VIDEO: Elijah Wood Challenges Dominic Monaghan to Hobbit vs. Hobbit Fight

Fantastic Fest’s annual Fantastic Debates pit filmmakers, critics, and celebrities against each other in a two-part battle that begins with a podium debate and ends with the ultimate showdown in the boxing ring. This year’s Debates, held Saturday night in Austin, Texas, will get even more fantastic than usual as Elijah Wood and Lord of the Rings pal Dominic Monaghan duke it out with some Hobbit vs. Hobbit fisticuffs. Watch their challenge videos after the jump! First, a wild-eyed Wood issues his challenge while training for the bout: “Where’s your Pippin now, bitch?” But wait! Charlie from LOST has a bold response: Well, good luck with that. (Their topic of debate? The merits of World of Warcraft.) Also debating (and brawling) in the Debates: Filmmaker brothers Nathan and David Zellner on the topic of robots vs. humans, an astrophysicist vs. a NASA hater arguing for and against the honor of NASA, and Fantastic Fest founder Tim League — who fought and defeated Michelle Rodriguez in last year’s Debates — fighting undefeated bare-knuckle fighter James Quinn McDonagh, the star of the documentary Knuckle. Watch more challenge videos over at Fandango. Fantastic Fest: Elijah Wood Fights Dominic Monaghan in Fantastic Debates, Check Out the Pre-Fight Videos [Fandango]

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Guns N' Roses Announces First U.S. Tour in 5 Years

Guns N' Roses is headed out on its first U.S. tour in 5 years.our editor recommendsAxl Rose Sues Activision for $20M for Including Slash in 'Guitar Hero' This guitar rock band introduced Wednesday, within 24 hours R.E.M. made its breakup official, that it'll start its fall trek beginning March. 28 in Orlando, FL before wrapping on Year's Eve. Just before the U.S. tour, Guns N' Roses will work in Latin America, first closing the Rock in Rio music festival in Rio p Janeiro, South america on March. 2. PHOTOS: Top Ten Greatest-Compensated Artists The approaching U.S. tour will have a two-and-a-30 minutes show, featuring this guitar rock band's hit tunes. Additionally to Orlando, the tour is scheduled to prevent at Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Nashville, Colorado and Indiana, simply to title a couple of metropolitan areas. Band people Axl Rose, DJ Ashba, Dizzy Reed, Tommy Stinson, Richard Fortus, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, Chris Pitman and Frank Ferrer carried out 71 shows this past year in additional than 30 nations. PHOTOS: The Background Music Industry's Greatest Givers Axl Rose created Guns N' Roses in 1985 and also have since offered a lot more than 100 million albums worldwide. This guitar rock band's latest album, Chinese Democracy, first showed at No. 3 around the Billboard 200 charts and was licensed platinum within the U.S. More dates and metropolitan areas is going to be introduced shortly. This is actually the complete list right now: March 28 Orlando, FL @ Amway Center Arena March 29 Miami, FL @ American Air carriers Arena March 31 Greenville, SC @ Bi-Lo Center Arena November 2 Atlanta, GA @ Phillips Arena Houston, Texas November 5 Dallas, Texas @ Gexa Energy Pavillion Omaha, NE Tulsa, OK November 12 Might, MO @ Sprint Center Arena November 13 Ontario, MN @ Target Center Arena Chicago, IL @ All Condition Arena East Rutherford, NJ Hartford, CT Wilkes-Barre, PA Worcester, MA Camden, NJ Detroit, MI Cincinnati, OH Nashville, TN Indiana, IN Colorado, CO Related Subjects

The Wood

John Viscardi is a reporter who exposes police brutality against immigrant Vladimir Versailles. Melanie Charles is the victims wife. A Rattlestick Playwrights Theater presentation of a play in two acts by Dan Klores. Directed by David Bar Katz. Justin Volpe - Michael Carlsen Micheline Louima - Melanie Charles Tommy - David Deblinger Alice McAlary - Kim Director Abner Louima - Vladimir Versailles Mike McAlary - John ViscardiDocumentary filmmaker Dan Klores brings a cinematic eye to "The Wood," his reverential bio-dram about Mike McAlary, the muckraking NYC newspaper columnist who won a Pulitzer in 1998 for his sensational expose of police brutality against Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. Episodic and unfocused in its overlong first act, show pulls itself together in act two for some tough scenes between Louima and McAlary, who would die of cancer at 41, the year after he won his Pulitzer. The material has power, but the whole structure of the piece needs overhauling to make a real impact. Two solid perfs from John Viscardi (as McAlary) and Vladimir Versailles (as Louima) and nice backup from Kim Director and Melanie Charles (as their respective wives) give ballast to the jumpy production helmed by David Bar Katz. Viscardi nails both the journalistic hunger that made McAlary such a tenacious news hound and that attitude of compassion and understanding that made people trust him with their deepest secrets. He's also winning when McAlary addresses the audience directly to reveal a passion for cutthroat journalism, a sense of justice that made him a "superhero for the working class," and an ego the size of a house. Versailles is most sympathetic in the hospital scenes in which a badly beaten Louima bares his humiliation and pain to the reporter who would splash his story on the front page of the Daily News. He also establishes great rapport with Charles, so touching as Louima's distraught wife. But it takes an unendurable length of time before Louima comes out of the shadows to focus McAlary's attention and point the play in a dramatic direction. Until then, Klores relies on a series of sketchy scenes -- written in no consistent style and performed the same way -- to fill in McAlary's backstory and flesh out the character of this driven man, so competitive that he would skip chemotherapy to chase down a news tip. There may be a good play in here somewhere, but right now it's a jumble of bits and pieces waiting for the rewrite desk.Sets, John McDermott; costumes, Kalere A. Payton; lighting, Joel Moritz; sound, Janie Bullard; projections, Steve Channon; production stage manager, Jamie Wolfe. Opened Sept. 15, 2011. Reviewed Sept. 14. Running time: 2 HOURS, 10 MIN.With: Thomas Kopache and Sidney Williams Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

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Horror Thriller Silk Nabbed For Remake

Ghost child alert!You might not think that the three writers who cranked out the script for 2010 Halle Berry drama Frankie & Alice are the ideal people to adapt Silk, a chilling Taiwanese tale of a dead child and the driven scientist who captures his energy in an old apartment building, for Western audiences, but Gold Circle Films disagrees. The company has hired Marko King, Mary King and Jonathan Watters to get the job done. The 2006 original, directed by Chao-Bin Su, found a crippled scientist using his new invention, the Menger Sponge, to capture the essence of a vengeful ghost child. Employing the services of a lip-reading detective to discover why the spooky sprog's energy is still so powerful, they eventually figure out that the poor lad's mother killed the tumour-ridden tot and buried him near a nuclear plant. Naturally, things go scare-shaped from there. According to the Heat Vision Blog, Gold Circle plans to have the writing trio forge a new path beyond the basic concept. The producers aren't letting any real details slip yet, though the idea is to blend Michael Crichton with The Sixth Sense. So expect a similar story of technology meeting the supernatural and very bad things happening. There's no word on any casting or a director being hired yet, but it's still early days....

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Barrymore

A Steve Kalafer and Peter LeDonne presentation from the Barrymore Entertainment production. (Worldwide sales: Film Sales Co., NY.) Produced by Garth H. Drabinsky. Executive producers, Kalafer, LeDonne, Kevin Albrecht, Christopher Plummer, Gene Saks. Directed, put together by Erik Canuel, modified within the follow William Luce.With: Christopher Plummer, John Plumpis.A serviceable screen record in the (essentially) one-guy show Christopher Plummer remains undertaking since its premiere in 1996, "Barrymore" is certainly the enjoyable spectacle of just one great actor needing to pay tribute to another. Yet William Luce's easily digestible assemblage of John Barrymore's quips, anecdotes and self-criticisms has not been a particularly inspired vehicle, and author-director Erik Canuel's adaptation probably was not ever an chance of transcending its shot-play limits, particularly as this piece happens situated on the stage. Despite wishful-thinking Toronto buzz inside the veteran Canuck thesp's award prospects, this exercise has "quality tv producersInch written throughout it. A fictive device posseses an enfeebled Barrymore (Plummer) leasing a theater one evening to coach for just about any backer's audition of "Richard III," a past personal triumph he hopes can help to save his career within the depths of self-parody. Everyone knows, however, he'll not live to look for the entire year (1942) out. Tippling and grandstanding for the benefit of nobody but themselves together with a extended-suffering prompter (John Plumpis, frequently heard but never fully seen), "the fantastic Profile" muses fleetingly on his many close ties, laureled thespian siblings and siblings, abusive backstage upbringing, etc. He sings Container Pan Alley tunes, does imitations (W.C. Fields, Louella Parsons), and extremely every once in awhile recalls to declaim a kind of Shakespeare. Plummer socks all this finished great gusto, reveling in the shameless show-off's compulsive need to entertain (possibly first of all themselves), while letting the not-infrequent moments of pathos slip through with impact but no heavy-handed emphasis. It's a method of calculating the actor's craft that particular doesn't feel it's the millionth time he's carried out this role, but rather, it is the millionth time Barrymore has vocally tap-danced to leave their very own self-loathing. However, the material itself features a formulaic solo-bioplay rhythm neither artist nor director can fully elude. Canuel ("Bon Cop, Bad Cop") sometimes tries too difficult to jazz some misunderstanding through editing or getting a mute visual flashback. But typically, the pic has precisely the benefits and limitations in the stage piece, whose original collaborators are thanked to conclude credits, with design contributions noted as "according toInch their legit antecedents. Tech package is polished, though "Barrymore" will ultimately look most in your house round the smallscreen.Camera (color, HD), Bernard Couture editor, Jean-Francois Bergeron music, Michel Corriveau production designer, Cameron Porteous. Examined at Toronto Film Festival (Mavericks), Sept. 11, 2011. Running time: 84 MIN. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com

Emmys up a tick in demos

The Primetime Emmy Honours telecast on Fox demonstrated no rankings match for Michael Vick's go back to Atlanta on NBC's "Sunday Evening Football," however the kudocast did eke out slight rankings gains in key youthful-adult demo groups.Based on preliminary national estimations from Nielsen that contain viewing for that early West Coast airings, the 63rd Primetime Emmy Honours on Fox averaged a 4.2 rating in grown ups 18-49 and 12.4 million audiences overall from 8 to 11. Though lower about a million total audiences from last year's late-August telecast on NBC -- for among the show's cheapest overall earnings on record -- the Emmys were up a tick versus. this past year both in 18-49 and 18-34 within the latter category, it had been the very best in 4 years.At NBC last evening, the Atlanta Falcons' 35-31 victory within the Philadelphia Eagles, in Vick's first game like a starter against his former team, averaged a large 9.2/22 in 18-49 and 21.5 million audiences overall on NBC's stations from 8:30 to 11 these amounts are required to increase within the excellent. In Nielsen's metered-market overnights, the overall game averaged a 15.7 household rating/25 share , up 3% over last year's Week 2 game between your NY Titans and Indiana Colts (15.2/24). The taking part metropolitan areas came similarly huge amounts, with Atlanta garnering a 33.6/50 and Philadelphia a 33.5/49. CBS had good circulation to begin the evening by having an National football league overrun, however the aud rapidly spread either to football or even the Emmys. ''60 Minutes,'' airing from about 7:30 to eight:30 p.m. in much of the nation, averaged roughly a couple.6/7 in 18-49 and 11.4 million audiences overall. It had been then two repeats of ''The Good Wife'' after which ''CSI: Miami.'' ABC broadcast repeats of ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' (1.2/3 in 18-49, 5.4 million audiences overall), ''Extreme Transformation: Home Edition'' (1.3/3 in 18-49, 4.7 million audiences overall) and ''20/20: The Sixth Sense'' (1.4/3 in 18-49, 5.a million audiences overall).Preliminary 18-49 earnings for that evening: NBC, 7.4/19 Fox, 3.6/9 CBS, 2.1/5 ABC, 1.3/3.As a whole audiences: NBC, 17.8 million Fox, 10.4 million CBS, 8.7 million ABC, 5.a million. Contact Ron Kissell at ron.kissell@variety.com

Global Showbiz Briefs: Scotland, Uk, India

American Author In Your Thoughts Edinburgh Film Festival Chris Fujiwara has already established overleadership in the festival inside a critical juncture. Thatfact was underlined by today’s newsthat the primary executive in the festival’s parent body, Gavin Burns,had resigned. The first sort BBC marketing executive was rocked with the resignation of previous artistic director Hannah McGill together with a 2011 edition in the fest in June that was short on funding, premieres and star energy. Fujiwaratold The Scotsman he was “well aware” in the critique flattened within the festival this summer season. “Edinburgh is clearly a festival that's handling a transitional phase,” he mentioned, “but meaning there's an opportunity for positive change and tomake an authentic difference.” Fujiwara mentioned it absolutely was almost certain the next festival would keep remain inJune,rather than returning to its traditional August slot. U.K. Director Could Make Hollywood Debut on ‘Offworld’ Producer Lloyd Levin (United states . 93, Watchmen) has signed on British director Julian Gilbey (A Lonely Place To Die) for his sci-fi film Offworld. “It’s a kind of an intergalactic Naked Prey,” Levintold the U.K. film blog Empire, “a pedal-to-the-metal safari movie set by having an alien planet. There’s lots of nasty creatures, occurrences where concerning the good males’ side.” American David Leslie Manley (Wrath In The Leaders, TV’s The Walking Dead) is writing the script. Indian Studio WillDo Double-Duty As Tourist Destination India’s 33-year-old Film City –known in your town as Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagar– will receive a facelift, a Bollywood museum and become a tourist destination. The regional Maharashtra government has made a decision to upgrade the 520-acre home of 16 art galleries with condition-of-the-art facilities. Its a ongoing process and may require sometime before it'll get implemented,” a film City representative referred to to have an Indian film blog. Among films that recently shot there is a Indian blockbuster Bodyguard, Ready and Devdas.