Apparently someone at Twentieth Century Fox is reading SpoutBlog lists for inspiration: a month after we suggested a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Will Ferrell, the studio has announced a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Jack Black (really, though, the project has apparently been in the works for some time). Perhaps we’ll soon hear about a Candide movie at Paramount?
Sylvester Stallone is continuing his career as a full-fledged filmmaker by writing, directing and co-starring in The Expendables, in which he and Jason Statham and Jet Li will play mercenaries on a mission to kill a South American dictator.
Yesterday’s list dealt with Tom Cruise’s performance in Tropic Thunder. Today, a response to Robert Downey Jr.’s role in the same film as a white actor portraying a black soldier in a war movie (seen in the above clip). Doesn’t it seem such an original and shocking idea? I guess not if you see it as an update on blackface. Fortunately, it’s different when it’s an actor playing a character who makes himself up to look black. It’s funny. But isn’t it typically more acceptable when the make-up isn’t quite as authentic-looking as Downey’s? He actually looks black. Specifically, he looks like Fred Williamson.
I’ve seen plenty of lists detailing the worst instances of one race or nationality playing characters of another race/nationality (John Wayne and Susan Hayward in The Conquerorcomes to mind as #1), but I can’t recall any lists involving actors playing characters disguised as or playing another race. So here’s one:
WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) — U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday that U.S.-China relations are good and important, and he is “honored” to be invited to attend the Beijing premiere of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a new Jet Li/Brendan Fraser fantasy film.
“The fact that both countries are honoring the 30th anniversary of the relationship is a statement about good relations,” he told reporters from China, South Korea and Thailand at the White House ahead of his upcoming trip to the three countries. Also, the fact that both China and the United States are opening new Magic Johnson Theaters in each other’s capitals is “a signal of how important the relationship is,” Bush added.
–Two surprise clips of Drag Me To Hell were shown; one was good/funny, the other awful.
–Sid and Marty Krofft say H.R. Puffnstuf will be turned into a movie after Land of the Lost, and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters after that.”
–Brendan Fraser is apparently perennially hopped up on over-the-counter cold medicine.
I just realized that Michael Angarano is not the same person as Shia LaBeouf. No, just kidding, but I did just realize that he is to LaBeouf as Brian Cox is to Albert Finney, as Gary Busey is to Nick Nolte, as Skeet Ulrich is to Johnny Depp, etc. (for others see the Daily Doppel). Perhaps one day the two young actors will even get to star in a film together and it will be anticipated with the same excitement as The Forbidden Kingdom, which teams up for the first time Hong Kong superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Of course, I hope nobody has ever confused these two martial artists and do not mean to insinuate they are anything like each other’s doppelganger. In fact, they are such distinct and amazing performers in their own right, it’s almost too much to feature them both in this movie.
The last teaser trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom was pretty much a disappointment, as it focused almost entirely on Angarano’s character, an American teenager who magically winds up in ancient China. Sure, it’s alright for the little guy to be in the movie — he’s probably needed to water down the movie’s awesomeness, which is so extreme, what with Jackie Chan, Jet Li and action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping on board, that it would probably make us all explode otherwise. With this new trailer, though, we get the whole story and a lot more of the real stars. Sure, it leads us to believe that Angarano is to become the next great kung fu master, and there’s a little more CGI than I like in a Jackie Chan movie (might as well get Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott), but it still looks hot.
The Forbidden Kingdom arrives in theaters April 18.
Earlier this week, Grady Hendrix (co-founder of Subway Cinema, the collective that puts on the annual New York Asian Film Festival) re-launched his Kaiju Shakedown Asian cinema blog at Variety. Yesterday, Hendrix posted a mighty listicle, in an effort to catch his readers up on the Asian film world gossip that they missed while the blog was on its “six month bathroom break.” And thank God he did, because otherwise, we would have never known about this post on Jackie Chan’s official blog, dated July 16 and titled “Absolutely No Fun”. An excerpt:
Today is Monday. I have to begin my fourth day of prosthetic make-up. Thinking about doing the same thing tomorrow just makes me feel like there is no joy in life. Supposedly, I was scheduled to finish filming my prosthetic make-up shots today. But they told me they needed an extra day because they haven’t finished filming all the shots. When I heard this news, my whole body felt like it was about to break down. I totally lost my appetite. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to make any phone calls. Even if someone called me, I didn’t want to answer the phone. I didn’t want to write my diary. If they needed me to film, then I would film. Otherwise, I didn’t want to do anything else…
The prosthetics are for a film Chan is making for The Weinstein Company with Jet Li, called Forbidden Kingdom, and since the pairing of the two stairs makes this a huge project for martial arts fans he’s apparently contractually forbidden from releasing pictures of the “no fun” make-up job (Twitch linked to some cast photos in June, but there are no close-ups of Chan). We wouldn’t want to wish this kind of suffering on anyone, but you’ve got to wonder: is Chan undergoing some kind of karmic retribution for continually enabling the ascendancy of Brett Ratner?
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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