Big Screen Little Screen

Stand-up comic Louis C.K. and Pamela Adlon, former stars of HBO’s Lucky Louie, are reteaming for another multicamera sitcom - this time for CBS. HBO cancelled Louie - a raunchy, male-nudity friendly comedy shot in front of a live audience - after its first season, citing bad ratings. Less than favorable reviews from critics didn’t sit well with the network either.

C.K. and Adlon get co-writer/co-creator/co-star credits for the new, untitled project for CBS, about “a married couple who have been together too long and have too many children.” (Hollywood Reporter)

Due to the writers strike, the series on HBO’s regular summer slate (Big Love, Entourage, Flight of the Conchords) have been delayed. To help fill the void in programming, the cable network has scheduled original documentaries to air every Monday from June until the end of August, beginning with Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The doc looks at the controversial Rosemary’s Baby director who fled from the U.S. to France after pleading guilty to statutory rape of a 13-year old girl in 1977. The full summer doc schedule, from Variety:

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (June 9)
Resolved (June 16)
Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card (June 23)
Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (June 30).
The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly’s Not for Sale (July 7)
China’s Stolen Children (July 14)
Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal (July 21)
The Recruiter (July 28)
Baghdad High (Aug. 4)
We Are Together: The Children of Agape Choir (Aug. 11)
Ganja Queen (Aug. 18)
The Black List, Vol. 1 (Aug. 25)

Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz has found room for former cast members Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Henry “The Fonz” Winkler for voice roles in his animated sitcom in development for Fox, entitled Sit Down, Shut Up. Based on a live-action series in Australia from back in 2000, Hurwitz’s version, centered around the politics and personal lives of a high school staff, will also employ the vocal talents of Cheri Oteri, Will Forte, Regina King, Nick Kroll, Tom Kenny and Maria Bamford. (Hollywood Reporter)

“I’ve never discussed a movie possibility for ‘The Hills’…and I’m not sure if for my first movie I’d let Lauren Conrad narrate me, so I don’t think that would be something I would do.”

“If I was doing movies, I’d want it to be with Denzel Washington or something like that. If they were to make a ‘Hills’ movie, I wouldn’t be in it. No, thank you.”

“The perfect movie I want to do is like [Jennifer Garner’s character] Sydney Bristow on ‘Alias.’ I want to be, like, an action star. I want a big gun. Like Angelina Jolie roles. I want to be the badass.” - The Hills “Star” Heidi Montag (MTV Movies)

American Teen - Nanette Burnstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) directed this festival favorite High School doc starring small town Indiana as Anywhere, USA. “If you seek out American Teen thinking it’ll be a decisive work of sociology, you’re going to be out of luck…But if you seek out American Teen looking for an engaging, stylish and surprisingly smart piece of non-fiction entertainment, you’re going to be completely won over.” - Cinematical

The House Bunny - Legally Blonde meets Legally Blonde (meets Revenge of the Nerds, Old School). Anna Faris, Emma Stone (Superbad), and Rumer Willis go to Triumph Over Adversity University. (Coming Soon)

Battle in Seattle - Dramatization of the 1999 WTO Riots in Seattle. Starring Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Andre 3000, and Ray Liotta. Compare to the real deal. (Film Junk)

The Fall - Directed by Tarsem Singh (The Cell) and cosigned by David Fincher and Spike Jonze. Maybe you could tell me what the hell this fantasy is about. “A deeply flawed piece of storytelling… but if you are at all serious about cinema, you MUST see the film on a big screen during its upcoming run.” - David Poland

War, Inc. - Substitute Nic Cage for John Cusack and you’d have a Lord of War offshoot. Keep John, add sister Joan and Dan Ackroyd for that Grosse Pointe Blank appeal, throw in Marisa Tomei and Hillary Duff, blend with Wag the Dog - now you’ve got an entirely fresh, bad-prospect film altogether. (EW)

Speed Racer (New International Trailer) - Even if the latest from the Wachowski Brothers is an epic clunker, it will be the prettiest, shiniest, most expensive clunker of the summer.

Birth Control Glasses still required (Variety)

Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show saw its very first week at the top of the ratings as Late Night with Conan O’Brien slumped. Ferguson was first in viewership four out of five nights last week, averaging 1.88 million viewers while Conan averaged 1.77 million. I find myself catching Ferguson’s opening by default, as the lead-in host to Conan’s late nighter is a nonstarter. (NYT)

This Kanye West sanctioned interweaving of “Flashing Lights” with the visual backdrop of Wong Kar Wai’s hue-saturated, retro-futuristic fantasy, 2046, is a perfect melding of their respective strengths: style over substance meets style over script. It’s almost sacrilege to not watch this in High Definition, but the video remix still shames the original Spike Jonze helmed spot.

Kanye’s editor Derrick Lee put together this, along with the following videos (making use of footage from Tron, 2001, Oldboy, and Akira, respectively) for the Graduation Album Listening Experience in about 3 days. (via KanyeUniverseCity)

“I Wonder” & Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)

“Good Morning” & 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

“Barry Bonds” & Oldboy (Chan-wook Park, 2003)

Eating disorders are OK - beef panties, and batshit crazy Tyra Banks won’t melt your child’s brain - but a blurred out nude photoshoot with America’s Next Top Model hopeful Anya is where the Parents Television Council draws the line. (Time)

It’s like the wet-dream team that only a male, twentysomething indie blogger could have envisioned: Chloe Sevigny and Zooey Deschanel have signed on for Divorce Ranch, a post World War II indie comedy written and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg - who has been directing, primarily in television, since the early sixties. His last project was the 2001 film adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. Sevigny will play a young starlet/mom who treks to a Nevada ranch where divorces come nearly as quick and easy as marriages. Deschanel will play her assistant. (Variety)

“We had my birthday party in L.A. at this club called Funky Reggae. There was this girl dancing like mad on a speaker. I said, ‘Will you please get down before you break your neck and I get sued?’ She cursed me out. I never heard a voice like that. I said, ‘What’s your name?’ She said, ‘Rosie Perez.’ That’s where I got the idea that Mookie should have a Puerto Rican girlfriend.” - Spike Lee looks back on Do the Right Thing, the in-movie campaign against Ed Koch, and getting overlooked because of “Driving Miss Motherfucking Daisy.” In another segment, he relates Scorsese’s Oscar for The Departed to a “makeup call in basketball.” (New York Magazine)

– Related: The woefully missed Miss Perez will follow up an appearance in Pineapple Express by joining Geena Davis for the CBS drama Exit 19.

– Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) is developing the psychological thriller Riverview Towers for AMC - another series (after critical hit Mad Men) passed on by HBO. (HR)

– Why you should buy the There Will Be Blood single disc DVD and skip the double disc special edition. (via Row Three)

– Jeffrey Wells rounds up the speculation surrounding Steven Soderbergh and his Che Guevera double dips starring Benicio Del Toro - The Argentine, and Guerilla.

– The Weinstein Brothers need another controversy like they need two pairs of skinny jeans: Nikke Finke diagrams the lead-up to the Project Runway defection from Bravo to Lifetime.

– Flickr’d: Steve Zisso and company in The Lego Aquatic. (via Kottke)

April 5th, 2008: Saturday Night Live took a photo of Christopher Walken, folded it in half, and then just kept folding and folding and folding…

S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, creators of Johnny 5, have been hired for a remake job by Dimension. (Variety)

I try to understand because I’m people too
And playing games is part of human nature
My heart’s in overdrive
It’s great to be alive

“Who’s Johnny?” she said
And smiled in her special way
“Johnny” she said
“You know I love you”
“Who’s Johnny?” she said
And tried to look the other way
Her eyes gave her away

ABC Family has attached Molly Ringwald to a pilot where she’ll play the mother of a pregnant teen, reports Variety. The untitled series will be written and produced by 7th Heaven creator Brenda Hampton, and features 16-year-old Shailine Woodley as the at-risk-of-Ellen-Page-cribbing youth. Hampton also worked to revitalize the career of another 80’s star - Kirstie Alley, for Showtime’s Fat Actress. That series lasted 6 episodes.

Movie City Indie has assembled a look back at the mixed-bag critical reactions and many other novelties relating to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the film hit the 40-years-later mark on Wednesday.

Roger Ebert is still not able to return to TV, but his readiness to jump back into written criticism is one small bit of good news amongst the glut of firings suffered by critics in newspapers across the country. Ebert has been doing one-off reviews while in recovery since last year - in a message to readers of the Chicago Sun-Times, he said that he is “still cancer free,” though not 100 percent just yet.  However, he’s feeling good enough to return to a more steady schedule:

I am at last returning to the movie beat. After my current stay at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, I’m looking forward to opening night of my annual film festival at the University of Illinois on April 23, and I will resume writing movie reviews shortly thereafter.

Are you as bored with my health as I am? I underwent a third surgery in January, this one in Houston, and once again there were complications. I am sorry to say that my ability to speak was not restored. That would require another surgery.

Meanwhile, Ebert & Roeper is still Roeper and Someone Else: Anne Thompson notes that Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips will likely be Ebert’s permanent-temporary replacement, rather than the cycle of guests hosts we’ve been seeing, until Ebert has his voice restored.

Along with a bevy of sites like TV Squad, Paste, Pajiba, and the ubiquitous Stuff White People Like - Big Screen Little Screen is participating in the Hey! Nielsen Ultimate Pop-Culture Trivia Quiz - covering Movies, Television, Music, and all things Pop. Play for fun and fabulous prizes. Much tougher than your average Facebook quiz - make me look silly by beating my sad, sad score of 18 out of 35. I wish I would have asked a harder question.