SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY: REVIEW – The new Star Wars movie hits theatres.
The new Star Wars movie – Solo: A Star Wars Story – is in theaters, starring Emilia Clarke, Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover and we ask: is it any good?
Nope.
Tag: woody harrelson
HAN SOLO TO APPEAR IN LANDO MOVIE
HOLLYWOOD – The trailer for Lando: A Star Wars Story dropped during the NFL Super Bowl and it featured a surprise.
The new Star Wars Story – featuring Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian – just dropped its first teaser trailer and there was a surprise for fans. A brief appearance of Han Solo. Don’t get too excited it wasn’t Harrison Ford. But rather Alden Ehrenreich. The film is directed by the team who brought you Cloudy with Meatballs and The Lego Movie Far and Away and The DaVinci Code and tells the story of how Childish Gambino became the most legendary smuggler and gambler in the galaxy.
The film also stars Daenerys Targaryen and Woody from Cheers. The appearance of a slightly younger Han Solo than the Han Solo that appears in New Hope sparked speculation that there might be a stand alone Solo Story in the offing. A rumor that Kathleen Kennedy quickly snuffed.
There will be no stand alone Han Solo movie. Everyone knows that Han Solo is a side show to the more interesting stuff about Skywalkers and Jedis. Plus there’s no actor who could sustain a full length movie playing the iconic role which Harrison Ford created.
Lando: A Star Wars Story will be released in the Summer.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI – REVIEW
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI – REVIEW – Fargo goes to Missouri as Olive Kitteridge is angry with Woody the barman from Cheers.
Ebbing Missouri is the kind of small town in which everyone knows everyone else’s business. And a terrible crime has been committed. With the failure of the local police chief to apprehend the guilty, a distraught mother (Frances McDormand) decides to take things into her own hands by advertising the police department’s apparent ineptitude to the world.
Martin McDonagh has written and directed a smart and complex dramedy with a crowd-pleasing performance by the actress who could challenge Meryl Streep for the American acting crown. Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson also have solid parts, with McDonagh giving everyone lines that are as chewy as tobacco. The only problem if the film has a weird internal inconsistency. It’s supposed to be about how terrible violence can have consequences on the lives of those left behind, but all the violence of the film seems to be strangely weightless and bouncy. It wants to say something serious but also wants to wear a silly hat. There are plot holes and absurdities that clang against the realism of other parts. Also I’m not entirely sure that Martin McDonagh really knows much about small town America. I’m guessing that a lot of Ebbing was inspired by movies rather than a real place.
That said it is funny and the acting is great.
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5 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT WOODY HARRELSON
HOLLYWOOD -5 Facts we never knew but just found out about Woody Harrelson.
We sent the FACT squad to Ebbing Missouri to find out what we could about Woody Harrelson.
1. Woody Harrelson first became famous playing Ted Danson in Cheers.
2. The Cheers star had a spin-off show called Woody in which he is continuously mistaken for Woody Allen’s brother.
3. Woody Harrelson is Woody Allen’s brother.
4. His first break into serious films was a starring role in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Playing Mickey Knox a psychopathic serial killer, Harrelson said he prepared for the role by growing an unconvincing mullet. The hair cut led to the film being disowned by script writer Quentin Tarantino.
5. Since his break through he has appeared with some of the most talented film directors in the world like the Coen Brothers and the Farrelly Brothers. He has challenged himself with demanding material like Rampart and The Messenger, as well as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. He was also in War of Planet of the Apes and the Hunger Games films in which he played The Hunger. Don’t Look Now was shit though.
For more FACTS click here.
WOODY HARRELSON: ‘CGI ME IS AMAZING IN WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES’
HOLLYWOOD – Woody Harrelson called the CGI on War for the Planet of the Apes ‘extraordinary.’
In an EXCLUSIVE interview with the Studio Exec, former Cheers and White Men Can’t Jump star Woody Harrelson heaped praise on the CGI work of his new film War for the Planet of the Apes.
It’s unbelievable. I already knew from Andy Serkis’ work in Lord of the Rings that CGI could help bring a character alive but this was my first time getting experience firsthand and I walked away impressed.
The Apes are really realistic.
Absolutely. But for me that isn’t even the greatest achievement. You see monkeys and Gollums and what not, they’re fantastic creatures to begin with. You know what I mean? But real people are tough. My character is a soldier. A colonel and yet the detail on the face, the eyes – which up until now have been so difficult to replicate – were damned near perfect.
But your character wasn’t CGI.
The best part, going into this, I thought there’d be a stupid costume with ping pong balls I’d have to wear. But Matt Reeves told me I could just wear the costume of the character. I mentioned the CGI suit, the motion capture but he just laughed and said ‘nice one Woody!’ So I was prepared for the end result being less than optimum. When I saw the final cut of the film, it blew me away. It looked as if it was just me acting. It was so life like.
War for the Planet of the Apes is in cinemas.
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT TURNS UP TO FORCE AWAKENS PREMIERE DRESSED LIKE KERMIT
HOLLYWOOD – Star of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and 50/50, Joseph Gordon-Levitt turned up to the Star Wars: Force Awakens première in Los Angeles tonight, dressed like a Muppet.
In some sad sack Cosplay attempt, Joseph Gordon-Levitt turned up to the first screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens dressed in his pyjamas and with his face green and some home-made ears. A stormtrooper standing by told the Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY:
I really liked Looper, but today Joseph Gordon Levitt was a sad embarrassment to the very serious business of Cosplay. We dedicate our time and energy to getting our costumes precisely accurate, but Levitt turns up and the asshole’s got the wrong movie.
Cheers and Hunger Games star, Woody Harrelson defended the actor saying, ‘Maybe he thought Kermit was in the picture.’ But everyone knows that Harrelson is always high so an endorsement from his mouth is almost worse than nothing. When asked what on earth he was thinking turning up to a Star Wars event dressed as a Muppet, Gordon-Levitt laughed it off:
Right, Muppet! Fantastic. After four hundred years so Kermity you will be. Ha ha!
Everyone agreed that it made no sense whatsoever. Noted linguist Noam Chomsky posted a video on YouTube criticizing Gordon-Levitt’s syntax. ‘It’s all wrong,’ he concluded.
Could this be the end of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career?
Use the comment box below to tell us what you think.
To read our Star Wars: The Force Awakens SPOILER FREE review CLICK HERE!
TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 2 SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS SURPRISE
HOLLYWOOD – The first reviews are in for True Detective Season 2 and the biggest surprise has been the appearance of animated character Spongebob Squarepants.
True Detective creator Nic Pizzolato explained to the Studio Exec the inclusion of Spongebob Squarepants:
When I finished the first season I knew we had done something very special with the team we had assembled. Woody Harrelson, Cary Fukunaga and Matthew McConaughey and I knew the easy thing to do would have been to simply try and repeat that and I knew that would have been entirely the wrong thing to do. So I decided to go in a totally new direction. I got a new director and I cast Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaughn. Initially I wanted Vince to provide a lighter shading with his hilarious every-man comedy persona, the likable schlub, but he was keen to do something different. That was great but it left us with a problem. Everyone looked like they wanted to take a shit they were so glum. I was drinking in West Hollywood and I bumped into Stephen Hillenburg, who I knew from back when we both worked on 60 Minutes together. I asked him about Spongebob and he was a bit down about how Spongebob Squarepants Sponge Out of Water had turned out. I didn’t think anything of it but the next day I got up to do some writing and I wrote the words ‘Who lives in a pineapple under the sea’. It was unbelievable.
What role does Spongebob play?
I wanted him to be the goofy desk sergeant that is always getting things wrong and yet providing Colin Farrell’s character Ray Velcoro with some welcome relief from all the brooding he has to do. His japes, whether trying the cocaine that he is supposed to be filing away as evidence, or jawing with the local hookers, just add another color to my palate. Imagine how dour it would be without Spongebob to cheer things up?
The first episode ‘The Western Book of the Dead’ sees a mobster trying to go straight and corruption rife in the LAPD while Spongebob accidentally leaves his trousers at home.
True Detective Season 2 is currently showing on HBO.
5 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT TRUE DETECTIVE 2
HOLLYWOOD – True Detective 2 is going to be hitting HBO in June but what do we really know about it?
Although we already have the facts about True Detective 1, we sent the Studio Exec FACT squad into the underbelly of the badlands to find FACTS out like a real detective, I mean a genuine detective, an authentic detective, or a true investigator to find out about True Detective 2.
1. Despite coming from an impeccable source, the casting news that Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Zach Galiafanakis and Jack Black feature in the series looks to be untrue, possibly a ‘spoof’ of some kind.
2. The confirmation of Vince Vaughn, however, like much of his work, is no laughing matter.
3. Although it’s called True Detective, the characters never actually existed, the story is based on Nic Pizzolatto’s brain squirts and the setting of Los Angeles is a fictional kingdom like Narnia. To add to the titular falsehood, there are actually no detectives in the show, just police officers.
4. Rachel McAdams is to play the woman, doing stuff and not just being naked or a whiney wife type as a way of solving some of the accusations of misogyny leveled at the first season. For the men, Colin Farrell has a moustache.
5. Although the new season of True Detective is not a continuation of the first season, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are thought to have cameos to add some extra incomprehensibility.
For more FACTS click HERE.
INTERSTELLAR: FIRST REACTIONS
HOLLYWOOD – Following the first screenings of Christopher Nolan’s new science fiction epic Interstellar the first reactions from the internet are in and we have collected them.
Generally speaking the reaction from the celebrities who have seen the film have been overwhelmingly positive. For example, Gordon Ramsey tweeted ‘F*cking great f*cking science f*cking fiction film, Chris!’ and Fox News’ Doctor Manny tweeted ‘Interstellar cures cancer AND herpes’.
Here are some other responses gathered EXCLUSIVELY by the Studio Exec:
Christopher Nolan’s new film Interstellar was so good it made me want to JUMP!
Dave Lee Roth
WTF! Casey Affleck is in this? When did that happen?
Ben Affleck
One of the funniest films I have ever seen. Nolan is a master.
Adam Sandler
Interstellar is a deeply religious film. Truly spiritual and Christopher Nolan must be applauded for actually spending so much time in space to make this.
Sarah Palin
Interstellar sh*ts on Gravity. From a height!
NASA
Matthew McConaughey is awful. Embarrassing really.
Woody Harrelson
I should have used more tuba.
Hans Zimmer
Good to see it done well and not have to think about Ghostbusters 3. Which will be out in 2016.
Dan Aykroyd
Okay Chris. I give up. You’ve got the job.
God
3D WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A JOKE, ADMITS JAMES CAMERON
HOLLYWOOD – James Cameron admitted today in a shock revelation that will undoubtedly rock the whole of Hollywood that the reintroduction of 3D was actually the result of an off-the-cuff remark, which was supposed to be a joke.
The Avatar “visionary” is famous for his hilarious sense of humor and is only challenged by Woody Harrelson for the crown as king of the Hollywood practical jokers.
Bill Paxton tells the story:
This was a couple of years after Titanic and everyone was hanging on Jimmy’s every word, all the top brass at the studios, anything he said they would jump to do because as far as they could see he was golden. One evening we’re eating out at thisJapanese restaurant and he challenges me. He says “What is the most ridiculous thing that I can ask for?” So I think and then I say “3D”.
The Piranha 2: The Spawning director and the Twister actor laughed over their sushi, but Jimmy Cameron took up the gauntlet. ‘I was amazed when I first heard that Avatar was going to be in 3D,’ the Paxo man recalls. ‘But then it became unstoppable. The irony is Jimmy hates 3D as much as anyone else.’
With arguments raging about expensive equipment, exorbitant ticket prices, reduced luminosity and silly glasses, the erstwhile King of the World has finally decided to come clean.
‘I didn’t mean it to go so far but really, you’re all too gullible. You have to remember I’m, the guy who put Arnie Schwarzenegger in a 007 kind of role. I’m the guy who made out like Michael Biehn was an actor. Come on, seriously. How could you take anything I said at face value?’
Is it true that you yourself don’t like 3D?
‘It’s like those theaters we used to make out of cereal boxes when we were kids. It’s embarrassingly bad. A series of flat surfaces. It looks flatter than 2D for crying out loud,’ Cameron starts shouting, his lips flecked with spit. ‘Why do you think I keep going down to the bottom of the ocean? It’s the only place I can go and have a really good laugh at you assholes.’
Avatar 2 and 3 are due out sometime in the next decade.
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS AND JACK BLACK TAPPED FOR TRUE DETECTIVE 2
HOLLYWOOD – Rumors have been rife about the casting of HBO’s second season of True Detective, with names such as Vince Vaughn being banded around with what can only be described as gay abandon, but Studio Exec can now confirm that Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis have both been confirmed in lead roles. Continue reading “ZACH GALIFIANAKIS AND JACK BLACK TAPPED FOR TRUE DETECTIVE 2”
5 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT TRUE DETECTIVE
LOUISIANA – All hail the Yellow King and the climax of the McConaughssance, but what are the FACTS behind the HBO hit anthology show True Detective? Only the Truer Detective of the Studio Exec can give you the lowest low down. And we promise it will be depressing.
1. First mooted in the late eighties, True Detective was initially envisioned as a Cheers spin off which the producers hoped would cash in on Woody Harrelson’s popularity as Woody. Entitled The Dopey Detective, the script was altered as the years went by, but according to director Cary Fukunaga ‘the ideas are essentially the same as is the mood of the piece’.
2. The theme song is sung by Cyndi Lauper from her own composition.
3. The references throughout the series to the Yellow King is a reference to show runner Nic Pizzolatto’s love of Lego. There was even a suggestion that the finale would be a Lego episode.
4. Despite playing an atheistic intellectual and troubled soul of keen intelligence, actor Matthew McConaughey is much different in real life, being in reality a dopey God Squader. Woody Harrelson plays an inebriated pussy hound. And… erm.
5. Cary Fukunaga and Nic Pizzolatto are in talks to make a new show based on the Matthew McConaughey picture Sahara. ‘It will be the most depressing and humorless thing ever put on television,’ says Pizzolatto. ‘In keeping with the spirit of the film.’
For more 5 FACTS clickety click.
HBO CANCEL TRUE DETECTIVE
HOLLYWOOD – The Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey show True Detective has been canceled by HBO following criticism that the show was just not funny enough.
A source within the studio complained:
We’ve been giving Nic Pizzolatto notes throughout the run and he has obviously been ignoring them. When Nic first came to us with the idea for the show, he sold it to us as Woody from Cheers gets into a fix with love-able rom-com scoundrel Matthew McConaughy as two bumbling cops. He said it would be like Two and a Half Men meets Starsky and Hutch (the remake). When we saw the first episode, we sat in grim Nietzschean silence. Not one joke. Not a single one. And McConaughey looks like he has AIDs, which is not – to put it mildly – a laughing matter.
But isn’t the series supposed to be a weighty mood piece?
I’m not going to criticize everything. His female characters are good on the nudity front and don’t talk too much so he ticks those boxes. But the complete lack of humor, embarrassing situations and ‘zingers’ is fatal. And the plot is all over the place. We wanted laughs, resolution and on to the next episode.
True Detective is currently available on HBO.
OUT OF THE FURNACE: REVIEW
OUT OF THE FURNACE: REVIEW – Beardy Bruce Wayne works in the steel mill from the Deer Hunter and looks after his brother, the coward Robert Ford, who has come back from Iraq with his Hurt Locker full only to become the least likely bare knuckle boxer since… well, ever.
However, things take a turn for the worst when in an attempt to settle his debt with Jesus Christ, the coward Robert Ford decides to fight for Woody from Cheers up in Deliverance land.
Ever since Winter’s Bone, film makers have been trying to remake it, but with boys and this is a solid enough effort. The acting is its strength, the ensemble manage to keep the melodramatic overdrive grounded despite the over-egged pudding of psychopaths, alcoholism, gangsters, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, drunk driving, parental death, love triangles, murder, pregnancy and revenge. There’s also a scene with a kitchen sink.
The clichés come thick and fast – the hunter NOT shooting the deer (cf. Deer Hunter again) – but it is testament to the talent involved that I didn’t scream at the screen too loudly.