Oftentimes a big star will be humbled by a few flops and he/she will take a step back to work on a smaller project or two before making another attempt at something as unnecessarily expensive as Land of the Lost. Is this what’s going on with Will Ferrell, though? According to Variety, he’s signed on to a little comedy called Everything Must Go, a title which could be attributed to his recent bombs, including The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, which he produced and tried to help sell via a much-publicized cameo.
But this is no Winter Passing or Melinda and Melinda. Yes, Everything Must Go is an “indie,” but it still has a budget of $10 million and it’s still a high-profile sitcom sort of movie. I’m sure it will be less goofy than his major studio vehicles, but we’re not looking at one of those cases where a Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler starts doing dramatic roles and acquiring (ultimately unsubstantiated) Oscar buzz. Not that Ferrell doesn’t have it in him.
Still, the only thing Ferrell needs to learn after this past summer is that he should stay away from huge budgets and silly sci-fi concepts and stick with Adam McKay-directed comedies (and the like). No bigger, no smaller. Fortunately, next summer’s The Other Guyswill come along at just the right time to remind us what we like our Will Ferrell movies to be like.
Check out what other film bloggers have to say about Will Ferrell’s seemingly retreating career move after the jump: …Read more
Since we were kids, we knew the taxman was a bad guy. If we didn’t get the message from the lyrics of The Beatles, or the wolfish version of the Sheriff of Nottingham in Disney’s Robin Hood, then we learned through the very real anguish our parents suffered every year, mid-April. As we grew up, we likely heard comedians joke about the IRS, and every character but Jesus appeared to be unforgiving of any person who’d take a job in tax collection. Occasionally we’d see iconic IRS agents, such as the one Charles Lane plays in Capra’s film of You Can’t Take it With You, but even when memorable and enjoyable, they are still mostly identifiably villains. In Abbas Kiarostami’s first film, The Report (Gozaresh), the “hero” is a tax collector, yet he’s involved in corruption and beats his wife. Still hardly classifiable as a good guy, it would seem.
However, with all the movies made around the world in all the years of cinema’s existence, there had to be some films with likable taxmen, so we dug deep and desperately and just barely found ten such characters (admittedly, some are a stretch). While you struggle last minute with your 1040 today, you might not have much appreciation for a list of good guy taxmen, but we don’t care, because hopefully our celebration of these characters will keep us from getting audited anytime soon. Or, if we must get a visit from the IRS agent, we can hope we’re sent one like these men and woman: …Read more
A new Zooey Deschanel movie came out last weekend. But is it the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Paul Dano or the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt? It’s the former, and it’s called Gigantic, which is also not to be confused with this coming week’s new DVD release, Yes Man, in which she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Jim Carrey.
Sure, Deschanel has range and talent (see this fan-made montage of some of her more varied performances), but she also has a certain repetitive nature to her characters. And this “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” nature became all the more confusing recently when trailers for Gigantic and (500) Days of Summer (the Gordon-Levitt one, which is actually her second romantic pairing with the actor) appeared online around the same time. Maybe instead of worrying about people confusing her for Katy Perry, the actress should worry more about people confusing her characters and films for each other.
Or, maybe not. Plenty of us can’t get enough of Deschanel’s quirky, free-spirited performances. In his Yes Man review, Roger Ebert noted that two critics proposed marriage to the character at the end of the film. We wouldn’t go that far, but we have crushed on the actress since All the Real Girls and haven’t yet gotten sick of her or her similar, typecast roles. In fact, to us, the problem is not that indie films too often employ the MPDG character; it’s that they don’t cast Deschanel for every such part. So, instead of wishing she’d broaden her career to include other types of characters (it didn’t work well for her with The Happening, after all), we’ve selected ten MPDG characters that she should have additionally played. …Read more
Standing in front of a packed crowd at the IFC Center last night before the SXSW-presented New York City premiere of his doc Of All The Things, Jody Lambert contemplated his good fortune. “To have Janet Pierson introduce the movie, to be part of Stranger Than Fiction, to have John Pierson send you an email…it’s kind of like Bonertown, USA.”
To say that there were boners all around might be an exaggeration, but Lambert’s goofy, feel-good film definitely pleased the crowd. Jody’s father Dennis Lambert is the songwriter and/or producer of dozens of mainstream pop-rock hits, from “Baby Come Back” (after the screening, Lambert noted that its use in Swiffer commercials has been “very lucrative”) to “Ain’t No Woman” to (my personal favorite) “Do The Freddie.” After spending twenty-plus years writing hits for other artists, eventually Lambert moved down to Boca Raton to start a new life with a new wife and daughter, and a new career as a real estate agent. But “Bags and Things”, the solo album that Lambert released in the early 70s which flopped in the States, is a huge hit in the Phillippines, and Things follows Lambert as he embarks on a tour of that country performing the songs from that album which have apparently become the standard soundtrack for Filipinos in love.
The weekly documentary series Stranger Than Fiction, curated by the Toronto Film Festival’s Thom Powers and hosted at Manhattan’s IFC Center, wrapped up its Spring 2008 season last night with a screening of two rarely seen films directed by Albert Maysles, a Q & A with the octogenarian documentarian, and the obligatory after-movie cocktail session. If the two films shown offered object lessons in Maysles’ combined talents––patience, negotiation, and an unfailing knack at taking advantage of serendipity––the discussion after the screening offered a glimpse into this independent artist’s ever-present conflict between his stated mission and the economic sacrifices that support it.
One of the most talked about films having its New York premiere this week at Tribeca is James Marsh’s Man on Wire. Notable blurbs include this one from Steve Erickson (via The House Next Door), who calls it “the most purely entertaining film I’ve ever seen at Tribeca” and predicts that the “caper film and inspirational sports tale rolled into one” will soon be fodder for a Hollywood remake. But there’s actually another James Marsh film screening in New York this week: The Burger and the King, a 1996 BBC documentary on Elvis Presley’s history as an eater, will play Stranger Than Fiction tomorrow night followed by a Q&A with Marsh. For a preview, you can check out the first nine minutes of the film above. You can buy tickets for the event via the IFC Center’s website.
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.
I’m a bit of a doc junkie, so I was pretty pleased to see that Kevin Kelly (co-founding editor of Wired) has put together reviews of 100 of his favorite documentary films. Better yet, the 56-page book is published in PDF format, so you can download it for $3 (at the Boing Boing Digital Emporium).
On his website, Kevin nicely sums up what I love about docs:
“The very best of these non-fiction films are as entertaining as the best of Hollywood blockbusters. In contrast to the fiction that most movies are, true films offer authentic plot twists, real characters, and truth stranger than fiction. They aim to both entertain and to inform–a powerful combo.”
I think this book will be a great tool to change the minds of people who aren’t quite sold on the idea of enjoying documentaries. And for those who have long loved docs, apparently there’s already been a film club launched around the 100 films reviewed in the book. I’m not sure who organized it, or where, but it sounds like a good idea for Spout doc fans.
I’ll be back with more after I have a chance to look at the book.
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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Standing in front of a packed crowd at the IFC Center last night before the SXSW-presented New York City premiere of his doc 
