Tonight another year slips into the mists of memory like mime into quicksand. And to celebrate, here’s what those of us a PCWEI think are the best things to remember about 2007:
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How powerful is David Letterman? His tears cure cancer. Except he’s never cried. Oh wait, that’s Chuck Norris…
Letterman has negotiated his own deal with the WGA so his writers (and the ones for network mate Craig Ferguson) get to come back to work on January 2nd. Letterman and his production company Worldwide Pants worked for the last two weeks to hammer out an agreement. So like Leno, Kimmel, and Conan, Letterman will come back on the 2nd. But unlike the others he’ll have his writing staff. Advantage Dave.
via TV Squad
I’m proud to present, through the miracle of YouTube, the sneak preview of Heroes volume three: Villains that was shown at the Jules Verne Film Festival:
Anchorman. 40-Year-Old Virgin. Talladega Nights. Knocked Up. Superbad. It’s safe to say that Judd Apatow has had the Midas touch lately. He’s managed to either write/direct or write/produce films that range from completely silly to bawdily funny but grounded in reality. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is his latest writing effort, and it treads on new ground for Apatow: the musical. The spoof of music biopics like Walk the Line and Ray seems like perfect fodder for Apatow’s signature wit. But can it live up to it’s predecessors and fulfill the lofty expectations?
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X-mas is finally here, presents are open, and the roast is in the oven. So let’s fire up the old jukebox for a little aural cheer:
Sufjan Stevens - “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!”
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Jonathon Coulton - “Podsafe Christmas Song”
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Michael Bishop - “Rock-a-billy Christmas”
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And because no X-Mas is complete without mashups, here are a couple of selections from Santastic III (In 3-D!):
djBC - “You Shook Me All Noel”
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mojochronic - “Yuletide Zeppelin”
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There’s a red band trailer for Will Ferrell’s upcoming basketball movie Semi-Pro out, and like most red band trailers it makes the movie look much funnier than the G-rated version.
We’ve got a while to wait for the movie, as it’s not due to hit theaters until February 29th. Even if you’re not a Will Ferrell fan it should be fun to see Andy Richter, Tim Meadows, Will Arnett, and Woody Harrelson together.
It seemed like this week might be a good time for a Christmas-themed cover. So here are Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam covering John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”. U2’s the perfect band to cover a protest song, and their version is thankfully devoid of any of Yoko’s shrieking…
You may have heard of Pixar, the animation studio that’s brought us Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. They tend to make movies that don’t suck.
Well their next project is called WALL-E, and it’s about a robot that’s left behind when humans leave Earth. For 700 years he keeps doing his job, cleaning up trash. Then he meets EVE and everything changes. It’s written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who directed Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc, and it hits theaters next June. Check out the trailer below.
Uniquely strange filmmaker Tim Burton is producing and directing his own spin on the Lewis Carrol classic Alice in Wonderland. Linda Woolverton, writer of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King will write the script. Filming will start in early 2008, but no word on a release date yet.
This should be interesting to say the least. What do you think? Can Burton pull off the sublime quirkiness of Alice in Wonderland without going off the rails?
My Lost-lust has officially set in. Why? Watch these two videos, then we’ll discuss:
30-Second Trailer
Longer Trailer
Holy Schnikes. Ok, so after the videos what do we know?
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Ahh, the Cox jokes just never get old. I guess deep down I really am 12 years old…
The marketing machine for Walk Hard is in full swing. They’ve got lots of goodies to check out, including holiday cards for your friends (like the one above and the ones below), clips from the movie, and downloadable Dewey Cox bobbleheads for your computer. Head on over to EveryoneLovesCox and check them out.
Sony has released the first 10 minutes of the Walk Hard, so if you can’t wait until this Friday you can check it out below.
The clip shows Dewey Cox’s back story, from growing up in the country, to cutting his brother in half, to becoming a musician. If the rest of the movie lives up to this it’s going to be hysterical. Can’t wait!
The fine folks over at /Film have served up a few more nuggets from The Dark Knight today.
First, watch the official, non-bootlegged, version of the first full trailer for The Dark Knight below, or get it in glorious high definition.
Next, check out a bootlegged version of the first few minutes of the movie. It’s playing as a trailer to the IMAX version of I Am Legend.
And, finally, a new poster for the movie, featuring The Joker asking us, “Why So Serious?” (click for the full-size version)
The end of the year is upon us, and here at PCWEI we’re busy Christmas shopping, working, and generally getting things wrapped up before the new year. So Sunday Music Spotlight is going to take the rest of the year off. To tide you over until the first Sunday of next year, here’s a playlist of songs that have appeared in the Sunday Music Spotlight this year.
Enjoy, and happy holidays.
NBC officially unveiled the car that will be KITT in the new TV movie version of Knight Rider, and just like we thought, it’s a Mustang. They also had the cast on hand at the unveiling, so we get to see the folks who will be behind and against KITT. TV Squad has all the details, with pictures and story details.
The highlights are that Hasselhoff will make a guest appearance as Michael Knight, the main character will be his son, and the really cool part, KITT’s voice will be played by Will Arnett (who played Gob on Arrested Development). So KITT should have a sense of humor. And possibly perform illusions.
Knight Rider premiers on NBC on February 17th, 2008.
Who doesn’t love Bruce Campbell? You know, the badass actor from the Evil Dead movies (including Army of Darkness)? He’s one of the few actors that manages to be funny and a badass at the same time.
So now that we all agree that we love him, let me tell you a story. Imagine you live in a small town in Oregon. And you accidentally summon the Chinese god of war. Who do you call? Bruce Campbell, naturally.
That’s the basic plot of My Name is Bruce, an upcoming movie that Campbell directed and stars in. It’s not due out until the middle of next year, but check out the trailer now. It looks like it could be a classic B movie.
There’s a trailer for The Dark Knight that’s running before I Am Legend, and because this is 2007 it has leaked onto teh intrawebs. Hooray intrawebs!
It’s a poor quality recording of the trailer, but it’s good enough for me to say that if the movie comes anywhere near living up to the trailer this will be far and away the best Batman movie ever. Heath Ledger seems delightfully deranged as The Joker. He looks so badass that I have a feeling Batman will be playing second fiddle in his own movie. But don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself:
In addition to the supremely kickass trailer, /Film has uncovered two international posters for the film. The first shows Batman looking over a city, and the second shows The Joker down on the street ready to cause mayhem.
(Click on the thumbnails to see them full-sized)
The first trailer for the straight-to-DVD movie version of Dead Like Me is out, and it shows a few interesting things. First we get to see Henry Ian Cusick as Rube’s replacement. Then we get to see Sarah Wynter replacing Laura Harris as Daisie. Overall, while it’s good to see the reapers again, it doesn’t give us a lot to work with. Check it out:
For more news about the movie check out this post at TVSquad.
Influential rock guitarist Ike Turner has died at the age of 76. Turner is best known for being Tina Turner’s shady husband, but he was actually quite the musical innovator. He wrote and played on what’s considered the first “rock n’ roll” record: “Rocket 88″ by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. He was an early adopter and innovator of guitar distortion. As an A&R man for Sun Record he signed Howlin Wolf, Otis Redding, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Elmore James. After that he discovered Tina, wrote strings of hits, and became a highly-regarded session guitarist and piano player. Of course he also did time in prison for drugs, and there’s the little matter of him allegedly beating Tina, but let’s not kick a guy on the day he died.
J.J. Abrams and the rest of the folks behind the upcoming Cloverfield have released an extended clip from the movie. The clip does a good job of giving you enough information to get you excited without giving away anything. Check it out below:
Merriam-Webster has named it’s Word of the Year for 2007, and the winner is “w00t!”. If you’re not a gamer or interweb geek you may be thinking “What the hell is w00t!?” It’s a general-purpose interjection expressing joy or excitement, usually used when smiting one’s enemies or scoring cool stuff. Note that the two middle letters are zeroes, because the word stems from L33t, the hacker spelling system.
There are a bunch of theories about the origin of “w00t!”, but they all center around online gaming. The two most plausible are:
- It’s an acronym for “we owned other team”, originating in online games like Counter Strike
- It’s RPG shorthand for “wow, loot!”
I think “w00t!” is a great word, but I’m a little dissapointed. I would have voted for “pwned”…
via BoingBoing
Here’s the second pic I’ve found from Spike Jonez’ upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendek’s iconic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are (the first one is here). This looks like the type of material Jonez can really sink his teeth into and create something very very cool. We’ll have to wait until October of next year to find out.
The official video for Iron & Wine’s “Boy With a Coin” is out, and it features Sam playing for what appears to be a flamenco dance class. The lovely ladies dance and clap along to the song. Then the instructor takes over and shows them how it’s really done. Great use of subtle special effects. All in all I’d have to say it’s a very well done video. But don’t take my word for it:
Not many bands can take you on a journey from camfire singalongs to experimental noise rock in the space of one album. But that’s just what Portland’s Blitzen Trapper does on their latest release, Wild Mountain Nation.
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If you’re anything like me you’re a big fan of Scrubs, and you think that one of the funnier characters on the show is The Todd. Well here’s The Todd, rapping a song about his favorite body part, uninhibited by NBC’s puritanical rules:
For the full story behind this video head on over to TV Squad
Here’s a new clip from the upcoming Apatow joint Walk Hard. It shows Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) meeting and falling for his backup singer Darlene Madison (Office hottie Jenna Fischer), set to the pair singing “Let’s Duet”, a double-entendre laced country ballad.
Walk Hard comes out December 21st, but I’m not sure I can wait that long…
Just because I’m in a Jonathan Coulton kind of mood today, here are a couple folks covering JoCo on ukuleles.
First up is YouTube user sweetafton23 (who you may remember from her cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”) taking on “Tom Cruise Crazy”:
Next is YouTube user JohnRockwell, who put some production values into his cover of the modern office zombie drama that is “re: Your Brain”:
When I heard that the creative miscreants behind The Matrix Trilogy had decided to make a live-action version of Speed Racer I was intrigued. I was never a big fan of the cartoon, but how could I not be interested in what the Wachowski Brothers were going to do with it? Well they certainly haven’t disappointed.
Never content to stick with something conventional, the Wachowskis have set out to make the movie look like a live-action cartoon. Using fancy new techniques to layer film and keep the foreground and background of the frame in focus . On top of that they’ve packed each frame with highly saturated colors, further enhancing the cartoon feel.
So, will all this fanciness add up to anything? Judge for yourself below (or go to MovieFone to see it in high def):
Speed Racer races into theaters May 9th, 2008.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times: Red Band trailers kick ass. Here’s the red band trailer for the latest Judd Apatow joint, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which shows more of the back story, some drug use, and includes lots of profanity. Oh, and there’s more Jenna Fischer. So basically wins all around.
Click the thumbnail for the full-size photo, in all its hi-res glory. I’m not a big Iron Man fan, but I have to admit the suit looks pretty bad ass. Look for Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man on May 2, 2008.
Adam Brody, former star of The OC and the infinitely superior Gilmore Girls, will play the role of Wally West, aka The Flash, the upcoming Justice League of America movie. You may remember The Flash as the comic book character that could run fast. That’s it. Just run fast. Kind of like Deion Sanders in red and yellow tights. Not quite as lame as Aquaman, but pretty close.
Previously, Ryan Reynolds (aka Van Wilder) had said it was his dream to play The Flash. Sorry Ryan. No soup for you. At least not in Justice League, but there’s still a shot of The Flash getting his own movie after that’s over.
Any comic fans out there who can tell me why The Flash isn’t lame? Because I’m just not seeing it. I mean running fast is cool and all, but it’s not that exciting. I seem to remember him running so fast around the world that he reversed the rotation of the earth and made time go backward, but I could be confusing that with Superman (or just making it up…).
The Office’s receptionist and resident hottie Jenna Fischer is writing an indie movie. She’s not willing to give any details yet, but she’s hoping to have Walk Hard co-star John C. Reilly to star in it, because she would “actually like to do every single film with John C. Reilly for the rest of my career.”
This won’t be Jenna’s first foray into the writing world. She wrote and directed the mockumentary LolliLove with her husband James Gunn (that lucky, lucky bastard…). LolliLove follows the couple’s quest to give back by wrapping lollipops in inspirational messages and handing them out to homeless people. And it’s actually pretty funny. At least I think I remember it being funny. I’m pretty sure I lent my copy to someone and never got it back. If you have my copy please drop me a line 
via MTV Movie Blog
Last night’s season finale of Heroes wrapped up some loose ends, but in typical fashion it left a number of unanswered questions. The show’s creator Tim Kring offered up some answers in a TV Guide interview.
Don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers here. There are some in the article though, so consider yourself warned.
The role of KITT in the new Knight Rider movie and series won’t be played by a Pontiac like the original. Instead it will be a Shelby GT500KR Mustang. Jalopnik not only has the news, but they have actual pictures of the car.
The new Knight Rider is coming to NBC in 2008 as a made-for-tv movie. If that does well the network will pick it up for a series, sans Hasselhoff.
Will Oldham is something of a Renaissance man. Not only is he a multi-faceted musician, but he’s also an accomplished actor and photographer. In his musical career he’s performed and recorded under a number of different monikers, including Palace Brothers, Palace Brothers, Palace Music, and his most recent and most famous, Bonnie “Prince” Billy.
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The Today Show’s Al Roker sat chatted with Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhardt, and Christopher Nolan on the set of The Dark Knight. There’s also some good behind-the-scenes footage.
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