Monday, January 11, 2010

FILM: Blake Lively in Green Lantern, Owen Wilson & The Farrelly Brothers, and more

• After a month at #1 and setting the record for the #2 best-selling movie of all time, James Cameron is taking this opportunity to go in a different direction than Avatar and make a really depressing movie—and not of the romantic, Titanic variety. He'll be adapting Charles Pellegrino's nonfiction novel The Last Train From Hiroshima, which chronicles two days of the post-nuclear bomb aftermath in Japan. While I'm sure that visually he'll make it a sight to be seen, I'm not sure he has the right fanbase to support the film. Just look at how poorly Peter Jackson's Lovely Bones is doing. Those geeks just want him to get back to the shire and work on The Hobbit, and I'm afraid Avatards are going to want that sequel faster than you can say Blu-Ray.

• Meanwhile, Sam Worthington has a shot at starring in Flash Gordon. Hmm. As much as I would love to see the sexy Aussie in skin-tight spandex, I don't think it's the right fit.

• Who knows? Maybe Scarlett Johannson didn't want to be in an action movie with her husband. But I still don't think that's an excuse to make me watch 22-year-old Blake Lively make googly eyes at 33-year-old Ryan Reynolds, while he stars in the Green Lantern. What is he, the first pedophile super hero? Are there no other mature women in Hollywood he could romance? Apparently, she beat out Keri Russell (ok fine, she kind of looks like a mom now) and Jennifer Garner (hopefully Affleck, Lively's current costar in The Town, didn't have anything to do with that). No, but seriously what about Ginnifer Goodwin, Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Summer Glau (Serenity and "Dollhouse")? Ugh, anyways, she'll play the woman who hires the test pilot to work for her father's aerospace company before he acquires the ring to become the infamous super hero. Geeks everywhere are chirping about her character's villainous future as Star Sapphire, but chances are they'll leave that for the sequel.

• Screw being cute and cuddly, Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) wants to be a killer. She's signed on for Hanna, the story of "a 14-year-old Eastern European girl who has been raised by her father to be a cold-blooded killing machine. She connects with a French family, forms a friendship with their daughter and goes through the pangs of adolescence. When the girl is dragged back to her father's world and discovers that she was bred as a killing machine in a CIA prison camp, she must fight her way to a free life." When I first read this, I immediately thought of Dakota Fanning or even Chloe Moretz, who is gaining a huge fanbase after the Kick-Ass teaser hit the net. But since Lovely Bones director Joe Wright is involved, he obviously wanted to go with the hormonal teenager he's already tamed.

• The Farrelly brothers just cast Owen Wilson in the lead of their latest comedy Hall Pass. "A married couple who find themselves in a lull in their marriage and just going through the motions. The wife then gives her husband a 'hall pass,' a free ticket to engage in extramarital encounters." Jason Sudeikis ("SNL") will play his best friend, who also gets a free pass. It all sounds great, except I'm more interested in the woman who will be giving this free pass. I don't know why, but for some reason Halle Berry popped into my head, which is weird since the last time she made me laugh was in Catwoman and that probably unintentional.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson might actually get to star in a movie with adults, which he hasn't since 2006's tediously long indie Southland Tales. In Faster, he'll "play an ex-con bent on avenging the death of his brother, murdered 10 years earlier when the two were double-crossed during a heist." He'll co-star with  Billy Bob Thornton, Salma Hayek, and Maggie Grace ("Lost"). That's a step in the right direction.

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