Category: Movies (Page 332 of 498)

A Chat with Kevin Nealon

June 28, 2009 /

Kevin Nealon’s been a familiar face on television since his days as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” but in recent years, he’s become more known for his work on Showtime’s long-running series, “Weeds.” Those who can’t afford the premium stations, however, may also see him pop up as the host of TBS’s “World’s Funniest Commercials” specials. Won’t you please join us for…

Kevin Nealon: Hey, Will! How are you doing?

Bullz-Eye: Hey, Kevin, good to talk to you!

KN: Yeah, you, too!

BE: So this is not your first time around the block for TBS.

KN: No, it’s not! It’s starting to add up. (Laughs)

BE: So how did you come to hook up with them in the first place?

KN: Oh, gee, let me see if I can remember. It’s been about…oh, I’m guessing eight years now? Seven or eight years. I think they just kind of came to my agents with this offer to host this show, and I always loved funny commercials. You know, one of the reasons – like a lot of people – that I watch the Super Bowl is for the commercials during it, so I was into that. And, also, I went to school for marketing and learned a lot about commercials then, and I was going to be in advertising, but instead I went into comedy. So there’s a big interest there for me.

BE: Do you have a favorite commercial from this most recent special that really stands out?

KN: Well, there are a couple that I like. There’s one…I think it’s for Berlitz Language School, where a guy’s on the phone and he’s trying to find out how to spell “Def Leppard” because he’s doing a tattoo on somebody’s back. And it’s all in subtitles, but the woman goes, “Do you mean ‘deaf’ as in hearing, or ‘death’ as in dying?” He goes, “Um, I’m not sure.” Then he looks to the person’s back, where he’s just made the tattoo “deaf.” That’s a cool one, and there’s another one for Tabasco that’s from Belgium, where they show a streaker running across a soccer field, the cops are chasing him, and then they stop the action and say, “An hour earlier,” and they show him in a restaurant having Tabasco sauce. They kind of back up the whole thing, from the soccer field leading back up to when he used the Tabasco.

BE: So where did you film this special? I know you film them on location in various places.

KN: Oh, yeah, we’ve done them everywhere! Well, not everywhere, but we’ve done them in California, in Paris, New York. This one happens to be in Chicago, which is great, because I love Chicago.

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Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Interviews, Movie Comedies, Movies, TV, TV Comedies

Box office wrap-up: “Transformers” sequel blows up real good

June 28, 2009 /

The news this week is about as simple and unsurprising as you can get: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has done some pretty spectacular business, netting an estimate of $201.2 million, just shy of the all-time record $203.8 million “The Dark Knight” earned on its initial five-day release. Could that $2.6 million difference be the difference between outstanding reviews and really bad ones? Nah, but I still wouldn’t be surprised to see a big drop off here, or maybe that’s wishful thinking based on my oft-repeated feelings about this particular franchise.

As per Variety, “The Proposal” came in at the #2 spot, dropping 45% from its opening for $18.5 million in its second week. And this summer’s ongoing audience and critical favorites continue to do outstanding business. “The Hangover” is thought to have taken in $17.2 million in its third week, while “Up” continues to exercise the astonishing power of the Pixar touch in the #4 spot with about $13 million in its fifth week.

This week’s only non-“Transformers” wide release, “My Sister’s Keeper” (referred to by newly rich superblogger Nikki Finke as “simpering,” but which our own Jason Zingale actually kind of liked), came in at the #5 spot with an estimated $12 million. As we mentioned last time, that’s actually a couple million more than some expected.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, It also wasn’t a bad weekend on the indie side. The critically acclaimed Iraq war action-suspense drama, “The Hurt Locker,” performed well in its four theaters on the coasts, netting about $3600 per screen. In wider release, the high pedigree prestige comedy, “Away We Go,” perhaps benefited from the TV appeal of stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, and got into the #10 spot with $1.7 million in just under 500 theaters.

Back tomorrow with more on the about to be concluded LAFF…

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Reviews

Sunday Movie Moment: “Thriller”

June 28, 2009 /

I suppose that technically rock videos aren’t really movies in the sense of being a theatrical motion picture, but “Thriller” sure feels like a mini-movie, and it’s homages to classic horror — complete with a rap of sorts by Vincent Price — are still scary, even mixed with Michael Peter’s and Michael Jackson funky choreography. Undoubtedly a still strong piece of movie making by John Landis, and one of the late Mr. Jackson’s most important efforts,

I’ll be back with the box office numbers later today, and I’ll be wrapping up my coverage of the Los Angeles Film Festival, which ends tonight, over the next couple of days.

External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Horror Movies, Movies, Video

Shameless commerce with “I Sell the Dead”

June 27, 2009 /

I usually like my horror best when it’s well mixed with comedy. Moreover, this LAFF selection has gotten some good responses elsewhere, but I’m sorry to say that “I Sell the Dead” was my first real disappointment of the festival. It’s a fairly classic example of the kind of film where the cinematic “frosting” is sickly delightful, but where the actual movie “cake” beneath it is mostly a dud. Written, directed, and edited by Glen McQuaid on his first feature, the film is largely told in flashback as career grave robber/ghoul and alleged killer Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan, “Lost” and LOTR) is encouraged to recount his lengthy career by a fearsome but jovial cleric (geekfilm stalwart Ron Perlman).

Young Arthur (Daniel Manche) begins his profession under the tutelage of experienced corpse dealer Willie Grimes (cult/indie horror regular Larry Fessenden). Willie’s a rough sort and ready to do young Arthur in to curry favor with his fearsome main customer, an evil scientist who pays mostly in blackmail (the memorable Angus Scrimm, a.k.a., the terrifying “Tall Man” from the “Phantasm” series). But at heart he’s no murderer and the two become close friends as they eventually branch out from simple grave robbing to the commercial possibilities of dealing with the bodies of vampires, zombies, and assorted other deceased creatures, both undead and unusual. Eventually, Arthur’s ghoulishly sexy Lady MacBeth of a girlfriend (the terrific Brenda Cooney) complicates matters just a bit.

Writer/director/editor McQuaid is a designer and effects artist with a keen classic film and EC comics-inspired visual sense and a gift for horror-based humor, but the story he comes up with here is episodic at best and lacks anything resembling a spine. Moreover, while there are some wonderful gags and genuinely creepy moments starting about half-way through the film, it’s a long slog getting there and a fairly long feeling slog after.

I share McQuaid’s affection for the modestly budgeted horror/comedy/camp classics of old and “I Sell the Dead” is a nicely designed homage. However, without any clear emotional spine to the story, the director’s strong visuals and obvious enthusiasm for the genre, strong acting from the entire cast, and terrific score by composer Jeff Grace, sadly doesn’t add up to very much entertainment. Still, I know that fans of the endangered art of comic horror will want to seek this one out anyway. I hope they get more fun out of it than I did.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movies, Reviews

More LAFF: How do you mend a “Paper Heart”?

June 27, 2009 /

If documentaries necessarily involve a potential for abuse, simply because the perceived reality of film is so open to manipulation through editing and other tricks of the movie trade, documentary/fiction hybrids offer the opportunity for extreme confusion and manipulation. And, boy, is that the case here.

While the actual write-ups for “Paper Heart” were vague about the premise, a fellow LAFF-goer casually told me that it involved some kind of recreation of the romance between comedian/performance artist Charlyne Yi (“Knocked Up“) and the future of comic understatement, Michael Cera. Thus, watching the film, I became convinced I was seeing some kind of fictionalized retelling of a real-life romance. I am informed, however, in David Poland’s interview and from the post film Q&A that the relationship in the film is utterly and entirely fictional, so I assumed I was wrong again and the pair don’t date and never have. But after a bit more research I have information that indicates that Yi and Cera do have a relationship, just not in the one the movie. Except that the movie deals with what are Yi’s supposedly real feelings about love and how could that not affect her real or imagined romance with Cera? Of course, that’s none of my business and that’s probably a big part of the point.

The whole layers of fiction and reality thing got even more complicated when, at the post-screening Q&A, cowriter-director Nicholas Jasenovec stated categorically that story portions of the film were fictional while the documentary portions were not. Fine, but then a pre-teen boy who appears in the film opining on romance joins the discussion and, asked about he was found for “Paper Heart,” he and Jasenovic state that he was found through a casting process to join what appears to be a conversation with more or less random school children, and he is an actor.

When Jean Luc Godard uttered his most quoted line, that cinema was truth, 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie, I think this is kind of what he was talking about. But, so what?

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Documentaries, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movies, Reviews

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