Kim Basinger In Talks To Play Zac Efron's Mom

Kim Basinger is in talks to join Zac Efron in "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud." And, according to Variety, if negotiations work out Basinger will be playing Efron's mother.

In the film, Efron's character is a cemetery caretaker who has weekly meetings with his younger brother, who died years earlier. Basinger would play the grieving mom. Amanda Crew, who joined the cast late last month, plays Efron's love interest, who is believed to be lost in a sailing accident.

The film is being helmed by Efron's "17 Again" director, Burr Steers, whose credits also include "Igby Goes Down." In order to make the film, Efron passed on the "Footloose" remake — his role went to "Gossip Girl" star Chace Crawford. Efron has expressed a desire to make more serious-minded films and move away from teen fare.

"I'm very excited about the future and trying new things and the unknown," he told MTV News back in April. "Not that I'm done with musicals in any way, but I feel like I've made somewhat of a mark there, and I'd like to try new things before going back to my safe place."

As for roles like his in "St.Cloud," he said, "I'm not doing anything to drastically to try and change up my image. But I do need to keep things interesting for myself. And grow up. ... I still make very family-friendly films. I'm not involved with the next 'Trainspotting' sequel or anything like that."

Check out everything we've got on "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud."

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'The Goods' Marks Will Ferrell's 'Funniest Cameo,' Adam McKay Says

LOS ANGELES — He's the guy who gave us "Anchorman." He blessed us with "Talladega Nights," "Step Brothers," "Eastbound & Down" and Funny or Die. Adam McKay even wrote what is quite possibly the funniest fake commercial of all time.

Needless to say, he always delivers the goods.

Now, McKay is doing so on a more literal level with "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard." It's an improv-heavy comedy starring Emmy-winning "Entourage" star Jeremy Piven and a host of familiar faces, including McKay's longtime comedy partner Will Ferrell. As the used-car comedy rolls into theaters, we caught up with its producer for a conversation about why the film's no clunker but is still worthy of your cash.

MTV: Tell us about "The Goods."

Adam McKay: Well, it's the story of a failing auto dealership. They hire the best salesman in the country, a mercenary named Don Ready, to come in and liquidate their lot to save it. Ready is played by Jeremy Piven — he's the guy who's always on the road, and as he comes into town, his life's falling apart, he's on his last legs. Deep character discoveries are made, and absurd hilarity ensues.

MTV: I just watched what might be the funniest thing I've seen all year — it's a clip involving Will Ferrell, an Abe Lincoln costume and various sexual instruments. Is this a Web-only thing on Funny or Die, or is it actually in the movie?

McKay: That is in the film, and Ferrell also has another little tag cameo for that scene, which I think might even be funnier. I was telling Will, "I think this might be the funniest cameo you've ever done."

MTV: That's high praise. He's done some good ones over the years.

McKay: He's done some really good ones — his "Wedding Crashers" cameo is great.

MTV: We know you and Will often work with the same stable of dependable improv actors — David Koechner, Rob Riggle, Kathryn Hahn — how did Jeremy Piven enter the fold?

McKay: A lot of people are big fans of Jeremy's acting, but people don't know he comes from an improvisational background. His parents ran a theater school in Chicago and were connected to Second City, and there's a whole improvisational background there. Plus, the character couldn't be any more perfect for him. In fact, I think he improvised the "Let's hug it out, b---h" line on "Entourage."

MTV: Really? That's the most classic line on that show.

McKay: Yeah, and I believe it was an improvised line.

MTV: What's the best line in "The Goods"?

McKay: Wow, that's a good one. Ving Rhames has a couple of my favorites. ... He says: "We haven't been home in a year and a half, and I'm 90 percent certain I left my door open."

MTV: What's your worst car-buying story?

McKay: When I moved to L.A., I went and bought a Prius. I went to the dealership with a printout from the Internet, listing exactly how much I should be paying — and all the guy did was try and work me on it, try and get the price up. Total slick moves the whole time! Then, at the very end, he says: "Hey, I have a script I wrote for the Hughes brothers [who wrote and directed 'Menace II Society']. Can you give it to them?"

MTV: Do you have a connection to the Hughes brothers? Am I missing something?

McKay: No! None at all, none whatsoever. [ Laughs. ] Don't know 'em, never met them. He just thought all [famous people] knew each other or something.

Check out everything we've got on "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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'District 9': The Uninvited, By Kurt Loder

"District 9" seems an oddly misguided sci-fi movie. Where are the Hasbro toy connections? The skeletons of ancient TV series? There's not even a comic book involved. What is wrong with this picture?

Actually, the movie is based on ... what's the term — ah, yes: an original idea. It's a good one, too. The film does have aliens, but they're not the traditional galactic marauders. These amiable extraterrestrials were just cruising along over South Africa some 20-odd years ago when their huge spaceship suddenly conked out in the sky above Johannesburg, where it's still parked. The humans below managed to ferry the passengers down — more than a million of them — but then were stuck with the problem of what to do with these unwanted interlopers. Assimilation was out of the question — the creatures resembled big weird crustaceans with a snoutful of wriggling worms, and their native tongue sounded like a flock of ducks being eaten alive. They did have some interesting technology — especially in the weapons department — but it was bio-mechanical, and could only be operated by beings with alien DNA. Bummer.

The locals loathed the aliens instantly — they were ugly, disgusting, clearly sub-human. And so ever since, these uninvited guests — reviled as "prawns" — have been confined in a trash-pit shantytown called District 9, where they live in abject squalor, foraging among the garbage heaps for sustenance (they favor cat food, raw meat and rubber) and dreaming of someday, somehow, returning home. As the story begins, the government, bowing to public demand, has enlisted the operatives of a sinister munitions outfit called Multi-National United (MNU) to begin rounding up the District 9 populace for relocation to a faraway concentration camp, festooned with welcoming wreaths of barbed wire, where they'll no longer fan the resentment of the master species.

The movie obviously stirs thoughts of the old South African apartheid system (as well as American racial segregation and the Nazi genocide), but it's not a tolerance lecture — there's no message being pounded home. "District 9" is an action movie with a full payload of bullets, blood and much that's more wonderfully worse. The director, Neill Blomkamp, has a striking sci-fi vision. A South African now residing in Vancouver, Blomkamp became such a hot commodity directing music videos and TV commercials that he came to the attention of Peter Jackson, the noted New Zealand Ring-lord. Jackson recruited Blomkamp to direct a movie based on the Halo video games. When that project fell through, he took an interest in a six-minute short Blomkamp had made called "Alive in Jo'burg," and suggested they (and Blomkamp's writing partner, Terri Tatchell) beef it up into a feature film. The result is "District 9."

Blomkamp has given the picture a distinctive look. The aliens — worked up by Jackson's Weta Digital workshop, the Tiffany's of high-end fantasy fabrication — aren't deployed as expensive showpiece creations, to be paraded through for our techno-delectation. They're seamlessly embedded in the movie's scruffy visual texture, an urgent whirl of zoom and blur and general hand-held instability. The movie was shot without a script (there was only a storyline; the dialogue was improvised), and it looks less like a standard sci-fi feature than it does a low-budget documentary about an impossible subject.

The picture also gets a lively infusion of antsy energy from the lead performance by Sharlto Copley, who plays Wikus Van De Merwe, the hapless government functionary who's been put in charge of the alien-relocation program. Copley, a South African writer and producer, isn't an actor (or wasn't — he is now). But he's just right, in an odd way, as a dim-bulb bureaucrat caught up in a ... let's say a transformative experience. In rousting aliens out of their miserable shacks, Wikus comes across a canister of nasty-looking black gunk which, klutz that he is, he inadvertently sprays on his face. As the hideous effect of this contamination becomes apparent (and it's really icky), he finds himself on the run from brutal MNU operatives and a vicious Nigerian gang boss, and falling in league with an alien called (in a resonant slave-name touch) Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope). Christopher says he can heal Wikus, but he needs the black gunk (which also has a secret alien use). Unfortunately, it's been removed to a creepy lab at MNU headquarters -- a place where unspeakable experiments are conducted. When Wikus and Christopher finally arrive there, things get wild, and a lot gooier.

The movie's own DNA is an amalgam of many earlier films, among them "Independence Day," "E.T." (Christopher has an ugly-cute little CGI kid) and the 1955 Hammer classic, "The Creeping Unknown." But Blomkamp has a gift for raw action, and like Jackson himself, back in his "Meet the Feebles" days, he's happy to home in on the most gruesome imagery. Can Wikus be saved? In the normal run of sci-fi movies, the answer would be preordained. Here, though, it's ... well, worth witnessing for yourself.

Don't miss Kurt Loder's review of "Grace," also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "District 9."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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'Gossip Girl' Star Sebastian Stan Buddies Up To Ashton Kutcher In 'Spread'

Fans of "Gossip Girl" may know Sebastian Stan as Carter Baizen, the globe-trekking troublemaker who spiced up Blair's love life for a bit last season and may be hooking up with Serena this fall. But in the meantime, Leighton Meester's real-life boyfriend is also starring alongside Ashton Kutcher, who spices up various women's love lives in the new movie "Spread," out Friday (August 14).

Stan plays Harry, pal to Kutcher's Nikki, a relationship he likens to another onscreen bromance.

"We kind of have that Vince Vaughn/ Jon Favreau relationship," he told MTV News. "We sort of nag each other. We need each other to be in each other's lives."

Much like Vaughn and Favreau in "Swingers," Harry and Nikki are definitely yin and yang. "I kind of balance him out," Stan explained. "He brings me up to date to what's hip and what's the manual for picking up a girl. And that's sort of what our relationship [is like], and it gets affected by what happens to him in the film."

The movie, which also stars Anne Heche and Margarita Levieva, is really about young people who are trying to get by in Los Angeles, in a shady kind of way, Stan said. " 'Spread' is just like this fun, kind of sexy movie with the beautiful Ashton Kutcher and myself," he said. "And it's sort of about young people in L.A. who, well, are in a sense con artists.

"It's about [Nikki] basically being a con artist, sort of getting his way around with women ... to live day to day," he said. "And there's a major lesson he learns in the process. And I think it's very relatable to 2009, our generation right now."

Check out everything we've got on "Spread."

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Peter Jackson Proud Of 'Fiercely Original' 'District 9'

If there's one thing Peter Jackson seems to be proud of as far as "District 9" is concerned, it's that the film is an original work. As producer of the much-buzzed-about science-fiction flick, he credits writer/director Neill Blomkamp with bringing something personal to the story that most action movies today lack.

"It's fiercely original, which is what I really like about it," Jackson told MTV News. "And I like the fact that it's based on the life experience of Neill, growing up in a society that was different to anything we've experienced."

Of course, he didn't mean to say that Blomkamp grew up living among alien refugees who've been forced to live in ghettos as marginalized non-citizens. But the film is clearly an allegory for the racial segregation of South Africa's past.

Jackson went on about the rookie filmmaker's upbringing in South Africa and how his witnessing of the end of the apartheid era was instrumental to the creation of "District 9," which he said is a little sci-fi spin on the history. The parallel Blomkamp draws helps to convey the humanity of the film's aliens, which, similar to black Africans during apartheid, are put into Soweto-style townships and treated badly by the local population.

"It was interesting and much more complex than the usual sort of science-fiction film," Jackson said of the script. "And it's not based on a comic; it's not based on a remake or a TV show. It's very original, which today is rare. For some reason we've all forgotten how to be original."

The irony is that Jackson and Blomkamp first got together to collaborate on a very unoriginal project, an adaptation of the video game "Halo." Jackson spoke to MTV News about this first failed pairing, which lasted six months before studio politics killed the production. He confessed to being very disappointed with the turn of events, but he loved working with Blomkamp, who he had taken under his wing.

So they quickly came up with an original story that could be produced independently of a studio. And Jackson is happy with the idea that something like "District 9" was born from the ashes of "Halo." He even claims it was fate that intervened and gave us this other film.

As much as Jackson celebrates the fresh and inventive plot of "District 9," though, if pressed he can come up with comparisons for those audiences who fear something completely new.

"It's a little bit of 'Cloverfield' and it's a little bit of 'The Constant Gardener,' " he said, adding, "If such a thing is possible."

Check out everything we've got on "District 9."

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Joe Jonas Reportedly Joining Ex Taylor Swift In 'Valentine's Day'

If the reports are true, then it seems that Joe Jonas is ditching his brothers, Nick and Kevin, to try his hand at a Hollywood career. The middle Jonas is reportedly in talks to join the rom-com "Valentine's Day" alongside his ex and fellow aspiring actor, Taylor Swift, and "Twilight" star Taylor Lautner.

E! News reports that Joe is close to joining the Garry Marshall-directed flick, which stars a who's who of Hollywood — Julia Roberts, Jessica Biel, Emma Roberts, Jessica Alba, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper and Anne Hathaway, to name a few.

A rep for the pop star didn't respond to MTV News' call for comment by press time.

According to E!, Jonas, who stars with his brothers in the Disney sitcom "JONAS," wouldn't be playing himself in the film, which revolves around intertwining stories of love in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day. Joe is currently on tour and also has plans to start shooting the sequel to the hit Disney film "Camp Rock" this fall, but he would film his reported role sometime between now and when production ends in October.

In addition to the role that is rumored feature her as the prom queen to Lautner's king, Swift may be recording a song for the movie's soundtrack, the E! report said. No word on whether Joe would also record a song, with or without his brothers.

Check out everything we've got on "Valentine's Day."

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'New Moon' Newcomer Noot Seear Prefers Zack Morris To Robert Pattinson

Model-turned-actress Noot Seear may be new to the "Twilight" world, but she is awkwardly familiar with the fanaticism so many teenagers display when it comes to Stephenie Meyer's vampire trilogy and its tousle-haired heartthrob, Robert Pattinson. So who was the 25-year-old Canadian's obsession back in her adolescent years?

"It's too embarrassing, I can't say," she said during a Style.com interview.

Come on, how bad could it be? You decide: Seear, who will play Volturi vampire Heidi in "New Moon," eventually confessed to sweating through a case of the teenage hots for Mark-Paul Gosselaar in "Saved by the Bell," otherwise known as Zack Morris.

"I had posters, the whole thing," she said. "I think I'm still a big Zack Morris fan. I'd probably freak out if I saw him at a party. What is that guy doing now?"

Well, Noot, he's still hanging out with his old co-stars — just check out the latest cover of People. But back to Seear, and the way in which her life is going to drastically change when "New Moon" comes out in November — just as Pattinson's did last year.

"I know it's something Rob has been struggling with, because it happened so quickly to him and in such a massive way," Seear said. "I like being able to walk down my street without being recognized, and I don't like people knowing my business."

Her first taste of the "Twilight" craziness came at Comic-Con last month. "People slept outside overnight just to get a glimpse of the cast, and then, you know, we go into this auditorium, and screen a clip of the movie, and the fans are just screaming, like, the loudest noise I've ever heard," she said. "And the screaming would die down for a minute, and then Rob would brush his hair out of his eyes or something, and that's all it would take for the screaming to start up again."

While Seear hadn't read the books before she auditioned, she's been sure to study up since. "I read them on airplanes," she said. "I think there's something about flying that heightens emotion, because I was literally crying the whole way through each of those books. Flying and crying. I'm sure people thought I was crazy."

Check out everything we've got on "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

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