Eddie Murphy may have to leave his donkey at home; George Lucas continues his ruination of all things nerds love; Madonna makes a comedy without even trying; Alec Baldwin still has great hair; TNT decides it needs a little more space on their roster.
Today’s Hollywood Dish will do it live!
Are We Sure Shrek Can Lend the World Eddie Murphy?: Brett Ratner, The Best Producer of Our Time, and the former murderer of the X-Men franchise, is co-producing the Oscars. We’ve already discussed how this makes us feel intestinally, but apparently he also worked diligently to get Eddie Murphy as the 2012 Oscar host. His hard work paid off. Eddie Murphy will host the Oscars in probably what will be the most over-hyped, pressure filled broadcast in recent memory. No one will give a crap if Franco ate the funny brownies last year. It will now be the year Eddie Murphy either does or does not F*** Up the Oscars. Now, if this were twenty years ago, we’d be pretty excited to see Eddie up there making the jokes, doing the impressions, and bringing the sarcasm to the stage, right? But after several years of kid movies, goofy antics, Norbit, and myriad other non-serious roles, we’re a little skeptical…not to mention that Eddie has seemed a bit camera-shy during his most recent live appearances. We wonder if he still has the “chops,” or if given the opportunity, he’ll just dissolve into Donkey Voice and talk about “Makin Waffles” or something else equally regrettable. In his favor, Deadline reports that sources say Eddie is a true cinephile and that he can quote scenes from various movies word for word, and we shouldn’t forget his numerous, and legendary live concert films, and days on SNL. Still, support of this move has been received with mixed response. When it goes down in February, if nothing else, people may tune in to see either the resurrection of comedy genius or to see Eddie fall flat on his face. I’m rooting for the former. Good Luck, Eddie! [Deadline]
George Lucas to Attempt Star Wars Procreation Forever: He just won’t stop. Ever. No, not ever. George Lucas will keep squeezing as much out of the Star Wars franchise until there is literally just silver nitrate dust particles left, which he will then fuse together with the geriatric hair follicles he’s plucked from Mark Hamil’s head, and like some sort of movie destroying wizard he will create a monster that continues to ravage beloved movies and effectively smear the dung of stupid ideas onto them all. In one of the world’s worst ideas, Lucas has decided to release the Blu-Ray versions of the trilogy with 40 hours of extras (40 HOURS!), and Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi will now say “Nooooo! Noooo!” when the Emperor tries to kill Luke. Nerds just exploded globally. Really, nerds have just exploded into a million shiny stars across the cosmos. Some are even calling for a boycott of the Blu-Ray release based on George Lucas’ continued copulation with the franchise. Apparently, he wants Star Wars babies made for all of eternity. It isn’t enough that he made three garbage sequels that spawned numerous other chaotic Gremlins, now he has sullied the good name of Darth Vader! Sullied! And effectively made him lame. This will not stand. Someone will pay…but not George Lucas. George will continue to live at his ranch and continue to profit until there is no longer money and we‘ve gone back to buying things with beads and shells. [Deadline]
Madonna Accused of Giving Everyone “Laughing Gas” at Film Festival: Well, this is just not good. You know how British Madonna decided that she, purveyor of all things English, would make a movie about the British royalty and some American person named Wallis Simpson? Yes, well, that was a bad idea, since it has basically bombed all over the Venice Film Festival. Oh, ho. Seriously, it’s pretty bad. U.K. news outlets are reporting that Madonna has actually made a comedy! And that it’s a “simpering folly.” Wow, that can’t be good. The movie literally “had ‘em rolling in the aisles.” Sheesh. Uh, um, okay… is this like saying it’s the Ishtar of Venice? Because that’s what it sounds like. Reportedly Harvey Weinstein, who is set to distribute the movie here in the states, is pretty angry by the response and well, by the movie itself. He was going to push for its release during the sacred Oscar months. That’s probably a bad idea, Harvey. Deadline is reporting that he may try his hand at re-editing the picture himself to try and save the film. And he’ll have to do all of this by the NY and LA release date of December 9th. Most likely he’ll cut and slash the film and then dump it quietly into America’s lap and hope we find some sort of middle ground and not compare it to Shanghai Surprise or Swept Away…other Madonna failures. But we will. It’s what we do! Remember Who’s That Girl?! Fortunately for Weinstein he also has Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in the hopper as well as My Week with Marilyn starring Michelle Williams slated for release soon. Madonna, though, is releasing another album in 2012. And we think there’s nothing like having a day job. [Deadline]
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetleju…Really?: Hold on to your faces, Hollywood has set their time machines back to the 80’s yet again, and this time they’d like to make a sequel out of the Tim Burton hit, Beetlejuice. Well, okay. I guess if Robert Englund can play Freddy for decades than we can drag out old Michael Keaton, right? Producers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith are adamant that this will not be a reboot. It will in fact advance the movie forward. Hmmm, okay. I suppose we can round up Winona Ryder and Geena Davis, they haven’t been really busy in a while, and well, Alec Baldwin will have to rectify looking at the slimmer, sexier version of himself in the original with the comedic blowhard he is now… but just who will Beetlejuice haunt? Will there be little goth Winona’s running around? Has he found the Shaman who shrunk his head and he’s free to roam outside that model town? There are just so many things we can do with this movie that haven’t been done before in a sequel! Don’t you agree? And just what role will Johnny Depp play? Oh, there’s no way they could revisit this thing with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp not play some sort of Edward Scissorhands, brooding, goth, garage-band misfit, right? Let us all get prepared for Beetlejuice starring Winona, Alec, Geena, and Johnny Depp as a weirdo, headless, Willy Wonka, finger-slicing, murderous barber type. We’ve never seen this movie. It will be totally new and original. Oh, Beetlejuice, you should just stay dead. [Deadline]
It’s Probably Marc Anthony’s Fault: On the heels of an actual break-up and a rumored one by the two lead actors, TNT has canceled the drama HawthoRNe starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Marc Anthony. The show ran for three seasons. Really? That many? I kind of just thought it appeared one day last Spring and stayed on the air because no one really knew it was on and everyone just kind of forgot about it. I almost think this is how How I Met Your Mother managed to stay on air all these years. The network isn’t giving a reason as to why the show was canceled. We can just assume it was ratings related or the fact that there’s no ampersand in HawthoRNe. You know, like the other shows the network has renewed, Rizzoli & Isles and Franklin & Bash. See, it’s probably some sort of latent ampersand discrimination, or a prejudice against using capital letters in the middle of names like RN, because the main character is an RN, and her name is Hawthrone and it has an RN in the middle…HA! We never knew that! It’s just really shocking what those TV people will come up with. So talented. So creative. Well, HawthoRNe will just have to go to some unknown place where television shows with stupid names go. Obviously this show was just too much of a burden on the network who’s getting ready for a reboot of Dallas. Like for real. You need to have all hands on deck if you’re going to reboot Dallas. And no ampersand-less drama about nurses or alphabet soup connoisseurs should be left hanging around while these folks have a second go at living the life in Rick Perry’s state. [EW]
