The new trailer for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Storydebuted yesterday on CNN.com, but obviously the world (including me) was too busy crapping on the Avatar trailer to notice. Even the Wolfman spot received more notice. For awhile last night I thought maybe people, even those on the left, were tired of Moore completely. But no, there has finally been some discussion of the thing today.
And the consensus appears to be that Moore isn’t making films any fresher or more groundbreaking than James Cameron is. In fact, Moore’s latest seems surprisingly dated. This is something we’ve expected, of course, given the ongoing story of the economic meltdown, but it is interesting to see so much Bush as well as a complete lack of footage that appears to have been shot since Obama was elected.
Worst of all, everyone agrees, is the use of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on the soundtrack. Even if that song hadn’t been used to death by Pineapple Expressand Slumdog Millionaireads, I would think I was watching a trailer from 2008. How about, given the current events, Moore just rereleases Sicko instead?
Check out what the rest of the film blogs are saying about the film/trailer after the jump:
If Tyler Perry gets an Oscar nomination for his acting in Madea Goes to Jail, can a washed-up actress scold him for taking away female roles? Actually, could it just be Cuba Gooding Jr. in drag, a la Boat Trip?
Seriously, though, Madea won’t be up for any Academy Awards next year, but damn is Perry’s character popular. Enough that the sassy matriarch has now evolved from a supporting character into the star of her own vehicle (which gave the filmmaker his biggest opening yet this past weekend). Yes, it’s true that Madea is a central figure in most of Perry’s films and has previously been the main protagonist in his plays (including the one Madea Goes to Jail is based on), but in the movie world she was introduced as a secondary role in Diary of a Mad Black Woman. So, now she belongs in that small club of supporting characters who’ve earned their own film(s); other members of which include Jay and Silent Bob, Bruce and Lloyd, Cousin Eddie, Marshal Samuel Gerard, the Scorpion King and Wolverine.
And Madea is one of the very few female characters to belong to the club, which is another good reason for an actress to scold Perry. But the problem also lies with the people who write woman characters, apparently, since in coming up with ten other supporting characters who deserve their own spin off, we managed to only include two females on our list. Perhaps if we’d permitted classic film characters there’d be more to choose from — though even then we might be more likely to include a Peter Lorre or a William Demarest role than a Thelma Ritter or Eve Arden. …Read more
The past two weekends have seen the release of two big, R-rated comedies, first Pineapple Express and then Tropic Thunder. Both featured stars who have, at least occasionally, dipped their toes into family friendly film waters and who have developed big followings across all age groups.
Both movies marketing campaigns also featured red-band trailers. Others and I have discussed the role of the red-band trailer in the campaigns for R-rated movies. They are great components for selling the movies to their adult audiences since, as I’ve said before, they are able to more accurately portray the movie as a whole. If a movie’s comedy or drama depends on the use of coarse language or violence then it’s better for the movie to be able to present those elements to the target audience in order to appear attractive.
Red-band trailers have come back into fashion in the last four or five years largely because of the rise of high-speed video online. On the Internet, studios can put into place safeguards, usually in the form of forms that require the inputting of name, birth-date and zip code, that are meant to keep those under 18 from seeing the trailer or other content. Invariably, though, these trailers wind up on YouTube or some other video sharing site – or directly on blogs – where there is no safeguard. This makes what’s supposed to be restricted content available to everywhere regardless of age. This is an obvious flaw in the process.
But the larger question about the advertising of R-rated films is: What advertising is appropriate?
Trailer remakes seem to be all the rage now — the Dark Knightwith kids clip I posted last month is getting a lot of mileage lately — and this week Indy Mogul premiered its parody of the full Pineapple Expresstrailer, for a fake movie titled “Banana Express.” Here’s the quick synopsis: a gorilla (Seth Rogen) and his banana dealer (James Franco) go on the run after the former witnesses a zookeeper murdering a fellow gorilla.
It may not be the funniest thing you see this week, but you have to give them credit for attempting to “ape” the Pineapple Express trailer shot for shot (Indy Mogul links to the original trailer and welcomes you to compare the two videos) and for including their own parody of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” titled “Banana Peels & Bombs”, which can be downloaded from Indymogul.com. Think you could do better? In 36 hours? I’m anxious to see other trailer remakes and parodies, so bring ‘em on.
Though Pineapple Express had a better per-screen average and walked away from its first five days with a more than adequate $40 million, it couldn’t block The Dark Knight from nabbing its fourth consecutive weekend box office title. Currently at $441 million, the Batman sequel is expected to overcome Star Wars as the number 2 domestic grosser of all time.
Entourage star Adrien Grenier is making a documentary about the 14 year-old paparazzo (unnamed in this Hollywood Reporter report) with whom he’s developed a friendship. Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Longoria, and Rosie O’Donnell will make appearances in the film, which is said to “interweave the relationship portrait with philosophical interviews in the style of Richard Linklater’s Waking Life.”
The drift away from R-rated horror is already starting to pay off for Lionsgate. Thanks to a combination of factors––home video successes like Rambo, theatrical moneymakers like The Forbidden Kingdom, the surge in hotness of TV titles Mad Men and Weeds––their total revenue was up 50% in the first fiscal quarter.
Rogen and Franco are hilarious in Pineapple Express, but the pothead to really watch out for is Danny McBride. Often relegated to brilliant and all-too-brief supporting roles, McBride stars in The Foot Fist Way, which is finally getting a gradual release thanks to Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. McBride’s magic lies in his ability to be a complete asshole 100% of the time on screen, while still charming the viewer. How does he do that?
ALSO, a call to Karina brings us back to the mid-twentieth century with some great television. What is it that makes AMC’s Mad Men so addictive? Need an excuse to not leave the house for the rest of the summer? Try TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.
Pineapple Express‘ Wednesday night opening broke two records: with its gross of $12.5 million, it had the best August Wednesday opening day ever. It has also now grossed more than every other film directed by David Gordon Green combined. His previous high grosser was All the Real Girls, which made about half a million dollars back in 2003. That’s right: in a single day, he beat his personal high score by a factor of 25. Of course, Pineapple also opened in 125 times as many theaters as Real Girls played in its widest release.
There’s really no way to calculate how much of that $12.5 million is due to the efforts of Green, and how much can be credited to the Judd Apatow brand name, to the combination of leads Seth Rogen and James Franco, or to the immortal Huey Lewis. So…cheers all around!
I’m glad I didn’t know Huey Lewis and the News were performing their Pineapple Express plot song on the Jimmy Kimmel show, because if I had, I might have actually forced myself to watch the Jimmy Kimmel show, and it wouldn’t have been worth it. The video evidence of the performance is above, and it’s hard to imagine a more cheerless gesture of synergy. After Huey’s half-assed opening hand claps, he seems to give up the game to his horn section. Maybe for good reason––he’s seemingly employed the finest pop-rock saxophonists alive––but I’m still going to say it’s for Huey Lewis and/or plot song completists only.
Torture pornographer Eli Roth is in talks “a baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter” in Quentin Tarantino’s The Inglorious Bastards. Tarantino is apparently still talking to Brad Pitt about playing the lead role in the film, but nothing has been finalized.
Pineapple Express and the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsare opening today because their distributors want to “get a jump on a weekend full of Olympics coverage, which shifts into high gear Friday with the Opening Ceremony.” The “high end of expectations” would have David Gordon Green’s stoner comedy beating Batman at the box office. Emphasis on the “high.”
A theoretical SAG work stoppage be damned, Ang Lee will begin shootingTaking Woodstock this month, his ensemble film about the “aspiring interior designer” who offered up his parents hotel as the concert’s base of operation. Meanwhile, a new 40th anniversary Woodstock DVD is in the works, with at least an hour of concert footage added.
Prada has commissioned nine short films inspired by Prada, which Prada will then have edited into a feature about Prada, for viewing on the Prada website.
Comic-Con begins this week, not with a bang, but a blaze. Sony’s eagerly awaited next installment in the train that is Judd Apatow continues barreling down the track with multiple word of mouth screenings of Pineapple Express this week, including one in San Diego during the massive weekend of the Con. It’s worth trying to get into one just for the Huey Lewis and the News song that rolls over the end credits.
I was lucky enough to see the flick last night, and it was excellent on all counts. It’s over the top, violent, and very funny. And while Danny McBride’s Red character threatens to outfunny both Seth Rogen and James Franco, it’s Franco who brings us back the loveable movie stoner that we’ve missed so much.
People have been smoking pot in movies for decades now, but where Knocked Up just gave us useless layabouts who light up all the time, there’s actually a long line of lovable movie stoners who have handed off the torch to Franco, and he continues their tradition in glorious fashion. Here’s to those who helped pave the road.
Finally, a special July 4th treat: Nick Dawson points us to the website for Proud American, a film described thusly by its official synopsis, “While showing the nation’s spectacular landmarks and engineering marvels, historical sites and natural wonders, Proud American is really about the American people.” And it’s “presented by” Coca-Cola, MasterCard and Wal-Mart, so you know it has to be good!
This is it, the day we’ve been waiting for two full decades (or, at least, since we first heard it was happening back in December): the Huey Lewis plot song written specifically for the David Gordon Green-driected, Judd Apatow-produced stoner comedy Pineapple Express has hit the web! The Playlist first posted a clip of the song last night; today, Whitney at Pop Candy points to the full thing, available for streaming or download on MySpace.
It’s very much in classic Huey Lewis plot song mode, complete with gratuitous hand claps and sax solo. It’s not as directly narrative as, say, “Back in Time” (above), but it’s slightly more literally connected to the film than, like, “The Power of Love.” A sample from the chorus: “How did we get into this mess? Pineapple Express! Can’t deal with this stress! Totally gone, cause we’re on, Pineapple Express!” It is the best, and it is also totally the worst.
As we’ve discussed before, plot songs take the science of the source cue to a new level. After the jump, a brief, video-guided journey through plot song history. Let us know what we’ve left out.
On Saturday, Karina and I were discussing the upcoming Judd Apatow-produced comedy Pineapple Express, which I think is a waste of David Gordon Green’s directorial talent. Even more, I think it’s a waste of his writing talent, as it’s his first film where he’s not (credited as) one of the screenwriters. But, as Karina argued, a guy has to earn a paycheck now and again, and if him making this stoner comedy means I get to see more beautiful little films from Green in the future, then I should be happy for him and thankful to Apatow and Columbia Pictures. After all, great actors do this sort of thing all the time, so why shouldn’t it be okay for directors?
However, all too often a sellout film can leave a really bad taste in our mouths. Sometimes that one really commercial movie will harm a filmmaker’s career for a long time, whether because it’s a box office flop or because it ends up only being the first in a new, more-mainstream direction for the filmmaker (see John Woo, sort of). Hopefully Pineapple Express won’t be as bad as any of these famous disasters by otherwise great directors:
Alien Resurrection (1997) - It kind of seemed a dream come true that Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children) would be wooed by Hollywood, especially for something as high-profile as the fourth Alien installment. But like many great foreign filmmakers, Jeunet was not nearly as great with an English-language script (nor is, apparently, Wong Kar-Wai). The movie looked really good, as had Jeunet’s French films, but overall the film was quite disappointing. It wasn’t necessarily Jeunet’s fault, but because he wasn’t fluent in English, it was likely difficult for him to communicate well with the actors and to see the faults of Joss Whedon’s script. Fortunately, Jeunet went on to make Amelie and has hopefully ignored the call of Hollywood ever since. …Read more
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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