Flixens: Movies, DVDs, TV, comic books and pop culture for women. The boys shouldn't have all the fun.

It's been quite a while since we had an update on the trials and tribulations of Shia LaBeouf.  May 4th, to be exact.  Long-time readers of this site will know that I have a special plase in my heart for that cutie.  But today is a new day and we have news that young Master Shia has signed on to Transformers 2 and 3.

Now, now... don't get all excited.  These trilogy deals are pretty standard these days.  What's interesting though is that Shia seems to think that the Transformers feature film will be his ticket on the Lord of the Rings Gravy Train.  In an interview with About.com, Shia compared his work on Bobby with his work on Transformers:

Again, that’s exactly what that is. If anyone tells you they do that for the art value, that’s bulls**t. It’s f**king painful. To go from Emilio Estevez to Michael Bay is like walking out of, you know, like in a hammock in the sky, hanging out drinking Pina Coladas with Jesus and then getting smacked in the face and thrown in the devil’s s**pile and having to make a movie. I swear to God.

Huh wha??  He goes on....

I was thinking about quitting this industry. And Michael Bay will tell you that. He’s so hard on his actors, and not in the way that Emilio might be, in that he’ll push you to be something better. Mike is just f**king a hard a**.

OMG, what a whiny, foul-mouthed little wimp!  How could I have been so wrong?

Look, the four, five months of pain I went through might buy my mom a house and that’s forever, so I’m all right. People go to f**king war, it’s not like I have a hard job. I’m an actor. It’s not the worst thing. We’re sitting at a pool, I didn’t pay for those shoes, I didn’t pay for this. It’s not a bad life, and for a guy that didn’t have s**t going on. There’s certain pains; it’s a tradeoff like anything. There’s things you don’t want to do in your industry... You get lost in a f**king weird depression, man... I barely made it out of that movie. I was going to a heart specialist; I was having anxiety attacks, losing my mind. And you know, you’re doing physical s**t all day. It’s tough, man. And even Mike at the end, he was like, ‘Look, I know I’m hard on you but you’ll never get this again. If you can go through this with me, you can do anything.’ Sort of like the whole, ‘If you can live in New York you can live anywhere,” type thing. Whatever doesn’t kill you.

Yeah, yeah... whatever, pansy-boy.  I am SO done with you.  Oh yeah, and the thing about LOTR...

You don’t get bigger than $250 million robots blowing up the world. I don’t plan on making any other – I mean, I’m going to do Transformers 2 and 3 so that will be my Lord of the Rings.... Yeah, I’m gonna do it. That will be my Lord of the Rings and then I’ll just make indies the rest of my time, for a long time. Elijah [Wood’s] straight. Elijah can do whatever he wants. Why? Because he’s in one of the biggest, the top five grossers ever. People in China know who he is and people in Iceland know who he is. He can do whatever he wants. That’s my whole thing is I’ve got to get to the point where people in Iceland will go see Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. That’s what I’m trying to do... It’s a tough deal but again, it was tough to go from the kid thing to the adult thing. That was the toughest jump you can do in this business.

Sheesh... he sounds like Drew Barrymore coming off her E.T. gig.  Who would have known?  You know what?  He's not even THAT cute...

Hello everyone... Nina here to present another installment of "Across the Pond," Dominique Taylor's semi-regular column focusing on the UK entertainment scene.  This week, Dominique opines on the talents of Lena Headey with the recent news that she has landed the role of Sarah Connor in the Fox network's Sarah Connor Chronicles...

Things Get Heady for Lena

By Dominique Taylor

As Nina has already mentioned, Lena Headey has landed the role as Sarah Connor in Fox’s new Terminator spin-off and so this week is dedicated to the Huddersfield girl who finally gets her break and asks the question, can she cut it?

Lina Heady has long been one of those actresses that you’re sure you’ve seen before but can’t really place.  Playing alongside Steve Coogan in The Parole Officer I remember mistaking her for Melanie Sykes.  And in similar Sykes fashion, she is a beautiful Northern brunette, but unlike Sykes, a midday ITV show with Des O’ Conner seems a million miles away as she is forging a solid career in Hollywood.

Solid because if you look at her filmography on IMDB, you will see that she has featured not only in Brothers Grimm, but also Onegin, Possession, Ripley’s Game and The Cave and she’s also got a number of films in pre and post-production, including Vivaldi and The Shooter.  However, the same website reminds us of her thus far over-shadowed talent by offering a biography that could fit on a postage stamp and giving priority to the fact she was born on the same day as Seann William Scott.  Flattering, no?

But can she blow this all into space as she lands the role of Sarah Connor?  Her role in The Cave saw her as an adrenaline junky mega bitch and she’s got the tattoos to butch herself up, but the thing that’s worrying me is that this is supposed to take place in the time between Terminator 2 and 3 and she doesn’t look a bit like Axl Rose.  Where’s the realism?  If this is going to work, I need to know why Sarah Connor decided the scraped-back hair, sunglasses and fag look was not for her.

All facetiousness aside, what I’m trying to get at is that, in usual fashion, James Cameron provided us with a heroine that was largely desexualised (other than the small matter of creating John) and Fox has swiftly sexed her up again.  I hope Lena does well, she deserves a steady starring role in the US, but I’m rather concerned this could just end up as one for the lads as a beautiful woman runs around firing her big gun and getting sweaty.

Talk about your massive media blitzes...

An all-new, full-length, 2 1/2-minute trailer for Spider-Man 3 is about to be unleashed on the world today, broadcasting across a number of Viacom's media networks on TV as well as the Internet.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, on CBS the trailer will air after CSI and before the Shark. On Comedy Central, the trailer will run before a new South Park episode, while MTV will show the spot before a new Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Other TV networks airing the trailer include BET, Logo, MTV2, Spike TV and VH1, with each supporting the event with custom promotions.

In addition, 14 online destinations from Viacom's networks are supporting the airing, including AddictingGames.com, AddictingClips.com, BET.com, MTV.com, IFilm.com, Nick.com, ComedyCentral.com, GameTrailers.com, LogoOnline.com, Neopets.com, SpikeTV.com, The-N.com, VH1.com, and Xfire.com.

Immediately after the television premiere, a high-definition version of the trailer will be available exclusively on  IFilm.com.

Sniff... news like this reminds me of Jenny From Canada and her Spidey-Loving ways... we miss you Jenny, wherever your parents have you locked away.

Lena Headey has been cast as the lead in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which expands on the mythology of the Terminator films and takes place in the timeframe between Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, according to SciFiWire.

The project, from Warner Bros. TV is preparing a pilot for Fox, to be directed by David Nutter, who also directed James Cameron's Dark Angel pilot for the network.  Nutter also directed the pilots for Smallville, Without a Trace, and almost a dozen others that have all been picked up as full series orders.

"It's important for me to live up, as best I can, to the bar that Jim Cameron set," Nutter said back in August, adding that the pilot "has to carry as much of a punch" as possible, even on a TV budget.  "This is a huge project that's going to take an extensive amount of preparation and pre-production, [and I want to protect] the integrity of what Cameron created."

Headey will soon be seen opposite Gerard Butler in the feature film adaptation of Frank Miller's 300, where she will play Queen Gorgo.

Marvel is looking to the summer of '08 to release The Incredible Hulk on 6/27/08, two months after it unleashes Jon Favreau's Iron Man on the world.

Variety has an interesting article about the company, where it reveals that the company is scrambling to show that its film business is running smoothly despite the departure of Avi Arad, and that while its overall revenues have dropped nearly 44% for the year (the cost of movies in development, I would imagine) it's publishing business has increased revenue by 20% to push overall sales revenue to 13% for the third quarter.

Ah, the power of marketing.

Wall Street has been happy with the direction Marvel has been taking, as evidenced by the fact that their stock price is up 6%.  And the company expects to make a boatload of cash from the release of the two films, which have been highly anticipated by fanboys and fangirls everywhere.

Trying to distance itself from Ang Lee's take on the green behemoth, Marvel has promised in a press release that "you WILL like the Hulk when he's angry."  Hee-hee... cute.

Recently Nina told you about how Universal and Fox were pulling out of the Halo movie, citing cost among other factors as the reason for bailing out.  Microsoft and Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films had hoped to continue on with the film, especially since pre-production was underway at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital.

Brace yourselves fanboys...  I have some distressing news. Both parties have issued a statement saying that production on the film has officially ground to a halt.

Say it with me now... HEADSHOT!

The official word is as follows:

"As was previously confirmed, we deeply regret that both Universal and Fox did not choose to move forward with financing the Halo film under the original terms of the agreement.

At this time Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, along with their partner, Microsoft, have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video game universe until we can fulfill the promise we made to millions of Halo fans throughout the world that we would settle for no less than bringing a first class film to the big screen.

We are fully supportive of Director Neill Blomkamp's vision of the film. Neill is a tremendously gifted filmmaker and his preliminary work on Halo is truly awe-inspiring.

While it will undoubtedly take a little longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are confident that the final feature film will be well worth the wait".

Hi everyone, I hope you had a nice weekend.  We'll start out the day here with an update on a story from last week...

The other day we talked about the rumor that Superman Returns director Bryan Singer would be directing a sequel to the film, with FilmIck saying that it was a done deal.

Variety confirms it today with a story about Singer signing a deal with Warner Bros. to produce and direct the follow-up to the mildly(?) successful Superman reboot.  The film is tentatively scheduled for a summer 2009 release, but the studio stresses that there is no script yet (it isn't clear if Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty will return to put pen to page yet) and no budget has been agreed upon.

It is assumed that the budget will be highly scrutinized again, with Warner insisting that the budget stay well below $200 million.