Per Variety, a Christmas Day 2008 release date has been set aside for the new Star Trek feature to be helmed by J.J. Abrams, produced by Lost cohort Damon Lindelof, and penned by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci (Mission: Impossible III).... Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III) will direct a remake of David Cronenberg's Scanners.... Per the Hollywood Reporter, Alan Arkin will reunite with Little Miss Sunshine costar Steve Carell when he plays "Chief" in the big-screen Get Smart.... M:I:III's Michelle "Don't I look like Kate Holmes?" Monaghan will star opposite Patrick Dempsey in Made of Honor, a romantic comedy about longtime friends who come to want something more just as Monaghan's character is about to wed.... Robert Downey Jr. and Jay Baruchel will star in Tropic Thunder, a Ben Stiller-directed comedy about the making of an epic war film. Downey plays "the greatest actor of his generation," while Baruchel is a newbie.
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The one thing I realized as Oscar night droned on and on for nearly four hours: If I ever had to choose someone to be stranded with for hours on end (say, like those poor Jet Blue passengers a few weeks ago), it would have to be Ellen DeGeneres.Keeping her cool, and her genuine aura of chipper goodwill, throughout three costume changes (in suits from red velvet to all-white to royal blue) and what seemed once again like an overindulgent excess of movie montages (we definitely could have done without Michael Mann’s fuzzy survey of cinematic American history), Ellen was welcome nearly every time she popped up. Offering a spec script to Martin Scorsese, directing Steven Spielberg on how to take her photo with Clint Eastwood, asking the megastars in the front row to lift their legs as she vacuumed the Kodak past midnight (ET), while informing us that Helen Mirren had just asked for a rum and coke (sounded pretty good to me at the time), Ellen did her darndest to deflate the bloat a...
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The Academy Awards are on tonight, so Fox scheduled two Family Guy repeats. From 9-10 pm/ET tonight I switched back and forth between Oscar coverage and Family Guy, so this post will be about both. Right before I hit the Fox pre-set button on my remote, they had just handed out the first Oscar of the evening. It only took almost 30 minutes. And what a first award it was! Art Direction. Riveting! I couldn’t hit the button fast enough. I love movies and although every year I rant and rave about the Academy Awards, I watch. It’s a televised gaper delay. The clock turned 9:00, and I moved over to Family Guy. The first episode provided one of the best sight gags this season: Joe’s legs floating to the surface of the beer vat every three seconds. And the idea of messing about with the opening credit sequence was inspired. During the first commercial break I switched back over to the Oscars. Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor for Little Miss Sunshine! Now that made me happ...
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• In Justice's Jason O'Mara is in final talks to play Philip Marlowe in ABC's drama pilot.• Something About Amelia reunion alert! Ted Danson has been cast as a corporate titan facing off against Glenn Close's litigator in FX's get-a-title-already legal thriller pilot, says the Hollywood Reporter.• Oscar nominee Alan Arkin will play a prison pal of Damian Lewis' wrongfully imprisoned cop-back-on-the-force in the NBC pilot Life.• Legendary composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is a guest judge on NBC's Grease: You're the One that I Want on Feb. 11.• Lucy Liu and Jerry O'Connell appear on the Feb. 15 episode of Ugly Betty, playing a once-frumpy college classmate of Daniel's and a man Alexis meets in a bar, respectively.• Lisa Donovan (aka YouTube's "Lisa Nova") joins the cast of Mad TV on Feb. 17.• Desperate Housewives' Mark Moses guests on Without a Trace on Feb. 25.
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Per Variety, Brian Cox, Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker and Leslie Bibb will star in Trick 'r Treat, a Halloween-set, Bryan Singer-produced horror pic.... Per the Hollywood Reporter, Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez (Domino) will play a superkiller in The Bourne Ultimatum.... Alan Arkin, hot off the success of Little Miss Sunshine, is in talks to join Rendition, playing a senator who tries to help a pregnant woman (Reese Witherspoon) find her missing CIA analyst husband (Jake Gyllenhaal)..... Lionsgate has nabbed U.S. distribution rights to a live-action feature based on the Bratz dolls. Production starts in February, no casting has been announced. (Hurry, Mary-Kate and Ashley, hurry!)
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