If you want to see how the opening scenes of The Heartbreak Kid fit you without ven paying a single cent or sneaking past a single usher, then you can. It has to be said, however, that the film is reputed to open well, and even keep it up for quite some time, before performing less successfully in the final act.
Steve Conrad has been hired to do an extensive overhaul on the script for In Deep, originally written by George Beckerman in the late 80s, and he's apparently being paid 1.6 million against 2.5 million for his trouble.
The director attached is Mark Romanek which, if you ask me, is a very good thing. Both of Romanek's features so far - One Hour Photo and Static - are genuine masterpieces.
Ben Stiller is producing the film and seems likely to star. The plot revolves around a man who challenges a parking ticket and, as a result, becomes sucked further and further into 'criminal allegations'. Sounds like Changing Lanes maybe, or even The Winslow Boy, in an odd way. It may, however, be nothing like either of those because all I know for sure is that this simple logline won't be anwhere nearly as sophisticated as the actual film.
Romanek is due to go into production on The Wolfman later this year, with Benicio Del Toro in the title role and, possibly, Anthony Hopkins as his father (and fellow bearer of the lupine genes?).
Choose between 480p, 720p and 108p hi-def versions of the hi-def Heartbreak Kid trailer and see Ben Stiller reteam with the Farrelly Brothers. Yahoo also have it streaming in a very, very blurry lower-def version.
According to TV, radio and tabloid reports here in the UK (but nothing I can link to as yet, I'm afraid) George Clooney and Hugh Grant are to star in a feature film adaptation of The Persuaders. Apparently, Ben Stiller is the film's producer so don't expect it to be played straight.
I was wondering if Charlie's Angels (which I liked, a lot) started this trend of reinventing old TV as slightly kitschy, jokey films when I remembered The Brady Bunch Movie. If I remember correctly, I rather liked that too... so, maybe the question should be when it all went wrong. Your suggestions, please.
Perhaps a big screen Happy Days will come along so that the genre can literally jump the shark.
Joe Dante's Small Soldiers is a bit wonky but I do love it dearly. Indeed, once the awkward exposition is dealt with, and we're stripped down to the set-pieces and satire, everything does kick up a gear or two and really gets moving. So very underappreciated - just like most other Joe Dante movies.
Now, it looks like a sequel is on the cards. Sadly, like the potential third Gremlins film, Dante hasn't been signed up, and it seems unlikely that he will be. The core concept is the selling point of what will likely go straight to DVD.
The new Small Soldiers script is being written by Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons. They're also developing Master Mind, the first film Ben Stiller is producing at Dreamworks Animation. That one is a kind of post-Incredibles superhero gimmick film in which the supervillain Master Mind kills his goodly nemesis Uberman in the first set-piece and then suffers from depression and a crippling lack of direction.
It could work. It will need a clever script that sidesteps cliche. This revisionist superhero stuff is getting to be a rather crowded subgenre.
Master Mind's directors are to be Cameron Hood and Kyle Jefferson, animators climbing up the Dreamworks ranks. It will, like all other Dreamworks animations from 2009 onwards, be released in 3D.
Naomi Watts has signed to star in Kicked, Bitten and Scratched, a romantic comedy adaptation of Amy Sutherland's animal training memoir. Todd Louiso and Jacob Kosoff are writing the script. You'll probably recognise Louiso as an actor - making mixtapes in Jerry Maguire, being delicate in High Fidelity - but he also directed Love Liza and, again with Kosoff, wrote the upcoming Ben Stiller and Jason Schwartzman comedy, The Marc Pease Experience.
I'm looking back at Naomi Watts' CV here, and this one hardly stands out. A good part of the reason for this is, of course, how varied her CV is. I think I saw her first of all in Flirting - if I did see For Love Alone, the previous film she made, I certainly have no recollection of it. And I must have seen her in Home and Away, if only for a brief glimpse as I channel hopped, or while I was visiting soap-addicted family.
As for her brief appearance in Joe Dante's Matinee, I wish I could picture it now. I believe she was in a mock up of something like a Kurt Russell/Disney family film. I adore Matinee, but I never picked up the DVD (so far) - mainly as the R2 version is bare bones and pan-scanned to 4:3. Inexcusable.
...and the little pieces of Tank Girl that I really, honestly, deeply loved (cumulative running time: under four minutes) weren't any pieces with Watts in - through no fault of her own. They just weren't Jet Girl scenes. Thinking back on it now, though,
So, I guess, Mulholland Drive was, for me as much as the rest of the movie watching world, the moment Naomi Watts really started to matter a little bit more. After that film, she was a talking point, a star, one of the ingredients of a film that one would be likely to discuss rather than ignore.
And I guess that's when it started getting wobbly. The quality of the films that Watts has opted for since David Lynch foist her into the limelight has been genuinely unpredictable. King Kong and I Heart Huckabees were wonderful; 21 Grams, Stay and The Ring 2 were most definitely not; the first Ring and Le Divorce watchable but far from essential.
What's interesting, though, is that she's some kind of off-centre star. Somehow, Watts doesn't slot so readily into the big, generic movies like Julia Roberts or (Watts' best friend) Nicole Kidman. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it looks to me like there's something vague around the edges of Naomi Watts' public image, and I always find it impossible to predict the style, budget or genre of her next film.
Maybe it's just because she finds it hard too. A girl has to work, right?
Dan Aykroyd has been promising a 3rd Ghostbusters film since... well, since before Ghostbusters 2. According to the man himself, interviewed by Mike Maguire on CISNFM, he's soon to get his way.
But how? Surely Bill Murray would never spend all of that time hanging out with all of those people all over again? He won't have to. The film is now being planned as a CG cartoon, with Murray already having agreed to record Venkman's voice. That way, he can do his work in a little booth, collect a cheque and leave the rest of them to get on with it. Sigh.
The plot is just the same as we heard it would be in countless previous Aykroyd interviews: the Ghostbusters invent a reality-phase-shifter and slip into a parallel universe version of New York - but not just any parallel universe, mind. The one we think of as Hell.
If you visit the radio station's site, part 2 of the interview is the piece regarding this news. Nothing on Ben Stiller, Will Farrell, Vince Vaughn or any of the rumoured new-additions.
Ben Stiller has been planning his next comedy film Tropic Thunder for almost twenty years, so it better be worth it. The script has been written by Stiller, Etan Coen and Justin Theroux. I thought this is the second Joel-less project for Ethan Coen to turn up on this blog in as many days and immediately got to wondering if there is trouble brewing at the house of Coen - then I noticed it was Etan, not Ethan. Etan Coen was a writer on Madagascar. Panic over.
Justin Theroux is most famous, I'd guess, for appearing in Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and the second Charlie's Angels - but probably most recognised for appearing on posters in the window of Gap.
According to Production Weekly, the premise behind Tropic Thunder is a little wild: actors cast in a big-budget war spectacular end up actually becoming real commandos when 'everything goes wrong'. That really is some screw up if it turns the filming of a movie into a warzone - who's directing this film within a film? David Fincher?
Stiller reputedly cooked up the basic idea when working on Empire of the Sun, but it sounds like there are also trace elements of 1942, Three Amigos and Hearts of Darkness or Apocalypse Now to me.
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