Wait, what?! Robert Zemeckis is mo-capping his own version of Yellow Submarine? That’s like Joe Dante making a claymation version of The Monkees’ Head. And motion-caputre? So this time we can truly appreciate the performances of not-the-Beatles? Granted, the Fab Four weren’t very involved in the original either, but that really seems like a film of it’s time to me.
[/Film]
The Mars Movie Database is nowhere near as awesome.
Let’s face it: IMDB.com is awesome. Where else can you confirm that Chevy Chase did indeed star in eight episodes of a Swedish TV show called Hjälp!? However, IMDB also has a dark, dark, I’m talkin’ pitch black side as well…and it’s called the “Movie/TV News” section. What follows are a few actual headlines from the last few hours. You’ve been warned.
Monkey Goes Ape on Biggs
It was a lot like that movie Congo, except you were rooting for the monkeys.
Brody Eyed Fox Flash
A lot of times with these IMDB headlines, I find it more fun to just skip over the story and try to guess what it might be about based on the headline. Here’s what I think: Roy Scheider’s character from Jaws loves to watch FOXnews.
(UPDATE: As it turns out, this is a story about Megan Fox’s boobs! A must read!)
and finally…
Bacall Blasts Twilight Vampires
Okay, so this is actually an interesting one. It would seem that film legend Lauren Bacall didn’t like Twilight. Here’s what she had to say about it on Twitter:
Yes, I saw Twilight – my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever. After the ‘film’ was over I wanted to smack her across her head with my shoe, but I do not want a (tell-all) book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die. So instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, ‘Now that’s a vampire film!’ And that goes for all of you! Watch Nosferatu instead!
Wait wait wait. Lauren Bacall has a Twitter account?! Did I read that right?! I don’t even have a Twitter account! My God, man! The woman was born in 1924! IMDB, I think you missed the real news story here.
Have a great week, folks.
COMEDY.
You know what? It’s time to take back comedy, damn it. No longer will we allow Hollywood to force feed us whatever mediocre new film Judd Apatow is producing! No longer will we listen to any Radiohead listening, PBR sucking hipster explain the brilliance of Bill Murray! It’s time to take a stand! You hear me people?! Who’s with me? LET’S GO!
Hello?
Well, if there’s anybody still reading, that time has come. And by “that time” I mean the return of one Mr. Cornelius Crane Chase. A second coming has been predicted for some time now (your pals here at Critical End! are still trying to figure out why Vegas Vacation didn’t work like it was supposed to), and it looks like it’s going to come from both your TV and local cinema. Take that, Murray!
First off, if you haven’t heard of Community yet, you obviously haven’t been hanging out with me for the past six months. Check out this NBC promo for the scoop. It’s packed with lots of Chevy goodness!
That’s a start in the right direction! But I know you…now you’re thinking, “Gee, Logan, that’s swell and all, but where’s the R-rated Chevy that I’ve heard tale of? Also, you’re ever so handsome.” Whoa. Settle down there, ladies. For those of you who want to see Chevy return to his R-rated roots, check out this teaser for Hot Tub Time Machine!
Granted, Chevy is no where to be seen in this teaser, but do you really want to turn down the chance to see John Cusack and Chevy in the same movie? I think not!
Let the comedy revolution begin!
Ryan Reynolds has just gone from “actor whose agent says they like comics to up their geek cred” to “actual factual capes and cowls fan” in my book.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine managed to waste both Deadpool as a character and Reynolds as an actor, but Reynolds has apparently insisted that the spin-off movie stick close to the source material, specifically Deadpool’s fourth-wall-breaking awareness that he’s in a work of fiction. Combine this with the speculation that the albino thing at the end of Wolverine was in fact a clone of Deadpool and not the real deal (meaning we can happily ignore it going forward) and we may actually get an excellent cinematic take on one of my favorite characters.
[Via /Film]
1. NASCAR? Really, Final Destination series?
2. If you’re going to reference the fact that this is the fourth movie in a series that started ten years ago, why not just call it em>Final Destination 4? My guess? They lost count.
3. “Death saved the best…..FOR 3D!” may be one of the best tag lines ever.
4. NASCAR?! I mean…really? I guess after the roller coaster opening of the third film (meaning that there actually WAS a roller coaster. It wasn’t that exciting), the series had no where else to go except to the thrilling world of NASCAR.
5. NASCAR again. Not to keep driving this point home (pun intended. Zing!), but isn’t this pretty much the same opening as Final Destination 2? You know, the one with all of the cars on the interstate? I think it is. In fact, it looks to me like they just took that opening and CG’d some NASCAR logos in. LAME.
6. I can not wait to see this movie.
Yes, that is a picture of me at the height of my "all brown" phase.
Here’s a fun one from back in the day: Remember Stretch Armstrong? Was he one of the coolest toys on the block or what? Next to my sisters’ Lite-Brite (which I only admitted recently to playing with when they weren’t around), Mr. Armstrong was one of the greatest things ever. What kid doesn’t want to own a toy that leaks some strange yellowish goo when it breaks? In fact, the only thing more awesome was Stretch Armstrong’s dog, Fetch Armstrong. Why? Well, for one the name alone was freakin’ genius. See how Fetch rhymes with Stretch? I hope they gave some guy over at Hasbro Toys the rest of the day off for that one. And two: He was a weiner dog! Now THAT’S a toy worth stretchin’!
The real news here is that they’re making a Stretch Armstrong movie because we all remember how great the toy was. I mean, let’s face it: That’s the only reason you bought a ticket to Transformers, wasn’t it? The answer is yes.
Full story (along with a listing of the other upcoming Hasbro films) can be found here.
Bryan Singer loves the X-Men almost as much as he loves making out with Frank Langella. And that's A LOT.
Well, okay, he doesn’t say that exactly. But when asked about the third X-film, which Brett Ratner directed while he was doing Superman Returns, Singer replied “It’s weird for me to watch it, because I’m so close to the universe. And also Brett is a good friend of mine. But, of course, I would love to return to that universe.” That sounds like disappointment to me.
He goes on to say he’d be interested in doing another X-Men film. To which I said, in a recent interview, “Yes please.” Too bad all the interesting characters are dead, depowered, or wussies now. Thanks, Ratner.
"One...two...yeah that's everyone. ACTION!"
The same handful of Aykroyd quotes about the third Ghostbusters film have been floating around for a month or two, but this /Film article adds a new wrinkle to the saga. Apparently, Bill Murray finally agreed to do the sequel (after years of refusing) on the condition that Ernie Hudson gets more screen time.
Now, we here at Critical End! are fans of Mr. Hudson, as any right-thinking individual should be. We thrilled at his out-of-nowhere appearance in Dragonball Evolution. But does anyone actually believe that this was the reason Murray was holding out? It’s one thing to go all reverse Steve Martin and start pretending you’re too artsy for any comedy without “A Film By” somewhere on the poster, while somehow deigning to do TWO horrendous CGI Garfield movies. But it’s another thing to claim you’re standing up for your pal by standing in the way of the most high profile job he’s had in years.
To be fair, this info comes secondhand from Aykroyd rather in a statement by Murray himself. But c’mon. Ernie Hudson doesn’t need your charity, Bill. Shut up and go back to making fun movies.
[/Film]
Thumbs up indeed.
But I kid. Here’s a clip from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Heath Ledger’s final film. Looks to be the usual Gilliam oddness, made all the odder by the knowledge that Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law will all show up at some point to pretend they’re Heath Ledger and that really everything’s fine, and not all of Terry Gilliam’s movies are cursed by some vengeful movie God bent on punishing him for Baron Munchausen.
[i09]
Long nose = wackiness!
To get the obvious points out of the way:
My GOD. Do we really need another…
But ignoring all that, Disney is going to promote this thing by carting props and marketing around to 40 cities in a vintage train. At each stop they plan to unload a giant inflatable 3D theater and do sneak previews of the film. I hear about these train tours from time to time and I’m always left wondering, “Are there still trains? Are trains still a thing?”
Where, within these 40 cities, is this train going to stop? Is it like Harry Potter where you have to find the magical entrance to some hidden anachronistic train platform? Or is Disney building an entire rail system solely for the promotion of their poor man’s Grinch?
Either way, I look forward to similar stunts in the future. Perhaps a cross-country hot air balloon tour for Up, a Romanian caravan tour for the Pinocchio Blu-ray, or a sewer-traversing exercise ball tour for G-Force. Speaking of which, this is exquisite.
[Variety]
Some of you may recall my open letter to NBC back in March about the fate of a certain new show starring the absolute dream cast of Chevy Chase and Joel McHale. Today I am proud to report that this wonderful show, or Community as the gods have so named it, is now a reality. Let there be dancing in the streets.
Since IMDB doesn’t have a listing for it yet, the only info I have found is a short two line summary on this site. Don’t bother clicking on it, as here’s the best part:
Needless to say, I think I just peed a little. Is it too soon to declare this the greatest show ever? I think not.
Uh oh. He's got that look in his eyes that can only mean one thing: MURDER (or perhaps "taco night").
You know, there’s a reason I stopped inviting Kiefer Sutherland to my pool parties. Sure, he always brought some killer homemade guacamole and a great collection of Devo records, but he was always too quick to headbutt all of my guests.
And now it seems that the ol’ Kiefernator is at it again: New York City police are currently investigating an incident where, and I swear I’m not making this up, Sutherland apparently headbutted fashion designer Jack McCollough at an upscale party. The reason? McCollough bumped into Brooke Shields and refused to apologize. A spokesperson for Shields had the following to say about the incident:
“Nothing happened to her. Jack did nothing inappropriate. It’s not clear what caused Keifer to do what he did.”
Oh, I’ll tell you what caused him to do what he did: HE’S KIEFER SUTHERLAND. This is what he does, people! Haven’t the New York City police ever seen a Kiefer film, or as I like to call them, a Kiefer Klassic? Listen folks, I know that if I ever meet Sutherland I’m not going to ask him to sign my black and white 8×10 of him in Young Guns II, I’m going to ask him to freakin’ headbutt it…with his head.
The full story can be found here.
It’s hard not to like Joe Dante’s 1978 film Piranha. Sure it was just a lame Roger Corman produced rip-off of Jaws, but in Dante’s hands it became a cult classic. How can you not like a film that’s got mutated killer fish eating a group of elementary school kids, Dick Miller in a huge cowboy hat, and one of my favorite horror movie lines, “Terror, horror, death. Film at eleven.”
But enough about how much I love Joe Dante and how some day he’ll have all my little Logan Jr.’s. You see, Hollywood is remaking Piranha…in 3D…with Elisabeth Shue. Some of you may recall that it was already remade in 1995 as a made for TV movie (which was completely forgettable except for the fact that it starred a young Soleil Moon Frye AND Mila Kunis), but it seems that what Hollywood really thinks it needs is a gory 3D update from that loony French guy who made the pretty bland High Tension. What was his name? Alexandre Aja or something. Crazy French and their crazy…Frenchness. As far as the remake goes, I feel like it could work. We’ll have to wait to find out, so until then why not rent the original this summer?
Anyway, what I really want to talk about is span style=”text-decoration: line-through;”>Joe Dante some more the recent news I read about Richard Dreyfuss shooting a cameo in the new remake. It turns out that the cameo will be an homage to his role in Jaws. So, if I’m understanding this correctly, Dreyfuss is doing an homage to his classic character in a film that is a remake of a rip off of the original film that featured his classic character. Does that sound about right? I was never great at math.
Meanwhile, they’re remaking Drop Dead Fred? What’s up with that?
It’s no secret that Eli Roth is my favorite horror director of recent years (cue hate mail), so I was both extremely happy and extremely all like “Huh?” when I read this story over at MTV movies. I know you don’t have time to read it, what with your busy online schedule of keeping up with everything that your ex is doing on Facebook (that slut).
I’ll hit the three highlights:
1. The “Huh?” news? Roth is trying to get his first big honkin’ budget movie made. So, what’s it about? I’ll let him take it from here:
“I don’t want to give away the title yet, because I have to make sure I own it 100%, but it’s going to be something that is really fun with lots of mass destruction. I wanted to do something along the lines of Transformers or Cloverfield that was a little more science fiction-based, and with lots of chaos and mass destruction. I don’t want to say what [the monster is] yet. Once it gets set up, I will let everyone know. It is not aliens or robots or a virus – it’s a little more grounded. But when people hear it they are going to be like That is going to be insane!”
Okay, Roth, I’m intrigued. I can only hope that it’s better than, well, Transformers or Cloverfield.
2. Okay, so this isn’t really a highlight so much as a comment: When did MTV start scoring all the good movie scoops? This is the third time that your pals at Critical End! have linked to their site and I’m kinda getting tired of it. Each time I feel like I lose a bit more of my soul. Where was I? Oh, yes…
3. The extremely exciting news: It also would appear that Roth is finally getting around to making Thanksgiving! Roth again:
“The plan is this: I want to do a huge budget movie, but tack on three weeks to the end of it and shoot Thanksgiving. I want to do an $80 million dollar movie, and then schedule three weeks at the end to quickly shoot a $5 million dollar movie.”
What’s all this hooplah? Some of you may recall Roth’s way way way over the top faux trailer to Thanksgiving in the mediocre Grindhouse. If so, you may realize why I’m so excited. In little under three minutes, Roth managed to parody and pay tribute to the slasher genre in such a way that I wanted to stand up and cheer after it was over…but then Tarantino’s Death Proof came on and I fell asleep.
Anyway, in case you missed it, check out the awesomeness below. That is all.
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