Cue up the “Axel F”: Tropic Thunder actor Brandon T. Jackson has landed the lead in CBS’s Beverly Hills Cop reboot, which producers plan to bring back as a series for TV under the guidance of original star Eddie Murphy and The Shield’s Shawn Ryan.
Murphy, who will executive produce and act in the series pilot, will reprise his role as the wisecracking, transplanted cop Axel Foley while Jackson will play Foley’s police officer son. Per Deadline:
The series centers on Axel Foley’s blue-collar police officer son, Aaron (Jackson), who helps take down the criminal elements of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills while trying to escape the shadow of his larger-than-life father. Murphy will reprise his role as Axel in the pilot and may recur if the pilot goes to series.
And look — Jackson’s already a part of the Beverly Hills Cop family! (Pictured below: Judge Reinhold and Jackson at Spike TV’s “Eddie Murphy: One Night Only” event earlier this month.)
If this Beverly Hills Cop reboot business is happening, I’m glad it’s someone like Jackson, one of the more consistently hilarious actors of his class, getting the big shot. Because if there’s some other young up-and-comer fit to step into Murphy’s shoes, it’s probably Jackson. Also: Alpha Chino Forever.
[via Deadline]
Just the words South Central will conjure up an image of mean streets and gangs, even by people who don’t live in Los Angeles. The neighborhood is infamous for its hardened criminals and its gang-banger imagery has permeated the popular culture everywhere. Director David Ayer returns to the neighborhood he knows well in his latest film End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (who is also an executive producer) and Michael Peña who give gripping performances as LAPD cops Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala tackling a better armed group of very tough group – both guys and gals. Ayer grew up in the neighborhood and knows the people he’s brought to the big screen well. South Central was the setting for his first directorial feature, Harsh Times back in 2005. And LAPD cops were at the heart of his 2008 pic Street Kings. Ayer told ML that he initially wanted to move away from the cop-crime scenario after working on those films, but headed back to the genre even as he was trying to talk himself out of it.
In the feature that opens wide Friday, Gyllenhaal and Peña play LAPD officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala. The action plays out on screen through the P.O.V. of hand-held cameras implanted on police officers with more footage “shown” by gang members, surveillance cameras, dish cams and citizen-caught images in the line of fire. While there are moments peppered throughout the feature showing moments of levity between the their characters that prompted outbursts of laughter during the film’s premiere in Toronto, the scenes quickly turn to present a mosaic of dark violent streets, human trafficking, gang confrontation and a barrage of shoot-outs. Just try and fall asleep in this movie – aint gonna happen…
David Ayer chatted with ML the day…
Full Story »It says something about how the LAPD tends to get portrayed in the movies that when Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) are introduced on screen at the beginning of the surprising cop drama End of Watch, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before they plant evidence on someone, steal drugs or money, beat or kill someone without warrant or let loose with something terribly racist.
The film is, after, the latest from David Ayer, who wrote and directed Street Kings and scripted Training Day, two features that portrayed Los Angeles law enforcement as morally compromised at best and violently corrupt at worst. That sense of apprehension carries through an opening scene in which Taylor and Zavala shoot two suspects down in what appears to be legitimate self-defense. (They’re cleared of any wrongdoing and roll back onto the street on patrol.) The two cops are cocky and funny and young, and it still takes a good half hour to accept that they may be as forthright and dedicated to their jobs as they appear to be.
End of Watch is a Millennial police drama. It’s a generation or two removed from Rodney King and the Rampart scandal, and Ayer manages to give a startling sense of a changing of the LAPD guard as well as the forces they’re up against. Its main characters are tough but not yet jaded cops who bicker with affectionate familiarity about race and make obligatory gay jokes that lack the sting of homophobia. The longstanding L.A. battle against gang violence is ongoing, but lurking behind it is a new and more frightening enemy: the Sinaloa Cartel, onto whose ominous dealings Taylor and Zavala stumble more times than is good for their health.
The film’s found footage aesthetic also speaks to its refreshing next-gen spirit. Taylor and Zavala blithely…
Full Story »Digging into the rabbit hole of a mystery that is the inflammatory, anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims — the amateurish viral trailer for which set off protests and violent attacks in at U.S. embassies in Libya, Egypt, and other cities this week — Vice Magazine and Gawker have fingered the man they believe directed the project last year in California. Did industry veteran Alan Roberts (AKA Robert Brownell), a B-movie director and editor behind cult/softcore Cannon/Golan & Globus-era schlock Karate Cop, The Sexpert, and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, make the incendiary anti-Muslim screed?
Vice reports that they were “anonymously furnished with documents” pointing to a Robert Brownell AKA Alan Roberts:
The documents clearly state that in 2009 and 2011 Robert Brownell purchased pre-production services related to Desert Warrior, which has been widely reported as the working title of the film that the world now knows as Innocence of Muslims.
The documents also include Robert Brownell’s address in Tarzana, California (or at least his address when the purchases were made in 2009; the property is now up for sale), phone number, and “contact information,” which lists yet a different name—Alan Roberts.
Meanwhile, Gawker confirms Roberts was the director on Innocence of Muslims, filmed under the title Desert Warrior with a different script from the allegedly blasphemous final version.
A former business partner and an acquaintance confirmed to the website that Roberts is the same Alan Roberts listed on IMDb as the director of low-budget B-movie threequel The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980) (co-starring Adam West!), the action pic Karate Cop (1991), and the Harry Hamlin erotic thriller Save Me (1994). Roberts is said to be laying low, understandably.
According to Roberts’ ex-business partner, Roberts filmed…
Full Story »With two weeks to go until Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters, Warner Bros. has made available nearly 50 pages of detailed production notes online that offer behind-the-scenes tidbits on character, plot, costume design, the crazy practical stunts Nolan & Co. pulled off, Batman’s new toys, and some of the new faces joining the trilogy. The question is, how much do you want to know? (Bonus: Get the new IMAX poster after the jump!)
Given TDKR’s set-up — it takes place eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, with Batman in semi-retirement/hiding — and the two new adversaries joining Bruce Wayne/Batman straight from the pages of the comics (i.e. supervillain Bane and super-minx Selina Kyle/Catwoman), some of this is already familiar to Bat-fans. And while the production note dossier includes only a few semi-spoilery details on certain scenes and characters, unless you’re committed to going into TDKR with as pure and spoiler-free a mind as possible, the doc is fairly safe to peruse, and chock full of geeky details.
The bigger discoveries here concern the supporting characters in Batman/Bruce Wayne’s life, including Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and new characters Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and Gotham City police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Below, read a few select passages and get the pretty new TDKR IMAX poster:
[BEWARE SPOILERS! WHO KNOWS WHAT YOUR VIRGIN BAT-EYES WILL DISCOVER!]
On Gordon, who’s now wrestled with Batman’s secret for eight years:
“Gary Oldman returns to the role of Gotham City’s top cop, Commissioner Gordon, who withheld the truth of Harvey Dent’s demise at great personal cost. ‘He respects Batman’s sacrifice, but allowing the citizens of Gotham to be fed
…
Full Story »An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper telling the local news that “it was determined that there was an active meth lab in his pants” is the reason why the American flag is flying extra high today.
When Highway Patrol trooper Shiloh Hall pulled over an SUV for speeding, he asked the same question tanning salon employees ask after Jocelyn Wildenstein comes in to bake her skin: “What is that chemical smell?” When Trooper Shiloh realized that something in the SUV was meth, its passenger, David Williams, quit that bitch and ran away. Trooper Shiloh chased after David, caught the ho and quickly realized he had a meth lab stashed in his pants. File this under: WWWWD (What Would Walt White Do?).
Sometime during David’s struggle with Trooper Shiloh, the meth lab franchise on his crotch exploded. Besides the fact that David’s got meth mouth of the dick and has become the most eligible piece in the Lohan family, the meth bottle blast didn’t cause any major injuries. David was arrested for manufacturing a control substance.
They should also charge David’s dumb ass for being the worst meth maker ever. When Trooper Shiloh asked what that gross chemical smell was, David should’ve said that a can of Mountain Dew spilled in the car earlier or he should’ve said that all the Purell he drinks makes his farts smelly funny. Trooper Shiloh would’ve shrugged and move on. But no, David had to run off like a moron. What if Trooper Shiloh fired a shot at David? Bitch
…
Full Story »Did you all have a good April Fool’s Day? Either way, chances are it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as that of the Criterion Collection, which turned its customary April 1 brio on the perfect target: Kindergarten Cop.
This July, we’ll be releasing Ivan Reitman’s landmark KINDERGARTEN COP on Blu-ray and DVD: ow.ly/a0AO5
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) April 1, 2012
Better still: The Kindergarten Cop page at the Criterion site, replete with such special features as “New audio commentary featuring Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, author of It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Can Teach Us,” Excerpts from the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps: ‘Ivan Reitman’” and this extraordinary cover art:
Nicely, nicely done, team.
Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.
I was shoved by an NYPD cop on New Year’s, too! He shoved my face out of the seat of his cop pants. I like cops.
Veteran actress Ellen Barkin claims she was “shoved” by a police officer on New Year’s Eve. In the video below, you see Ellen cursing out officers about what she felt was an unnecessary arrest of Occupy Wall Street protesters. Wait, isn’t Ellen Barkin the 1%? Look at her, defying her status in life and coming to the aid of the other percentage! In her defense, she DID play one of the best trailer park mommas going. She’s done the research, and knows the life. Holy shit, I want a loop of that movie playing on my gravestone.
Anyway, Ellen unleashed hell on her Twitter feed about the incident. Here’s some heated Twats:
“Just threatened on my street by NYPD, cop shoved me, both hands, onto sidewalk..Is it a crime 2 stand in the street in NY? WTF is going on here?”
“I was trying 2 make my way 2 young girl they had thrown in2 the van.She was not a protester. Was not drunk. She was walking home”
“F–k all of u, Bloomberg & every1 goosestepping behind u”
When you made 40 mil from your divorce, you can tell the mayor of NYC to
…
Full Story »Just in time for the 2011 awards-release homestretch come the first trailer for Rampart, promising star Woody Harrelson as “the most corrupt cop you’ve ever seen on screen.” Which isn’t a review blurb, mind you, or some praise from Toronto, AFI Fest or elsewhere on the circuit where Oren Moverman’s latest has made its first impressions. That’s just a bold claim by distributor Millennium Entertainment — kind of the Pepsi Challenge of Oscar-chasing bad-cop dramas.
And while no one can know for sure until they see Rampart how Harrelson’s performance stands up to those of awful, awful Orson Welles in Touch of Evil or — more in the awards mold — Denzel Washington in Training Day, that really heavy rock riffage implies that it’ll be up there! Kneel before Woody! Or something.
VERDICT: Sold.
Full Story »While at the Austin Film Festival to pimp this week’s Hunter S. Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary, star Johnny Depp grabbed his guitar and took to the stage with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top for a surprise rock show. Because that’s how you get the kids to come to your new period movie, folks! Viral marketing meets rock ‘n’ roll! Johnny Depp can do no wrong! Watch the video and stick around for more Buzz Break.
[via Gossip Cop]
• H&M is set to release a Lisbeth Salander-inspired clothing line. Dress like an emotionally-damaged Swedish anorexic punk hacker this winter! [Moviefone via Badass Digest]
• There’s another bin Laden assassination thriller on the horizon, based on the team of Navy SEALs that brought the political fugitive down in Pakistan, and it’s being directed by… the guy who made Into the Blue. Sure, why not? [Variety]
• A coalition of Hollywood studios and distributors have filed the biggest copyright lawsuit ever in Russia, charging that Moscow couple Andrei and Natalia Lopukhov with $1.24 billion in damages from pirating films like Resident Evil: Extinction and Shrek the Third. [THR]
• Beverly Hills Cop IV is dead. But Axel Foley may live on in television! [Rolling Stone]
• The best imagined explanation of that Kirk Cameron Subway sandwich birthday party picture floating around the web. [FilmDrunk]
Full Story »
