But back to Mirren, can we get her to star in a straight-up action vehicle without any winks? She’d be great as Jason Bourne.

The film is based on a non-fiction book and will be directed by Anvil! The Story of Anvil helmer Sacha Gervasi with a script by Black Swan‘s John J. McLaughlin. Somehow or another, Paul Giamatti wasn’t cast as Hitchcock. That role will be filled by Anthony Hopkins and his wife will be played by Helen Mirren. James D’Arcy will play Anthony Perkins. If this goes well, I hope to see Megan Fox in a sequel about the making of The Birds. (Variety)

As seeming proof of this project’s inevitability, Dean Parisot has been attached as director. He’s best known for the cult comedy Galaxy Quest, but he’s done a few other movies in addition to some stellar recent work in TV. His flair for action-comedy would seemingly make him a good fit for Red 2, which is as action-comedyish as you’re likely to get without Chris Tucker shouting at you. There’s no word yet on who of the cast of Red will be back for the sequel, but hopefully they’ll all be able to make it if they don’t die of old age first, yuk yuk yuk. (The Playlist)

With the news of the nominees today, let’s look back at some of the most controversial and entertaining moments during the Golden Globe ceremonies over the years.

1982 – Richard Attenborough

I would like to start off the list with Richard Attenborough’s now-infamous “Ghandi sucks” speech. Upon winning the award for Best Director for the epic biopic of the Indian icon, Richard Attenborough held his award to the sky in triumph, then, smiling, said, “I guess this means I can finally stop talking about fucking Ghandi 24 hours a day.”

He then broke into an offensive Indian accent which is now believed to have been the inspiration for Apu on The Simpsons, during which the cameras cut to Sir Ben Kingsley in the audience, who appeared to be laughing uproariously throughout the insensitive rant.

1990 – Ted Danson

Ted Danson receives his second Golden Globe award for his performance as Sam in Cheers. He gives a gracious and thoughtful acceptance speech, only to have it overshadowed by popping an enormous “fear boner” halfway through his acceptance. Mortified, Danson stalls and stammers onstage until Clint Eastwood emerges from the audience to escort him off stage. According to a stagehand they passed walking offstage, Clint Eastwood whispered to Danson, “One way or another, you’re going to have to get rid of that thing.”

Both actors disappear from the public eye for six weeks, reappearing together in a little-seen “Tour Nova Scotia!” television commercial.

(Note: Following this incident, the Awards producers worked to buck the notion that the Golden Globes were the “Deadwood of awards ceremonies” by sedating all nominees in attendance. It is for this reason that there was little excitement in the awards until the Department of Justice put an end to the practice in 2003.)

- “Up All Night” is a single camera comedy, starring Christina Applegate as a working mother who never thought she’d be a mom, but guess what: she totally is. Maya Rudolph and Will Arnett co-star, with Emily Spivey and Lorne Michaels executive producing. Network executives are convinced that one day, Arnett will star in a ratings-generating sitcom. It has been foretold by the sitcom elders.

- Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for “Smash,” a drama about a group of musical folk producing a Marilyn Monroe show on Broadway. It’s been described as”Glee” for adults, so please keep it the hell away from me. Starring Debra Messing and Katharine McPhee, Spielberg co-wrote the pilot with Theresa Rebeck. I’ll tune into Spielberg’s other show instead.

- Based on her stand-up routine, Whitney Cummings‘ cleverly titled multi-camera comedy “Whitney” is about the trials and tribulations of a young couple in a committed relationship. I’m guessing someone’s mother on that show will ask why they’re not married. Laughter will then ensue.

- Maria Bello stars in “Prime Suspect,” a female NYC detective trying to “make it” in a male-dominated precinct. We’re all rooting for you, girlfriend. It’s based on a British mini-series starring Helen Mirren.

Above is the trailer for The Debt, a Focus Features film directed by John Madden, starring Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren, Jessica “Young Helen Mirren” Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson. The film is about a Mossad mission in 1966 where three Israeli spies snuck into East Berlin to kidnap a horrible Nazi doctor. Surrounding that mission are dangers, secrets, and secret dangers. We follow the characters as they complete (?) the mission in the 60s, and thirty-some years later, when two of the now retired agents receive shocking news about their partner. *Duhn-duhn-duuuuuhn*

All goof-arounds aside, I can see this being an intriguing thriller. We see a lot of films about the Holocaust, but not as many about what happened afterward. Also, Israeli soldiers know how to kick some serious ass, and we saw a lot of Helen Mirren’s solid-looking boobs on a recent “SNL” episode I am intrigued.

Russell Brand and Helen Mirren are so good, it makes Arthur entertaining. It’s still the same old contrived Hollywood formula, and it’s not a particularly good version of it, but Brand and Mirren have fun throughout.

In case this seems like an original idea to you, Arthur (Brand) is a billionaire heir to the Bach Worldwide corporation. He gets into trouble dressing as Batman and crashing a Batmobile, which embarrasses his mother Vivienne. Vivienne plans to marry him off to Susan (Jennifer Garner), otherwise she’ll cut him off. It’s at that exact point in his life and the story that he meets whimsical Grand Central Terminal tour guide Naomi (Greta Gerwig). So he’s torn between keeping his money and going with his heart, and his nanny Hobson (Mirren) tries to steer him right.

This is mainly a collection of contrived set pieces, but that’s where Brand does his best work. He goes all out in the proposal dinner scene and doesn’t miss an opportunity to jump around, be foolish or slip in a clever joke. Brand is having fun sneering at the formula he’s stuck in, down to Arthur’s stint working in a candy store.

Hobson is funny despite being pretty mean. Calling women streetwalkers and tarts is just bullying, but Mirren is so classy she pulls off the humor in it. Her references to spoilers are more appreciated than putdowns. Susan is a totally one dimensional villain obsessed with money and status. Her drunk dominatrix schtick is beneath Garner.

Arthur is a good character. As much of his recklessness is selfless, giving away money or helping people achieve their dreams, as the other half is hedonistic. He does want noble things like conversation in a relationship, so the physical promises Susan makes actually offend his sensibilities.

The only modern touches are a brief mention of the recession and an upskirt (upkilt) shot of Arthur’s blurred out junk. I guess you could also count how this remake does what all Hollywood comedies do now and goes all serious. But the movie doesn’t seem to know when Arthur’s learned his lesson so it keeps getting serious and goes way past heartwarming. Then it takes so long to work out the plot with a wedding, running around Queens naked and another whole montage.

You won’t mind watching Arthur because of Brand and Mirren, and Gerwig is sweet, but there’s nothing memorable or hilarious. It’s just pleasant enough, which can be fine. Sometimes we just want to see pretty people have fun. That’s all this Arthur is.

I’m not a fan of Shakespeare. I think if you have to take a literature course to even understand the dialogue, that’s not an effective form of communication or drama. But, I accept that it is an art form that exists, and sometimes people make interesting adaptations out of it (my favorite: Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet: THE GANGSTA VERSION!)

The Tempest is not one of the good ones, which surprises me because I have liked Julie Taymor’s other movies. I didn’t see Titus, which was the other Shakespeare one, but loved Frida and Across the Universe both for visuals and content. Never saw her stage productions but figured she’d have something interesting to contribute.

The interesting visuals are minimal in The Tempest so the film relies mostly on the text. The story of an island hermit’s manipulative games with some shipwreck survivors isn’t quite as deep as star crossed lovers or political treachery. Als the spirit is stupid.

Prospero is now Prospera so that Helen Mirren can star, so I guess whenever Miranda (Felicity Jones) calls her mother, that used to say father. The spirit (Ben Whishaw) does Prospera’s bidding and appears as bizarre visions. These are the most Tamor-esque visuals, but they’re ridiculous. The black bird look is silly and I don’t understand why he has tits. Not since Jaye Davidson has a man made me want to cop a feel.

There’s actually very little Prospera, so not much Mirren. We have to spend a lot of time with Caliban (Djimon Honsou), Trinculo (Russell Brand) and Stephano (Alfred Molina). They just bumble around and it’s embarrassing. It’s like high class stupidity. They can dress it up with fancy talk but it’s still stupid. King Alonso (David Strathairn), Sebastian (Alan Cumming), Antonio (Chris Cooper) and Gonzalo (Tom Conti) try to bring the gravitas but it just feels like filler until all three parties collide. (And when they do, man, oh man, they talk some more.)

The film feels desperate to visualize a play that’s all talk. There are a few nice sets, Prospera’s castle with the angular staircases, her cave with the pool. They look like a Broadway stage captured on camera. The visual effects are a distraction. The rock music video storm sequence just drowns out all the Shakespearian dialogue.

The Tempest film is like high school trip to the theater. It’s better than sitting in class, but I still can’t follow the dialogue and don’t care about the story. It already took me too long to write this review and figure out who played what and why they were in the movie.

I loves me some badass, bald Bruce. He’s my hero and Red had all the makings of the kind of crazy action movie I like. In some ways it kind of delivered but I’m still disappointed by it. The comedy works and making that the context for the action totally works, but it’s more "Moonlighting" than Die Hard.

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) goes about his daily routines, flirting with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) by phone as she handles his pension check. When ski masked guys come to his house, he takes them all out, goes after Sarah and gets the old gang back together. He was a CIA operative with Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren). Now agent Cooper (Karl Urban) is on their tail.

More after the jump…

All the shenanigans are played as comedy, in fact as romantic comedy between Frank and Sarah. That’s fine. I always say action is an inherently comedic genre anyway. The stunts and payoffs are punch lines. It still has to cohere like an action movie though. Red feels like just a collection of stunts with no flow.

Action sequences are just poorly shot. It feels like they took a few comic panels from the book, but you don’t see the effects of a given action. It’s hard to see how Frank takes out the intruders, but he looks cool doing it. Those trailer moments like getting out of the spinning car or shooting rockets at bad guys are cool, but they only play as stunts that somebody filmed, not actions the characters performed in the scene. You barely see Mirren with the machinegun at all.

Romantic comedies could take a cue from Red though. How many stupid movies have we seen where a woman hates the difficult guy until she learns he’s really not all bad? Well, Sarah has every right to feel that way, dragged on the run by a sketchy guy she’s only spoken to by phone, so she doesn’t even know that he’s the good guy. It works largely because Parker is so adorable.

The team is great together and they’ve got an all star cast of supporting actors to play opposite too. Every scene feels like a bunch of old pros reminiscing, whether they’re colleagues or villains. There’s some nifty caper as they orchestrate their mission, everyone gets some badass moments and they have outrageous sets for the characters to play in.

That’s a lot to be happy about in Red but it failed me on the most important aspect. I could just accept that it’s an all star comedy with great characters, but that would be wrong. The action scenes left me cold and that’s no good in an action movie.
 

As any self-respecting stalker of Helen Mirren can tell you, Hollywood’s sexiest old lady has teamed up with Bruce Willis for the upcoming action-thriller type movie, Red. But what they might not know unless they have a Google Alert set up for "hot geriatric ass" is that an excerpt from the film was just released. Luckily, I do, and I’m more than willing to keep you posted on such matters.

In the clip, Mirren and Willis discuss life after retirement. Of course, the pair are retired spies, which makes it a much more interesting conversation than it would be if they had been insurance salesmen, postal employees, etc.

Keep in mind I’m stealing this synopsis from Collider since I can’t get the damn video to load on my connection. Up yours, Iola, Kansas public library.

Watch Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren talk some sh*t out after the jump…

Who says Hollywood is out of ideas? Obviously they haven’t seen this picture of Helen Mirren giving Russell Brand the old "rub & tug" on the set of Arthur. In fact, seeing a geriatric Mirren giving Brand a bathtub HJ is the most original thing I’ve seen in weeks, and mind you, I watch Bravo daily.

The only question is how is Hollywood going to top this? Chances are we’ll see Betty White giving an "Asian massage" to the wolf-boy from Twilight sometime soon. "Team Jacob" indeed! (Cinema Blend)

The Machete red band trailer is awesome, but not one that you can share with your grandmother. Unless your grandmother is awesome. Thankfully, we have the new trailer for RED to appease Nans.

This second trailer gives us a much better idea of what’s going on, and the film seems legitimately fun. C’mon. It’s got Helen Mirren and bazookas. You’ll never see that again until we successfully engineer that Stephen Frears-Michael Bay hybrid moster. And the funding drives for that have been an abject failure so far.

Watch a batsh*t Malkovich after the jump…

_{So, did you hear the one about the girl with the cleft…..uh oh!}

Next time your OB/GYN tells a crude joke or makes a "wrong turn," take a page from The Debt and bring the busta down, hardcore.

OB/GYN takedowns aside, The Debt tells the story of a team of Mossad agents tasked with capturing an infamous Nazi war criminal in 1965, and the secret that still haunts them 30 years later. Directed by John Madden and based on a 2007 Israeli film of the same name, The Debt is fun for the whole family, as long as your family considers films like Marathon Man and The Boys From Brazil "fun," which I assume they do.

Watch a badass OB/GYN takedown, after the jump. 

Director: John Madden

Cast: Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds, Romi Aboulafia

Synopsis: In 1965, three young Israeli Mossad agents on a secret mission capture and kill a notorious Nazi war criminal. Now, thirty years later, a man claiming to be the Nazi has surfaced in Ukraine and one of the former agents must go back undercover to seek out the truth.

Release Date: December 29, 2010

Robert Schwentke’s film adaptation of the Warren Ellis graphic novel Red looks like The Losers recast for a CBS audience. It stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich (going full-Nugent), and Mary-Louise Parker as former CIA assassins forced into retirement. But old habits die hard and the boredom of retired life sets in, causing them to venture out on their own to murder-for-hire. And then when their old bosses try to have them killed, they reunite to take the fight to the CIA’s front door.

Why is the CIA always trying to kill its former employees? That hardly happens with any other profession. Better off safe than sorry though. That’s why I’ve been systematically eliminating the customers from my boyhood paper route. That, and because of their ethnicities.

HELEN MIRREN POPS A CAP AFTER THE JUMP…

Red – Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

_{Pick a whore, any whore!}

The trailer for Taylor Hackford’s Love Ranch has scratched, tickled, and hit the web. In it, Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci portray the real life couple that started the first legal brothel in Nevada.

Needless to say, there are prostitutes in this film, gentlemen, and you better believe at some point Pesci teaches them some respect. Will it be Gina Gershon, Bai Ling, Scout Taylor-Compton, or Taryn Manning who is subject to the little man’s wrath? Considering Manning has already done the whole "lady of the night thing" before in Hustle & Flow she’s probably the most resilient. But don’t get too cocky, Taryn. Pesci lays down pimp law a lot harder than Terrence Howard. I have the bruises to prove it.

Check out the trailer after the jump. Love Ranch propositions its way into theaters June 30.

Love Ranch Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Director: Taylor Hackford

Cast: Helen Mirren, Joe Pesci

Synopsis: Tells the story of the married couple who opened the first legal brothel in Nevada.

Release Date: June 30, 2010