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Hey guys! I'm back from my unannounced Christmas break. One last post before moving on to next year. I might have to change my method of blogging since I start new studies in January. Well, here we go!

From top left: Harry Potter extras, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Home Alone 2, Will & Grace

FILM

Since I haven't wrote for a while, some of my news might be a bit older, but deal with it. As a committed Disney fan I'll start with this new concept art picture of the upcoming Frozen animated film, based on the classic Snow Queen fairytale. This doesn't really give us any new info, but just clears up the visual image of the film and it looks like they are going with a classic look and not too unusual.

Disney is also moving forward with the Tron Legacy sequel currently named Tron 3. I really loved Legacy visually so I got high hopes for this one too. Garrett Hedlund was reported to reprise his lead role, but the plot is still a mystery. Hopefully Olivia Wilde will be back too.

Johnny Depp is keeping busy though The Lone Ranger isn't even out yet (new trailer here!) and he's got next project already on the line. He is planning a modern take on Don Quixote, where I can only assume he'll attack skyscrapers instead of windmills of the original story. Since it's Depp we can't really expect anything, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out for more updates on this project!

Though Barbra Streisand's comedy that is out now (I can't even remember the name, she co-stars with Seth Rogen) and it kinda flopped, she is keeping busy with her Gypsy movie adaptation. Now she has hinted that she would be interested to see Lady Gaga star in it.  That would honestly be pretty amazing! I would love to see a bit toned down version of Gaga.

I finally saw Chronicle and I can honestly say it was one of the best movies of 2012. So obviously I had too look up the director Josh Trank and that was pretty easy since he was in the headlines recently when his Fantastic Four reboot got a release date. So it looks like 2015 is going to be the year of nerds, with Fantastic Four reboot, Avengers 2, Justice League, Star Wars 7 and maybe even Avatar 2 coming out the same year.

TV

For TV news I've mostly got casting news since they all are currently on Christmas break too. I was going to post this behind-the-scenes of Parks and Rec, with Christ Pratt, but you'll have to watch through 30 sec toilet paper commercial to get to the video, so have fun with that. And by the way, Jenny Slate (old SNL member) is coming in for a guest spot as Jean Ralphio's (Ben Schwartz) sister and shares his bizarre personality.

Speaking of SNL, Jennifer Lawrence is hosting the show Jan 19th. Though her previous roles (Winters Bone and Hunger Games) haven't really been comic ones, I laugh at every interview she's in because she is so funny! And also, look at this. She is currently promoting her dramedy Silver Linings Playbook.

It's funny how everything seems to be connected to SNL this week. Abby Elliot left the show past year, but we can still see her in TV. She appeared in an episode of 2 Broke Girls few weeks ago and has now landed a guest spot on the Happy Endings where she plays a love interest to Adam Pally's gay character Max, who falls for her for all the wrong reasons (basketball game tickets). If you are a fan of the show, you should also check out this video!

Sean Hayes (Will&Grace) might be coming back to TV for a longer haul, if his comedy gets picked up for airing in NBC. The show is a bout a dad whose 14-yo daughter moves in with him. Hayes has recently appeared in Up All Night and Parks and Rec. He will also have an arc in the second season of Smash. And you can find a long list of Smash spoilers here!

TRAILER

Tarrence Malik is back after Tree of Life with another stunning film, To The Wonder. It stars some big names like Ben Afleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem. The footage has similar feeling to it as the Tree of Life had, but I think this one might be a bit more comprehensible.

Then some comedy. Here is the trailer for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone starring Steve Carrel and Steve Buscemi. With Jim Carrey too, this one is hilariously stupid and that's why I like it.

And lastly, the first proper trailer for Man Of Steel, the Superman movie directed by Zach Snyder with Henry Cavill in the title role. Finally we get to see some action and flying.

That's all folks! Happy New Year and I'll see you in 2013!

-Golden Globe Nominations-

The nominations for 70th Golden Globe Awards were announced yesterday, with the usual amount of snubs and surprises. The main event itself will be held Jan 13th with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosting (ah-mazing!). I mean, just look at their first promo!

HERE is the full list of nominees!

Now let's talk a bit about them. I've always thought that the separation of drama and comedy has its pro's and con's. Pro: acting categories (more nominees and appropriate categories), con: directing category (with total of 10 best film nominees but only 5 best director, many great directors will get shut out, like Tom Hooper (Les Miserables) and David O. Russel (Silver Linings Playbook)).

Golden Globes are given out by Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) which is notorious for favouring stars with big names and being kinda easy to persuade, which is most likely to have happened with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. It has been MIA in almost all other award ceremonies, and yet it pops up here with three nomination, for Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor (who has been lobbying for nomination for The Impossible, but did not get nominated for that like his co-star Naomi Watts) and for Best Comedy. I was also surprised that Maggie Smith got nominated for Quartet instead of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (maybe it was too long to write on the ballots). 

 

There have been so many great performances this year in film, so there are bound to be big snubs through-out the award season. You can write them in the comments if you feel like I should mention some one in particular.

 

Few words about the TV noms then. The two most glaring surprises was the nomination of Newsroom over Mad Men in drama category and Smash getting nominated for Best Comedy/Musical instead of one of the great comedies on air. Don't get me wrong, I love Smash and Newsroom is pretty awesome too, but still it was surprising that more people voted them.

 

I really don't get the idea with the current acting categories. Why on earth is there different categories for lead actors/actresses in Drama and Comedy, but then every single supporting category is smashed together (Comedy, Drama, Miniseries and TV movies). This makes it almost impossible to predict who will walk home with the Supporting Actor/Actress Globes.

The Best Song category was pretty star-studded too. Adele, Jon Bon Jovi, Keith Urban, Taylor Swift and Les Miserables (with new brand new song not in the stage musical, so that it will qualify for Best Song awards). Here is a small featurette of the making of that song:

Though this event might not be very good prediction when preparing for Oscars, it will surely be entertaining. Weekly post coming Sat/Sun.

 

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Empire is one of my favourite film magazines and its time for their annual Jameson Empire Awards. You can affect the result by voting here. You can also win tickets to attend the awards themselves in London, would be pretty amazing to meet all the A-listers. So good luck! And in case you missed, you should still hate Bret Easton Ellis.

From top left: Kathy Griffin: My Life on The D-List, Friends, SNL, The Simpsons

FILM

As if portraying Princess Diana wasn't enough, Naomi Watts will also play Marilyn Monroe in a biopic Blonde, which was frozen for a while, but is now back in action. Andrew Dominik is set to direct, making this only his third movie. Monroe has been a very popular subject for TV and film throughout the years. With Naomi Watt's talent, I'm sure she'll excel at the role. You can next see her in The Impossible.

Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) will join Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Shailene Woodley and Jamie Foxx in the sequel for Amazing Spider-Man. He'll play Harry Osborn in the film. I haven't seen Chronicle yet (but it's on my list) so I can't say a lot about his acting skills but he sure looks the part. Harry Osborn was portrayed by James Franco in the previous trilogy.

As the award season is kicking in, you'll see a lot of mentions about them. I'll mostly just post links to the winners/nominees, and assume you'll read through them yourselves if you are interested. My focus will be on The Oscars and Golden Globes. Here are the Annie Award nominees. Annies celebrate achievement in  among animated films and television series. It came as no surprise that Disney/Pixar dominates the categories with Brave and Wreck-It Ralph, which both did well at the box office and with the critics. The winner of Best Film at Annies is usually the frontrunner for The Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

But we shall not forget live-action films either. Here are the Satellite Awards nominees. These awards are presented by the International Press Academy, so they are basically voted by journalists. Satellite Awards don't always go for future Oscar winners and I think they sometimes represent more the public view. AMPAS members voting for Oscars tend to be more traditional and not vote for the underdog. And I'm very proud to say that there is a Finnish actress nominated for the Best Actres Satellite Award, Laura Birn for her role in Purge (Puhdistus). Good luck to her, she's got a tough competition from Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain among others.

Since it's Christmas you can find a lot of advent calendars online, but this might be by favourite. Les Misreables just happens to come out 25th in US, so why not make a calendar celebrating Christmas as well as the premiere. We have Vulture to thank for this. It features many fun videos like this and this picture:

I don't usually get to talk about one of my favourite musicals, Sound Of Music, but I'm super excited to tell you that Carrie Underwood will play Maria in a televised version of the stage musical, airing at NBC. It will be produced by Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, who are working on Smash and the next Oscars too. Can't wait! We all know of course that Julie Andrews played Maria in the classic film version, which won Oscar for Best Picture. Due to an throat-surgery gone wrong in 1994, we haven't heard her sing for a while, and unfortunately she has said that she'll probably never be able to sing properly ever again. I guess we'll just have to listen her beautiful singing voice on recordings then. She is currently trying to produce a musical version of a childrens book she wrote.

I feel like I've been writing about The Hobbit every week for past few months, but they just keep coming out with more cool stuff. (Like first looks of the second and third movies in the trilogy). We also got a picture of the main villain of the first movie, the Goblin King. But what I found the most interesting was these 6 small clips directly from the movie itself. And I assure you, they are all worth watching.

TV

BBC is working fast, since it has already announced that it would be turning J.K.Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy, into a TV series. I haven't read the book yet, but it is supposed to be pretty good, though nothing like her Harry Potter-series. This one is basically about small town drama. But honestly, at this point she could pretty much sell a book with just blank pages and get to the bestseller list.

Fox has ordered some new addition to its animated Sunday schedule. A new comedy Murder Police will join Fox's old Sunday stars The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy and American Dad. Murder Police was created by Family Guy Executive Producer David Goodman and newcomer Jason Ruiz. The show is about to homicide detectives with Peter Griffin/Homer Simpson qualities aka. no brains.

Though we still have to wait over three months for a new episode of Game Of Thrones, HBO has released a behind-the-scenes of their third season, featuring many of the stars speaking about their experiences. We don't get to see that much of material from the new season, but who cares, its Game Of Thrones, you'll enjoy everything about it!

TRAILERS

I don't usually like Zombie movies, but when its paired up with comic and romantic elements, it becomes interesting. Warm Bodies stars Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, and seems pretty good, take a look:

Even the guys at /Film couldn't figure out what Upstream Color is really about, my guess is cancer? The official synopsis: A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. So that doesn't really help at all. See if you can make more sense about this:

I generally hate Tom Cruise, Oblivion looks pretty good. He plays just a simple guy, repairing drones in post-apocalyptic Earth where there is not supposed to be any life left. But guess what? There is plenty of it. The cast is pretty impressive, Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, Olga Kurylenko, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. The film is coming out later in 2013.

That's all folks! New post coming next week!

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In case you are wondering why I haven't mentioned the Oscars for a while, I'm planning to go all out for this year's award ceremony. I'll write one post about the nominations, one pre-show and one about the ceremony and maybe one where I write about why specific movies won certain trophies. So it's going to be an Oscar-extravaganza (or Oscarvaganza?)

From top left: The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Big Bang Theory

TV

Miss B aka Beyonce is making a move towards the small screen, since she has now decided to release a behind-the-scenes documentary of her return to the show business after giving birth to Blue Ivy. The documentary will air Feb 16th on HBO and I'm really looking forward to it. In my eyes she can do no wrong and it'll be fun to see how she manages her life since she sure ain't slowing down.

One of the most talked about events of the past week was the bizarre rant of Two and a Half Men-star Angus T. Jones where he declared the show to be filth and not worth watching. He then apologized for the clip and said he will honor his contract with the show. But it's not sure yet if the show even wants him back. He is not scheduled to appear in the next few episodes anyways, so that gives the studio time to think. Former star of the show Charlie Sheen (who was kicked out because of a mental breakdown) even went on to say that the show is cursed. This whole thing has of course been a very easy bait for gossip, even so that some sources suggested that Miley Cyrus would replace him after providing the show with great ratings boost during her two-episode arc. Honestly I think the show has gone downhill since Sheen left. Sure he was crazy, but he was easily the best character on the show. Without him the show is like a headless chicken and I really wouldn't mind if it got cut after this season, though it still provides pretty decent ratings.

Though Seth MacFarlane is probably one of the busiest men in Hollywood at this point (With three shows and Oscar-hosting duties waiting), he still has time for more. There have been plenty of speculations about the Family Guy movie, if it would be made or not. MacFarlane recently confirmed that a movie is indeed in works, after he finally found a plotline that would be impossible to make as a TV episode. He has dabbled with animated movies already with the three Star Wars/Family Guy mash-up parodies and of course last year's comedy success Ted. MacFarlane will also guest star in rival Fox animated series The Simpsons. He is going to play a suitor of Marge in the premiere episode of 25th season.

The cast of Parks and Recreation joined forces with GQ to release this hilarious video of the cast playing Hollywood Squares. The rules of the game don't really matter, since they could probably make any game-show invented funnier than the original.

FILM

Though I'm still very much looking forward to the Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty live-action remake), a new fairytale adaption has entered my radar. Cinderella is getting a live-action version too, and it seems like Cate Blanchett has landed the role of the evil step-mother. The movie will be directed by Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go) and written by Chris Weitz (Golden Compass, Twilight: New Moon). So it certainly has a good setup for a great success. But lets see, we can never be too sure about these big productions.

X-Men First Class sequel, Days of Future past has attached Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart to reprise their roles as Magneto and Professor X from the original trilogy. In First class those same roles are played by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, who certainly look nothing like their older counterparts, so it'll be fun to see how they link those two stories together. Hugh Jackman will also appear in the new movie as Wolverine, a character he is maybe the most know for. He did a small cameo in First Class, but hopefully this will be a bit bigger part.

In other superhero related news. It was first rumored that Joseph Gordon-Levitt might play Batman in the Justice League movie that is currently in pre-pre-production, and that he would cameo in the Man of Steele Superman movie. While this would have been pretty great, JGL's team has declined all these rumors. I know this news might be a bit pointless, but that rules out one big name from the casting list. Or maybe they are just lying and covering up?

 The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced this week. It was no surprise that Moonrise Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook and Beast of The Southern Wild were among the top nominees. Though Spirit Awards rarely go to eventual Oscar winners, it is not unheard of. I think these awards will pave the way for Silver Linings Playbook most of all. But WTF is Matthew McConaughey doing getting nominated for Magic Mike? Is that a joke?

I'll end with some Disney news. Their newest, and most interesting, upcoming animated feature film, Frozen, has finally locked both its directors. Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck (both have been working for Disney previously) will direct this adaptation of the old fairytale Snow Queen. I'm really looking forward for this, since I've been a fan of the original story since I was a kid and the talent attached to this production is pretty amazing (Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel). And I have the biggest respect for traditional animation, that's what made Disney worth its value.

TRAILERS

This time all three featured films here were totally under my radar. I haven't heard anything about them, which actually pretty good thing, since I didn't have any expectations. First one is for a thriller where the they pray turns against the hunters as three women get into some serious trouble. The movie looks haunting and raw, but I'm not sure if the full film manages to keep up the level of suspense. Here is Black Rock:

I don't really know how to describe this next one. I think by saying that it stars Charlie Sheen as a man who goes a bit nuts after breaking up with his girlfriend, says pretty much. The film is called A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. It looks just crazy enough to be totally hilarious.

The last one is for Love is All You Need, starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm.  This Danish-British film is directed by Oscar-winner Susanne Bier. It looks like a decent romantic comedy, but I doubt it will be a smash hit outside Denmark.

That's all folks! New post coming next week (this week was kinda close to ending)