If you need further evidence that Marvel is winning the battle against DC on the comic-book movie front, consider the latest Internet chatter about the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Latino Review, which knows how to work that fan boy beat, reports that Marvel has inquired about the availability of both Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler for the movie, which is slated to hit theaters on Aug. 1, 2014. more »
Also in Thursday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, Adam Sandler's next comedy heads to a rival studio. Matthew Vaughn is departing X-Men. And Jill Scott boards a Fox Searchlight project.
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It's good to see Genndy Tartakovsky on the big screen. Even when he was working at Cartoon Network beginning in the 1990s, where he produced such contemporary animated classics as Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls and the visually stunning Samurai Jack, Tartakovsky and his team created remarkably three-dimensional worlds using 2D animation. It was only a matter of time before he graduated to feature films, and on Friday his engaging and funny directorial debut Hotel Transylvania opened in theaters in 3D. more »
Cole Abaius over at Film School Rejects performs a post-mortem on Adam Sandler's increasingly inane recent output of comedies, as parodied brilliantly in Judd Apatow's Funny People (then subsequently embraced with stinkers like Jack and Jill — life imitating art imitating life?). "The most prominent George Simmons film in Funny People is a gem called Re-Do where an overworked lawyer is transmuted by magic into the body of an infant," Abaius observes. "By playing Simmons, Sandler was directly commenting on the hollow nature of a lot of his own work."
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Well, not all of you. Just the ones on the haterade-swilling Anti-Sandler train, "an unconscious social ideology that protects Hollywood’s status quo" according to everyone's favorite provocateur, Armond White: "Sandler’s key challenge notes the derangement of social values, beginning with the celebrity young Donny endured [...] silliness doesn’t prevent Sandler from accurately pinpointing our social hypocrisy. That’s what W.C. Fields used to do [...] Despite its deliberate ribaldry and outrage, That’s My Boy poignantly reminds the elite class of its forgotten virtues [...] Sandler dares to express feelings about family, ethnicity, friendship – the realpolitik of genuine social interaction. [City Arts]
To say that That's My Boy is a step up from the recent output of Adam Sandler and his company Happy Madison Productions really is to suggest only that the film isn't likely to be screened as some sort of new Guantanamo interrogation technique. Jack and Jill, Zookeeper, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star — these movies aren't merely bad, they're sandpaper-on-skin excruciating, unfunny to the point of inspiring hostility toward whoever's chosen to make them. Sandler, once upon a time, was king of a winning kind of anarchic, gleeful stupidity — Billy Madison holds up so well (seriously, it does) because it feels like it's just every idiotic gag that he and his buddies could come up with while crowded around a table littered with bongs and beer cans, crammed into an hour and a half. These late features have an undercurrent of misanthropy — their silliness isn't inclusive, its confrontational and unpleasant, as if it was a chore to have to be bothered to actually make the movie in order to get everyone paid.
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For some reason a remake of the 1987 comedy classic Summer School has been in development hell for years, and it may finally come to fruition under Adam Sandler's Happy Madison banner. Though Sandler hasn't yet threatened to star as the slacker high school gym teacher forced to start caring about education -- a role played with Hawaiian-shirted panache by one Mr. Mark Harmon, and don't you forget it -- the possibility certainly looms over this project, as THR reports that Happy Madison is negotiating to produce. Take a trip down memory lane with the original trailer and decide: If not Sandler, who could fill Harmon's sockless shoes? (And will there be a part for Kirstie Alley?)
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"Going into a conversation where you’re defending Adam Sandler is normally not going to work in your favor. I learned this six years ago when I was doing my shift hanging out with Holocaust survivors, and one of the old guys actually turned to me and said, 'This is the worst thing I've ever seen,” and this was coming from a man who was in Auschwitz. There was no way I was going to try to defend the merits of Sandler talking gibberish to a room full of men who lived through one of the darkest periods in all of humanity. If he thought Sandler making a bottle of shampoo battle a bottle of conditioner was bad, then I had to agree." [Splitsider]
The first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator had Megan Fox and Kardashian jokes, but those pop culture touchstones have been replaced by Anna Faris and terrorism gags in the new, longer trailer. An upgrade? Eh, sure. Maybe. Or not: Faris's brunette pixie 'do does make her look particularly adorable, but juxtaposed with her natural poise Cohen comes off as a poor man's Adam Sandler. Like, hammy Zohan-lite Sandler.
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Congrats aren't just in order for the winners of tonight's Film Independent Spirit Awards; major props go to Adam Sandler for an outstanding showing in today's Razzie nominations announcement, which found the Jack & Jill/Just Go With It star breaking the previous record for most personal Razzie nominations earned in a year. (Sandler won 11 nominations, while Jack & Jill itself earned 12.) Eddie Murphy, guess you're off the hook for the Year of Norbit. See the full list of fairly obvious nominees vying for Golden Raspberry (dis)honors after the the jump and leave your predictions below.
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... and by better I mean worse, and by worse I mean now that the licensing deal between Universal and toy company Hasbro has ended, Sony has snatched up the Candy Land board game movie project -- you know, the one like "Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy" -- as a vehicle for none other than Adam Sandler. Said Columbia prez Doug Belgrad: "Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam. We are thrilled to partner with Hasbro and Happy Madison on this project." [THR]
What's that? Adam Sandler's Grown Ups was a comedy and not technically a horror concoction/exercise in torture dreamed up to keep children and adults up at night? Well, that doesn't make this report any less frightening: According to ComingSoon, a sequel to the Dennis Dugan-directed 2010 buddy pic, about four immature grown men acting like children while on retreat with their families, already has a release date of July 12, 2013. Duh duh duhhhhhn. Well, Grown Ups did make $271M worldwide. Eh, at least it's not Jack and Jill 2. Mark your calendars accordingly. [ComingSoon]
Not to be terribly negative at the start of the new year – because any year that gifted us the Fassboner had to be a pretty good year, amirite? – but there were a handful of recurring trends in the movies of 2011 that could stand a rest as we charge ahead through 2012. First let’s list the good ones, the motifs in otherwise disparate films, from a wide range of filmmakers indie and studio-backed, new and established, that were actually kind of awesome to marinate in this past year. (Goslingmania comin' atcha!)
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While it didn't quite slay Jack and Jill at the box office -- a more resounding spanking might've restored my faith in humanity, but many, many folks still came out for the Adam Sandler twinsies comedy -- Tarsem's fantasy actioner Immortals exceeded expectations on its way to a surprising $32 million number one opening, the best ever debut for studio Relativity Media. Also: Puss in Boots and Tower Heist continued to slide down the ranks, with J. Edgar making a decent go of things to round out the Top 5. Dive in for your Weekend Receipts!
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It's over. It can mean the best of news or the worst of news, a new beginning or the utmost in closure. Its extremity is unparalleled, its harsh clarity often benumbing. Some people found out this week what It's over meant for them. For many of the rest of us, it couldn't be over soon enough. But you can get all the more closer here with Movieline's Week in Review.
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