TV and Movie News (page 986)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave....when ABC baits and switches to deceive. If you tuned in this week expecting fireworks, be happy if you end up holding a sparkler. The Arie Situation didn't prove one millionth as explosive as built up, but this week did reveal the final four moving on to next week's hometown dates.

Is Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The Newsroom," stealing material... from himself? An eagle-eyed (or eared) fan has picked up on the fact that Mr. Sorkin, who is regarded as one of the best writers out there (and has the Oscar to prove it), plagiarizes himself from time to time. You could call it "recycling dialogue" if you wanted, but the fact remains that there are Sorkinisms that repeat across different shows.

Maybe the whole "Celebrity Hero" thing is going a bit too far. When Kate Winslet helped carry Richard Branson's elderly mother out of a burning building, that was pretty heroic. When Ryan Gosling pulled a journalist out of the street to avoid getting hit by a car, that was a little less heroic. When Patrick Dempsey saved a kid from a crashed car with a crowbar, that was somewhere in between the two (but P Demps gets bonus points for witty one-liners).

Could a "Sucker Punch" girl be the next tribute in "The Hunger Games?" Rumor has it that Jena Malone, who co-starred in "Sucker Punch," is being strongly considered for the role of Johanna Mason in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." Now that the rumor mill around the casting of Finnick Odair has calmed down, it seems that Johanna is the next role that everyone is curious about.

Any good show has to come to an end eventuallly, and yes, that includes the beloved "Sons of Anarchy." In fact, it would seem that the show's executive producer, Paris Barclay, already knows when and how the show is going to end, according to some comments he made in an interview with EW.

For nearly a century, Hollywood has had a tradition: once you become a big star, you get your footprints in cement out in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in the heart of Hollywood. Everyone from John Wayne to the cast of "Harry Potter" have made their mark outside the theater, but history was made just this week as the first dog put his prints in stone.

There are trailers, and then there are trailers. This 25-minute "super preview" of "The Amazing Spider-Man" is a trailer. Yes, this is indeed a 25-minute-long preview of the upcoming superhero flick, featuring footage from the movie. There's no filler made up of interviews with cast members, directors or special effects guys: it's all clips from the movie.

Let's set aside the Finnick Odair rumors for a moment and focus on the other big victor from "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." The casting of Finnick doesn't seem to be going anywhere currently anyway, and lord knows we all need something to speculate wildly about. Johanna Mason is the other major character from "Catching Fire" that needs to be cast, and a few names have already started to surface.

Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Someone's gotta claim John Travolta tried to have sex with them. Circle of Life, I suppose. The "Pulp Fiction" star faces a new claim - this one, from a former Royal Caribbean employee - that Travolta got naked and tried to seduce an unwilling man.

Will it prove as successful as "Game of Thrones" or "True Blood?" Time will tell. They're both two and five respective seasons into their lives and going strong. But for now, "The Newsroom" can claim that its premiere HBO bow outperformed one's series premiere and ranks not far behind the other's.