The Watch (nee Neighborhood Watch) truncated its title to avoid conjuring the February killing of Trayvon Martin and its plot contains no major similarities to the teen's controversial death. But in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting — which may have spawned at least one would-be copycat thwarted today in Maryland — some of the violence-based laughs in the Ben Stiller-Vince Vaughn comedy might hit too close to home for some moviegoers.
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Walking out of The Watch, Saturday Night Live writer Akiva Schaffer’s garrulous but indistinctive sophomore directing effort, a young woman in front of me complained to her friend. “What do you even say about that?” he’d asked. “I have no idea,” she said. She only had to write up a list of the movie’s pros and cons, and even then she could think of but one item for the former column.
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Man, tip your cap to the marketing crew at 20th Century Fox, which redirected one of 2012's most unfortunate current-events overlaps into a completely revised angle that it probably should have pursued in the first place. Behold: the new and improved teaser for The Watch, complete with introduction by star Vince Vaughn.
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Movieline joins music and film fans in mourning the death of Adam Yauch - a.k.a. MCA, one-third of rap legends the Beastie Boys, influential filmmaker and music-video director, and founder of independent-film distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories. In other film news, Friday afternoon's Biz Break includes rundowns on Jonah Hill's collaboration with Martin Scorsese, Cannes' new addition to its official selection, Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, and UTA's failed bid for a Beverly Hills street name.
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High five to Fox for pulling their bullet-ridden Neighborhood Watch marketing materials from Florida theaters this week following the February killing of Trayvon Martin. Trying to get as much distance as possible from the teaser's emphasis on grown men Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade stalking and finger-shooting suburban kids is a good idea and a sensitive move -- not to mention a no-brainer necessity, PR-wise -- so the studio's forthcoming campaign will likely focus on the film's "broad alien-invasion comedy" elements. But even four months from now, will it be too soon for Neighborhood Watch to make fun escapism out of vigilante violence?
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What's the Film: The Sitter (2011), new on DVD and Blu-ray via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Why it's an Inessential Essential: Director David Gordon Green’s transition from being an American indie darling to a reviled slacker-comedy pumper-outter is kind of astonishing. One minute, he’s being praised for being the Terrence Malick-inspired director of such films as George Washington and All The Real Girls; the next he’s being put down for making lazy pot comedies like Your Highness and The Sitter. But the thing of it is: Green’s comedies don’t deserve to be compared to good movies.
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With both an Oscars appearance and a No. 1 movie within the last month, Jonah Hill's 2012 is on pace to exceed even his stellar 2011. And the folks behind The Sitter know it, dropping the David Gordon Green-directed comedy on DVD and Blu-ray this week for prime placement amid Jonahmania. But they also know, as Green mentioned in interviews last year, that the 81-minute movie yielded a trove of deleted scenes — one of which Movieline is debuting right here and now.
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There was no shortage of stars coming through SXSW 2012, debuting films and projects as diverse as Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods to Lena Dunham's HBO series GIRLS. Take a look and see who else dropped in on Austin, Texas for the annual film festival, including: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and their 21 Jump Street crew, Willem Dafoe, Al Gore, Johnny Knoxville, Melissa Leo, Matthew McConaughey, Jack Black, Aubrey Plaza, Gabrielle Union, Bobcat Goldthwait, new director (!) Matthew Lillard, two Broken Lizards, model-turned-actress Dree Hemingway, and more.
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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]
There’s a peculiar kind of pleasure to be found in watching Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, in 21 Jump Street, horsing around and generally acting like doofuses for our amusement. As rookie cops assigned to patrol — by bicycle — a city park, they’re more than ready to prove their tough-guy status: When they spot a bunch of biker guys experiencing the joys of cannabis beneath a tree, they strut toward the gang in their shorts and bike helmets, but not before flipping their kickstands down with a mighty thwack. Later, Hill says a fervent prayer in the Catholic church that serves as headquarters for the undercover unit to which the duo has been assigned, its sign outside reading, in mistranslated Korean, “Aroma of Christ Church.” Hill kneels in front of the crucifix, beginning his urgent plea with the words, “Hey, Korean Jesus…” That irreverent riff captures the tone of the whole picture — it’s a ramshackle thing, a goof on the idea that anyone might actually care about a movie based on an old TV show, or that anyone might actually care about a movie at all.
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It wasn't tough to spot Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill at the after party following the SXSW premiere of 21 Jump Street; they were the ones, beaming unselfconsciously in the middle of the crowd, wearing bicycle-cop uniforms. More specifically, wearing their costumes from the movie, in which they play a pair of bumbling rookie policemen sent undercover to high school -- a set-up that so delivers beyond its premise that the '80s Johnny Depp TV series adaptation is actually one of the best new films of 2012, comedy or otherwise.
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Each year SXSW plays host to a slate of risk-taking fare of all kinds, from true indie offerings to upcoming studio releases geared to a slightly more open crowd, and the 2012 film line-up features no shortage of movies poised to earn that precious film festival commodity: Positive buzz. But some projects have more at stake than others -- say, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's long-awaited Cabin in the Woods, Will Ferrell's Spanish-language comedy Casa de mi Padre, or the directorial debut of actor Matthew Lillard. On the eve of SXSW 2012 (which runs March 9-17 in Austin, Texas), check out the ten SXSW titles with the most to prove going into their festival debuts.
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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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"Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors." Such was Glenn Kenny's tweeted lament earlier this week -- one eerily anticipating today's latest, sanity-thrashing edition of Oscar Index. And that's just its effect on readers! You really don't want to see the catatonic pall saturating Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. On the other hand, we're gonna make a fortune recycling this mounting pile of wine bottles. To the Index!
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