Crowe considering new Master and Commander movie

Russell Crowe is in the early stages of negotiations to reprise the role of Jack Aubrey as a British sea captain in a new movie version from the Master & Commander series of novels.

Crowe told The Associated Press on Friday that a script based mostly on the eleventh novel of Patrick O'Brian's 20-novel series, The Reverse of the Medal, had been written, but that discussions were at a very early stage.

"There's still a long way to go," the New Zealand-born actor told AP at a cricket match between England and Australia in London. He said talks had been taking place with the owner of the rights to the novels.

The 44-year-old Crowe, who won a best actor Oscar for his starring role in Gladiator, is a keen cricket fan. His two cousins, Jeff and Martin, are former captains of the New Zealand national team. Jeff is now a senior cricket official and is in charge of the team of officials at the England-Australia match.

The AubreyMaturin novels consists of 20 books and one partly written before his death in 2000 by O'Brian, all set during the Napoleonic Wars.

The 2003 movie Master and Commander took material from several of the novels. The Reverse of the Medal, published in 1986, sees Aubrey in the Caribbean in his ship HMS Surprise, where he meets his illegitimate son Samuel Panda, a Catholic priest born from an illicit liaison.

Crowe gave no indication of when filming could start but said it was one of a number of projects he is considering.

Bruno has-a gay ole time in the Holy Land

Bruno's flamboyant sashay across the Middle East has succeeded in one thing _ uniting Sacha Baron Cohen's unwitting Israeli and Palestinian victims in their joint disdain for his latest comedic creation.

Bruno is an over-the-top gay Austrian fashionista with a Nazi streak whose goal is to become the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler. To do so he travels to America, where he is told he must take on a charitable cause to achieve worldwide fame. So he decides to bring peace to a troubled place he calls "Middle Earth."

There, he nearly sparks a riot in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem when he struts down the street in a sexed-up Hassidic outfit that includes skintight shorts. On the Palestinian side, he tries to convince a West Bank militant to kidnap him, while giving the man condescending fashion tips. Bruno confuses the popular chickpea spread "hummus" with the Islamic militant group "Hamas" when he tries to bring together Israeli and Palestinian personalities to make peace.

Baron Cohen, an observant, Hebrew-speaking Jew with close ties to Israel, has ribbed the region before. In his 2006 movie Borat, his fake Kazakh language was actually Hebrew and his shtick was peppered with Israeli slang. In Bruno he goes a step further, taking aim at the Middle East's most sacred cows.

The movie opened worldwide a week ago and became the top grossing film in the U.S. over the weekend. It's making waves in Israel, too.

The locally shot scenes got big rounds of applause and hearty laughs at a recent Jerusalem screening. But the subjects of his pranks don't seem to be in on the joke.

"This man, I think he is not a man," said Ayman Abu Aita, a former member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group that has been largely disbanded. "He is not saying the truth about me. He lied."

In their scene together, Bruno identifies Abu Aita as a "terrorist" and asks to be abducted.

"I want to be famous, and I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me," Bruno says. "Al-Qaida are so 2001."

Before Abu Aita has a chance to reply, Bruno suggests that the mustachioed man lose his facial hair. "Because your King Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard or a homeless Santa," he says before being kicked out.

In an interview with David Letterman, Baron Cohen, 37, said he set up the meeting in the West Bank with the help of a CIA agent.

Abu Aita's Israeli-Arab lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, denied his client has been involved in any acts of violence. He said he is preparing a lawsuit against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the terrorist reference could get Abu Aita in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by Palestinians. "This joke is very dangerous. We are not in the United States, we are not in Europe. We are in the Middle East and the world operates differently here," Abu Ahmad said.

The jokes apparently had their share of dangers for Baron Cohen as well. His production team said he narrowly escaped an angry mob during his prance in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Jonathan Rosenblum, an ultra-Orthodox columnist, said he hasn't viewed the scene but said the reaction was to be expected.

"It was offensive. It was meant to be offensive and it succeeded," he said. "I don't have any interest in going to the movie but I am sure it will have its fans."

Yossi Alpher, a former Israeli Mossad officer, and Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister, are apparently not among them.

In a panel Bruno holds with them in the movie, he tries to find common ground.

"Why are you so anti-Hamas? I mean isn't pita bread the real enemy here?" Bruno asks with a straight face.

The dumbfounded interviewees look awkwardly at each other before taking the bait.

"You think there is a relation between Hamas and Hummus?" Khatib asks.

"Hummus has nothing to do with Hamas," Alpher insists. "It's a food. We eat it, they eat it."

To which Khatib responds: "It's vegetarian, it's healthy, it's beans."

The Hangover (2009) movie

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor
Director: Todd Phillips
Genres: Farce, Absurd Comedy, Buddy Film, Comedy

Two days before his wedding, Doug and three friends drive to Las Vegas for a wild and memorable stag party. In fact, when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning, they can't remember a thing; nor can they find Doug. With little time to spare , the three hazy pals try to re-trace their steps and find Doug so they can get him back to Los Angeles in time to walk down the aisle.


The Hangover Critic Reviews:

Amid all the debris of The Hangover, and it is considerable -- the tooth, the Taser, the tiger, the puke, the police, the stripper, the shots and so very much more -- there is a sort of perverse brilliance or brilliant perverseness to be found in this story of a bachelor party gone terribly wrong.

The basic conceit is nothing new: Guys go to Vegas to give groom one last night of debauched fun. But in The Hangover, director Todd Phillips and the screenwriting team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have created a heart-of-darkness comedy running naked and wild through the streets. Hysterically and embarrassingly black, The Hangover nevertheless is filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable. And it all begins when they lose Doug.

Doug is the groom played by Justin Bartha. He and BFFs Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) and brother-in-law-to-be Alan (Zach Galifianakis) make up this wolf pack, as the slightly cracked Alan puts it during a rooftop toast over shots of Jägermeister. At one point, Phil nods in Alan's direction and asks Doug, "Should we be worried about him?" The correct answer would be "Yes," if for no other reason than Galifianakis steals the show.

There is far more than 300 miles of desert separating the two worlds of The Hangover.The sumptuous perfection of wedding cakes, lush flowers and an even more luscious bride back in L.A. is the one the pack is running from. The neon glitz of the Las Vegas Strip with its "we won't tell" promise is the dream they're heading toward, that and a $4,000-a-night suite in Caesars Palace where Alan can wear a man purse while chanting "Who Let The Dogs Out" and seem almost normal.

Doug, the straight arrow in a designer suit with the rich fiancée on his arm, is the one who drew the success card years ago. Since he's lost for much of the film, we really don't get to know him; just as well since he's basically just a nice guy in a bad spot.

Stu, a dentist, is the nerd of the group and hasn't colored outside the lines since the first grade. That he's got a controlling girlfriend is no surprise, though Rachael Harris' Melissa creates a whole new level of acerbic, as in scar-you-for-life acerbic. She's just one of the women that this movie doesn't like. In fact, except for Heather Graham's stripper, Jade, and I would remind you she is a stripper, you get the feeling the filmmakers don't like women at all. That might be more of an issue if they were anything more than window dressing, particularly the bride, Tracy (Sasha Barrese), whose main job is to look great while doing her nails and occasionally frown and pout during phone calls. I think "Where is Doug?" and "Where the hell is Doug?" might be her only lines of dialogue.

Phil, a married schoolteacher with a kid, is the cool guy conflicted by how conventional his life has become. He's supposed to be the leader of the pack, Mr. Confident, we're adults, we can figure this out. His arrogance is hard to take at times, but he does get things going after the guys wake up to a morning-after of what utter mayhem must look like. Their luxury suite is awash with bodily fluids and floating blow-up dolls; clothing, food and empty bottles are strewn everywhere; there's an unidentified baby in a closet, an unidentified tiger in the bathroom and blinding headaches you can almost feel. What there isn't, yet, is any shred of regret.

Like the chicken that is picking its way through this mess, Phil starts trying to get the guys to help reconstruct the night they can't remember.

If you're a gambler, and we're in Vegas after all, the friend to bet on is Galifianakis' Alan, the most complex and strangely likable one of the bunch. Socially awkward, completely inappropriate, genuinely innocent and prescient at the same time, he's like having an R-rated kid on your hands.

When you tire of Stu whining over his missing tooth, or the endless invective of a small, naked, gay Chinese high-rolling mobster named Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) representing every possible cliché and racial slur rolled into one angry body, Alan is there doing the hard emotional work of The Hangover. While his scenes with the baby are priceless (and sometimes tasteless), Alan turns out to be the one with the emotional depth.

Piece by sordid piece, the night starts coming back to them: the hospital, the police station, the wedding chapel, and, in keeping with its theme of overindulgence, much more. Some bits are better than others, but one of the best comes when former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson enters the picture, his right hook still deadly and his version of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" already a YouTube classic.

Another saving grace is the soundtrack. The music provides its own narrative score, whether an oldie such as "It's Now or Never" that has that born-in-Vegas feel, or Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" that plays as Vegas' neon skyline unfolds in front of us.

And of course Alan is in there too, finding his inner absurdity and delivering yet another deft touch that lifts the film beyond the ordinary. His best musical moment comes in the back seat of the classic Mercedes convertible his father (Jeffrey Tambor) lent them for the trip. Bruised and nearly broken, both the car and the boys, they are heading toward what they hope will finally be Doug.

It's a simple sing-song that goes something like this, "We're the three best friends that anyone could have, we're the three best friends that anyone could have . . . " Which is also what passes for the moral of this story -- in spite of everything that does happen in Vegas, you could do worse than having friends like these.

The Proposal movie 2009

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White
Director: Anne Fletcher
Genres: Romantic Comedy, Comedy

A book editor is forced to marry her male assistant in order to stay in the country. When they travel to Alaska to meet his family, the new couple has to fake their way through a surprise wedding thrown by his parents.


The ProposalCritic Reviews:
The appeal of a romantic comedy lies mostly in the chemistry between the starring lovebirds.

In that regard, The Proposal has what it takes. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds prove a likable duo.

A veteran of the genre, Bullock shows she still can be an endearing America's sweetheart, even if she's no longer quite the girl next door.

Reynolds has the appropriate good looks, easygoing charm and comic timing to be a natural in this setting.

When the story trains its focus on their interactions, things proceed swimmingly. But the film trips up in the second half, when the humor becomes too broad and the scenarios become outlandish.

Bullock plays the steely Margaret, a witchy and heartless book editor with nary a shred of people skills. Reynolds plays Andrew, her hardworking assistant. She overworks and abuses him, and still he tirelessly plugs away. We later learn it's not out of loyalty: He's determined to learn the business and has an overriding love for books.

When a bureaucratic matter results in her impending deportation from the USA to her native Canada, Margaret suddenly announces that she and Andrew are getting married, which will allow her to remain in the country. Privately, she threatens to fire him and destroy his future professional opportunities if he refuses. No dummy, he extracts a promotion in the deal.

They go off to Andrew's family home in Alaska, bound for his grandmother's (Betty White) birthday. The movie generally deteriorates, getting bogged down in predictability and silliness.

While Bullock and Reynolds are mired in animosity, the laughs keep coming. Once they spend time together in a scenic remote locale, get to know each other and develop an affection, it becomes a familiar fish-out-of-water story that is only sporadically funny.

As Bullock shows she's still adept at zany physical humor, the film also showcases a nutty jack-of-all-trades, played by Oscar Nunez (The Office).

Though it falls short of winning our hearts completely, The Proposal is a serviceable and intermittently funny romance made enjoyable by the sparks between Bullock and Reynolds.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Dunn
Director: Michael Bay
Genres: Sci-Fi Action, Action, Science Fiction

The battle for Earth has ended but the battle for the universe has just begun. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron's dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Now Megatron is back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye.



Just when we've been lulled into thinking a car is just a car and a plane is just a plane, the metal monstrosities of Cybertron are back in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Where once only 14 robots bone-crushed our world and each other, now there are 46 of them on the prowl, morphing out of microwaves, motorcycles, fighter jets and more as they ready for a screeching showdown of titanic proportions in director Michael Bay's latest extravaganza of alloyed excess.

Shia LaBeouf is back as Sam, the precocious teen who gave hope to nerds everywhere in 2007's Transformers that they too could get the beautiful girl, if only they had the right alien species parked in their garage. Now he's headed off to college leaving behind said beautiful girl, Mikaela (Megan Fox), who spends her days working on cars and bikes by artfully draping herself across them in Daisy Dukes that make Jessica Simpson seem modest.

Bumblebee, Sam's Autobot guardian angel, a gentle metal giant whose undercover guise is a souped-up yellow Camaro, isn't going to college either, and B is none too happy about it.

Meanwhile, planet Cybertron is in trouble and the bad guy Decepticons are in a foul mood, still holding a grudge since the last movie when the good guy Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, won the day. War, we sense, will come soon. And does it ever, with soul-shaking, knee-quaking megaton force.

Though battles are "Transformers' " raison d'être, before it's over, "Revenge" will collapse under the weight of far too many of them. With legions of Autobots and Decepticons now in the fray, lost is the simple pleasure, arguably the beauty, of seeing a couple of metal heads shred each other into a million shiny pieces.

In the last film, the Bot-Con battle was over "the cube," a metallic and encryption-based thing (excuse the technical jargon) called the All Spark that held great power and pixilated from big to small in some very cool ways. This time, the thing at the center of the conflict is "the matrix," which could lead you to think some of the hard edges of Cybertron's fighting forces might morph into smooth silvery sinews, but no such luck.

If anything, Bay, never one to bother with nuance, has packed even more wing nuts and wheels, rods and bolts, pressure plates and pilot bearings into these visually complex beings. Despite the millions it must take to construct them (even in CGI), they still have a junkyard, found-object look that has long entranced boys, filling toy boxes and Hasbro's bank accounts for years.

Though Sam's trying desperately to fade into the background of the college scene, it isn't really working out. There's that new blond Alice (Isabel Lucas) who's got him in her sights, the ominous warning from Optimus Prime in that deep, really convincing synthesized voice of his, that little mess of an unexplained "toxic spill" in Saigon that opens the movie and the massive metal carcass that's been dredged up from a thousand leagues under the sea. As is his lot in life, Sam is needed, the one person on Earth who can possibly beat the Decepticons to the matrix.

Revenge is strictly a man's world, really, a boom, boom, bang, bang fever dream of special effects. Yet in all this macho mayhem, it is LaBeouf's young Sam, slight of frame, sensitive and smart, who makes it all work.

Although there are female Autobots and Decepticons in the Transformer universe, they are rare and none make it into the movie, which is too bad because Revenge could sure use a woman's touch. The only significant female presence comes from Sam's slightly crazy mom (Julie White) and Fox, who despite wearing white skinny jeans as she stumbles across the desert and jumps through any number of crumbling buildings, manages to stay remarkably clean except for that fetching smudge on her cheek.

Machines and their machinations are clearly where the director's affections lie, leaving the emotional side of Revenge to flatline again and again. Still, the film, written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, is filled with enough of the familiar to likely satisfy many Transformer fans. John Turturro as the now disgraced Sector 7 agent is passing his days working in the family deli and gathering data on the Decepticons in his survivalist-style basement, and Josh Duhamel's Capt. Lennox is still heading his Special Forces troops. We've got big, bad Megatron in cahoots with the towering fearsomeness of the 10-story Devastator. Meanwhile, try as he might, Optimus Prime just can't keep things civil. Neither can Bay.

Revenge is in-your-face, ear-splitting and unrelenting. It's easy to walk away feeling like you've spent 2 1/2 hours in the mad, wild hydraulic embrace of a car compactor -- exhilarating or excruciating, depending on your point of view.