Fancast: The Big Picture

The MTV Movie Awards, a crazy orgy of shameless promotion and a flimsy excuse to get a bunch of celebrities together to make jokes, gave out some golden popcorn trophies. Here are the winners. Pictures from the event to come.

BEST MOVIE
Winner: Transformers
Juno
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
I Am Legend
Superbad
National Treasure: Book of Secrets

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE
Winner: Ellen Page - Juno
Keira Knightley - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Katherine Heigl - Knocked Up
Amy Adams - Enchanted
Jessica Biel - I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE
Winner: Will Smith - I Am Legend
Shia LaBeouf - Transformers
Denzel Washington - American Gangster
Matt Damon - The Bourne Ultimatum
Michael Cera - Juno

BEST VILLAIN
Winner: Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Denzel Washington - American Gangster
Angelina Jolie - Beowulf
Topher Grace - Spider-Man 3
Javier Bardem - No Country For Old Men

BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE
Winner: Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Adam Sandler - I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Jonah Hill - Superbad
Seth Rogen - Knocked Up
Amy Adams - Enchanted

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Winner: Zac Efron - Hairspray
Seth Rogen - Knocked Up
Jonah Hill - Superbad
Michael Cera - Superbad
Chris Brown - This Christmas
Nikki Blonsky - Hairspray
Megan Fox - Transformers
Christopher Mintz-Plasse - Superbad

BEST KISS
Winner: Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman - Step Up 2 The Streets
Shia LaBeouf and Sarah Roemer - Disturbia
Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey - Enchanted
Daniel Radcliffe and Katie Leung - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Ellen Page and Michael Cera - Juno

BEST FIGHT
Winner: Sean Faris vs. Cam Gigandet - Never Back Down
Matt Damon vs. Joey Ansah - The Bourne Ultimatum
Tobey Maguire vs. James Franco - Spider-Man 3
Hayden Christensen vs. Jamie Bell - Jumper
Chris Tucker & Jackie Chan vs. Sun Ming Ming - Rush Hour 3
Alien vs. Predator - Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

BEST SUMMER MOVIE SO FAR
Winner: Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Sex and the City
Speed Racer
The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian

By Melissa Locker
Fancast.com

As the doors of the theater to the sold out Sex and the City showing opened onto 42nd Street, the din rivaled that of a Jonas Brothers concert. As expected, the crowd was predominately women. More specifically, high-heeled twenty-, thirty-, or forty-something women, tittering loudly, and determined to find a decent Cosmo in midtown to squee over the long-anticipated movie. [Watch this video of the sexy NYC premiere.]

Amid the giggling maddening crowd of bespoke hats and overpriced shoes were, yes, a few brave men. While most were primarily men of the, shall we say, Stanford Blatch persuasion, there were a select few of obviously straight men mixed in the crowd. These brave souls were more than willing to hurriedly justify their attendance. Their reasons? It’s all about the ladies. And, no, not Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. “When I was first dating my wife, the only way I could stay over was if I watched Sex and the City with her and her roommates," explained one gent. "So I pretty much saw every episode.”

Another moviegoer in straight-man uniform of oversized Gap shorts, Mexican beer t-shirt, and backwards baseball cap, announced that his three sisters would watch it and they only had one television set. “Besides, once I started watching, I could totally use it to talk to the hotties at work. I got like four dates because I knew who Mr. Big was.” Another guy at the show who specifically announced that he was straight, not once but twice, claimed he came with his female co-workers because he knew he would be one of the few men in the audience and he liked the odds. When asked if it worked, he whipped out his Blackberry and said he got two numbers. Ah Sex and the City, helping dudes score since 1998.

[Click here to watch more Sex and the City videos and cast interviews.]

The MTV Movie Awards were a somewhat surreal affair, with the Universal Studios fire that was going on just a few hundred yards away combined with Rainn Wilson being naked on stage and a weird last-minute censorship of the Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy bit - get the close-up they edited out after the jump.

A massive fire broke out at Universal Studios Sunday morning, tearing up the King Kong attraction and New York Street, not to mention a film vault, although reports are that "nothing irreplaceable was lost" as far as that goes.

TheStudioTour.com not only has a detailed look at the fire, but the history of big fires at Universal Studios to boot.

Areas destroyed or damaged:

* King Kong attraction soundstage (the fire spread from adjacent buildings via the roof, so the sprinkler systems were defeated)

* Courthouse Square (at least two sides of the square are destroyed - the courthouse itself, once again, has been spared). Ghost Whisperer production will be affected.

* New York Street

* New England Street (including church with tall spire)

* Video Vaults adjacent to New York Street. As duplicate copies are kept elsewhere, no material is believed to have been lost forever. The film vaults are elsewhere and were not affected.

The LA Times has a great slideshow detailing just how versatile the Universal backlot area was for all kinds of memorable films.

Sex and the City managed to beat expectations and take the top spot at the box office, beating out Indiana Jones. This turn of events can be blamed squarely on making Indiana Jones fight aliens. Too many shades of wrong.

1. Sex and the City - $55m
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $46m
3. The Strangers - $20.7m
4. Iron Man - $14m
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - $13m
6. What Happens In Vegas - $6.8m
7. Baby Mama - $2.2m
8. Speed Racer - $2.1m
9. Made of Honor - $2m
10. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - $1m

By Trinity Hamrick
Fancast.com

Saturday night at the movie theater: I'm not sure if it's our Marin County weather or the stubborn grunge aesthetic, but it's only the second night that Sex and the City is in theaters and there's not a heel in sight - designer or otherwise. [By contrast, watch the NYC premiere.] The only thing more surprising than the amount of flip-flops and baseball hats is the number of men; although unfortunately not single, as I'm soon to find out. Rather, they are very much attached to the wives and girlfriends who have dragged them, "kicking and screaming" in some cases, to what is surely the chick flick par excellence. Although they haven't willingly braved this terror, there are a few men brave enough to admit to having actually liked it. Upon discussing a particularly emotional scene from the movie, one such man was secure enough in his masculinity to confess that he -gasp- "was crying" alongside his female captors. This is of course only after his two female companions have already volunteered that they were tearing up.

Turner Classic Movies will be paying tribute to the late, great Sydney Pollack by showing some of his most acclaimed films tonight, June 2.

Everyone knows Tootsie [watch the trailer], of course, the legendary tale of Dustin Hoffman living life in drag and discovering just how difficult it was to be a woman in 1982.

Three Days of the Condor [watch the trailer] is less talked about, but still a great film starring Robert Redford as a CIA agent who returns from lunch to finds his small office staff has been assassinated, and he's next on the hit list if he doesn't unravel the vast conspiracy first.

Then there's Jeremiah Johnson [watch the trailer], once again starring Redford, this time as a man abandoning society to live among the mountains.

Rainn Wilson, huge movie star, made quite an impact at the MTV Movie Awards by doffing it all save for a teddy bear covering his nethers when presenting with his future Transformers 2 co-star Megan Fox. In his upcoming film The Rocker [watch the trailer], directed by The Full Monty helmer Peter Cattaneo, he inadvertently makes his nephew's band an internet sensation as The Naked Drummer. So this begs a specific question that I asked him this morning.

Do you enjoy being naked?
"I find that question highly inappropriate. I feel uncomfortable right now and my room is 427. No. I always enjoy taking my clothes off to comedic effect. I've been making women laugh with my naked body for the last 20 years, and hopefully audiences across America will find it just as amusing as many of the ladies have known."

"I guess I've always been comfortable with my body. It just is what it is. I'm just a character guy, I've never had any pretentions. I'm never going to look like Brad Pitt, so why not just enjoy taking my clothes off for comedic effect?"

"I'm definitely in the commitment school of comedy - throwing yourself in 100%, entering the character and just going balls out, and not standing back and commenting on it, winking at it or being better than. You can't be afraid to make a fool of yourself. I hope that never changes for me."

Did you look for the 'Full Monty' bit in the script for The Rocker?
"Yes, in this, it's the Naked Drummer scene. [Peter] is very good at using naked men to achieve his goals."

What drew you to a movie like Transformers 2?
"I've never seen a Michael Bay movie in my life, and I really should start with Transformers 1, probably, to get prepared. I just love the idea of doing a giant big-budget movie like that and just doing a small part in it. It's just basically a cameo, and I enjoy doing that kind of thing. So I was like, 'what the hell?'"

American Idol also-ran Katharine McPhee is set to star opposite 'what happened to this guy' case study Wes Bentley in The Storyteller, to be directed by Robert Masciantonio. Seriously, what's Bentley really been doing American Beauty? Let's overlook Ghost Rider. His output has been pretty sporadic and middling. Let's hope this can turn it around a bit.

Check out McPhee in the trailer for The House Bunny, where she stars as a member of the nerdiest sorority on campus, which Anna Faris' ex-Playboy bunny comes to liven up.

Charlize Theron of the upcoming film Hancock [watch the trailer] has made a little wave by voicing a thought that a lot of people wouldn't attribute to one of the "sexiest women alive" - a desire to see random people naked.

"I think it would be fun to see people naked. It could be scary as well. But it would be fun to be able to walk down the street and be able to see people nude without them knowing. I think that's the element that makes the difference. When we're nude we tend to suck it all in. Just to see some dude taking the garbage out would be good!"

As for her own reputation for sexiness:

"I think everything in life has to be taken with a giant pinch of salt, especially in this industry. It's a great compliment. They could have something a lot worse. I'm not jaded about that, it's really sweet. But there's no such thing as the sexiest woman alive."

That's why we use the qualifier "one of the sexiest women alive." Let's take a moment to enjoy some Charlize, shall we?

Check out Fancast's Charlize Theron slideshow.

Watch the trailer for Choke, starring Sam Rockwell, right here on Fancast.

Sam Rockwell should be enough to sell anybody on his movies, but for some reason, he's not yet as famous as his talent mandates that he eventually will be. The fact that he's playing a colonial theme-park attendant/con artist/sex addict who falls hard for the great Kelly MacDonald, who's playing the doctor for his ailing mother (Anjelica Huston), should be a highly compelling premise as well. The kicker is that it's based on a Chuck Palahniuk's novel - and you may remember this guy as the man who wrote Fight Club. Now you have no excuse. Watch this trailer, love it, and go see the Sundance hit Choke when it opens up in September.

Watch the restricted red-band trailer for The Coen Brothers' comedy Burn After Reading right here on Fancast.

After the dark turn of No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen seem determined to remind us once again that they can do comedy like no one else. This is evidenced in the hilarious and naughty trailer for Burn After Reading, opening September 12.

Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand are two dopey gym employees who come across a briefcase filled with sensitive "CIA shit" who then proceed to blackmail the owner, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), to try and get a big-time payday, even though the secrets had been stolen by Cox's ex-wife (Tilda Swinton), and her current beau and current CIA-man Harry (George Clooney) is called in to clean things up.

You'll see right away that this is going to be a vastly different dynamic between Clooney and Swinton than they had in Michael Clayton, and after Brad Pitt's publicized fuddy-duddyness, it's great to see him in a hilarious role like this. The man should do more comedy, not less.

Joel Coen himself said this about the film:

"All the characters in 'Burn After Reading' are numskulls," says Joel, "which Malkovich had no problem with; Clooney has never had a problem with . . . Brad was initially taken aback. He's very funny in the movie. He grew to love it as much as George does. Each character is dumber than the next. But they're all lovable."

Watch the trailer here, and love everybody in Burn After Reading. But be warned - it has naughty words and "adult situations" in it.

Semi-Pro [watch the trailer]
Will Ferrell's wacky take on the American Basketball Association of the 1970s and his character Jackie Moon's insane attempts to get his team accepted into the NBA. Including nudity.

The Eye [watch the trailer]
Jessica Alba as a blind girl who gets an eye transplant, only to find out that they're haunted with supernatural sight. I'll still take this over the haunted cell phone movie.

Meet the Spartans [watch the trailer]
300 jokes were old when this spoof came out, and now they're even more old. Still, we've got some clips so you can investigate this movie without actually having to pay to see it.

Watch Carmen Electra seduce Leonidas.
Watch Carmen Electra hijinks behind the scenes.
Watch Ken Davitian talk about his role as Xerxes.
Watch the cast discuss training for the film.

Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show [watch the trailer]
Vince Vaughn can be really funny, so it stands to reason that going on the road with a bunch of stand-up comics would make for something truly hysterical, does it not? Too bad the trailer doesn't really bring that across all that much.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a cartoon in the 1980s, when most every cartoon was designed to sell toys. It was one of the shoddier productions, prompting even unenlightened 10-year-olds to get their first awareness of the concept of 'stock footage.' The lead character's name was He-Man. HE-MAN. Everyone ran around wearing furry underwear. They made a movie that starred Dolph Lundgren. There was a little floating imp running around being annoying named Orko. There was a He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special. There's no way they could turn this into something watchable today, right?

Not according to this script review of Grayskull: Masters of the Universe on Latino Review. Apparently, screenwriter Justin Marks has created something that takes all the elements that made the show a hit and strips away everything that made the show lame. A crazy blend of sorcery and technology, like Conan with tanks and cyborgs, a maniacal bad guy named Skeletor, power swords and the incredibly awesome visual that is Castle Grayskull. Drama, violence, swordplay and monsters. The guys over at LR are absolutely loving it, calling it a "fanboy masterpiece."

Many a great script has been ruined in the translation, though. Will this be any different? Only time will tell.

The Love Guru [watch the trailer] may look like a new Mike Myers yukfest, but it's got a number of folks in the Hindu religion up in arms about the mockery involved. Renowned spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra is now telling them to get over it.

"The premature outcry against the movie is itself religious propaganda," Chopra wrote, noting that the protesters based their views on the film's 21⁄2-minute trailer. "As viewers will find out when the movie is released this summer, no one is more thoroughly skewered in it than I am -- you could even say that I am made to seem preposterous."

"He said, 'Listen, it's kind of a satire. It's a lampoon,"' Chopra said, recalling Myers' words. "He said on the surface it's like that, but on a deeper level, it's a tribute."

Myers "has the most profound understanding of Eastern wisdom, traditions and spirituality," Chopra said. "In the end, the movie is about self-esteem and love. It is about, in fact, love being the ultimate truth. He goes about it in a very silly, humorous way, but that's his style."

"It's a sign that your faith has become a cover-up for all your insecurities because you can't even take a joke," Chopra said. "Mike is bringing attention to some very profound truths and these people haven't even seen the movie."

"The teachings in this comedy are fictional and non-denominational," Myers told the Associated Press in a statement. "They are based on a made up system called D.R.A.M.A. D.R.A.M.A. is Distraction, Regression, Adjustment, Maturity and Action. It's a mythical creation. It's like the Force in 'Star Wars.' "

It didn't work out so well for Leelee Sobieski when she played the nefarious student to Al Pacino's phoned-in teacher in the abysmal 88 Minutes, so maybe she'll fare better if she teams up with one of the other people who created Heat, Michael Mann. It can't hurt that Mann is currently directing Johnny Depp on Public Enemies, and Sobieski will get to play Depp's paramour - more specifically, the last girlfriend that notorious gangster John Dillinger ever had. Depp has the midas touch these days. Anything he does will be flocked to now. Leelee could use a bit of that rub.

Watch Hollywood Shuffle in its entirety for free right here, right now on Fancast.

You Don't Mess With The Zohan [watch the trailer] opens this weekend, which features Adam Sandler continuing his newfound mission in life - making broad comedies to draw dumb-comedy frat boy fans in to see movies that might actually help them let go of some stupid stereotypes. On Letterman last night, he jokingly claimed it worked with I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, resulting in California's recent ruling to allow gay marriage, so maybe it'll work with Zohan to try and help stop prejudice against Arabs and Jews.

Robert Townsend did something groundbreaking along those lines back in 1987, when "liberal Hollywood" still would scarcely cast black men in anything other than pimps and criminals. As writer/director/producer/star of Hollywood Shuffle, Townsend created a wacky comedy about Bobby Taylor, a struggling young actor who dreams of playing action heroes and leading men, but he only ever gets to read for parts in which the central debate is whether or not he's "black enough." When he finally gets offered one of these roles, he has to decide whether or not to advance his career by swallowing the stereotype bullet and selling out, or to keep on struggling and hold on to his principles. It's a morality tale in sketch comedy format.

Co-starring and co-written by Keenen Ivory Wayans pre-In Living Color, back when the name Wayans used to mean fresh, new and interesting comedy rather than awful movies, it remains a sign of how far things have come since then. It took 15 years after Hollywood Shuffle for a black man and a black woman to win Best Actor and Actress at the Oscars, but now the playing field is a little more even. Before, black men could only get stereotypical and demeaning parts in crappy movies made by white people. Now they can suck just as bad making movies like Wayans' Scary Movie 2 as white guys do making Meet the Spartans. Nobody said equality was easy.

As a bonus, here are some fun clips from In Living Color:

Homey D. Clown
The Homeboy Shopping Network
The Brothers Brothers
The Head Detective
Oswald Bates for the United Negro Scholarship Fund
The First Black Man on the Moon
The Hardest Working Family in America
Calhoun Tubbs
Spike Lee's Joint
Ridin' Miss Daisy
Oppression

Matt Reeves, director of the January smash hit monster flick Cloverfield, spoke a little recently about the prospects of a sequel. Here's what he told Wired.

I can say that we really hope we could do it. It's in a pre-baby stage. Right now, it's still like in the single-cell version of itself. It's not a viable life form yet. But the truth of the matter is, we're not 100 percent that we're going to do it. I have a couple of ideas, Drew [Goddard] has a couple of ideas, but we just finished this one, and we haven't had the time to evaluate what's next.

This isn't me being evasive, but it's literally just too early to tell. We promised ourselves that we would have to come up with something just as fresh and fun, 'cause you don't want to repeat the experience. We don't want to be repetitive. It's an unusual problem, but a cool one, to see what would come out of it.

If there's a continuation like a sequel, then one would think there's something still going on. Whether it's that monster or not, I don’t know. We know the film would need a fresh perspective, and I don't think that means just picking up where we left off. But I can't even confirm anything in that direction.

There's a movie called Outlander, to which the Weinstein Company owns the domestic rights, that currently has no domestic release date. It stars Jim Caviezel as an alien who lands on Earth in 6th Century A.D., and when a space monster is accidentally unleashed, he has to team up with Vikings to try and stop it.

It might be as lame as Reign of Fire (aka Dragons vs. Tanks that only had one tank in it that never fired once), but it could also be as awesome as Vikings vs. Aliens as a concept implies. Especially when it co-stars Ron Perlman and John Hurt. It screened for the Cannes market and some have even called it "a joy to watch."

You have one job, Weinsteins, and that is to give us movies. Give us Vikings vs. Aliens! This, I command!

In the meantime, we can get our fix of Ron Perlman and John Hurt in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

In a move that earns him some respect, McG has apologized and clarified his ridiculous nickname on his blog about his work on the lamentably-titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.

"I realize my name is ridiculous. I was born Joseph McGinty Nichol. McG is short for McGinty. I have been called this since the day I was born to create separation from my Uncle Joe and Grandpa Joe. I realize it sounds like some Hollywood nickname, hip-hop choice. But the truth is, this is simply my name - for every day of elementary school, every zit-filled day of high school. I have been taking shit for it ever since. I get it, I would think it's lame too. But it's just a name, and to change it now would seem fraudulent."

Then, he gave a bit more information about Terminator 4.

"This movie takes place several years after Judgment Day, but prior to 2029. Just like it took a long time to get an HD plasma screen in our world, it took Skynet a lot of research and development to get to the T-800, and this movie explores that "space between." We have all been fascinated with the world after Judgment Day. Here it is."

"In this film, there are Hydrobots that patrol the water, Transports that move human prisoners around, Harvesters that collect human beings as lab rats for Skynet and Aerostats that survey all that is going on with the resistance the world over."

"We've started shooting the T-600 - the bigger, grimier, nastier version that preceded the T-800."

The T-800, of course, being Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the T-1000 being Robert Patrick. In response to some recently rumored and reviled "mega-spoilers," he only insisted that "there are only three people who know the ending."