Rachel Hoffman: A Cautionary Tale

Seed of the Great One

The Great Barry Sanders...Jr?

Jimmy Fallon has created the funniest webisode

Jimmy Fallon's first ever webisode is going super viral. His webisode has overshadowed the news that Jay Leno is getting a primetime show.

Fallon is getting ready for his new late night gig as soon-to-be-host of NBC's "Late Night" and posted his first video blog. Fallon will be doing a live nightly 5-minute Web tidbit at 12:30 Eastern until his show premieres on NBC next year.

His premiere webisode last night was nothing short of incredible and It was only 96 seconds long, but he was able to jam-packed it with some hilarious comedy. The question i have is simple. Why isn't Jimmy getting his own primetime show? Seriously. Jimmy and his writers have basically reinvented the comedy wheel.

"What's amazing about his new brand of comedy is that it's so subtle, but so damn hilarious," says Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment.

Mass-killing of trapped narwhal whales okayed by Canada

I'm not an overly sentimental animal lover usually. But I can't stomach this nonsense story about how our neighbors to the north Canada has given there consent(whoever they are) to kill roughly 500 narwhal whales, a near-threatened species of whale that has unicorn-like tusks, because they have become dangerously crowded around the only ice hole in the vicinity through which they could come up for air.

Apparently, "They" figured using ice breakers to free the whales was deemed too stressful. I guess killing them en masse (and not-so-coincidentally, allowing the hunters to harvest way more than the annual quota of tusks, each of which command prices of $2000 and up) is the more humane way to go. Way to go Canada!!!!

Johnny Depp books 'Hand of Dante'

Thanks to Variety we can see that Depp will be busy for the next few years....


Johnny Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil has acquired screen rights to the Nick Tosches novel "In the Hand of Dante." The novel will be developed as a potential star vehicle for Depp.

Depp will produce with his Infinitum Nihil partner Christi Dembrowski. The company, which has a first-look deal with Warner Bros. and Graham King's GK Films, optioned the book with its own coin.

Book revolves around Dante's masterwork "The Divine Comedy," and tells parallel storylines involving Dante in 14th-century Italy as he tries to complete the work, and a contemporary storyline involving Tosches, who is asked to authenticate what might be Dante's original manuscript. Depp would play Tosches. The novel was published in 2002.

Depp, who is playing the Mad Hatter in the Tim Burton-directed "Alice in Wonderland," has a dance card that includes toplining another "Pirates of the Caribbean" film, "The Lone Ranger," and voicing the title character in the Gore Verbinski-directed animated film "Rango."

At the same time, his production company has become more ambitious, and is getting close to the starting line on its first movie.


And my favorite part of the article...
Depp will star in March as gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in "The Rum Diary," an adaptation of the Thompson book that Infinitum Nihil is producing with GK Films, with King's company financing the picture. Bruce Robinson is directing his script. It's Depp's second turn in a Thompson tale; he starred in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

Infinitum Nihil also is working with GK Films and WB on a film transfer of "Dark Shadows" that will have Depp playing Barnabas Collins; an adaptation of "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" that will be directed by Chris Wedge; an adaptation of the Gregory David Roberts book "Shantaram" that was scripted by Eric Roth; and "The Bomb in My Garden," the Mahdi Obeidi/Kurt Pitzer book that has a script by Robert Edwards. Infinitum Nihil also is developing an adaptation of "Inamorata" that was scripted by the book's author, Joseph Gangemi.


By MICHAEL FLEMING

2009 Sundance Film Festival

SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES 2009 COMPETITION LINEUP

Yesterday the Sundance Institute announced the lineup of films screening in the competition categories for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which will take place Jan. 15-25 in Park City, Utah. I'm hoping to be in attendance at next years festival but till then i will wait patiently for the movies to come to a theater near-by. Some of the titles that jumped out at me are Joe Berlinger's Crude, Tom DiCillo's When You're Strange on the doc side Cary Fukunaga's Sin Nombre, Director Dana Perry's Boy Interrupted and rounding off Director Hamid Rahmanian's The Glass House

Baby Face Killer

MUMBAI, Dec. 2 --of the 10 radical Islamic gunmen carried out attacks in Mumbai India last week, There was only one, 24 year old Azam Amir Kasab to be captured by the police. Shown in this picture with an assault rifle in hand as he tiptoed through a train station, he has become the face of the three-day assault that brought the city to its knees and left at least 174 people dead. Since then, interrogations of Kasab have become the centerpiece of India's probe into one of the worst terrorist strikes in the country in years.

Like the C.I.A of old Indian police interrogators are preparing to administer a "truth serum" on the sole Islamic militant captured during last week's terror attacks on Mumbai to settle once and for all the questions of who and why?



The mystery of the man dubbed "the baby-faced gunman" has weighed heavily on India's relations with Pakistan as the nuclear-armed neighbours dispute each other's accounts of his origin.


Police interrogators in Mumbai told The Times that they have "verified" that Azam Amir Kasab, who was captured after a shoot-out in a Mumbai railway station on Wednesday night, is from Faridkot, a small village in Pakistan's impoverished south Punjab region. They say that the nine dead gunmen are also Pakistani.

Disputing that account, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan told CNN last night: "We have not been given any tangible proof to say that he is definitely a Pakistani. I very much doubt it … that he is a Pakistani."

He added: "The gunmen plus the planners, whoever they are stateless actors who have been holding hostage the whole world."

Deep as a Ganster...

The FBI try to take down Early American Gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd during there notorious crime wave of the 1930s.

No jail could hold him. His charm and audacious jailbreaks endeared him to almost everyone in the American public who had no sympathy for the evil banks that had plunged the country into the Depression.At the time no one could stop John Dillinger.

Acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann directs Public Enemies staring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Academy Award® winner Marion Cotillard in the true story of the legendary bank robber John Dillinger (Deep) The charismatic bank robber whose lightning raids made him the number one target of J. Edgar Hoovers fledgling FBI and its top agent, Melvin Purvis (Bale), and a folk hero to much of the public.

RELEASE DATE: July 1 2009