The Screengrab : rob corddry

Morning Deal Report: Diablo Cody’s Zombie Lament

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Diablo Cody will produce an adaptation of Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, a new novel by S.G. Browne. The romantic comedy “centers on a recently deceased Everyman and newly minted zombie who is having trouble adjusting to his new existence. All that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls,” Variety reports.

John Cusack and Rob Corddry are soaking in the Hot Tub Time Machine. “The script, by Josh Heald, follows a group of guys who have grown frustrated with their adult lives. They return to the ski lodge where they partied as teens to find answers and are transported to 1987 via their hot tub, a bubbly time machine,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Best Actor Oscar winner Sean Penn is in talks to join Naomi Watts in Doug Liman’s Fair Game, a drama about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Penn is in talks to play Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who “watched his wife's CIA status become compromised after he wrote op-ed columns that accused the Bush Administration of manipulating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.” Weird – it’s not like Penn to get all political.

Related:
Diablo Cody Unwraps "Jennifer's Body"
John Cusack: Political Poet

Morning Deal Report: Ben Affleck on the Town

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Gone Baby Gone director Ben Affleck “will rewrite, direct and star in The Town, a Warner Bros. adaptation of the Chuck Hogan novel The Prince of Thieves,” according to Variety. He’ll play a thief who falls for a bank manager in the movie “based in Charlestown, Mass., a gritty blue-collar Boston suburb similar to the one that Affleck captured in his directorial debut.” Way to make those Red Sox season tickets work for you, Ben.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Loser gets shot at redemption by coaching team of young misfits. This time around it’s called The Winning Season and stars Sam Rockwell as the has-been coach “asked to run the local high school's girls basketball team,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Emma Roberts and Rob Corddry co-star.

Seven Children of the Corn movies simply weren’t enough, so the original will be remade. David Anders of Heroes and Kandyse McClure of Battlestar Galactica will play “Burt and Vicky, a couple with marital problems whose attempt at a second-honeymoon driving trip ends up taking them into a seemingly deserted rural community that conceals a grim secret among its rows of tall corn.”

Related:
Unwatchable #71: "Gigli"
Trailer Review: "Choke"

Oliver Stone Finds His Dick

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

When last we checked in with Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic, W., most of the major players were in place. Josh Brolin was busy practicing his chimplike smirk and hunched shrug of defeat for the title role, with Elizabeth Banks as the missus, and the cabinet filled out by Thandie Newton (Condi Rice), Rob Corddry (Ari Fleischer) and Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell).

One major hole remained: the man behind the throne, Dick Cheney. Speculation pointed to Robert Duvall (who reportedly turned down the role) and Paul Giamatti (who may have had his fill of White House machinations with John Adams). Now it appears the role has been filled.

The Hollywood Reporter sez: “Richard Dreyfuss could soon make the trip to Oliver Stone's White House, entering final negotiations to play Dick Cheney in the provocateur director's upcoming W.” The Reporter also passes on the following helpful tidbit: “The 60-year-old Dreyfuss has never played a U.S. leader, but has had a few related roles. He starred as an opposition senator to Michael Douglas' commander in chief in 1995's The American President, as Alexander Haig in a television movie about Ronald Reagan and played the president of a banana republic in the 1980s comedy Moon Over Parador.”

How appropriate that it took the addition of a Jaws star for the casting of W. to jump the shark.

SXSW Review: "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:15:00 GMT

After the surprisingly good-natured and occasionally hilarious Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle became a huge cult hit on DVD, it was only a matter of time before we were treated to a sequel. Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg picked up the directorial reins as well, and brought back Kal Penn and John Cho as the leads. This was an absolute necessity, as it was their insouciant stoner charm that gave the first movie its lasting appeal; the big surprise came when it was announced that the new film would feature the boys being arrested and incarcerated in the most famous prison in the world. Would the Harold and Kumar franchise become a sounding bell for radicalism? Would the bodily secretion jokes and dope references take a back seat to fiery condemnation of America's notorious prison camp on foreign soil? Was this movie actually going to teach us something?

Come on, folks. It's Harold and Kumar, not Vidal and Chomsky. The boys spend all of five minutes of screen time in Guantanamo Bay and the rest of the movie is devoted to more of the low-comedy high-jinks that one would expect from the people who made America's favorite stoner road picture. George W. Bush is brought in mostly to make a weed gag, the bits where people learn a valuable lesson about racial profiling are as subtle as a hailstorm (if occasionally quite funny, as when Harold and Kumar encounter gangs of rural whites and urban blacks, and a memorable scene where Klansmen refer to the duo as "Mexicans"), and the movie's main argument against terrorism is to bellow "Fuck you! Donuts are awesome!" No one should go into this thing expecting carefully crafted political arguments from any point on the political spectrum, nor should they go into it expecting subtle comedy, crafty worldplay or an absence of jokes involving pubic hair.

The real question is, should they go into it at all? As long as they know exactly what to expect, of course they should. While there are a ton of gags that fall flat, the movie never stops trying to make us laugh, and that's admirable. The relentlessly good-natured comedy barely gives us time to breathe, and in fact, two of the movie's biggest laughs come after the end credits have already started to roll. Penn and Cho are as entertaining as they were in the last film, and while their romantic interests are a snore, the writers wisely bring back Neil Patrick Harris, playing a fictionalized version of himself as rampaging monster from the id. Rob Corddry is also a good addition to the cast, playing a Homeland Security agent who delivers on some of the movie's funniest moments thanks to his out-of-control stereotyping of every non-white person he encounters. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay isn't going to make anyone's top ten list or replace The Road to Guantanamo in the public imagination, but if you liked the first one, you'll likely have a good time at this one as well. (It helps to see it, as I did, in a theater packed to the rafters with a wildly repsonsive crowd who are likely stoned off their gourds. That's the way Harold and Kumar would watch it.)