Here's the concluding half of my annual Fall Movie Preview. Part one was yesterday.LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS –Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake plays a Viagra salesman. If the movie lasts longer than four hours consult your physician.
RED – Adapted from a graphic novel. League of Justice with AARP members. Helen Mirren as an action hero? This I gotta see. Boxoffice prospects dim since every paying customer is getting the senior discount.
SECRETARIAT – Triple Crown thoroughbred of the 70s. Stars Diane Lane. She played against Richard Gere, she can easily play against a horse.
JACKASS 3D – It's like they're throwing the darts in your face! The best movie ever!!
THE KING’S SPEECH – If the buzz is right Colin Firth will win Best Actor this Oscar season. He’s even better in this than his second sex tape.
NOWHERE BOY – Story of John Lennon in the 50s. He deals with his dysfunctional mother. It might explain Yoko Ono.
MORNING GLORY – Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford as morning news anchors who hate each other. This tired premise has been around since Keaton and Ford were ingénues – so at least a hundred years. The 8 PM showing will have five people in the theater. The 11 AM showing will be packed.
MEGAMIND – Superhero animated movie with the voices of Will Ferrell and Tina Fey. Megamind looks like a blue Bruce Willis with a swelled head (which was his head until HUDSON HAWK).
TRON: LEGACY -- the second sequel to TRON. The first was the Aha music video.
DUE DATE – Zach Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr. in a buddy road trip comedy. Before you gag, just know it was directed by Todd Phillips (THE HANGOVER). Then gag.
HEREAFTER – Chick flick directed by Clint Eastwood. Matt Damon is a psychic who can communicate with the dead. You can see why women would be attracted to this subject matter.
TANGLED – Disney 3D CG-animated version of Rapunzel. Can’t be better than the Fractured Fairy Tales version on the Bullwinkle Show.
THE NEXT THREE DAYS – Russell Crowe plans a prison escape for his wife, played by Elizabeth Banks. Isn’t it always the way? Hubby just wants to kick back and watch the game but no, wifey has a to-do list.
NEVER LET GO – Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. A sci-fi human drama. I don’t know what will scare off the Comic-con crowd more – human drama or two pretty girls.
FASTER – The Rock has decided to relinquish his title of King of Screen Comedies to return to the action genre. This leaves a huge void. Even fake vomit doesn't seem so funny anymore.
FAIR GAME – Naomi Watts as a CIA agent blows the whistle on Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie. I know it’s taking creative license but to me the satisfying ending of this movie would be Bush getting impeached.
UNSTOPPABLE – Denzel Washington as a crazed villain who rigs a runaway train with toxic chemicals and points it at a big city. Yawn. 24 only did this eight times.
HOW DO YOU KNOW – James L. Brooks’ romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson. Two people have a blind date on the worst day of their lives. When he’s on his game no one is better than Brooks. Please let this be another BROADCAST NEWS and not SPANGLISH.
TRUE GRIT – On first glance, just a remake of the John Wayne film. But the Coen Brothers are doing it. Stars Jeff Bridges. The Dude becomes the Duke.
THE TEMPEST – Helen Mirren stars in this classic Shakespeare play. William Shakespeare gets sole screenplay credit. The Bard doesn’t have to share it with Babaloo Mandell.
LITTLE FOCKERS – Second sequel to MEET THE PARENTS. If the trailer is any indication, this could be the worst movie of the year. Maybe ten.
SOMEWHERE – Sofia Coppola returns to the only thing she can do well, a LOST IN TRANSLATION clone. Original title was TRANSLATION AND MISDEMEANORS.
COUNTRY STRONG – Gwyneth Paltrow takes time out from instructing people on how to give enemas to play a washed-up country singer. Hey, it worked for Jeff Bridges.
CONVICTION – Hilary Swank in the true-life story of Betty Ann Walters. What more do you need to know?
BLACK SWAN – A psychological thriller set in the rough world of the ballet.
Clever comment on "Fair Game". I, however, expected the movie "Jackass 3D" to be a biopic about 3 Democrat Jackasses - Obama, Pelosi, & Reid.
ReplyDeleteBroadcast News *was* one of the best movies of the last 25 years, wasn't it?
ReplyDelete(Even if they couldn't spell Tektronix...)
A movie about a runaway train?
ReplyDeleteHaven't they already made a movie (or 2 or 3) (dozen) about a runaway train?
Oh, yeah, it was called--
"RUNAWAY TRAIN".
Hollywood continues to impress.
MORNING GLORY... sounds like the Steve and Eydie of TV news.
ReplyDeleteOne difference, where in the real world do you see a pair of 60-somethings paired at the anchor desk??
I got about a third of the way down, then realised you weren't making these up.
ReplyDeleteThank gooodness for Netflix
ReplyDeleteI'm stoked about The Tempest, and Helen Mirren is a perfect fit. I once saw Vanessa Redgrave play Prospero at The Globe and old Mischievous British ladies are the way to go there.
ReplyDelete"Morning Glory" - Aside from the incredibly tired premise, who would want to see this movie? Keaton and Ford have done great work in the past, but I for one down't want to see them lock lips at the Cineplex. The very though is, well, icky.
ReplyDelete"Little Fockers?" - Fock, no.
"Black Swan" - Darren Aronofsky and a great cast... could be interesting.
P.S.: In what universe would Sofia Coppola ever get to direct features, if not for her famous father? What if she had been born Delores Shumpike?
Don't know why I can't seem to speel today. And I'm a writur, too.
ReplyDeleteColin Firth had a sex tape? (shiver)
ReplyDeleteThe title is Never Let Me Go, it's based on a novel that was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, same author who wrote Remains of the Day. But sure, lump it in with Comic-Con
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that the Coen Bros have based their True Grit on the original novel and not the Rooster Cogburn film with John 'never-acted-in-his-life' Wayne.
ReplyDeleteI have hope.
Are you sure 'MORNING GLORY' isn't the title of the Viagra romcom? And will it be a 'tent-pole' movie?
ReplyDeleteTwo newscasters who hate each other? They're in pretty much every episode of Family Guy. And yes, numerous other productions since the birth of the moving image.
'DUE DATE' - Robert Downey Jr is well capable of bringing the awesome, and Zach Galafinakis can be great (just never on the big screen,) but from the trailer this looks like PLAINS TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, if you eviscerated everything that was glorious about that movie.
'HOW DO YOU KNOW?' Fingers crossed it's James L Brooks firing on all his funny-cylinders.
'LITTLE FOCKERS' They should just be honest and title it 'BIG PAYDAYS.' What other earthly reason is there for this?
'THE TEMPEST' Was amazed to find out Russell Brand's in this. I haven't seen the play for years, but I don't recall which character was an annoying one-trick pony who looks like he needs a bath.
'TRUE GRIT.' It's the Coen Brothers. And it's The Dude. Sometimes you can reassemble lightning and catch it in a bottle. I'm keeping everything crossed for this.
That should be 'Planes.' Reading that list of movies broke my spelling bone.
ReplyDeleteWow, a True Grit remake by the Coen brothers!? I don't know whether to be really eager to see it, or pretend I don't know about it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the really cool thing is that Barry Pepper plays Lucky Ned Pepper. What are the odds of that?
Were you thinking of Colin FARREL when you mentioned the sex tape?
ReplyDeleteHarrison Ford is looking like he has absolutely no ability to pick a project anymore. He hasn't made even a halfway decent movie in ten years and finally agrees to reprise his role as Indiana Jones and we get Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?? EVen the title "Morning Glory" is cringeworthy and the trailer looks even worse.
Due Date looks absolutely hilarious. The Hangover might not have been as good as a lot of people claimed, but it was still one of the best comedies from last year and after watching Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis on Funnyordie.com, I'm a big fan.
Oh, and in Unstoppable Denzel Washington plays an engineer ho tries to stop of runaway train, not the villain, unless you've just given away a big spoiler.
Man do I want "How Do You Know" to be good. Paul Rudd and James L. Brooks. That's like a dream pairing.
"Conviction" may be doomed to be shut out of Oscar contention, because its star will live to see the end credits, or as they said on one awards show, "Nobody gets beaten to death like Hilary Swank".
ReplyDeleteSW: Inkania - Oceania is ALWAYS at war with Inkania.
@Mike McCann...Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer for years on ABC.
ReplyDeleteOffTopic...
ReplyDeleteEdwin Newman died today. Distinguished career as a journalist, but what do I remember? Him calling Dick Loudon a "weenie" on Newhart.
Tim: Yeah, pretty sure Ken got his Colins crossed there.
ReplyDeleteRob: Are there really still people who think John Wayne couldn't act? I know it's hard to get past the politics, but She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Red River, Sands of Iwo Jima, Island in the Sky, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, etc. Granted, when you make a couple hundred films over almost 50 years, you're gonna phone it in sometimes, but I have no problem saying that in general Wayne was an excellent screen actor (at least when not playing Genghis Khan).
Agreed on all counts about Wayne - he might be playing variations on the same character, but what a character!
ReplyDeleteAlso, the original movie version of True Grit is based on the same novel as the remake.
This is one of your funniest, item for item, blog entries ever - thanks.
ReplyDeleteJohn Wayne was also very good in his last film, The Shootist - for me it made up for the crappy '70s films that preceded it, such as Brannigan and McQ.
I hated Broadcast News (have not seen it since it was in theaters 20 years ago), although I loved the three leads and their performances; must be the plot itself that turned me off. I still hope someday we get to see the original musical version of I'll Do Anything, though.
Edwin Newman's books starting with Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue in the '70s were deservedly popular and are no less relevant today. Was a pretty good SNL host too, about 25 years ago.
how come Knucklehead didn't get a preview? It's gonna be a smash
ReplyDeleteA few of my own thoughts when I heard the titles and found out about the casting in some of these movies...
ReplyDeleteLOVE AND OTHER DRUGS – Anne Hathaway's character suddenly realizes her boyfriend looks just like that guy in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, and introduces him to her brother...
RED -- Helen Mirren reprises her role as Elizabeth II whose face suddenly turns that color when she discovers her riding jodhpurs have split down the middle, thereby enabling everyone to get a glimpse of the Royal Unmentionables...
SECRETARIAT -- Guess who Elizabeth was seated on when "see above" happened...
JACKASS 3D -- James Cameron's fantasy/science tale about a trip to Arizona...
THE KING'S SPEECH -- What Glenn Beck's daybook planner obviously made no mention of...
MORNING GLORY -- Two people who are too old to continue making movies meet at the Motion Picture Academy's Retirement Home and discuss what kind of flowers they'd like to have put on their graves....
HEREAFTER -- Matt Damon portrays a man, who every time he looks in a mirror, sees Haley Joel Osment. The drama reaches fever pitch when he confronts his agent to find out why the hell the two of them end up sharing so many scenes.
FASTER -- Dwayne Johnson as a man who can't get to the bank soon enough to cash the check he got for being in this bomb...
HOW DO YOU KNOW -- Jack Nicholson continues his string of roles playing irritating, self-loathing old men who, for no apparent reason whatsoever, manage to win the love of the comely young female costar. NOTE: Free complete silverware settings given to the first 50 people in line to see it....
Yep, time to start hitting Blockbuster once again....
Thank you, Ken, for reminding us how great Fractured Fairy Tales was.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mac, for summarizing Russell Brand. Not even one trick in my opinion.
"Morning Glory" was the title of a Katharine Hepburn movie seventy years ago. Hollywood loves to recycle.
I have an awful suspicion these two posts will turn out to be more fun than the movies. And we can read them for free.
Tom: The big twist in your version of the LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS plot could be when Anne Hathaway realizes that she, too, was in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, playing that guy's wife.
ReplyDeleteThanks to the people who are, like me, aware that John Wayne is a damn good actor.
ReplyDeleteI read True Grit last year and the movie is pretty faithful to the book, especially for Hollywood. The only reason I can see to remake it is to recast the Glen Campbell part.
jbryant:
ReplyDeleteYou're right -- I had forgotten about that!
Wonder if one of her lines is "You know, there's really something oddly familiar about you -- but I can't put my finger on it"....
Sad to see the Coen brothers get their hands on as fine a book as True Grit. Charles Portis is one of the great comic talents in American literature, and the CB's are like circus clowns who try to be funny but mostly scare little children and scar them for life. Still, if Bridges is half as good as Wayne and they can find a young actress capable of playing Mattie Ross (I always rather liked Kim Darby in the role, but she was too old), there might be some hope for entertainment.
ReplyDeleteTHE TEMPEST' Was amazed to find out Russell Brand's in this. I haven't seen the play for years, but I don't recall which character was an annoying one-trick pony who looks like he needs a bath.
ReplyDeleteI haven't checked it out on IMDB, but Caliban would fit the description.
Did you misremember the logline of UNSTOPPABLE, or do you know something we don't - or rather, shouldn't - and have now thrown out a major spoiler? Not that I care either way...
ReplyDeleteMorning Glory: Seriously, at some point the age-factor DOES matter in terms of believability, not only content, script and all that jazz.
ReplyDeleteTron: The original has a quirky spirit, even an indepedent feel for the times, that unless they can capture that twice, it will be a special-effects game.
As for Sofia Coppola - Robert Altman's career was commercially rejuvenated by "The Player" so maybe she chose accordingly. And it worked as her recent film-festival grand prize shows. Doesn't mean I'll see it.
75-year-old Harrison Ford as a local news anchor is quite believable. It's 60s-something Diane Keaton who is not. Look at your local news: anchormen close to Mr. Ford's age are generally paired with women from their 20s to at most their 40s. After than, no matter how good they are, the women get tossed out the door, even if their "elder statesman" partner was Ron Burgundy.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder Hollywood needs a bailout.
ReplyDelete"Please let this be another BROADCAST NEWS and not SPANGLISH."
ReplyDeleteYou cannot be serious? Broadcast News remains, easily, the most overrated film of the 1980s. Hell, it is so goddamn overrated, it should be included on any overrated film list of the 1990s.
A plot that went no where s-l-o-w-l-y. The final scene with William Hurt and Albert Brooks walking toward Holly Hunt, who is waiting in the pagoda, was simply awful.
MORNING GLORY -- there was an awful movie with Katherine Hepburn by this title (ironically, she won the Oscar for it, probably because just before the Oscar ceremony in early '34, RKO released LITTLE WOMEN and folks realized she was actually a very good actress).
ReplyDeleteI'd like to join the "overrated" chorus on BROADCAST NEWS -- any movie that tries to present Albert Brooks as likeable -- as opposed to a reasonably-functional sociopath, has their head in the clouds. Albert Brooks isn't one of them, because in most of the movies he's written and directed himself, he almost always plays a reasonably-functional psychopath . . .
Matt: Actually, LITTLE WOMEN was released only about 3 months after MORNING GLORY (in late '33), and it received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay (winning the latter). Why the Academy preferred to nominate Hepburn for the lesser film is a mystery, but as far as I can tell there was nothing to keep them from nominating her for LITTLE WOMEN instead.
ReplyDelete