Prolific producer Neal H. Moritz knows a whole lot about making patently un-scary horror flicks (his resumé is littered with two Urban Legends, three Skulls, a Soul Survivors, three people who Know What You Did Last Summer, and one Prom Night -- so far. Therefore simple logic dictates that, now that the mega-successful Goosebumpsbooks are about to leap into the multiplexes, Mr. Moritz should be in charge of the operation.
According to Variety, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series is the second-best-selling pre-teen book series in the world, second only to the literary adventures of a certain young wizard. And while fans certainly have fond memories of the rather large book series (and a 1995 TV adaptation), this will mark the first time the Goosebumps will be doled out in cinemas. (Not surprisingly, there's also a video game on the way -- all from a company called "Scholastic.") Mr. Moritz will produce with his Sony-connected Original Films banner, and the team is presently on the hunt for stuff like actors, writers, and directors: "Moritz said they likely will cast unknown child actors and then pepper the film with well-known thesps in supporting roles, much like Warner did with the Harry Potter franchise."
Frankly I think this is a very cool idea. Horror should NOT be a grown-ups-only experience, and I'm really tired of my cheesy old favorites getting dusted off and promptly neutered for a new generation of pre-teens. The Goosebumps books were created with young audiences in mind, so this sounds like it could be the beginning of a very profitable relationship. (Yes, obviously Sony is thinking "franchise" here.)
With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber,Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).
Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.
Broad comedy and splattery horror are a pretty tough combo to pull off, but if anyone can do it ... the British can. There's no denying that the British are masters of comedy, and they also have a lot of skill with the scary stuff ... most of the time. One need only take another look at a flick like Shaun of the Dead to see how rare and how satisfying a great "horror comedy combo" can be. Which brings us to The Cottage, an enjoyably but fairly schizophrenic genre experiment that does a fine job with the horror and comedy as separate components -- but, as is usually the case, the combination of the two proves to be a very difficult feat to pull off.
Similar in tone and delivery to Chistopher Smith's Severance, The Cottage tells the story of two astoundingly different brothers who (stupidly) decide to kidnap a crime boss' daughter and hold the buxom blonde for ransom, only to discover that their forest hideout is the home of a typically horrific and mutated murderer. In a fashion that may prove familiar to fans of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, The Cottage spends about 45 minutes as a dark-hued kidnapping comedy -- and then it quickly changes speed before evolving into a rather energetic horror-fest. The tonal shift creates a flick that doesn't always work well as a whole, but definitely succeeds on the backs of a few strong performances and a handful of amusingly over-the-top gore-splatters.
The second wedding-centric "comedy" I've seen this year is the new release Made of Honor, and like the first one, Over Her Dead Body (aka That Waste of Paul Rudd That I Had to Look Up the Title For), the word "comedy" deserves to be within quotation marks when used as an adjective. It's not a terrible film, but it rarely rises above the hilarity level of Oh, How Cute. Even the cuteness wears off in the last third of the movie, leaving you with nothing but the feeling that you've seen this all before, perhaps in sitcoms, where it was much funnier.
You can predict the plot from the poster. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) are best friends who pal around New York together like pale imitations of the leads in When Harry Met Sally, except these two characters apparently never watched the second half of that film. Tom is relationship-phobic -- he has a set of strict rules for his frequent one-night stands -- but when Hannah takes a long business trip to Scotland, he starts to realize that maybe Hannah is a bigger part of his life than someone to antique-shop and eat desserts with. Naturally, when Hannah returns from Scotland, it's with a perfectly sexy, perfectly perfect fiance in tow. And in a move that is meant to be the incitement for high humor, she asks the newly lovelorn and crushed Tom to be her -- you won't believe this -- maid of honor. Have you fallen out of your chair yet, and are you rolling on the floor in hysterics?
Oh, this is going to be huge. There's a new 3-minute trailer for Will Smith's Hancock available here and ... well, go see for yourself. I recommend the Quicktime version.
I know the all-too-common criticism that "all the good parts are in the trailer" makes this less meaningful, but: Every frame of that thing is gold. The first minute or so, with Will Smith as a sarcastic, rude, drunken superhero, is simply brilliant; I've watched the five-second exchange between Hancock and the indignant bystander ("I can smell that liquor on your breath!" "'Cause I been drinkin'!") a half-dozen times now and giggled every time. Smith deserves an Oscar just for his delivery of that line, and we don't even get to hear the whole thing (I'm guessing the next word is "b*tch"). The second half of the trailer, giving us a glimpse of Hancock's attempted PR comeback with the help of an opportunistic publicist (Jason Bateman) isn't as incredible, but I love the focus on what it's like to be a superhero not in a universe where you can do whatever you want, but in the American bureaucratic state. Hancock's canned press conference apology is priceless.
The special effects look seamless, and I'm particularly curious to see a full-on summer blockbuster done in director Peter Berg's signature volatile shaky-cam style. From what I can tell, it's a bit toned down but still unmistakably present; look at the SUV scene in the opening seconds, and the introduction of Jason Bateman about a minute in.
This looks like a summer movie made by a bunch of very smart, very talented people. And that's something to look forward to.
Due to a snafu (my own fault), I did not have a seat at Tuesday night's Iron Man screening in Philadelphia. So while everybody who is anybody hereabouts was giddily watching Tony Stark transform from an arms dealer to an ass-kicking, metal-suited superhero, I was in a different theater one block away watching Patrick Dempsey be a bridesmaid in Made of Honor. There'll be a Cinematical review of the movie on Friday, but for now I'd like to ask a very specific question: what on earth could that title possibly mean?
Others who have seen the movie have referred to "Made of Honor" as "a pun," or even an "appalling pun." Okay, but a pun usually involves conflating two words or expressions that make sense in the same context and happen to sound alike. In this case, I only count one. Yes, I get it -- Dempsey plays the best friend of a woman who is getting married, and so she names him her maid of honor. It's funny because he's a guy, but he's the maid of honor. Hahaha! Fantastic. But made of honor? What, like built of honor? Who? Patrick Dempsey? I'm not connecting the dots.
Just last month, we heard about a contest where one lucky couple would have the honor of being married at the premiere of Made of Honor. Well, that lucky couple has been picked, and you can see their smiling faces over to the right. Michelle Golightly and Shaun Bollinger of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania are going to get hitched in a super-fancy Monday wedding in the Big Apple on April 28, right at the premiere of the film.
It might seem like a weird idea, but think about it -- these guys get to have top-of-the-line professionals put together their day, and it won't break their wallets or bring on the usual, insane piles of debt! They get a first-class, all-expenses-paid trip to Manhattan, where super talented wedding people style them up, get them dressed, take their pictures, get their rings, make their cake, and do everything else that a wedding requires. And to top all that off -- Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight is going to be the officiant -- it's so weird that I actually love the idea.
If you want to see this wildness for yourself, you can check out the webcast on Crackle.com, footage after the fact on ET the next night, or if you find yourself in the neighborhood, there's street space for people who want to check out the wedding and premiere -- it's all going down at the Ziegfeld on 54th.
I'm a big fan of original weddings that go at least slightly against the grain, so this whole scenario sounds like a hoot. But I wonder: what's the strangest, wackiest, or most original wedding you've ever witnessed, or been in? Share your stories below.
This is one movie I keep forgetting is actually being made. Ron Howard's adaptation of Angels and Demonshas been simmering away, sending out casting calls, not quite reaching any level of heady anticipation. Maybe this news will do it. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer has landed the part of Vittoria Vetra, the daughter of a CERN physicist who is embarked on a journey to uncover the truth behind her father's murder. Of course, Robert Langdon (still played by Tom Hanks) accompanies her, and they must foil a terrorist plot in the process.
The studio has yet to confirm. Naomi Watts was reportedly the last to be in talks for the role. No other parts have been cast.
I'm not an avid reader of Dan Brown, so I must ask: is the plot of Angels and Demons really that similar to The DaVinci Code? Is it really that a pretty foreign girl loses a member of her paterfamilias, and Robert Langdon must help her? Is it via the works of coded works of Michaelangelo? Is the Catholic Church evilly involved? I am guessing it is, since one of the characters in need of an actor is an aide to the Pope. Fill me in, because I will never read the book.
Angels and Demons is still set for release May 15th, 2009.
Recently, many remarks have been cracked about running times of movies and the title 88 Minutes. "Is it too much to hope for that 88 Minutes will actually be 88 minutes?" our own James Rocchi asked me not too long ago. 88 minutes is a great running time for a movie, especially for busy critics with lots of movies to see and too many deadlines. You're in an out well before the welcome has worn out. Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons is considered a masterpiece at 88 minutes, even cut down from its original 132. Bill Murray knew the power of 88 minutes when he turned in his final cut of the classic Quick Change (1990). The Woodsman (2004) would have been unbearable at anything longer than 88 minutes. And whatever else you have to say about them, Scary Movie, Sexy Beast, Spy Kids, The Big Bounce, Transporter 2, Wristcutters: A Love Story and Horton Hears a Who! never seemed too long.
But, alas, 88 Minutes runs 108 minutes, and it's too long. Al Pacino (with a poofy, rooster-head haircut) plays high-profile forensic psychologist Jack Gramm, whose testimony was almost solely responsible for the conviction of accused murderer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough). Today, Forster is going to the chair, while maintaining his innocence, and while identical murders are still being committed throughout Seattle. At 10:17 a.m., Gramm gets a call, saying he has 88 minutes left to live. That call comes about a half hour into the movie, and the 88 minutes passes by in an awkward, compressed 70 minutes, give or take, followed by the expected conclusion and credits. Couldn't a cleverer filmmaker have set the movie in real time, and then used flashbacks to do all that boring preliminary stuff? Wouldn't the film have been much better if it just started with a bang, with that phone call?
After hungrily watching National Treasure: Book of Secrets rake in $218 million domestic last December, Hollywood has apparently decided that what we really want is more movies about treasure hunting. On Tuesday, Erik Davis told you about Beaujolais, the new Farrelly-produced comedy about a treasure-hunting version of Ace Ventura or Austin Powers. Now comes news that Iron Jack, a spec script about a novelist's pursuit of legendary treasure in the 1930s, sparked a bidding war among studios, with Columbia picking it up for $1.25 million against $2 million (which means the writer will get an extra $750,000 if the film is actually produced). The screenwriter responsible is Johnny Rosenthal, who's had a number of things in the works over the years (including an interesting-looking comedy about a pilot who is forced to become a flight attendant to learn gender sensitivity), but with nothing coming to fruition.
The two National Treasures were a perfect demonstration of the line between treasure-hunting movies that are breezy and entertaining (the first one) and ones that are plodding, boring and ridiculous (the second). The Indiana Jones films are the genre's gold standard, of course, so The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should hold you over nicely until Iron Jack, Beaujolais, and no doubt a third National Treasure show up at a theater near you.
In case you weren't sure, Zombie Strippers is exactly what it sounds like: a horror comedy about zombified strippers. And like most zombie movies, it has political subtext, though you don't have to worry about it being headier than something titled Zombie Strippers should be. Sure, it claims to be based loosely on Eugène Ionesco's classic absurdist play Rhinoceros and, sure, it features allusions to a number of philosophers, including Camus and Sartre, but really it's dumb and silly and a heck of a good time. Particularly if you're anything but sober. And if you're just looking for a grindhouse sort of guilty pleasure to pass the time.
Zombie Strippers opens with a montage that sets the scene: it's sometime in the near future, and Bush has just been reelected to his fourth term. Already, we know this movie will be a complete farce, but the ludicrous exposition continues, explaining that government scientists have developed a virus that allows soldiers in Iraq to continue fighting after they're killed. Yes, these super soldiers are zombies, a minor twist on Joe Dante's anti-Bush short Homecoming, which was one of the more critically celebrated episodes of the cable series Masters of Horror, and which featured Iraq War casualties rising from the dead in order to cast their vote against Bush's reelection.
My affection for the fantastic Spanish horror flick [REC] has been well-documented at this very website (and elsewhere), but now it's time to throw a little spotlight towards (you guessed it) the remake. I refuse to allow my enthusiasm for the first movie to foster an unkind perspective towards the remake, but basically ... if Quarantine is only half as good as [REC], then it's already twice as good as most studio-sponsored horror flicks.
Second studio flick from newcomer John Dowdle (his The Poughkeepsie Tapes is complete, but currently stuck on a shelf at MGM right now), Quarantine is about the horrors that go down when a news crew, some rescue workers and a bunch of clueless tenants are locked inside of an apartment building. (I'm not spoiling a thing, but let's say things get zombiefied.) The directors of the original flick had a lot of fun playing games with the "found footage" approach, and I'm hoping the American version will been able to capture some of [REC]'s choppy charm.
Quarantine doesn't arrive until October, but you can check out the brand-new teaser trailer over at UGO.com. You won't see much of the cast in the teaser clip, but trust me when I say the movie features Jennifer Carpenter, Johnathon Schaech, Greg Germann and Jay Hernandez. (And here's a photo gallery!) Regarding the new promo clip, I'd say this: Those who've seen the original film will find little here that's new -- nor will they find anything to get all irritated about, either. And that's a good thing.
If Tobe Hooper's Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist opened today, it would almost definitely earn a PG-13 rating. Earlier this year we were treated to a very entertainingly creepy monster movie called Cloverfield -- which was also rated PG-13. So we know it CAN be done. Despite what the horror fans have been conditioned to believe recently, it IS possible to make an effective horror movie that's not rated R.
But it sure as hell won't happen this week, as the latest no-effort PG-13 remake to lurch off of the assembly line is called Prom Night, and it's easily one of the flimsiest movies I've ever seen. The entire film absolutely reeks of corporatized product, and nobody involved in the flick (from director Nelson McCormick and screenwriter J.S. Cardone to just about every bored actor onscreen) seems even remotely interested in making, y'know, a half-decent movie. No, Prom Night exists for one reason only: To snatch some of that babysitting money from the 15-year-old girls of the planet. (I should know. I sat behind nine of 'em as Prom Night unspooled, and not one of 'em was paying as much attention to the screen as they were their cell phones.)
After viewing the trailer for Anna Faris' new comedy The House Bunny for a second time, my review can only be summed up by the immortal words of Han Solo: "I've got a bad feeling about this." You can now check out the trailer above for the Playmate comedy starring Faris as a down-on-her-luck Playboy bunny named Shelley who becomes the den mother to a 'socially clueless' sorority.
Faris is joined by Rumer Willis, Kat Dennings and Katherine McPhee (of American Idol fame) as the loser girls of Zeta House. As Shelley teaches them about the important things in life like lip gloss and dancing in high heels, she learns valuable lessons about being not hot ... or something. The only real question I had after watching the trailer was how did Colin Hanks get talked into doing this movie?
I kinda liked the straightforward and no-nonsense approach to Nimrod Antal's thriller Vacancy (and it does hold up to repeat viewings), so consider me sufficiently intrigued regarding the news of another a follow-up. But recent word indicates that the next Vacancy will be A) direct-to-video (of course), and B) a prequel instead of a sequel. Although they're sticking with screenwriter Mark L. Smith, the new director will be Eric Bross, a named recognizable to only the most serious fans of rotten cinema. (Bross directed that Joey Fatone movie a few years back.)
According to Shock, the prequel will involve "a couple, Jessica and Caleb, and their pal Tanner who check into the Meadow View Inn where the employees are making snuff films." OK, that's a workable concept, but if you've seen the first movie, you kinda know what happened to those kids. (Sounds a lot like the main problem in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.) Our source also gives us a bunch of new cast members, namely Agnes Bruckner, Lola Davidson, Angel Oquendo, David Moscow, Nelson Lee, Brian Klugman and Gwendoline Yeo.
No word yet on if we'll get to see (slightly) younger versions of Ethan Embry and Frank Whaley.
Prolific producer Neal H. Moritz knows a whole lot about making patently un-scary horror flicks (his resumé is littered with two Urban Legends, three Skulls, a Soul Survivors, three people who Know What You Did Last Summer, and one Prom Night -- so far. Therefore simple logic dictates that, now that the mega-successful Goosebumps books are about to leap into the multiplexes, Mr. Moritz should be in charge of the operation.
With five nominations, it looks like 
Due to a snafu (my own fault), I did not have a seat at Tuesday night's Iron Man screening in Philadelphia. So while everybody who is anybody hereabouts was giddily watching Tony Stark transform from an arms dealer to an ass-kicking, metal-suited superhero, I was in a different theater one block away watching 
Just last month, 
This is one movie I keep forgetting is actually being made. 
After hungrily watching National Treasure: Book of Secrets rake in $218 million domestic last December, Hollywood has apparently decided that what we really want is more movies about treasure hunting. On Tuesday, Erik Davis told you about 
My affection for the fantastic Spanish horror flick 
I kinda liked the straightforward and no-nonsense approach to Nimrod Antal's thriller 
