Many critics will no doubt rip apart Robert Pattinson’s performance as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes this weekend, but the truth is that it’s a surprisingly good portrayal of the artist. That is to say that given our expectations, combined with Pattinson’s own celebrity, added to the fact that anyone would look ridiculous sporting Dali’s signature mustache (even Dali), the Twilight actor does as well in the role as is possible. Is the performance Oscar-worthy? Certainly not, but it is deserving of some level of praise.
Pattinson’s Dali follows a long tradition of surprisingly good portrayals of iconic figures. Movie stars are constantly cast as famous persons they barely resemble, and often it’s difficult to shake off our identification with the player in order to accept him/her as the depicted individual. Some of these performances are better than others, and most have been honored by the Academy, but each actor and actress listed below either initially seemed like a wrong choice for the respective part or he/she was at least understood to be taking on a difficult task in attempting to portray such a familiar personality. …Read more
Having seen the trailer for the Ken Kwapis’ cast-of-a-thousand stars self help book dramatization He’s Just Not That Into Youmany, many times (I watch a lot of SoapNET, Lifetime and, uh, MSNBC), I felt reasonably certain going in that I knew exactly what kind of film it was going to be: a wacky, light romantic comedy of mating manners, set in an alternate universe in which otherwise cosmopolitan adults can’t figure out how to use MySpace, and in which all normal and abnormal interpersonal neuroses and difficulties with intimacy are transposed into total paralysis over text messaging. I hope that someday soon, someone in Hollywood makes the film that He’s Not That Into You Was advertised as, because that’s sounds like the exact kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. But He’s Not That Into You is definitely not that film. The question is: what the hell is it?
That Into You fails to fit neatly into assumptions bred by its advertising and its genre makes it somewhat more interesting, if only because it forces us to contend with what our expectations actually are when we go to see a romantic comedy, and what it would actually mean to subvert them. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein seem to be very aware of contemporary romantic comedy conventions, as well as a certain tradition of final inning moral clean-up that dates back to the very earliest examples of the genre produced under the Hayes Code. But they have no interest in depriving a mass audience of the crack hit of cinematic junk food that they were promised by the promos. The film’s ultimate willingness to pander to expectation may make it a disappointment on a critical level, but I’m not sure making the audience conscious of the way their guilty pleasure works before letting them have it is something for which the filmmakers should be reprimanded.
Here’s a tip for the marketing department handling New Line’s He’s Just Not That Into You: telling guys what isn’t in your movie is not going to get them to see it. Why? Because most guys who hate chick flicks aren’t going to recognize the 10 chick flick cliches you purport are absent from the movie. I’m not a guy’s guy, and I watch a ton of movies, yet even I am not familiar with many of the genre’s conventions. Also: having three of the male leads from HJNTIY mock and act out these cliche scenarios is just going to turn guys off more. The promise of a scene featuring a skinny dipping Scarlett Johansson (even if it is non-nude) would obviously be a much better sell to men than an all-male recreation of a “falling in love montage.”
Unfortunately, my advice comes too late, and HJNTIY already has a viral video in which Justin Long, Bradley Cooper and Kevin Connolly address male moviegoers in order to tell them that their new movie isn’t like most chick flicks and that guys “might even like it.” The six-minute clip reeks of desperation and misdirection, and if anything it should make guys even less interested. …Read more
Believe it or not, Alvin & the Chipmunks is about to cross the $200 million box-office mark, could become the most successful family film released in 2007, and is already the highest-grossing talking animal/live-action cartoon adaptation ever. All this can only mean one thing: Chipettes. “There has been a lot of talk about it,” revealed Janice Karman, one of the film’s producers. “A lot of people have been asking about the little girls.”
Of course, in times like this, we go to YouTube, where we quickly learn that “asking about the little girls” is a problematic concept indeed. Check out the comment exchange that sprung up (um, definitely no double entendre intended) under the above video:
Eventually Judd Apatow’s schtick will no longer be fresh. But it may continue to be funny, even after the viral marketing backlash. Case in point: this new sketch/advertisement for Walk Hard, which takes Apatow’s viral brand to a mega-meta level. As much as the idea of fake fights involving Apatow and his actors is now a tired concept, the video is hilarious. And as much as Apatow’s self-referential jokes about being self-referential about being self-referential are as obvious as they are mind-wrapping, the video is still hilarious.It helps that this time around, there’s more funny guys involved and more going on at once. It’s not simply funny to watch Craig Robinson chasing after Judd Apatow because he’s pissed about being in another one of his “fucking commercials”, but it’s comedic gold to inter-cut it with Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill and Justin Long realizing they no longer have to talk about Apatow’s movies and can freely discuss their desire to see Michael Clayton.
Funny is funny, regardless of the situation or the motive.
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
Here’s a tip for the marketing department handling New Line’s 
