The conclusion of this season's boxoffice fare. Part one was Monday. Part two was yesterday.
SKYFALL – 23rd James Bond movie. Daniel Craig stars. Berenice Marlohe is the Bond girl, although to sell tickets in Florida, those residents are being told it’s Judi Dench.
RISE OF THE GUARDIANS – Another animated feature where Hollywood actors who make a gazillion dollars take away more jobs from voice-over actors who are starving. Alec Baldwin and Hugh Jackman take the food off of families’ tables in this one.
THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS – The Terrell Owens story.
RED DAWN – High school students in Colorado battle Commies. Yeah, like they need an excuse to carry weapons.
THE DETAILS – Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks battle raccoons that are eating their lawn. Tobey left the Spiderman franchise for this?
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE – Sean Penn as a washed up rock star. Spicoli gone bad.
LES MISERABLES – Broadway musical with Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. Uses a lot of Victor Hugo’s original songs.
THE HOBBIT – Peter Jackson is at it again. First the Rings, now this. Huge budget and sweeping scope. They did not scrimp on dwarves. 13 of them are seen in this fantasy extravaganza.
JACK REACHER – And speaking of dwarves, Tom Cruise plays Lee Child’s best-selling character who in the book is a husky 6’5”.
THE IMPOSSIBLE – Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor survive a tsunami in Thailand. Survival movies are quite the rage. Here’s another one:
ZERO DARK THIRTY – Director Kathryn Bigelow’s first movie since THE HURT LOCKER. Lighter fare this time. The hunt for Osama bin Laden. SPOILER ALERT: We kill the motherfucker.
DJANGO UNCHAINED – Quentin Tarantino’s new movie. A cowboy yarn about slavery. INGLORIOUS SOUTHERNERS.
THIS IS 40 – “When you going to write a movie for me? When you going to write a movie for me? When? When? When? When?” I assume this was the nightly conversation between Leslie Mann and her husband Judd Apatow. The result (probably for his own sanity) is a sequel to KNOCKED UP this time focusing on Leslie (natch) and Paul Rudd.
ON THE ROAD – Jack Kerouac’s 1957 classic finally hits the big screen. It took 55 years but they finally found the perfect actress – Kristen Stewart.
PARENTAL GUIDANCE – Billy Crystal, who hasn’t been in a movie since Bob Hope was still funny, babysits his grandkids. He’s hoping it’s an Oscar-hosting-worthy performance.
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON – Bill Murray as FDR. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And now I’d like to do a little medley from STAR WARS.”
See you at the Cineplex!
I take it you were in Seattle during T.O.'s tryout. It also looks like he left his iron hands in the stadium for ex-teammate Jason Whitten to borrow this past Sunday.
ReplyDeleteBabs doesn't end up in Seth's car like Imogine Coca did in Chevy's station wagon during "National Lampoon's Vacation", does she? (bonus points to Seth's 'edgy' image if she ends up like Imogine's dog did in "Vacation").
Murray tried this almost 30 years ago when he followed up "Ghostbusters" with Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge". Not exactly what the fans were expecting. He's got more of a track record now and it's not like kids today just can't wait for "Ghostbusters III", so the turn as FDR won't be that big a shock. But you're still going to be waiting for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to attack Pearl Harbor.
What's the over/under on how many of your readers get the Bill Murray-Star Wars joke? I did.
ReplyDeleteYour final Bill Murray comment killed me. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI always thought if Bill Murray was going to portray a character once played by Ralph Bellamy, I thought it would be that Okie who was the third wheel in "The Awful Truth."
ReplyDeleteI never understood the whole use of celebrities in cartoon movies. With the exception of those that can do different voices (like Mike Myers), I just find it distracting to the story to think about the actor doing the voice.
ReplyDeleteOf course, with five kids under the age of 10 I hear a lot of cartoons from the other room and I start to recognize the same voice-over actors in the various shows.
ReplyDeleteThe trailer for Flight is good, except for its last few seconds when we see the airliner crash landing. An airliner upside down and only a hundred feet above the ground can't roll back and crash land facing up. If that's the premise of the movie, it has problems.
Boeing test pilots have rolled big planes such as a 707 and maintained control, but they were thousands of feet up.
I like their movie poster a lot, though.
Between Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher and Morgan Freeman/Tyler Perry as Alex Cross, what book characters have been more miscast in their movies? Alex Cross is 6'5'' and jacked, Tyler Perry is fat. Morgan Freeman is skinny. Michael Clark Duncan would've been a better choice in any of the Alex Cross movies. As for Jack Reacher, he's also 6'5'' and jacked, although his girth is different depending on which book you're reading. It would take three of Tom Cruise just to equal Jack Reacher height wise. I hope the movies are well done and at least generally follow the books, but the casting is an abject failure.
ReplyDeleteI'm so mad they changed the title of "My Mother's Curse" to "The Guilt Trip."
ReplyDeleteNot only does The Guilt Trip sound like the most generic title imaginable, but it makes it sound like the story of a naggy Jewish mother.
My Mother's Curse was so poetic. The curse was that his mother loved him so much she made him feel like he never lived up to her expectations.
This was such a great script and I was looking forward to the film. Now I'm cranky.
I'll be seeing 'This Is 40' for Leslie Mann who can be delightfully funny. And, unlike her co-star, she is not everywhere all the time. Yes, I'm sick of seeing Paul Rudd. (There I said it!)
ReplyDeleteAnd if he keeps on making 20 movie/TV appearances a year you will be, too.
Aren't you glad you weren't at the old ball park last night (in Seattle)? 18 frigginn innings and even more friggin frigginistic...ZERO FOR 17 WRSP! You'd think that ZERO FOR 17 is impossible. Not with these friggin Mariners! On the other hand, I'm all for anyone beating NY out of the AL East crown and especially if it's the Orioles, so 5 1/2 hrs later, things are ok for the Orioles.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute, isn't Red Dawn a remake? Okay, I'm old enough that I remember when Patrick Swazy played one of those high school kids.
ReplyDeleteGeeze, Hollywood, how about some originality? Or maybe, instead of trying to rip of a good, classic movie and ruining it, you could try remaking an old BAD movie and improving it.
Tyler: Tyler Perry is fat? Are you perhaps unaware that he wears padding when he plays Madea?
ReplyDeleteCheck for the trailer for this movie. I make no prediction whatsoever about whether he will be any good, but he is unquestionably fit here.
When you wrote, "Seth Rogen takes a road trip with MY mom," was that an intentional joke or a Freudian slip?
ReplyDeleteAs someone who used to do radio commercial voice work before going into comedy writing full time, I second the thumb's down for the annoying trend of paying celebrities huge bucks to do cartoon voiceovers. I can't believe they give Cameron Diaz millions of dollars to voice the princess in "Shreck," when it doesn't even utilize her best (only?) asset, her looks. The job could have been done 100 times better for far less money by a real voice talent like Sue Scott.
Years ago, Walt Disney had a rule that he would not use celebrities as voices for his cartoons because it was lazy just to appropriate their personas, plus it would date the films as the stars fell out of fashion. Thanks to that rule, Disney cartoonists of the '30s and '40s created original, timeless characters that are loved to this day. A couple of generations from now, what kid is going to know or care that Alec Baldwin or Huge Jackson is the voice of a cartoon character? For that matter, what kid gives a damn now?
(For the record, I make an exception for Craig Ferguson, who could have been a top rate voice actor even if he weren't a celebrity in his own right.)
Typo fix: "Huge" = "Hugh." I've been hanging around with my friends in the cabaret world too long.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Bob Saget is doing the voiceovers on HIMYM. A steady gig keeps him off the screen so that movie and TV producers can hire people who are actually funny.
ReplyDeleteLeslie Mann is as funny as lit dogshit and I'm having a hard time remembering the last thing I saw Paul Rudd in (apart from his guest spots on Friends, which were great.)
ReplyDeleteAnd recognisable actors doing cartoon voice roles seems to be a fairly recent thing to be annoyed about, I don't recall any issue with Mel Gibson in Chicken Run or Hugh Jackman in Flushed Away.
Thank goodness for netflix. Looks like I won't be going out to the movies for a long long while.
ReplyDeleteDo some people not understand that Ken is being snarky and hasn't seen these films? At least seven or eight of these sound quite good, if you actually know anything about them. But every time he does one of these posts, a few people chime in with how awful everything looks, as though Ken is providing a consumer guide rather than a humor piece.
ReplyDeleteRed Dawn remake:
ReplyDeleteWhy would the Chinese invade America? They already own it.
I'll put Albert Brooks "Mother" with Debbie Reynolds up against Seth Rogen's "The Guilt Trip" with Streisand.
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ReplyDeleteGuilt Trip and On the Road.
Two road movies, each with a woman alongside for the ride. Be glad only one is going to get topless.
"Inglorious Peckerwoods" is closer
ReplyDeleteI saw a picture of Bill Murray as FDR. He looks amazing.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Tom Cruise movie, when you think about it 5 foot 6 isn't all that different from 6 foot 5.
I prefer nice young Jewish actors like Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anton Yelchin, Andrew Garfield, etc.
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