A great week for Paul Feig just keeps getting better. On the heels of the record-breaking box office haul for Bridesmaids, it was announced Wednesday that Feig will receive the comedy director of the year award at the upcoming Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. Well, provided the festival organizers didn't mean to give it to someone else. Here, let Paul explain.
Despite some chatter to the contrary, comedies are alive and well in Hollywood this summer. Especially R-rated comedies: the combined domestic grosses of The Hangover Part II, Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher are closing in on $500 million. Into this landscape arrives Horrible Bosses (out Friday), the Seth Gordon-directed comedy about three dudes who try to kill their titular terrible employers. How come Bosses works so well when some other summer comedies have not?
I'll leave it to our esteemed critics to supply the complete lowdown on this week's Kevin James comedy Zookeeper, but in the meantime, at least one intriguing element emerged from my viewing last week: The film's forlorn, TGI Friday's-craving gorilla, Bernie. Voiced by Nick Nolte with a sort of gruff, mechanized sheen, the beast is one of several at Boston's Franklin Park Zoo who chips in to help their beloved zookeeper Griffin (James) land the girl of his dreams (Leslie Bibb -- or is it Rosario Dawson, playing his veterinarian colleague? What is a zookeeper to do?). But it's also the one most notably pushing the technology envelope on the set. Or more specifically, according to a claim about which I just had to solicit some clarification from James and Co., "the gorilla technology envelope."
Twenty four-year-old Lyndsy Fonseca has been familiar to television fans since her days on The Young and the Restless (she also appeared on Boston Public, Big Love, Desperate Housewives, and as Ted Mosby's future daughter on How I Met Your Mother) but she made herself known in fierce fashion last fall as Maggie Q's cunning and loyal protégé, Alex, on The CW's lady spy series Nikita. This week Fonseca adds to her growing film slate with a turn in John Carpenter's The Ward, a '60s-set psychological horror tale also filled with complex female relationships, themes of survival, and endless twists and turns.
If the total grosses of The Hangover Part II, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Transformers: Dark of the Moon have you feeling a bit peaked, there is some hope: the success of Bridesmaids. The beloved Kristen Wiig-led comedy not only scored near-universal praise from critics upon its release in May, but record crowds as well; it's the biggest Judd Apatow production ever, and over the Fourth of July, Bridesmaids became the highest grossing R-rated female comedy of all-time. Said director Paul Feig to Movieline about topping Sex and the City for that crown: "I'm dancing in the streets about that one."
The last few years have seen Patrick Wilson travel the hero route (Watchmen), the villain route (The A-Team), the romantic-lead route (Morning Glory), the romantic-foil route (The Switch), the beset-father route (Insidious) and the indie title-character route (Barry Munday). The versatile actor takes a road far less traveled in The Ledge, playing a religious zealot from under whose thumb his wife (Liv Tyler) squirms into an affair with the godless heathen next door (Charlie Hunnam). The triangle prompts a stand-off on the titular ledge, where a despondent cop (Terrence Howard) attempts to talk the heathen down. Sound crazy? It is! But in a good way.
"It's like Whac-A-Mole." That's how John C. Reilly described his eclectic career a couple of weeks ago at a swank Park Avenue hotel in Manhattan. From prestige films like Gangs of New York and Chicago, to broad comedies like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, to indies like Cyrus and Terri (out Friday), Reilly has made a living toying with audience expectations. "If you start to do the same thing, it just gets boring on a personal level."
On top of being one of the worst-reviewed filmmakers of all time, German director Uwe Boll is many things: the possessor of a doctorate in literature, an author, an avid boxer (who has literally knocked out his critics), a recipient of the rare Razzie "Worst Career" award, an outspoken adversary of Michael Bay, a non-chewer of Stride gum (the company supported a petition for him to retire in 2008), an unwavering believer in his own "art" form. And judging from the five minutes Movieline spent with him during Tuesday's press event for BloodRayne: Third Reich -- the straight-to-DVD third film in his BloodRayne franchise -- Boll is also a current-events buff with an affinity for George Clooney movies and small, fluffy dogs.
If there's anyone who knows how to break into horror these days, it's Ti West, the 30-year-old writer/director whose feature films The Roost, Trigger Man, The House of the Devil and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (which he disowned after extensive re-editing by the producers) have made him a well-known name and respected auteur in the scare community. After showing his latest movie The Innkeepers at the Los Angeles Film Festival last week, Movieline asked the filmmaker to share his pro tips for breaking into the horror genre.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Or, rather: First came the agony -- the surprise shut-down of production on his ambitious At the Mountains of Madness -- but now filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is having a ball prepping his next directorial effort, the futuristic alien invasion action movie Pacific Rim. He spoke with Movieline about the two projects while making the press rounds for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.
After last week's rousing round of My Favorite Scene, actor David Hyde Pierce returns to Movieline today to chat about The Perfect Host. Director Nick Tomnay's feature debut features Pierce as Warwick, a posh Angeleno hosting a dinner party crashed by a wounded bank robber (Clayne Crawford) on the lam. That's about all I'm going to tell you about the narrative, which twists like a Red Vine and swings from psychological thriller to dark comedy to heist intrigue -- and sometimes back again -- with dizzying speed.
Before Sunday night's L.A. Film Fest premiere of the August horror pic Don't Be Afraid of the Dark succumbed to an unfortunate series of annoyances -- a fire alarm temporarily evacuated the theater midway through, while chaos reigned at the post-screening cell phone check -- producer and co-writer Guillermo del Toro emphasized what, hopefully, will make Don't Be Afraid of the Dark memorable: Its "pervasive scariness," so terrifying that the MPAA deemed it too frightening for its intended rating.
Elijah Wood has a new hit on his hands in Wilfred, the offbeat FX comedy about a depressed young man's relationship with the canine next door -- whom he happens to visualize and converse with as a dude in a dog suit (played by the show's co-creator, Jason Gann). Wilfred debuted last week to 2.6 million viewers, the network's highest ratings ever for a comedy premiere. Not bad at all, but it has a ways to go before catching up with the other phenomenon in Wood's life.
In a second floor of The Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, someone left an apple on the conference table. Not that Jacob Wysocki minded. "I wish someone was like, 'Here's an apple for your interview!' I would just eat it the whole time. Crunching in the microphone." The young star of the new indie film Terri (out Friday) was in good spirits during his first ever trip to New York two weeks ago -- animated and excited to endure his first press day. Put another way: He was the exact opposite of Terri.
Certain members of legendary NYC hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest had voiced mixed reactions to Michael Rapaport's incisive documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest even before its Sundance debut and subsequent distribution deal. But Friday night in Hollywood, all save one of Tribe's four members came out to support the film, sharing the emotional experience of watching their musical history -- and the complex behind-the-scenes clashes that led to their disbanding -- play out on screen.
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