Sean Bean stabbed in a barfight defending Playboy Bunny's honor

Yell at me all you want for this not being specifically movie related, but I figured you'd rather hear this excellent story than have me write about some new film that just got greenlit about CGI dogs and cats hunting ghosts.

You probably best know Sean Bean for his role in LORD OF THE RINGS, but recently he's returned to the genre for the lead role in HBO's Game of Thrones. But this story shows that he doesn't just play the badass hero, he is one.
The incident kicked off when the 52-year-old Bean and 22-year-old Playboy bunny April Summers (real name Nadia Foster) went outside Camden's Hill Bar and Brasserie to smoke. A passerby spotted the duo (or at least one half of the duo) and began making lewd comments, leading Bean to confront the big talker.
All was seemingly well until the stranger returned later on, at which point a scuffle broke out, and Bean was reportedly punched in the face, causing a bruise over his eye, and stabbed in the arm with broken glass.
Getting into a barfight defending a Playboy Bunny (and seriously, Google her) when you're 52? Badass enough. But what happens next is what makes the story.
Despite his wounds, Bean refused any medical attention and opted not to go to a hospital. Instead, the actor accepted a first aid kit from the bar staff, then ordered another drink.
I liked him before, but I've got a newfound respect for the man now. I hope I'm half as awesome at his age

Risk is the latest board game to become a movie

I never really played much of the board game RISK when I was younger -- the game seemed to take forever, and I was probably looking for a bit more immediate carnage in my global domination, so things often resulted in the pieces ultimately being grabbed and hurled at opponents in fury.
But it's a popular and recognizable property, so like BATTLESHIP and CANDYLAND and MONOPOLY and others, it's getting adapted into a movie.
The Hasbro (and former Parker Brothers) turn-based strategy game will somehow become a contemporary action-thriller from Sony, who apparently sees value in the brand instead of just, y'know, making an original contemporary action-thriller about world domination.
A script is in the works by writer John Hlavin, who spent time on "The Shield" and penned the upcoming fourth UNDERWORLD flick.
Since its initial release in 1959, the RISK game has been released in a variety of licensed versions, including STAR WARS, LORD OF THE RINGS, HALO, NARNIA and TRANSFORMERS, which all undoubtedly had more imaginatively stimulating pieces than the plastic Roman numerals from my wayback (in the days when the idea of board game movies was just material for sketch comedy shows).

Warner Bros. producing new Looney Tunes shorts with Mel Blanc's voice

God knows they've tried, but things haven't been the same at Looney Tunes since Mel Blanc, the voice of the vast majority of those characters, died in 1989. There are some voice actors who've had the unenviable position of trying to voice Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and crew since but it just isn't working. It would be like recasting Moe, Larry and Curly and trying to make a THREE STOOGES movie (wait...).

So in an effort to help revitalize the brand, Warner Bros. is producing new theatrical shorts that will feature archival vocal recordings of Blanc as some of his most famous characters. In the first, "Daffy's Rhapsody," Elmer Fudd is chasing Daffy on stage during a musical performance. The short would include audio of Blanc performing "Daffy Duck's Rhapsody." The original song, which can be heard here, was recorded as a novelty song in 1950 but was never animated.

"I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat" will be a new Sylvester and Tweety cartoon that follows the usual structure of their shorts and will include a song by the same name. Blanc also recorded that song in the 50s, as Tweety, and it even became a hit in the UK.

While both of these shorts include new songs once recorded by Blanc as his famous characters, I'm assuming there will also be some vocal recordings by new actors. How that will mesh and work remains to be seen. The first of these shorts will run before HAPPY FEET TWO later this year.

First look at Sacha Baron Cohen in costume as The Dictator

He's done Ali G, Borat and Bruno films, so now it's time for Sacha Baron Cohen to begininventing NEW ridiculous characters for future projects. And he's definitely outdone himself this time.
Below you'll find the first shot of Cohen in costume for THE DICTATOR, his new film inspired by a book written by Saddam Hussein. In the film, a dictator is secretly replaced by a goat herder lookalike so he can travel to New York where he falls for a beautiful fruit vendor. That role will go to Anna Faris, while Cohen will be playing both the dictator and the goat herder.

The original Hussein book, "Zabibah and the King," is about a king who falls for a young woman brutalized by her husband. It's a not so subtle allegory about Hussein, the Iraqi people, and America, and this film seems to be a rough satire of that concept

Warner Bros. might have to digitally replace the Tyson Hangover 2 tattoo!

Many of you have probably heard about the lawsuit that Mike Tyson's tattoo artist filed over Ed Helm's facial ink from THE HANGOVER PART II. It didn't do anything to the release of the film, but the lawsuit is still ongoing, and if a settlement isn't able to be reached, Warners says they'll actually go and digitally change the tattoo for the DVD release.
“If the parties are unable to resolve their dispute, Warner Bros. does not intend to makeany use of the allegedly infringing tattoo after the film ends its run in theaters because Warner Bros. will digitally alter the film to substitute a different tattoo on Ed Helms’s face."
"The home video release is currently scheduled for early December 2011, which would allow Warner Bros. sufficient time to make the change if it becomes necessary."
The crux of the joke is that the tattoo in fact the one Mike Tyson has, but I'm not sure if they actually put in a line stating that in the film. It seems like something that should have been mentioned, but I have a hunch it was maybe a scene that was cut after the lawsuit was filed.

So what are they going to replace it with? Just another weird tribal squiggle, or will they try to make it an entirely new joke. How about in the theatrical cut it's a butterfly, and in the Unrated version it's a giant dong

Of course Roland Emmerich has been offered Asteroids....

n case you forgot, one of the most ridiculous ideas floating around Hollywood today is a big budget adaptation of the Atari game ASTEROIDS. The game and the movie will likely share nothing more than the destruction of asteroids, as that's really all it CAN share as there isn't actually anything more to the game.
So who could possible direct such an opus of constant chaos and destruction? Why Roland Emmerich of course, which is why it's no surprise that Vulture is reporting that Universal has offered him the job. The man has destroyed the earth with aliens, weather, monsters and whatever the hell happened in 2012, so it's no stretch to think he could do the same here.
ASTEROIDS is currently one of my best examples of what's wrong with Hollywood today. There was actually a BIDDING WAR over who would get the rights to Asteroids. Seriously, you can't just make a movie about dangerous asteroids? You really needed to base it off the substance-less Atari game? I would have given Universal a lot more credit if they just wrote a script for a new sci-fi film and called it an original production, which this actually will have to be because THE GAME DOESN'T HAVE A DAMN PLOT.
Anyway, if Emmerich takes the job, I'm sure he'll figure out some way to ensure the earth is destroyed by the end of the film, and I can re-shift my focus to ripping on BATTLESHIP instead.

If at first you don't succeed, re-boot! THE WOLFMAN instant redux!

The recent update of Universal's classic lycanthrope THE WOLFMAN held plenty of promise but didn't prove entirely satisfying -- even director Joe Johnston acknowledged its flaws.

But that hardly means we've seen the last of the legendary fanged moon-howler. In fact, it seems as though the studio already wants to reboot the property for the big screen. Universal had been considering a sequel to last year's disappointment, but Moviehole says that intended follow-up is now "being rewritten and reworked to be an original film – almost a reboot of the classic Universal monster movie series."

Benicio del Toro obviously won't be back in the fur shirt, but Moviehole says the new project will look for directors soon for a possible start in the fall. And it might even get a different title... possibly just WEREWOLF.
The new movie will apparently share some kind of link to the studio's 1941 Lon Chaney version of the folklore tale, about a guy suffering from a curse that causes him to uncontrollably transform into a hairy, murderous beast every full moon