Are you a huge fan of sex panthers, and diapers full of Indian food, and tridents to the chest, and the breaking of the glass ceiling, and all the rest of the good stuff from Anchorman? Have you been waiting years for the sequel? Want to know everything you can about Anchorman: The Legend Continues? Well, you can't. You can't know everything. It's just started shooting and, frankly, they're not going to let all the details go just yet. It just doesn't make sense, for the movie, to do that. I'm sorry. You gotta maintain the mystery.
Obviously, you should not hitchhike unless you really have no other choice. It's also wise, in general, to avoid killing someone with a hatchet. But if you HAVE to hitchhike, and you HAVE to kill someone with a hatchet, you really should do it just like this. Homeless hitchhiker Kai Has-No-Last-Name ("No, bro, I don't have anything"), of indeterminate age ("I can't call it"), is maybe the only person who has ever been a hero in a story involving thumbing a ride and blunt force trauma.
Sometimes shows are canceled with a whimper. Usually shows are canceled with a harangue. This is not one of those times.
On a random summer Tuesday, executive producer Greg Daniels casually let slip that the upcoming, unasked-for ninth season of The Office would be the series’ last. Unlike with the premature passing of similarly influential sitcoms, there will be no kvetching in the streets, no mail-in campaigns, no strongly worded letters. This is an act of mercy, no different from the necessary euthanasia of a beloved pet.
Really! Will Ferrell showed up on Conan Wednesday night in full Ron Burgundy gear — complete with mustache, jazz flute, and insults — and made it very clear: "I want to announce this to everyone here in the Americas ... to our friends in Spain, Turkey, and the U.K., including England ... that as of 0900 Mountain Time, Paramount Pictures and myself, Ronald Joseph Aaron Burgundy, have come to terms on a sequel to Anchorman ... it is official: There will be a sequel to Anchorman." Burgundy also tweeted, "Hey America & Hawaii. Looks like Paramount & my lawyer Gene Tigerworthy have agreed to terms on a sequel to Anchorman. Whiskey sours on me!" Well, I don't know about you, but to me, this news smells exactly like the opposite of a used diaper filled with Indian food.
Dan Silver: Last week Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was a film I was looking forward to mocking, shunning, and then secretly renting on VOD one night after my wife and kid went to bed. But after seeing the brooding, visually vibrant, and downright bad-ass first trailer, I quickly became excited to fork over my $11 on June 22. So it pains me to say that the film’s international trailer diminishes my enthusiasm somewhat. With its orchestral score and all too typical hyperbolic, out of context, monologue/VO, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter now feels like the tonally askew, narratively disjointed, bland summer blockbuster I always thought it was going to be. More specifically it’s smelling a little like Jonah Hex. [Ed Note: OUCH.]
As previously rumored, Billy Crystal has indeed been hired to replace Eddie Murphy as Oscars host, for his ninth go-around on the hosting carousel. After the news was confirmed, Billy tweeted “Am doing the Oscars so the young woman in the pharmacy will stop asking my name when I pick up my prescriptions. Looking forward to the show.” Your 84th Academy Awards host, everyone! Grade: B- [Deadline]
The Clash of the Titans sequel, Wrath of the Titans, opens March of next year, but Warner Bros. is already planning a third installment. Two of Wrath’s co-writers, Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson, have been hired to whip up a treatment that will again focus on Sam Worthington’s Perseus. A name for the movie is far from being confirmed, although producers are rumored to really be leaning toward Kitty Litter Tray of the Titans. Grade: C [HR]
Steve Carell will star in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, the long-gestating movie about John du Pont, paranoid schizophrenic heir to the du Pont chemical fortune. In 1996, in the wrestling-training facility he built called Team Foxcatcher, du Pont shot and killed his friend David Schultz, an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, then shut himself in his mansion negotiating with the police over the phone for two days. Wait — Steve Carell is going to murder someone? He better be practicing his serious face. Grade: A- [Showblitz]
Woody Harrelson is in talks for Now You See Me, a heist movie also starring Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, Isla Fisher, and Melanie Laurent. Woody would play a magician who uses his Jedi-mind-tricks style in the services of the Four Horsemen, a crew of gentlemen-illusionist-bank-robbers who pull off their heists during their performances, then dole out the money to the crowds. Oh, you crazy-ass sounding movie, you had us at "Jedi mind tricks." Grade: A [Showblitz]
Tonight, The Office returns for its eighth season — and first without Steve Carell. To make sure it stays appointment television, here are a few suggested plotlines for the show's other characters.
