Yikes!

Add comment September 22nd, 2009

Via Tim Burton JP (what appears to be a Japanese Tim Burton fan site) by way of Cinematical, here’s a horrifying glimpse of a costume test from Tim Burton’s ill-fated SUPERMAN LIVES movie that was to star Nicolas Cage.

Once you glimpse the fake Cage in the costume, you’ll be glad it was ill-fated. Very glad.

They’re real … and they’re awful

5 comments August 13th, 2009

Here, courtesy of Oddee.com, are fifteen of the worst movie titles of all time.

I think my favorite on the list is the 1966 no-budget oddity RAT PFINK A BOO BOO, a semi-Batman spoof by the late and legendary Ray Dennis Steckler (also the man behind another title on the list, the unforgettable THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES.)

I’ve actually seen both of those films, and believe me, the titles are the best thing about them (though RAT PFINK has an intriguing home movie vibe that I quite liked). Supposedly, the title was supposed to be RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO, but the artist making the titles screwed up and Steckler was too cheap to fix it.

I also like one of the titles listed in the reader comments at the bottom — AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL. I’ve seen the trailer for this one, and it’s at least as strange as the title. Stranger, even, if that’s possible.

ELIZABETHTOWN, shot by painful shot

Add comment July 22nd, 2009

When the question “What were the best movies of the 21st century?” is asked, the answer you don’t expect is “Elizabethtown.” Generally viewed as a BIG step down for writer-director Cameron Crowe, it’s the movie where he let his tendency to be too cute and loveable run just a bit too wild. ALMOST FAMOUS? Charming. ELIZABETHTOWN? Cloying.

Nevertheless, the movie does have its fans, and two of them teamed up for a shot-by-shot liveblog of the movie as it ran through their DVD player. You can read the whole thing here, and if you’ve got the DVD (and I’m guessing you can get it really, really cheap), take another look. Maybe it’s not as quite as bad as it seemed.*

(I’m no fan of ELIZABETHTOWN, but admittedly, I didn’t see it under the best circumstances. I was several thousand feet above the Arctic, slipping in and out of a restless sleep, jammed into an airplane headed for Hong Kong. Heck, maybe I should give the movie a fighting chance.)

* Actually, as the intro to the liveblog section explains, Vadim Rizov didn’t really think this was one of the best movies of the decade. He just wanted to give it another look.

A surprisingly long, complex post about SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3.

1 comment July 15th, 2009

Snopes.com looks at an intriguing urban legend about a very un-intriguing movie: SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3.

According to Hollywood lore, the movie was originally shot with Jackie Gleason playing both his Sheriff Buford T. Justice character and the Bandit role. (Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields had bailed on this third movie in the series, though Gleason and Jerry Reed stuck around.)

From the book HICK FLICKS, as quoted at Snopes…

An urban legend persists (propagated by Leonard Maltin, among others) that SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 3 was originally filmed as SMOKEY IS THE BANDIT, with Gleason playing both title roles. After a disastrous test screening, Jerry Reed took over the role of the Bandit in reshoots, or so the story goes. In reality, it’s hard to believe this idea ever got past the pitch meeting, and not so much as a production still (let along a full-length bootleg copy) of the supposed original version of this film has ever surfaced.

Snopes, however, points to newspaper articles of the time indicating that this was originally an all-Gleason film. They also bring up a third theory, that the film was originally made with the roles of Buford and Bandit combined into one part…

That is, this time around, Sheriff Justice, not the Bandit, was to be the one who took an outrageous bet from Big and Little Enos involving a law-breaking, cross-country run, thereby making Gleason both Smokey, the lawman, and Bandit, the lawman’s nemesis — Smokey IS the Bandit.

Personally, I found the effort to piece together the real story behind SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3 fascinating in a film geek way. A lot more fascinating than the movie itself.

Read the whole Snopes article here.

Rolling buildings? Why not?

Add comment July 7th, 2009

Really, this re-cut, re-scored trailer is how they should sell 2012 — watching stuff collapse and blow up is all anyone wants to see anyway…

Remember, today’s date is July 6. Not — I repeat NOT — April 1

Add comment July 6th, 2009

TJ HOOKER is becoming a movie.

 It’s true. Variety has the scoop.

Chuck Russell  (THE SCORPION KING, THE MASK) is in talks to direct. The writing team of Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson will script the story, which focuses on the relationship between the title character and his father.

According to the story, “No actors have been cast yet for the feature,” but I think it’s safe to assume that original star William Shatner (along with co-stars Adrian Zmed and Heather Locklear) will not be squeezing back into the police uniforms for this movie. Though I’m sure they’ll be used in some sort of “ironic” cameo.

Personally, the only way I’d see this movie is if Shatner played both himself and his own father. Now there’s a concept huge enough for the big screen!

‘An affront of the greatest order’

1 comment June 29th, 2009

On the one hand, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN made more than $200 million for the weekend. On the other hand, it got some of the worst reviews in recent memory.

Here’s my favorite, from Robert Humanick over at The House Next Door. Not only does Humanick (who, keep in mind, liked the first TRANSFORMERS movie) blast the movie on a creative level, he blames it for the loss of several lives…

I mourn the volume of human life being wasted on this thing. If the film makes $100 million this weekend and tickets cost $10 a pop, that’s ten million viewers and a total of twenty-five million hours, not including previews, travel and the time spent earning the wasted money. If the average person lives to be 75, that’s 38 lives.

(And, because TRANFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN topped the $200 mil mark, that’s at least 76 lives lost.)

Read the rest of Humanick’s review here. The language, as you might guess from one so enraged, gets a bit salty — starting with the title of the piece. Consider yourself warned.

Not the way you want to end a career

Add comment June 22nd, 2009

Gene Kelly (right) stares in disbelief at how far his star has fallen.

If you want to start your Monday morning off on a downbeat note, check out “With a Whimper, Not a Bang: 15 Particularly Depressing Cinematic Swan Songs from Talented Actors” over at the Onion AV Club.  The article charts the final film appearances of such legends as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin (yukking it up in CANNONBALL RUN 2), Bela Lugosi (appearing in scraps of footage years after his death in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) and Gene Kelly (roller-boogie-ing it up in XANADU).

That picture  that leads off the article, of Groucho Marx from DUCK SOUP ( arguably the Marx Brothers’ finest film) makes the realization that Groucho finished his  career in the painful to watch comedy SKIDOO even more depressing.

Happy birthday, you awful, awful character

1 comment May 22nd, 2009

Over at Hitfix.com, blogger Drew McWeeny “celebrates” the 10th birthday of Jar-Jar Binks. (Yes, believe it or not, THE PHANTOM MENACE arrived in theaters a decade ago.) But he does more than mock the worst thing George Lucas was ever involved with (and yes, I’m including HOWARD THE DUCK in my assessment). He explains why STAR WARS fans — who, for the most part, thought Lucas walked on water (and yes, I’m including myself in that assessment) turned on him viciously when PHANTOM MENACE was released…

Jar-Jar Binks, perhaps the most reviled character in the entire “Star Wars” mythos, has become a symbol of everything that went wrong with the prequels.  You want to make a “Star Wars” fan mental, just tell them, “Meesa wuv Jah- Jah!”  Even now, I’ll bet you see a twitch.  In another way, though, Jar-Jar isn’t just a symbol of how Lucas failed… he’s a symbol of exactly where fandom lost its way.

Read the whole thing here.

And here, for your viewing “pleasure,” is virtually ever Jar-Jar Binks moment from THE PHANTOM MENACE edited into one 10-minute montage. Some one was brave enough to post this You Tube — are you brave enough to watch it?

Check out the seven-minute mark for the worst moment in any of the STAR WARS films.

DVD Review: THE SPIRIT

4 comments April 27th, 2009

It’s not a good movie, but it is an interesting one — here’s my review of Frank Miller’s 2008 bomb, a failed adaptation of the classic 1940s comic book hero, The Spirit. The print version can be found here…

And the video version — with some really strange clips from the movie — can be found here.