classic TV show or movie. The reader who submits the best cast wins a BuzzSugar t-shirt!

Fast Times at Ridgemont High was one of the many great suggestions you gave me back when I asked for recast suggestions, and I think it's "high" time we got to recasting this awesome '80s teen movie!

If you could recast the movie with new actors, who would you pick for Stacy and her best friend, the, um, mature-for-her-age Linda? Who else could play the dazed and confused Spicoli? What about Stacy's hapless brother Brad, the nerdy Mark "Rat" Ratner and the shady Mike? Finally, of course, there's the hilariously named Mr. Hand to recast.

Leave your entry in the comment section below, and I'll pick one winner to feature Tuesday, October 2, complete with a "new" cast photo.

To see a list of characters to recast and a photo of the BuzzSugar t-shirt, read more

Characters to recast:
Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh)
Linda (Phoebe Cates)
Spicoli (Sean Penn)
Mark/"Rat" (Brian Backer)
Mike (Robert Romanus)
Brad (Judge Reinhold)
Mr. Hand (Ray Walston)

The BuzzSugar t-shirt

First Look: Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding

BuzzSugar — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:30:00 -0700

Noah Baumbach is the young director whose indie film The Squid and the Whale (starring Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney) was weirdly fascinating. Embracing the look and feel of Brooklyn in the 1980s, it was a difficult family drama that often made me laugh or feel uncomfortable (or, at times, accomplished both those things at the same time). Baumbach's latest venture, Margot at the Wedding, appears to have precisely the same style and feeling as Squid, and again deals with strained familial relationships.

Nicole Kidman plays Margot whose sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is marrying the slightly schlubby Malcolm (Jack Black, curiously trying his hand at a dramatic role). Margot, clearly not enjoying a smooth relationship with her sister, has some reservations about this union.

Margot at the Wedding opens October 19. To see the trailer (in which Kidman is back to her beautiful redheaded self), read more

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