Brian De Palma, Noah Baumbach And Jake Paltrow Talk De Palma

The new documentary, that is

There were not many surprises at this year’s Venice Film Festival, but one film that proved an unexpected joy was De Palma. A simple talking-head documentary, featuring Brian De Palma gassing happily about his entire CV from Murder A La Mod to Carrie to Scarface to Passion, it’s directed by the unlikely team of Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow.

“I met Noah at a birthday party for Paul Schrader twenty years ago and Jake at a party about ten years ago,” De Palma told Empire in Venice. “And we just had a rapport and a love for movies”.

“There were so many conversations we had with Brian and things he would talk about that at a certain point we thought we should just ask him to talk about it on camera,” says Paltrow. “It was selfish at first. So we asked and he was up for it.”

The film drew overwhelmingly positive reviews after its first press screening because it’s not just a piece for fans of De Palma, but a thorough, sometimes rather indiscreet, monologue on what it’s like to go from being part of the explosion of young ‘70s filmmakers, alongside Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese, to becoming part of the Hollywood establishment, to then falling out of favour.

“Well you don’t want people thinking they’ve heard the same anecdote 863 times, because I’ve been asked about certain films rather a lot,” says De Palma. “My relationship with these two directors and my feelings for them and the questions they’re answering, means I’m not going to be stylized and on script”.

“What we were looking for was to get the feeling of those dinners we’ve had where Brian would regale us with these incredible stories,” says Baumbach. “And I think that’s what we got”.

De Palma does not yet have a UK release date but expect news on a release soon.

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Watch: Miss America CEO Finally Apologizes to Vanessa Williams

More than 30 years after she was forced to resign from the Miss America Organization thanks to a nude photo scandal, Vanessa Williams finally got an apology from the group's CEO on Sunday night about the way the controversy was handled.

Williams, who was a judge at Sunday's 2015 pageant, became the

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Exclusive Nashville Sneak Peek: Juliette Breaks Down in Front of Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan

It's easy to dismiss Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) as a terrible mother on ABC's Nashville, but when the show later this month, it quickly becomes apparent that her issues stem from more than just selfishness.

Like any good A-list celebrity, Juliette maintains the façade that her work/life

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Ridley Scott Updates On Prometheus 2

Michael Fassbender returning for February shoot

Out on the publicity rounds for The Martian, Ridley Scott has given a lengthy career-spanning interview to Deadline and confirmed what we pretty much already knew: his immediate next film will take him straight back to space. It's Prometheus 2 (happening well before Neill Blompkamp's Alien 5). He also confirms - no surprise here either - that Michael Fassbender is returning as the synthetic David, and gives some indication of, if not exactly plot specifics, the direction his thoughts are taking him.

"You [could] leave the first film alone and jump ahead," muses Sir Ridders, "but you can’t because it ends on too specific a plot sentence as she says, 'I want to go where they came from, I don’t want to go back to where I came from'. I thought the subtext of that film was a bit florid and grandiose, but it asks a good question: who created us? 

"That raises the question to me," he continues, "same as was depicted in 2001 when... that ape that had been grubbing around in the water hole with all of them bickering at each other... has a bigger thought injected into his brain than Newton got sitting under a tree and seeing an apple fall. That is one gigantic, magnificent leap of a thousand years of evolution; that is where the world begins. It is pretty grand thinking, and that’s what I want to explore. You’ve got to go back and find those engineers and see what they are thinking. If engineers are the forerunners of us, and therefore were creators of life forms in places that were possible for biology to function, who created that? Where’s the big boy?"

Addressing the fact that he's delegating the directing of the also-developing Blade Runner sequel to Dennis Villenueve, Scott says "He has taken my script, from Hampton [Fancher] and Michael Green, and that’s what he’ll make. I can’t direct them all, and I have to do Prometheus."

Elsewhere in the extensive chat he touches on the disppointment of The Counsellor, from Cormac McCarthy's original screenplay: "The actors were great, the writing was fantastic, it was a great narrative... the intellectual complexity of it was just brilliant... I am very proud of that film, but it didn't play. I think people were horrified, but I don't quite know why."

And he also touches on future projects Flashman (from the George MacDonald Frazier novels) and The Cartel, both of which were bought specifically for him by studio Fox. "Cartel is, in a word, The Godfather," he says of the latter, "in the subtext of what makes that sick business tick. I’ve been getting to the heart of it all because you aren’t going to stop them. It’s becoming an army problem, and they have their own armies. It’s this melting pot of evil; you can’t call that business anything other than evil, and the idea a guy trained special forces goes to work for the cartel is disgraceful."

There's plenty more in the original piece, but returning to the Prometheus sequel Scott says "It’s meant to start production in February. I’m in prep, now. I’ll either shoot in Aussie, or here [Toronto]." 

The Martian lands on September 30.

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Alec Baldwin And Salma Hayek Are Drunk Parents

For The House Bunny's director Fred Wolf

After scoring big hits as a writer with Grown Ups and its sequel, House Bunny director Fred Wolf has recently returned to directing (and to a previous cult "favourite") with Crackle's Joe Dirt 2. Now he's got his next project lined up. He'll direct Drunk Parents, which may sound like a vehicle for Adam Sandler or David Spade, but will actually mark a 30 Rock reunion for Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek.

Wolf wrote the screenplay with Peter Gaulke, with whom he also worked on 2008's Strange Wilderness. The story sees parents Baldwin and Hayek waving goodbye to their daughter as she goes off to college, and immediately going on a drinking binge to celebrate their first time alone for 18 years. This leads them to make some Bad Decisions and get involved in a kidnapping and a case of mistaken identity.

“Alec and Salma are both incredibly charismatic, hilarious talents," says producer Robert Ogden Barnum. "Paired together with this brilliant writing, audiences are going to love watching these two beautiful people take on all odds in Drunk Parents." It sounds very much like a mash-up of Date Night and The Hangover at this point, but he's right: Jack Donaghy and Santanico Pandemonium at the top of the cast, reigniting their 30 Rock spark, mean it could potentially be good fun.

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Catherine Hardwicke Casts Two For Stargirl

Joey King and Charlie Plummer sign up

Two months after Catherine Hardwicke came aboard as director, Stargirl now has its first principal cast members. Rising stars Joey King and Charlie Plummer have both joined the project, which is adapted from the kids' novel by Jerry Spinelli.

Kristin Hahn (a producer on Cake and The Switch) wrote the screenplay, which follows a home-schooled teenage girl who has to enrol in an Arizona high school, and has a big impact on the facility’s culture with her non-conformist ways.

King, who's had roles in Crazy Stupid Love, The Dark Knight Rises and the Fargo TV series is our girl (the Stargirl of the title). Plummer, who arrives via Boardwalk Empire, Granite Falls and a near miss in the casting of the new Spider-Man, is the star-struck boy who loves her and narrates the story.

It seems like a good fit for Hardwicke, who helped kick off the massive Twilight film franchise and has shown a sensitivity about offbeat teenage stories with the likes of Thirteen. She most recently made the Drew Barrymore/Toni Collette drama Miss You Already, which will be out in the UK on September 25.

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Rza Stages Breakout

Directing a new action thriller

The Man With The Iron Fists didn't quite kick off Rza's directing career in the way he might have hoped (a single DTV sequel directed by Death Race 2's Roel Reine is all we've seen so far of the intended massive franchise) but it also has harmed him in the long run. He's just finished behind the cameras with the hip-hop drama Coco, and he'll now move straight on to action thriller Breakout.

Rza made Coco for Iron Fists studio Lionsgate, but Breakout is for Amasia, with whom he's also just worked as an actor on Mr Right. Breakout involves a photographer wrongfully imprisoned in Bangladesh for drug trafficking, whose father ropes in two old friends to find the truth and secure his release by any means necessary.

Richard D'Ovidio (The Forger, The Call) wrote the screenplay, in cahoots with his regular collaborator (and wife) Nicole D'Ovidio. Shooting is set for early next year, so expect casting news to start rolling in shortly.

Coco, starring Azealia Banks, should be out sometime next year but doesn't have a release date yet. Neither does Mr Right (directed by Paco Cabezas from Max Landis' script), although at makes its debut at TIFF this week.

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