Fox was the bread in a Chihuahua sandwich this weekend, as estimates place the studio’s two new releases at #1 and #3 on the box office chart. 20th Century Fox’s Max Payne made $18 million while Fox Searchlight’s The Secret Life of Bees earned just over $11 million, which was very, very close to Beverly Hills Chihuahua’s second-placing $11.2 million. Coming in fourth place, which in terms of the sandwich metaphor makes it a pickle, was Oliver Stone’s W. with a close $10.6 million. The discarded turkey, meanwhile, was Sex Drive, which placed ninth with only $3.6 million.
Not enough of a turkey, however, that the Sex Drive writing-directing team of John Morris and Sean Anders couldn’t make a deal for their next project, a college comedy about an accidental father.
Citing creative differences, Hugh Grant has exited the movie biz-set romantic comedy Lost for Words, which would have seen him play opposite Ziyi Zhang as an actor who falls for his director despite a language barrier. Now hopes of a life-imitates-art romance between Grant and Danish director Susanne Bier have been shattered.
Killer Films is producing a movie involving the 1944 meeting of Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Keroac. Too bad David Cross, who hilariously portrayed Ginsberg in Killer’s I’m Not There is probably too old to reprise the role.
I’m still waiting for the day a remake of Troop Beverly Hills is announced, but for now the similar-sounding Tough Cookieswill just have to suffice. The family film will be about a deadbeat dad who leads an unconventional group of girl scouts, who compete against snobbish rivals at the National Scout Rally.
I’m skeptical about James Franco portraying Allen Ginsberg in the courtroom-set biopic Howl (can anyone but David Cross be cast after I’m Not There?), but now that Paul Rudd, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Alan Alda and David Straithairn are also aboard, it could at least be a decent ensemble piece.
Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, U2 and now … Blue Man Group? The painted trio is the latest group to be given a 3-D concert film. I wonder if David Cross just blue himself in the hopes of getting a part in it.
New Line has acquired an upcoming novel from Richard Doetsch about a man accused of killing his wife and his trip back in time — in one-hour increments — to save her. Titled The Thirteenth Hour, Variety says it’s being described as The Bourne Identity meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, but obviously it’s more like The Fugitive meets Memento (meets — hopefully — David Cross).
New Line is also making a romantic comedy that’s an obvious cross between Slap Shot and The Devil Wears Prada. And, not obviously, it’s based on a true story.
Oh my. The wholewideinternet is now talking about David Cross’ blog post in defense of his decision to cash in on Alvin and the Chipmunks. Cross was apparently moved to write the post, at least in part, by “a snide comment” made by fellow comedian Patton Oswalt on his own blog. Oswalt, who acknowledges the irony that he’s somehow managed to maintain some modicum of credibility even after playing “the fat sidekick from King Of Queens” for something like three decades, had originally claimed that “[B]oth Brian Posehn and I were offered the part [in Alvin]. We both threw the script across the room in disgust. David Cross caught it.”
Now, in a letter ostensibly addressed to Cross, published by The A.V. Club, Oswalt says said snide comment was actually an inside joke which Cross just didn’t get. Oswalt says he ran into Cross after attending the premiere of Failure to Launch, in which Oswalt had “a tiny, three-line part in the movie, and I used it as a way to scam Paramount into flying me to Manhattan for a few days.” And then…
David Cross has written a long blog post justifying his appearance in Alvin and the Chipmunks. He lists four “mitigating factors” (and #4 has a sub-clause, so it’s really five), but it all pretty much comes down to what you’d expect: “indie hipster cred” doesn’ pay for upstate cottages, and he needed the job. An excerpt:
I like to work. I really do…Up to working on Alvin I had not worked in six (SIX!) months. That is an eternity if you’re an actor. Think about not working for two months with no hope of anything on the horizon. Now triple that. It was the longest period without work since after Ben Stiller got cancelled (the show, not the man) and I was going nuts. I was depressed and difficult to live with. I was VERY happy to have the work. Again, no regrets.
Cross basically has to do this (the blog post, not the work) because his fan base consists in large part of post-punk consumerists––ie: people who themselves enjoy the spoils of consumer culture, but persist on holding their cultural icons to an impossible high standard of “integrity” and commercial purity. This is why we don’t see similar posts from, say Helen Mirren, justifying her choice to follow up her Oscar-winning work in The Queen by playing sexy academic in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Which is a shame, because I’d love to see her follow in David Cross’ footsteps, and use a New York Times review as evidence for why her fans could/should “suck it.”
A number of stories from Juno press confabs fueled rumors last week that Jason Bateman is trying to jump-start a movie based on his much-missed FOX comedy Arrested Development. Keith Olbermann, who admits to being friends with at least three ex-AD cast members, passed along a statement from the actor and series creator Mitchell Hurwitz, confirming that the movie is “something [they're] very interested in doing, but only after the writers’ strike, and only if the powers that be approve.”
For those not in the know, AD starred Bateman as Michael Bluth, the one sort-of together member of a high-profile Southern California family, whose real estate tycoon patriarch (Jeffrey Tambor) has been thrown in jail whilst awaiting trial on charges of (among other things) building mansions for Sadaam Hussein. Michael Cera, Bateman’s so-hot-right-now Juno costar, played his son on the show; Will Arnet, Portia DiRossi and David Cross rounded out the cast.
I was a huge Arrested Development fan (I wrote this much-misread post about the show in spring 2005), but I was also fairly satisfied with the series’ conclusion. I sat down to try to imagine/divine possible plotlines for a movie, but because there was very little that I was dying to see resolved, I decided to call in some reinforcements. I sent out emails to some bloggy friends, I trolled Facebook looking for fans. Then, weirdness: for every AD fan who happily offered up an idea for The Bluth family’s big screen debut, another essentially refused to comment. It looks like there’s a decent contingent of AD fans who really don’t want to see the show they love ruined by a false, cinematic extension–and really, having seen the careless cash-in that is the Sex and the City trailer, can you blame them?
In any case, between my own fixations and those of three blogger friends, after the jump I manage to cobble together a list of five pretty promising potential plotlines for this not-yet-even-greenlit Arrested Development movie. These aren’t prognostications, just narrative directions that actual AD fans would like to see explored. Toss out your own thoughts in the comments.
Late last week, a clip from Todd Haynes‘ experimental Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There appeared on YouTube, and some bloggers spent the weekend debating whether or not to post it on their own sites. It’s the first upload for YouTube user adin1978, but the clip–which depicts a run-in between Dylan (played in this scene by Cate Blanchett) and Allen Ginsberg, played by comedian David Cross–bears a timecode stamp at the bottom, which means it was probably leaked by someone very close to the film. There’s a possibility that this was done with Haynes’ consent, to test early web buzz, but being that this is the first real glimpse of the film we’ve seen, there’s a also a solid chance that the clip was leaked against the filmmakers’ wishes.
Yesterday, Ray Pride posted on Movie City Indie about his decision not to embed the clip, but linked to a post by Scott Macaulay at the FILMMAKER blog which allegedly did contain the clip. “For all I know this is an early viral transmission intended to stoke interest in the movie by getting run on sites like this one. So, I’m embedding it below unless I hear otherwise,” Macaulay wrote. As of this morning, that blog post no longer exists.
There’s no indication whether Macaulay second-guessed his decision and removed the clip himself, or if he did so in response to a request from the filmmakers. But, the clip itself has not been removed from YouTube (which is usually the first step copyright holders take when their material has been distributed against their will), and as of this morning, it’s still embedded on a number of sites. I’m going to take my chances and embed the clip here, for two reasons: a) YouTube makes it incredibly easy for unhappy copyright holders to remove their work from the site, so anything that is allowed to stay up for several days, pirated or not, is fair game for bloggers to disseminate; and b) David Cross’s interpretation of Ginsberg deserves to be seen by as many eyes as possible.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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