Tag: Zombieland (Page 1 of 4)

It’s time for midweek movie news

I used to be disgusted, now I try to stay bemused…

* Yes, they weren’t kidding. Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise are teaming up to make a Les Grossman movie, declares Nikki Finke. I try never to prejudge films, and I really did think Cruise was hilarious in “Tropic Thunder.” However, I think writer Michael Bacall, Ben Stiller, and whoever winds up directing really have their work cut out for them in terms of this not turning into some kind of inverted ego-fest (“look at me — I’m willing to act all crazy!”) like what we saw on MTV a few nights back.

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* A new James L. Brooks romantic comedy by any name will probably be worth a look, and maybe better than that.

* It’s always seemed to me that the best part of the guilty pleasure appeal of “Entourage” — aside from Ari, Lloyd, and Johnny Drama, anyway — is the lightning fast pacing that nearly always leaves fans wanting more. Now, producer Mark Wahlberg is determined to give us more in the form of a movie to follow up from the conclusion of the television show. I’m concerned about whether he gets the concept of why you want to always leave an audience wanting more. If not, “Entourage”  could become the male equivalent of “Sex and the City” in theaters as well as the small screen.

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Kinda midweekish movie news

Again, plenty to do so I’ll try to keep things efficient this evening as I go over a few stories. Some of them, I must admit, are left overs from last night. Still, just like the way cold chicken can be even better after sitting in the fridge, maybe this news will have improved slightly with time.

* If we can believe the Wall Street Journal, it appears that the Weinstein/Burkle deal to kinda-sort retake Miramax is off, writes Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical.  Since the company is actually named after the parents of Harvey and Bob Weinstein, I imagine this might hurt a little.

Dominic Cooper in * John Slattery of “Mad Men” was one of the more pleasant surprises of “Iron Man 2” as a middle-aged (actually long-deceased) Howard Stark. Now, we know who’ll be playing Stark as a young man in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” It’s Dominic Cooper, the male ingenue of “Mamma Mia,” whose other recent parts includes playing Uday Hussein, so he’s definitely running the gamut.

* Jesse Eisenberg, who had a rather good weekend with two films in limited release, is reteaming with his “Zombieland” director, Ruben Fleischer. The picture sounds like a pretty fun black comedy about a bizarre bank robbery. Aziz Ansari is also in the film as a middle-school teacher which, right off the bat makes me laugh.

* Sam Rockwell as…Joe Christ?

* There’s very little reason to expect the Paul W.S. Anderson 3-D version “The Three Musketeers” is going to be anywhere near one of the better versions of the oft-filmed adventure tale, but I actually like the idea of elf-to-punching-bag actor Orlando Bloom as a bad ass villain. I’ve missed most of his non-elven performances, so I’m not yet a Bloom-hater. Anyhow, it’s good for actors to stretch a bit.

*  I might have been tempted to run clips from the ongoing “Star Wars” spoofery going on at “The Family Guy” only I have this strange, yet deep, inner conviction that Seth MacFarlane should in no way be confused with someone who makes funny shows. The clip from a table read embedded on a  post by Geoff Boucher only strengthens that conviction. I seriously do not understand what those people are laughing at. I’ve asked this question before and have never received a good answer: is the “joke” of his shows that all the jokes are bad?

* If the movie adventures of young Jack London get more kids to actually read Jack London, I think that’ll be great. Confession time: I’ve only read The Sea Wolf. The movie, despite having Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and Ida Lupino in it, didn’t begin to do it justice. Steling Hayden or Robert Ryan were the only men ever born to play the half-insane, ultra-macho, pseudo-intellectual control freak Wolf Larsen. Actually, Russell Crowe could not only play Wolf Larson, I suspect he is Wolf Larsen.

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Another weekend trailer — “Easy A”

Here’s a trailer that has been making the rounds and that I think is worth a look.

There’s some pretty contrived stuff in here but overall the writing — by playwright Bert V. Royal of the Peanuts-influenced “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” — certainly seems to be a cut above the usual. The same definitely applies to the first-rate cast, with such reliable supporting players as Stanley Tucci, who everyone seems to agree has the best one-liner in the trailer, and Patricia Clarkson supporting up-and-comer Emma Stone, who was such a hoot in “Zombieland” and also “Superbad.”

H/t Peter Sciretta.

It’s your end of week movie news dump…

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

* Champion poker player Chris Ferguson is making movies, writes Mike Fleming. He’s probably as well prepared for the business as anyone could be.

* I can’t help but think that this Anne Thompson item about two sets of brothers bidding for Miramax — one pair of them being Mira and Max’s sons, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and the other being the wealthy Tom and Alec Gores — is somehow related to an odd claim by actor Michael Madsen. In a radio interview, the voluble and consistently amusing Madsen stated that Quentin Tarantino‘s long shelved concept for a combined “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” prequel about his and John Travolta‘s characters has been revived. How? Well, it will now be a sequel and…well, you have to go over to Peter Hall’s post at Cinematical, but it also involves two pairs of siblings.

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Do I buy this? Well, it does sounds like Tarantino in that it’s kind of a doubling up of a gimmick used by a favorite director of his to overcome a similar sequel obstacle.  (If anyone out there has seen John Woo’s great 1980’s Hong Kong pistol operas, “A Better Tomorrow” and “A Better Tomorrow II,” they’ll know what I’m getting at.) Still, the whole thing has a shaggy dog story vibe to it that I suspect means we’ll never, ever see a “Vega Brothers” movie of any sort. I also get the vague feeling that it’s just possible Mr. Madsen and/or Tarantino is having us all on, as the Brits say. Still, I’m sure Mr. Tarantino’s trips to Tijuana can have a way of stimulating the imagination.

* Anne Thompson also brings up a very real issue that we Angelenos will recognize regarding the move of the Los Angeles Film Festival to Downtown L.A. L.A.’s downtown is in the middle of, I guess, a rebirth of sorts, but the issues associated with setting it there are legion. We’ll start with the exorbitant cost of parking.

* The porno “Big Lebowski” is upon us. Great production values for porn but, otherwise, I can’t say the (sex free) trailer looks in any way “good,” though I guess Tom Byron does qualify as the Jeff Bridges of the porn world. (Ron Jeremy is it’s Pacino/De Niro, I suppose.) Also, spoofs of comedies almost never work. Still, kind of gives a whole new meaning to “Achievers.”

* I’ve never heard anyone say they miss Michael Ovitz and his noxious effect on Hollywood back in the eighties and nineties. However, Nikki Finke’s lingering venom towards him fifteen years after his departure from the scene is utterly pointless.

* Could it be? An Asian-American comic headlining his own comedy and his character is named neither “Harold” nor “Kumar”? Yes, maybe. The very funny Indian-American stand-up/actor Aziz Ansari, who first came on my radar screen championing the cause of movie consumer rights, could be in the new comedy from “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer, writes Jeff Schneider of the Wrap.

* RIP Meinhart Raabe who has passed on at age 94. He was the Coroner of Munchkin City, so I’m not sure who’ll confirm his passing. (I’m so sorry for that, really, but I’m sure the late Mr. Raabe had a sense of humor about that kind of thing, assuming that what I wrote qualifies as something resembling humor.)

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Cameron attacks Beck! Beck attacks Cameron! Kevin Smith attacks me (and every other critic in the world)!! MI:4 gets jiggy with directorial possibilities!!!! It’s auteurs gone wild!

I was honestly going to take tonight off to focus on some other stuff I need to get done but then Kevin Smith, James Cameron and, er, Glenn Beck — yes, you heard me, Glenn freaking Beck, have made that impossible.  Between the three of them, I could probably do five thousand words alone. Just let’s say there’s a whole lotta lameness going on. On the other hand, Michael Bay is actually making as much sense as Cameron these days. It’s a weird world we live in. And that’s not all,  to wit…

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* In a massive example of what this liberal feels falls under the category of “dude, I’m not sure you’re helping,” while talking to the press, James Cameron launched into a somewhat humourous expletive filled tirade against Glenn Beck, the newest and by far the looniest resident of the Fox News asylum. Naturally, this was grist for the mill of John Nolte over at Andrew Breitbart’s frequently even more unhinged far right film blog, Big Hollywood.

Now, it would probably take me the aforementioned five thousands words to explain why the vast majority of what Nolte ordinarily writes is, I believe objectively and factually, complete horse puckey. However, here there is a definite kernel of truth in noting that Cameron’s decision to release an initially stripped down “Avatar” single disc with zero extras on Earth Day, naturally to be followed by more deluxe editions in the future, doesn’t exactly fit in with the environmentalist message of the film or Cameron’s claims to be not too terribly concerned with making scads of money. Though, to be fair, Fox — owned by Rupert Murdoch — does have something to say here as well.

Of course, Glenn Beck has responded and, watching said response, during the first half I was thinking: “Good work, James Cameron, you’ve given Glen f–king Beck a chance to look sane.” But, fortunately for my view of the universe, Beck’s need to over-dramatize, even in an attempt at humor, prevented him from looking too stable or stable at all.

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Steven Zeitchik of the oh-so-liberal (in comparison to Big Hollywood) L.A. Times provides the video and some context involving Cameron’s involvement in a 2007 documentary touching on the historical reality of the New Testament. Big Hollywood provides the same video and some very different context on the same film. I simply don’t have the time to investigate that one right now.

Three things I’m sure of, however: 1. One of these men is a gifted egomaniac; 2. the other is a former “Morning Zoo” shock jock who has found the only job on the planet requiring even less intelligence and sense of responsibility; 3. the best way to turn the public off the entire issue of the environment is for James Cameron and Glenn Beck to have a debate about it.

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