Also in Monday afternoon's round up of news, AFI appoints a new head of communications, Susan Sarandon will receive honors at the upcoming Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Tribeca Film eyes Glee star's feature film for U.S. release and Ed Helms readies for two film roles ahead of The Office.
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Susan Sarandon is a woman at her wit’s end in Jay and Mark Duplass’ comedy Jeff, Who Lives at Home; stuck in mind-numbing office job and still dealing with the problems of her two grown but immature sons – Jeff (Jason Segal), an unemployed pothead, and Pat (Ed Helms), a douchey sales rep – her Sharon spends her days daydreaming about the life she once wanted for herself. As Sarandon confessed in a chat with Movieline, there was plenty in Jeff she related to as a single working mother in an often unforgiving industry – but, as she’s discovered, there’s always “a new dawn, a new day.”
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You have to admire the chutzpah, if not necessarily the filmmaking skills, of Jay and Mark Duplass, the duo behind the stay-at-home-son comedy-drama Jeff, Who Lives at Home. With their 2005 debut, The Puffy Chair, the Duplass brothers took an uninteresting story fleshed out with lackadaisical dialogue and, using barely rudimentary camera skills, fashioned a noodly tale about love, life and relationships. It’s easier, maybe, to admire the Duplasses' boldness more than the actual product, but you have to say this much for them: They sure do keep moving.
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Here is a trailer for Jeff Who Lives at Home, which tells the very unusual story of sibling men-children (Jason Segel and Ed Helms) dealing with crises of various import. Epiphanies are had, edgy humor is achieved, Porsches are wrecked. Susan Sarandon cries and enjoys the cathartic eruption of office fire sprinklers. Some kids sing cheerily over the closing credits. It opens March 16. What did I miss?
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The Lorax is one of Dr. Seuss's most didactic books, which makes it seem less intriguing as a candidate for the big screen. But avast! The trailer for the animated The Lorax -- which features the voices of Danny DeVito, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White, and Ed Helms -- is positively fresh and ebullient. Forests of Pez-colored pompoms! Popsicle-colored streets! An environmentally friendly message dressed up in Tropical Skittles! It's a must-watch.
Remember this summer's Hangover Part II? The Todd Phillips sequel about American pals who indulge in blacked-out Bangkok escapades involving kidnapped Buddhist monks, a chain-smoking monkey, Toyota car chases, kathoey prostitutes, Russian mobsters and Mike Tyson singing an obscure '80s song from Murray Head? Well, now someone is claiming that the critically disappointing blockbuster was based on his own life, and he's suing the filmmakers.
With a whopping $489.1 million global box office take under its belt, surely Warner Bros. could afford to settle its legal dispute with the tattoo artist who copyrighted Mike Tyson's tribal face design that Ed Helms sports in The Hangover Part II. And while details are hazy on WB's dealings with said artist, it appears that the beef has now been "amicably resolved." No digital erase-job for the DVD release! Creative copyright ostensibly protected! Happy endings for all! [The Wrap]
Not even lackluster reviews can stop Todd Phillips' highly anticipated R-rated The Hangover Part II. Wednesday's midnight shows brought in a whopping $10.4M, Warner Bros. has the Bangkok-set sequel planned for the biggest opening ever for an R-rated film, and it's going into a five-day holiday weekend. Pundits estimate a $100M or higher opening take, and you know what that means: get ready for a Hangover Part III. [Deadline]
Because of his unique brand of hilariously discomfiting stand-up comedy and, in particular, his mock-confrontational talk show satire Between Two Ferns, which lampoons the celebrity interview itself with clear-eyed vitriol, you might not peg Zach Galifianakis for a warm interviewee. But, like most comics, he's nothing like any of his own characters -- including Alan Garner, the delusional man-child who, along with his fellow "Wolf Pack"-ers (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and, this time around, a monkey) wakes up in a seedy Bangkok hotel room after yet another night of black-out debauchery in The Hangover Part II.
"Unapologetic" was the word most frequently used by director Todd Phillips and his Wolf Pack cast and writers to describe the outrageous shenanigans that go down in The Hangover Part II, which finds the heroes of The Hangover once again dealing with a bad case of morning-after confusion. This time, they awake disoriented in Bangkok, a place that takes monkeyshines to a whole new level. "Sometimes to make a movie about mayhem," Phillips admitted at Wednesday's press conference, "you have to go to mayhem."
Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder Matt Walsh (Outsourced) called on a dozen of his fellow comedians to act in his directorial debut High Road, an improvised film about a weed dealer (James F. Pumphrey) torn between his "career," his musical aspirations, and his pregnant girlfriend (Abby Elliott). Hit the trailer after the jump and see how many of your favorite comedy players, including veterans of The State, Saturday Night Live, and Walsh's short-lived series Players show up in the lo-fi indie comedy. (Well hello, Horatio Sanz!)
It's still eerily quiet here in Park City, so Movieline popped into Main Street's only pop-up insurance agency for our first Sundance Swag Report. Those crazy kids over at Fox Searchlight have constructed an entire insurance agency to promote their Sundance entry/coming-of-age comedy Cedar Rapids, about a small town insurance agent (Ed Helms) who has the weekend of his life at a convention in Iowa. Because nothing says "sexy Sundance swag" like wood paneling and hot apple cider! (Sexy, sexy swag pics within.)
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