For only 25 Bazingas you can become part of the promotional street team for the hit CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Don’t hold your breath for 1600 Penn merch.

If you visited the Internet Movie Database recently you may have been led to believe that actress Michelle Williams, who’s starred in movies such as My Week with Marilyn and Blue Valentine, was also a former singer of the R&B group Destiny’s Child.

The usually reliable movie news site accidentally posted a picture of the wrong Michelle Williams to accompany a link to an E! Online story about the singer Michelle’s experiences with depression. IMDb isn’t the only media outlet that has been responsible for a mixed-up photo. Read more…

Movies are works of art, not legal documents or recordings of actual events. And even movies with the disclaimer, “Based on a True Story,” are filtered through the lens of a writer, director and actors. The Coen Brothers poked fun at the convention in Fargo (1996), which was entirely fictional, yet opened with titles that read:

This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987.

It’s rare that a movie generates as much controversy on the basis of its historical accuracy as Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty has lately. Read more…

The gold standard of bizarre awards show acceptance speeches goes to model/actress Lauren Hutton. The highlight of her speech at Bravo TV’s 2008 A-list Awards was when she announced. “Testosterone. It is sluts!” while waving her award above her head.

 My reaction to Jodie Foster‘s speech after she received the Cecil B. Demille award at the Golden Globes on Sunday was that it was unusually frank, endearing and a little crazy. Sounding nervous and slightly off-kilter, she vaguely mentioned being gay without actually coming out and even managed to work in a Honey Boo Boo reference as she talked about how much she values her own privacy. The speech was a Rorschach test for journalists and bloggers who found it equally inspiring and confounding. And they had a field day writing about it. Read more…

Stream Watch: The magical place where random movies are discovered and revisited.

Today’s pick: Leap of Faith, a 1992 drama starring Steve Martin, Debra Winger and Liam Neeson. Martin plays Jonas Nightengale, a flimflam salesman, as the Amazing Randi would say, who tours the country with his traveling show of religious miracles. Things take a dramatic turn, however, when his bus breaks down in a small, rural Texas town (even 20 years ago this cliche was old) and the kindly townsfolk move him in unexpected ways. Read more…

Any movie can score a low rating on the critic aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. But it takes a truly special brand of awfulness to score 0%. As of this writing, one of  the new movies opening this week, a list that includes Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty and the all-star action thriller Gangster Squad, holds that distinction. A Haunted House, the new comedy from The Wayans Bros, has received Rotten Tomatoes’ lowest score. MSN Movies’ James Rocchi wrote:

Mean-spirited, badly made and unfunny is one set of disasters; adding in storytelling incompetence adds to the catastrophe.

Despite the negative reviews, Variety’s Joe Leydon wrote that it should be able to attract moviegoers in the short term:

This Open Road release nonetheless appears capable of attracting enough of a crossover aud for a respectable opening-weekend gross. But don’t expect it to haunt megaplexes very long.

The Paranormal Activity spoof isn’t alone with its low score. A list of films (in alphabetical order) whose only common thread is scoring 0% is posted after the jump. Read more…

BBC broadcaster Krishnan Guru-Murthyin is the latest journalist to use the opportunity of a sit down interview with Quentin Tarantino to ask about his thoughts on the connection between movie violence and real life atrocities. Terry Gross the host of Fresh Air couldn’t resist popping the question when he appeared on the NPR chat show last week and now Guru-Murthyin is the latest to succumb to what’s developed into a hacky journalistic faux pas when interviewing the iconoclastic filmmaker. Read more…

Judging by the look of the overly photoshopped cast photo for the mid-season replacement 1600 Penn, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that each of the actors was photographed on different continents. The NBC sitcom, created by, former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett and Modern Family director  Jason Winer, officially premieres tonight on NBC after first airing on December 17. The creators told Kim Masters, the host of the KCRW radio show The Business, the fact that NBC bumped the show from the fall schedule at the last minute ultimately worked in their favor. After deciding it would be a mid-season replacement, the network increased their order from 6 to 13 episodes. Early reviews for the show have been mixed. Read more…

During a recent interview with Quentin Tarantino, Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s Fresh Air, took the opportunity to dust off the well worn question about whether movie violence has an effect on real life violence. The interview took an awkward turn when she asked:

TG: So, I just have to ask you, um, is it any less fun after like the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Do you ever go through a period where you lose your taste for movie violence. I understand the difference. But still, are there times when it’s, it just is not, um, is not a fun experience for you. Either to be making it that way, or to be in the audience for something like that.

QT: Not for me.

Tarantino was rightfully taken aback and annoyed at Gross’ question, which he has had to answer like clockwork with the release of each of his films dating back to Reservoir Dogs. The most basic research by Gross and her colleagues would have uncovered his thoughts on the subject. In 1994, he explained his attitude towards on screen violence during a conversation with fellow filmmaker and cinematic provocateur Brian De Palma. Read more…