BLOGS
May 2008 Archives
Oliver Stone is showing off his version of George W. Bush via a spread in Entertainment Weekly. It might seem a little premature when you consider that Stone says the script is "still evolving" and he's yet to cast someone in the role of Dick Cheney. Maybe his hope is that the early showcase will inspire some actor to step up to the plate -- and soon. After all, Stone is aiming for a release date a mere five months from now in order to hit movie screens before the November elections. Newsflash: People are already getting burnt out on politics; by fall, they'll be willing to shell out money to not sit through another two hours of it.
You'll never believe it: There's a trailer out there that may not be very representative of an upcoming movie. You may sense a bit of sarcasm, but I once saw a TV spot for Fight Club that made it look like a romantic comedy (I'm serious, it's in the DVD extras) and suffice it to say I learned a big lesson that day. It has come out via Dark Horizons that it has probably happened again.
Nancy Meyers is a machine. Or has at least invented one. Variety reports today that the writer/director of Something's Gotta Give and The Holiday has signed on to write and direct her next (at this point untitled) romantic comedy for Universal. When asked about the film, Variety reports that Meyers said "the movie concerns marriage and follows a relationship over a long term. There are big parts, she added, for a woman and two men."
Oh my god, you guys. Lindsay Lohan's mom just won a Mother of the Year award. Radar is reporting that it was completely without irony too, which totally blows my mind. Now, I hate giving the woman any more press than she already gets as she clearly craves it and doesn't deserve it, but it's a really slow news day in Hollywood, and Dina Lohan was presented with a Mother of the Year award! OMFG.
According to Variety, the movie got a vote of confidence after Lionsgate brass presented the project to fans at New York Comic-Con. I hate to channel my 10 year-old self but, no duh, Lionsgate. Of course they were receptive to a comic-strip adaptation; it's Comic-Con. It's up against other Christmas releases like Marley & Me, The Time Traveler's Wife and Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories, and only time will tell whether or not the greater public will be quite as enthusiastic as the comic book nerds.
"The Spirit," which was created by writer-artist Will Eisner in 1940, tells the story of Denny Colt, a masked vigilante who fights crime with the blessing of the city's police commissioner. Written and directed by Frank Miller (whose work also includes "Sin City," and "300") and starring Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes, the film will be an action-adventure romance that revolves around a slain rookie cop who returns from the dead to fight crime and track a cold-blooded killer. Which when you think about it, actually does kind of have Christ parallels. Perhaps the move wasn't so dumb after all.
John Waters is back in the director's chair and his casting remains as eclectic as his oeuvre. Parker Posey and Johnny Knoxville have signed up to star in the filmmaker's newest Christmas fare Fruitcake. The Hollywood Reporter (said today that "The plot is officially under wraps but is said to center on the title character, a boy named after his favorite dessert. He runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are caught shoplifting meat, then meets up with a runaway girl raised by two gay men and searching for her birth mother." Being that Fruitcake is a John Waters film, that sounds about right.
The 2008 MTV Movie Award nominations are out, and it feels like the guy in their movie logo's astronaut suit is Judd Apatow. Apatow's crew and his films, Knocked Up and SuperBad, have multiple nominations in almost every category. The MTV site has all the details, and while I'm tempted to rank on some of the nominee descriptions, which sound crafted by a 12-year-old with a boner, I'd rather focus on what the nominees got right. This will be difficult, as the MTV site offers this reason for one nominee: "One of the hottest chicks ever, Jessica Biel is up for big honors after getting groped by Adam Sandler..." Is this why Meryl's working with Happy Gilmore now?
Sometimes movies give their dissenting reviewers a nice slow pitch across home plate. Naming your movie Perfect, as the makers of Jamie Lee Curtis' pre-Activia aerobics workout movie did, is an, um, perfect example of this. Critics responded that Perfect was "anything but" and "far from" its titular adjective. Having a theme song that says "Go Speed Racer Go" is an invitation to use that chorus against its owner: "Go Speed Racer Go -- and Don't Come Back!" Or, as David Edelstein put it, "No Speed Racer No."
Paul Kersey first appeared three years after Dirty Harry in 1974's Death Wish. The movie, based on a novel by Brian Garfield, created the story that would be repeated and sustained through four sequels: Bad guys rape and murder Kersey's wife, daughter, relatives, employees, or neighbors and Kersey becomes a vigilante. The first movie had something interesting to say about vigilantism, but the franchise threw all that out of the window because it took time away from watching Chuck shoot people in the face with enormous guns.
When Death Wish 5: The Crackdown came out, Bronson was 73 and still shooting people without benefit of a wheelchair or a Little Rascal scooter. How I longed to see Bronson, wheelchair-bound and half-senile, aiming his Giganto-Gun at a perp and vaporizing the perp's entire upper body. The kickback would be so powerful, it'd send Chuck's chair flying backwards through a wall. Alas, that never happened, nor did the rumored Death Wish 6 in which the perps, having no more friends of Kersey to mutilate and kill, go after his pets. The climax would have Chuck aiming a Civil War cannon at the main villain, snarling, "This one's for Fluffy!" BLAM!!!!
So if Chuck can kill people at 73, surely his fellow spaghetti Western star can blow them away at 77. (No, Eastwood's latest movie, Gran Turino, is not the Dirty Harry movie.)
Stop reading here if you don't want spoilers. The New York Daily News reports that Eastwood is reviving Harry so he can have him go out in style -- that is, in one hell of a death scene. If I can put in my request, I direct Eastwood to Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle. In that film, the homeboy film critics ask the Dirty Harry clone in the movie they're reviewing "Make my day? Do 50 bullets in yo' ass make yo' day?!" Or even better, have the perp ask what Chuck Bronson asked one killer: "Do you believe in Jesus? Well you're gonna meet him." BLAM!! I love the Dirty Harry movies, so I eagerly await my chance to see him get his day made.
Michael Patrick King is on the 'Net dispelling rumors that he's sending Chris Noth's Mr. Big to the big Law & Order episode in the sky. King tells the Associated Press that he's no merchant of death when it comes to his franchise. "Kill Mr. Big? I would have been chased around the planet by women with torches," he says. If Sex and the City: The Movie is the chick-flick equivalent of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, King's torch-filled premonition may come to pass. Every woman I know is dying to get her hands on a movie ticket for the May 30th premiere or, if she's in front of the Beacon Theater, a copy of Sex And The City: The Bootleg Recorded-Off-The-Screen DVD. If it fails to delight an audience this year's summer movies continue to ignore, King may end up like that guy at the end of Revenge of the Stepford Wives.
Blog Categories
A Festival for the Rest...ival
25 Entries
Accidents Do Happen
46 Entries
Adventures in Fakery
77 Entries
Animation Desensitization
80 Entries
Awards Schmawards
17 Entries
Box Office Tally
79 Entries
Burning Questions
6 Entries
Coming Soonish
9 Entries
Cool Nerds Guide
6 Entries
Director? I Hardly Knew Her!
156 Entries
DVDs Unwrapped
25 Entries
For Your Amusement (Park)
10 Entries
Foreign Relations
54 Entries
Galleries (and Other Picture Postcards)
23 Entries
Gangster's Paradise
5 Entries
Getting Dramatic
5 Entries
Girls on Film
80 Entries
Happy Anniversary
10 Entries
Hollywood To TWoP: Hello There!
40 Entries
I Voted for GORE!
103 Entries
I Want My DVD
236 Entries
I Want My VOD
24 Entries
I've Got Two Tickets to Merchandise
33 Entries
IMDb Fun Times
6 Entries
Indie Snapshot
57 Entries
Indie, Indie, Come Back Home
40 Entries
It Came From New York
7 Entries
It Came From San Diego
14 Entries
It's a Major Award!
75 Entries
Legal Eaglese
21 Entries
Let's Blame the Media!
49 Entries
Let's Go To The Video!
29 Entries
Letterbox of Recommendations
22 Entries
Lights, Camera... Action Jackson!
184 Entries
Little TV Shows That Done Hit the Big Time
71 Entries
Martial Artistry
11 Entries
Momentous Occasions
25 Entries
More On Movies
38 Entries
Movie Merchandise
4 Entries
Musicalifornication
48 Entries
Obituaries Without Pity
23 Entries
Oscars and Grouchery
11 Entries
Pros and Controversy
26 Entries
Read All About It
5 Entries
Real People, Fake Movies
25 Entries
Remakes R Us
8 Entries
Reviews of Movies We Haven't Seen Yet
43 Entries
Reviews of Movies We've Actually Seen
517 Entries
Scary Monsters & Super Creeps
105 Entries
Sci-Fidelity
151 Entries
Script From the Headlines!
56 Entries
Separate but Sequel
249 Entries
Sequelitis
24 Entries
Shameless Self-Promotion
27 Entries
Sports in Our Shorts
7 Entries
Strike Watch
14 Entries
Stupid Cinematic Celebrity Sayings
34 Entries
Sundance Sundance Revolution
13 Entries
Taste the Reading Rainbow
94 Entries
The Biz
122 Entries
The Casting Conch
192 Entries
The History, Booooyyyyy!
80 Entries
The Kongs of Comedy
206 Entries
Theatre With an "R" and an "E"
11 Entries
Trailer Trashing
73 Entries
Trailers Without Pity
37 Entries
Video Games Killed the Movie Star
23 Entries
We Call Do-Over
177 Entries
We Watches the Watchmen
33 Entries
What's Up, Documentary?
17 Entries
When Animal Movies Attack
14 Entries
You Got Comic Book in My Movie
251 Entries
You Know, For Kids!
132 Entries