Watch A Good Day To Die Hard Online. Two high profile actors have been announced for CBS’ new pilot, Hostages. Recently, United States of Tara’s Toni Collette was signed on to head the pilot, and today the network announced that American Horror Story’s Dylan McDermott will take the lead opposite Collette. Hostages is executive produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and, in true Bruckheimer fashion, the pilot will be a high stakes thriller. In Hostages’ case, the pilot will be a high stakes political thriller, involving life in Washington, D.C. and the president of the United States. Jeffrey Nachmanoff is writing and executive producing CBS’ project. Also executive producing is the aforementioned Bruckheimer, as well as Rotem Shamir, Chayim Shari, Jonathan Littman, and Omri Givon.
Watch Die Hard 5 Online. That seems like a ton of executive producers, but several names involved with the pilot actually created the material for Hostages from Israeli-based source material that was eventually scrapped. Which brings us back to McDermott. In the pilot, the actor will star opposite Collette as an FBI agent. THR is describing his character, Duncan, as an upright agent “at the center” of the conspiracy. Assumedly, he’ll have some interaction with Collette’s Ellen, a surgeon who chose to operate covertly on the president, later finding her family taken hostage (there’s where the title comes in). Assumedly, with two big acting names and Jerry Bruckheimer on board for Hostages, CBS is expecting good things from the pilot.
Watch Beautiful Creatures Online. We’ll let you know if Hostages gets a series order or doesn’t live up to expectations. Among the pilots in development at CBS is a comedy from The Big Bang Theory's Chuck Lorre, titled Mom, which has Scary Movie's Anna Faris set for the lead role. With Faris playing the titular "mom," there's the matter of who will be playing her child. That role has gone to newcomer Sadie Calvano. Mom stars Faris as Christy, a single mother who's trying to get her life together in Napa Valley (California) after getting sober. In addition to Faris, the multi-camera comedy will also feature Allison Janney (The West Wing, Drop Dead Gorgeous), Matt Jones (Jesse's friend Badger in Breaking Bad), Spencer Daniels (Meredith's obnoxious son in The Office) and Nate Corddry (Harry's Law, brother to Rob).
Watch Die Hard 5 Online. So the project already has a solid cast on board, not to mention Lorre's involvement (and his history with successful comedies at CBS). And now it can add Calvano to the list, as she's set to play Christy's teen daughter Violet. I suppose we should assume Anna Faris was on the younger side when she had Violet. Calvano doesn't have a lot of credits to her name just yet, though she did appear in an episode of Kickin' It, and she played J. Edgar's niece in J. Edgar. Her other credits include an episode o Eagleheart and NCIS. Of course, if things go well for Mom, we may be seeing much more of her in the future. Like most of Hollywood’s best directors, Quentin Tarantino is an obsessive, uncompromising eccentric.
Watch A Good Day To Die Hard Online. He goes about his business with the type of zealous swagger normally reserved for great hockey goalies and Russian chess masters. He’ll work on an individual scene for months or even years to coax out every single laugh and every droplet of bloody potential because he genuinely cares about making his movies as good as they can possibly be. Unfortunately, that obsession with adding layers and habitually maximizing the material is the very reason why Django Unchained is a goddamn afterthought in this Oscar race. His dedication is why Beasts Of The Southern Wild will probably get more support for Best Picture, and with all due respect to Benh Zeitlin’s (likeable) hot mess, that never should have happened. Somewhere inside Django Unchained is the best movie of the year. Part meticulously researched homage and part aggressive, pulsating thump of originality, this re-cut would bleed with furious and vengeful momentum, swagger with the confidence of a gaudy suit and pause just long enough to offer whimsical and brilliant asides about fucking up the eye hole construction in white supremacy hoods. At an hour and forty-five minutes, it would feel like a sniper shot from the bushes with about a half dozen wonderful but unnecessary scenes chopped and the entire second half of the third act abridged or sawed off entirely, thus paving the way for a monster two hour and forty-five minute unrated director’s cut for the Blu-ray.
Sadly, we didn’t get that streamlined version. Audiences showed up to the theater and got what should have been the director’s cut instead. We got a movie so interested in showing the world it created from every angle and so interested in giving us maximum backstory and maximum exposure to every character that it meanders rather than gallops. We got a film so blinded by its own tunnel vision that it sets up a very satisfying conclusion and winds up using it as a conduit to shoehorn in way more runtime. Eyed in a vacuum, no single scene is the problem and no single moment is less than very good, but altogether, they combine to clog Django’s arteries like delicious, yet woefully unnecessary calories. Before people even saw Django, critics and observers were taking about Tarantino’s history of writing dialogue that contained n-bombs and whether or not this new film would be racist or an insult to the millions of men and women who lived and died as slaves. Quentin is far too good of a director to treat such subject matter with indifference. That never should have been a concern. What people should have spent their energies worrying about, given what we’ve seen from the writer-director in the past, was whether or not he could edit himself and remove the superfluous pieces to create a product with real pace. Well, the footage is in and the answer is no—by about an hour. Just because a scene is funny or action-packed or even brilliant doesn’t mean it actually benefits the larger movie, and in the case of Django Unchained all that baggage turns arguably the single greatest film of the year into just one of many very good ones.
Talk about synergy. The first official trailer for Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s office comedy The Internship will air today, Feb. 13, during a Google-plus hangout starring the actors and hosted by Conan O’Brien. That works because the movie casts the Wedding Crashers duo as past-their-prime salesmen who try to reinvent themselves in a tech-savvy world by taking on an internship at the massive Google corporation. Here’s a 30-second commercial urging you to tune in to the eventual hangout. The trailer likely will be onlone shortly after Google’s official event. Certain comedians work better in pairs, and I’m anxiously awaiting what Vaughn and Wilson are able to do with the medium-concept premise. They seem to bring out the best in each other, though director Shawn Levy wisely surrounded them with hilarious talents who should help get the most out of the movie. Rose Byrne, John Goodman, Josh Gad, Max Minghella and Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show have been confirmed. Will Ferrell is rumored. We can only pray that he’s bringing back his basement-dwelling character from Wedding Crashers … and that his mom will bring him more meatloaf. The marketing campaign for The Internship appears to be ramping up. Before the trailer drops, the studio shared a first-look image, with a full plot synopsis likely to arrive once the footage has fans stirred up. The Internship arrives in theaters on June 7. Do you think it has a chance at being a breakout summer hit? Or did Vaughn’s The Watch put you into wait-and-see mode? Let us know.
Black Keys Drummer Was Out
Feb 13 2013, 10:33 PM
