Will it be as cool as Jonah Hill's Rolex? "It is an expensive watch. My dad said — my dad's a watch guy — when you get any little bit of money, I want you to go out and buy a watch that you can't afford, because you'll have it for the rest of your life, and every time you look at what time it is, you'll see how hard you've worked. That you've worked for that watch." [The Awl]
Still feeling nihilistic? So's Michael Musto! "Apparently, you pay Scientology, and they help your career big time. But in the old days, the studios closeted you for free! ... I'd rather read an old Pauline Kael review of a movie than watch the actual movie. ... The film biz should pick one day out of the calendar year and declare it 'No Fart Jokes or Car Crashes Day.' ... And how about 'No Pretentious, Scenery-Chewing Oscar-Grubbing Month' (and let's make it December)? ... Every important film from an auteur bloats in at exactly two hours and 20 minutes. One second less would obviously be a creative abortion. ... Today's stars should never do historical epics. Chin implants and pillow lips look funny in the Middle Ages. ... Opening credits have become ridiculous. 'Dingdong Films, under the auspices of Crapola Productions, in association with FilMagic, Cinema Paradise, and Rutgers University, along with Kazilloscope Matters Inc., and Hempstead Futons, Presents an Ashton Kutcher Joint ...'" [Village Voice]
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Mark your calendars for May 20! Or not: "Chronicling the lives of Dina Eastwood, the wife of Oscar-winning film legend Clint Eastwood, and their daughters Francesca (18) and Morgan (15), and the all-male six member vocal group from South Africa managed by Dina, 'Overtone,' Mrs. Eastwood & Company is an unprecedented look at the surprisingly normal extended and blended family behind one of Hollywood's most iconic superstars. This series invites viewers to witness their lives and proves that familial bonds are shaped by more than DNA." [E!]
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An inevitable consequence of the ugly Kim Novak/Artist soundtrack-rape saga had to be that other artists and actors would use the analogy to describe how, unauthorized, new legacies are built or enhanced using elements of their older ones. Right on cue, enter Courtney Love: "Courtney Love believes Kermit the Frog and his gang of Muppet friends 'raped' the memory of her ex-husband Kurt Cobain -- by bastardizing Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in their 2011 movie ... without her permission. [...] But there's another side to this ... We're told Courtney sold off half of her rights to Kurt's music to a company called Primary Wave Music. And there's more ... Courtney also gave Primary Wave the exclusive right to distribute Nirvana's entire catalog." Mm-hmm. Anyway, isn't this stuff supposed to be limited to awards season? Better luck next year, Courtney. [TMZ]
Today in horrifying reboot news comes the stuff of past and future nightmares: "Michael Eisner’s The Tornante Company will finance and produce the development of a feature film based on Garbage Pail Kids, the trading card line published by Topps." Viral video/shorts helmer PES will direct based on the terrifying 1985 trading cards, which were previously adapted into one of the worst feature films of all time featuring the most disgusting child characters ever created who scared an entire generation of youngsters into not judging their freaky looking but well-meaning peers by their looks alone. Or something. So... yay? [Deadline]
"Yes, because everybody's giving me a ration about it. I wish they would have named it something else because I have a weird background and now people keep accusing me of being reincarnated." I see. How about John Carter of Oklahoma? "Why are you calling? Oh. Well, he's been dead for over 10 years." [Moviefone]
This is pretty much perfect: "since i am blamed whenever people don’t like it, but never praised when they do, and since most critics forget that they liked or hated something two years ago and cite it as a strength or weakness two years later, i’ve come to be philosophical about the show. if people don’t like the comic who hosts, they hate the show. if no comic hosts, they hate the show and demand that a comic be summoned. when he’s edgier, like chris rock, we get slammed. when he’s bland, like ellen, we get slammed. but a few things are clear. this is the oscars. they still mean something after 83 years, at least in the industry. unlike the mtv awards, their audience is not exclusively 9-18 year olds. unlike the golden globes, the voters are people who actually make movies, not pretend to be journalists. some things are simply inappropriate. it’s a dance every year to figure out what those are. every single line on the oscar show is negotiated. unless you’ve been there, you have no idea how it is put together. it’s like nothing else on earth. i’m writing a book about it, but i have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells." [Filmdrunk]
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Stephanie Zacharek's review pretty much confirmed this, but! For the record, Dear Consumer: "The advertisements emphasize the Bridesmaids pseudo-reunion, making it look like it's a rollicking comedic romp with Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, and Chris O'Dowd all just giggling and making silly faces. [...] Those four, the Bridesmaids folk, they really don't have much to do other than pop in every 20 minutes or so to comment on the action, a sort of Greek chorus surrounding our two heroes. It's also worth noting that none of them is actually funny, by design. You know that scene you've seen the commercial where Wiig and Hamm sneak out of the restaurant bathroom, post coitus? That's in the first five minutes of the movie, right before a 'Four Years Later' insert. Wiig spends the rest of the film crying into various glasses of wine while Hamm yells at her. It's a real laugh riot." [Deadspin]
Hint: Not a lot. "Rourke was leaving the gym in L.A. yesterday when he joked about using the movie as a torture device ... 'I'm gonna tie you to a chair and make you watch Moneyball all fucking night.'" [TMZ]
You've been hearing about it for years, and at last, the fabled Hugh Hefner biopic that will never get made has moved from Universal to Warner Bros. The one and only Jerry Weintraub will produce, at least until he won't. "While Universal had filmmakers like Brett Ratner attached at one time or another and actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Jackman mentioned as possibles to play Hef, the project languished," Mike Fleming writes at ML's sister site Deadline. "Wentraub would not disclose what part of Hefner’s life he will cover, and he denied that Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves is being talked to as a potential screenwriter." Finally! We're getting somewhere. [Deadline]
Following in the footsteps of hit musical adaptations Billy Elliot, Wicked, and Bring It On: The Musical, Universal's stage adaptation of John Landis's Animal House will hit Broadway with a book by playwright Michael Mitnick, to be directed by Book of Mormon's Casey Nicholaw, with music by the guys who sang the indelible lyrics "Chickity China the Chinese chicken/You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin'." Because nothing says "Broadway" like frat boys and crunchy Canadian alt-rock, right? [THR]
Remember the short documentary that Errol Morris released last year in commemoration of the 48th anniversary of JFK's assassination? Not for nothing, but there's plenty more where that came from — and it sounds... interesting: "I wondered why [he drove] because we offered to fly him in. So I’m interviewing him. He gets up. He walks off. He comes back. And he has a Mannlicher-Carcano, just like the one Oswald used. [...] He wanted to demonstrate for me the enormous difficulty of firing those shots in rapid succession.” [Smithsonian]
Can you believe that someone is accusing the writers of This Means War of being... lazy? "The fact remains, though, that most people don’t launch into film-studies lectures on a first date, not unless they’re in the movie business. When they do so in a romantic comedy it’s a giveaway that the screenwriter was too lazy and unimaginative to give their characters any hobbies that they don’t have themselves. It shifts the story even further away from reality." Seriously! It's getting bad. Someone start a human rights petition. [The Economist via The Awl]
"Director Sacha Gervasi has tapped Scarlett Johansson and James D'Arcy to play Psycho stars Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Fox Searchlight's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Anthony Hopkins will play the iconic director, while Helen Mirren will play his wife, Alma. [...] Sources tell Variety that Making of Psycho has drawn comparisons to My Week With Marilyn, and that the role of Janet Leigh could lead to the same awards consideration for Johansson that the Marilyn Monroe role did for Michelle Williams." [Variety]
Despite the censors and lackluster reviews, 2011's Hong Kong softcore period piece 3D Sex and Zen went on to make money. So naturally, producer Stephen Shiu wants to up the ante. A sequel entitled 4D Sex and Zen: Slayer of a Thousand from the Mysterious East is being plotted to include the added in-theater experience of vibrating seats. I mean, of course! How have the folks at D-Box not figured out how to capitalize on the erotic fourth dimension already? [Yahoo! Phillippines via Twitch Film]
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