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.
The trailer for The Ugly Truth, the romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl is up at the film's official website. The premise of this film sounded downright terrible -- a television producer is forced to deal with a chauvinistic correspondent, who decides to teach her what men want so that she can find love, with the pair discovering "an unexpected result" along the way. Could that result be ... love? Yeah, probably.
But you know what? The trailer's not half bad, and it really does seem like an updated and raunchier Pillow Talk. Plus, it's rated R, which gives me a lot of hope that it could be something akin to a Judd Apatow movie. I really expected a lot of PG-13 chauvanism, not lessons on how to sexily eat a hot dog, or Butler using the phrase "ladygarden."
Maybe I'm just a sucker for a Butler movie after all. I slagged him off a bit last week, but he's just so darn charming, even when he's being a total sleaze. Then again, 2 hours of him saying things like "Get on a Stairmaster!" might be an emotionally unpleasant experience. I like escapism in my movies. If I wanted to hear guys saying that kind of stuff to me, I'd just go to a Denver bar and wait ten minutes. It'd be cheaper than a movie ticket. The Ugly Truth opens April 3rd, 2009.
In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday that nears, it seemed only fitting that our minds turned to those films for which we are most unexpectedly grateful, those flops and duds, those bombs and turkeys rife with unintentional humor and renewed entertainment values. Now, we've pretty much stuck with the past decade or so with our picks; anything before that has either been done right by MST3K or is probably titled Showgirls.
With that said, please enjoy this Cinematical Seven responsibly, and do feel free to contribute your own personal favorite howlers of late in the comments below...
Goodness knows the world wasn't asking for the equivalent of National Lampoon's Bring It On (alternate title: Take It Off), but if we had to be subjected to the forthcoming cheer romp that is Fired Up!, why has it taken nine years to cash in on the trend? I can't otherwise understand how else this comedy -- the trailer for which we've included after the jump -- has gotten off the ground.
See, it's about a pair of high school football players (played by 31-year-old Eric Christian Olsen and 28-year-old Nicholas D'Agosto) who opt out on their team training in order to tag along with the all-female cheerleading squad to their cheer camp/competition. Besides, with 300 ready-and-waiting young women at their alleged disposal, what are the odds that one of our guys will instead want to hook up with the cutie (Sarah Roemer) calling their bluff? And what chance could there possibly be that she already has a dick-ish boyfriend who can't help but make them look like more sensible guys in comparison? Might hilarity ensue?!
...and yet still managed to be a damn good movie? Well I sure thought it was, anyway, even if the Tomato-meter doesn't seem to agree with me. I said lots of nice things about the flick back in my original review, but I also longed to see Peter Berg's original cut. The one that wasn't sacrificed at the altar of the demigod known as PeeGee-Thirteen.
So hey! Hancock comes out on DVD next week, and guess what? Two different versions! (Three if you count the Blu-Ray, which offers both versions in the same package.) OK, so according to this DVD cover, the theatrical cut runs 92 minutes, while this DVD coverclearly illustrates that the Unrated Cut goes about 102 minutes. And you don't need t snip a full ten minutes just to excise a few F-bombs. Needless to say, I'm very enthused about checking out the "unrated" cut -- but they don't actually call it a Director's Cut ... so could we be looking at another DVD somewhere down the line? (What a shocking assumption, I know.) For more on the Hancock DVD, check out this review that I'll read in about a week. But I trust the source.
You know, you would think that after starring in one of the biggest movies of all time, Aaron Eckhart might want to take a break from the world of big-budgeted action movies. Then again, he probably knows better than anyone that sometimes those small indie films can really get you into trouble. So, in the spirit of 'safe bets', The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Eckhart will star in the sci-fi action flick, Battle: Los Angeles.
Chris Bertolini's (The General's Daughter) script centers on an alien invasion that has landed in the streets of LA. Eckhart would play the leader of a platoon of Marines who are the last line of defense in the invasion. Jonathan Liebesman (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) has already signed to direct the film for Columbia Pictures, although a start date for the production has yet to be finalized.
Since his 'debut' in 1997's In the Company of Men, Eckhart has stuck to parts in smaller films like Thank you For Smoking, or like his latest with Jennifer Aniston, Traveling. Unfortunately, the big-budget flicks haven't worked out so well (with one whopper of an exception.) So even though some of Eckhart's other Hollywood projects have been less than impressive (cough, The Core, cough), Battle will be the first time Eckhart is playing front and center in an action flick. Lets just hope Battle doesn't fall into the same category as some of his other very expensive disasters.
Monika mentioned it a few months back, but we now have a lot more details regarding the highly-anticipated xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. And when I say "highly-anticipated," I mean anticipated by folks like Vin Diesel, director Rob Cohen, and the screenwriting team of Michael Ferris and John Brancato. Because they're getting paid.
According to Variety, the writers are the newest employees on the project, and if you're a fan of their work if you're a fan of The Net, The Game, Catwoman, Primeval, or Terminator 3. (They also have T4 on the way.) Diesel and Cohen (who recently directed the nigh-unwatchable Mummy 3) worked together on the first xXx flick, and we all remember how awesome profitable that movie was. The sequel (xXx: State of the Union) went with director Lee Tamahori and leading man Ice Cube -- and we all remember how that turned out. Actually, do we remember anything about these movies, really? One of them had an avalanche, I think.
For more on mindless action franchises that Diesel once bailed on, only to return a bit later, I refer you to this article.
What does Daniel Craig get right in his new outing as James Bond? What does Quantum of Solaceget wrong? Can Marc Forster really direct action? Is Olga Kurylenkoreally the "hottest Bond girl ever?" Which directors could and should take on Bond's 23rd outing? And above and beyond all these topics, what does this week's guest Kevin Kelly, of Joystiq and Spout, think needs to happen to save Bond from both his corporate overlords and world-destroying villains? You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:
As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
Even as the franchise began to shed staples with 2006's Casino Royale and tomorrow's Quantum of Solace, the James Bond series is still known for several keystones across twenty other films: girls, gadgets, guns, martinis, silhouettes of female figures thrusting about during the credits, and so on. Some would say that these were the traditions that helped lead James Bond down the path that would end in 2002's Die Another Day, which some would say made them want to take a top hat to their own throats. (Me? I didn't hate it.)
Among these recurring touches were the last lines, often cheeky turns of phrase that seemed to suggest that everything was going to be just fine between Commander Bond and that chick who we'd never see or hear about ever again. So, out of twenty-one films, I humbly offer up my picks for the seven best of the bunch. I'll leave you to find out if Quantum ends more along the lines of Royale's "The name's Bond... James Bond", or with something a bit sexier...
At this point, the most dangerous threat James Bond faces does not shoot from the barrel of a gun or glimmer from the lens of a laser but instead springs from the tightly-coiled engine of the audience's expectations. Any new Bond film has to not only compete with the films that have come before but also the other high-end entries in the action genre; any political or moral ideas in the film have to compete with the political and moral landscape of the world we live in. Quantum of Solace, the 22nd Bond film, is Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond, and the blunt, brutal and brisk Casino Royale set the bar very high; if Casino Royale marked a return to greatness for the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace represents a return to adequacy.
Directed by Mark Forster, Quantum of Solace has the basic bones of a Bond film -- globe-trotting settings, cars and chases, hair's-breadth escapes, nefarious plots. It does not, fortunately, have much of the fat that the worst Bond films have larded onto the series -- there's a minimum of high-tech gadgetry, no skiing sequences, no invisible cars, no henchmen with metal teeth. While Casino Royale brought Judi Dench's gruff spymaster M back to the series from the Brosnan era, it also brought Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion back to the franchise; in the new Bond era, cars crash and buildings break with thundering, shuddering force as Daniel Craig's Bond smashes, crashes and grunts his way through a hard, painful world. In the film's opening car chase, on the winding coastal roads of Italy, there are a number of moments where the crunch and thud of the action catches you up in a two-fisted grip of exhilaration and terror. Part of that's the stunt work, but a big part of it is Craig's Bond -- who you believe as being capable of executing a perfect shift-and-skid turn while firing an automatic weapon out of what used to be his car window with shards of glass lacerating his face.
I should have known better than to start writing columns and dreaming too much about a Preacher movie. Apparently, the project is just as iffy as its ever been. EmpireOnline caught up with newly appointed director Sam Mendes to find out that things aren't as definite as they seem.
"I'd love to make Preacher. But there's no script. This is a typical Variety announcement, 'Mendes to direct Preacher' – I wish! Basically they should have written, 'Mendes in development with Preacher'. What I'm doing is, I've gotta find a script. I've just got to get it written." To be fair, The Hollywood Reporter did say that Mendes would "lead the search" for writers, but the directing job didn't seem so questionable.
Mendes does sound pretty enthralled with the material, so at the very least he'll have a good go at it. "It's brilliant, it's an incredible twisted vision. There's so much of it you couldn't possibly fit it all into one movie. It's just about what you keep and what you leave out, and how you structure the story. But just to have that toy set again, being able to paint on a big canvas and to say 'I am gonna do crazy crane shots and massive action sequences again because I want to,' it's exciting."
But enthusiasm doesn't always get movies made. Plenty of people have fallen for the material in the past, and this adapting it for the big or small screen always falls short of the finish line. I fully expect this to slip back into the purgatory of pre-production, the rights to the series collecting dust on a Columbia shelf.
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.
Not days after Eric D. Snider brought us welcome proof of Tom Hanks' mullet-free appearance has the teaser trailer for next May's Da Vinci Code sequel (or is it prequel?) been posted online, and all that can really be said for Angels & Demons at this point is that Hanks is once again racing against the ironically shadowy Illuminati to solve another Vatican-set (but not Vatican-shot) mystery.
He's paired up with another brunette agent (Ayelet Zurer in lieu of Audrey Tautou), Ewan McGregor pops up as a man of the cloth, and Stellan Skarsgard finds himself on the business end of a branding iron. I had heard that the novel is an improvement from its predecessor, so let's hope this follows suit next May.
Considerably closer and already loaded with acclaim is Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, the trailer for which just popped up over at Yahoo! Movies. I'm close enough to seeing the film myself that I'm going to forgo watching it, but this'll hopefully convince you to catch it if our review and others hadn't already. Millionaire opens in limited release on November 12th.
And to round things out is this five-minute trailer for the looming remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, which bears resemblance for the most part to this previous extended trailer, save for a last minute crammed with more completed money shots involving our big, bad friend Gort. TDTESS opens in IMAX and regular theaters on December 12th.
This is officially my favorite news story of the week! Remember when HBO dropped Preacher from their slate, and rumors swirled that a big name was interested? Turns out, that interested party was none other than Sam Mendes, and according to Variety, he's bringing the long-awaited series to the big screen.
Let's slow down and savor that: Sam Mendes is going to direct Garth Ennis' Preacher for Columbia Pictures. Ahhhh. Yes, doesn't it feel good?
For the unconverted, Preacher is a 75-issue series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion -- and it was the kind of dark, brilliant insanity that comic book fans see maybe once or twice in their lifetime. It centers on the Reverend Jesse Custer, who becomes inhabited by the offspring of an angel and a demon, and gives him a little power called the Word of God. Upon learning that God has officially retired from the Heavenly Father business, Custer goes on a hunt to bring the Lord to justice, accompanied by his ex-girlfriend, Tulip, and a vampire named Cassidy. And that's all I'm going to tell you, because I'm not about to spoil any more of it. After you finish reading this, go to Amazon and buy the first volume. You'll love it. It's a good old fashioned western, mixed with horror, comedy, and blasphemy.
I'm not sure how they'll get most of it onscreen (Arseface, Grandma, and the Allfather plot immediately spring to mind), and I'm not sure if Mendes has the twisted touch to bring it to life. But it's the kind of story you love or you hate -- it's difficult to imagine any director signing on for Preacher without being utterly committed to its depravity. There's no halfway with it.
For me, it all hinges on what man's man they cast as the not-so-good Reverend. I can't wait to see who gets to wear the collar, and I'll drop my support if he doesn't meet my exact specifications.
Naturally, today's release of Saw V (read our review) brings with it numerous trailers for early '09 horror offerings. Earlier this week, we received the first trailer for that Friday the 13th remake (which you can see here), and now we have two others.
First up is My Bloody Valentine 3D, the crotch-targeting poster for which Scott made mention of earlier today. Lionsgate is going to have trouble actually marketing this in 3-D, as family-friendly fare continues to dominate that format; thus, we have this somewhat hokey green-band number courtesy of IGN. (For what it's worth, several little birdies who had the good fortune to see some footage recently -- in all its R-rated, three-dimensional glory -- were seriously impressed. Nothing sells quite the same as airborne eyeballs...)
Finally, there's Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: third in the franchise to date, but first in our hearts terms of story continuity. Since Rhona Mitra came to so very much resemble Kate Beckinsale in last spring's Doomsday, it only makes sense that she formally take up the mantle in the war between werewolves and vampires. Be sure to check out this recently released trailer if you also want to see what it looks like when Michael Sheen isn't feuding with the werewolf-like Nixon.
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