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First Look: Schwartzman, Galifianakis in HBO's Bored to Death

BuzzSugar — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:30:37 -0700

A weekly dose of Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis on my TV? Yes, please! HBO has released a teaser for its newest half-hour comedy series Bored to Death, which will premiere in September. Zach Galifianakis was recently added to the show, which is pretty brilliant casting given the success of The Hangover. The comedy star power doesn't end with those two - as you'll see in the trailer the series also features Ted Danson, Parker Posey, and Kristen Wiig. So great!

Schwartzman plays Jonathan, a struggling writer living in Brooklyn who drinks a lot. For no apparent reason he decides to become a private detective. Galifianakis plays his friend who writes comic books. The whole thing looks pretty funny and full of promise. To check out the trailer and tell me what you think, read more.

Posey + Waters + Knoxville = Crazy/Weird Movie

BuzzSugar — Thu, 08 May 2008 10:30:06 -0700

An indie/cult classic in the making, perhaps?
I'm so excited that Parker Posey is continuing to get roles and that John Waters (the mastermind behind the original Hairspray, along with Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom and others) is still hard at work creating bizarre indie films. And Johnny Knoxville is. . . also in this news item. The three are teaming up for Waters' next project, a Christmas film titled Fruitcake.

Mmm. . . Delicious fruitcake.
According to Hollywood Reporter, "The plot is officially under wraps but is said to center on the title character, a boy named after his favorite dessert. He runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are caught shoplifting meat, then meets up with a runaway girl raised by two gay men and searching for her birth mother."

Shoplifting meat?
Huh, for a plot that is "officially under wraps," that's a pretty solid plot description. Elsewhere I've seen the movie described as a "children's film," so I'll be extremely curious to see exactly how this Fruitcake comes out.

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TV Tonight: The Return of Jezebel James

BuzzSugar — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 06:30:00 -0700

It hurts me so much to write this post, because the fact is, The Return of Jezebel James should be my new favorite TV show. It stars Parker Posey, one of my favorite actresses of all time, alongside Lauren Ambrose, who absolutely stole my heart as Claire Fisher on Six Feet Under. It has an intriguing plot: The sister who has her life together (Posey) can't have children, so she asks her screwed-up younger sister (Ambrose) to carry a child for her. And the whole thing is created and written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, who made her mark with Gilmore Girls.

So it hurts me, truly, to say that I didn't like The Return of Jezebel James. When I talked to Amy Sherman-Palladino at the TCA press tour last summer, she said she wanted Jezebel to be a return to her sitcom roots, when she was a writer on Roseanne. But Sherman-Palladino's quick and witty dialogue just doesn't seem to lend itself well to a show with a laugh track. Both Posey and Ambrose - but especially Posey - feel too big for the very two-dimensional world of Jezebel. And, maybe worst of all, the two don't quite have a believable chemistry as sisters. That last part, I believe, would come with time - but, given the show's other problems and the fact that Fox has already cut its order to seven episodes and socked it into a killer Friday night time slot, I'm not sure the actresses will ever have that chance.

It's possible my expectations were just too high. Maybe I'm being too hard on poor Jezebel; maybe it is a return to the days of Roseanne (or, as Posey suggested, Family Ties) and nothing more. But I wanted more, and Jezebel just didn't deliver for me. Still have faith? The show's first two episodes air tonight starting at 8 p.m. EDT and PDT. To watch a preview, just read more.

Photo courtesy of Fox

Interview: Parker Posey on Jezebel James, Runway, and More

BuzzSugar — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:30:53 -0700

Parker Posey doesn't speak in sentences; she speaks in stories. Ask her a question, and her incredibly detailed response will often start with the line "So I was doing this play in New York . . . " and then dart all over the place before ultimately reaching the answer.

I had the chance to chat with Posey last summer at the TCA press tour, when she was first promoting The Return of Jezebel James. The show, which co-stars Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under and was created and written by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, finally premieres Friday night on Fox. So, I figured it was time to share Posey's thoughts on her new co-star, her move to the small screen, and even her path to becoming a Project Runway guest judge a couple of seasons back. Here were highlights:

On becoming a fan of Ambrose through Six Feet Under: "I was a huge fan of her in the show. I was hooked. [Tells long story about breaking her finger doing a play in New York and renting the first season's DVDs while she was recuperating.] I had Monday off. I watched the entire first season, high on Vicodin, crying and eating lasagna from takeout somewhere, and I was like, 'This is the greatest time ever. I'm working on this play, I had one day off, I'm watching the best TV ever.'"
On learning Ambrose would be cast as her sister: "It just made sense. . . . When I met her, she really reminded me of my cousin, so I knew there was something about us. I don't know her that well, but there's something about us that's relatable."

More from Posey about her move to TV and the ProjRun connection, so read more.

On why she'd move to TV right now: "I read [the script] and I liked it. It makes sense to me. . . . It mostly was the writing and the ease of the writing and how much I could hear the voice. It was so inhabited, it flew off the page and just soared. I loved how classy it was. It was classy and clean and sweet and smart. . . . It reminded me of Family Ties, family sitcoms. I think that's the demographic right there."
On finally getting to live in New York full time: "I had a whole tub of sweaters that I had forgotten about because I had been traveling around so much. Now I can be really grounded, live and work - that will be normal for me."
On how she came to guest-judge Project Runway's first-season finale: "I was doing a play in New York called Hurly Burly . . . It's about the movie business and they're all coked out and crazy. I played a fashion photographer who's kind of in love with the bad guy. Our dark days were Sundays, and that's when the Project Runway marathons were on Bravo. That's how I would wind down - I'd watch the entire marathon. So then I got a call, and it was my publicist, and he said, 'Would you like to be a guest judge on Project Runway?" I was like, "That's weird, I'm totally obsessed with it!"

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Link Time! 1/8

BuzzSugar — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:30:59 -0800

SlashFilm finds a San Francisco street artist posing a key question: Do you prefer shoot-em-up star Rambo, or 19th-century French poet Rimbaud?
Popwatch has a call to action to stop Jessica Simpson's country album from happening.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's return to the air makes TV Squad wonder: What's the going definition of "writing" these days, anyway?
When MTV Movies Blog chatted with director David Fincher he revealed his plans to turn Fight Club into a musical.
Pop Candy shares a way to win a chance to see the Lipstick Jungle premiere early - plus free lipstick.
Pop has photos from the set of Eagle Eye, the thriller that is reuniting Shia LaBeouf with his Disturbia director D.J. Caruso.
Check out Stereogum for Moby's latest video for the song "Alice."
TV Filter spreads the good news that all of Lost is now available online for free!
CasaSugar lets us tour Parker Posey's old apartment - without stalking her!
Idolator already has a contender for the worst album cover of 2008.

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Broken English: Parker Posey, All Grown Up

BuzzSugar — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:28:49 -0700

The realization struck me hard about halfway through Broken English: Parker Posey isn't Party Girl anymore. She hasn't been Party Girl for years, of course, and the roles she's taken have evolved steadily from neurotic 20-somethings to neurotic 30-somethings. But in Broken English, I saw for the first time that Posey and her characters are adults now - a little less hopeful, a little more world-weary, a lot more afraid of the idea that this could be the best life gets.

Posey plays Nora Wilder, a chronically single 30-something who once dreamed of an art career but ended up as the guest relations director at a boutique hotel. In the name of "putting herself out there," she launches into a series of bad dates - one with a famous actor who later tells a Hollywood news program he's dating his costar; another with a sad sack of a man who can't get over his ex. Then, at an almost laughably bad party thrown by a coworker, Nora meets Julien (Melvil Poupaud), who's sweet, attentive, romantic - and about to return to Paris. Julien encourages Nora to run away to Paris with him, and she's too practical (or too self-sabotaging, or too scared) to go. But at the urging of a friend, she ultimately takes off for the romantic city, in search of a fantasy of love. That's just the skeleton, so to hear more of what I thought, read more

Broken English is beautiful to look at. Director Zoe Cassavetes - daughter of film legend John, directing her first feature here - has given the film a gauzy, almost pastel look reminiscent of Lost in Translation. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Posey's covetable wardrobe.

Cassavetes and Posey manage to make a familiar story of screwed-up singledom feel relatively fresh, but the director's inexperience is obvious in places. A few subplots (the screwed-up marriage of Nora's best friend, Audrey, as well as the confusing courier mission that gets Audrey and Nora to Paris eventually) slide in and out of relevance, as if Cassavetes couldn't quite decide how important those stories were to Nora's journey. And the movie seemed to both drag on for too long and end too soon; the buildup to the final moments felt overly drawn out, while the ending itself was too abrupt.

But in the end, this is Nora's story. She's not quite an everywoman in Posey's hands; rather, she's that lovable mess of a friend we all know and love. She's too romantic, then too practical, then too regretful to do much of anything. It's a performance that is strong, nuanced and - above all - grown up.

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Movie Preview: Parker Posey in Broken English

BuzzSugar — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:35:14 -0700

Broken English first caught my eye when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year because it stars one of the greatest film actresses out there (Parker Posey), and because it was written and directed by a lady (Zoe Cassavetes). Since then, I've just been waiting for it to come out, and this Friday the wait is over. Originally, it looked like a comedy - and was billed as such - but now, having seen the trailer I'm not so sure. It looks a lot like a romantic drama with some moments of funny thrown in, but you can see for yourself.

Posey stars as 30-something Nora whose mother keeps urging her to "settle down." When an intriguing Frenchman enters her life, Nora decides to move to Paris in the pursuit of love and happiness (or, as one French man pronounces it in the trailer, "ah-peeness"). I really can't wait to see this movie now that I've watched the sweet-looking trailer, so to check it out, read more

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Pilot Watch: "The Return of Jezebel James"

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:29:00 -0700

The networks have announced their fall schedules, but which of the series will actually be worth watching? Throughout the summer, as I watch the pilots, I'll be posting my first impressions. Note that a lot can change before a show actually makes it to air, so these aren't comprehensive reviews, just quick thoughts on how the shows look now. Today's installment: Fox's "The Return of Jezebel James."

What's it about? Two estranged sisters - a driven book editor and an alterna-slacker - reconnect when the younger sister agrees to carry the older one's baby.

Who's in it? Parker Posey, Lauren Ambrose, Michael Arden, Scott Cohen

The good: The show is written by Amy Sherman-Palladino of "Gilmore Girls" fame, and the first episode packs in plenty of her signature snappy dialogue. Posey and Ambrose have a great sisterly chemistry, and the plot seems full of potential for at least a couple of strong seasons.

The bad: The production of this show was a huge turnoff for me. It's a half-hour comedy that should be a one-hour drama - or, at the very least, a comedy produced more in the style of "The Office." At least a couple of good lines got buried in the distracting laugh track, and the show felt very sound-stage-y - I'm not sure there was a single exterior shot! The episode also seemed rushed, as though 30 minutes wasn't enough for all the plot and character development the writers wanted to do.

Will I watch? This show has two of my favorite actresses and one of my favorite writers, so I want it to be good. But I have to say, if this show doesn't change a lot before it makes it to the air at midseason, I don't think I'll be watching.

To watch a preview clip and see a gallery of photos from the show, read more

"The Return of Jezebel James"

View 4 Photos ›

Photos and video courtesy of Fox

Buzz News Roundup, 2/17

BuzzSugar — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:18:11 -0800

Poison frontman Bret Michaels gets his own VH1 reality show, says the Futon Critic.
The AP reports that last week's "Lost," which aired on Valentine's Day, scored the lowest ratings in the show's history.
Chris Cornell calls it quits for Audioslave and plans a solo project, says Billboard.
Fox picks up "House" and "Bones" for next season, Variety is reporting.
The New York Times sums up the experience of getting tickets to late-night shows: cold-people waiting in line.
Lawmakers in North Dakota reject a proposal to honor Bono, says NME.
Zap2It reports that Parker Posey will star in a new pilot by the creator of "Gilmore Girls.
Unbelievably, the Coachella music festival is already sold out.