WTF Is RIP Eddie Murphy Trending,He didnt pass away, twitter is killing people more than Jason Voorhees

— It's Shadoe Bitch (@MeganFoxFanNYC) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy, god twitter kills more people than Rebecca Black's Friday! #JustSayin

— Michael Booth (@M__Booth) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy? WTF, Twitter killed more people than Hitler.

— GrandadjFreeman (@GrandadJFreeman) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy. He's not even dead? Twitter kills more people than Bin Laden.

— r.e.b.e.c.c.a. (@TW_Fever) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy? God, Twitter kills more people than Voldemort

— Dumble-fucking-dory(@Evil_Dumbledore) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy? Is it me or do more people die on Twitter than Texas' Death Row?

— American Humor (@AmericanHumor) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy? Twitter kills more people than fried chicken.

— gurdeep singh virdi (@gurdeepsv) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy? Man, Twitter kills more people each year than cars, airplanes and trucks combined!

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy twitter kills more people than midsummer murders

— Courtney Carey(@NathanSykesXOXO) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy twitter kills more people than Detroit city!

— father of all stee (@JOYRDTONE) February 3, 2012

RIP Eddie Murphy is trending... Twitter has killed more people than the Titanic disaster. #smh

— Dan Cooper (@mrmadchef) February 3, 2012

"RIP Eddie Murphy" - This is not true. Ignore it. Twitter kills more people than ______ (insert evil well known killer here)

— Laurice Fattal (@LauriceF) February 3, 2012

Er, I have nothing. Go for it. Long live Eddie Murphy.

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Maybe Jersey Shore recaps are the new phone book. Let's make all of this year's nominees read aloud about The Situation's pubes and JWoww's bikini waxes or whatever and see who comes out with their dignity intact.

[Jimmy Kimmel Live]

· The Woman in Black black long sleeve t-shirt
· The Woman in Black black short sleeve t-shirt
· The Woman in Black black veil
· The Woman in Black static cling
· The Woman in Black source novel by Susan King
· The Woman in Black branded iPod Nano
· The Woman in Black signed Daniel Radcliffe poster

Hoo boy. Don't ask me how we come across all these things, seriously.

So how does one participate? Simple: Post an original piece of Daniel Radcliffe fan fiction in the comments section below. Follow these basic rules to qualify:

· The fiction must be 100 words or less. Not a word over!
· It must feature Daniel Radcliffe.
· It must include The Woman in Black's tagline, "What did they see?"
· Romantic scenarios are fine, but anything considered especially lewd or obscene will be immediately disqualified and removed from the site.
· It must be previously unpublished. Finalists will be vetted for originality.
· Only one submission per person, please. Make it count.
· The winner must be a U.S. resident.

The deadline to participate is this Thursday, Feb. 2, at 5 p.m. PT. The winner will be judged by Movieline staff on the basis of originality, creativity and how imaginatively the "What did they see?" tagline is deployed. We'll announce and republish the winner on Feb. 3 around noon PT.

Happy writing, and good luck!

[UPDATE 2/2: Contest is now closed. Thanks for playing! Winner will be announced tomorrow, Friday Feb. 3.]

--

UPDATE 2/3: We have a winner! Congrats to Movieliner Martha, whose 100-word fan fic submission captured our imaginations and brought us closer to Woman in Black star Daniel Radcliffe because really, haven't we all been there?

From Martha:

"Daniel Radcliffe was used to the stares at premieres; he wasn’t used to the silence. Silence which was quickly turning into whispered snickers. His brows furrowed as he made to push through his security personal to begin the trek down the red carpet, but they wouldn’t let him though. He was roughly pushed back into the limo. The door slammed shut. He looked at his hands in his lap in confusion and that’s when he saw it. He didn’t have on any pants. His last thought was 'What did they see?' before his alarm went off and startled him awake."

Congrats, Martha - and thanks to all of our ML wordsmiths for playing!

Dujardin and co-star Gilles Lellouche appear in the posters in pseudo-in flagrante poses, boasting douchey looks of self-satisfaction accessorized by faceless women and female body parts. Of course, pointing out the ridiculousness of these fellas' wanton use of women for sex is probably the entire point of the film (I'm guessing/hoping), but y'know...

Above tagline translation, per THR: “It’s going to cut out. I’m entering a tunnel.” Tres classy! But you tell me: Are these posters (courtesy of the film's Facebook page) so bad? And, more relevant to this season: Can these raunchy images damage Dujardin's hold on the Best Actor race?

For more of a sense of the film, and to see Oscar's leading man get down and dirty, watch the French language redband trailer (via EW):

[THR, EW, Facebook]

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Which brings us to the two sound categories. Does anyone out there who's not a sound engineer actually understand the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing? Fine, I'm sure there are a handful of expert McKnowitalls out there. (Essentially, editing is the selection/assemblage of sounds and mixing is the blending of all sounds/dialogue/audio for the final film.) But you know who doesn't understand the difference between the two? Normal people, and a whole lot of Oscar voters.

That's probably why Paramount's Transformers Oscar spot doesn't even bother distinguishing between the two sound categories. "Just vote for us across the board!" the campaign practically screams, and why not? The goal of these spots is basically to put Transformers in the minds of the voters -- the ones who can be swayed by a TV commercial telling them that these are the best effects of the year. Take a look at the ad below and chime in below: Do you think this campaign will finally earn the franchise their Oscar?

[via Deadline]

Atlas Productions, LLC announced today that Atlas Shrugged Part 2, the second installment of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy, has been officially greenlit with principal photography to begin this coming April in Los Angeles, Colorado, and New York.

Based on Ayn Rand’s (Feb. 2 1905 - Mar. 6 1982) 1957 novel, ATLAS SHRUGGED is set in the near future when a dystopian United States finds its leading innovators, from industrialists to artists, mysteriously disappearing at an alarming rate resulting in the “stopping the motor of the world." [...]

Rand’s 1,100 page novel is being produced by Atlas Productions as a trilogy which follows the three part structure of the bestselling book. Part 1 was released theatrically on April 15, 2011. Part 2 is set to be in theaters October 2012 amidst what is sure to be a fever pitched presidential election season.

“It’s no coincidence that we chose Ayn Rand’s Birthday as the occasion to make this announcement. We have high aspirations for Part 2. We’ve looked carefully at Part 1 and taken time to analyze and reexamine everything from the script to the casting. John and I are committed to making a great Part 2 and excited about what lies ahead,” according to Producer Harmon Kaslow.

For the record, the first installment of Atlas Shrugged grossed $4.6 million theatrically on a reported (read: clearly overinflated) $20 million budget, prompting even such knob-polishing deans of blurb whoredom as Peter Travers to gripe: "Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal."

Anyway, here's a teaser. Mark your calendars!

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W.E. is actually two intertwining stories -- or maybe, more accurately, two stories clumsily rubbing against each other in an awkward attempt to set off a spark. The first is the story, set in the late 1990s, of Wally Winthrop, a young New York society wife played by Abbie Cornish. Wally, it turns out, was named after the Duchess of Windsor -- her mother and grandmother were obsessed with the stylish American double divorcée who stole a king's heart. That helps explain why Wally, who's ignored -- and worse -- by her rich doctor husband (Richard Coyle), keeps stalking her former place of employment, which happens to be Sotheby's: The auction house is just about to sell off many of the Duchess's possessions, and since Wally used to work there, she can just go around lifting Wallis's crystal stemware off tables and removing nighties from their hangers to scrutinize and fondle them. A handsome Russian intellectual-slash-security guard (I kid you not), played by the winsome Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac, also happens to have a crush on Wally; he's a good guy to have around when you have a hankering to stroke precious historical objects willy-nilly.

Wally has other problems -- she desperately wants a child, even as her scoundrel of a husband refuses to sleep with her. And so, interlocked with Wally's story, we get episodic glimpses into the life of her idol, Wallis (played, in a stroke of brilliant casting, by Andrea Riseborough, who shares Mrs. Simpson's regal bearing; she has also appeared recently in Rowan Joffe's adaptation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock). It turns out Wallis was often unhappy, too! And that she made sacrifices in life! And that she wasn't the Nazi sympathizer she was made out to be! When Wally's husband tries to bring up the Duchess's hazy Nazi-loving past, Wally comes limping to her defense: "Most of that's based on rumor," she retorts. So there. Later, Wally brings more irrefutable evidence to the Wallis Simpson pity party: "The whole world turned against her." Take that.

Madonna, who co-wrote the script with Alek Keshishian (the director of Madonna: Truth or Dare), isn't wrong about that. But do we much care? Madonna is actually following a decent impulse here: The desire to take an unlikable character and render her in shades beyond black-and-white. But even as viewed through the filmmaker's glassy, admiring eyes, Wallis isn't easy to care about. Madonna takes great pains to show how Mrs. Simpson tried to persuade her paramour to stay on the throne; but James D'Arcy, as the abdicator Edward VIII -- known to his close friends and family as David -- declared he couldn't live unless he could have the woman he loved by his side. What Madonna does capture is Edward's romantic naivete. And Wallis does rattle a mean cocktail shaker. I guess it's easy enough to see how a guy's head -- even a royal head -- could get turned by that delightful chrome shak-a-shak sound.

But W.E. is too much of a sprawl; the parallels between the two women are stretched uncomfortably, and Cornish, especially, is left with little to do. Madonna doesn't really have a point of view -- she wants to set the record straight on Wallis, but she doesn't have the ammunition or the skills to do it right. W.E. is filled with stylish, empty touches: After the young (and pregnant) Wallis is kicked in the stomach by her first husband, we see her lying on a sparkling white tile floor as a pool of crimson blood gathers around her nether region. It's the best-art-directed miscarriage I've seen all year.

But W.E. does try, at least, to put a few nicks and scratches in the concept of the "great love story." The movie's title refers to the term Wallis and Edward used, privately, for themselves as a fused unit -- a forerunner of Brangelina and Bennifer, if you will. The idea of that sort of soulmate coupling is either wildly romantic to you, or it's stifling. Madonna isn't quite sure which side of that fence she's on, but at least she's acknowledging the fence. She's also keyed in to Wallis Simpson's practical side: No material girl would scoff at custom-made trinkets from Cartier, and when Edward does super-cute stuff like hide a diamond-encrusted cross in the bottom of her teacup, Wallis accepts with delight. "You certainly know the way to a woman's heart," she coos, to which he responds, "I wasn't aiming that high." That's Madonna's baser instinct at work, and W.E. could use more of it: The movie's shallowest moments are also its most honest.

[Editor's note: This review appeared earlier, in a slightly different form, in December 2011, when W.E. opened for a brief Oscar-qualification run. A version of this review also appeared in Stephanie Zacharek's 2011 Venice Film Festival coverage.]

Related: Here's Lynch writing about his love for coffee, also old news. I am running out of things to give up on!

[AdWeek via THR]

So, you know, another Friday night in Seattle. The trio take the event more or less in stride, so that what ensues is basically a montage of their various attempts to create the best YouTube video ever. The boys treat their superpowers like one more of puberty’s bodily twists, and trade tips on how to manage it. They begin by moving other objects around and creating force fields to shield their bodies from pain. The more they develop the power, like a muscle, the stronger it becomes. Soon they begin moving themselves around, and then up into the sky. What could go wrong?

Trank keeps the fraternal tone so light it’s sometimes just shy of forced -- the script, by Max Landis (the son of John Landis), is a little heavy on the “Dude, no way!” dialogue. But the first half of Chronicle establishes an affable and believable bond between the three characters -- something one of them badly needs. They talk about girls and plan to see the world -- Andrew wants to make a spiritual mission to Tibet. And yet it’s Andrew who begins pulling away from the pack. The kid’s got a lot of unfocused rage, and it starts slipping out in small acts of aggression. The group’s golden rule -- basically don’t hurt anybody -- doesn’t preclude letting Andrew earn a little social cred at the school talent show, so he puts on a “magic” act that makes him an instant hero. But a sexual humiliation soon follows, and it proves to be a point of no return. Only his friends are powerful enough to stop him, which means they quickly become his enemies.

Andrew starts out with the desire to create a true record of the abuse he is suffering, presumably one that will be witnessed. And yet the fact that Andrew’s persecutors are presented from his vantage, literally and otherwise, reinforces the sense that if the camera doesn’t lie, perspective still tends to exaggerate. This uneven but earnest, often exhilarating film derives its greatest interest from the way it turns the found-footage format inside out: At some point Andrew learns to control the camera’s movement with his mind, so instead of seeing what he sees, we're watching a self-directed version of his life. When that movie becomes a kind of disaster pic it would seem that the further we move from Andrew’s literal perspective, the deeper we get into his psyche and the hellmouth of teenage rage. By the time he’s putting the entire metro area on notice -- having thrashed his father and all the local bullies -- Andrew has no camera and the metaphor has run away with the story entirely. The crazy thing is it almost works.

The finale, which goes off like an unmanned fire hose, rests on the assumption that everything is in fact being filmed from here on out -- a subtext of the found-footage conceit. The question of who has found and edited this thing together is treated as understood, an apt reflection of the genre’s popularity. Doesn’t some part of every self-documenter assume a future curator will rescue him from oblivion? That someday his story will be told? The coda suggests the evidence will exonerate Tibet-loving Andrew for that time he had his revenge on Seattle; the truth is he was just misunderstood.

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