At some point this past summer, between all but consecutive viewings of The Dark Knight, I slipped into a screening of Step Brothers with the same tempered expectations with which I had greeted Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro -- and found myself equally surprised in the coming days and weeks and months by just how admittedly tickled I was by any of them (quoting lines was moderate on all counts). Mind you, I'm saying this as the guy who chuckled during Anchorman, sure, but not really enough to keep it on my shelf or call myself thankful for it.
That's nothing against our Eric D. Snider, and nothing against the star of each film mentioned, Will Ferrell (yes, he was actually Batman). In fact, with Step Brothers hitting shelves today (with reports of a wholly sung commentary track), it only seemed fitting that we go over his most amusing roles as overgrown man-children (Ferrell's, not Snider's). Because they're there, and they always will be, and the sooner that I admit to being vulnerable to his shtick, a better world this very well may be.
I didn't think much of Madagascar, which had an unfocused story, no internal logic, and only a few laughs, scattered mostly among the minor characters. It relied too much on pop-culture references, too, a common problem these days in animation. So I'm glad to report that the sequel, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, is an improvement. The story has a clear protagonist (instead of the lion and zebra battling for screen time), it's a bit more straightforward, and the movie references are all but gone. It's still primarily the supporting cast that's funny, not the leads -- but hey, if Dreamworks were capable of doing everything right it would have to change its name to Pixar.
The sequel, again directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, finds our heroes having repaired a dilapidated airplane and now preparing to fly themselves back to New York. But instead, they crash-land not far from the island of Madagascar: on the continent of Africa, in fact, and in the very animal preserve where Alex the lion (voice of Ben Stiller) was born. He is joyfully reunited with his parents (Bernie Mac and Sherri Shepherd), and his friends are thrilled with their ancestral homeland, too. Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) is able to run with a herd for the first time, Melman (David Schwimmer) finds his hypochondria to be a hit with his fellow giraffes, and Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) loves that with hippos, fat equals attractive.
You might remember that at the end of September, word came that Steven Spielberg was having trouble financing his Tintin trilogy. Universal Studios had passed on the film, leaving Spielberg and co-director Peter Jackson without a major backer. According to Variety, they've found one. Sony and Paramount Studios are in talks to co-finance the franchise, with Sony handling the foreign release, and Paramount overseeing the domestic. DreamWorks will have no association with the film whatsoever.
The news that Tintin will still go ahead is good for fans -- but as always, there's a catch. Under the deal currently being negotiated, it looks as though there will only be two Tintin films. Considering that a director was never assigned, or a script written, this may have been decided long before the financing fell through. Perhaps a third film hinges on the success of the first two installments, and its a project Spielberg and Jackson plan to return to. It's going to be a hard sell here in North America, where Tintin is largely unknown, and I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Paramount are hedging their bets a little.
It's also unclear when this film will ever start shooting. When the deal fell apart with Universal, Spielberg lost the participation of his lead actor, Thomas Sangster. They're going to need another Tintin -- and fast, as the first film is still expected to make its 2010 release.
This is a passion project for Spielberg and Jackson -- and at this point, it's going to take every ounce of that enthusiasm to ever get a motion-capture Tintin on the big screen.
What's happening in Hollywood? Does no one have a day planner? Can nobody stick to a schedule? Pushing a film's release date back a week or two isn't a big deal, but when you move it to an entirely different calendar year, that changes everything -- especially its Oscar chances.
As we've already mentioned, rumors are swirling that the Weinsteins' The Road won't be done in time for its November release, and maybe not for December, either. Now we have three more titles on the move. Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere is reporting that the Weinsteins' Hurricane Season, an Inspiring Sports Drama® about a high school basketball team composed of displaced Katrina survivors, is "not ready" for its planned Christmas Day release and is being pushed back to March. And at Paramount, two Oscar hopefuls, Defiance and The Soloist, are being bumped to 2009, too, according to Variety.
The Soloist move is the one that should raise the most eyebrows. A true story starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. (pictured), it has all the hallmarks of a feel-good Oscar contender, and that's how Paramount and DreamWorks (which produced it) were positioning it. But now it's being moved from Thanksgiving to March, which is basically Paramount's way of saying they don't have much confidence in its Oscar potential after all. At the very least, it means they think its chances of making a lot of money (which are higher in March than in the crowded holiday season) are greater than its chances of winning awards. Which might actually be a very smart financial move, so good for them.
Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:
We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.
Steven Spielberg has yet another project that he's keen to make his next directorial gig -- according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's just snagged the rights to Chocky, John Wyndham's famous sci-fi novel.
Chocky is more famous in the United Kingdom than here in the States, as it was the basis for a television show in 1984. It centers on a young boy who has a rather tumultuous relationship with his imaginary friend. His father grows concerned that his son has not yet abandoned his imaginary friend for real ones -- and slowly, he begins to realize that the invisible friend is actually an alien consciousness that is residing in the boy's mind. It's old territory for Spielberg, right down to the government forces who are far too interested in the boy and his alien. Surely, Chocky is some reader's favorite book or childhood television memory, and I'm keen to hear your opinion of its big screen potential.
Nevertheless, don't get too excited, Chocky fans. Given Spielberg's break with Paramount, it's uncertain where the project will end up -- DreamWorks has optioned it, but all of its properties automatically end up with Paramount, which would require Spielberg to actually buy it back for his own development. And this is just one of a slew of projects Spielberg has acquired lately. He still has Tintin, The Trial of the Chicago 7, that long-delayed Lincoln biopic, Cowboys and Aliens, and The 39 Clues. All are technically owned by Paramount, all are "the next picture Spielberg wants to direct," and all need to be re-purchased if he wants to develop them at DreamWorks. So by 2009 or 2010, you might see Tintin, you might see Chocky, or you might see another project altogether. Spielberg is covering all his bases.
I'm of two minds when it comes to this fall's sure-fire awards contender, The Soloist. One half of me is in mild awe that, even in 2008, we find ourselves staring down an awards bid in which a failed journalist and a failed musician help restore one another to their former glory, live life to the fullest, so on, so forth, etc. Yeah, I know it's based from a true story, but that doesn't make it instantly inspirational (well, it does for some).
The other half, however, acknowledges that two talented actors could make something special out of the material, and judging from this new trailer over at Yahoo! Movies, Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx might be just the men for the respective roles. (Oh, and Joe Wright's directing, perhaps out of a need to make a film that didn't involve the melodramatic romances carried out by a character played by Keira Knightley.)
So what do you guys think? Will this be as much of a cross between Resurrecting the Champ and Shine as I suspect it to be, or is your personal performance-hunch-o-meter positively a-tingle?
The basic plot of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window-- man believes he witnessed a murder, has to prove it really happened -- has been reused for so many films and TV shows that it's not that surprising when another homage or ripoff comes around. Yet last year's Disturbia, starring Shia LaBeouf as a guy under house arrest who thinks his neighbor is a serial killer, bore close enough resemblance to be labeled an update on Hitchcock's film. And now, not surprisingly, Dreamworks, its parent company Viacom and Universal Pictures, are being sued for creating an unauthorized remake.*
The defendant in the case is not exactly related to Hitchcock's film, though; the lawsuit was filed by Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, which owns the rights to Cornell Woolrich's original short story "It Had to Be Murder" (called "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" in the article), upon which Rear Window is based. Film business followers may remember the name Sheldon Abend from the important Supreme Court copyright case of 1990, Stewart v. Abend, in which Abend sued James Stewart and the production company Patron Inc. after Rear Window was aired on television.
If you've seen both Disturbia and Rear Window do you think the case is valid? Is Disturbia really that much more of a ripoff than Manhattan Murder Mystery, Head Over Heels and most of Brian DePalma's early career? Even Antonioni's Blow Upand Coppola's The Conversationare fairly similar in concept. Obviously some works, such as the Simpsons episode in which Bart thinks Flanders murdered his wife, are okay because they fall under the permissions of parody.
*Note: We accidentally listed Steven Spielberg as an executive producer on Disturbia, though he was not. That information has been removed from the post. [ed]
Despite being seemingly obligated by demographic alone to enjoy it, I didn't particularly care for Michael Bay's Transformers, even after a recent second look on the small screen. Regardless, the people have spoken with their wallets, and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Ka-Ching is well underway for its release next summer.
Embedded above is the first of several behind-the-scenes videos that Wal-Mart will be providing in the coming months, and right from the get-go, the visionary Bay talks about not only making a sequel that'll make kids' dreams, but also sticking his custom-made Nikes up the collective ass of his crew. Watch as "Bay-os" and "Bay-hem" ensue in Bethlehem, PA, with fast bikes, nice cars, and big booms...
Heck, just about the only thing missing from this two-minute taste is some sweet hand-injury action.
Remember that ginormous project called 39 Clues that was announced awhile back -- a worldwide mystery to span books, interactive games, trading cards and a movie deal, courtesy of Steven Spielberg? The first book in the series, The Maze of Bones, hits shelves all over the world next Tuesday, the same day as its interactive online game. Will it spark an obsession along the lines of Twilight or Harry Potter? Time will tell.
Steven Spielberg has confidence in it, though. Acccording to Variety, he's hired his old pal Jeff Nathanson to pen the script, marking their fourth collaboration together. They paired up previously on The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Spielberg is still eying Clues' director's chair, and it will be interesting to see where this can fit into his busy schedule, where Tintin and Lincoln were taking precedence. Does he want this worldwide money hunt (the prize for solving the project's mystery is $10,000) to be over before the movie, or will the bloom be off the rose by then? What if the whole multiplatform concept fails spectacularly? Are the books still filmable? The ambition of 39 Clues leaves me doubting whether it can deliver -- but I can hardly pretend to have better judgment than Spielberg. At any rate, I'll be watching the book pages with interest to see what audiences make of The Maze of Bones -- if anyone out there buys it, give us the scoop!
Considering the lengths to which the Tropic Thunder gang went to sell all of their Hollywood fakery, it comes as little surprise that the mock making-of Rain of Madness does exist beyond a mere trailer (embedded above, and probably not kid-friendly) and website. However, while I'm sure it'll be included on the eventual DVD, who's really going to wait that long when it's currently available as a free iTunes exclusive?
That's right: for thirty minutes and zero dollars (yep), one can follow filmmaker Jan Jürgen (co-writer Justin Theroux, acting as if making Werner Herzog's Werner Herzog were making Hearts of Darkness) as he chronicles the expensive chaos that went behind making the movie within the movie. Star/director/co-writer/probable caterer Ben Stiller explained in a recent press release: "We wanted to do a fake documentary about the making of the movie within the movie which is called "Tropic Thunder" -- not the actual movie "Tropic Thunder". The fake documentary focuses on the real movie's fake director, and what happens to the fake cast before they go into the real jungle. It's pretty straightforward."
Well, I know who I am. I'm the dude playing the dude currently downloading this S.O.B. Any of you who follow suit, share your thoughts below.
For those concerned commenters, I'm well aware that Werner Herzog did not, in fact, direct Hearts of Darkness. However, Mr. Theroux is behaving as if he were Mr. Herzog and, as such, proceeded to make a film not unlike the doc actually made by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper.
What I didn't know was how to directly link to any items made available through the iTunes store. I still don't, but I do appreciate the considerate ones below who were both helpful and tactful in passing the direct iTunes link on - namely, Niraj and not the exceedingly impatient Marcos.
I'm not one of those waiting for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen with a whole lot of anticipation. I feel bad about saying that, but let's face it, Transformers passed me right by as I was playing with Strawberry Shortcake. Many have tried to re-educate me on the awesomeness of Optimus Prime, and failed.
Nevertheless, even I have to admit it's pretty cool when a screenwriter drops in among their fans for a good sequel chat. That's what Robert Orci, one of the scriptwriters for Transformers 1 and 2, has done over at Transformer World 2005. The dedicated can sift through what is currently 82(!) pages of script Q&A, by the time you read this, it will probably be 182. Much of it is hints as to which robots might factor into the sequel -- including a tease that Arcee, the girl Transformer, might appear. On the other hand, he's careful to remind fans that anything you hear about the film is probably careful disinformation, but well meant. "It is fun to 'play' with fandom, not to toy with fandom -- I do not hand out disinformation."
But there's a few reliable sounding bits in here. According to Orci, the sequel will be more "global" in scale, and that there won't a lot of re-introductions. "The first movie is all about the mystery and reveal of the Transformers as a concept and a species, which means we had to hide them a lot in the first hour. In the second movie, now that everyone believes in the universe, we can jump right into the world of the Transformers." The movie will be firmly rooted in Transformers mythology, but will also maintain the "liberties" taken with it in the first film.
He insists they're listening to fan input, so anything you want to see, now's the time to demand it. I'm going to go ahead and demand Arcee, if only to ponder how Transformers can have gender, and whether she will be pink.
With all the publicity surrounding Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I thought we would certainly have some definitive Tintin news. Confirmation that Thomas Sangster was taking the lead? Cast members that would join Andy Serkis? Any indication, at all, that the film was going to start shooting next month? Nope.
But a tiny update comes courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, although it's more like a baby controversy. Herge Studios, holders of Tintin's rights, claimed today that Peter Jackson was moving into the director's chair for the first film, replacing Steven Spielberg. Both Spielberg and Jackson have denied that this is the case, and that Spielberg is still attached to direct the first Tintin installment, Jackson the second. Not even Abraham Lincoln will get in the way, it is the next film on his agenda. No start date has been announced, though. THR is also reporting that Thomas Sangster is starring as the motion captured Tintin, so at least that's official now.
Perhaps the most interesting news in all of this official spokesperson stuff is the blurb about which books are being adapted for the big screen. The first film (scripted by Doctor Who'sSteven Moffat) will be based on The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure. Now that's worthy of discussion! What do you Tintin fans think about that -- and which books ought to be adapted for film two and three?
In what appears to be part of a most thorough campaign to botch Entertainment Weekly's Fall Movie Preview, a recent press release wholly admits that the North American opening of the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, back from November 7th to the 14th marks an effort to capitalize on last week's sudden Harry Potter shift.
Although the removal of the 007th from any coming marketing blitz sure is a shame, it does place this film closer to the release of its predecessor, Casino Royale, which opened on November 17, 2006 to the tune of almost $600 million worldwide. Solace will still premiere in the United Kingdom on October 31.
For those keeping track at home, this now leaves Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and the just now shifted Paul Rudd comedy Role Models on November 7th, and the 14th is now between Bond, Baz Luhrmann's epic drama Australia, and Bernie Mac's final film, Soul Men.
It may be bootlegged -- and therefore a limited-time offering -- but from very early on, this trailer for next spring's 3-D animated bonanza Monsters vs. Aliens had me sold and only worked its way up from there.
I like that all of the human characters appear to be related to the Parr family, and that the monsters and aliens on display promise to look even cooler in three dimensions. I dig Stephen Colbert as the President and Keifer Sutherland as General W.R. Monger, not to mention other voices by Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Rainn Wilson, Hugh Laurie, and Paul Rudd. (Oh, and Reese Witherspoon never did anyone any harm either.) Most importantly, the project gives off a saavy sense of humor without relying as heavily on pop culture riffs as Dreamworks used to. A '50-styled sci-fi send-up should hold my attention as much as the little ones, if done right.
Between this, Kung Fu Panda, and Over the Hedge, I think that it's fair to say that Dreamworks Animation has found a reliable niche as Pixar's hipper cousin. With any luck, I won't be proven wrong come March 27, 2009.
You might remember that at the end of September, word came that 
What's happening in Hollywood? Does no one have a day planner? Can nobody stick to a schedule? Pushing a film's release date back a week or two isn't a big deal, but when you move it to an entirely different calendar year, that changes everything -- especially its Oscar chances.
Steven Spielberg has yet another project that he's keen to make his next directorial gig -- according to 
I'm of two minds when it comes to this fall's sure-fire awards contender, 
The basic plot of Alfred Hitchcock's 
Remember that ginormous project called 39 Clues that was 
I'm not one of those waiting for 
In what appears to be part of a most thorough campaign to botch 
