I know that the MTV Movie Awards are a complete joke, and I hate to play the role of fist-shaking elder, but I was flipping by the channel recently, saw a bit of a rebroadcast of the aforementioned show, and caught a brief snippet that struck me as especially goddamned stupid — Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel accepting an award on behalf of Transformers. The category — the “Best Film Not Yet Seen.” Seriously.
I think there were eight nominees… even Rush Hour 3, a movie I can’t yet bring myself to fathom really existing, was “honored,” for Chrissakes. Why didn’t they just keep the brief clips from the movies and retitle this segment “Four Minutes of Us Fellating Movie Studios While Moving Pictures Unfurl in the Background,” huh? Beck had it right, yo…
So it seems that a 29-year-old Memphis, Tennessee projectionist working for the Malco Theatre chain
has lost his job after writing an early review of 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic
Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for the web site Ain’t It Cool News.
Jesse Morrison, who pens write-ups under the screen name Memflix, crushed the film in a review, and then got canned — or, sorry, “suspended without further notice” — two days later, after Malco received a phone call from Fox. No demands were made, insisted Malco Senior VP Jimmy Tashie, but the intimation/popular conjecture is that Fox put the screws to Malco, threatening to pull screening business or deal with them unfavorably somewhere down the line if punitive measures weren’t taken.
Predictably, AICN’s Drew McWeeny circled the wagons and launched into a Fox-bashing tirade over the matter, while Morrison himself milked the cow of sympathy and stuck a moistened finger of pitiable measurement to the air, saying, in The Hollywood Reporter, “I’m hoping to get a job as a professional movie reviewer, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. I guess you could say I’m at some kind of crossroads right now.”
<Deep sigh> Can anyone really be surprised over this? Morrison says he didn’t autograph a non-disclosure agreement, nor was he ever asked to, in which case he says he would have signed. OK, fine. Still, I have to figure it’s within Malco’s right to fire him for such an offense (e.g., they can find something in their HR policy manuals to justify), and the guy’s an idiot if he didn’t recognize the danger inherent in what he was doing as an unaffiliated stringer. Do what you’re gonna do, but at least have the stones to own it in the end, and not go mock-shocked or hat-in-hand after the fact.
It may seem like big, bad, tit-for-tat corporate reciprocation, but it’s a game that’s played all the time in Hollywood and everywhere else. What do you think Fox was doing when they dumped Mike Judge’sIdiocracylike a murder victim last fall, tossing it out in 130 theaters (including zero in New York City) in a mere seven cities early September in an unpublicized, cover-of-night release? They were playing corporate hardball, the popular rumor — never addressed by Fox — being that certain other corporations didn’t respond nicely to Judge’s futuristic lampooning of their products, names and brands, and pressured Fox to squash the film. So… Fox gave the movie its contractual release, but offered no screenings, advance word, etc. — this for a director whose cult hit Office Space moved millions of units on DVD purely on the strength of word-of-mouth. Draw your own conclusions. It’s all about pressure points, people. Anthony Hopkins’ Fracture character would certainly approve…
Not an irritation in the strictest definition, but certainly from the “bad idea” files comes word that the idiot-stuntman comedy Hot Rod, Andy Samberg’s introduction to the film world after a quick ascension up the ranks of Saturday Night Live as the latest self-effacing goofball in the Adam Sandler/Jimmy Fallon mold, has a running time of 120 minutes. This per the Los Angeles Film Festival’s web site, which hosts a special outdoor screening of the movie at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Thursday, June 28.
Comedy isn’t always brevity — Knocked Up comes in at just over two hours, and 2005’s Wedding Crashers was fine at about six or seven minutes short of that mark — but for a broad, putatively mainstream leading man debut, this reeks of runaway myopia. Get in, get out, and leave audiences wanting more, Samberg. Hot Rod‘s trailer already seemed to tell the movie’s entire story (and then some), and unless there’s some subtlety and/or labyrinthine reversals I’m missing in footage of Ian McShane and Samberg wrestling in the dirt and talking about mustaches, this is a bad idea.
UPDATE 6/12, 10:05 a.m.: According to an email from Paramount, the running time has yet to be finalized. Stay tuned…
UPDATE 7/13: Good news, of a sort — Hot Rod‘s final commercial release running time is in the ballpark of 87 minutes or so, definitely under 90 minutes, even with credits.
At the recent press day for Evan Almighty in Los Angeles this past weekend, Wanda Sykes was asked her thoughts about Paris Hilton, and the famously tart-tongued comedienne let loose in memorable fashion. “I’m losing sleep! Is she in jail today, or is she at home — oh, what’s goin’ on with Paris? It’s just so ridiculous how famous she is for absolutely nothing,” laments Sykes. “I mean, she is such a non-celebrity, but again, people are camped out in front of her house and want to see if she goes to jail. I mean, she’s rich, and she’s screwing up just being rich, you know? That’s pretty sad, when you fuck up rich. You’ve got to be the biggest idiot in the world if you can’t just sit your ass down for a minute and be rich.”
Here Sykes pauses for a laugh, and shakes her head. “If I was a Hilton, I would’ve been premature,” she continues. “I would’ve shot out of the womb early, as soon as I found out: ‘Wait a minute, I’m rich?! I’m outta here! Let me get my life started!’ I just think it’s ridiculous, the whole thing.”
I realize this sounds pissy and irredeemably minor, but I’m kind of irked by obviously Photoshopped images, both on film posters and in other matters of promotion. I know the practice isn’t at all uncommon; the forthcoming Underdog kids movie features a deftly manipulated poster, and I was sent an eye-gougingly bad wall calendar replete with more of the same. I even (knowingly) used a studio-doctored picture in a review of Click, an image in which Kate Beckinsale was stuffed into frame alongside Adam Sandler, giving her character the momentary appearance of having something to do in the movie.
The most recent Photoshop job comes courtesy of Evan Almighty‘s press kit (above), which, in its corner, crams in a view of its Washington, D.C. setting that is not quite wholly impossible, but doesn’t jibe with the movie’s third act. I’ll get into this more in the coming days, but it says a lot — in its own subtle, sad way — that the studio feels not one, not two, but three images are needed to reinforce the setting to… whom, exactly? Professional writers and reviewers? (I don’t believe this image appears in posters for the movie as well, but maybe it does.) So we get Congress, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial… what, the Jefferson Memorial couldn’t be worked in as well? I guess I have to bite my tongue and give proper credit, though — at least they didn’t reverse the image of the Lincoln Memorial, and have it facing the wrong way.
Wow, Michael Musto — when asked if he thought Paris Hilton was eventually going to write (sigh…) another book to help re-cast herself in a more sympathetic light — said that she was “going to scratch the letter X on a used tampon.” This on MSNBC…
Fan-freaking-tastic. After readying, in my mind, an admittedly somewhat belated but nonetheless brilliant post about Paris Hilton’s forthcoming Disturbia experience, it appears that Paris has been thrown back behind bars for her reckless driving and suspended license parole violation — at least for now — freaking out in the courtroom and crying out, “It’s not right!” and, “Mom!” All this after being placed in handcuffs in a police car and driven to the courtroom this morning for a hearing on her early release from jail — a hearing that her lawyers tried to get her to “attend” via phone.
None-too-happy Judge Michael T. Sauer said that he saw “no documentation or evidence to support claims of a mitigating medical condition” (e.g., the sheriff’s office filed no paperwork) and reinstated Hilton’s sentence, though with California’s overcrowded prisons and the possibility of good behavior time off, a full, 45-day term shouldn’t be expected. Naturally, an appeal over the house arrest/jail matter should also be filed, probably today but possibly Monday. Meanwhile, TMZ.com managing editor Harvey Levin is on MSNBC playing talking head right now, with paper airplanes flying around his head in the “newsroom” background. Wow. This. Is. America.
Hilton would have gotten through this whole ordeal a lot more smoothly if she just shut up and took it like a champ, with a clenched jaw. This makes her look like even more of a spoiled, out-of-touch brat, though, something I didn’t think was possible. And the courtroom outburst has to rank as top-shelf taunting material for years to come. In fact, if I strain my ears, I think I can hear the “It’s not right!” T-shirts being printed up right now…
So according to Variety, Naomi Watts has inked to star in We Are All the Same, an adaptation of Nightline correspondent Jim Wooten’s 2004 book about Gail Johnson, a white South African woman who adopted a black baby stricken with AIDS, then traveled the world with the child to raise awareness about his plight.
A bit ridiculously on-the-nose, that title, don’t you think? (It also smacks of that’s-a-mouthful similarity to Watts’ We Don’t Live Here Anymore, a poor-grossing, enervated adaptation of Andre Dubus’ short stories, which in turn sounded like a Ryan Adams song.) Geopolitical hot-riser Keir Pearson (a co-writer on Hotel Rwanda, and author of the announced Son of Al Qaeda) is adapting the story, which holds some promise, but a lot about this movie depends on who comes on board as director. Why do I feel like John Curran or John Madden or Sydney Pollack are already fielding calls about this project? Ugh. My left field vote would be someone like Niels Mueller. Or, if I’m being completely unrealistic, D.J. Caruso, who desperately needs to escape the genre ghetto, but won’t do something like this, because the fact that Disturbia was such a big hit means he’s getting hot-shit offers to do the Wolverine movie and other big, summer-type flicks.
Need further proof that Rupert Murdoch is a lightning bolt-wielding quasi-deity who probably already owns either the company you work for or you outright? You mean other than the fact that he has someone on staff at $195,000 a year whose sole job it is to follow him around and make his movie studio’s little trumpeting theme song, and do the Bartman at any time he chooses? Dude just bought the American quarter.
Well, sort of. As part of its promotional campaign for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 20th Century Fox has apparently teamed with (read: punched in the face, and taken the keys to their press) the Franklin Mint to create a limited edition run of 40,000 quarters which feature the titular baddie (and the film’s URL address, of course) emblazoned on the coin’s back, plastered over that pesky bald eagle. What the Christ is next… Die Hard dollars, with Bruce Willis’ smirking visage and, “In ‘yippee ki-yay’ we trust” stamped on the reverse? Umm… hey, Rupert — if you use that idea, actually, could you just cut me a small, tiny creative license fee? Yes, you can pay me in quarters.
I know they’re just teaser posters, but I can’t think of a worse way to market Good Luck Chuck than the above images of Dane Cook, Jessica Alba and Dan Fogler that Lionsgate used to tout the movie at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
The movie’s concept notwithstanding (Cook plays a guy who’s the perennial perfect lucky charm for women; they meet Mr. Right and get married after sleeping with him), a shirtless Cook doesn’t have the “wow” factor to matter to a large percentage of ladies, and there’s absolutely nothing about that shot appealing to dudes, which comprise most of his fan base. Alba is Alba, sure, but the off-camera glance doesn’t match the melting ice cream cone. Then there’s Fogler… wait a second, who?
Granted, these are international posters, and presumably they would be clustered around one another, lacquered to panel wood surrounding construction sites and what not (they still have construction like that abroad, right?), but if you’re not a comic book movie with a lot of characters and/or don’t have huge stars that you’re trying to flaunt separately, all this does is draw attention to your movie’s shortcomings, from a marketing point-of-view. I didn’t go to advertising school, but that much I know…
UPDATE 5/30: Apparently, I really need more blowjobs, as, per the comment below, I totally whiffed on the visual joke in the picture with Dane Cook. In my defense, though, the above image is fairly small, and the original impetus for this post was actually a set of text-less one-sheets without that, umm, portion of the photo. Funny.
I still maintain, though, that this is a strange way to sell what’s being billed as essentially a raucous love story (for the movie’s trailer, click here) and not a gross-out or full-fledged sex comedy (yes, yes, despite the nookie-charm hook). What exactly about those pictures appeals to women? This also answers my question about these being international posters, and not destined for American subways, etcetera.
As embodied above, let’s all pause to remember the good times with Lindsay Lohan. The, umm… more innocent times? Well, sort of, actually. In news that comes as a shock to only… well, no one, Lohan was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 (how’s that for a product plug?) convertible struck a curb and crashed on Sunset Blvd. at 5:30 a.m. She was subsequently released from custody because she was admitted to the hospital, police said. The rub is that investigators also found what they suspect is cocaine at the scene; they declined to say where the drug was found other than to say Lohan was not carrying it. (Two other passengers were with her at the time of the crash.)
On a personal level, I’m mainly really irritated because this ruined by planned July 2 post for Lohan’s 21st birthday, which was to be an open letter to her explaining all about alcohol, and what she could expect from her first libation. Confirmation of what deep down many already knew (that Lohan was into some harder stuff) takes the edge off of such dry, beautifully crafted sarcasm.
In other Lohan news, I previously touched on the in-character video blog that’s serving as the first wave of Sony’s promotional push for its July release, I Know Who Killed Me, and as of right now the site is still active. I was talking with a friend recently about someone who worked on the project, and his sense was one of a movie in some tonal trouble. He reported that the film’s first cut was well over three hours, and while a first-pass “assembly cut” of significantly longer length isn’t atypical, it does seem curiously long for a genre film of this sort. I also gleaned a very interesting plot detail that I’ll look to re-confirm and post again on next week.
I’m steadfast in my blaming of both TiVo and my girlfriend for this, but I admit that I recently caught part of Oprah Winfrey’s show, I believe from May 14, with most of the cast of Hairspray. On it, Oprah indulged her longstanding crush on John Travolta by batting her lashes and goofily hoofing it with him, and there was a nice casting bit with Nikki Blonsky, who was plucked from ice cream shop obscurity to star in the film by director Adam Shankman.
As detailed here, from a peek at advance footage last month, the movie actually looks good, or at the very least of a piece and consistently energetic. What rankles, though, or at least stands out as ridiculous, was Travolta’s on-air assertion, when lobbed an obviously tipped-off Winfrey softball about its advance testing with audiences, that Hairspray was the “highest scoring movie in history.”Really?
Look, I can’t immediately summon to mind all the other examples, but in around 10 years of film reportage, I’ve heard this very statement about, no lie, probably 15 or so different movies, from producers, directors and stars alike. It always struck me as somewhat desperate — something to talk about it lieu of the actual content and artistry of the film. Distributor New Line is obviously enthusiastic about the finished product (you don’t trot out footage this far in advance if you’re not), but is pushing cotton, as it were, over the prospect of selling a grand-gesture musical to a summer audience conditioned to look for more spoon-fed explosions and thrills.
Ergo, this sort of attempt at pre-selling word-of-mouth. Travolta’s comment was partially qualified (as in prefaced by, “I think it was”) — cloaked in blithe, movie star-ese — but in my view it’s still a goddamned stupid thing to say. I get that this tack is a consequence of a world where weekend box office grosses get mainstream press coverage, but it’s cynical and it devalues, in ways both specific and less concrete, the creative and aesthetic achievements of films, even if one accepts the false supposition that such rendered statements are always true. Hairspray is currently set
for wide release on July 20. For more information, click here.
For its crime thriller I Know Who Killed Me, Sony Pictures is the latest company to go quasi-viral and underground in its web marketing approach, eschewing the usual gimmicks and moody evocations of such a genre piece’s Internet shingle in favor of a low-fi site built around only an in-character video blog. This is all the more unusual since the movie stars Lindsay Lohan, who plays a stripper that is abducted and tortured by a serial killer, rescued — and then returns claiming she is someone else. The question, then is: understandable trauma, split personality or something else even more sinister?
Five bits are posted so far, with 15 more teased in picture form — around one new posting each week until its scheduled late July release. The problem here is not the concept, but rather the execution. First off, the mouthy title is actually pinched from a rather famously whispered line of dialogue from Twin Peaks. The greater problem, though, is that the ridiculous, willfully vague, pseudo-intellectual ramblings (“Our nature is to go deeper, to find calmness, quiet, answers.
And questions. It’s why you’re here in my hallowed place, learning”) that are laid over the killer’s hand-held footage (which itself consists of abattoir atmospherics and peeping Tom long-distance shots), as well as their gravelly, Jigsaw-esque tone, make the project seem like a slightly tonier Saw knockoff. I have no doubt that it all (in theory, at least) builds to something, but right now the site conveys neither chilly menace nor greatly guarded mystery. I’ll try to check back on it in the coming weeks…
I don’t know if anyone else out there has caught MTV’s Adventures in Hollyhood — and I certainly can’t recommend it — but my television had lag-defaulted there late last night from its earlier TiVo consumption of the deliciously retarded The Inferno, and I was struck dumb by witnessing director Joel Schumacher take a meeting with members of the Three 6 Mafia, to discuss a potential film project.
For those (blissfully) not in the know, the series centers, I gather, around rappers Juicy J, DJ Paul, Project Pat, Big Treice et al, and their attempts to parlay their Oscar-winning Hustle & Flow hit into some sort of collective and respective film careers. After staring at each other slack-jawed while trying to pen a script, or at least the loose approximation thereof (and then, finally, getting the bright idea to phone Hustle & Flow producer John Singleton for advice), a pair of the guys somehow score an audience with Schumacher. This is obviously a courtesy meeting, but the Three 6 Mafia goes all out in an attempt to more robustly authenticate the “Memphis flavor” of their rambling pitch, hiring bikini-clad girls to serve barbecued ribs to the filmmaker — nevermind that even a cursory biography search would have revealed Schumacher to be openly gay.
Polite to a fault, Schumacher chows down on the ribs, offers some to the ladies, makes an awkward bulimia joke, and then listens to what appears to be a 30-minute reading or something like that. At its end, Schumacher tells the Three 6 Mafia that he feels “they really have a film,” and he wants to follow up with them; the whole surreal bit ends with hugs and “pounds.” It gets even better, though. In the show’s closing credits, one of the rappers receives a call several days later from someone at Schumacher’s office, but hangs up on them, mistaking their own identification as the person for whom they were asking. So take note, aspiring screenwriters: forget structure and craft, merely start a rap career to help open up occupational avenues for yourself…
The folks at Maxim obviously watch television (making the cut: Yunjim Kim, Ali Larter, et al), but I guess just not The Office. To quote Cartman from South Park: “It’s wrong, it’s wronnnng!” For another, perfectly beatific picture, as well as an analysis of Fischer’s transition to film roles, click here.
Shannon Elizabeth still has breasts. This is what one learned from her recent appearance on Thank God You’re Here, NBC’s competitive improvisational sketch comedy show, which throws together a new quartet of celebrities each week with a couple of holdover cast members.
Hosted by David Alan Grier and judged by Dave Foley, who presents the winner with a trophy of some sort, the show drops costumed celebs into both group and individual colorful scenarios in which they have no idea what will happen, except that they’ll be greeted by the titular phrase. I only caught this show due to a TiVo lag, but once I glimpsed the pain that was Elizabeth attempting improv comedy, I couldn’t avert my eyes. It was like tonguing the gaping hole of a newly missing tooth, watching a police pursuit and car accident, and inhaling deeply at the gasoline pump, all at once.
Appearing alongside George Takei, Tom Green and some other chick whose name escapes me, Elizabeth — who was dragged to momentary fame in American Pie courtesy of her bared breasts, then suffered the ignominious fate of costarring in a movie in which David Ogden Stiers ingests a human testicle (that would be 2001’s Tomcats) — evidenced absolutely no knowledge of the basic working precepts of improv. A fading, bitter sex symbol who’d receded from pop cultural memory over the past four or five years except for winning some stupid poker tournament, Elizabeth was clearly a called-in chit of her agent or manager, who probably said something like this: “No, she’s really, really funny, I swear! Did you see her guest spots on That ’70s Show? No? Oh! Oh, let me tell you…”
After delivering an eye-gougingly bad solo set, the show-closing group sketch found the celebs adorned in Viking get-up, and called before their chief, ostensibly to talk about his replacement. With nothing better to do, Elizabeth pounced on the guy and started grinding on and making out with him, which then led Tom Green to do the same. The piece devolved into a mock-outrageous orgy, with Elizabeth kissing everyone in sight and Foley even joining in on the action. Then, making her play for top honors, Elizabeth ran over and mounted a since withdrawn Foley, saying, “You’re the real judge!” Grier appeared embarassed by the whole episode, and an amused Foley only slightly less so. Look, Shannon, play the sexpot card or not, but don’t constantly bitch about the parts you’re offered, pose for Playboy and then talk about how much you regret it, or insist you’ve so much more to offer other than your body or looks and then disingenuously reach into the hootchie grab-bag when you’re painted into an improvisational corner. And most of all, please stop trying to be funny… you’re killing me.
to make the doughnuts, immediately discover three or four problems in your inbox, before your first shots of caffeine have even really had a chance to work their way through your system, and then you get a ray-of-comic-sunshine email like this, which has you checking your calendar to see if it’s not April 1 instead of May 1:
“What do you get when you mix a reality TV crew, four handheld
digital camcorders and an eye surgeon to the stars (that would be ophthalmologist
Dr. Robert K. Maloney, presumably self-described) with a TV beauty’s pursuit of
20/20 vision and one innovative company willing to document it all? You get the
breakthrough online docu-drama RealityLASIK,
which documents Kristin Cavallari’s pursuit of the latest in vision correction
surgery and her decision to ultimately undergoing [sic] Advanced CustomVue LASIK
with the IntraLase Method.” (parentheses and correction mine)
That’s right. Cavallari (above), perhaps equally known for her role
several years ago on the MTV reality series Laguna
Beach: The Real Orange County, and her more recent role in consoling Nick
Lachey’s jock (allegedly) after the break-up of his marriage to Jessica Simpson,
needs glasses. Or needed, I guess. Then
she decided she was through with that mess — glasses are so 20th century, nerds! But here, let me let a talking head
explain.
“Kristin had made the decision to have LASIK surgery, and
approached us with the idea of documenting her own experience as a fun way to
speak to her fans and others considering the procedure,” said Lauren
Kanner, AMO’s global director of consumer market development. “The
medical industry is always looking for ways to earn the public’s trust. The
very nature of a reality-based program is to draw the audience in, and we
thought this was an engaging opportunity for people to live the LASIK surgery
experience through Kristin’s eyes, not ours.”
So there you have it. Cavallari will have LASIK surgery,
presumably in a bikini. I’m not sure what qualifies this project as a “breakthrough,”
other than simply the dizzying combination of ingredients — though by this classification,
an omelet consisting of everything in my refrigerator would also be a “breakthrough.”
I do know I’m happy for its existence, though. It’s given me an out-loud laugh,
and staked a strong claim to the most awesome thing of the day. Take that, birthday of Wes Anderson!
For more information, I suppose you can visit the web site by clicking here.
It’s a happy birthday to Carmen Electra, né Tara Leigh Patrick, who turns 35 today. Quick question, though: does Electra do anything other than pose for photos? I mean, I guess she’s an actress, in the most nominal sense, picking up paychecks to appear in stuff like Scary Movie 4, Date Movie and the like, and even doing some occasional (and presumably breathy) voicework on animated series like King of the Hill and American Dad.
So I’ve expressed my rage at big screen architects before, and now it seems that Adam Sandler didn’t get enough of the ultimate hot-shit, white-collar, oh-I’m-so-stressed occupation in Click. He’ll be headlining director Adam Shankman’s Bedtime Stories, a fantasy-comedy project which centers around how the life of a busy architect takes a crazy turn when the nighttime tales he tells his niece and nephew start to come true. Vomit. Just… vomit.
Richard Gere just had to do it, didn’t he? After my review of the roguish and spry, rooted-in-murky-truth caper flick The Hoax, in which I praise a nimble Gere that we haven’t seen in a long time, if at all, that old shamanistic earnestness kicked in during a Thursday appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Gere had to make sure that potential ticket buyers knew of the very serious underpinnings and parallels in the film, which tells the story of novelist Clifford Irving, who fakes an autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes.
“This small lie connects to a much larger lie,” says Gere, slowly and pointedly, at the end of a long-ish monologue of narrative explication. “Which was the Vietnam War, Nixon, the Supreme Court, money laundering — it was all kinds of crazy stuff. To me what was interesting was the resonance between that time and that war and that president who lies, and this time and this president who lies and this war that didn’t have to happen.” At this point DeGeneres replies, blankly, “Yeah.”
However much one might agree with Gere about our current president being a serial molester of facts who led us into an awful and entirely unnecessary morass, the fact is that The Hoax, even in its more fanciful flights of speculative inclusion, has nothing to do with, and makes no claim on, the Vietnam War, and Gere’s attempt at linkage was pompous and maladroit — perfectly illustrative of why almost everybody outside of Hollywood looks at this guy as their buzzkill uncle.
Give credit where credit is due, however. Though her show was undeniably hijacked, and had the potential to plunge dourly and in headlong fashion into the next commercial break, DeGeneres showed why sunny aplomb is her greatest weapon of comedic return, gracing Gere with a TiVo, which was apparently part of some earlier referenced joke, inclusive of previous visit(s) to the show. And it was a 40-hour TiVo, just for those wondering…
In what I’m not sure is an opportunity or a dare, Geffen
Records is calling on all musicians for the chance to have their music be placed in the upcoming live-action comedy adventure Bratz. MGA
Entertainment, Avi Arad Productions and Crystal Sky Pictures have teamed up on
the feature film, which Lionsgate will distribute nationwide on August 10. The
soundtrack will be available through Geffen Records on July 31.
I have a friend who’s labored on several Bratz videogame titles, and he’s generally
sounded like he’s wanted to pluck out his eyeballs, so inane is the work. But
the franchise, spun off from what began as a line of 10-inch dolls with
oversized heads and huge eyes — a sort of hipper, sluttier alternative to
Barbie — is highly lucrative. And since movies today are driven by and apparently
green-lit solely by name recognition, we’ll now get a live action flick to go
alongside all the animated product clogging the imaginative arteries of prepubescent
and tween-age girls. Given that it’s directed by 45-year-old white dude Sean
McNamara, the artisan behind 3 Ninjas:
High Noon at MegaMountain and the Hilary Duff starrer Raise Your Voice, I’m sure it will be a
movie of nuanced social commentary.
At any rate… what were we talking about? Oh, right: your roommate’s
band. Musical submissions will be reviewed by top A&R executives at Geffen
Records up until the deadline of May 15. If you’ve always wanted to get
your music in front of a major record label, or you have a song about 10-inch dolls
and how totally awesome and outrageous they are, this is your chance to be
discovered. For rules, regulations and more information click here,
and enter all pertinent contact information.
Variety is reporting that Sydney Pollack will direct Recount, a scripted HBO movie about the contested 2000 presidential election that will focus on the five weeks following Election Day, up through the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of George W. Bush. Casting has yet to be finalized, but presumably slightly fictionalized and composited disgruntled voters will rub shoulders with real-life strategists and local politicians (after all, who can forget this face?).
Sorry, but the fact that the project is “aiming for the widest possible audience, and will steer clear of a partisan point of view, according to execs,” doesn’t bode well for its meat-and-potatoes worth as a drama. I totally get this project’s editorial and financial value in the middle of a heated election-year cycle (it will air on the net sometime next spring or summer), and Pollack’s deft touch with the politically-related material makes him an easy and solid, if somewhat too safe choice. But what gives that backdrop its electrical charge is the winning and losing. Anything else might as well be just a documentary offering — the same sort of thing which …So Goes the Nation incidentally did a pretty damn good job of capturing, in Ohio in 2004.
If you’re not showing the anger of people who feel like they’re getting jammed (or, conversely, the celebration of those “getting over”), if you’re too busy tap-dancing around some imaginary line of kumbaya appeasement, if you’re not choosing, in some loose sense, you’re going to end up with just a neutered piece of info-tainment to serve as lead-in fodder for shows like Hardball and Tucker, and the policy wonks that watch them. It will be interesting to see if all the major players and party power brokers are represented in Recount‘s story, whatever its putative dramatic focus. If not, it has the strong potential to be empty theater.
The one person who should be most grateful for this announcement, other than actor-turned-writer Danny Strong? Fran Drescher. I don’t what the hell she’s up to, but if her agent is worth a rat’s ass, they’re booking her for the role of Katherine Harris. Yesterday.
UPDATE 8/09: A few days old now, but according to Reuters and other outlers, Pollack, 73, has backed out of directing Recount, citing unspecified health concerns. “He’s got some medical issues,” spokeswoman Leslie Dart told Reuters.
“He’s not feeling well right now. It would be unrealistic for him to go
into production right away.” Pollack will stay on board as a producer, and Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meets the Parents) will step in to direct.
So I’ve previously railed against Ugg boots, which I regard as an abomination. In fact, there’s a girl who lives near me who always walks her dog wearing the same pink sweatpants and tan Uggs, which strikes me as bizarre. I haven’t yet punched her in the head or run over and ripped her boots off, but I might just yet.
My latest irritation comes in the form of the sort of gigantic sunglasses that the Paris Hiltons, Eva Longorias and Jennifer Lopezes of the world have women hooked on. I guess Dior is the chief offender, but doubtless there are other, equally offensive peddlers. I gather that — not unlike the appendix — these sunglasses started out serving some functional purpose, namely when celebrities had to disguise themselves while ducking out into the real world on the weekend when their assistants had to return home for a parent or sibling’s funeral. Soon, though, they became just another way to say, “Look at me!” They look like friggin’ welder’s masks, some of these things, yet when a character is meant to be portrayed as desirably fashionable, more often than not these shades get some screen time.
A stand needs to be taken, desperately. I mean, no one called bullshit on parachute pants in the early 1980s, and look where that got us…
So it seems little “Teddy” Baehr — reverend, cultural crusader and chairman of the Christian
Film & Television Commission, whose reviews on Movieguide.org are aimed
squarely at the Christian right — has taken aim at the foolish notion that war has a human toll on each side of the line. (To link to the original story from the Kansas City Star, click here.)
Baehr, who in the past has warned parents to protect their children from “the evil occult power of Harry Potter,” recently took to task Clint
Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated Letters from Iwo Jima — a look at the
World War II battle as experienced by Japanese soldiers — for ignoring “the
terrible horrors that Japanese soldiers inflicted in places like Manchuria, Nanking, Korea
and the Philippines.” He railed against Eastwood for promoting “some kind of politically correct,
misguided liberal notion of fairness and pacifism,” and then added, “No wonder the politically
correct Los Angeles Film Critics Association thinks Letters is the best movie
of the year.”
As a member of said called-out organization, I can say yes, it’s completely true — we are politically correct. Totally. Still, Baehr has hated us for years, dating back to at least the turn of the millennium, and our controversial decision to honor Michael Douglas’ performance in Wonder Boys over Kirk Cameron’s turn in Left Behind. Again, to link to the original story, click here.
So a couple days ago in the mail I got this promotional calendar for Disney’s Underdog, slated for release August 3, and it elicited a deep sigh. Really? This is what we’ve come to? (Mostly crappy) remakes of every television serial of yesteryear aren’t good enough by themselves, apparently; we also need live action soiling of cartoon properties. I mean, I know the Air Bud franchise has done quite well, but is the name recognition value of Underdog going to help drive this ostensibly like-minded property? Why not just call it Caped Canine or something?
Promising “state-of-the-art CGI visual effects mixed with live action to create stunning visuals,” the film stars Jim Belushi (of course), Peter Dinklage, John Slattery, Patrick Warburton and Brad Garrett, with Jason Lee providing the titular mutt’s voice and Amy Adams voicing his putative love interest, a spaniel named Polly Purebread. And in case you were wondering, yes, there’s a maniacal scientist. It’s an accident in his lab that graces our ordinary beagle with unimaginable powers and the ability to speak. Finally… Underdog’s backstory revealed! Whatever…
Without seeing a frame, I can tell you that this movie is indicative of Hollywood’s backwards-plotted thinking with regards to production. They’d rather churn out almost exclusively carbon copies of previous fare — preferably with some sort of franchise attachment to a videogame or TV show or book, no matter how old, forgotten or cultishly niche said product was in the first place. Because no one really puts their name or reputation on the line for those movies, for movies like Underdog; there’s plausible deniability if it fails, and no shortage of credit if it succeeds. Ergo, no Hollywood suit ever really loses their job, because there aren’t any tough decisions in making these films. In fact, looking at the adventuresome, heroically lit photos of a blank-faced Underdog soaring past international landmarks in this calendar, you almost get the feeling that someone just forgot to say no to this film. And yes, yes, I know it’s “just” a kids’ flick, but still… c’mon.
to make the doughnuts, immediately discover three or four problems in your inbox, before your first shots of caffeine have even really had a chance to work their way through your system, and then you get a ray-of-comic-sunshine email like this, which has you checking your calendar to see if it’s not April 1 instead of May 1:, and she ended up lounging on the beach about 15 feet from me, and I was struck by not only her dimunutive size (she’s charitably listed at 5’3″), but also <i>just</i> how kind the camera is to her. Oh sure, I’d throw her one, but I wasn’t completely blown away, I guess I’m saying.</p>
<p>I mean, I get that she’s really personable, and as a product of all those photo shoots, the potential aloof bitchy vibe around her has evaporated. She’s also stayed in good shape (via those stripper-cise aerobic videos, I guess), and <b>made a nice career out of branded name commercial work and parodying the image of parodying the image of parodying the image of the blithe bombshell that’s been established by the performances of <i>others</i></b>, but never really Electra herself. Actually, nevermind… I totally get her appeal now that I’ve ruminated on it for 45 seconds. Well played, Carmen, well played…</p>
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