I knew from the recent Hollywood Reporter feature on Twilightthat Summit Entertainment planned to release a new trailer more geared toward a male audience, but I never would have guessed they’d do such a damn good job of it. I’ve been hating on this movie from the beginning, but now part of me is actually thinking I’d like to see it. And I bet a lot of teenage boys will be thinking the same, only more so.
This is pure genius marketing, and it would have been in Summit’s favor to have gone this route all along. What with superheroes so huge right now, why hadn’t they already tried to sell this thing as being like a comic book movie rather than a sappy adaptation of goth chick lit? Wasn’t that bit of dialogue referencing Spider-Manand Supermanin the film the whole time? Such a line needs to be exploited, and it’s a shame the fledgling studio took so long to employ it. This trailer is seriously what Summit should have shown at Comic-Con.
Whether you’re a South Park viewer or a reader of many film blogs, you’ve probably seen the disturbing (though not disturbingly funny) clip of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas raping Indiana Jones. As much as I too was disappointed with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, though, I find the South Park thing more upsetting, and I’ll probably have a more difficult time getting the image of Indy in whitey tighties being mounted by Spielberg out of my head than I did erasing the memory of Shia LaBeouf swinging through the trees with a bunch of monkey friends.
Speaking of LaBeouf, he’s the star of today’s Clip of the Day in lieu of the rape thing (which I don’t want to subject anyone to, if they’ve managed to avoid it so far). Because everyone knows Spielberg loves LaBeouf — as an actor; get the rape and other related thoughts out of your head — the site Spill.com has put together a little animated montage of what it would be like had LaBeouf starred in (or were he inserted into, via effects magic) Spielberg’s past movies. I like it mainly because I’m already obsessed with the Shia LaBeouf “no no no no no” thing (see this past Clip), which works perfectly in the old movies. The Close Encountersmusical version is especially great.
If John McCain doesn’t become the next President of the United States, perhaps he could take a completely different sort of gig, as The Penguin in the next Batman movie. Of course, there’s already a worthy candidate for that role, too, but if Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t want the job, Christopher Nolan should give it to the senator. That is, if Nolan actually decides to include the villain in his next installment, and so far it hasn’t seemed likely that he would.
The idea of McCain as The Penguin sparked from a campaign speech the presidential candidate gave last Friday in which he inadvertently channeled Burgess Meredith while congratulating his running mate, Sarah Palin, on her performance at the VP debate the night before. Since then, YouTubers galore have sampled the speech, whether using the audio to redub a scene from Batman Returns, as you can see in today’s Clip (and here), or intercutting the audio and video with footage from Meredith’s portrayal of The Penguin on the old Batman TV show, or simply drawing in the necessary accessories and props to make McCain look like Meredith’s Penguin.
The whole trend may have actually begun with a little joke on The Young Turks talk show. But how about it? Ehh? Throughout the Town Hall debate last night, while watching McCain waddle around that stage, I couldn’t get the Penguin thing out of my mind. He’s perfect for the part. Ehh?
Yesterday, MEAN Magazine released (or, sent out a press release about) their latest viral video, a “remake” of Bad Lieutenant starring SNL’s Bill Hader (”Eat your heart out, Werner Herzog,” reads the explanatory title card.) It’s okay. The best part is Hader’s final, weepy line, “I’m such a bad lieutenant!”
But more interesting is a MEAN video that I missed, the above “Emma Stone in Busby Berkeley 2.0.” With Stone (Jonah Hill’s love interest from Superbad) wearing a vintage bathing suit and staring coquettishly at the camera amidst digital kaleodoscopic chaos, it’s less Busby Berkely than a retro-porn spin on Esther Williams. But it’s pretty!
Turns out, Ferris wasn’t lying. And not only was he actually too sick to go to school, he was terminally ill with only days left to his life. So, he went out with his best friend and his girlfriend and had as much fun as he could before he died. Meanwhile, his whole community attempted to cure him with the Save Ferris collection campaign. Does the film have a tearjerker of an ending with Ferris in his last moments? Probably not, because Ferris Bueller’s Day Offis not another depressing movie about dying; it’s a positive movie about living life to the fullest.
Man, how shitty would Rooney be feeling now if it turned out Ferris was indeed really, really sick? After watching this recut trailer, I’m wondering if you can actually watch the whole movie as is with the idea that Ferris is secretly terminal. Though it was once my favorite movie, I haven’t seen Ferris in its entirety in a long time, so I can’t be sure. Ignoring certain bits of dialogue about Ferris going off to college and any other hints that he’ll be continuing with his life may be dismissed as either denial or a case of other characters not knowing — a la My Life Without Me. And maybe that post-credits epilogue in which Ferris tells everyone to go home is really the guy trying to get rid of us so we don’t see his demise. …Read more
I’m not expecting to learn anything from Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic, W., but it’s possible that I will. After watching this clip depicting the first encounter of the future President (played by Josh Brolin) and the future First Lady (Elizabeth Banks), I’ve already learned something I didn’t previously know: that Laura was a Democrat, one who even campaigned for ‘68 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, before meeting the conservative, Barry Goldwater-reading man of her dreams at a backyard barbecue.
Surprisingly, Stone’s portrayal of how George and Laura met is accurate. At least, it is if Wikipedia is to be believed. And I guess that only guarantees me that the setting is correct. The dialogue is probably only based on speculation. Not that I mind. I still love Stone’s The Doors and have no problem with the romantic fabrication of how Jim Morrison and Pam Courson meet in the film, and as a Doors fan, I know how ridiculously false it is.
“Lee Atwater destroyed the business of politics by going negative,” said Terry MacAuliffe yesterday, introducing an Impact Film Festival screening of Stefan Forbes’ Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. “Democrats don’t fight hard enough. They play tougher on the other side. The bottom line is that these guys will do anything to win.”
Forbes’ film, which caused such a ruckus at its premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, essentially functions as an ideological ink blot––people see what they want in it. It’s possible (and, based on the director’s comments after the film, probably preferred) to see Boogie Man as a vicious indictment of the political operative who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush whilst helping the latter’s father overcome the Iran Contra scandal to win the presidency, destroying Michael Dukakis’ political career in the process. But Forbes, to his credit, also clearly explicates Atwater’s appeal. You might need to put blinders on a bit, but it would be possible to walk away from this film cheering McCain to turn Obama into the new Dukakis
In fact, after the screening, Forbes acknowledged that there are lessons the left could learn from the enemy. “When a fight gets dirty, do you have to join? If you just play defense, you end up looking guilty. You have to turn the attacks into a referendum on the other party.”
It’s been awhile since I put the spotlight on a trailer mash-up, but I haven’t seen too many good ones lately. Have they gone out of fashion? Are internerds tired of watching such and such drama made to look like a comedy and such and such comedy made to look like a thriller? I don’t know, but this fake promo for Home Alone,recut to ape the I Am Legendtrailer, is a evidence that the art of the mash-up should not be lost just yet.
I have one problem with it, though. While it’s as good an idea as the Kill Yoda spot from earlier this year, and it’s initially executed rather successfully with the captions and voice-over, it kinda loses me when Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern show up. And the shot of Kevin where there’s a bunch of people in the background completely ruins the whole idea. Some of the image/audio match-ups are perfect, at least, like the iconic aftershave gag.
I admit it. I loved Steve Guttenberg when I was a kid. And I’ve been anticipating a respectable comeback from the Police Academystar for almost two decades now. But after watching this video from Funny or Die, I’m finally ready to close the door on any hope I might have had for the guy. The faux commercial for “Guttenberg’s Steak House” is lame and unoriginal, and not only did I not laugh, I don’t even understand what’s supposed to be funny about it.
Until now, I kind of believed there was an almost win-win benefit to the viral marketing of oneself. A site like FOD is a perfect venue to showcase whatever talent we’ve been missing from a fallen star who otherwise has been trapped within the confines of the Hollywood system. Someone like Guttenberg, who has been stuck bottom feeding in the lowest of low-rent roles, could use this opportunity to be as brilliant as he can be. Unfortunately, maybe this is as good as he gets these days.
Forty years after the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesters are looking to repeat history in Denver this week. In fact there’s even a group calling itself “Recreate ‘68″, and if you’re a true internerd, you’ve already seen the popular YouTube clip of the crowd chanting “Fuck Fox News” at a Fox News correspondent (check out the other side here).
After so many attempts at making parallels between ‘68 and ‘08, I’m a little bored of the nostalgia, and I think the retro attitude is past the point of showing its ineffectiveness. Earlier this year, I groaned at the use of a modern (though really, mostly decade-old) soundtrack in the ‘68 DNC-set animated documentary Chicago 10. Yet two years prior to that film’s 2007 premiere at Sundance, I had already seen a failed attempt to callback ‘68 with the Medium Coolhomage This Revolution, the trailer for which is today’s clip of the day.
Originally, today’s clip was to be of Tom Cruise’s dance from Tropic Thunder. But, because the internet is not the utopia we like to think it is, the leaked footage has been removed from all formats that I’m aware of.* So, instead, let’s have a retro moment and remember what it was like when Tom Cruise had enjoyable dance sequences. When he wasn’t trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably in the process.
Of course, as I’ve seen with some recent comments to an old post about Cruise’s supposed scene stealing role in Tropic Thunder, there are people enjoying his new dance moves, too. But I have to agree with the guys at Vulture who stated right away that he’s just not that funny in the movie. And not only that, but I’ve now seen Tropic Thunder twice, and Cruise’s over the top swearing and dancing only gets worse the more times you see it (fortunately Robert Downey Jr. gets funnier each time). Not only am I shocked that anybody would let him do an encore of the dancing, I’m amazed that it’s the last thing we get from the otherwise decent movie — if ever there was a missed opportunity for a post-credits sequence, this was it.
Sing it with me: Still like that old time Tom Cruise dance. That kind of scene in which he wears no pants. I reminisce about the days of “Joel.” With that “Old Time Rock and Roll.”
*UPDATE: Oh, wait, I found another copy for the curious. Check it out after the jump (spoiler alert).
It seems appropriate to follow yesterday’s footage of Oliver Stone’s W.with the international trailer for Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. Both films are about leading candidates for worst U.S. President of all time (well, after we discount Harding, Buchanan, Jackson, Pierce and a number of others). And each has a subject that apparently inspired the year’s biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight.
Weeks ago, in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, mystery author Andrew Klavan basically stated that Batman is George W. Bush in the comic book adaptation. Today, Gabe at Videogum jokingly wrote, “just from watching this trailer, I learned that Richard Nixon was the inspiration for Batman’s voice in the Dark Knight.” Now, the question is, will either of these comparisons help their respective films ride the success of TDK? Oh, and how does Entertainment Weekly’s caricature of McCain as Batman figure in?
After watching the trailer for Oliver Stone’s W. a few weeks ago, I had the impression that the George W. Bush biopic wasn’t going to be an impersonation fest. Of course, we only really got to hear James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush, and he didn’t seem to be bothering to sound like anything other than himself — not that I was expecting him to do Dana Carvey doing the senior Bush, but a bit of a change in voice, in order to make me not feel I’m watching the junior Bush getting yelled at by L.A. Confidential’s Captain Smith, would have been appreciated.
Fortunately, as we can now see in some new behind the scenes footage courtesy of Access Hollywood, Josh Brolin is making an effort to sound like the man he’s portraying. Maybe it’s not so perfect that he’s mistakable for the real deal when you listen to the audio alone, but at least he doesn’t just sound like Josh Brolin, either. The video also gives us additional glimpses of Toby Jones as Karl Rove and Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush. The latter can be seen studying actual footage of the President (and likely the First Lady) and practicing mannerisms, and thankfully providing a tiny bit of playfulness to an otherwise too-serious looking set.
Now, when do we get to hear Banks speak? And, for that matter, when do I get my anticipated impersonations of Condi, Colin, Karl, Don and Dick?
Bill Murray jumped out of a plane last Friday as part of the opening of the 50th anniversary Chicago Air & Water Show. Surprisingly, there was apparently no kind of self-promotion involved. He wasn’t holding a sign advertising his villainous turn in this fall’s City of Ember, and he didn’t use the opportunity to announce being cast in The Bucket List 2 (which he’s not really in, and which hopefully isn’t even in the works). As far as I can tell, the only reason for Murray’s participation was that he’s originally from the area and he wanted to experience skydiving — even if strapped to an Army parachutist.
So, while there is seemingly nothing necessarily movie related about the jump, the video of Murray soaring through the air (check out the extended footage, lasting almost 6 minutes, here) did make me want to re-watch one of my favorite of his movies, the underrated What About Bob? I’m not sure if the audio on the camera would have picked it up, anyway, but I was hoping Murray would start screaming, “I’m flying! I’m flying!”
What would you do if the Death Star and a bunch of other Galactic Empire vehicles showed up in your city? Obviously, you’d just go about your business. Continue jogging, or flying your kite, or protesting against China. Maybe you’d get out your video camera and observe the invasion, as if the spacecraft or AT-ATs were Goodyear blimps or a Cloverfield monster.
I almost feel guilty asking what the point of this video is, because it’s done so well. It looks real enough that I actually kind of fear for my friends in the Bay area. I love this explanation from Topless Robot: “Over the weekend, the Empire invaded San Francisco. I assume that they were looking for the semi-nearby Skywalker Ranch, in order to kill George Lucas after seeing Clone Wars.”
