Writer guy Bob Westal was literally born in Hollywood and has commented on the worlds of movies, popular culture, politics, and food ever since. His interest in cocktails is more recent, but he made up for lost time with hundreds of “Drink of the Week” blog posts for Bullz-Eye. In addition to writing and editing, Bob also talks a lot.
I’m in the middle of some big stuff you’ll be seeing here before too long, so this is going to be an extremely short version of my usual long-winded pre-weekend box office previews.
Basically, this is a tricky weekend when it’s hard to see a clear box office favorite. It could be the remake of Alan Parker’s 1980 musical drama, “Fame“; it could be the Bruce Willis/Radha Mitchell virtual living science fiction flick “Surrogates” (a topic much on my mind as I work on a very long post about this movie); it could be a second #1 weekend for “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” It almost certainly won’t be a second sci-fi flick, a horror/space opera with Dennis Quaid that was withheld from critics, “Pandorum.” Dave McNary of Variety goes out on a limb to say that “Surrogates” will win the weekend with something in the low twenty millions, but jolly Carl DiOrio of THR is honestly equivocal while leaning on his imaginary car horn. He’s probably not wrong when he says there’s just an awful lot of material out there chasing a limited number of autumn filmgoers. We shall see.
I thought I was done with these kinds of tidbits last night, but I can’t resist this one.
Stanley Tucci, one of my everyone’s favorite character actors who I featured here recently in a great bit from 1996’s “Big Night,” is joining the cast of a musical, “Burlesque!” The movie will also star Cher and Christina Aguilera, who presumably will be doing most of the singing between the two of them. To be helmed by actor-writer turned first-time director Steve Antin, the production is described by Variety‘s Mike Fleming as follows:
Aguilera plays an ambitious small-town girl with a big voice who finds success in a neo-burlesque club reminiscent of the nightclub in Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” Tucci will play the manager of the Sunset Boulevard club and the best friend and confidante of Tess (Cher), a former dancer who takes the young girl under her wing.
I’ve lived within a few miles of the Sunset Strip the vast majority of my life and, as far as I know, there is no club remotely like the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club on the strip or anywhere in Los Angeles — except, of course, if they’re actually doing a production of “Cabaret.” If I’m wrong and there is one, I definitely want to go. Now.
There are times when I really think I shouldn’t mention another single casting related story. There are so many, and the news so often changes several times before the first day of shooting, that it seems kind of pointless. Nevertheless, today brings us a few such items that sort of demand a little attention.
* I don’t think I’ve mentioned the word that’s been floating around for a while now that Brad Pitt will apparently be opposite Robert Downey, Jr. playing the role of Sherlock Holmes’ archnemisis, Prof. James Moriarity, aka “the Napoleon of Crime.” Though it appears he’ll only be in a cameo role, if at all, in the upcoming “Sherlock Holmes” film directed by Guy Ritchie, he’ll apparently be handling head villain duties in the already-planned for sequel — assuming, of course, that the first film is reasonably profitable.
If you can’t get enough of excessively early speculation, Spout’s Christopher Campbell was way ahead of me and rounded that all up as of yesterday. Pitt seems an unusual choice, but he’s always seemed to do better in character roles than leading man parts, and Downey is a genius at bringing a bit of character to leading man roles, so there’s a nice bit of symmetry here.
* If one or even two well known leads can’t guarantee box office success, why not try four and add a cult-comedy kicker? That seems to be thinking behind the latest collaboration of comedy writer-director Adam McKay and post “Land of the Lost“-still-megastar Will Ferrell.
As described by MTV’s Mike Wigler and THR‘s Mike Fleming, “The Other Guys” is a post “Hot Fuzz” spin on the buddy-cop genre in which Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “No Longer the Rock” Johnson will attempt to allow a day in the sun for presumably bumbling, non-supercop ne’er do wells Ferrell and Mark “It’s been Decades Since I’ve Been ‘Marky Mark!” Wahlberg. Only time will tell if this funky bunch — which also includes English comic Steve Coogan of “Tropic Thunder” and “24 Hour Party People” — delivers at the box office, but all five of these guys have proven they can be varying degrees of funny.
For some reason Jackson hasn’t had much luck with out-and-out comedies. (He once remarked wryly that, “They were all funny while we were making them.”) Personally, I’d like to see him break that particular curse. I’m sure he would too.
Just a few interesting items in recent movieworld news.
* Nikki Finke selects a possible future “toldja” candidate for the next Disney chairman. Toothy, bespectacled Rich Ross is not a name that’s likely to excite movie fans, as his background is pretty much Disney Channel material. Interesting comments on this one.
* Fresh on the heels of the bad box office of the graphic comedy horror flick, “Jennifer’s Body,” “Juno” authoress Diablo Cody’s next outing will be a major dialing down of the “edgy” factor, as she will be adopting the Sweet Valley High book series for the movies. I had only heard of the television series until I saw this item, but according to the Heat Vision blog, a humongous 150 of the books were published between 1983 and 2003 and 60 million copies are in print. That’s not small and reminds me of a female-skewing variant on classic pulp series based on characters like the Shadow and Doc Savage.
Attaching Cody to this project strikes me as a canny move. Not only is she apparently a fan, but giving it to a writer with a known “edge” might broaden the appeal to cynics and, possibly, males. I’m far from Cody’s biggest fan, but I’m still a lot more likely to check out the movie than I would have been otherwise.
* Also courtesy of Heat Vision, the Jack Kirby estate law suit against the Disney owned Marvel continues to play out. The THR blog’s Borys Kits and Matthew Belloni say that they’ve seen some of the legal “termination notices” and that this might be a more sweeping suit that was thought. To me, the really interesting portion of this is that one of the notices was for Spiderman, a character Kirby never drew that’s usually credited largely to the eccentric and brilliant Steve Ditko. However…
According to several accounts, Kirby, with his Captain America co-creator Joe Simon, did create a character called the Silver Spider, whose alter ego was an orphaned boy living with two elderly people, and that character was morphed into Spider-Man. Other accounts have the Silver Spider becoming the Fly for another comic company.
It gets a lot broader than that, with the Kirby claiming some possession of several Spidey supporting characters, but that may be just so much legal jockeying. We’ll see.
I’ve had a real keister-kicker of a day today — mostly in a good way. Nevertheless, I basically have no energy left and not a brain cell to spare for any wondrous words of filmic wisdom for you tonight. So, instead I present the cure for what ails me, energy wise. The leggy, chubby-cheeked dancer extraordinaire of the classic era, Ms. Ann Miller, here ably assisted by Betty Garrett, Jules Munshin, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.
This clip, by the way, is from “On the Town” which will be included in an upcoming Bullz-Eye feature. Stay tuned.
