Saturday Shenanigans: Recent Entertainment News

You know the drill, I look up the most interesting entertainment related stories of the week and pass them along to you. Before we jump into it though, I’d like you to look a bit to the right here and notice that we’ve got a fancy new logo! At least it’s what we’ll use for the time being. How do you like it?

Well, I hope you just said you liked it, otherwise, I guess you can just ignore that little portion of our weekly Shenanigans. Your entertainment stories are waiting for you after the jump.

I ran across this story on Joystiq.com: Matthew Perry loves his video games, I mean, he loves his video games! On the April 24, 2009 show, Perry appeared not only to promote 17 Again, but he also gave Ellen an Xbox 360 system with a copy of the game, Fallout 3. He told Ellen, “I played this video game so often that I injured my hand so severely that I had to go to a hand doctor and get injections in my hand because I love this video game so much. The game is called Fallout 3. I’m not affiliated with this game at all, I just love it. But I signed it, so it looks like I created it.” Apparently, that act earned him the good graces of Bethesda and Obsidian, leading to his eventual casting as Rat Pack-esque character Benny. How cool is that?

January Jones has been cast as Emma Frost in the upcoming X-Men: First Class. At first, this news confused me because a long time ago there were reports that Alice Eve had been cast in that role. Well, it turns out she asked out of her contract, possibly to be a villain in the upcoming Avengers flick. If she ends up getting a role in that movie, I’d have to say she made a good decision.

Cinematical has a list of the most dangerous celebrities to google. According to a report from PC World, the security gurus over at McAfee have determined that of all celebrity names typed into Google, Cameron Diaz is the one most likely to infect your computer with malicious viruses. Approximately 10% of all searches for the My Sister’s Keeper star land internet surfers on sites riddled with nasty code.

Entertainment Weekly had an article awhile back about 15 SNL ‘Dream Hosts’… which was terrible. I mean, truly horrid. Half the list have hosted in the last 3-4 years, a handful are former stars on the show, and the rest are A-level stars that just don’t need to do things like SNL to promote their movies. A list like that deserves more thought than they gave it, so I’ll be bringing you our very own list in the coming days.

And now for this week’s New in Theaters, we’ve got a bunch of middle of the road flicks this time around:

Movie: Nanny McPhee Returns
Stars: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Cast)
Rated: PG
Runtime: 1 hr. 40 min.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77% – Emma Thompson’s second labor of love with the Nanny McPhee character actually improves on the first, delivering charming family fare with an excellent cast.
The Plot: Nanny McPhee (Thompson) arrives to help a harried young mother, Mrs. Green (Gyllenhaal), with running the family farm while her husband is away at war. With Mrs. Green’s children waging a personal war with their two spoiled cousins, Nanny McPhee uses her magic to teach the kids five important new lessons.
Will I See It?: No, never saw the first one and I don’t feel like I missed anything.

Movie: Piranha 3D
Stars: Elisabeth Shue, Jerry O’Connell, Richard Dreyfuss (Cast)
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hr. 29 min.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79% – Playing exactly to expectations for a movie about killer fish run amok,Piranha 3-D dishes out gore, guffaws and gratuitous nudity with equal glee.
The Plot: After a tremor under the surface of Lake Victoria unleashes scores of prehistoric piranhas, a group of strangers under the direction of the local sheriff (Shue) band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food.
Will I See It?: Up until I saw a 79% on RottenTomatoes I would have said no, but now I’m interested. It’ll be a renter.

Movie: The Switch
Stars: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Patrick Wilson (Cast)
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr. 40 min.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 53% – The Switch has an interesting premise and a charming cast; unfortunately, it also has a trite script that hews too close to tired rom-com formulas.
The Plot: An unmarried 40-year-old woman (Aniston) turns to a turkey baster in order to become pregnant. Seven years later, she reunites with her best friend (Bateman), who has been living with a secret …
Will I See It?: No, never saw the first one and I don’t feel like I missed anything.

There’s 2 other wide releases, Vampires Suck and Lottery Ticket, but both look terrible beyond all imagination. The trailer I picked for you guys this week is I’m Still Here. I really still don’t know what to think of this movie. I really don’t know how to describe this movie, so here’s the official release followed by the teaser trailer:

I’m Still Here is a portrayal of a tumultuous year in the life of actor Joaquin Phoenix. With remarkable access, the documentary follows the Oscar-nominee as he announces his retirement from a successful film career in the fall of 2008 and sets off to reinvent himself as a hip hop musician. The film is a portrait of an artist at a crossroads and explores notions of courage and creative reinvention, as well as the ramifications of a life spent in the public eye.