Sufficiently Teased? Here's the Red Band Trailer

It's nice to see Traci Lords back in porno where she belongs.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno Red Band Teaser Trailer

And, in fact, we are teased. NSFW.

The Players of the Onion

Is that the recently dead Don LaFontaine doing voiceover on the trailer for the Steven Seagal fake 'fu film Cock Puncher? And is that Steve Guttenberg? (t/y Ed)

Guy Ritchie Plus One

A flawless Madonna took a tour detour last night, flying in from Zurich to support husband Guy Richie at the premiere in Leicester Square of his latest movie, RocknRolla. Tomorrow she's off to Amsterdam. Meanwhile, it looks like she wants to fuck the photographer. Or already has. (Mail; photo: Wire Image)

The Brothers Bloom

Rachel Weisz, Adrian Brody, and Mark Ruffalo star in this romantic crime adventure written and directed by Brick's Rian Johnson. (Official site)

Paris Hilton Auditions for The Queen

In this "lost screen test," the hotel heiress reads for the part of the British monarch with her best English accent. Which, of course, is hot.

Another Gay Sequel: Out Now

Does the Lady Bunny stretch her acting chops to the breaking point playing against type in the film Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild? You'll have to see. It opens today. The comedy also stars RuPaul, Scott Thompson, and Lypsinka.

Snap!

Optimus Prime rolls onto the set of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen in Long Beach, California, which has been temporarily transformed into China. (get the big picture)

Snap!

George Clooney arrived in Venice today for the waterlogged city's 65th annual film festival. The Coen brothers' movie Burn After Reading, starring Clooney and Brad Pitt, opens the festival tomorrow night. (Photo: Joel Ryan/AP)

Bears, Robots, Donuts

Two wonderful retromoderne animations featuring things soft, hard, and edible. (t/y Clancy)

Trojan Horse

Fenton Bailey writes:

Generally, independent production companies in competition with each other don't get along. But I always liked Gavin Hay and Remy Blumenfeld of Brighter Pictures. Then they got bought by Endemol for jillions and, no longer obliged to race on TV's treadmill, Gavin and Remy went their separate ways in pursuit of their dreams.

Of the two, Remy always seemed "girl on the loose" versus Gavin, who projected a more stay-at-home professorial vibe. He wore glasses and corduroys – maybe even smoked a pipe.

But then Gavin changed his name to Trojan Rock.

Woody Allen: She Is Not a Muse

Woody Allen wants to make it clear that although Scarlett Johansson has starred in at least 14 consecutive films of his, she is in no way his muse. "It is silly," he said when his Johansson-starring Vicky Cristina Barcelona premiered at the LA Film Festival. "She’s in no way my muse, but she is one of the great American actresses." (FoxNews; photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters

Shia LaBeouf: Revenge of the Fallen

Shia LaBeouf, looking very beouf indeed, was back on the set of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday with his spiffily bandaged hand written into the sequel. So how does a guy do pushups with a broken wrist? (Photos: INF Daily)

Primer Scream

This beautiful, surreal, increasingly nightmarish, exhaustively annotated animated tale will haunt you retroactively. Even in a past life, if it has to, it's that awesome. (via IHeartChaos)

Robert Downey Jr Not a Fan of The Dark Knight

So far this year, Robert Downey Jr has starred and co-starred in two of the summer's best movies – exciting entertainments that were, in our opinion, superior to The Dark Knight in many ways. And judging from what he had to say in this interview, he agrees:

"... I saw The Dark Knight. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and scriptwriting and I’m like, ’That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved The Prestige but didn’t understand The Dark Knight. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character, and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ’I get it. This is so highbrow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? Fuck DC comics. That’s all I have to say, and that’s where I’m really coming from."

James Franco: Sonny and Share

In the 2002 Nicolas Cage movie Sonny, James Franco played a prostitute (above), and to learn the moves, he hung out with the boys who work Santa Monica Boulevard. In an interview with GQ magazine, he reveals that to prove he wasn't an undercover cop, he had to pull out his dick and show it to them. Presumably for free. But the LA whores weren't as forthcoming as the Method man had hoped, so he turned to the pros in New Orleans, and hung out in a Bourbon Street sex club with a straight male stripper who serviced both men and women. Franco says that when a man came in and needed some action right away, he went along on the job and watched. Presumably for free. (Page Six)

Putting the Man in Romance

A montage of swoony romantic scenes culled from gay films. See, it's not all about fisting. (t/y Adam)

Destroying Jonah Hill

World of Wonder's tech assist Steve Sims looks a lot like Superbad star Jonah Hill and he made a comedy short about it called Destroying Jonah Hill. The film got such good feedback at a private screening in Los Angeles last March that Phalco Films decided to release it as both a DVD and as an online download. In the short, directed by Dylan Stern and written by Sims and Mike Roach, Sims plays an aspiring actor named Sims who moves to Los Angeles with his best friend Roach in the hope of getting his high school-set screenplay made, starring himself – then discovers the existence of doppelganging Jonah Hill and Superbad. Sims sets out to destroy Hills – at least in the business.

Brand, James Brand

The new OO7 movie, Quantum of Solace, the getting-easier-to-remember-the-name-of sequel to Casino Royale and the 22nd movie in the whole effing Bond franchise, is said to be fully loaded with product placement. Says Variety:

Sequel to "Casino Royale" will again be backed by Ford Motor Co., Heineken beer, Smirnoff vodka, Omega watches, Virgin Atlantic, Sony Ericsson cell phones and other Sony electronics. These brands all have products placed in the film and each will shell out tens of millions of dollars as a promotional partner of the pic.

Jake Gyllenhaal: He's Fit for a Prince

Jake Gyllenhaal holds hands with a frowny Reese Witherspoon on the set of his movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, shooting in Morocco. He built up quite a rugged exterior for the role of Dastan, a 6th-century prince determined to keep the god-given magic sands on the side of right. Meanwhile, the couple are staying at the luxurious five-star Amanjena hotel in Marrakech. (Just Jared; photo: SplashNewsOnline)

Suspiria Again?

The story that Britney Spears will be taking Tura Satana's role of Varla in Tarantino's remake of Russ Meyer's 1965 Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! turned out to be a fabrication, if you believe the singer's rep. So let's run this up the flagpole of celebrity-mouthpiece denial: It's said that Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green's next project, a remake of Dario Argento's sumptuous 1977 horror classic, Suspiria, will have Natalie Portman in the role originated by Jessica Harper. We won't believe it's true until we're told it isn't. (Bloody Disgusting via Tuna Flix)

Pussycat! Dolls

Britney Spears is as good as signed to play the murderous lesbian stripper Varla in Quentin Tarantino's unnecessary remake of Russ Meyer's gorgeous 1965 classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! "Quentin is convinced Britney will be brilliant," said a source. But no one can measure up to the genius of Tura Satana in that role. Really.

Kubrick's Boxes to Air In US

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, Jon Ronson's awesome documentary on the thousand-plus cardboard boxes the director obsessively filled with every bit of trivia and memorabilia from his films, was part of the "True Stories" Kubrick series that ran on Channel 4 in the UK – and now Randy Barbato tells us that the World of Wonder production will be airing soon on the Sundance Channel in the US, which is very good news. Here's an excerpt from a story in Variety yesterday:

The boxes reveal memos to assistants on everything from researching precise barometric pressures to developing a breakaway cat leash, as well as (more fascinatingly for movie buffs) screen tests for "Lolita" and 18 hours of docu footage shot by Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, during the making of "Full Metal Jacket." (Latter is extensively excerpted, showing a surprisingly patient, genial helmer at work.) But no outtakes from his movies: Per Ronson, Kubrick incinerated them all. [...] Weirdest find is that Kubrick kept every single fan letter, cataloguing them as either "positive," "negative" or "crank." In one inspired moment, Ronson tracks down one writer, former TV scripter Vincent Tilsley, 35 years after he penned a critique of "2001."

(Ronson photo, left, by Chris M Saunders)

Painful-to-Watch Video of the Day

Debbie Matenopoulos truly believes she and Robert Downey Jr are fabulous together here. The actor, stumping for the stumpteenth time for Tropic Thunder, seems barely able to stay awake and badly needs a bump of something as soon as the Debster finishes being taken with herself. Fortunately, that won't happen.

McFlys: Feeture Presentation

After much pressure from consumers, constant nudging from Michael Maloof of the Official McFly 2015 Project, and a cool video, Nike has finally made some headway into the production of the fantasy self-tying Air McFlys Michael J Fox wore in Back to the Future II. Above, a still from the movie; below, the new issue from Nike. "The box itself has 2015 on its side," says Gizmodo, "and the slide out inner chamber is patterned like Marty's hoverboard. The wrapping paper inside has the words 'great scott!' on them. And the sneakers come with hoverboard pink laces with blue tips." Sadly, the laces don't tie themselves. Perhaps version 2.0.

(Previously and previously)

Johnny Depp, Already Fond of Hats, to Play Mad Hatter

Johnny Depp is reportedly set to play the Mad Hatter in what would be an extended cameo in Tim Burton's proposed 3-D version of Alice in Wonderland, the Lewis Carroll acid trip that's been done again and again. But does Burton even have to shoot it – can't we already picture it? (LA Times' The Envelope)

Boba Fett: What a Feeling

The Wonky Horror Picture Show

In this clip from the upcoming operafilm, Repo! The Genetic Opera, a ghastly, goth Paris Hilton appears to have unwittiingly used Method's "sense memory" technique for her performance, recalling some of her funkier nights at LeDeux, Hyde, etc – including going home in a garbage truck.

Don't Dream It, Remake It

Since 1975, the cult movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, has grossed $140 million in domestic box office – which doesn't seem like much, but is a helluva lot for a movie we're pretty sure was never officially released. Now MTV is thinking remake. Lou Adler, who was executive producer on the original film, is teaming with BermanBraun and Fox Television Studios on the new version, which will stick to director Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien's original script and may add some new tunes. We smell Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. "I'd like to see it shown a year from this coming Halloween, but that's up to MTV," Adler said. Yeah, well, we'd like to see it remade with the original cast, and set in a nursing home instead of a castle: The Rocking-Chair Horror Picture Show. (Variety; photo: Tim Curry and Lou Adler during the original production)

Sienna Miller: A Merkin Wasn't Workin'

A Hippie Hippie Shake post-production crew had to fluff up Sienna Miller's muff to make it suit a film set in '60s London. "Sienna was an absolute star throughout filming and her performance was flawless," an insider told the Mirror. "Unfortunately, Brazilians weren't common in the '60s and Sienna's part involved one or two nude scenes – meaning that her grooming habits were on full display." Wardrobe tried covering Miller's minge with a merkin but it looked...like a wig – and a weave might have been too labor-intensive. So it was CGI to the rescue. "Sienna's private parts were digitally enhanced," said the insider, "giving her a rather unruly, loud-and-proud bush." (Female First; photo via Egotastic!)

Not Only But Also: As We Were Saying

Well, isn't this convenient. A clip from the original At the Movies, featuring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, reviewing the 1992 comedy Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot, starring Sylvester Stallone and, yes, Estelle Getty. (via Golden Fiddle)

Ben & Ben: The Replacements

When the At the Movies guys on the left dropped the signature "thumbs up/thumbs down" rating system made famous by Siskel and Ebert, it was the beginning of the end for them, eventually leading to their being dropped from the show and now they'll be shopping their ingenious "see it/skip it" system elsewhere. Meanwhile, the guys on the right, both named Ben, have been fingered by ABC brass to replace the guys on the left. If anyone cares, Anne Thompson has the full story at Variety.

Journey at the Center of the Earth

Seems Earth has a melted-cheese center in this movie-music mashup. (t/y Jason)

Terminator Salvation Teaser Trailer

Christian Bale's next summer blockbuster. (t/y Ed)

Sing Along With Dr Horrible

Remember the loveliness that was Joss Whedon's musical episode of Buffy? You wanted more. Now Whedon's created a wonderful web musical, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starring the decidedly unhorrible Neil Patrick Harris as the horrible singing doctor. Apparently, there'd been a great deal of anticipation for the project that was frustrated when the first of the show’s three 15-minute episodes went live this morning at midnight. The international crowd immediately began screaming that they couldn’t access it and those viewers here who tried to pay $1.99 to download it from iTunes couldn’t. It wound up that so many people were clamoring to watch the show that its website crashed. Which was genuinely horrible. But the tumult has calmed down now and you can watch all three episodes on Hulu.

Three Things

What do these items – the severed head, the driver license, the newspaper story – have in common? Answer after the jump.

Sex and the Sequel

Those fashionable girls from Manhattan could be trading their cosmos and pricey boutique shopping for Coors and Macy's at the mall if the in-the-discussion-stage sequel to Sex and the City gets going. Warner Bros is salivating over the idea of pulling in another quick $150 million at the box office with Sex and the Suburbs. (Hollywood Insider)

The Boxes of Stanley Kubrick

This is the awesome trailer for our latest UK production: a Kubrick season on More 4. The trailer was created at inestimable cost by the channel (more on that). The tentpole of the season is a Jon Ronson-directed and World of Wonder-produced documentary that has at various times been called Kubrick's Cubes (Jon hated that one with a passion), Citizen Kubrick (the Kubrick estate hated that with a passion), and now simply Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, which no one hates – or loves much either! But the genius of the film is in the content – the thousands of boxes that Kubrick filled and squirelled away on his country estate. Going through the boxes was a monumental task, and so the film has been in production on and off for about four years. In this Guardian story, Jon writes about his journey into the archive around the same time we started filming back in 2004.

– Fenton Bailey

Extreme Makeovers: Holmes Edition

Robert Downey Jr and Sacha Baron Cohen will each be playing Sherlock Holmes in movies that revisit the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sleuth. Downey's in Guy Ritchie's film, an action adventure with boxing and swordplay; Cohen will play the detective for laughs under the direction of Judd Apatow, with Will Farrell as Holmes' hapless sidekick, Dr Watson. No word yet on whether either Sherlock will be taking cocaine. Both films should be ready for a showdown in 2009. (Guardian)

Dave Meeting Canceled

There was considerable excitement about Eddie Murphy showing up to meet press and fans yesterday at the premiere in Westwood of his Meet Dave movie. He was expected to talk up this latest production and announce a new sequel to his long-dead Beverly Hills Cop franchise. But he canceled at the last minute, leaving the likes of costars Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, and Scott Caan to cover. Perhaps Murphy had just seen a print of the sci-fi comedy and it reminded him of Pluto Nash. (LA.com)

Snoop Dogg to Earn His Delhi Bread

Recently, he made the soapy One Life to Live theme sound Snoopy, now Snoop Dogg is collaborating with Indian superstar Akshay Kumar to make a music video for the theme to Kumar's next movie, Singh Is Kinng. Kumar, you might know, is famous for his Khiladi series of films, in which he plays an Indian version of James Bond. (Page Six)

Friends: They'll Finally Be There for You

You can thank – or curse – the shocking success of Sex and the City's recent theatrical presentation for the probability of Friends heading to the big screen in the near future via Warner Bros. The "gang" – you know 'em, you love 'em – now considerably longer in the tooth, are said to be eager to reprise their roles (probably none more eager than Matt LeBlanc, who's gotta be outta pocket money by now, don't you think?). The idea to make a Friends movie has, of course, come up virtually every day since the last TV episode was shot, but there were always impediments. Like this one, reported by the Daily Mail: "'What's held back a Friends movie so far is that people were worried that Jennifer had simply become too famous to play Rachel again." Hah! She's so totally ready now, what with her own production company and all. Developing.

Question

Why is Universal looking for HD replacement masters of Inside Deep Throat?

One Hundred Movie Clips in Two Minutes

You do the meth.

Quantum Leak

Britney: Daft or Alive

Britney vs Daft Punk vs Dead or Alive. (t/y Steven)

The Dark Knight Begins

The good news is that the first review of The Dark Knight is super positive; the bad news is that it's from Rolling Stone's Peter "I loved it, and you can quote me!" Travers, who writes predictable raves to be excerpted in the Sunday papers. In fact, his first graph alone has enough blurbtastic hyperbole to fill a whole opening weekend of advertising:

Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up.

And so is Travers. Read on.

Mini-Me Files Maxi-Lawsuit

Actor Verne Troyer is fighting mad that a tiny part of his sex tape was leaked on the website TMZ, and filed suit yesterday, for a whopping $20 meeellion. In the suit, Troyer claims TMZ violated his privacy rights and infringed on his copyright and trademark by running portions of the tape on TMZ TV and TMZ.com, and alleges TMZ violated his right of publicity and misappropriated his name and likeness. All of which means TMZ showed his tiny part before he could. (TMZ)

Sienna Miller Has Dabbled

In the upcoming John Maybury film, The Edge of Love, Sienna Miller shares a bed and bath with Kiera Knightley. "We'd have the odd snog together. It wasn't all the time, but you know, who hasn't dabbled?" shrugged Miller. "And besides, female friendships can often be tactile and intimate." And now, if she hasn't before, Knightley can say she's dabbled too. (via Holy Moly!; t/y LIndsey)

Subpar Wars

There's some pretty tacky homemade costumes on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame, but this trash-can R2-D2 really is my favorite.

– Steven Corfe

Who Am I?

Reveal after the jump.

Frameline 32

This year's Frameline Film Festival has been really fun so far. As you can see from the photos attached, I've been hanging out with WOW alum, Alec Mapa. We found this giant Hello Kitty in one of the rooms at a party Saturday night – it was as big as him. Alec plays a closeted teacher in a film called Tru Loved, which gets a repeat this Wednesday @ the Castro Theatre. It's a heartwarming fairy tale with some amazing cameos by Jasmine Guy and Nichelle Nichols. The idosyncracies of digital video, like hyper blurred motion, usually overshadow a production and in lesser hands it may have done in this project, but the writing and performances were so strong even the limitations of the medium couldn't distract too much. It's a great exploration of small-town small-mindedness and the amount of courage needed to overcome it.

I also met Grant & Dan the guys behind the thriller, Cthulhu which features WOW alum Tori Spelling in a supporting role. I convinced Dan to join me for Randy's screening of When I Knew. The film is so uplifting and thought-provoking, you guys really did a good job on it. I've talked to a few friends this morning who saw the film yesterday and I wanted you to know that people are still talking about it and thinking about their own coming-out evolutionary paths. I can't remember the editor's name [Mark Cohen] but Randy said he was straight and stayed up all night to put together a special "San Francisco Remix" with footage from the When I Knew video booth stationed in the film festival pavilion. Since I recognized a few of the people featured, it felt even more special. I love the way both versions captured a distinctive mix of immediacy and nostalgia with such raw honesty and authenticity. It felt like a celebration of the special qualities that make the LGBT experience so unique. I'm really excited to see how the web project evolves and I've bookmarked wheniknew.com and I hope you'll encourage your readers to post their videos there.

– Quartknee

RuPaul and Bunny: Sequins and Sequel

RuPaul and the irrepressible Lady Bunny just managed to finish shooting the "Get Wild" music video for the Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild movie before RuPaul had to hop a plane to Amsterdam where he will be performing tonight. The Gays Gone Wild sequel, which Ru describes as being a bit like a gay Cannon Ball Run but funnier, will make its nationwide debut on August 15.

– AguynamedWayne

Jedi Nights

Quote Unquote

"The MPAA? It's my mission to sue the MPAA and take them down. I don't know how to go about doing that. But to me, it seems like it's something that has to be taken care of." – Seth Rogan to MTV about the problems Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno is having with the irrational ratings board.

Jessica Alba at World of Wonder?

While Defamer rightfully rags on Jessica Alba's trenchant appraisals of such movies as Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, and Moonstruck on AFI's three-hour 10 Top 10 special last night, we're scratching our heads over why she's sitting in front of a photographic backdrop of the World of Wonder building. Anyone? (t/y Lydia)

Jennifer, Jennifer, Ginnifer, and Drew: Star Wars