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More strange stories from Cannes: Someone — "a crazy guy," according to police — brought a starter pistol to a French TV broadcast and fired off two blanks during the taping. Christoph Waltz and Daniel Auteuil were among the people being interviewed; you can watch them get rushed off the program below. The man in question was arrested, and the show continued. Since there were no actual bullets in the pistol, everyone is fine.
It’s wild and wooly out there in the world of streaming video. As movies and TV shows become increasingly accessible through a variety of services, it has also become increasingly difficult to keep track of what is available where, what is expiring when, and what is actually worth watching. So every Friday, Vulture will have a list of recommendations of movies and TV shows that are new to Netflix (as well as Hulu, Amazon, On Demand, and other streaming sites), those that are expiring, and those that you should watch just because.
A sad, moving sports doc, a smart slasher pic, and a Star Trek wormhole
With her web series "Ask Amy," Amy Poehler has proven she's an expert at giving advice, but can she predict the future? Well, she dropped by The Chris Gethard Show to do just that. With a magic eight ball on her head, she predicts one caller will never meet Barbra Streisand, another will be very cold in Chicago, and that "I think there's going to be a guy named David in your building and he's going to be very interesting." She'll obviously be correct on all of these, because she's Amy Poehler and we predict she the coolest.
Last summer at Cannes, Harvey Weinstein held a special press conference to show off forthcoming film footage from The Master, Silver Linings Playbook, and Django Unchained — three major works from A-list auteurs. The Weinstein Company slate isn't stacked in quite the same way this year, but Weinstein held another event earlier today at the Hotel Majestic, at which he ran down the company's entire slate, padding some of the first looks — including a five-minute reel for Nicole Kidman's Grace Kelly biopic — with lots of trailers that we've already seen from films like August: Osage County and The Butler. Still, you couldn't help but notice that Weinstein's upcoming slate was packed with prestige films starring black actors, including Forest Whitaker, Michael B. Jordan, and Idris Elba. Always a canny awards-season presence, could Weinstein push all three men into a history-making Best Actor category?
We haven't had more than one black nominee for Best Actor since 2006.
If you believe the rumors and were suspicious about her recent show cancellation, Beyoncé is pregnant (again!). Blue Ivy might just get the sister-friend she's been dreaming of since being locked in that tall ivory tower. But seriously, siblings are wonderful — and so are the notes Beyoncé uses to communicate with her fans via Tumblr and Instagram. Is that how she'll announce the pregnancy? With a slight nod to the press and a handwritten note for us? What will the note say? We imagined a few rough drafts, so please don't put us in jail for our falsified Beyoncé signature.
"This weather, what the fuck?" That was Rooney Mara's jovial and very appropriate greeting to Harvey Weinstein at Thursday night’s annual IFP- and Calvin Klein–sponsored celebration of Women in Film, usually one of the most reliably fun nights at the Cannes Film Festival. The combination of body-fat-deficient actresses in slinky, sleeveless Calvin Klein dresses plus a monsoonlike storm driving rain directly onto the ocean-side red carpet made for a stunningly miserable affair (that is, until everyone got inside the heated tent and got a lot of Champagne into their bellies). Goosebumps covered honoree Carey Mulligan in a tight strapless black dress as she rehashed Gatsby yet again, this time for the foreign press corps, and talked about which women in film she wants to work with: Marion Cotillard and Nicole Kidman (who followed her down the red carpet; let's hope the two struck a deal inside).
Sarah Polley frowns. We're seated opposite each other in the conference room of a Beverly Hills boutique hotel, and I've just asked what I thought was an innocuous question about her new documentary, Stories We Tell. "I'm hesitant to talk to you about that specific thing," she replies to the query in question. "It's such a spoiler." That's the sort of answer you might expect to get from an actor guarding superhero movie secrets, but not from Polley, a 34-year-old actress-cum-director who's made an indie documentary about the skeletons in her family closet.
But Stories We Tell is no ordinary documentary, and that's by design.
Aaron Eckhart (who’s already had one action hit this year with Olympus Has Fallen) is apparently out to claim Liam Neeson’s mantle: Just like in the Taken films and Unknown, he’s playing an ex-black-ops guy who has to protect/save/find his family in this Europudding action thriller. The title, Erased, even sounds like a Liam Neeson film. (It was originally called The Expatriate, which was presumably nixed because Americans won’t know what the hell an expatriate is.) Five years from now, it’ll be an inevitable source of confusion: “Wait, what was that Liam Neeson movie? Abducted? Disappeared? Vanished? Erased?” “No, dummy, Erased starred that other guy…what’s his name?”
Actually, for its first half, Erased is pretty solid. But then...
(SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) After the first Star Trek reboot opened big in 2009, J.J. Abrams mused about having Khan be the villain in a sequel. And then he spent the next four years refuting the idea, swatting down any evidence that suggested it. Right up until today's premiere, he's been maintaining that Benedict Cumberbatch's villain is named John Harrison. (SERIOUSLY, THIS IS YOUR LAST SPOILER ALERT. SAVE YOURSELF!) Now the movie is open, and critics weighing in have had to decide just how much detail they are going to go into when describing Cumberbatch's bad guy. These reviewers split into three camps: complete avoidance, waffling hints, and flat-out shouting it to the space rafters.
The Office finale didn’t just bring back past regulars Michael Scott, Kelly, and Ryan. The 75-minute closer also paraded out classic bygone bit players (Mose! Devon!) and characters we’d only heard about until last night (Erin’s birth parents … awww). But the show was also packed with many Office regulars who you might not have recognized: Behind-the-scenes folks popped in for small parts, from writers and producers to key crew members (and, in some cases, their loved ones) and one very dedicated Office fan, all of whom kept Dunder Mifflin chugging away for nine seasons. (There were also a couple of very familiar actors who showed up as new characters, which felt like they were setting things up for some kind of Scrubs-like continuation with a new cast.) Here’s the complete list of returning players, backstage castings, and surprise cameos, alphabetically by character.* (UPDATE: Thanks to the help of Office director/editor/producer David Rogers, we were able to identify even more players, added in below.)
Several unnamed "sources" have confirmed to E! News that Beyoncé is indeed pregnant! The announcement follows weeks of rumors that began with her awkwardly belted Met Gala dress and gained momentum when she canceled a performance in Antwerp, Belgium, on Tuesday, owing to "dehydration and exhaustion" (ahem, morning sickness). Meanwhile, her PR team has forbidden photographers from taking pictures at her shows, spawning gossip that hi-res images would reveal her growing tummy. Although Team Bey STILL has not confirmed, go ahead and fire up the
color + plant baby-name generator.
After a series of hate letters to humankind, Noah Baumbach has fashioned an ode to his girlfriend Greta Gerwig’s galumphing adorableness (they co-wrote the script). Frances Ha is black-and-white and has a French New Wave gloss, along with a soundtrack that quotes Georges Delerue’s theme from King of Hearts. (It cranks up when Baumbach needs enchantment.) Gerwig plays a childishly enthusiastic would-be dancer walloped by grown-up life in our most heartless metropolis, New York. Sophie (Mickey Sumner), the best friend she cherishes (hugs, holds hands with, tells “the story of us” to), pulls away. She loses the gig that would pay her rent. The camera holds on her open face as she takes each blow. She blinks to signal disbelief, curls her mouth, and bites down on her lower lip. But she galumphs on.
Frances Ha has the trappings and suits of love, but it’s full of sour tones.
Fox executives have waited (in fear) for a moment like this: American Idol wrapped its twelfth season last night with its least-watched finale ever and the first one in the show's history to not crack 20 million viewers. On a night that also included the finale of The Office (more on that later), around 14.3 million people watched Candace Glover win Fox's singing competition, with the two-hour-and-seven-minute broadcast averaging a 3.6 rating among adults under 50. Those are impressive numbers for most shows on TV; ABC's red-hot Scandal only managed a 3.2 in the demo last night. But they are absolutely awful numbers by the standards of a show that, until last season, was consistently TV's most-watched program. Compared to the May 2012 finale, Idol was down a stunning 44 percent in the demo and lost exactly one-third of its overall audience year-to-year. And in a sign of just how much of the Idol core audience abandoned the show, last night's Idol finale had a lower demo rating than any of the roughly 40 episodes of Idol episodes that aired last year. In other words, the lowest-rated episode of Idol season elevent was still bigger than this year's finale. Idol also bled viewers throughout the season: It kicked off this January with a 6.0 rating in the demo and stayed above a 4 rating until midway through its never-ending Hollywood round in mid-February. One small upside: Even with the jaw-dropping collapse, Idol was still big enough Thursday to give Fox a win for the night, despite facing massive competition from the season finales of network TV's top comedy (The Big Bang Theory) and top drama among adults under 50 (Grey's Anatomy), plus the series finale of The Office. It should also be noted that in past years, Idol has ended its season on a Wednesday, usually with far less brutal competition than it faced last night.
When we first heard the reports that Sofia Coppola would open her new movie The Bling Ring with a quote from Nicole Richie's Twitter account ... well, had anything ever seemed so perfect? And yet, when the movie premiered yesterday at Cannes, no such tweet was to be found! What gives? Last night at the movie's Nikki Beach after-party, we cornered Coppola to solve the mystery. "The quote from her was 'Life is crazy and unpredictable … my bangs are going to the left today,'" laughed Coppola. "I started looking at Twitter a lot while I was working on this movie, and I thought it was funny." Still, she doesn't mourn its absence from the screen: "I always just had it on the first page of the script, just to kind of introduce it, you know? But I wasn't planning on putting it in the movie." Well, at least she'll always have Paris.
And another Marvel blockbuster hits ten figures: Iron Man 3 has now passed the $1 billion benchmark worldwide, and it also just broke $300 million domestically. Everyone loves Guy Pearce in a nice cropped pant. (Also: superheroes.)
The Office’s last two episodes – last four, if you consider this week’s finale and last week’s episode to be double features – were sweet, charming, and often sneakily powerful. I’m surely not the only viewer who was a wreck throughout large sections of each: Jim’s video declaration of love for Pam, Erin finally meeting her mother and father (played by Joan Cusack and Ed Begley, Jr.), and the entirety of Dwight’s wedding to Angela (with special surprise guest appearance by Michael) scored especially high on the waterworks scale.
It wouldn't be a Grey's Anatomy season finale unless someone met his or her maker, and last night's episode certainly left things looking like the (former) Chief was this year's unlucky character. Not as unlucky as the plane-crash victims in last year's season finale, but unlucky nonetheless. No one wants to get electrocuted in the basement of their workplace.
Hologram enthusiasts the world over were delighted to learn that this year's Rock the Bells would feature two ghost rappers — Eazy-E and Ol' Dirty Bastard (in reunion with Bone Thugs and Wu-Tang). Except ODB's widow was apparently not consulted, and she has now filed a cease and desist. "I am looking forward to talking to Wu-Tang about this matter and coming up with a positive solution in order to bring my husband to the stage once again,” it reads. Okay, but does "positive solution" mean "hologram"?
You guys, it is finally time to do this. After nearly 45 minutes of show stretched over four-and-a-half months, tonight we choose our twelfth American Idol. Is everybody ready? Is anybody here? Hello? Oh, it’s just you and me left? Great; more wine and Pop-Tarts for us, then.
"I'm not worried about Instagram," J.R. Smith told reporters last night, in response to a question about Rihanna, after the Knicks' 85–75 victory over the Pacers. "I'm worried about the playoffs." Considering how much better he played last night compared to the rest of the series, maybe Rihanna could call him a "desert thirsty nigga" again before Game 6?
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