Nicole Kidman is set to star in Woody Allen’s next film She joins an all-star cast of Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts.

The film remains untitled but has rounded out nicely with  such a great cast.  I can’t wait to see it.

Artists Jason Aldean, Rodney Atkins, Jamey Johnson, Jake Owen, and Taylor Swift have been added to the lineup for the highly anticipated 2009 CMA Music Festival. The stars were added to the performance lineup for the Nightly Concerts on the VAULT Concert Stage at LP Field. The four-day festival takes place Thursday through Sunday, June 11-14, in Downtown Nashville.

“We are delighted to add four of Country Music’s brightest stars to our incredible talent lineup,” said Tammy Genovese, CMA Chief Executive Officer. “Youthful and electrifying, this group of artists bring a new level of energy and excitement to the event that cannot be beat.”

These artists will perform during the Nightly Concerts on the VAULT Concert Stage at LP Field, along with previously announced performers Trace Adkins, Dierks Bentley, Brooks & Dunn, Julianne Hough, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Montgomery Gentry, Brad Paisley, and John Rich. Additional artists will be announced in the coming weeks. Surprise guests have also become a hallmark of the Festival, enriching an already star-packed lineup

Four-day tickets for 2009 CMA Music Festival are available now. The four-day ticket package includes the Nightly Concerts on the VAULT Concert Stage at LP Field, exclusive access to the Greased Lightning Fan Fair Hall in the Nashville Convention Center, exclusive access to the Photo Lines at LP Field and Riverfront Park, exclusive access to the event shuttle between venues, and a registration bag, with collectible pin, and 2009 souvenir program book.

(Source) Press

It looks like Twilight star Robert Pattinson will work with Summit Entertainment in the romance-drama Memoirs.

Allen Coulter, whose credits include “Hollywoodland,” “The Sopranos” and “Damages,” is looking at taking the helm to direct Memoirs.

The script, originally penned by Will Fetters, follows on a pair of star-crossed lovers who meet and fall in love while under pressure to deal with family tragedies that jeopardizes their relationship. Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married) is aboard to rewrite.

Anthony Hopkins might take on the role of Ernest in Hemingway & Fuentes, an independent project about the renowned writer, written and directed by Andy Garcia.

Garcia is co-writing the script with Hilary Hemingway, a screenwriter, author and the niece of Ernest Hemingway. The movie will focus on the relationship between Hemingway and his longtime fishing-boat captain Gregorio Fuentes.

Hints are also surfacing that Annette Benning could play the role of Hemingway’s wife and Widow Mary Welsh.

Garcia is not calling the film a biopic, but rather a historical drama, concentrating on the final, complex chapter in Hemingway’s dramatic life.

Hemingway spent a good deal of the last decade of his life in the fishing towns of Cojira, Cuba and Ketchum, Idaho, a time when the author is artistically recognized for penning “The Old Man and the Sea,” the novella about a Cuban fisherman that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1952.

Garcia told Hollywood Reported that he wants to explore both the psyche of Hemingway, the dynamic with Fuentes and the relationship both had with fishing. “I’m a Hemingway nut and also an avid fisherman, and the reality of the relationship between Hemingway and his captain is compelling to me,” he said. Garcia, who said the project is in its nascent stages, said he aims to star as Fuentes.

You might ask, who is Fuentes?

He is the captain, who died in 2002 at the age of 104 and led a colorful life himself. Born in the Canary Islands, he migrated to Cuba when he was ten-years-old; some say he was the model for “Old Man and the Sea” protagonist Santiago, though others may say otherwise.

What is it with Nic Cage and precognition?

Seriously, the last movie I caught him in was that movie Next, where he could predict the future up to a couple minutes in advance, now he’s got the capacity to predict farther out.  More on that in a minute, I just wanted to get that point in there that Nic Cage and suspense movies about precognition seem to go together like beans and rice, or failing that, chocolate and peanut butter.

Anyway, this time Nic’s back in the precog department with Knowing, only this time, he’s got a roadmap of the future written by a clearly insane ten year old girl.  At least I think she’s ten—it’s not like I got a copy of her birth certificate.  Said road map is put into a time capsule as part of a school building’s grand opening and sunk into the ground for the next fifty years.  Fifty years later, Nic’s kid gets a hold of the road map, which is basically just a series of numbers.  How handy that Nic’s playing an astrophysics professor at MIT!

When Nic finally puts his huge analytical MIT brain to work, he discovers that the series of numbers on the page essentially tell the future, in unsettling detail.  As he works to uncover the secrets behind the numbers, he’ll learn a whole lot of OTHER unsettling details until the final unsettling ending.  This ending, sadly, I absolutely cannot tell you about because it will be a MONSTER spoiler.

Basically, the first two hours or so of Knowing are a series of really, really awesome moments, one right after the next, and you’ll spend a good chunk of the movie with your jaw dropped.  Let me put it this way—there’s this one truly spectacular scene with an airliner that just GOT me.  I was downright amazed—the last time I’d seen anything this eye-popping with an airplane was one of the last scenes in Pulse.

Even the plot holes are so cool that you’ll slide right over them—for instance, watch for Nic’s cell phone to spend a lot of time unable to get a signal, until his son calls him from a landline phone, and then suddenly, not a pop or a hiss.  I didn’t even catch that one until about five minutes AFTER the movie ended.  It was just that cool.

However, the ending, which contains massive twists, isn’t exactly the greatest thing since sliced bread.  While I understand, from a narrative perspective, that they really didn’t have a fat lot of choice BUT to do what they did, it still left a whole lot of unanswered questions that didn’t sit well with me.  And it was sad to have to go out on that note—for crying out loud, this was an AWESOME movie.  For the first two hours my mind was BLOWN.  But then, they hit the ending, and suddenly it all just falls apart by a sequence that seems almost tacked on.

In the immortal words of Mr. Horse, no sir, I didn’t like it.

But still, considering the sheer ratio of good to suck in this movie, and further considering that the suck was of the most minor sort to begin with, it’s still hard to do anything but recommend this movie.  You really ought to get a thrill out of Knowing, especially if you’re a science wonk.

Disney and Pixar team up to bring “Up”. Up is about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America. But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 9-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.

The movie is set to premier on May 29. Among the voices used for this film included Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger, Delroy Lindo and Jordan Nagai.

In what is turning out to be a tragic turn of events, actress Natasha Richardson has reportedly taken a turn for the worst. Last March 16, the actress got into an unfortunate accident where she fell during a private ski lesson on the Nansen. She was not wearing a helmet during that time. Richardson was at the bottom of the run, in what is known as the flats, during the midafternoon lesson when she fell and tumbled down the hill.

Two ski patrollers helped Richardson but she was able to walk to her room at the resort’s Quintessence Hotel, where she’d been staying since Sunday. She received emergency treatment at the Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, nearby, and was then transferred to Montreal’s Sacre Coeur Hospital. While she was feeling fine after the incident, she had complained of a headache and was taken to hospital in Montreal before being flown to a hospital in New York, where her family is based.

But now, it seems that Richardson’s conditioned has worsened and said to be close to death after a seemingly innocuous fall on a beginners’ ski slope. She is now on life support and is reportedly being flown to New York where families will be gathering to make the final decision on what to do regarding Richardson’s condition.

Natasha Richardson is married to actor Liam Neeson to which she has two sons. She is the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson.

(Source) Daily Mail

She may be a familiar face on the Iron Chef but in real life she is still a mother underneath. And with that, she has happily revealed that she is 4 ½ months pregnant and that her expected child will be a boy. At 41, this is her first pregnancy and the fourth child for the Cora family. Cat and her partner, Jennifer, have two sons and Jennifer will deliver their third child, also a boy, in April.

“Jennifer and I are thrilled to go through the wonderful experience of pregnancy together. We started the in-vitro process 5 years ago,” said Cat who is due in July. “This has been a miracle for us and we’ll now have 4 beautiful children.”

Together for nearly ten years, the Cora’s share a unique family story in which both women have carried the other’s biological child. Cat’s pregnancy is a result of in-vitro fertilization with Jennifer’s embryo. The couple’s sons, ages 5 years and 23 months, were both carried by Jennifer. She was artificially inseminated for her first pregnancy, but the second she carried to term using Cat’s embryo.

In Jennifer’s current pregnancy, both women’s embryos were implanted, so the biological mother is unknown. They do not to plan to conduct DNA testing to determine the baby’s biological mother.

(Source) Press

Universal films will be producing another movie and has added Rita Wilson to the cast of Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. There is no official title for the said movie although the role of Wilson has already been announced. She will be playing on of Streep’s best friends and confidantes.

Up next for Wilson is Fox Searchlight’s spring release “My Life in Ruins,” starring Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” In November, Wilson appears in the Disney comedy “Old Dogs” alongside John Travolta and Robin Williams.

READ ON »

After big names like Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan, don’t be surprised if the next star is a Blatz! Well from all indications, Kelly Blatz is being built up as the next star for Walt Disney. Quickly creating buzz, the California native comes out of the hit-making machine that catapulted Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and the High School Musical cast to fame and stardom.

If all goes as planned, the Walt Disney Company will package 21 year old Kelly Blatz into a marketing machine that extends across the company’s many platforms, from film and television to merchandise and music.

Today he can be seen playing the title role on the new network’s flagship series Aaron Stone. A former Starbucks barista, Blatz also has a leading part in a much larger role: to attract male tweens to a network tailored to their tastes.

Until February’s XD launch, there was a relative shortage of programming designed specifically for the 18 million male tween viewers in the USA. It’s a powerful piece of the younger population to not fully attract: Internationally, the age group, usually defined as kids 6 to 14, injects an estimated $50 billion into the economy.

Later this year, Disney XD will serve up still more tween boy talent. The 16-year-old newcomers Hutch Dano and Adam Hicks star in a documentary-style comedy, Zeke & Luther. The pair will play best friends who have set their sights on becoming the world’s best skateboarders.

(Source) Live-PR