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Spike Lee and Robert De Niro Are Headed to Showtime

BuzzSugar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:45:44 -0700

Talk about a power duo! Hollywood business titans, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro, are working together on a new series for Showtime called Alphaville. Set in New York's Alphabet City during the crime and drug-filled 80s, the show will focus on the diverse residents of the neighborhood. Both Lee and De Niro will executive produce, and Lee will direct the pilot.

A gritty New York landscape is nothing new to this talented pairing - De Niro's Taxi Driver took place in the very same area, and many of Lee's films have been set in the borough of Brooklyn - so I expect a pretty realistic depiction of this era in Manhattan life. I'm hoping it can be to Showtime and New York what The Wire was to HBO and Baltimore.

The show is just in the development stages right now, so there's no word yet on when it might debut, but will you check it out when it airs?

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:30:01 -0800

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 my selections below you can also add Soul Men, the creepy thriller Blindness, and the first volume of the fifth season of Melrose Place to your queue.

Frozen River
Frozen River won the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition at Sundance last year, and now the movie's star Melissa Leo is up for an Academy Award. I've been curious to check out this performance that landed Leo in a category alongside Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie.

The movie is set near a border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York state and Quebec, and follows a single mother (Leo) who smuggles people across the border via the frozen St. Lawrence River.

Special features include commentary with writer and director Courtney Hunt and producer Heather Rae.

Two more up next so read more.

Miracle at St. Anna
The latest Spike Lee film to come to DVD begins in 1983 with a deadly shooting. A young reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) interviews the shooter in his jail and learns about his experience as one of four black American soldiers trapped in a Tuscan village behind enemy lines in World War II.

In addition to Gordon-Levitt, the movie also stars Laz Alonso, Derek Luke, John Turturro, Omar Benson Miller and Michael Ealy and is based on a novel by James McBride.

W.
Josh Brolin is one actor who can do no wrong lately (er, acting-wise, anyway) and it's his considerable talent that I think saves the day in this odd, somewhat satirical look at our previous president. It's strange, it's controversial, it has daddy issues all over it - what else would you expect from Oliver Stone? You can check out my full review here.

Special features include audio commentary with Stone and a featurette titled "Dangerous Dynasty: The Bush Presidency."

Buzz News Roundup, 2/4

BuzzSugar — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:30:42 -0800

Al Pacino will play King Lear in a new film adaptation of the Shakespeare play. - ComingSoon
Steve Zahn is close to joining the cast of Treme, the New Orleans-set show from the creator of The Wire. - TV.com
Columbia Pictures and producer Scott Rudin will make a film based on the life of Henry Molaison, whose brain became the most studied gray matter in medical history. - Variety
The Hold Steady will release a documentary/live album combo in April. - Pitchfork
The creators of My So-Called Life are working on a pilot for CBS called A Marriage. - The Hollywood Reporter
Spike Lee is returning to a WWII setting, as he signs on to produce Brendan Koerner's manhunt tale Now the Hell Will Start. - Zap2it
A movie titled The Legend of Santa Claus is in the works, the first installment in a three-film series exploring the early days and mythology of the Christmas hero. - Variety
Warner Bros. Pictures has set Aaron Sorkin to write the movie The Challenge, a courtroom drama which George Clooney will produce. - ComingSoon
It's official: Bob Saget will return to ABC in Surviving Suburbia. - Zap2it

Source and source

Link Time! 1/27

BuzzSugar — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:30:39 -0800

Something to ponder: Do we want a Charlie's Angels 3? - Cinematical
Susan Sarandon is also coming to ER in the same episode as George Clooney. - Watch With Kristin
Spike Lee plans to use James Brown's real voice - not Wesley Snipes's - in his biopic of the Godfather of Soul. - MTV Movies Blog
The Once couple's band, The Swell Season, will continue on even though their dating relationship is over. - Hollywood Insider
What series (like, say, Lord of the Rings) do you revisit over and over? - Popwatch
Check out the veggie sex PETA ad that NBC pulled from its Super Bowl lineup. - TV Squad
How does Gossip Girl love LG? Let us count the ways. - geeksugar
We can now hear Scarlett Johansson's cover of Jeff Buckley's "Last Goodbye,", which will be featured on the soundtrack for He's Just Not That Into You. - Stereogum

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Eagle Eye Soars at Box Office

BuzzSugar — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:30:36 -0700

Shia LaBeouf proves he's box office gold once again with the No. 1 movie this weekend, Eagle Eye, also starring Michelle Monaghan and directed by D.J. Caruso. The action-thriller performed well with an estimated $29.2 million, making it the fourth-best September debut ever. In second place with an estimated $13. 6 million came the Nicholas Sparks tearjerker Nights in Rodanthe.

Lakeview Terrace came in third place, and to my great surprise Fireproof, starring Kirk Cameron (yes, you read that right), came in at No. 4. The Christian-themed flick narrowly beat Burn After Reading, which came in fifth. Who would have ever guessed that Mr. Cameron would join Mr. LaBeouf as two of the big stars of the weekend?

Spike Lee's World War II epic Miracle at St. Anna suffered from disappointing reviews (including my own) and paid for it at the box office, coming in at No. 9.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Miracle at St. Anna: Epically Disappointing

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:30:10 -0700

The conflicted and heroic history of World War II's Buffalo Soldiers deserves to be told in a dramatic and thoughtful movie. Unfortunately, Miracle at St. Anna is neither of those things. After seeing the subtle trailer, I was curious how Spike Lee's style would translate into a war epic, but I never imagined this. The overdone melodrama is so weighed down with trivial details that it loses the potentially powerful impact of its subject matter.

With Miracle at St. Anna, Lee sets out to correct that fact that black soldiers have been largely absent from WWII cinema and memory. To that end, the story follows four members of the 92nd Infantry Division, comprised of 15,000 African-American troops. After a devastating battle on the Italian frontlines, the surviving foursome - Stamps (Derek Luke), Bishop (Michael Ealy), Hector (Laz Alonso), and Train (Omar Benson Miller) - are left to fend for themselves with a broken radio and an injured Italian kid they've picked up along the way. For what goes wrong, read more.

Lee capably conveys the neglect the soldiers suffer at the hands of their white commanders, and you feel the ache of these heroes fighting for a country so dismissive of them. Especially powerful is a battlefield scene in which the Buffalo Soldiers are forced to listen to the bewitching voice of "Axis Sally" (Germany's version of Tokyo Rose) promising racial equality, good food, and beautiful women if they surrender. Unfortunately, most of the movie is sorely lacking the emotional weight it deserves.

As ambitious as Miracle is in concept, it's amateurish in execution and often insulting to moviegoers' intelligence. The war story is bookended by a modern-day mystery: One of our vets is accused of murder, and cops find an ancient Italian artifact in his closet. The story isn't revisited until the final scene of the unnecessarily long 160-minute movie, at which point the "mystery" is solved in a way that viewers will see coming from miles away. (But just in case we don't, the characters spell it all out in laughably explanatory dialogue.)

Throughout the movie, the dramatic tension is deflated by a melodramatic musical score and heavy-handed script by James McBride, who wrote the novel on which the film is based. Frequently, the characters deliver lines that clumsily explain plot points or, even worse, elaborate on the cultural commentary that should be intrinsic. Miracle at St. Anna is also plagued by several scenes that just defy logic. For instance, if the Italian boy understands the word "no" and knows that nodding means "yes," why must he and Train communicate through a system of taps, where one tap means "yes" and two taps mean "no"? Because it figures into the plot later, of course!

When the mystery borders on farce, overexaggerated performances by Ealy and Miller don't do it any favors. But I was impressed by Luke as the level-headed Stamps and Alonso in the multilayered role of Hector; both manage to convey gravitas in a movie that's lacking it. But frankly, I expected more from Spike Lee.

Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures

Buzz News Roundup, 9/8

BuzzSugar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:30:07 -0700

J.K. Rowling has won her copyright infringement lawsuit against a fan who wanted to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia. - AP
Spike Lee is working on a sequel to Inside Man. - Hollywood Reporter
24 is shutting down production for two weeks to rewrite scripts and figure out the end to the next season. - Zap2it
The Stand Up to Cancer telethon and associated fundraising efforts made $100 million for cancer research. - TV Guide
The Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler sparked an all-night bidding war at the Toronto International Film Festival. - Variety
Musicians including Heart and Jackson Browne don't want Republican candidates using their songs to campaign. - CitizenSugar
NBC is putting together a new Muppets special, Letters to Santa: A Muppet Christmas. - Reuters
Jayma Mays has been cast as the lead in the Fox pilot Glee, which might be an American Idol companion this Spring. - Hollywood Reporter
Jessica Alba has been cast in a "modern-day fable" called An Invisible Sign of My Own, which was initially supposed to star America Ferrera. - Variety

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Buzz News Roundup, 7/7

BuzzSugar — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:30:03 -0700

The Wire's David Simon has told Broadcasting & Cable that he wants to make a movie about Donnie Andrews, the real-life Omar who robbed drug dealers.
Reuters reports that Bill Clinton will be among the first guests on Elvis Costello's talk/music show.
The Osbournes are headed to Fox for a new variety show that might be paired with American Idol next year, TV Week reports.
According to Billboard, the Flaming Lips are showing their Christmas movie, Christmas on Mars, at the festivals they're playing up until the movie is released on DVD later this year.
E! reports that Jamie-Lynn Sigler will join the cast of Entourage for a few episodes, playing herself.
The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the Sundance Institute has established a submission deadline for the 2009 festival: September 8, 2008.
Spike Lee is on board to film performances of the Broadway show Passing Strange, writes Variety.
90210 has added two new members to its cast, Zap2it reports - including the actress currently best known for modeling Case 24 on Deal or No Deal.

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Buzz News Roundup, 6/18

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:39:14 -0700

E! Online reports that Universal has set a release date for Bruno: May 15, 2009.
Dancer/actress Cyd Charisse has died at the age of 86, the AP announces.
There's some turmoil over at Dirty Sexy Money, where the show's top producer has just been replaced, according to Variety.
LilWayne's new album became the first since 2005 to sell a million albums in a week, writes Billboard.
ComingSoon reports that Spike Lee will direct Time Traveler, an adaptation of a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation's first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.
Susanne Daniels, the executive who wooed Project Runway to Lifetime, has stepped down from the position, writes the Hollywood Reporter.
TV Guide reports that ABC has renewed Jimmy Kimmel Live through 2010.
TV Week has a story speculating that The CW might be on its way out.

Movie Preview: Miracle at St. Anna

BuzzSugar — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:00:42 -0700

When Spike Lee isn't making waves with his speech, he's making movies that also provoke. The latest addition to his canon, Miracle at St. Anna, will be out this Fall, and this week brought us the first glimpse of its trailer. The film is an adaptation of a novel by the same title and follows the harrowing story of four African-American soldiers trapped in an Italian village during World War II.

This is the first feature-length film Lee has released since his terrific 2006 "joint" Inside Man, and based on the trailer, it looks like he may have found a way to examine history, tell a great story, and entertain all in one film. In fact, this looks like the kind of moving, sweeping tale that the folks who give out Oscars tend to enjoy. I wonder if we are seeing a preview of a potential 2008 nominee? Time will tell!

Miracle at St. Anna opens Sept. 26. To watch the trailer for yourself, read more.

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