Those of you who thought that perhaps - just perhaps - that the production of S. Darko (also known as Donnie Darko 2) was just some bad rumor will be troubled to hear that casting is indeed going forward. Whereas the first movie starred practically unknown Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, the casting has gone the Showgirls route with the announcement that Elizabeth Berkley will be joining the cast.
Berkley will play a crazy Jesus freak who wants to rid the world of sin - but who also lusts after her dreamy pastor.
In addition, Briana Evigan (Step Up 2: The Streets) will also have a role in the movie as the best friend of star Daveigh Chase (reprising her role as the youngest daughter in the original Donnie Darko). Other cast members already announced include Ed Westwick and Justin Chatwin.
Watch the funny new R-rated “teaser trailer” for Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the new Kevin Smith movie coming to theaters this October. The video isn’t as much an actual teaser trailer but a series of clips of Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks attempting to cast their porno. Warning: there are swear words, so if you are for some reason offended by such words, don’t watch.
The Red Band trailer for the upcoming Coen Brothers movie Burn After Reading went online today over at Apple.com. It is definitely not along the same vein as Joel and Ethan Coen’s last film, No Country for Old Men, but still looks pretty good. Here’s how the studio describes the movie, which is set to be released in September 12, 2008:
A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official’s (Academy Award nominee John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.
The trailer is pretty funny, in an offbeat way - what else would you expect from the Coens? Most noticeable is the fact that the movie has an absolutely killer cast, specifically George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton. You really can’t get much better than that unless you threw in a Meryl Streep.
Sex and the City comes to theaters this weekend, and I have to imagine that box office pundits are nervous about making predictions for this one. It’s a highly anticipated film - among women. In fact, it’s one of the rare female-targeted films that is opening to midnight screenings. A movie theater near me is selling $90 tickets for a three-course meal, Cosmos and a ticket. Sex and the City: The Movie is an event by any stretch of the imagination.
Then again, it’s still a movie aimed toward women. What does that mean for box office dollars? $30 million? $40 million? $60 million? Higher?
In general, it sounds like $30-35 million is the average most “experts” are predicting, and if so, that will be a great feat for a film like Sex and the City, which stars a bunch of “older” women. That being said, don’t you think an event film like this will be considered just a slight disappointment if it comes in second to Indiana Jones? Indiana Jones will fall hard this weekend, but falling from $100 million still means a lot of money.
This bugs the hell out of me. With actors, radio hosts and newscasters forced to go off the air due to a single slip of the tongue, how come Fox commentator Michelle Malkin isn’t getting stripped of her job for fueling a ridiculous argument about a Muslim headscarf that isn’t even close to being an actual Muslim headscarf. And if it were a Muslim headscarf, who… the… fuck… cares? And even if she cares - even if you care - who… the… fuck… cares?
If you somehow haven’t heard about this, Malkin, a right-wing psycho (I can only assume), said that the scarf Rachael Ray wears in a recent Dunkin’ Donuts commercials looks like a kiffiyeh, a Middle Eastern garb that is “popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos.”
Um, seriously?
Listen, if she feels this way, fine, and normally I wouldn’t call for her dismissal or even a boycott. She’s practically declared that she is a bigot and an idiot. But, considering this day and age where every little misstatement results in the end of someone’s career, how is this not worse?
First, the scarf isn’t a Muslim scarf. It’s just a scarf.
Two, even if it is a Muslim scarf, how is that succumbing to terrorists? How does it even relate to Muslims? What is wrong with Muslims?
Three, why should Malkin reasonably assume that the scarf is intended by either Ray or Dunkin’ Donuts to be a symbol of terrorism? Look at the picture - it just doesn’t make sense.
Oh, and shame on Dunkin’ Donuts for actually pulling the ad. Corporations need to stand up to absurd accusations and fight back. I actually have less respect for them now that they’ve bowed to pressure - but how much pressure were they actually receiving? Preposterous.
The Lord of the Ring franchise is New Line Cinema’s greatest achievement and greatest curse. The movies, which mark the pinnacle of the now all-but-defunct company, have made billions of dollars in revenue - but have also brought along some hefty lawsuits to boot. With the Peter Jackson lawsuit now behind them, New Line is facing a new one that aims to halt the development and production of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Hobbit movies.
Time Online is reporting that Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkin, has vowed “one last crusade.” Christopher Tolkien, already a bane to Lord of the Ring fans everywhere, is pressing on his long-running court battle to receive $80 million in back payments from a deal that was signed in 1969. Christopher, who is now 83, apparently was facing tax problems and had to sell the rights to his father’s work.
The lawsuit, which will be presented to a judge on June 6th, will lay claim to Christopher’s right to terminate film rights to The Hobbit and its sequel.
OK, having lived in Seattle most of my life, I know that the weather is hard to predict around here. Forecasters are safest when they predict a chance of rain and clouds; less so when they call for a completely sunny day or one full of showers. But this Memorial Day Weekend has me shaking my head…
Early last week, the call was for warm temperatures and sun. By middle of the week, we were looking at 50-degree temperatures and rain. Lots of it. By end of the week, that prognosis was the same. It was going to be one crappy Memorial Day Weekend.
Come Saturday, I wake up and what do I see but blue skies. Not just blue skies, but blue skies without a cloud in sight. OK, I think. It’s blue now, but a storm is going to rear its ugly head any minute, the temperature is going to plummet and the skies will open. Or, how about it pushes into the 80’s and stays blue and hot all day long?
A little after noon, I check the online weather forecast. It still says that there’s going to be a high of 73 and showers. No where, including the little icon, does it indicate sun.
Today, Sunday, I wake up. It’s a little gray, but nothing too bad. It’s now 6:30, and what kind of day did I get? Another day of sun and warmth, albeit not as nice as Saturday. Still, the forecast for today reads a high of 66 and showers - no sun icon. What the hell?
There’s no real point to this blog post other than to vent about how bad the weathermen are around here. It’s OK if the weather is unpredictable and you can’t see far into the future, but at least admit it. Don’t pretend like you’ll be accurate five days in advance, let alone one.
While I’m on the topic of rants, the Seattle Mariners blew an eighth-inning lead to be swept by the Yankees. How does my team suck so badly?
The Associated Press is reporting that an actor who played a minor role in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has died after being stabbed to death. Eighteen-year-old Rob Knox was killed when he got involved in a fight outside a bar. Allegedly, a 21-year old suspect, who has been taken into custody, pulled a knife and stabbed Knox to death.
Knox played Ravenclaw student Marcus Belby in the new Harry Potter movie. The article does not indicate whether Belby already filmed his scene, though, with the movie set to release in less than six months, one would assume that he had.
Fourteen teenagers have been violently killed in London since the beginning of the year.
Oh, those silly little Soviets. One may think that communism is dead in Russia, or not if you watch as Vladimir Putin moves “his country” closer and closer to a KGB-esque version of democracy, but regardless of what he denies, there still is a Communist Party in Russia, and they allegedly want to return Russia to the glory years of the Soviet Union.
OK, that may be a sweeping generalization of Russia’s Communist Party. The Red Scare is all but over, and people have their right to whatever political beliefs they may hold. There’s nothing inherently evil about communism, though the implementation of such ideals have never appeared to be as glorious as Karl Marx had foreseen. And when it comes to Russia, communism has a pretty bad track record. That being said, I’m sure there are the moderates and the extremists within Russia’s Communist Party, but you wouldn’t guess from this Reuters article about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
According to the article, Russian Communists aren’t too happy about the depiction of their brethren in the latest Indiana Jones movie, so much so that they are calling for the film’s boycott in the largest country in the world. You see, to them, Indiana Jones 4 is “crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history.”
No, they’re not complaining about the specifics within the Indiana Jones movie, which is clearly fiction from beginning to end, but instead about the depiction of Cate Blanchett as an evil KGB agent looking for a crystal skull that could give her unimaginable powers - along with a bunch of other mindless and “evil” KGB agents and Soviet soldiers. The following are quotes taken from a recent Communist meeting (according to the Reuters article):
“What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame.” Um, I’m pretty sure Communists have been used as villains in films for the last sixty years.
“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country.” Really? Wow.
“Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957. They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war. It’s rubbish … In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?” OK, so maybe the Communists are attacking the plot of the movie. Arguments like these are ones that really send me over the deep end - if you’re going to take mindless entertainment so seriously, how can we possibly take your arguments seriously?
Ultimately, I find things like this ludicrous. Countries get offended by odd things, and it’s not always too surprising - after all, many countries have very strong national identities and don’t like it when films portray them in a negative light (Borat comes to mind). Hell, even some people in the U.S. get upset about anti-U.S. films (Bill O’Reilly, anyone?). Still, this is the first time I’ve heard of the defunct Russian Communist Party getting upset about such a blatantly harmless movie (though I’ve come to understand that there were also complaints about 1998’s Armageddon because the movie portrayed a derelict Russian space station). I mean, really, so many American and European movies have portrayed Soviets in a much more negative light, and usually to a higher degree of realism. The James Bond movies come to mind. Dozens of other quality films, too. Why get heated - and call for the ban of - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?
I just got back from a Thursday-night showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it is not everything I wanted and more. I liked it - it was entertaining enough - but there are some moments in the movie that really push your acceptance as an Indy fan.
Those of you who thought that perhaps - just perhaps - that the production of S. Darko (also known as Donnie Darko 2) was just some bad rumor will be troubled to hear that casting is indeed going forward. Whereas the first movie starred practically unknown Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, the casting has gone the Showgirls route with the announcement that Elizabeth Berkley will be joining the cast.
