Jennifer Aniston Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Love Happens isn't just an unfortunate title because of the obvious pun I'm biting my metaphorical tongue over (okay... sh*t happens! I said it!), but because it's boring and lazy, and that pretty much sums up the movie itself.

Aaron Eckhart is as bland as pudding as Burke Ryan, a psychologist who lost his wife in a tragic accident, and for some reason turned his grief into a cottage industry for other people in mourning. Even with an incredibly successful book and seminars across the country that teach people how to be "A-OK!" instead of, say, dealing with their grief Elisabeth Kübler-Ross-style, Burke is miserable. Small details that are meant to humanize him and illustrate the grief and anxiety that is inevitable after a life-changing loss feel small and clichéd. He always takes the stairs instead of the elevator. And those lemons he tells his readers to make into lemonade? He pours a little Grey Goose into his glass when no one else is around. One of the other characters even makes a point of mentioning what a teetotaler he is.

Those of you planning a night out at the movies this weekend with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart might want to do some extra finger crossing because there's a small chance love might not happen if two jaded screenwriters get their way. According to TMZ, screenwriters Greg Crowder and Tony Freitas are attempting to block the release of Universal's Love Happens this weekend because they feel the script for the film was stolen from them. That's right -- if Crowder and Freitas are to be believed, love already happened a few years ago when they handed the VP of Production for Universal a script called The Truth, which, we imagine, was a love story about love happening and then not happening, but thankfully happening again right before the end.

At the time Universal said the script needed a rewrite, but both writers wanted to be paid for said rewrite and that's when the deal fell apart. Then, earlier this year the duo submitted the script to another company, who then turned around and accused the writers of stealing the script from the upcoming Aniston/Eckhart vehicle. One imagines Greg and Tony then turned around, looked at each other and said something like, "Wait, did that just happen?"

So, now, these writers want to either block the release of Love Happens this weekend or receive a piece of its profits, which they hilariously estimate at more than $100 million. May as well demand the film's future Oscar while they're at it ...

Update: According to a studio source, Love Happens will still arrive in theaters this weekend as planned.

I have tried to remain neutral, and not really have an opinion on Jennifer Aniston one way or another, but merely judge her films as she makes them. I want to believe that she's a good egg who has become a victim of tabloid storytelling. But I give up, because every romantic comedy she signs onto not only furthers her own stereotype of lonely and desperate singleton, but keeps the grand character tradition alive on the big screen too.

So, what's her latest salute to womankind? Variety says its CBS Films' Pumas. Penned by Melissa Stack and directed by Wayne McClammy, it "centers on two thirtysomething women who make a habit of romancing younger men and take a French skiing vacation that challenges their romantic expectations." On the upside, McClammy is the guy who directed Jimmy Kimmel's "I'm F**king Matt Damon" and follow-up "I'm F**king Ben Affleck." On the downside, this contrived storyline has none of that snark or freshness, but will certainly be filled with lonely heart jokes, and will provide much tabloid fodder depending on what hunk they cast opposite Aniston.

I realize how nasty all this sounds, and I certainly don't want to engage in girl-hate, but I find Aniston's career choices throughly depressing. Is there nothing else that appeals to her? Can she not use her name to green-light something about a lawyer or a scientist who doesn't fret about her love life? Is there nothing she finds interesting beyond wondering if He's Just Not That Into You?

It looks like there's a push to reveal the lingering strings of segregation in Mississippi. From HotDocs, I shared word of Prom Night in Mississippi, a great documentary covering Morgan Freeman's attempt to stop the segregated proms in his hometown. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Screen Gems is getting ready for a similar account called Holler, which was written by Dana Adam Shapiro, and will be produced by Jennifer Aniston's Echo Films.

Said to be based on true events, the film will follow a bi-racial student who heads back to his Mississippi hometown with his mother. He falls for a white girl, and is shocked when he learns that she can't be his prom date due to lingering segregation. "He soon finds himself the catalyst for change for not only the prom but for the school and entire town." I wonder if he calls up Freeman for help?

Shapiro is the director of the Oscar-nominated Murderball, as well as the environmental short My Biodegradable Heart, so this should mix the romance and drama with a decent amount of social conscience. (It could also have some quirk, if The Every Boy is any indication.) This probably won't kick any segregation-lovers into the 21st century, but at least it gets the story out there. In the meantime, you can check out Prom Night in Mississippi on HBO.

You might not recognize Jason Sudeikis by name, but you certainly know his face from NBC. He might just be the next SNL alumni to score success outside the small screen, as he's just joined the cast of Bounty Hunter, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Hunter is the latest romantic comedy offering from Andy Tennant and the genre's favorite leading lady, Jennifer Aniston, who gets to be chased around by not one but two charming men in the personages of Gerard Butler and Sudeikis. Butler will play a bounty hunter named Milo hired to track down his ex-wife, Casidy, who has skipped bail and presumably crossed state lines. Sudeikis will play Stewart, who has the misfortune to befriend Casidy at work. Apparently, he's under the mistaken belief that he is her boyfriend (probably because he read it in the tabloids), and takes off after her when she goes on the run from the law.

While I'd love to imagine a film that'll feature Butler as a bloodthirsty bounty hunter in the manner of Boba Fett and Monco, and Aniston as a bank robber, drug runner, or brothel madam, I can't delude myself. I imagine it's just going to be full of squeaky clean criminals, hilarious misunderstandings, and a happy reunion between bail jumper and bounty hunter.

In a very minor way, Management attempts to freshen up the moribund romantic comedy genre, toning down the gleeful bounciness and upping the wry strangeness. Unfortunately, the weirdness employed by Stephen Belber's amorous fairy tale is of a decidedly limp, half-hearted sort, as the writer/director seems torn between wanting to make his film legitimately idiosyncratic, and fearing that going too far out on a limb will interfere with his rather traditional meet-cute tale – and alienate said material's formula-craving target audience. The result is a very mildly peculiar take on a stale opposites-attract premise, which in this case centers on Mike (Steve Zahn), a schlub who works as night manager at his parents' Arizona motel, and Sue (Jennifer Aniston), a chilly traveling saleswoman of corporate artwork who stays two nights at Mike's establishment and quickly catches his eye. Though Mike is a loser, he's an adorably earnest one, and though Sue is a cold fish, she's actually a caring, understanding one, and thus when Mike begins his courtship, it's already been made patently clear by Belber's contrived script that the two are destined to make googly-eyes at each other.

There are many roles I can see Jennifer Aniston in, from wacky friend to indie moonlighting. But while we've often seen her rocking a bikini in the tabloids, I never thought it would lead to the biggest bombshell cinematic gig out there -- Bond girl.

The latest rumor cooking up at the Daily Express (as outlined on Ace Showbiz) states that after Aniston told Elle Magazine that she'd love to do a James Bond action flick with Daniel Craig, she perked up the ears over at EON, Bond's production company. The source is quoted as saying: "We're always looking for the next Bond girl. She has to be beautiful but she also needs to have brains. It helps if she's athletic and able to keep up with the intense stunt work a Bond movie demands. Jennifer has all these qualities. It's great to hear she'd love to do a movie because we have used established actresses before such as Teri Hatcher and Denise Richards. It's great she's a fan." The source went on to say that it's likely she'll now be called in to meet with producers as another sequel starts brewing.

Call me crazy, but I don't see this working out. Aniston has achieved a great many things, but she's not the woman that exudes toughness and intrigue whilst making men drool. She's got her girl posse, but I rarely if ever hear men (especially action fiends) spouting Aniston love.

So, in honor of crazy casting, go wild in the comments with the most unlikely and crazy Bond girl you can think of. Would anyone be more surprising than Aniston?

It took over a year to get cooking, but now we're finally going to see what walking spermatoza look like. Yay? (No idea what I'm talking about, huh? Go read this.) The Blades of Glory duo were creating the story of a woman obsessed not with a family and that white picket fence, but with a baby sans the man. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jennifer Aniston will be the wanna-be mama, and Jason Bateman will play her sperm-having friend.

The twist, that I didn't mention before, is that Tomasina Kassie* (Aniston) plans to get inseminated with some semen that is most definitely not from her sperm-having friend Wally (Bateman). Having some baggage he hasn't gotten over, he switches the donor semen with his own, and "must live with the secret that he is the father of her child."

This is being touted as a romantic comedy, so I imagine that somehow, some way, Kassie and Wally find romance so that they can live with their cute, adorable little ill-conceived offspring. Or maybe he'll pull another Juno and get jerky. Would you mind being mistakenly impregnated with Bateman's sperm?

*In the story, her name is Tomasina, but I guess that isn't chic enough for Hollywood. And yet somehow "Wally" is ...

Living lives of loud desperation for the sake of your entertainment / enjoyment / enlightenment (a generous assessment on all three counts) are Rachel from Friends, the Mac Guy, Firestarter, Daredevil, and a dozen other familiar faces and names, all of them hell-bent on telling you that if He's Just Not That Into You, all one merely has to do is swap out that target of affection. In a weird way, it's a strategy that the film itself seems to employ: If you don't like what supposed relationship insights we have to offer up across 10 blocks of Baltimore and 130 minutes of running time, just wait -- we all change our tune to make each other happy eventually.

Since this romantic omnibus already has too many characters for its own good, let's go ahead and get their introductions out of the way real quick like. There's the desperate-to-date-and-then-some Ginnifer Goodwin, who is blown off by Kevin Connolly in favor of the company of Scarlett Johansson, and who is friends with Jennifer Connelly and Jennifer Aniston and, now, Connolly's frank pal Justin Long. (With me so far?) Connolly buys ad space in the local paper from Drew Barrymore and yet flirts with Barrymore's friend, Johansson, who is herself more interested in tempting Bradley Cooper, who is currently married to Connelly (Jennifer, not Kevin) and happens to be friends with Ben Affleck, who refuses to propose to long-time love interest Aniston, and oh, great, now I've gone all cross-eyed.