John Boyega Joins '24: Live Another Day'

If you read my review from Sundance of the inner-city drama Imperial Dreams, then you know I think Attack the Block star John Boyega is on the verge of breaking out big time. And it seems Hollywood is listening, as he was recently tapped to play Jesse Owens in Race, an upcoming biopic on the Olympic athlete. And now he's headed to the small screen where he'll share time with none other than American hero, Jack Bauer.

Boyega, along with Stephen Fry (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) have joined the cast of 24: Live Another Day, the 12-episode miniseries that takes place four years after the events of the show's final episode. Not much is known about Boyega's role except that it will be a recurring one, while Fry is set to play the British Prime Minister. Yep, Jack Bauer is going abroad this time as he's an exile on the run from the CIA.

Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub will be back, joined by Yvonne Strahovski, Benjamin Bratt, Giles Matthey, William Devane, Tate Donovan, Kim Raver, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Michael Wincott and Judy Davis. 24: Live Another Day will make its 2-hour premiere on May 5th. [Variety]

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Stephen Fry and a couple of others joins the cast of The Hobbit

The Master of Laketown is one of the many roles in The Hobbit that may be small initially, but will get pretty important when the action heats up. So it's a good thing that Peter Jackson has found somebody who can give the character a bit more presence, confirming via the film's Facebook page that Stephen Fry(V for Vendetta) will play the cowardly leader of men. Jackson also revealed a couple of other minor casting bits, which you can read about below...

"We are thrilled to confirm that Stephen Fry will be playing The Master of Laketown. I've known Stephen for several years, and we're developing a Dambusters movie together. In addition to his writing skills, he's a terrific actor and will create a very memorable "Master" for us.

The Master's conniving civil servant, Alfrid will be played by Ryan Gage. Ryan is a great young actor who we originally cast in a small hobbit role, but we liked him so much, we promoted him to the much larger Alfrid part.

I only joined Bret's fan-base, when he joined up with Jermaine Clement in their hilarious tv series Flight of the Conchords. Now he is briefly back in Rivendell as a senior official at Elrond's Court and he has a name "Lindir", which means "singer". Tolkien has plenty of songs in The Hobbit but the script doesn't indicate that Lindir will be singing any of them. If, as he promises, Bret makes a Conchord feature film ere long, I shall angle for a non-speaking part as BIGWIT. ("Bret Is..." etc.)

Last, and certainly not least, is Conan Stevens, who will be playing an Orc called Azog (orcs are never called Roger or Dennis for some strange reason). And yes that's his name - Conan! Isn't that cool? Azog is played by Conan! Here's a photo of Conan and I together ... I'm pretty tall ... probably at least 6'5" or 6'6" I would guess, so that gives you some clue how tall Conan is! You can learn all about him at www.conanstevens.com."

The "Bret" he's referring to is Bret McKenzie, who has been pretty much confirmed for the Lindir role for awhile now. By the way, here's that photo of Conan, and as you can see the dude looks like the white Manute Bol...

The Master of Laketown is the individual elected to run the city of Esgaroth, and one of the few who wasn't all that happy with the arrival of Bilbo and his companions. When Smaug the Dragon destroys the town, the Master is held responsible, but shifts as much blame as possible to the Dwarves.

Fry will be seen next as Mycroft Holmes in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

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Sherlock Holmes' brother to appear in sequel; Stephen Fry to play him

Is it possible that the sequel to Sherlock Holmes might be better than the already fun original? Judging the by cast it damn well might be, as Stephen Fry confirmed in an interview with BBC that he would be playing Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older and even more brilliant brother.

Fry: I’m playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun, but just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar [Wilde] had was a once in a lifetime thrill.

Yeah, none of those things describe Mycroft at all. In fact he was only a few of the Arthur Conan Doyle books. A quick profile of him describes him like this...

Possessing deductive powers exceeding even those of his younger brother, Mycroft is nonetheless incapable of performing detective work similar to that of Sherlock as he is unwilling to put in the physical effort necessary to bring cases to their conclusions.

While Conan Doyle's stories leave unclear what Mycroft Holmes' exact position is in the British government, Sherlock Holmes says that "Occasionally he is the British government [...] the most indispensable man in the country." He apparently serves as a sort of human computer.

Outside of his roles in Gosford Park and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland(he was the Cheshire Cat), I don't know much of his other stuff. I know him best for being one of my favorite peripheral characters on Bones, occasionally showing up as Booth's mentor/psychologist. If he brings that type of humor to Sherlock Holmes then his addition is certainly welcome.

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