Anchorman 2: Channel 4 News Team set to Reassmble

28 Mar

‘Ron Burgundy’ stops by Conan to play the jazz flute, and announce that the sought after Anchorman sequel is a go

Will Ferrell, er, ‘Ron Burgundy’ stopped by Conan tonight to insult the lanky, red-headed host, and dropped a breaking news bulletin that the very-much-sought-after sequel to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, is indeed a go. In the clip below, which was leaked hours before the talk show’s airing, the well-groomed newsman came out playing a little jazz flute, mocked Conan’s personal appearance, praised sidekick Andy Richter’s mojo, and dropped the sequel nugget that made fans and Facebook all aflutter.

While appearing solo and with no mention of the rest of the cast, Deadline.com announced earlier that the film was on, and will be returning stars Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell and David Koechner, to round out the supporting cast. No word on whether Christina Applegate will return as love interest ‘Veronica Corningstone’, but details are still few, and if proper sequel etiquette stays in tact, there will probably be a new leading lady to capture ‘Burgundy’s’ heart.

Now, what will the film be like? Again, no word yet, but a 2011 article quoted Ferrell as saying executives at Paramount were “being idiots” for passing on the idea of shooting a sequel, and if there’s any truth to the rumor that the new film was to be set on a moon base in space, I kinda don’t blame the studio. However, it begs the question, what movie sequel formula will the new ‘Anchorman’ follow? Here’s a suggested list:

-Take it where the last movie left off, and set it in the high-powered 80′s
-Set it in the NOW, and call it ‘Grumpy Old Anchormen’
-Pull an Austin Powers 2 and add a time-travel element
-Pull a Caddyshack 2 and have the news team open up a miniature golf course
-Pull a ‘Baywatch Nights’ and have the news team open up a paranormal detective agency
-Or, (sigh)….set the whole thing in space

Whatever they do, they probably shouldn’t mess with the formula too much. People loved the characters because of the element we found them in, and the whole movie was basically a rip on the gloriously gaudy decade of the 70′s (Ron Burgundy making ‘rich mahogany’ jokes in any other setting just wouldn’t feel as apropos). So, my suggestion, set it in the 80′s, push the sleeves up on your blazers, and have fresh take on a new decade that is just rife with comedy/parody. Only time will tell, but until then, stay classy Moon Base Number 4 (see, that just doesn’t sound right!….).

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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

17 Jan

This past year marked the 10th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, and Post-9/11 Hollywood has been all about Iraq-war documentaries, Michael Moore and ‘How long do we have to wait before we can make a fictional 9/11 movie?’ Which is actually tough because the documentaries started as soon as the first plane hit the North Tower, and Michael Moore had to wait until George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, but how long did Hollywood have to wait before it could successfully make a dramatic 9/11 movie without being accused of treading on a national tragedy? Well apparently five years, as the first major ‘based-off-actual-events’ film to tackle the subject was Paul Greengrass‘ United 93, released in April of 2006, which told the story of the doomed fourth plane that crash-landed in rural Pennsylvania, and then again four months later with the Nicolas Cage-driven World Trade Center, which focused more on the first responders at ground zero on the day of. Then in the years after we got Adam Sandler‘s Reign Over Me and Robert “Edward” Pattinson‘s (shudder) Remember Me, that told completely fictional stories that somewhat revolved around the events (and were both not very good movies). But now there’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, opening nationwide over ten years after the fact, that begs the question “How much time has to pass before it’s okay to publicly hate a movie about 9/11…?”

The movie in question centers around Tom Hanks, who works inside the World Trade Center and perishes that day with nearly 3,000 others, and the wife (Sandra Bullock) and son (newcomer Thomas Horn) who are left to grieve. While the mother-and-son relationship looks to be stilted at best, father-and-son seem to have an intellectual bond, as both are inquisitive about their surroundings, and keep each other on their toes with riddles and scavenger-hunt games that they presumably keep mom out of. Which in turn makes dad’s death that much more traumatic, since the mother seems to be seen as a secondary member of the household, and since the tragedy itself was so senseless and inconceivable. But just as his world is crumbling all around him, the young man finds one more quest left by his father, almost from beyond-the-grave, wherein the key to unlocking it seems impossible to find, yet the answer that lies forever on the horizon will put the boy at peace with dad’s death, and be the last bit of fatherly wisdom that will prepare the boy for his new life as a man……

Give me a break!

The trailer starts off with father and son playing “reconnaissance” games with one another and practicing karate in the living room, which is believable enough; who doesn’t think Tom Hanks would be the best dad in the world? But then he dies, and son Thomas Horn goes on this massive quest, presumably throughout all five burrows of New York City, to find the one lock that fits the one key left to him by dear-old dad, which holds a life-changing revelation that provides all the answers he’ll need, as a pre-teen who has to begin to live the rest of his life without a father. That may sound cynical, but maybe it’s the fact that they set the whole thing to the tune of Bono and U2 that makes me groan so incredibly loud.

My biggest contention lies not with the story, which I imagine was a wonderful novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, but in the execution, which seems to come off as overwrought. In what world does a 10-year-old travel around the biggest city in the world, meeting a kaleidoscope of strange people, of all ages, and of all colors? There was a woman in real life who let her 9-year-old ride the subway by himself, and the whole country tried to crucify her. And then there’s that mystery of a key that could open up the secrets of the universe, or just as easily a sock drawer. I mean, how many of us still have keys to old apartments that for one reason or another we still have lying around?  Plus, that kid just kind of annoys me. I mean, does every syllable need to be pronounced in every sentence? I know there’s hyper-intellectual kids out there (this one himself was found by producers after appearing on an episode of Kids Week Jeopardy!), but there’s a fine line between being precocious, and being obnoxious. Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone and Uncle Buck was a lovable scamp; that kid from Jerry McGuire was a delight! Jake Lloyd as a young Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace….? Obnoxious.

So, will it suck?

Yes. When I go to a movie that is going to make me cry, I don’t want to be able to physically see the producers just off screen squeezing the tears out of a scene. I want a natural arc to get me to be surprised that I’m so emotionally invested in a movie that I’m literally blubbering like a baby. This film seems like it’s forced, and yes, a lot of it stems from that U2 song in the trailer. You could play “Where the Streets Have No Name” while I’m running to the mailbox and you’d think that I just got a letter from a long-lost love, or that I just won a Nobel Prize for curing cancer, when in actuality it was just a bunch of porno mags. Don’t squeeze me. And yes, you may call me out for my cynical take on what is supposed to be a deeply moving movie about a young boy who loses his father on the worst day in Homeland Security, but hasn’t 9/11 made us all a bit more cynical? At least I’m honest about it.

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The Dark Knight Rises – Trailer #2 Goes Viral!

19 Dec

Has it already been three years? Well, three years, five months and one day to be exact, but ever since we sat in the theater on opening day to watch The Dark Knight, the second installment in the amazing ‘Batman’ trilogy Christopher Nolan is putting together, we’ve been waiting patiently for the thrid and final film, to complete what is looking to be the best movie arc since the original Star Wars (let’s be honest, Indiana Jones took a dive in Temple of Doom, and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was just waaaay too long and complex). Well, we are now one day closer to getting the final film, as an official trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has hit the web, and we couldn’t be happier to voice a collective “Hell Yes!”

A couple months back we got just a peek at the first teaser, showing Gary Oldman‘s ‘Commissioner Gordon’ painfully speaking from a hospital bed, and flashing a glimpse of main baddie ‘Bane’ played by Tom Hardy. A tease if I ever saw one! Combined with The Dark Knight regularly airing on basic cable, we felt it was high time the producers gave us a bit more, and a full trailer we now have. Eerily opening with a boy singing the National Anthem at a ‘Gotham Rogues’ football game, it sets the tone for a movie that promises no one will be left standing by the end of this thing, and we couldn’t be more excited. With Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler Alfred apologizing for failing to protect our hero, a memorial service for ‘Two-Face’ D.A. Harvey Dent, and an ominous warning from a so-far de-clawed Catwoman (played by Anne Hathaway) that would send shivers up the spines of the 1%, we’re confident Nolan’s got quite a movie brewing here. Oh, and not to mention Hardy’s ‘Bane’ blows up an entire football field in front of 80,000 strong; the Rogues will probably be playing the rest of their home games at Gotham U.

An uprising appears to be in the works in this one. With Hathaway’s ‘Selina Kyle/Catwoman’ whispering an address in Bruce Wayne’s ear on behalf of the have-nots, and Bane leading a rousing, AK-47 brandishing band of busted out convicts, the streets that were once safe under the watchful eye of the Bat, will run red with blood in his absence. With Nolan coming out and saying this film takes place 8 years after the last one left off, it appears Bruce has been actually running his companies rather than sleeping during board meetings, and the proletariat have gotten sick of watching the rich get richer and fatter at their expense. A scene in which a fancy house party gets trashed, and tuxedo clad guests get drug out by their bowties, only enforces that maybe Nolan is pulling an “art imitates life” maneuver; expect to see Occupy tents alongside rabid fanboys, waiting outside theaters on opening day.

But what’s the endgame here? The trailer clearly says this will be the “epic conclusion” and a final showdown on the steps of city hall between Bane and an older Batman could prove that this will be a showdown unlike any other. We’re playing for keeps in this one, winner take all, and the whole city is up for grabs. What happens to Gordon who is stuck in that hospital bed from the first teaser? Which side will Catwoman officially fall on? And who is flying that awesome Bat-plane; the one that looks like a stealth helicopter on steroids?! But more importantly, what happens to the Bat, who is out of practice, out of shape, and out of sequels? With the whole of Gotham depending on him, can he save the day and restore peace, society, and economic equality?

So, will it suck?

NO! A hundred thousand times No. With a pedigree like this, and such a kick-ass trailer, is there any way they can miss? Nolan’s built a franchise that could run on auto-pilot and still be more entertaining than Green Lantern, The Avengers and all of the X-Men combined, plus have plenty left over to blow out every other movie hitting screens this summer. Knowing his attention to detail and cerebral history, we’ve just gotta believe he pulled out all the stops to make this one just as good as the last, and even though the deck is stacked against him without the benefit of a Joker running around, The Dark Knight Rises will come out on top as one of the most entertaining movies in all of 2012, and should fit neatly in the textbooks as the proper way to make an action movie. It will be a bittersweet end to a great reboot, but I personally can’t wait, and I would sit through a thousand horrible movies this winter and spring just to watch this trailer over and over and over again. Plus, was that a cameo by Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward…???

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Will It Suck is on the Radio!

11 Nov

Listen Live every Friday at 12:40pm ET/11:40pm CT for the weekly radio segment, where Josh from Will It Suck? breaks down the weekend’s new movies, based solely on the trailers. Hosted by The Steve Cochran Show on The Big 550 KTRS. Tune in Live Here!

Steve Cochran - even better looking in person!

And if you missed it, check back every afternoon here to listen to the replay.

Avengers Unite!

11 Oct

The Long Awaited Avengers Trailer

Some would say it was the comic book nerds who most anticipated the release of The Avengers first trailer.  I suspect those who didn’t admit to drooling over the idea of a bunch of badasses joining forces were in denial and have probably been set straight by their psychologists by now.

Paramount kept teasing its fans by pushing back release dates of the trailer.  Now that it’s here, I’m not sure what they had to tweak to make it better.  It starts out with the disposable military and police that prove useless in hero movies.  They fire their impotent bullets at a target in the sky, I’m sure is an enormous death machine.  As the yet unseen monster/robot marches, the street erupts with fire that sends cars airborne.  Cut to The Avengers’ secret facility that I’m sure will be host to the most amazing training montage we’ve ever seen.

It looks like the big villain is Loki, Thor’s envious brother.  This isn’t much of a surprise if you saw both of this summer’s hits, Thor and Captain America.  There were hints in both those blockbusters if you were paying attention.  Loki was the best part about Thor if you don’t count staring into Natalie Portman’s seductive eyes.  No offense to Thor, but villains are much more interesting and Loki was beautifully rendered.  From Odin’s betrayal to his treasonous plans, we were able to connect the dots from dutiful servant to traitor.

King nerd Joss Whedon helms this action and hero packed movie.  Although he’s had some duds; creating Dollhouse for TV and writing Alien: Resurrection for film, he’s had super hits with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.  I know Firefly didn’t do so well in the ratings but man, does it have a cult following.  Whedon will do this movie justice and utilize his talent exactly as they need be.

Marvel has spent a lot of time and energy making its movies not be terrible.  It’s almost like it respects the fan base that’s made its titles successes, thus leading to the chance to make more money on the movies.  I’m going to go ahead and assume that not all of Marvel’s fans are happy with the films it’s produced.  But I don’t think anyone can say it is forsaking its foundation.  Comic book movies are hard to make well.  Depending on how long the characters have been around, there could be a hundred different plot twists and turns.  It is impossible to incorporate every bit of canon into a two and half hour movie.  Marvel has done well to protect its babies and has done well to find new fans.

WillItSuck?…No.  I admit ensemble movies are hard to pull off.  There’s more than one star competing for the audience’s attention.  Usually what happens is the star power is diluted until it’s evident the studio could have saved a ton of money and made a better movie had they gone with relative unknowns.  But for every few Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve (Why are the shitty ones about holidays?), there are the Magnificent Seven and Boogie Nights.  The more demonstrative characters will get the appropriate amount of screen time and the lesser characters will balance it out.  These characters have been established in either their own franchises or have been a common thread throughout each movie.  We won’t get lost like in Armageddon.  It was difficult to care about any character because they were getting killed off so fast we barely knew their names.  One critique though, do we really need The Hulk?  Two fine actors have sucked in the role, now we’re going to offer up a third?  Doesn’t seem right.  Oh well.

The Avengers / May 2012

The Avengers / May 2012

Red Lights: Point/Counterpoint

20 Sep

A new trailer is out for Red Lights, the Robert De Niro movie where he…um…sits on a bed, and….like, truth is stranger than fiction, or something? Experts Josh and Joe hash it out in this week’s “Point/Counterpoint”.

Joe: Ok, first off, the whole idea is to base my judgment off of only the trailer.  This means I will ignore what an IMDb search could give me regarding cast, director, plot, etc…So, that being said, based ONLY on this trailer for Red Lights – my opinion is: WHAT!?  Seriously, the pacing of the trailer is nice.  It’s not too fast and not too slow.  It builds up a rhythm that keeps my attention.  But the pay-off and reveal is nothing more than Robert De Niro looking creepy.  My very first impression is that the movie will SUCK – because the trailer is a very cheap tease at NOTHING.

Josh: You mention a “tease” and that’s just what this is – a “teaser” trailer (industry speak). But yeah, there’s one shot; that’s it, that’s all they give us. But there’s also a lot of build-up. Three quarters of the trailer is increasingly suspenseful music over voiceless text narration that repeats buzz words and phrases (that curiously mirror the plots of recent popular movies), and give us De Niro, sitting on a bed, turning around. Yeah, it looks creepy, but he also looked creepy in Meet the Parents, and those were supposed to be funny movies (okay, the first one was pretty good). My problem with the trailer is that yes, it gives us NOTHING, but what does “Red Lights” mean? Are they street lights? Tailights? Is it a UFO thing? And what’s with the “coded” language in the background of all the text shots? It’ll probably play somewhere in the plot, but let’s be honest, the little hints we got DON’T justify me being extra curious to find what this movie is all about; it more just pisses me off that they held so much back.

Joe: But let’s not gloss over your mention of MEET THE PARENTS.  Thanks to Bob’s (industry slang) recent choices of film we are left with a creepy De Niro that doesn’t really have any impact.  Imagine, just for a minute, that we are back in the late 90′s.  In a world without Meet the Parents or Rocky and Bullwinkle.  A world where De Niro hasn’t tried to ANALYZE anything yet.  In this world – right up to the boiling point of brilliance known as HEAT – De Niro had us by the balls.  The guy could do no wrong.  Sure, he had a few dogs leading up to Meet the Parents (Frankenstein? Yikes)  and even found a way to still have a decent flick sneak out after – my opinion is that The Score (2001) & City by the Sea (2002) are his last good movies – but there is a reason and a point to all of this rambling.  Here it is: Robert De Niro used to be able to hold enough weight (again, think back to the 90′s) to make a TEASER trailer like this actually work.  And, as long as we are throwing our minds into the 90′s, we could argue that a TEASER trailer like this one for Red Lights would seriously play 10 times BETTER in 1996 than it does now, 15 years later.  Why?  Because of the “buzz words and phrases”

Josh: “No matter what you think you know…”

Joe: …that are sprinkled throughout…

Josh: “No matter what you believe in…”

Joe: …the creepy build up…

Josh: “The truth is the most dangerous illusion of all…”

Joe: …to an old man’s face.  I mean, think about it – the text that tempts us in this teaser could easily be thrown in front of The Matirx all the way up to Inception and be selling the same movie.  So, after a bunch of nonsense and rambling, I’m trying to drive home that this concept of a trailer could really work…but the words and phrases need to be (and this will be tough for hollywood writers) original AND we need a creepy face that belongs to an actor who could give us the “wow factor.”  And since I don’t want to leave you assuming that I don’t have a plan I will tell you whose face could have given us the “wow factor” without us rolling our eyes:  Michael Keaton.  You throw Keaton’s mug up there and we’re all going to be whispering, “Was that Michael Keaton?”  “Man, he looked creepy!”  “What was the last movie he did?”  “I want to see that movie!”

Josh: Oh Jesus, again with the Michael Keaton?! You know, Michael Keaton had a chance to be creepy in the 90′s and that was Beetlejuice. You know what, scratch that; I think the snowman in Jack Frost freaked me out more than anything. I mean, what they hell was that? On the first warm day of the year I’m going to have to watch my dad die all over again, in a horrible, agonizing, Raiders of the Lost Ark face-melting way? Yikes indeed! But back to De Niro, yes, you make a good point, how can we ever take him seriously again? Whether he’s a cry-baby mob boss, or appearing in an Eddie Murphy movie, he’s lost that edge, and “Travis Bickle” or “Jimmy Conway” seem like distant memories (not to mention a young “Vito Corleone,” which frankly, is unrecognizable at this point). Does that mean that Bob is gone for good? No, not at all. It’s just this trailer looks like a cheap thriller that’s been done before, and if it does end up that he’s some suspenseful, supernatural code breaker, then no thank you; I’ve already seen The DaVinci Code. I smell a paycheck movie…

Last Words:

Joe: Fine, fine, fine.  You smell a paycheck movie.  I smell a potentially GREAT movie that will NOT find an audience until word of mouth and DVD because they are trying to sell the film on the mug of De Niro – and all that will do is keep people from bucking up and taking a chance because they are still scarred from Hide and Seek.

Josh: And I say it’s going to suck, because they’re resorting to a gimmick in the TEASER trailer, and the only gimmick you need in a Robert De Niro film, is Bob’s fine acting. And besides, when’s the last time you enjoyed being teased by and old-ass Robert De Niro on a bed…?

Moneyball

24 Aug

Ah, sports movies. They’re a dime a dozen, and they all tend to be tremendously inspiring (even the funny ones), because as we all know, it’s not whether we win or loose, it’s how much you tug at the heartstrings of sports fans, already used to the ups and downs of the game. Oh, and also how much money you make at the box office. Whether it be about baseball, football or even robot boxing (yes, there is a “robot boxing” movie coming out this fall (and yes, it looks a bit “Rock’em, Sock’em”)), one thing remains – there will always be a winner, and there will always be a loser; a metaphor for life, that if you work hard, you can overcome anything. All sports movies get schmaltzy toward the end, but that’s why we love them, which bodes well for Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, as front office men trying to build a winning baseball team in this Fall’s upcoming Moneyball.

Based on the true story and best-selling sports economics book of the same name, Moneyball follows Pitt as Billy Beane, the real-life GM of the Oakland Athletics, who despite having his hands tied with a paltry sum of money to buy a big name roster, put together a winning team by using a new system of acquiring undervalued players. With his numbers-crunching sidekick, played by Hill, Beane was able to look at the stats to find the biggest performers on the field, who weren’t necessarily ready to be asking for big, million dollar paychecks. And history showed that despite having a small payroll, he really was able to make it to the playoffs four years in-a-row in the early 2000′s, a feat that left the MLB guessing how he did it, and copying him ever since. We have to tip our pro-model caps to his ingenuity.

The movie, though, kinda comes off looking like Major League. As Beane is putting together his ragamuffins, we get the sense we’re watching our beloved Cleveland Indians from that late eighties film. As a lifetime catcher, we watch them try to transition Scott Hatteberg (played by Chris Pratt) to first base, as he’s got a great on-base percentage, but can’t stop a ball to save his life (a la Roger Dorn). Their pitching is more likely to hit the back stop than the strike zone (“Wild Thing” Ricky Vaughn), and there’s even a shot of the guy with double knee braces, which is almost lifted entirely from Jake Taylor’s double ice packs. But, to be fair, this is a different movie, and let’s be honest, The Bad News Bears pretty much did it first.

But halfway through the trailer, we get the “this isn’t working” scenes; people questioning his unorthodox decisions, a coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman)  that wants patiently for this trick to work, and Beane’s young daughter asking if her dad was really going to be fired. But, as these things normally do, the team starts coming together. Wild plays and, more importantly, wins start to manifest on the field, and fans begin to rally behind their A’s. The schmaltzy music kicks in (there’s that schmaltz again!), and we’re left to believe, “hey, they might actually pull this one off!” Could the daring decision to, oh I don’t know, actually put together a good team, finally pay off? In Tom Berenger’s words, the only thing left to do, is win the whole f**king thing.

So, will it suck?

No. Despite the heavy comparisons to Major League, this doesn’t seem to be a re-tread, or at the very least, not one that’ll take away from the film. There’s a handful of comedic parts in the trailer, that should pepper throughout the movie (hey, it’s baseball, not brain surgery!), and even though we know the A’s don’t win the World Series (or make it past the first round of playoffs), we know that somehow they’re going to stick this one out, and that yes, hard work and smarts will always trump big pocketbooks….to an extent. Watching Pitt (who looks surprisingly like Robert Redford) have a go at the majors looks promising, Jonah Hill looks toned down (which is a refreshing change of pace), and Hoffman as manager Art Howe looks to be the strong silent type. And have we mentioned earlier drafts of script were written by Aaron Sorkin, who worked wonders on the biographical The Social Network, 2010′s best film? Not to mention Pratt, who is dynamite in TV’s “Parks and Recreation”, director Bennett Miller, who had a ball with Hoffman in Capote, and co-screenwriter Steven Zaillian, Oscar-winning scribe of Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, and the upcoming The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They’ve nearly enough to field their own baseball team, and with Moneyball, they might not win Hollywood’s World Series, but you can be sure they’ve got enough juice for the playoffs.

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In Theaters This Weekend: Summer Movie Season is Over, Part II

19 Aug

Last week we claimed that the summer movie season was over. Every year, twice a year, Hollywood dumps the dead corpses of rotten movies on us, and much like the rubbish we got just after New Year’s (does Nicolas Cage ring a bell?), the end of summer is always signaled by studios giving up, and giving us trash movies that just had no chance of standing up to any movie that came out between May 1st and July 31st (and that includes The Smurfs). Last week we thought we were hitting rock bottom with stoner comedy 30 Minutes or Less, and what we can only hope is the final Final Destination movie. However, we might have called it too soon. Yes, as Hollywood always does, they’ve topped themselves this week, with an even larger (4 movies), smellier trash heap, and they expect us to continue to buy into this. No thanks, but without further ado, let’s take a look at how low Hollywood can go.

Almost as reliable as the mail, a throwaway movie in Hollywood is almost always a remake, either of a famous TV show your parents watched in the sixties and seventies, or a cherished, albeit cult film, from the 80′s. So, no doubt this week, we get two of them; one’s a vampire flick looking to capture the teen audience, and the other is a remake of Conan the Barbarian, which will likely be seen by nobody. In the “there’s a monster living right next door” movie category, Fright Night came out in the mid-eighties, to an audience clamoring for campy horror movies like Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street series; it wore its camp on its sleeve, and grew a cult following from kids growing up on catching it on TV and video. The remake, which stars Colin Farrell and up-and-comer Anton Yelchin, doesn’t quite cheese it up, and doesn’t quite capture that fun that a cult film usually needs to garner repeat viewings. Looking almost exactly like Disturbia (starring another young Hollywood darling, Shia LaBeouf), we can’t say this would completely suck, but let’s face it, if we wanted to watch a movie like Disturbia, then we’ll just re-watch that one, and politely pass when people ask if we want seconds. Conan the Barbarian, however, is a remake that deserves as little attention as possible, mostly for the fact that it wasn’t screened for critics, and if they put such little faith in a film they reportedly blew $90 Million on, they should learn to save their money and reinvest it in their R&D department, so maybe a good movie idea might have a chance to make it to the screen someday.

That day seems like a decade away, as the other two movies opening this weekend are a Spy Kids sequel (the 4th in the series), and an Anne Hathaway/Jim Sturgess movie that is what Beyond Sunrise/Sunset would’ve looked like if Richard Linklater was a lazy S.O.B. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D is a candy colored entry in the popular Spy Kids series, but people, will you never learn, it’s the rule of 3 – from art, literature, and sometimes even movies, everything is better in 3′s. How popular are movie trilogies? Very popular. Now tell me, what’s a great movie series that has 4 installments? Whoah, whoah, just give me one, please. And don’t get me started on the “in 4D” portion of the title, and yes, that is part of the title of the movie. Yes, we all know tacking on 3D to your film is going to make it easier to market toward idiots, but if you already name your 3rd installment Spy Kids 3-D, well, you’re kinda out of luck. And unless you can explain in-depth Euclidian geometry, or demonstrate the 4th dimension in spacetime, you shouldn’t be allowed to tag “4D” onto the end of your movie title. And as for Anne Hathaway and her horrible English accent in One Day, a movie about two people who are in love with each other (but don’t know they’re in love with each other), who meet one day a year for 20 years, we just have to say please stop now, and thank the stars we don’t have to revisit this junk once a year, every year……..

……it’s actually two weekends a year, and if the trend is to keep spreading the summer movie season trash heap over several weekends, making it to the Fall movie season is going to be a rough journey.

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Hi-Ho Budgets, Away!: Plug gets pulled on the Johnny Depp backed “Lone Ranger” project

16 Aug

Inflated budget cited as main reason, despite star-studded cast and crew

Inflated budget shuts down production of Johnny Depp backed Lone Ranger movie
As a sort of omen, or sign of the times, the critic website Pajiba.com just posted a list of the 25 Biggest Box Office Bombs, and reading over the list of movies (Gigli, $81 Million loss, The Alamo, $141 Million loss),  one of two things occur to you – a) how did this movie ever get greenlit in the first place?, and b) how did they convince the studio to give them so much money to make it?! And while it’s reasonable to see how a big budget can run away from you, like in the case of adventure movies like Speed Racer ($110 Million loss) or Cutthroat Island (#1 with $142 Million in losses), with their special effects costs ballooning out of control, it’s almost mind-boggling when you hear how a CGI-free romantic-comedy like 2001′s Town & Country ($120 Million loss) could cost so much, or why anyone would sink $100 Million dollars into The Adventures of Pluto Nash, when it was so clear no one would go see this movie (total U.S. gross – $4.41 Million).

Am I really the only one who saw this coming???.....

Maybe it was the freewheeling 90′s, or the spend-happy 2000′s that’s to blame for this, but clearly Hollywood, much like the rest of America, is realizing it’s time they stop wasting so much money. Hence news this week that the new Johnny Depp-backed Lone Ranger movie was getting the axe, not for artistic differences, not because of scheduling conflicts, but because the movie was just going to cost too much to make, and frankly, there wasn’t enough faith in getting it all back. According to Deadline.com, the film, which was actively in the casting stage, and already had Depp (as Tonto), Armie Hammer (Lone Ranger), and director Gore Verbinski already attached, was asking for a reported $250 Million budget, had conceded to start shooting for $232 Million, but in the end, just couldn’t meet Disney’s $200 Million limit, and was tentatively shut down until further notice.

Now, whether the production will grow legs from here is yet to be seen, with the option of shelving it until another studio comes along to cover the costs, or they strip it down to meet a more reasonable budget, but the one clear question from all of this is, how in the world could this film possibly cost this much money to make? With the source material being a TV show with a shoe-string budget, a Western where little (or no) costly CGI would be in play, and sparse settings in empty brushland totalling a whopping $275 Million by some estimates, one has to wonder where does all the money go when making a Hollywood movie? Unless the plans were to use CGI horses, a CGI background, while pasting a CGI mask full-time over the eyes of Armie Hammer, it’s just ridiculous and bombastic to to say you cannot film this movie for under $200 Million dollars. When you consider Titanic would only cost $247 Million by today’s inflated rates, it’s hard to feel sorry for a production who can’t seem to rangle in their inflated costs, when you can’t visibly see where that money would possibly go.

Even as a precocious teen in 1997, I could see the inflated costs of Titanic setting a Hollywood precedent of bloated budgets, so it’s nice to see a studio pushing back, saying, “Make it work and under budget, or we just won’t do it.” Now, if only the Federal goevernment would take a page out of Disney’s book…

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In Theaters This Weekend: It’s safe to say, summer movie season is over

12 Aug

Summer movie blockbuster season always brings big films to theaters, and frankly, it’s pretty much the reason we exist; all year long we go and see crappy film after crappy film, just to catch a glimpse at the trailers for the big-budget action/comedy/dramas that always tag on to the end “Coming this Summer…”. Well, it’s now August (mid-August at that), and we’ve already gotten our Pirates of the Caribbean, our Harry Potters, Transformers, and Captain Americas, but now it’s time for the hangover (and I’m not talking about The Hangover Part II) – the summer movie leftovers, which, much like stale popcorn left in the popper, are sure to leave us with a bad taste in our mouth.

30 Mintues or Less starring Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari
And speaking of bad taste, first up this weekend is 30 Minutes or Less, the new stoner comedy from the same guy who brought us Zombieland. Starring Michael Cera (I mean, Jesse Eisenberg) as a pizza delivery boy, and comedian Aziz Ansari as his more responsible, yet still immature, school teacher roommate. Based on a true story, Eisenberg gets kidnapped while out on a delivery, his tormentors strap a bomb to his chest and say “if you don’t rob a bank for us, we’ll blow you up,” which set into motion a series of zany events, and no doubt, comedy ensues. However, in real life, the bomb the kidnappers strap to the pizza guy blows up, and ”hilarity” did not ensue that day. Why the producers and director thought this was a good idea for a movie, I still do not know. But as far as the movie itself goes, it seems like instead of handing out 3D glasses at the theaters, they should pack the crowd a couple bowls, and liberally pass them around. Starring stoner-friendly actors Danny McBride and Nick Swardson as the kidnappers, the pedigree of this movie convinces me that it will come off just like Pineapple Express – a series of dick jokes, followed by some gross out comedy, some light action, a very angry and foul-mouthed McBride (does he play anything else?), a bit more action, and in the end, everyone ends up where they started. Case-closed. Swardson and Ansari are both funny frat-guy comedians, Eisenberg can act when he wants to, but when it boils down to it, the premise suffers from a “too soon” stigma based on the source material, and the comedy is just too stupid to overcome the underlying fact that this has actually happened before, and someone (pardon my choice of words) bombed once already when attempted. Save it for a late night on DVD, order some pizza, get high, and contemplate your own options when the dude comes to the door.

"Lasik Eye Surgery" as depicted in Final Destination 5
The next big movie opening up this weekend is Final Destination 5. Now, despite the fact that this is the fifth movie in the franchise, and comes off as tired and trite, with characters I could really have less interest in, who are getting murdered in the most ”is this really all you could come up with?” ways (lasik eye surgery, accupuncture sessions), its not the movie so much I have a problem with, but the fact that the movie was even made, and the title of the film. Now pardon me as I play semantics, but wasn’t the previous movie in this series called The Final Destination, and when you number the movies before that as Final Destination 2, and 3, doesn’t that imply that when the fourth installment comes around, if you don’t name it Final Destination 4, and you call it THE Final Destination, that maybe you’re insinuating that this is the LAST movie in the series, there will be no more of them, hence this is THE FINAL Destination? Isn’t that what that means??? Well, apparently not in this case, and apparently THE FINAL Destination made enough money for the studio to say “Forget what we said – let’s make another one. And if that one does well, let’s make two more after that.” Not to mention that the movie is going to be a complete trainwreck that even these death-dodging kids can’t avoid, Hollywood should start labeling these movies as “Teen Money Wasters”, as they’re solely creating a product in order to turn a quick profit, rather than putting just a little thought and effort into making a slightly interesting film. I would make a deal with Death himself if he could get me out of having to sit through this.

Emma Stone in The Help
And as a sort of afterthought here, a movie that might actually be decent, had we any energy left to actually discuss it, is The Help, starring the ever ubiquitous Emma Stone, who is rivaling Jason Bateman for the “Who can be in the most movies this summer?” award. Based on the insanely popular (with women) novel, Stone stars as ‘Skeeter’, a newly graduated journalism student from Ole Miss, who tackles the sticky subject of Civil Rights in the early 60′s, and fights for the rights of the black maids in her small southern town, rather than rejoin her ‘Southern Belle’ roots. A completely predictable storyline that people who watch “Oprah” and “Live with Regis and Kelly” are going to love, but frankly, we don’t want to see anything this weekend, and we’ll pass on this until our girlfriends make us watch it on DVD. 

Summer is coming to an end, and so are the good movies, so excuse us for being a bit jaded this weekend. That chill in the air is just a sign of dark days to come…..horrible Halloween inspired scary movies! Ugggghhhh…..

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