The Headliner

To the Wonder

After going the better part of a decade without making a film after the Best Picture Oscar nominee The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick is on a tear, following up 2011’s Tree of Life with To the Wonder (available on demand the same day as its theatrical release), less than two years later.

While Malick's most recent films may seem daunting in their scale — set against the backdrop of World War II (in the case of Line), or trying to cover all of life on Earth through the lens of a single family (OK, I never saw Tree of Life, but I know I saw dinosaurs in the trailer) — To the Wonder features a story that actually seems like a topic that could be fully covered on film. Ben Affleck returns to acting in someone else's movie to play a man torn between his love for two different women: a beautiful European (Olga Kurylenko) who's moved to the U.S. to be with him, and an American (Canadian Rachel McAdams, stretching) he's known since they were kids. Also present — and forebodingly narrating the trailer — is Javier Bardem as a priest, and let's hope one who sticks closer to the Eat Pray Love end of the spectrum than, say, Skyfall.

The Miami Heat's epic winning streak may have ended, but the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles are the NCAA tournament's Cinderella story and Spring Breakers is a surprise hit. Here are five more reasons why Florida is the nation's current cultural capital.

1. Electronic Dance Music & Trap Rap

The EDM bubble has yet to burst (or um, drop), and while we may look back at this era one day with all the head-shaking fondness now reserved for hair metal, right now is a good time to be an arena rave DJ or electronic musician in Florida. Particularly this month, when the annual Winter Music Conference is held in Miami in tandem with the electrocentric Ultra Music Festival. Diplo, who set out to be a world-famous DJ like Paul Oakenfold as a goof and ended up succeeding, also as a goof (Paul Jokenfold), titled his debut full-length album Florida in homage to the state he spent some years growing up in. Also inescapable: Carol City native Rick Ross's lumbering trap rap, heard blasting in bottle service clubs and out of hulking cars, most recently encouraging you to slip Molly in your date's drink and date-rape her.

By the time A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III was announced last September, Charlie Sheen's meltdown had just about completely abated. The timing seemed telling: It was the first movie for Roman Coppola, Sofia's big brother, since his 2001 debut CQ (he did co-write The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom in that time); it was also Sheen's first big-screen starring role since before he started his Two and a Half Men run.

Just out of common decency, really. Let's let it go? Until it actually happens? Because otherwise you have the last few years of endless rumors and innuendo about the movie, which no one but Dan Aykroyd seems to really want at this point. Not that it matters that there's no tangible development; every time another bit of unconfirmed nothingness bubbles up, the Internet freaks out, and we all get sad about the passing of time and the sullying of what was once good and true and pure (a.k.a. the first Ghostbusters). And the latest spike in the cycle is now here, courtesy of some information that director Ivan Reitman might have — or might have not! — shared in an interview with Collider. The evidence in question:

Bill Murray prefers not to sequel. Despite the fact that lifelong friend Dan Aykroyd's been so obsessed with ramming his Ghostbusters 3 project into multiplexes that the whole endeavor increasingly feels like an insane funding scheme for his burgeoning artisanal-booze-inside-Waterford-skulls empire, Murray has refused to pull on his protoplasm-wicking Venkman coveralls to cross streams one more time with his old bustin' buddies as long as there's any chance the effort will feel like a desperate cash-grab. But now it seems that Aykroyd, weary of the years-long standoff, is ready to make it happen without the stonewalling Murray. He tells the U.K.'s Metro:

Intense scrutiny goes hand in hand with the casting of any iconic superhero, and yet a few years back, when the Fantastic Four film installed Chris Evans as Johnny Storm (the Human Torch), I don't recall anyone complaining that Bill Murray didn't get the gig. Granted, at the time Murray was well into his fifties, just a bit older than the character of Johnny Storm. But the man had experience!

Star

John Travolta's Secret Life Surprises Kelly Preston: "Kelly was suddenly besieged by the reports of John's secret sex life." After their 11-year-old daughter asked what was up, Kelly "fell to the floor in a flood of tears. Suddenly, Kelly feels like she's been living a lie for two decades, and it's like a knife to the heart." The rumors about Travolta "have swarmed around Hollywood since at least 1990, when Paul Barresi, a gay porn star, publicly claimed that he and John were having sex." As a complete coincidence, Travolta married Preston in 1991 in "a quickie Scientology wedding ceremony." They signed a contract whose "exact contents are unknown" and "such agreements can contain almost anything — including prohibiting a spouse from speaking publicly about scandals." Jeff Conaway, who co-starred as Kenickie in Grease alongside Travolta, claims "that John once tried to perform oral sex on him while he slept." Conaway also says "that Kelly knows that John is gay" and agreed to beard for him, because she "wanted the lifestyle that comes with a marriage to a Hollywood celebrity more than love."

For as long as there have been rumors of a third installment of the Ghostbusters franchise, there have been rumors of Bill Murray hating the idea of a third installment of the Ghostbusters franchise. In interviews Murray is mostly coy about his feelings toward the project, stopping short of out-and-out animosity and settling instead into a nice, deep, indifferent groove. Well, there was that one time he knocked Year One, the previous movie from Ghostbusters 3 screenwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg: "People who [saw it], including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives.” (Side note: I myself am not a Ghostbuster, but cannot disagree with their appraisal of Year One.) So with Dan Aykroyd both rewriting the script and talking up the thing every chance he gets, plus a legion of nostalgia-demanding consumers salivating at the mere prospect of more Ray Parker Jr. jams, the perceived battle lines in the war for GB3 have long been set: Aykroyd/humanity vs. Bill Murray.

So here it is: The full version of the upcoming Super Bowl commercial in which Matthew Broderick, for reasons that are probably no more complicated than "it sounded kind of fun, and I was paid all the remaining money in the world," uses one of the most beloved characters in movie history to sell some Honda CR-Vs. This is the part where we're supposed to feel outraged, betrayed, our collective childhoods thoroughly diddled by the handsy uncle of commerce. You, sir, are acting in a manner unfit for the Sausage King of Chicago!