More stories on TV/Film:

BET Taps Tracee Ellis Ross for New Comedy

*BET has reportedly recruited former “Girlfriends” star Tracee Ellis Ross to produce and star in a new, original comedy pilot titled “Reed Between the Lines.” According to Deadline, Ross will play Dr. Carla Reed, “a busy psychiatrist, wife and mom struggling to balance her job and her happy but chaotic homelife.” Ross will serve as [...]

Video: Highlights from Obama’s ‘View’ Visit

*President Barack Obama’s history-making appearance on “The View” covered everything from the economy and Afghanistan, to Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson and Snooki. During the broadcast, which taped Wednesday afternoon and aired this morning, the president was also asked about his efforts to counter misinformation from FOX News and the right wing (a question from Joy [...]

Tyler Perry’s ‘Peeples’ Next for Lionsgate

*Tyler Perry and his 34th Street Films are currently in preproduction on “We The Peeples,” his 12th film for Lionsgate. According to Variety, the comedy is about a young man enduring the weekend from hell when he surprises his girlfriend by showing up to meet her parents during the family’s annual end of summer celebration. [...]

Video: Diddy Wants That Simon Cowell Money

*Sean “Diddy” Combs wasn’t interested in replacing “American Idol’s” most popular judge Simon Cowell on the Fox reality show next season – but then he found out how much the industry veteran was paid, and promptly changed his mind. “At first when people were asking me if I was interested in the job I was [...]

The Film Strip: ‘Get Low’ Gets High Marks

*It’ rare that I’ve gone to a screening of a film and all the critics there walked away singing the praises of the film. Such was the case with “Get Low” and I asked Bill Murray (Frank Quinn) if he got the sense that they were making a movie that would appeal to so many [...]

‘Twilight’s’ Laurent Joins New ‘X-Men’ Film

*Edi Gathegi is making a career transition from vampire to mutant. Best known as soft-spoken vampire Laurent in “Twilight” and “New Moon,” the actor has just joined the growing cast of “X-Men: First Class,” according to E! Online. Gathegi is set to play Darwin, the first “biracial mutant,” who has the power of “reactive evolution.” [...]

EUR Film Review: Spoken Word

*Cruz Montoya, Jr. (Kuno Becker) is a fixture on the West Coast slam poetry circuit, having cultivated a loyal following of devoted fans over the past three years. The bi-polar, former substance abuser has finally achieved a measure of emotional stability in San Francisco between teaching poetry and the love of a good woman (Persia [...]

‘SYTYCD’ Star ‘tWitch’ Lands Two Films

*”So You Think You Can Dance” alum Stephen “tWitch” Boss has just booked two new roles for Trimount Pictures. In the first, “Perfectus,” Boss will play Marcel X, a superhero mutant who sets out to save what is left of the destroyed planet. Malcolm McDowell, Tom Savini, Elise Avellan, Electra Avellan and Danny Trejo also [...]

Common to Play Freed Slave in AMC Pilot

*Rapper-actor Common is moving from film to television with his first TV role in AMC’s pilot “Hell on Wheels.” The show is described as a contemporary western that centers on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Common will play Elam, a freed slave who goes West to work on the railroad [...]

Old Spice Guy Joins Jennifer Aniston Film

*Isaiah Mustafa, the former NFL player whose fame skyrocketed as “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” has just been cast opposite Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman in Warner Bros. upcoming comedy “Horrible Bosses.” The film follows three friends who conspire to murder their awful bosses for standing in the way of their happiness. Mustafa [...]

EUR DVD Review: Repo Men

*Repo Man (1984) was a gritty cult hit about a couple of enforcers in a nasty line of work, namely, repossessing automobiles from folks who’d fallen behind in their car payments. A generation later, we now have Repo Men upping the ante, for this relatively-grisly, sci-fi adventure resurrects the same theme but applies it to [...]

Oprah’s OWN Taps Whitaker, Hawn, Roberts for Docs

*Julia Roberts, Goldie Hawn, Gabriel Byrne, Forest Whitaker and Mariel Hemingway have signed on to deliver feature-length documentaries for the Oprah Winfrey Network, which is scheduled to debut in January as a joint venture of Winfrey and Discovery Communications. Roberts’ Red Om Films will exec produce “Extraordinary Moms,” an exploration of motherhood, while Whitaker will [...]

Rihanna Tries Acting

*Rihanna will be making her big screen debut on Universal’s latest idea, “Battleship,” alongside Alexander Skarsgard and Taylor Kitsch. The news was announced Monday evening, with director Peter Berg expected to begin shooting shortly the live-action film, based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game. The movie is expected to release May 25, 2012. “Battleship” takes [...]

Video: Colbert Defends Sherrod; Blames ‘Racial Pro Firing’

*Stephen Colbert returned to his Comedy Central show fired up and ready vent about the treatment of Shirley Sherrod. The satirical conservative attacked not only the right-wing pundits who called out-of-context snippets of Sherrod’s speech racist, but the Obama Administration for fearing them so much as to fire Sherrod without cause. Underscoring CNN.com’s reference to [...]

Nene’s Antics Delay Wedding of ‘Housewives’ Castmate

*After her wedding last weekend, new “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” cast member Cynthia Bailey is probably thinking “What have I gotten myself into?” According to the New York Post, her Saturday nuptials in Atlanta to restaurateur Peter Thomas was held up for 45 minutes by castmate Nene Leakes, “who barged into Bailey’s bridal suite [...]

New ‘Detroit 1-8-7? Show Has City Officials Nervous

*Some Detroit City Council members say they’re concerned that an upcoming ABC Network drama will propagate a negative image of the city as dangerous and crime-ridden, and has asked the show’s producers to attend an upcoming council meeting to discuss it.“Detroit 1-8-7? – the title uses a former California police code for homicide – is [...]

The Four-Letter Words are Coming to Prime Time…More

*The FCC appears to be relaxing on the rules and regulations of “cussin’.”  You thought you had to buy HBO and the other all-inclusive digital line-ups to hear the “good stuff.” When the new fall shows pop up on CBS, they will be laden with the expletives people crave at the height of the moment [...]

EUR Film Review: Life during Wartime

*Taking a page from the Coen Brothers, whose semi-autobiographical A Serious Man captured what life was like coming of age in the late Sixties, Todd Solondz, here, serves up a much more twisted take on growing up Jewish in Florida instead of the Midwest. Life during Wartime also revolves around a 12 year-old (Dylan Riley [...]

Video: Sherrod Rejects ‘Beck’ Invite Four Times

*Glenn Beck whined to his Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly that ousted Agriculture Dept. employee Shirley Sherrod has refused to appear on his Fox News show. Beck claims that Sherrod, who reportedly was asked to resign by the White House in part over the administration’s fears that Beck would highlight her out-of-context comments on his [...]

Shirelles Story May Be Headed to Broadway

*Baby It’s You!, the musical about a New Jersey housewife who put the singing group The Shirelles on the map, is hoping for a Broadway run in winter 2011. The production focuses on Florence Greenberg, the New Jersey housewife who discovered the pop group and created a record label for new voices in the 1960s. [...]