Forget about comedians making a funny videos to plump up their IMDb profiles––the new hotness is skipping the video, and taking comedy directly to IMDb. On his Tumblr, comedian/Human Giant star Paul Scheer implores The Internet to join him, Adam McKay (writer/director of Anchorman and Talladega Nights) and several of their friends and colleagues in mobbing the message boards attached to the IMDb entry for the questionable classic,Another Stakeout. “Come join us and help us turn this movie into a giant cult hit for absolutely no good reason,” Scheer writes. “Let’s forward this e-mail and flood the site to the point where there are Another Stakeout festivals and conventions and midnight showings with people in costume saying lines along with the movie ala Rocky Horror Pic Show.” Why Another Stakeout and not just Stakeout? Scheer clarifies: “The first one was pretty good but like the Godfather 2 (or is the Godfather 2 like Another Stakeout?) director John Badham got it right the second time around.”
On last week’s edition of FilmCouch, I revealed one of my dirtiest secrets: on some level, I’m more interested in bad movies than good ones. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear my explanation, but coincidentally, I’ve come across a number of stories over the past few days that revolve around quantifying and qualifying movie badness.
Going into the weekend, FILMMAKER’s Scott Macaulay noticed that the apparently unwatchable (and unscreened for critics) Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me was rocking a rating of 0% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. “In our long-tailed world of a million and one tastes, it would seem impossible to make a film that simply nobody likes,” Macaulay wrote. “If you believe the tomato squad, however, it’s been done.” A commenter on that post noted that once a few more reviews started to roll in, its score skyrocketed to 8%; five days later, it has actually dropped to 7%.
Only two of the reviews listed at Rotten Tomatoes are positive enough to earn a juicy red tomato; one of them, by the McVoice syndicate’s Jim Ridley, has essentially convinced me that I Know Who Killed Me is a must see. “Watch the mallrats’ jaws drop as they pay to see the same old teen slicer-dicer, only to get this wacko hodgepodge of the Brian De Palma horror filmography and—I swear to God—Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique,” Ridley begins. The critic only has about 200 words to work with, but he manages to call it a “a surreal, disjointed mood piece about teen alienation,” AND commend Lohan for playing “her good-girl/bad-girl role with wit and an air of sly calculation,” AND toss off a reference to Kafka just before the clock runs out. Well played, indeed.
It looks like Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Rubens–who admits to feeling “like I’m on my third or fourth comeback at least”–is making one more stab at a return to relevancy. Fresh off a guest spot on my favorite show, 30 Rock, he’s apparently lining up new projects under both his given name, as the man-child persona that made him famous.
This fall, Rubens is set to work with Todd Solondz, on the Happiness auteur’s first film in three years. And he’s apparently hoping to get a new Pee Wee movie off the ground as well. “I didn’t do everything I wanted as Pee-wee Herman,” he tells the AP. Rubens has completed two Pee-wee screenplays: a light-hearted road trip reuniting the old Playhouse crew (so, probably this, which IMDb Pro lists as “in production” at Paramount), and a dark satire said to explore ” how Pee-wee deals with Hollywood and the trappings of fame.”
I’m not sure contemporary audiences are exactly clamoring for that one, but the Solondz project sounds interesting. indieWIRE reported last Spring that Solondz had secured financing for a film described as “a kind of sequel to — or riff on — Happiness,” and though 2004’s Palindromes is regular IMDB’s most recent listing for the director, IMDB Pro says the project described by indieWIRE is now called Life During Wartime, and is still in the script phase. So: Pee-Wee+Solondz+Talking Heads reference. It’s not much to report, but it’s a potentially exciting combo.
Word just came down the wire that Marc Forster has been hired to direct the next James Bond movie. According to Variety, the FInding Neverland director will “start work shortly” on a script polish with Paul Haggis, who wrote the (I think) very good Casino Royale and directed the (I think) very bad Crash.
It’s an interesting choice, considering Forster’s films a) tend have a lot of showy/Oscar bait-y roles for actors. and b) he has not previously directed anything resembling a franchise or mega-budget action film. But what does it mean? Reports surfaced earlier this year that Bond 22 (according to IMDb, it’s still untitled) will be a “direct sequel” to Casino Royale. The hiring of Forster could be an indication that the film take Casino’s “Bond is only human” angle even further, thus requiring a director who knows how to focus on an ordinary interpersonal drama set within an extraordinary circumstance (ie: Stranger Than Fiction). Still, the film’s primary IMDB “plot” keyword is “weaponry“, so I can’t imagine we’re talking about *too* much character drama.
If you’re a Bond fan (and, really, I think anyone who claims they get zero pleasure from these films is a dirty liar), you should check the Bond & Beyond group here at Spout. Or, if Forster’s casting has you super psyched (or super skeptical) about the sequel, you can start a new group devoted to Bond 22. Either would be a good place to talk about one of my favorite mashup videos, embedded above.
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.
filmcouch-114
Forget about comedians making a funny videos to plump up their IMDb profiles––the new hotness is skipping the video, and taking comedy directly to IMDb. 
On last week’s edition of FilmCouch, I revealed one of my dirtiest secrets: on some level, I’m more interested in bad movies than good ones. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear my explanation, but coincidentally, I’ve come across a number of stories over the past few days that revolve around quantifying and qualifying movie badness.
