BLOGS
June 2009 Archives
David Carradine is dead, and I feel guilty. I had nothing to do with it, of course; it happened in Thailand, and I'm in New York, as far as you or the authorities know. But I feel guilty nonetheless. Why? Because I have not seen nearly enough David Carradine movies. In fact, I have seen very few. How few? Three. And two of those are Kill Bill.
I was lucky enough to see The Hangover the other night, and while sometimes getting to see screenings in advance feels a lot like work, this one was actually a pleasure. It was quite the welcome change of pace after my recent outings included Terminator: Salvation, Fighting and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.
When did it get cool to not like Will Ferrell? It seems like a growing number of people (including a few inside the TWoP offices) have had enough of him. Now, I'm not saying all of his movies have been great -- I still have not met anyone who saw Semi-Pro -- but a lot of them make me laugh just thinking about them. The mental image of Ferrell running around thinking he's on fire in Talladega Nights, putting his scrotum on the drum kit in Step-Brothers, or screaming in a phone booth in Anchorman is enough to make me at least chuckle. Maybe that makes me some sort of dimwit. I don't know. But I certainly don't think I'm a "Ferrell follower," or part of some Ferrell-worshipping cult. I just like things that are funny.
They turned Transformers into a movie franchise; they turned Land of the Lost into a movie; they're turning Thundercats, Where's Waldo? and Stretch Armstrong into movies. Clearly, these things are just going to keep happening. Every single thing you remember from a past decade will be announced as a movie sooner or later. Slap wraps will be a movie. Girl Talk: The Next Zit Sticker will be a movie. Crystal Pepsi will be a movie. And you know what? I surrender! We might as well start preemptively embracing these things and hoping for the best before they're announced -- it lessens the blow that way. Here are five kid's shows you liked when you were younger that will inevitably be adapted into live action films, as well as some casting suggestions that we can hopefully all live with.
When we used to watch the Land of the Lost TV show as children, we thought it was the greatest TV show ever made. (Shows what we knew.) Now, with the big-budget movie remake stalking theaters, we're noticing that it bears more than a slight resemblance to what we currently think of as one of the greatest TV shows ever made -- one that's also about time travel and monsters and scientists. That's right, we're talking about Lost. Could the creators of Lost have been inspired by the original 1970s Land of the Lost TV series? Or did a VHS tape of Lost fall down a wormhole and end up inspiring Sid and Marty Krofft back in the 1970s? We compare the movie and the two shows to try and piece together the timeline in our Land of the Lost vs. Lost Gallery!
Looking to class things up in your DVD collection this week? Well, some very impressive titles come out today that will make you look like King or Queen of the frickin' Cinema. There's also some stuff that may actually be entertaining, like James Bond having sex with Sarah Connor, but, hey, whatever floats your boat.
If you're making a movie set in Las Vegas, there are pretty much three storylines you can choose from. Someone in your movie is either going to rob a casino, participate in a sporting event or, most commonly, make some bad life decisions. It could be booze, drugs, sex or gambling, but there's a good chance your main character is going to get mixed up in one of those things, and it's going to work out badly. Since The Hangover follows the survivors of a Vegas bachelor party gone horribly awry, we thought we'd run down some of our favorite "going crazy in Sin City" movies.