Alexia Fast Joins Cruise 'One Shot' (Exclusive)

Alexia Fasthas became a member of the cast ofOne Shot, the Vital-Skydance Productions crime thriller that starsTom Cruise. The project, anadaptation of the 2005Lee Childnovel, centers onJack Reacher (Cruise), an ex-Military cop who will get drawn in to the mystery all around the arrest of the sniper charged with killing five people. Fast will have Sandy, a sexy youthful siren involved with something of Cruise's character.The actress' film credits include Helen (2009) and Triple Dog (2010). Christopher McQuarrieis set to direct from the script he authored.Vital is thinking of getting an October start for shooting inPittsburgh. Fast is symbolized bySanders Remedy Caserta Management and Great North Artists Management. Email: Daniel.Burns@THR.com Twitter: @DanielNMiller Related Subjects Richard Jenkins Tom Cruise Movie Casting Rosamund Pike

Kelli Giddish on Law & Order: SVU's New Recruits: The Fans Are Going to Love Us

Kelli Giddish Most people would be wary to begin a series in its 13th season. Most people would be nervous to join a cast after the exit of a high-profile star. Kelli Giddish is not most people. "I couldn't feel better about it. ... There's no intimidation," Giddish tells TVGuide.com of jumping onboard Law & Order: SVU. "What attracted me was the prospect of re-invigorating a franchise that's been so well-known and so well-liked, and then to be the shaker and mover." Giddish is one of two fresh faces in the 16th District's SVU team this season, which also sees the departure of longtime showrunner Neal Baer and the exit of star Christopher Meloni. "They've lost a close family member and that's very, very obvious. The writers are not making light of it. They're not ignoring it. They're addressing it and it's nice to see TV do that," she says. "I know, and the writers know, that the fans love Chris Meloni very much." Fall Preview: Get scoop on your favorite returning shows Enter detectives Amanda Rollins and Nick Amaro (fellow new cast member Danny Pino). Amanda joins the team after having become a fan of Olivia's (Mariska Hargitay) work. "My character is in complete awe of Olivia," Giddish says. "Amanda's really eager to get in there because she knows her stuff and really eager to learn. She has come from Atlanta and there was a ceiling there, so she's come up to NY." The new guys won't be welcomed into the squad room with open arms, but each will be paired with familiar faces. This means Giddish and Pino will share screen time with returning cast members Ice-T, Richard Belzer and Hargitay, who will be back full-time despite early reports that she planned to scale back her workload this season while her character would be promoted. "Just like a real squad room, they're trading partners at the beginning because nobody knows who's with who yet. They're testing the chemistry, but they're putting newbies with the veterans right now," Giddish says, noting that she's worked with Ice-T quite a bit. "Danny and I haven't been sent out on our own yet because the audience isn't ready for that and we're not ready for that. That torch is not ready to be passed yet." Law & Order: SVU's new boss on Meloni's exit, the new detectives and rejuvenating the show Just like her character will have to earn the respect and trust of her co-workers, Giddish knows she and Pino have an uphill battle ahead of them to win over SVU's loyal fans. "It's not like Olivia is greeting us with smiles. I think that's a great tribute to the writers in the fact that they don't expect the fans to greet us with, 'Hey, you're one of the family,'" she says. "No, the fans challenge us and we come back with doing good work. If you are dedicated to your job then that shows up in your work. And that's what's showing up in the scripts, in terms of character. They're showing us really trying to dig in deep and figure out stuff for ourselves." This move to a more ensemble feel is not only a breath of fresh air for the series, but also for Giddish. After starring in back-to-back new network shows during the last two TV seasons (2010's Past Life and last season's Chase), Giddish says she's enjoying not having to bear the bulk of the responsibility on her own. "I've been saying, 'Oh my god, this is so nice being on SVU where it's not all on my shoulders.' With this show, I'm becoming a part of a team that's established and that's certainly a great feeling," she says. "I would be envious of me if I was anybody else. Just in terms of absorbing what these people have to give and having been on the show for 12 years - it's a really cool thing." Check out our list of TV's sexiest crime fighters Although fans have not always been receptive to new additions (Adam Beach and Michaela McManus are prime examples), Giddish is confident that viewers will warm up to Rollins and Amaro with time. "They're going to love us because it's not being forced in their faces," she says. "The more you know about us and the more you see us in your living room, the more you're hopefully going to love us." The new season of Law & Order: SVU premieres on Wednesday at 10/9c on NBC. Go behind the scenes of Giddish's first SVU scene in the video below:

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CBS Two And A Half Men Kills Sheens Character

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre introduced Ashton Kutcher as a new star of televisions most popular comedy on Monday, and gained a measure of revenge against the departed Charlie Sheen in the process. How Sheens character Charlie Harper would be killed off was a closely-held secret and it was revealed right away during the season premiere: he slipped on a subway platform in Paris and was hit by an oncoming train. His body just exploded like a balloon full of meat, Harpers obsessed neighbor Rose explained. Sheen went on a spectacular, insult-spewing rampage against Lorre and CBS after he was fired for drug use and erratic behavior earlier this year. Lorre took the arrows silently until Monday night. The show opened with Jon Cryer, who played ad writer Harpers sad-sack brother Alan, speaking at Charlies wake in front of a coffin and one of Sheens signature shirts. Alan said that it was a sad day for everyone. Speak for yourself, one woman shouted from the audience. Harper said that his brother gave everything he got in life and women called out sexual diseases that they had contracted from him. Later, Harpers housekeeper noted that all he had ever asked for was clean sheets and hosing the vomit off the occasional drug-addled hooker. The character of Charlie Harper was always considered a thinly-veiled version of Sheen in real life. Lorres script drove that point home with little romance or sentimentality. After a delivery man brings Harpers ashes in a golden urn, Alan has a conversation and says it was just like old times. Im talking and youre in a bottle ignoring me. He considered how to dispose of the ashes, perhaps sprinkling them on the nearby beach. Its simple, dignified, and pretty girls with oil will be sitting on you all day, Alan said. Its kind of like your life except for the dignified part. When Kutcher surprises Cryers character by appearing at the doorway, Charlies ashes are spilled all over the floor. Lorres barbs come just as Sheen has been expressing contrition in recent days. He said on the Tonight show that he would have fired himself if he was in charge at CBS or the shows producer.On the Emmy Awards telecast Sunday, he said he wanted to sincerely wish Kutcher and his old colleagues good luck for the new season. Lorre packed his show with a couple of inside jokes. John Stamos plays a potential buyer of Harpers house who backs off when he finds out who lived there. Stamos was widely considered a possible successor to Sheen before Kutcher was hired. Actors Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson also appeared as potential buyers, playing their old characters Dharma and Greg, a Lorre-produced series that aired on ABC from 1997 to 2002. Kutcher plays Internet billionaire Walden Schmidt, who made his appearance wet from a suicide attempt in the ocean. It seems Schmidt may be tall, good looking and rich, but hes morose about a lost love. Kutcher joins right in on the sex jokes that are the shows stock in trade. He walks around naked, and other characters comment on his anatomy. Alan Harper takes Schmidt out to drink, where Schmidt meets two women and brings them to Harpers home. I dig your house, he said. Im going to buy it. That appears to set up the second episode, explaining how Schmidt comes to live with two people he doesnt know in a house he just saw. Copyright 2011 by Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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ABC Buys Marriage Comedy Created By Jennifer Garner & Composed By Terri Minsky

ABC has bought Cartoon Marriage, a comedy script in line with the book by married NYer cartoonists Michael Maslin and Liza Donnelly. Jennifer Garner is executive creating the comedy, which is compiled by Lizzie McGuire andLess Than Perfect creator Terri Minsky. It stories adventures for each other and matrimony with the eyes from the NYers cartooning couple. Within the book, Maslin and Donnelly tell the storyline of the marriage through their separate perspectives, in cartoon form. The project was created by Garner’s production company Vandalia Films, with Garner and her creating partner Juliana Jane types executive creating with Minsky for ABC Galleries. This really is Vandalia’s second comedy work for ABC this this year, both according to books. Another, in line with the book The Nerds Shall Inherit our planet, has been modified by Easy A author Bert Royal.

Ryan Murphy On Glee: Passion Is Back

Ray Richmond is contributing to Deadline’s TV coverage. Coming off a sophomore season of Glee that drew gripes from fans and a controversy surrounding his comments about stars Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Cory Monteith leaving the show, co-creator Ryan Murphy is ready to make amends. “This year, the idea is just to run the show,” he said this afternoon after a screening of Glee‘s third season premiere. “Last year was a new thing for me. I’d run television shows before, but I’d never run a business before. It was a weird thing. I learned a lot. And I will never again say people are leaving (the show). I have learned my lesson.” And since Michele, Colfer and Monteith’s characters will graduate from high school at the end of this coming season, how will they be integrated into the series’ high-school setting? “There are lots of things they could do,” Murphy told Deadline. “They could become teachers. They could become college students. There are very organicways you could keep them on the show, and keep them big and keep the audience invested in them… But the show is always going to be about that choir room.” As for doing a spinoff, when the producers revisit the idea in the spring, “we would do discussions of it much differently than we handled it before,” Murphy said. But for now, the focus is “on making this the best year we’ve ever done (on Glee),” he said. “And in fact, we think that’s exactly what we’re going to have. Part of the reason for that is we’ve figured out the best way to shoot the show, and a way to do it more economically for Fox…I have my passion for (Glee) back…And you can see the excitement on the set. The actors I feel are really renewed and excited and are thrilled to be there. It’s fun again…You know, things took a bit of a nasty turn, but I feel great about it again.” The screening today confirmed that Glee exhibits a renewed zest, energy and focus in the kickoff hour, replete with rousing numbers, a genuine surprise or two, and an undeniable magic. The season opener, which airs Tuesday, also featured Lindsay Pearce –one of the four finalistson the Oxygen reality series The Glee Project– who is playing a major role on the show during Season 3.Pearce showed up as (SPOILER ALERT!) the leader of a rival singing group to New Directions, and she’ll continue to recur as a nemesis to Rachel (Michele) in severalepisodes. Her big first music number is singing Anything You Can Do from Annie Get Your Gun. Murphy told reporters thatit occurred to him after the part already had been written that Pearce would be perfect for it but had to shoot her first episode before The Glee Project finale had aired. “We kept delaying doing it so it wouldn’t leak,” Murphy said. He noted that The Glee Project‘s two winners, Damian McGinty and Sam Larsen, also will appear in significant story arcs on the show later this fall, with McGinty portraying “a foreign exchange student shacking up with Brittany (Heater Morris), and she of course believes him to be a leprechaun with magical powers.” McGinty “isn’t an actor,” Murphy acknowledged, “but he did great. On his first day he gotshoved into a locker like 25 times” but came through it well. Larsen will appear in “somewhere around Episode 10 or 11,” he added.

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Starbuck

A Les Films Christal presentation of a Caramel Films production. (International sales: eOne Intl., Toronto.) Produced by Andre Rouleau. Directed by Ken Scott. Screenplay, Scott, Martin Petit.With: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand. (French dialogue)A potent comedy of genetic chaos, "Starbuck" is pointedly contemporary and occasionally cloying, but guaranteed to draw attention for its premise and central character -- a sperm donor who has ended up fathering hundreds and wants to remain anonymous. Lack of edge will make placement tough for this Quebecois laffer, although word of mouth may benefit from Patrick Huard's funny, touching lead performance and a core idea that would have once qualified as sci-fi but now seems perfectly plausible. As referenced in an introductory flashback to the late '80s, when the rules were looser, ne'er-do-well Montreal meat delivery man David Wozniak (Huard) made a total of 648 sperm donations at $35 a pop (hence his evident lack of enthusiasm, for the job if not the cash). Twenty years later, his friend and unpaid lawyer Paul (the very funny Antoine Bertrand) informs David that his earlier deposits have matured into 533 adults, 142 of whom want to meet him. The confidentiality laws that have kept David anonymous all these years are being challenged in court, which only adds to David's woes: He's $80,000 in debt to gangsters who are sending leg breakers to his house and, in keeping with the theme, his unhappy girlfriend Valerie (Julie LeBreton) is pregnant. "Starbuck," the title of which refers not to the coffee but rather to a famous Canadian Holstein bull that sired thousands of calves (around the same time David was sowing his anonymous oats), echoes the recent docu "Donor Unknown" which told of a real-life serial donor whose dozens of children ended up connecting on the Internet and meeting their biological dad. While the timing of both films makes it unlikely that writer-helmer Ken Scott and co-scribe Martin Petit were directly inspired by "Donor Unknown," they have seized on the concept in a timely way and handled it well. Still, if "Starbuck" had pivoted entirely on the donor issue, it would likely have petered out early, but David's ongoing personal calamities keep any one plotline from dominating. As the least productive member of the family meat business, David is held in low esteem by his brothers and father, who more or less expect him to foul up almost anything he's supposed to do. The $80,000 debt is hanging over his head, and Valerie is not quite sure she wants David in her baby's life; he's something of a baby himself. Thus, the class-action suit, which would force the sperm bank to release David's identity, provides a very welcome route for him to become a better person. Having received profiles and photos of his various progeny, he knows who they are even if they don't know him, and he starts acting as their guardian angel -- saving one junkie daughter from an overdose, helping one drunken heir into a cab -- in ways that form the best part of the film. There are also extended musical montages and at least one sequence -- in which a goth kid ineptly plays soccer with David's family team -- that just feels like filler. The upshot of the film, however, is a portrait of a man becoming a better one, an idea that resonates despite all the easy jokes and formulaic constructions. Production values are generally quite good, although some of the music is a tad emotionally instructive.Camera (color), Pierre Gill; editor, Yvann Thibaudeau; music, David Lafleche; art director, Danielle Labrie; costume director, Sharon Scott; sound (Dolby Digital), Arnaud Derimay; supervising sound editor/sound designer, Pierre-Jules Audet; stunt coordinator, Mike Chute; line producer, Danny Rossner; associate producer, Valerie D'Auteuil, casting, Pierre Pageau, Daniel Poisson. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Gala Presentations), Sept. 14, 2011. Running time: 108 MIN. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

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George Lucas Screws Harrison Ford and Disappoints Star Wars Fans in New Taiwanese Animation

· George Lucas has been disappointing Stars Wars fans and cast members for years now with his trilogy tweaks and his profit hoarding, but these crimes have never been captured in a hilariously simplistic Taiwanese animation video. Until now! Click through to enjoy news organization NMA’s take on Lucas — which includes the Star Wars creator power drilling Harrison Ford from behind, raping the childhood memories of his fans and cutting Carrie Fisher out of Princess Leia laxative profits — and then, stick around for more Buzz Break! · In honor of Albert Brooks playing a frightening Jewish mobster in this weekend’s Drive, here are six other terrifying villains played by comedians. [Nerve.com] · Nicolas Cage woke up in the middle of the night once to find a mentally unstable man in his bedroom, wearing a leather jacket and eating a Fudgesicle. This has happened to everybody, right? [Reuters] · Here is a tour of the $6.8 million home that the Transformers franchise built Michael Bay. [PopCandy]