'Kung Fu Panda' Scribes to Pen 'Candyland' for Universal

Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, the writers behind the screenplay for Kung Fu Panda and its upcoming sequel, have been tapped to write Candyland for Universal.
Kevin Lima is attached to direct the project, which is being produced by Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir. Christopher Chase is exec producing.

The board game, which was set up at Universal when it made its six-year deal with Hasbro in 2008, has a story centered around finding the lost king of Candy Land. The players wind their way through enchanted lands such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain, see characters such as Princess Frostine and Gramma Nutt as well as the evil Lord Licorice who can make players lose a turn.

The studio is envisioning a live-action epic adventure. Etan Cohen worked on the project previously.

Jeff Kirschenbaum and Maradith Frenkel are overseeing.

The writers, repped by WME and attorney Ken Richman, have staked out a thriving career in animation, having also worked on DWA’s Monsters vs Aliens, as well as TV’s King of the Hill.

'Britney Spears: I Am the Femme Fatale' Trailer Premieres Tonight!

All day, Britney Spears is taking over MTV. That takeover includes a trailer for MTV's upcoming special about the pop star, "Britney Spears: I Am the Femme Fatale," which will take fans inside Britney's life to see what it's like to release a highly anticipated album.

Before the trailer premieres tonight at 7:58 p.m., teasers will air throughout the day. In the sneak peeks, fans get to see Spears work on the just-released Femme Fatale, including going over final production with will.i.am on their collabo. "I did some tweaking to 'Big Fat Bass,' " the Black Eyed Peas mastermind tells Spears as she gives the song another listen.

While on the way to rehearsals for her pre-album performances — including her set this past Friday at the Palms in Las Vegas, which will be included in "Britney Spears: I Am the Femme Fatale" — Spears admits to having some "jitterbugs." It is, after all, her first time back onstage since the Circus Tour.

In another intimate look at the singer's life, fans get to see Spears and her assistant as they go to Starbucks to take a minute for themselves in the hustle-and-bustle of a hectic schedule. "It's nice to have a peaceful moment just to sit down," Spears says. "It's nice to relax before the chaos."

That chaos included getting fans excited for her album release. On top of taking the stage in Vegas for a set full of pyro, shimmering bodysuits and flirty dance moves, Spears also pre-taped today's "Good Morning America" performance in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. "I totally loved how her bustier was lit up," fan Corina Andrati excitedly told MTV News moments after Spears wrapped her three-song set. "I'm so blessed to be here."

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http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1660830/britney-spears-femme-fatale-previews.jhtml

Nostalgia for the Light

There is no escaping the past in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where rain in some areas comes every 400 years. There is no humidity. No insects or plant life. Human remains are mummified, frozen in time. And the air is so thin astronomers can reach back millions of years.

Here, our strongest telescopes turn wheeling galaxies into spectacular light shows that trivialize the fantasies of Lucas and Spielberg. Distant planets seem close as apples on a backyard tree.

Not far from the desert’s gleaming white observatories, beautiful against blue sky, Chilean mothers till parched red soil with their arms and feet, looking for a reaching hand, a once useful leg – remains of a son or daughter who “disappeared” during Pinochet’s regime.

Patricio Guzmán’s documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.

The film is gorgeous, purposefully slow, almost a meditation. Guzmán tells us life in the Atacama Desert is an eternal book of memories. And he lingers on every page, capturing shots of constellations with the care of a master photographer. Imagine Ansel Adams, working in colour, let loose in the Milky Way.

At the same time, the filmmaker turns memories of desert victims into religious ceremony. An architect, one of 80,000 socialists imprisoned in the mid-1970s after General Augusto Pinochet led a coup d’état, tells how he paced the Chacabuco concentration camp, memorizing room sizes. Afterwards, alone in a cell, he translated the numbers into blueprints that might bear witness to the horror of Pinochet.

Another political prisoner remembers how he and friends would steal out at night, studying the sky with a makeshift telescope. How they felt drawn into heaven.

Just as astronomers’ telescopes go beyond our galaxy, filmmaker Guzmán’s gaze extends past the 20th century. Pinochet did not have to build Chacabuco. A hundred years earlier, workers were enslaved in desert camps and died mining salt that covered the soil like crusts of snow. The concentration camp where lawyers, doctors and writers were sent once housed Aymara and Mapuche Indians.

Although Nostalgia for the Light’s field of vision is deep, it’s also curiously narrow. Guzmán specializes in Chile’s recent history. His most famous efforts are The Battle of Chile and Salvador Allende. And he presumes the audience for his new film has seen those works. No effort is made to explain Pinochet’s overthrow of Allende’s democratically elected government.

Still, what he has done here is amazing to look at and important to consider. Guzmán’s message is simple: Vision is a gift that must be honoured with study and practice. He leaves us contemplating the words of a Chilean mother who continues to search for lost children. “I just wish the telescope didn’t just look at the sky, but could also see through the earth so that we could find them.”

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http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nostalgia_for_the_light/#!reviews=all

Video: Black Eyed Peas Pay Tribute to Japan on 'American Idol'

Black Eyed Peas visited "American Idol" on the result-show night on March 17, performing their latest single "Just Can't Get Enough". "This song is about love and strength and is dedicated to our friends in Japan," will.i.am said from his seat behind a white grand piano.

Stacy Ferguson aka Fergie sat on top of the piano, kicking in the first verses of the dance track. She and will.i.am then proceeded to move to the center stage and were joined by Taboo and apl.de.ap halfway through the set.

Another musical guest that night was Lee DeWyze, 2010 winner of "American Idol". The 24-year-old singer strummed a guitar and delivered his second single "Beautiful Like Me". He said to Ryan Seacrest, "It's great to be back."

The host asked Lee what advice he could give to the remaining contestants. "Just remember why you tried out in the first place," he answered. "You guys are fine, no matter what happens." Sitting among the audience were Jennifer Lopez's hubby Marc Anthony and her "On the Floor" collaborator Pitbull.

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http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00039104.html

Rango Movie Review

Johnny Depp is wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

He seems to have mislaid his pants.

He has the head of a green lizard and is wandering, lost, in the sunbaked wasteland of the Nevada desert.

Just another day with Hunter S. Thompson.

Except this is not a scene from the life of Dr. Gonzo, or an outtake from Depp’s own tripping tribute, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It is, instead, from “Rango.” A new cartoon. For children.

Yes, when the going gets weird, Johnny Depp gets weirder.

Because, at a time when so many animated features take the safe, cuddly, Happy Meal approach, “Rango” proudly hitches its covered wagon to the mangy, bug-eyed look of Tex Avery, Big Daddy Roth, Basil Wolverton and long-gone underground “comix.”

Watch Rango Movie Trailer

The slightly surreal animated story begins when a pet chameleon’s terrarium crashes in the desert — marooning him with a paper umbrella, a nude and headless Barbie and a wind-up fish.

So the little fellow starts walking, accompanied by an all-owl mariachi band — and finds himself in a town straight out of a Sergio Leone Western, complete with scrofulous villagers and low-life hired guns.

The Leone references soon start piling up (along with the Ennio Morricone musical cues). But there’s also a big nod to “Chinatown” (in its own way, a modern Western). And some odd, purely original touches — like a mystic armadillo — that come out of nowhere.

The originality may be deep in the DNA — Depp sometimes makes mistakes, but he never makes anything you’d expect him to, and director Gore Verbinski (who worked with him on the first few “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) is making his first cartoon.

Even better, the movie uses animators from Industrial Light and Magic who are also new to extended feature-film work.

So what’s here doesn’t look like the perfect, spit-and-polish work we’re used to.

It’s its own thing — and sometimes, admitted, it gets lost in its own wanderings. The story easily could have been sped up by five or 10 minutes. And although the late appearance of one movie icon is fine, an invocation of “Apocalypse Now” is both old and off-track.

But Depp, happily disembodied, has a fine time with Rango, who — being a chameleon — is constantly assuming different identities, and he’s nicely partnered by the work of Isla Fisher, voicing his plucky pioneer love.

Adults and slightly older children should have a great time.

Will the movie appeal to the youngest toddlers? Probably not. Its rattlesnake villain is a little too scary and even its nicest characters are so ugly they’re likely to disgust small tots (and some of the indulgent adults who accompany them).

So as a safe, preschool matinee — yeah, it’s a little iffy.

But as a midnight movie, it’s going to have a long, long life.

Read More Reviews Of Rango Movie:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rango-2011/

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