john cusack
Everyone But John Cusack Dies, and Other Key Revelations From New ‘2012′ Teaser
3:10AM STV | Sony yesterday released the new teaser for the apocalyptic epic 2012, sort of a Groundhog Day meets The Day After Tomorrow in which Earth’s inhabitants wake up one morning to find director Roland Emmerich once again destroying everything in sight. There’s little on hand to illuminate the plot that star John Cusack so vigorously protected earlier this year in a chat with Defamer, but here’s what we can suss from a couple viewings so far: More »
Matthew McConaughey Joins Elite Group Of A-Listers Who Couldn’t Crack a Six-Figure Opening
9:40AM STV | Any Straight-to-Flopz masterpiece can top out below $100,000 theatrically, but it takes a special kind of crap to do so with a real star above the line. Take Surfer, Dude, the new Matthew McConaughey adventure-in-shirtlessness that found exactly zero takers at Rotten Tomatoes and not many more upon its release in 96 theatres nationwide: $36,497 worth, to be precise, likely prompting the actor/producer/placenta vintner to wonder if perhaps he should have saved the comma in the film’s title for the total gross.
‘NY Post’ Alleges That John Cusack’s Childhood is Sold, Bought, and Processed
2:50AM Defamer Hollywood | When John Cusack called us up and asked, “If I answer your questions, will you stop writing nasty shit about me?” we demurred — sadly, he didn’t try the same tack with the New York Post. The left-leaning actor is a juicy target for the conservative tabloid, and after Cusack was asked to contribute an essay to the new HuffPost Chicago by his friend, “the good and great Arianna,” the Post tore it wide open like a disgruntled Must Love Dogs ticketbuyter. What they allege they’ve found is a whole host of errors and made-up childhood reminiscences:
Lloyd Dobler Grows Some Litigious Balls
9:55AM Defamer Hollywood | John Cusack is suing Intermedia Film Equities USA for breach of contract in the amount of $5.6 million, after production was canceled on his upcoming film Stopping Power. Originally scheduled to shoot in Germany, Cusack signed on to star after Intermedia guaranteed him a “pay or play” fixed compensation of $4.5 million, along with an additional $50,000 to cover the cost of Cusack’s staff while on location. $50,000? Who knew Lane Meyer was so high maintenance? Fortunately, we here at Defamer were able to get our hands on a top secret copy of Cusack’s rider. We break down exactly where that $50K would’ve gone after the jump. More »
The Critics Speak: ‘Postal’ May Actually Be Better than ‘Sex and the City’
4:30AM Defamer Hollywood | We’ve been following the bouncing Uwe Boll for what seems like months now, but once the consummate self-promoter and sworn enemy of 279,452 filmgoers (and counting) wound up playing the victim in the Sunday New York Times, the shark was considered jumped. But an eagle-eyed tipster points out one of the more fascinating signs yet of the loathed filmmaker’s resurgence: On a week when his new film Postal has reportedly been banned from multiplexes, it’s also pulling a better Rotten Tomatoes score (33%) than “mainstream” offerings Made of Honor (12%), What Happens in Vegas (28%) and John Cusack’s bomb-to-be War, Inc. (23%). It’s also neck-and-neck with Sex and the City and a mere percentage point behind the tentpole Speed Racer, which is still stalled at the gate with 34% positive reviews. More »
Disaster Addict John Cusack to Drive Limo Into the Apocalypse
8:40AM Defamer Hollywood | After the implosive one-two punch comprising his recent tandem War. Inc. and Grace is Gone (not to mention, of course, his spellbinding online short film featuring Diablo Cody as “Girl Who Thought He’d Be Cooler”), fortune may yet favour the slumping John Cusack. Or at least that’s the only option our optimistic hearts will allow upon reading about the actor’s reported next project, a massive-budget, honest-to-goodness end-of-the-world film by apocalypse maven Roland Emmerich: John Cusack is in negotiations to star in director Roland Emmerich’s (10,000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow) new disaster movie 2012 for Sony Pictures. The title refers to the year the world is supposed to end after a global cataclysm. Cusack is negotiating to play Jackson Curtis, a divorced dad who alternates between writing and driving a limo. … More »
Who Said It: John Cusack, Diablo Cody Or Bob Ross?
8:55AM Seth | Like an Iconoclasts that thanks you for the add, MySpaceTV’s Artist on Artist pits star vs. star in a Battle Royale of Big Ideas and Mutual Tucheslecking. The only loser? You! See if you can pin the following quotes from Diablo Cody and John Cusack’s recent Artist on Artist pairing to the appropriate speaker. To heighten the difficulty level a bit, we’ve also thrown in a few quotes from beloved TV landscape artist, Bob Ross: More »
John Cusack Disaster Reaffirms Iraq Films’ Special Place in America’s Heart
7:20AM Defamer Hollywood | John Cusack’s meander through his second-consecutive anti-war film is coming under heavy fire at the Tribeca Film Festival, where War, Inc. bowed this week to the kinds of reviews that made his previous Iraq entry — the $US50,899-grossing Grace is Gone — positively shine in comparison. While he and his agent sift around for a more reliable rom-com follow-up, our preliminary poke through the wreckage yields yet more smouldering evidence that Iraq is officially over as a dramatic subject. We piece together the eyewitness testimony after the jump: Cusack, in the latest of a seemingly endless (and psychologically curious) string of hitman roles, plays Hauser, a typically troubled assassin whose inner psyche is so dead that he resorts to downing shot glasses of hot sauce in order to feel anything. His latest mission, at the behest of Tamerlane — a Halliburton-type corporation run by a Dick Cheney-like former vice president (Dan Aykroyd) — is to assassinate a Middle Eastern oil minister named Omar Sharif (an example of the film’s humour) who is threatening to undercut their plans to build an oil pipeline in the wartorn country of Turaqistan. — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood ReporterObviously Someone Has Thoughtfully Informed Paul Leyden That Slagging Off John Cusack May Not Be The Best Career Move
10:41AM Jess McGuire | We laughed last week when we read Canal Road star Paul Leyden had spilled his guts whilst being interviewed on a Brisbane radio station, announcing that working with John Cusack had been a horrible experience due to the Hollywood’s star’s prima donna on set antics.
“Well,” we thought quietly to ourselves, “probably not the best thing to do when you’re just starting to make some headway in showbiz. Traditionally it’s best to keep mum about the countless dribbling idiots and egomaniacs you encounter in the movie business until you’re hugely rich and famous enough to not have to worry about the backlash. Ballsy move, Leyden…”
Clearly someone has given Paul Leyden a heads up on this fact, and he’s now attempting to tack on an unconvincing “… just kidding?” to his previous anti-Cusack comments.
Canal Road pin-up Paul Leyden has done some serious back-pedalling since calling Hollywood heavyweight John Cusack a prima donna this week.
Leyden said he was gutted when his “jovial” jibe from a Brisbane radio interview popped up in papers.
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