On the ever shifting scale of pop culture irrelevancy, Spy Hunter is snuggled somewhere between The Great Space Coaster and Styx’s Kilroy Was Here. Though one’s a coin-operated video game, the other a children’s television show and the latter a concept album that baffled a nation, they all share a common trait: they’d make lousy … Continue reading
This news makes me wanna shoop. (And I’ll venture that Eddy Curry’s very pleased with it, too.) Harold Ramis shouldn’t need the assistance of Judd Apatow to get his next project greenlit, but after the hugely underrated The Ice Harvest sputtered at the box office in 2005 (following the critically and commercially unloved duo of … Continue reading
Quoth Todd McFarlane, "I can make a spooky, suspenseful thriller that will scare the crap out of you." If it has to do with plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase Mark McGwire’s and Sammy Sosa’s now valueless home run balls, I’ll bet you can, sir. But if it’s a self-financed Spawn 2 … Continue reading
June 8th is only a week away, but for Lionsgate and Eli Roth, it must feel like an eternity. That a bootleg of Hostel: Part II has leaked to the internet isn’t unprecedented; every year, a few studios suffer the headache of an advance copy of a major release making the rounds weeks in advance. … Continue reading
When Hideo Nakata followed up Gore Verbinski’s superior version of Ringu (The Ring) with the atrocious The Ring 2, I figured his run in Hollywood was over. But mediocre directors don’t get run out of this town; they just seek refuge at Fox! Ergo, Nakata will take his slow-building dread act to the Pico lot, … Continue reading
Being a Hollywood resident, I’m relieved to have survived last Memorial Day weekend, what with Lindsay Lohan terrorizing the streets and the clubs and the women’s bathroom stalls of my fair town. Thankfully, the bender that launched a thousand gossip blog posts has landed the once promising movie star in rehab; unfortunately, the role she … Continue reading
Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid is not only a classic romantic comedy; it’s also one of the few Neil Simon scripts that isn’t undone by his gag writing instincts. There are real characters in The Heartbreak Kid, and they’re really unlikeable in a lot of ways, none more so than Charles Grodin’s Lenny, who, while … Continue reading
Woody Allen experienced his third creative renaissance whilst partnering with Miramax in the 1990s, so perhaps it’s a good omen that his latest picture, Cassandra’s Dream, will, according to Variety‘s Anne Thompson, get rolled out by The Weinstein Company. Or maybe it just means that Harvey outbid everyone else gambling that he’s got the next … Continue reading
I hated The Village and considered Lady in the Water 2005’s best comedy, and yet I’m still interested in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, The Happening (fka The Green Effect), if only because it’ll be his first R-rated feature. Maybe he’s been restrained by his need to be all things to too many people. It’s feasible. … Continue reading
Somewhere in an immaculate kitchen in an immaculate house situated in an immaculate neighborhood somewhere in Bel Air, Nora Ephron is toasting her troubles away*, wondering how in the hell a common vulgarian like Judd Apatow could reinvent the romantic comedy for modern audiences. And somewhere, perhaps a few blocks away or maybe in an … Continue reading