UPDATE: VCU to welcome team home at midnight

RICHMOND, Va. -- Tonight, VCU will welcome the Rams' men's basketball team home at the Siegel Center.
The Siegel Center will open its doors at midnight. According to VCU, the welcome back celebration will be brief and is open to the public. The team is expected to arrive between 1:15 a.m. and 2:30 a.m.
U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-7th, offered his congratulations to the Rams, saying in a statement: "Congratulations to the VCU Rams for their amazing victory over the Kansas Jayhawks. This is one of the biggest victories in tournament history and Coach Shaka Smart and his players deserve tremendous credit for their inspiring Cinderella run. It's great for the Commonwealth to be represented in the Final Four in Houston. Go Rams!"

From earlier reports
Streets in downtown Richmond around Virginia Commonwealth University's Monroe Campus are flooded with students and fans headed toward Monroe Park for a postgame celebration.
Thousands of gleeful VCU fans -- mostly students --  are jamming Broad Street, just west of Belvidere, cheering on the 11th-seeded Rams for achieving what once seemed the impossible -- taking down No. 1 seed Kansas to earn a berth in the NCAA men's Final Four.  
Fans standing on top of storefronts and atop parked vans are waving flags, signs and pom-poms in an exuberant tribute. Fans are improvising ways to make noise -- one banged on a pot.
Morris Street and Floyd Avenue are flooded with people headed toward the VCU campus, and Broad Street east from Hancock is blocked and inaccessible to traffic as people move toward Monroe Park.
Richmond police are monitoring the procession.
At the Jefferson Hotel, in the midst of a birthday celebration/afternoon tea, groups of women left their tables to gather around a large-screen TV at the bar to watch VCU's historic win.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell offered his congratulations, saying, "Virginians are celebrating their victory all across the commonwealth.  VCU is a great university with a well-deserved reputation for academic and athletic excellence.  We all look forward to cheering them on in the Final Four next weekend. I know they’ve got two more big wins left in them. Head Coach Shaka Smart and this group of talented student athletes are doing a tremendous job representing their school and community. Go Rams!”
(This has been a breaking news update; check back for more details as they become available.)

READ MORE.. »»

Mike Figgis to Direct SECONDS OF HAPPINESS; Christina Hendricks, Julia Stiles, and Matt Dillon Join Cast

Director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) has stepped in to replace Neil LaBute in an adaptation of LaBute’s collection of short stories, Seconds of Happiness.  The frame of the narrative takes place on an airplane and examines the interconnecting lives of various passengers through vignettes.  Clearly, this will be just like Lost.  Deadline also reports that Brendan Fraser and Kristen Scott Thomas will be joined by Christina Hendricks, Julia Stiles, and Matt Dillon.  Hendricks will play a woman who catches her husband (Fraser) in a “compromising position.”  Because I’ve never read LaBute’s book but have seen every episode of Lost, I imagine Fraser’s position has something to do with pushing a button every 108 minutes.  LaBute is still on board to produce and shooting is expected to begin this summer.
Hendricks recently signed on to star in the ensemble comedy I Don’t Know How She Does It while Dillon is attached to co-star in Roman Polanski’s God of Carnage and Matthew Weiner’s You Are Here.  Stiles recently co-starred on Showtime’s Dexter.   Hit the jump for the synopsis of Seconds of Pleasure.

Here’s the synopsis for Neil LaBute’s Seconds of Pleasure [via Amazon]:

Neil LaBute is best known for his controversial films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, and his plays The Mercy Seat and The Shape of Things—which he also adapted for the screen. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. Now, in his debut collection of stories, he brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Seductive and disturbing, the stories in Seconds of Pleasure are not for the faint of heart. Each potent and pithy tale finds men and women exploiting—or at the mercy of—the hidden fault lines that separate them: a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation in “Time Share”; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in “Boo-Boo”; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in “Soft Target.” Infused with LaBute’s trademark wit and black humor, Seconds of Pleasure unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

—

READ MORE.. »»