Christian Bale Takes a Turn as Moses in Exodus

exodusFrom Batman to Moses, Christian Bale has played his share of iconic men. In the Ridley Scott’s Old Testament epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, Bale takes on the role of the sea-splitting Moses, a role made famous by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Scott’s all-star film tells the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, then under rule of the Pharaoh Ramses, played by an almost unrecognizable Joel Edgerton. Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul are among the other actors who signed on to bring the ancient tale to life, shooting in the exotic locations of Almería, Spain, and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.

“The biblical account of Moses is extraordinary, and there was lots of room for us to go to places that The Ten Commandments never dreamed of going,” the Oscar-winning actor told Entertainment Weekly.

Exodus: Gods and Kings continues the Biblical-epic trend that’s been sweeping theaters all year, beginning with Son of God in February andNoah in March. Exodus opens in theaters on Dec. 12.

Watch the trailer below:

Be Afraid! Ray Donovan Is Coming Soon

ray donovanFor those of you who love Liev Schreiber and love to hate his character Ray Donovan…he’ll be back! Showtime has just released a trailer for the second season of its hit series Ray Donovan, which returns on July 13. Back alongside star Schreiber are Paula Malcomson, Eddie Marsan, Dash Mihok, Steven Bauer, Katherine Moennig, Pooch Hall, Kerris Dorsey and Devon Bagby is Jon Voight, who won the Golden Globe last season for his portrayal of Ray’s father Mickey.

The show is set in the sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, where Ray Donovan does the dirty work for LA’s top power players. Ray makes the problems of the city’s celebrities, superstar athletes and business moguls disappear. But his life is full of its own problems when Ray’s father is unexpectedly released from prison, setting off a chain of events that shakes the Donovan family to its core.

Season 2 will also feature guest star turns by Hank Azaria as FBI Bureau Chief Cochran as well as Elliot Gould, Ann-Margret, Wendell Pierce, Sherilyn Fenn, Vinessa Shaw, Brian Geraghty, Heather McComb and Kip Pardue. Creator Ann Biderman is exec producer alongside Mark Gordon, Bryan Zuriff and David Hollander. Watch the trailer:

Entertainment News: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson heads to Europe for the first time with this Indian Paintbrush production starring Saoirse Ronan, Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray, and Jude Law. Gustav H., the famous concierge at a legendary hotel situated in the Alps during the 1930′s becomes the center of a farcical whirlwind of suspicion when one of his institution’s oldest and richest patrons turns up dead, and she suspiciously leaves him her most priceless work of art — a Renaissance painting of a boy with an apple. Infuriated that she left anything of value to anyone else, the woman’s greedy and nefarious heir uses all manner of underhanded and illegal tactics to pin her death on Gustav and to silence anyone who questions his objective of inheriting every penny of her estate, leaving Gustav’s trusted lobby boy Zero to clear Gustav’s name.

Movies: 50 Shades of ‘Mummy Porn’

By now we all know the meteoric levels of popularity that Fifty Shades of Grey has reached, but did you know that Fifty Shades of Grey originated as Twilight fan fiction? It was originally called Master of the Universe and was published on the Twilight fansite. After it was deemed too “sexual” in nature, it was removed from the site by the author, E L James and was expanded and reworked into the first of the trilogy it would eventually become. The attraction to the book series has always been the intense level of eroticism — dubbed “Mummy Porn” – supposedly improving the sex lives of thousands of married women across the country, and bringing BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) into the mainstream of erotic fiction. With the adaptation of the book to the silver screen, producer Michael De Luca insisted that the film version is going to weigh more heavily towards “eroticism” as opposed to “explicit.”  De Luca was quoted as saying, “We’re going to give them what they expect, which is an intense and erotic love story, obviously the film can’t be as explicit as the book. A picture is worth a 1000 words. So to be erotic onscreen means I think an image is going to have way more power than reading the words on a page.”

The Focus Features pic is set to be released on February 13, 2015.

Rob Lowe To Star in New Comedy

Actor Rob Lowe will star in and executive produce a pilot  for single-camera comedy The Pro, which will air on NBC. Lowe made a development deal with NBC last summer when he was finalizing his upcoming exit from Parks And Recreation. In The Pro Lowe plays a former tennis doubles champion — “Big Ben” Bertrahm — whose career flame-out and misguided investments have left him working as the pro at a tennis and golf club. He tries to hustle and charm his way back into America’s 1% at the club.

Matthew McConaughey Takes on True Detective Role

HBO’s eight-episode series, True Detective, stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana state police detectives Rust Cohle and Martin Hart. The two are partnered up in the mid-1990s on what appears to be an occult-themed serial killer case. True Detective toggles between 1995 and modern day as two contemporary detectives reopen the case of almost 20 years beforehand. An eight-episode anthology franchise similar to American Horror Story, in which each season spins a different yarn with a different cast.

The show is the creation of crime writer Nic Pizzolatto, and the first work in television for Cary Joji Fukunaga, the director of Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre. Together, they have built a fluid, many-layered narrative that’s as intimate as a confession and as sinister as a nightmare. True Detective isn’t just one more roll in the anti-hero mir, it’s a show about meaningful themes — lots of chatter about history, memory, identity, religion, time, death, futility–while also being about two men (and a culture) afflicted with meaninglessness.

“I can’t imagine anyone playing that part better,” said Harrelson of McConaughey. “It was different than any other part I’ve seen him play before, and he knocked it out of the park.”

 

CBS & Amazon Ink Streaming Deal For New Series ‘Extant’ Starring Halle Berry

 

From DeadlineHollywood.com: CBS and Amazon are taking the video-on-demand model they introduced with the Amblin-produced summer series Under The Dome and are applying it to the new summer series from Steven Spielberg’s production company, Extant, which is set to debut on CBS in June. Continue reading