Variety reports that director Jay Roach, in partnership with Universal, is set to remake A Compelete History of My Sexual Failures, a crowd-pleasing personal documentary (in the loosest sense of the world) that premiered at Sundance in 2008. When I reviewed the film, my basic problems with it were that it felt too artificial, and too eager to prioritize laughs over truth. So it’s probably the perfect vehicle for the director behind the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents franchises, no?

A man was arrested in London last week for imitating James Bond. He wasn’t going around and ordering vodka martinis though, he had numerous fake IDs, replica guns, and even a personalized wallet styled after From Russia With Love. That’s dedication right there. We’ve had James Bond imitators in the movies for more than 40 years, but sadly none of them have ever been arrested. Although thankfully, a few of them have been entertaining. Check out the James Bond knockoffs in the list below, as we ramp up towards Quantum of Solace.

…Read more

This week, thanks to The Rocker, we can add another fictional band to the long list of music groups created solely for the movies. They’re called Vesuvius, and they’re an ‘80s hair band with a hit song titled “Promised Land.” As part of the film’s marketing, the track was offered as a free download for play on Rock Band (see the clip above). But if you ask me, the wrong tune was used in the promotion. Another song from the soundtrack, also credited to Vesuvius, is called “Pompeii Nights,” and it’s definitely the better of the two.

I’m not surprised, though. While most people favor the songs of Spinal Tap, a once-fictional band that has become popular enough to evolve into a “semi-fictional” performing act, I’ve preferred such gems as “The Whites of Their Eyes” by PEZ® People, from The Big Picture. Also co-written by This is Spinal Tap’s Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and sung by McKean, this song is apparently so underrated that I can’t even find an audio sample, let along a YouTube clip of the fake band’s music video, which was directed by fictional filmmaker Lydia Johnson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Fortunately, for the benefit of this list, the rest of these under-appreciated tracks have a few fellow fans.

…Read more

The best time for a Get Smart movie would have been the late ’60s, when the original television series was still on the air. In fact, there was a theatrical Get Smart film in the works during the run of the show, but it was canceled when the theatrical release of Munster, Go Home! bombed at the box office. Many years later, in 1980, a Get Smart feature titled The Nude Bomb was released to theaters, but it also performed poorly.

Now we’re getting a remake version starring Steve Carell in the role that was so iconically defined by the late Don Adams. Will it do the show justice? Reportedly the budget was $80 million, a significant amount of which was probably put towards pointless effects. But the best thing Warner Bros. could have done with that money is to give a large amount to series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, who probably even today could churn out a better script than Failure to Launch scribes Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember.

Despite its lack of original Get Smart talent, though, it could still be marginally funny. Yet the real problem is that it may be too outdated and obsolete for audiences to care. In the four decades since the show went off the air, there has been plenty of similar-themed movies, from spy spoofs to films with bumbling heroes. The following ten titles are the best evidence of why this new Get Smart movie is completely unnecessary:

1. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - It’s interesting that Get Smart is going up against a Mike Myers movie this weekend, because in a way it’s also going up against Myers’ Austin Powers movies, as well. Sure, spy parodies have been around in spades since around the time of the first James Bond movie, but nothing has been as popular as this series, which of course includes the much bigger-grossing sequels, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
   …Read more

It’s got to be difficult to upstage Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, but apparently Tom Cruise does it in this summer’s action-comedy-Hollywood satire Tropic Thunder. The way the New York Times describes it, Cruise’s cameo as a studio executive sounds like the best thing in the movie. Especially if you’re familiar with the whole Cruise vs. Sumner Redstone thing.

At an industry screening Tuesday night of the forthcoming comedy “Tropic Thunder” from Paramount Pictures and its unit DreamWorks, Tom Cruise brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools.

The article goes on to claim that nothing we’ve seen Cruise do before can prepare us for the performance.

Mr. Cruise, 45, has been a hunk (“Cocktail”), a heartthrob (“Far and Away”), an action hero (“Minority Report”) and a series of extraordinary ordinary guys (from “Taps” to “War of the Worlds”). He has also done some comic scenes. In 2002, for instance, there was a bit as Austin Powers, in “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”

But nothing on his résumé predicted the rapturous reaction he received Tuesday night.

…Read more