The Culture Czar

If you thought that Hollywood had run out of films to make sequels to, have we got some news for you! M. Night Shyamalan is back and talking about writing a sequel to his $95 million dollar grossing film Unbreakable. Which we feel begs the question: Why?

According to Mr. Shyamalan, the answer to that lays with the film's many fans. The embattled director told scifiwire that: "[O]ver the years, as it just grew and grew and grew, and people were like, ‘You know, I really like that. That's actually my favorite movie, and I watch that all the time,' and on and on.  read more »

Okay, we don't want to get our hopes up....but this Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland which will combine live action with performance-capture "technology" (meep!) is beginning to sound kinda awesome. In addition to Mia Wasikowska (from HBO's In Treatment) being cast as Alice, and Johnny Depp signing on as the Mad Hatter, The Hollywood Reporter reports today that Anne Hathaway, fresh off all her good reviews for Rachel Getting Married, has signed on to play the White Queen while Helena Bonham Carter will play the Red Queen. Good for Anne Hathaway! Not only has she handled a difficult time in her personal life with grace and aplomb in interviews, but she's doing the smartest thing possible: making good movies for people to talk about instead (it worked for Nicole Kidman, too). As for Mr. Burton's new production, we eagerly await casting news on who will play the Cheshire Cat. Is Jack Nicholson available?

So you're single in New York. You come home late after a few beers on a Friday night, check your email and find a bunch of spam. Your recent ex just wrote a new status update on her Facebook page, broadcasting how awesome the single life is before your new "relationship status" has dropped below the news feed page. And maybe you start drafting a drunken email message to the ex. Some of us have been there... and so has Gmail Engineer Jon Perlow.

"Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together." But Mr. Perlow has come up with a solution : Mail Goggles. "Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help," he wrote on the Official Gmail Blog yesterday.  read more »

We thought it would be a good time to check back in with Ryan Adams (though really, when is it not). And lo and behold, the soggy-haired kid has a bunch of juicy details for us on his first book, Infinity Blues, due in stores next April 1. The tome—which Adams’ publisher, Akashic Books, has confirmed is a poetry/short story combo—is in the final stages of a pre-order frenzy, and 750 of the 999 available hard-copy editions have already been claimed. These special editions come with “a smaller book inside” signed my Adams in French ('cause, why not). The “smaller book” includes one of Ryan’s most beloved works—a poem called “A to Z”— “which is a long as fuck poem about hating the alphabet and loving things thats [sic] begin with each letter too much.  read more »

The Daily Transom is not easily starstruck. But when Benicio Del Toro offered to "wine and dine" us in atonement for allowing someone to interrupt our conversation after the Monday evening screening of his new film, Che, directed by Steven Soderbergh, we must admit we had a ... moment. After all, the food and drinks at Plaza Athenee were free--it would be simple!

Fortunately, by the time he turned his attention back to us, we had regained our composure. What had the person who had approached him wanted to know? "He wanted to know how I lost weight for the movie."

How had he?

"That's a secret, it's a mystery!"

Well, then how had he gained it back?

"That's a secret.  read more »

We were surprised recently when on vacation in South Carolina we met a guy who, during a brief conversation about television, asked if we watched the FX drama Sons of Anarchy-surprised, because we worried that we might be the only ones who did! Well, not so, and we're happy to hear that the cable network just picked up a second season of the show about a motorcycle gang in a small California town.  read more »

As Arrested Development devotees, we're always excited to see what the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, has next in store for us . Thankfully, he's been busy lately! Variety reports that his latest project will be a remake of the hit British sit-com Absolutely Fabulous. Mr. Hurwitz will executive produce the series, with help from the original series' creator and star, Jennifer Saunders. Saturday Night Live writer Christine Zander will pen the script.  read more »

If you've got twenty-two minutes to kill, we suggest checking out the series premiere of Kath & Kim. Although the NBC show doesn't make its official debut until Thursday night, the network was kind enough to post the premiere episode online a few days early. Actually, after watching Kath & Kim, we can definitely say it wasn't that kind of them at all. The show kinda stinks.

Based on the hit Australian show of the same name, Kath & Kim stars Molly Shannon and Selma Blair as mother-daughter dullards who snipe and gripe. NBC is hoping the remake slides effortlessly into their Thursday night comedy lineup, but we have our doubts about the show's staying power.  read more »

Last week, we predicted that New Yorkers would defend Woody’s honor against the latest onslaught of fall films and keep Vicky Cristina Barcelona safely ensconced in the top ten. We weren’t entirely wrong. Though Vicky’s earnings fell more than 35 percent, Woody Allen’s latest stubbornly held on in tenth place during its seventh week in theaters. None of the opening films in this week’s list did spectacularly well on their own, but the five of them together—led by Peter Sollett’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist—managed to knock Vicky down five spots to the bottom of the pack.

In other words, the city’s moviegoers simply replaced one of the most-recognizably New York filmmakers in the world with one of its most recognizable stories: boy meets girl meets big city meets rock ’n’ roll.  read more »

Walking to work this morning in our skimpy track jacket, we realized something that shocked us. It's cold outside! Why didn't anyone tell us? Anyway, with the coming winter months just around the corner, we figured it would be good to check in with our favorite wintertime diversion, Lost. While it won't be back for its penultimate season until January of 2009, there are still plenty of tidbits to keep our fanboy hearts warm. Over at io9.com, they were nice enough to compile the latest rumors and speculations. If you don't like spoilers, we suggest you stop reading now.  read more »