If there’s one good thing that will come from this, it’s that no producer in his right mind will go through with an actual MacGyver movie after audiences suffer through the SNL-based parody MacGruber. Sadly, New Line has been developing an adaptation of the action series for a 2011 release, but the comedic knock-off is set to begin shooting next month and will likely arrive in theaters sometime in 2010. Many people would probably prefer the “real deal” version, so maybe my silver lining isn’t theirs. But I’ve actually never seen MacGyver nor the spoof sketches starring Will Forte, so I don’t really care which movie is made or which is better or which is more successful.

Honestly, I haven’t been interested in anything adapted from an SNL character since the disappointing Coneheads, so I was perfectly happy to ignore the announcement of a MacGruber movie altogether. However, it seems to be striking a nerve with the rest of the film blog community today.  So I present you with their mostly negative reactions after the jump:

…Read more

I’m not in the mood to trash Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the billionth time today, but the hot story on the blogs appears to be Indy related, so I’ll try to get through this disappointing story as quick as possible. According to Shia LaBeouf (in an interview with the BBC), Steven Spielberg has “cracked a story on” a fifth installment of the franchise, and the young actor thinks “they’re gearing that up.”

Of course that means little except that the series has survived despite having “nuked the fridge” (a term actually spawned by the ridiculousness of the fourth film), and it will continue grasping through life with some level of radiation sickness (aka further crappiness) as a result. Because I’m something of a cinematic masochist (you have to be in this line of work), I’ll probably see the next sequel, and the next, but I’ve got lower expectations for this thing than I’ve had for any movie ever greenlit.

Let’s see if any other bloggers feel the same way after the jump:
…Read more

Are you one of the many sci-fi and comic book geeks who’d be more interested in Push were it not for Dakota Fanning? Sure, the precocious child star is now a teen actress (she’s about to turn 15), yet that probably makes you even more worried about her appearance in the movie. But what can you do? She’s literally everywhere this week – voicing the title character in the animated Coraline and starring in two new video releases, Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees, both of which were released Tuesday. In the tradition of child actors continuing careers into adolescence, it’s only a matter of time before she ruins a movie that would have been better without her.

We’ll have to wait until this weekend to see if that time is now, with Push, but in the meantime let’s take a look at some of the past offenders in this tradition. Most of the following former child actors (our definition: actors that began their career below the age of 13) have done great things in their adulthood, but each has done at least one film that could have been better without him or her. You may disagree with some of these picks, and you may think we’ve forgotten some (was Christian Bale really the worst part of The Dark Knight? did Mary-Kate Olsen’s disturbing kiss with Ben Kingsley take away from The Wackness?), so do share your own thoughts on former child stars below. We just ask that you keep your comments somewhat tasteful and law-abiding.
…Read more

Should special effects only be used to service a film’s story, or is it perfectly fine for movies to feature extraneous spectacle? That’s a debate that comes up often among cineastes, but ultimately there’s room for both functions. Sometimes, in cases like Jurassic Park and The Matrix, both categories of effects may even faultlessly coexist in the same film. Yet there is one kind of effects employment that’s intolerable to all film-loving parties: the gratuitous exploitation for the sole purpose of brazen gimmickry. It’s this kind of effects work that goes beyond spectacle. It’s not so much a show as a show off.

For one example of this cinematic sin check out Karina’s review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which she references a scene featuring an inessential and irrelevant rocket launch in the background of an otherwise intimate moment between two lovers on a sailboat. Actually, that’s apparently only a minor citation in a “a film about the feat of its own whiz-bang, Frankensteinian digital imagery, drunk on its own accomplishment to an extent that feels quasi-ethical.” Hardly the first movie to commit such a crime, sure, but Benjamin Button seems to be the most thoroughly guilty exploiter since Forrest Gump (both films, incidentally, were scripted by Eric Roth).

So, in (dis)honor of Roth’s repeat offense, let’s take a short look at the worst exploitations of special effects in the last 15 years:
…Read more

• Shia LaBeouf will take a pause from Transformer movies and unofficial Hitchcock remakes long enough to star in an adaptation of the new John Grisham legal thriller, The Associate. The film will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who oversaw past Grisham films The Client and A Time to Kill. Could this mean director Joel Schumacher will also be on board?
• Peter Farrelly (one of the brothers) and producer Charles Wessler are putting together a comedic portmanteau (or anthology) film with 24 shorts utilizing the writing and/or directing talents of such vets as Brett Ratner, Todd Phillips, Mike Judge and potentially Josh Gordon and Will Speck. The sole Farrelly will direct two installments, but for some reason his brother Bobby is not involved with the project.
• The media thrashing of Australia includes the film’s reception Down Under, where it isn’t being greeted as the national treasure Fox hoped it’d be. Sure, it didn’t open as big as Mamma Mia! there, but if you look at usual figures for Oz, a US$5.1 million opening is actually pretty good. Besides, did the studio really think Aussies would let it topple Crocodile Dundee for the title of national treasure?
• Is Kung Fu Panda now the animated feature to beat at the Oscars? The film racked up more than double the amount of Annie Award nominations Wall-E received.
• Blockbuster stores still exist? I guess the few still out there will now be making some side money through a deal to sell concert tickets via LiveNation. Wait, people still buy concert tickets in person?

Whether you’re a South Park viewer or a reader of many film blogs, you’ve probably seen the disturbing (though not disturbingly funny) clip of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas raping Indiana Jones. As much as I too was disappointed with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, though, I find the South Park thing more upsetting, and I’ll probably have a more difficult time getting the image of Indy in whitey tighties being mounted by Spielberg out of my head than I did erasing the memory of Shia LaBeouf swinging through the trees with a bunch of monkey friends.

Speaking of LaBeouf, he’s the star of today’s Clip of the Day in lieu of the rape thing (which I don’t want to subject anyone to, if they’ve managed to avoid it so far). Because everyone knows Spielberg loves LaBeouf — as an actor; get the rape and other related thoughts out of your head — the site Spill.com has put together a little animated montage of what it would be like had LaBeouf starred in (or were he inserted into, via effects magic) Spielberg’s past movies. I like it mainly because I’m already obsessed with the Shia LaBeouf “no no no no no” thing (see this past Clip), which works perfectly in the old movies. The Close Encounters musical version is especially great.

In the new movie Eagle Eye, three characters participate in a re-creation of the famous crop duster sequence from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Only the plane from NbN has been replaced with an electrical tower and power lines, and it takes Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan and Anthony Azizi to perform Cary Gran’t part (Azizi also substitutes for the pilot and the farmer, I guess).

Such an homage is not surprising coming from director D.J. Caruso, whose last picture, Disturbia, is currently involved in a lawsuit for being an uncredited remake of Hitch’s Rear Window. This time, fortunately, Caruso borrows enough from other films, including Hitch’s second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2001: A Space Odyssey and I, Robot, to keep from being sued by any single party. Eagle Eye will likely also remind audiences of The Dark Knight, if not for the similar cell phone surveillance tactics then for Caruso’s even less capable talent for directing car chases.

While Caruso does a good job at allowing his audience to compare him to better filmmakers (yes, even I, Robot’s Alex Proyas), he doesn’t give us the world’s worst redo of the crop duster bit (that is probably this). But he also doesn’t come anywhere close to giving us the best. And for such a famous scene that is so widely studied and imitated, giving us merely another so-so re-creation is very disappointing. After the jump, you’ll find some of my favorite tributes to North by Northwest, mostly paying homage to that one beloved sequence.

…Read more

Eagle Eye from D.J. Caruso (Disturbia), starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan, opens this Friday in theaters. And, for the next few days, you can win Eagle Eye swag from Spout.

A mysterious woman turns the lives of two strangers, Jerry Shaw (LeBouf) and Rachel Holloman (Monaghan), upside down. They become the world’s most wanted–and attractive–fugitives. But as you wait to find out if Shia LaBeouf makes a better fugitive than an Indiana Jones (he’s got a thing for Harrison Ford roles), you can win crazy fugitive gear!

Each day this week we’ll be giving away a package containing one of each of the following

• Eagle Eye pen/flash drive (download files or write clues on paper)
• Eagle Eye t-shirt (makes a great tourniquet as well)
• Eagle Eye hoodie (for a quick disguise in a pinch, hoods up!)

New games go up each day and the winners are announced the following day. You can read the rules and see the prizes, here. Check back each day for the new game and good luck.

(Image: Hisaharu Motoda’s “Neo-Ruins” via Pink Tentacle)

The latest news from Wall Street seems to indicate that a complete financial meltdown is only a few weeks away. Before you violently horde every morsel of food from your local supermarket or begin a hostile take-over of your corner gas station, there are several movies you should watch in order to prepare for life after the downfall of Western civilization. There have been plenty of films in which the world we know is nothing but a burned out shell of its former glory. Nuclear holocaust and virulent plagues are common Earth-clearing disasters, but there’s no reason to think that a global economic collapse would be any less destructive. Let’s not forget that one of history’s most common causes for war is a desperate grab for resources during tough times. So without further ado, seven lessons from the movies, essential for surviving our impending doom:

1. Hoard gasoline!

Plenty of people are already getting a jump on this one, apparently upping demand to the point where falling oil prices are not translating to the pump. If you think waiting 15 minutes in line to buy gas at $4.50 a gallon is bad, watch The Road Warrior again. From the opening sequence where Mel Gibson gingerly harvests every precious ounce of fuel from an abandoned vehicle to the final deadly battle over a tanker truck, it’s clear that in a post-apocalyptic world, gas is gold. Sure, we’re working on becoming less dependent on the stuff, but what good is a Chevy Volt going to do you if the power grid is in shambles?

…Read more

• A couple of days ago, the new Ghostbusters video game––which features voice contributions from most of the major actors from the franchise and, for all practical purposes, is as close to Ghostbusters 3 as we’re going to get––was presented at Comic-Con. Today, its release is by no means guaranteed. Its publisher, Vivendi Games, recently merged with Activision; Activision Blizzard, the new company formed by the merger, has declined to exercise options on a number of Vivendi brands, including Ghostbusters.
• Shia LaBeouf’s drunk driving incident last weekend hasn’t shut down production on the Transformers sequel, but it has thrown a wrench into the proceedings. Whist Drunky McHearthrob takes a month to recover from an hand injury, Josh Duhamel’s scenes have been pushed up.
• Oh, these sound like baaaaad ideas: Howard Stern has hired Alex Winter––Yes, Bill from Bill and Ted––to write a remake of Rock n’ Roll High School. How are these two qualified to trample on the love child of The Ramones and Roger Corman? Well, Winter has also written a film about the inventor of Napster, and Howard Stern is also producing a remake of Porky’s. Of course!
• Disney’s overall income and revenues are up, even as their summer grosses are––thanks to Prince Caspian not being about pirates or having anything to do with Keith Richards––way down from last year.

He’s Hollywood’s current golden boy, but Shia LaBeouf still can’t avoid controversy. Actually, because he’s Hollywood’s current golden boy, the media is probably trying harder to hurt his image. That’s just what the media does. Not that I’m all that innocent. I had thought of embedding the latest clip, which shows the actor partying, slapping his buddy and using a certain “homophobic slur.” But it just didn’t seem that relevant to the discussion of film.

However, now that it’s in the news rather than just on the gossip blogs, with LaBeouf making a public apology (via his rep) and YouTube officially removing the video (except that it’s still here), I figured I’d share my favorite Shia LaBeouf montage, thereby making it more film-related. Because I imagine that each time Shia is arrested, or an embarrassing clip shows up online, or some other incident that requires damage control, he’s once again uttering his trademark, “no, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

…Read more

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting in a big, round room at the top of the Palais called Le Club, listening to hundreds of people scream. There’s a balcony encircling Le Club which looks out on docked yachts straight ahead, and the artist’s entrance for the red carpet premieres down below. The Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford’s Public Pension Collection premiere begins shortly, and every few minutes, the paparazzi mob down below erupts into a guttural, multi-lingual wail, each one greater than the last, as another celebrity gets out of another car.

Meanwhile, a large group of notebook-clutching press types have started to gather around two flat screen monitors inside Le Club, watching simulcast coverage of the arrivals. I would be making catty comments with them if I sensed that we spoke the same language––and if they seemed just a tiny bit less star-struck. Frankly, I’m slightly appalled. At least George Lucas had the decency to wear a sports coat––Spielberg, decked out in a baseball cap, a pink shirt and what appears to be a sweater vest made out of berber, is an embarrassment. Shia LaBeouf looks embarrassed. Shia LaBeouf, by the way, is extremely attractive for a 12 year old.

…Read more

• Oh, good: Indiana Jones and the Dorian Grey-ing of Harrison Ford Into Shia LaBouf will premiere at Cannes! Maybe. No one’s seen the thing yet, but according to Variety, “The cast, which includes Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett, have already been notified to pack their black-tie outfits for the French Riviera’s red carpet unspooling even though the fest has yet to confirm its official lineup.” Because celebrities pack suitcases 10 weeks in advance.
• Theatrical exhibition conference ShoWest will confer a special “Freedom of Expression Award” to Ang Lee and James Schamus, for releasing Lust, Caution with an NC-17 rating instead of cutting the film to get an R. National Theater Owners president John Fithian is inexplicably trying to push studios to revitalize the NC-17 market, even though even Lust, Caution made just under $5 million domestically, and in fact was a super-hit in China…where it was cut to appease the censors.
• Semi-Pro, which opens today, suddenly bears the dubious distinction of being the final release from New Line before the studio is subsumed into the clusterfuck that is Time Warner. It may not exactly send the studio out with a bang: although the comedy is said to be “tracking well among males under 25″ it’s nonetheless expected to “open well lower than Ferrell’s most recent films.”