Recently in the Film News Category

Rolling Stone

The delayed Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Broadway show featuring music by U2's Bono and the Edge will have to find a new Mary Jane. Producers have confirmed that Evan Rachel Wood, the actress originally cast in the role of Peter Parker's love interest, has left the musical, Variety reports. Wood exited the production due to a "scheduling conflict"; financial troubles pushed Turn Off the Dark's opening well beyond its original February 25th preview premiere date. Variety writes that Spider-Man will likely begin its preview run in late summer and open around Halloween, though those dates remain unconfirmed by the show's production team.

"She's the greatest actor of her generation, she's the one to watch," Bono said of Wood after her casting was announced. "She happens to sing like a bird, it's like a true voice. She's a very pure spirit and a very bright mind and she brings the part of MJ to life, really."

U2's Larry Mullen Jr. will lend his voice to a pair of characters in the upcoming season of the Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show. According to the BBC, Mullen Jr. reached out to producers about guest voicing on the show's second season, and producers were only too happy to oblige. The drummer will voice two characters: a mobster and a bad Elvis impersonator.

Springfield Rocks: check out photos of music's biggest stars on The Simpsons.

"He came in and we hung out for a couple of hours. We just recorded him doing a couple of different parts and he was very funny," Mike Henry, who voices Cleveland, told the BBC. "It's a thrill for me to do all this. U2 is my favorite band of all time and David Lynch the film director plays a part on our show." (In other Cleveland Show news, David Lynch will also guest voice!) As for recording Mullen Jr.'s part, Henry said, "He's got his own studio so we just record it from Dublin. You don't have to record at a certain time. It's an easy gig and one that people like to do. It's very cool to have all these people from different walks of entertainment participating in what we're doing."

By Maureen Coleman, Belfast Telegraph

A tour bus pulls up in Belfast's Lower Donegall Street with a big-haired band on board. Screaming teenage girls, in neon brights and leather jackets, greet the denim-clad rockers as they disembark. Nearby a market stallholder in pink pixie boots rubs her hands to fend off the cold.

Visitors to the Cathedral Quarter yesterday could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped back in time to the late 1970s/early 1980s, when new wave groups, red double-deckers, Ford Cortinas and pleated trousers were de rigeur.

Instead, it's a scene from music-comedy Killing Bono, being filmed in the city.

Starring Chronicles Of Narnia's Ben Barnes, the movie is set during U2's formative years in Dublin and London.

BBC News

Plenty of schoolchildren dream of becoming famous singers, but when a boy on the other side of the classroom goes on to become one of the most famous rock stars in the world, you could end up feeling a little overshadowed.

That is exactly what happened to Neil McCormick, who went to school with a boy called Paul Hewson - better known these days as U2's Bono.

So could it be jealously then that inspired the title of the new movie 'Killing Bono', which is based on Mr McCormick's memoirs?

Filming of the story, which is set around U2's formative years in a north Dublin comprehensive school, is set to begin in Northern Ireland early next year.

Belfast Telegraph

While Northern Ireland was in the grip of the Troubles in the late 1970s, something was happening south of the border which would have a global impact on music.

In 1976, a band was formed in Dublin after a young drummer posted on the school noticeboard looking for other musicians to join him. That band was U2.

Now a new movie is to reminisce about that time -- from the unusual perspective of a rival band.

Filming will get under way in Northern Ireland next month on Killing Bono -- a story about two Irish brothers chasing a dream of being rock stars.

The Sundance Channel's interview-performance series gets out of the gate fast in its second-season opener.

By Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

Upping the ante on any TV show that got off to as auspicious a start as the first season of the Sundance Channel's music interview-performance series "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With..." is a tall order.

After all, the first episode featured a conversation with Elton John -- not coincidentally, one of the executive producers and a key mover behind the series -- before pairing its deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host with subsequent guests, including Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, Lou Reed, Norah Jones, Rufus Wainwright, Renée Fleming and former President Clinton.

But out of the gate on tonight's second-season opener, Costello does impressively ratchet things up in a wide-ranging session with U2 singer Bono and guitarist the Edge.

By Lee Brown,

U2's Bono and The Edge have told Elvis Costello that he was a key reason for them forming a band.

The Irish rock stars were the first guests on the new season of Costello's music chatshow Spectacle.

Bono told Costello: 'We did go, at the age of 17 or 18, to see you - and you blew our minds. And everybody who was there formed a band. It's true.

'The two seminal concerts for us were the Clash and Elvis Costello and the Attractions,' he said, adding 'what a great honour' it was to be with him.

Costello, however, admitted that his first experience of U2, seeing them in the early days playing a gig in Gateshead, England, was not quite as good.

'I have to be honest, I didn't know what the hell you were doing,' he laughed, to which The Edge quipped: 'We didn't either!'

© 2009 Monsters and Critics.com

Click here for the Video Clip

Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone

Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... returns for its second season on the Sundance Channel this Wednesday, December 9th with U2's Bono and the Edge joining the My Aim is True singer-songwriter for an intimate conversation about the recording of some of the band's biggest hits, a performance of some obscure U2 tracks and a show-ending "mash-up" of Costello and the Imposters with the No Line on the Horizon pair. In this exclusive preview of Wednesday's show, Bono and the Edge talk about how a studio visit from Paul McCartney inspired the group to change their method of recording, as Beatles' classics like "Eleanor Rigby" were quickly recorded in mere three hours sessions.

Bono and the Edge stopped by the Spectacle set at Toronto's Masonic Temple during their recently concluded 360° Tour. Other artists will grace Costello's stage this season include Sheryl Crow, Neko Case, Levon Helm, Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, Ray LaMontagne and, in a special season-ending two-part episode, Mr. Kennedy Center Honors himself, Bruce Springsteen. For more clips from Wednesday's season premiere, airing 10pm on Sundance, check out the Spectacle site.

© Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone

TwentyFourBit Blog

The "Best Original Song" portion at the Academy Awards is one of the annual Hollywood award show's weirder categories. Most years I have no idea who is even nominated until the live broadcast when the host introduces Sting, Randy Newman, or whoever's pretending to have written a song inspired by a film they likely haven't seen in full that year. But then Three Six Mafia wins a gold statue, indie singer/songwriters Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová upset three nods for Enchanted, or Elliott Smith shows up to play "Miss Misery" dressed all in white, and they've grabbed my attention again.

In order to stir up some hope that next year's broadcast will include a similar event, we'll be posting from time to time on a few interesting possible nominees that come across the radar, starting with U2:

The Wrap reports that Lionsgate Films are plotting a big Oscar campaign for Brothers, a drama starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Tobey Maguire, and U2 have penned a song for the Academy's consideration. "Winter," a tune that is also supposedly included on Songs of Ascent, the forthcoming sister album to No Line on the Horizon, can be streamed here.

British director has helmed concert shows with Britney Spears and U2, and the MTV awards.

By Yvonne Villarreal, Los Angeles Times

At 82, the Academy Awards are long overdue for some cosmetic enhancement. And the show's producers have tapped a new director they hope can do the job.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced Wednesday that Hamish Hamilton would direct the telecast.

Like the telecast's producers, Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman, Hamilton is a newcomer to the Oscars.

"One of the things that came to mind from Hamish's shows was an unbelievable use of the most current technology with cameras," Shankman said in a telephone interview.