Whitaker to join Reeves in Watchmen

Whitaker set for Night Watchman
Fresh off his Best Actor Oscar for The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker is in final talks to star alongside Keanu Reeves in The Night Watchman, directed by David Ayer. Reeves was attached last month to play a member of an elite group of LAPD cops whose ruthless tactics to solve murders and battle gang violence falls into question with his peers. Whitaker will play a captain of the elite unit. James Ellroy wrote the script. Shooting is slated for May 21 with Fox Searchlight and New Regency financing. (Variety)

Clinton to appear on South Park

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is set to appear as a character on satirical cartoon series South Park. The presidential hopeful will be recreated in two-dimensional form in an episode of the controversial show, which will air on TV network Comedy Central tonight. Sources from the network tell the New York Daily News the storyline will focus on a local rally for Clinton’s political campaign, but would not elaborate further on the show’s final plot. Last year, an episode dealing with Scientology and Tom Cruise caused Isaac Hayes, who played Chef on the show, to quit over “inappropriate ridicule” of the controversial religion. (IMDb.com)

Hide the children, Marilyn Manson is back

The Antichrist Superstar exorcises some demons – including his divorce – on new album
Marilyn Manson sits in the front room of his home in San Fernando Valley, drinking from a bottle of rose-tinted absinthe. The house feels dark and unwelcoming – his estranged wife, model Dita Von Teese, has recently moved out – and Manson apologizes for the disarray. Without the makeup that he usually wears in public, and dressed casually in black, Manson pours himself into a couch and explains the turmoil that’s plagued him for much of the past year – and ultimately led him to restart his musical career with a new album, EAT ME, DRINK ME (referring to the last supper), due in June. The songs, he says, “are clearly written to seduce somebody,” though he is hesitant to divulge whom. “I don’t want people to think the record is some kind of exploitation of my personal life,” says Manson. “At the same time, it also represents exactly who I am and what I feel.”
For the next few hours, Manson plays unmastered cuts from EAT ME, DRINK ME and describes his year in hell. “Halfway through last year I was in such a black hole of depression,” he says. “I couldn’t make anything, I couldn’t do anything. I lost hope.” At the time, Manson’s mother was diagnosed with a mental illness and, he says, “I got trapped in one of the classic rock & roll cliches of having people that work for me rob me behind my back.” He had no interest in making music, and the film project he was focused on – Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll based on the twisted life of Lewis Carroll – became a psychological burden.
Manson says he was finally uplifted by a close friend’s morbid gesture of devotion. “She picked up a butcher’s knife and said, ‘Here, you can stab me,’” he says. “When someone was willing to drown with me, I really didn’t want to drown anymore.” This theme is depicted in the six-minute epic “If I Was Your Vampire,” which Manson wrote on Christmas. “That song is the new ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead,’” says Manson. “It’s the all-time gothic anthem.”
The album’s lyrics were written after last Halloween. That night, Manson presided over the opening of his Los Angeles art gallery. The next morning he left his home in the Valley and set up temporary digs at a studio-equipped house in the Hollywood Hills. “Suddenly,” he says, “I felt liberated. I’d write a song, walk two doors down the hall and record it right then.” Manson’s lyrics, which were recorded over tracks by Tim Skold (who joined Manson’s band in 2002 as bassist), came quickly. “I was writing out of desperation and hope,” he says. “The record came out in a rush – like an open wound – and I went with it.”
“Just A Car Crash Away” is a Bic-waving ballad, a death march punctuated by Skold’s searing guitar solo. “The Red Carpet Grave” is classic Manson, echoing with buzz saws and primitive percussion. (In fact, on “You, Me and the Devil Makes 3″ they beat on a metal skunk trap they found outside the house.) Manson wrote the album’s first single, “Putting Holes in Happiness,” on his birthday, and describes it as “a romantic-misogynistic-cannibal-gothic-vampire ballad.”
Manson hopes to release a film in conjunction with the disc that he claims “is nothing short of the most horrifying horror that you could ever experience.” He will also tour this summer, debuting live versions of the new songs at European festivals. “I really wanted to be a singer on this album,” he says. “This is very earnest and uncalculated and raw, in the sense that I know I’m fucked up, and I’m really not ashamed of it.” (Rolling Stone)
Here is a taste of Manson artwork:

The video for Manson’s last single, “(s)AINT”

More news
Manson will be touring this summer with Slayer. The tour will begin in July, but exact dates and venues have not been announced.

A history lesson of the origin of Spidey’s black suit

Venom. In comic circles, it’s a name that conjures up images of a murderous, hulking creature garbed in a twisted, black version of Spider-Man’s costume. For fans eagerly awaiting Spider-Man 3, the black costume–and the inevitable rise of Venom–could signal the end for Peter Parker. But what’s the story behind the alien costume that would come to be one of Spider-Man’s most feared foes? Read on to find out!
It all began during the battle dubbed Secret Wars, when Spider-Man found a machine he thought to be a fabric replicator. Reaching for the black sphere produced by the alien machine, Peter Parker’s arm, then his entire body, became engulfed in black goo. The substance seemed to acknowledge Peter’s thoughts and oozing over Spidey’s body, fashioned itself into a new outfit for the Web-Slinger. Now sporting a black variation of his original costume, Spider-Man found that the suit not only augmented his abilities, it also possessed some powers of its own; the suit generated its own supply of webbing and could change appearances according to Spidey’s thoughts.
Returning to Earth, Peter soon discovered that the suit had a mind of its own, using Peter’s body while he was sleeping. Peter brought the suit to Reed Richards, and the two learned that the suit was actually a symbiotic life form that had physically and psychically bonded to Peter. Reed needed to use powerful sonic waves to forcefully separate the symbiote from Peter. Contained in the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, the symbiote eventually escaped and returned to Peter’s home. Camouflaging itself as an old red and blue costume, Peter unknowingly put the symbiote back on. Peter broke the symbiote’s hold over him by using the loud sounds in a church bell-tower. After splitting with the symbiote, Peter watched it slither away, assuming it would die in its weakened state.
Unfortunately for Peter, the symbiote fell inside the church where journalist Eddie Brock prayed. Brock wrote an article revealing the identity of a murderer called the Sin-Eater, but Spider-Man exposed the true identity of the killer and in the process caused Eddie to lose his job and spiral into depression. Sensing Brock’s hatred of Spider-Man, the symbiote bonded with the dejected reporter.
As Venom, Brock possessed the same powers Peter had with the symbiote, but had two advantages crucial to hunting Spider-Man: he knew Spider-Man’s secret identity and the symbiote could shield Brock from Peter’s spider-sense. While Venom operated under a twisted moral code of innocence, he battled Spider-Man on numerous occasions, becoming a sinister rival not seen since Peter fought the original Green Goblin. Though they sometimes fought side-by-side, Venom was ever a thorn in Spider-Man’s side.

Lynch offers his own public service announcement

Here is an ad for public awareness against littering by the master director, David Lynch. Enjoy!

Depp and Banderas could star in Sin City sequels

Director Robert Rodriguez is handing out casting tidbits for his post-Grindhouse projects, revealing he’s keen on finding a part for Antonio Banderas in a Sin City sequel and possibly giving Johnny Depp the starring role for Sin City 3.
“When I showed [Banderas] the first sample of the work, he went, ‘Man, I’ll do anything in that. I’ll be the hunchback. You have to bring me onboard, that looks amazing,’” said Rodriguez to MTV. “So Frank met him that time too and he said, ‘I have got to find something for that guy. I’ve never met him before. He’s amazing.’ [So we're] looking at the cast of characters and [looking] to see where he can fit.”
Though Frank Miller has already finished the Sin City 2 script (based on the A Dame to Kill For story), accommodation for Banderas isn’t ruled out; in fact, Miller recently added scenes for Jessica Alba’s Nancy Callahan.
The initial grounding is also being laid out for the third Sin City, based on Hell and Back. The story revolves around Wallace, a moody artist who, after being repeatedly drugged, stumbles through most of the action hallucinating.
“[Depp] was interested in doing the Jackie Boy character that Benicio del Toro played [in Sin City], but he was doing that movie Libertine in Europe and it just kept getting pushed and delayed and went right through our shooting schedule,” Rodriguez said. “But there is a better role for him in [Hell and Back]. I kept going, ‘Gosh, Jackie Boy is a small part, he could be really good [as Wallace].’”
Should we start expecting Once Upon a Time in Mexico-meets-Fear and Loathing? The next “Sin Cities” currently have tentative release dates of 2008.
Source: MTV

Aronofsky to direct Wahlberg, Damon boxing movie

Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) is in final negotiations with Paramount to direct the boxing movie starring Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg. The story is based on the life of boxer ”Irish” Mickey Ward (Wahlberg) and his trainer brother Dick Eklund (Damon), their early days on the rough streets of Lowell, MA and Ward’s eventual world championship in London. Wahlberg and Damon are from Boston, and Aronofsky and Damon both went to Harvard. Sources say Aronofsky is waiting for a rewrite from Paul Attanasio before he signs onto the project. (Hollywood Reporter)

Ghost Town gets its stars

Gervais, Kinnear team for Ghost Town
Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear will star in the romantic comedy Ghost Town, which screenwriter David Koepp (War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones 4) will direct for DreamWorks from a script he wrote with John Kamps. The story is about a dentist who sees dead people who ask him for help in contacting the living. DreamWorks, which paid $2 million for rights to the story in 2005, is scheduled to start shooting in October. (Hollywood Reporter)

Gibson and Professor disagree on Apocalypto

Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film “Apocalypto” at an on-campus screening. Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie. Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the crowd.
“In no way was my question aggressive in the way that he responded to it,” Estrada said. “These are questions that my peers, my colleagues, ask me every time I make a presentation. These are questions I pose to my students in the classroom.”
Gibson’s publicist, Alan Nierob, characterized the professor as “a heckler.”
“The woman … was rude and disruptive inasmuch as the event organizers had to escort her out,” Nierob said.
Lauren Robeson, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Daily Sundial, said Gibson denounced Estrada as a troublemaker.
“It was a brief disruption to an otherwise interesting, stimulating event from our students’ perspectives,” said university spokesman John Chandler. “The students were very appreciative of Mr. Gibson being there. He spent a lot of time answering questioernational headlines. The R-rated epic about the decline of Mayan civilization shows Mayan rulers slitting throats and beheading and ripping the beating hearts from the chests of their enemies.
Human sacrifice among the Mayans has been well-documented in recent years and is accepted as fact by most anthropologists, knocking down a previous theory that the culture did not take part in such bloody rituals.
However, there are some scholars and Indian activists who still believe the human sacrifice accounts are false or overblown, and an attempt by racist scientists to paint the culture as violent.
“This isn’t the Mayan culture,” Juan Tiney, leader of the National Indian and Farmer Committee, Guatemala’s biggest Mayan organization, told the AP. “Although it might be part of it, there was also culture, economics, astronomical wealth and language. … It discredits a people to present them in this manner.”
Gibson “did his homework and consulted with world authorities on this matter,” Nierob said.
“Apocalypto” has grossed more than $100 million worldwide, and it earned three Academy Award nominations.

Winslet and DiCaprio reunite for new film

Titanic stars reunite for DreamWorks
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio will star together for the first time since 1997’s Titanic in DreamWorks’ Revolutionary Road. The Sam Mendes-directed movie will be based on the Richard Yates’s 1961 novel about post-war disillusionment seen through the eyes of a suburban couple raising two children in the mid-1950s who find their true desires obstructed by pressure to conform. Writer Justin Haythe adapted the screenplay. John N. Hart, Scott Rudin, Bobby Cohen, and Mendes (Winslet’s husband) will produce in association with BBC Films. Shooting is slated to begin this summer. (Variety)