The Screengrab : will smith

Morning Deal Report: Rosario Dawson Meets the Zookeeper

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

“Rosario Dawson will star opposite Kevin James in romantic comedy The Zookeeper,” Variety reports. “Live actioner centers on zoo animals trying to teach the keeper their methods of dating and mating to help him win back the woman of his dreams.” Kevin James will keep the fat guy/hot chick genre alive as long as he possibly can.

Stan Lee teams up with Disney to bring his latest hero to the screen. Nick Ratchet is a “lighthearted mystery thriller centers on a Jekyll & Hyde struggle between a meek, ineffectual police officer and his online alter-ego, a tough avatar cop named Nick Ratchet who emerges from inside a video game to usurp the life of his creator,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Will Smith’s production company has enlisted John Lee Hancock (The Alamo) to bring a Hurricane Katrina story to the screen. The film will tell the story of “John Keller, an ex-Marine who orchestrated the rescue of 244 of his New Orleans neighbors after their building, the American Can Co., was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The five-story structure sat in 11 feet of water after the breach of the levees,” Variety reports.

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

5. INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

Atlanta, July 4th weekend, 1996. I was in town to visit friends, celebrate the holiday, and check in on the progress of the centennial Olympic games. Finding myself downtown early one afternoon with nothing much to do, I ducked into a movie theater, which was showing the mega-hyped blockbuster Independence Day. I wasn’t expecting much; the cast was crammed with big-budget line-readers, and Roland Emmerich was already, by virtue of Universal Soldier, one of the worst directors in Hollywood. But I was just looking to kill a couple of hours until the bars opened; how bad, I reasoned, could it be? The answer turned out to be not only “incredibly bad”, but “one of the worst of all time”. Independence Day would have been bad enough even if it was nothing but what it appeared to be – an utterly witless sci-fi action movie that substituted explosions for plot, motivation, characterization, and anything else worth watching – but it added some of the most egregious stereotyping seen in films this side of the 1930s. In addition to the name actors – including Will Smith as a wisecracking fighter pilot, Bill Pullman as a Fightin’ President, Jeff Goldblum as a nerdy computer scientist, Judd Hirsch as a Jewish father straight out of a Julius Streicher publication, Randy Quaid as the crazy town drunk no one will believe, Margaret Colin as a ball-busting corporate hard-ass, Vivica Fox as a whore with a heart of gold, and Harvey Fierstein as a mincing queen – even the bit parts were insulting caricatures. After the alien motherships are brought down, we’re treated to such rare sights as bone-through-the-nose, booga-booga-shouting African tribesmen and gibbering, ululating Arabs who can’t be understood – at least, until a civilized British officer steps in to translate. (LP)

4. BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)

No matter how many awards he may win, or magazine covers he adorns, or starlets he beds, or good causes he spearheads, no one will ever let George Clooney forget he once wore the Bat-suit with the nipples. And that’s as it should be. It’s astounding to think Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to overcome the scandalous footage of himself in full Mr. Freeze drag, willingly uttering lines like “Da ice man cometh!” and still be elected governor of California. And while it’s nice that Joel Schumacher was finally able to achieve his lifelong dream of directing the Ice Capades, maybe someone should have pulled him aside and explained that this was actually supposed to be a Batman movie. Scientists have been unable to pinpoint with any exactitude the lowest moment of the Bat-franchise. Was it Robin surfing through the air, howling “Cowabunga!” or the close-up of Clooney’s bat-buttocks as he fastens his utility belt or Schwarzenegger leading his minions in a chorus of “He’s Mr. Snow-Miser”? To answer the question definitively would entail sitting through the entire movie again, and so far no one has been willing to take on the challenge. (SVD)

3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)

There are quite a few lessons to be learned from Battlefield Earth. L. Ron Hubbard wasn’t much of a fictional storyteller. The sight of John Travolta decked out in alien dreadlocks is not pleasant. And most important of all for aspiring directors, tilting the camera at a 45-degree angle for every other shot of a two-hour film is the quickest and most conclusive way to tip audiences off to your directorial ineptitude. (NS)

2. SHOWGIRLS (1995)

I posted the following about a year ago in our list "Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors," but I'd say it pretty much sums up why Showgirls ranked so high on our Top Ten list of all-time rankest films:

“Do you know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!” And that hilarious quip from strip club “comedienne” Henrietta “Mama” Bazoom pretty much sums up the philosophy towards women in this abortion of a cult classic by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven. Sure, I get it...this campy, overwrought drag show bitch-fest about amoral sex worker Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is so bad it’s good! And we can all just laugh through the parts where Gina Ravera’s Molly (the only vaguely redeemable or recognizably human character in the movie, and a black woman to boot) gets brutally raped by a loathsome white rock star. (I love it when they act out that part in the drag queen version of the show at my favorite hipster bar!) Garish, ridiculous and aggressively stupid, Showgirls is hard for me to enjoy ironically, since it so clearly embraces and truly believes in its own fetid realpolitik Hollywood philosophy that love is a lie, “art” is whatever makes money, winning is everything, men are scumbags, women are worthless (especially if they’re not hot, naked and young), the world is a shithole, if you’re not clawing your way to the top every single minute (and/or don’t know how to properly pronounce the most expensive status symbol brand names) you’re a fool and a loser and deserve what you get. Yeccch. Showgirls ain't just misogynistic: it pretty much hates everyone. And the feeling is mutual. (AO)

And now, the Screengrab's #1 Worst Movie Of All Time...

1. BABY GENIUSES (1999)

Let's see...cynical, lowest-common-denominator high-concept plot that's pretty much summed up in the title? Check! Hacky script featuring way-past-their-expiration date pop culture catch phrases? Check! Depressing lead performance by an actress who deserves better but can't find any decent roles in Hollywood because she doesn't have the off-the-chart talent of, um, Kate Hudson? Check! All that, plus creepy baby fetish CGI and the directorial flourish of the auteur behind Porky's II: The Next Day and you've got the perfect movie to fit in a double feature with Ow! My Balls! The Motion Picture in the future Idiocracy multiplex that waits for us all. (AO)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Andrew Osborne

Jackie Chan Puts His Foot In It

Phil Nugent — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:30:00 GMT

I don't guess it's completely surprising that Jackie Chan could get himself in trouble by saying something that pissed people off, but considering the possibilities, it's kind of unexpected that he managed to do it while speaking his first language. Addressing a business group in the southern Chinese province of Hainan on Saturday, Chan said, "I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not. I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want." In the past, Chan has criticized the mainland Chinese government for the 1989 crackdown, but in recent years he has avoided weighing in on political topics. This time, speaking before a receptive audience, he let himself stray into dangerous territory, even calling Hong Kong and Taiwan "chaotic" compared to the mainland.

Chan's comments went over well with his listeners but have provoked a fierce backlash from legislators in Hong Kong and Taiwan. One of them, Leung Kwok-hung, insisted that Chan has "insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets. Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law." Another critic, Huang Wei-che, pointed out that the internationally beloved star "has enjoyed freedom and democracy and has reaped the economic benefits of capitalism. But he has yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom and democracy." Others called Chan's remarks racist. Ironically, Chan's comments received no coverage at all in mainland China itself. Chan is currently in talks to co-star with Will Smith's son Jaden Smith in a remake of The Karate Kid, to be shot in Beijing.

DVD O'Digest for March 17, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the much-ballyhooed Luck of the Irish doesn’t extend to DVD shoppers, who will find little in the way of worthwhile recent releases to add to their collections. Nonetheless, there’s worthy stuff hitting the market today, provided you know where to look.

This week’s haul of recent releases is headed by Will Smith’s latest attempt to curry Academy favor, Gabriele Muccino’s Seven Pounds (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Other movies hitting stores today include the animated family film The Tale of Despereaux (Universal, also Blu-Ray), the comic book-inspired revenge actioner Punisher: War Zone (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), and Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz in Elegy (Sony). Also, this weekend brings the release of two new DVDs starring newly-anointed star Kristen Stewart- the smash vampire-teen blockbuster Twilight and the Mary Stuart Masterson-directed indie drama The Cake Eaters, the movie that answers the question, “whatever happened to Mary Stuart Masterson?”

In the classics department, the big news this week is the release of Akira Kurosawa’s first color film, Dodes’ka-den (Criterion). I’ve yet to see it myself, but according to a number of critics, Dodes’ka-den is second-tier Kurosawa. All the same, it’s still Kurosawa, so I’m eager to give it a look. Also this week: The Robe Special Edition (Fox, also Blu-Ray), a lumbering biblical picture that’s justly remembered solely for being the first Cinemascope release; and the box set Eclipse Series 15: Travels With Hiroshi Shimizu, featuring four titles from this Japanese auteur.

In TV on DVD, this week brings Mr. Belvedere Seasons 1 and 2 (Universal). And in Blu-Ray only news, the highlights this week are the sword-and-sandal epic Quo Vadis (Fox) and the eighties favorite The Princess Bride (MGM).

Finally, I’d like to close this column introducing a new feature with this week’s DVD Digest, spotlighting the most bizarre DVD synopsis of any of this week’s new releases. Despite some competition from a movie that described itself as “a horrific thriller in the vein of Captivity (who’d want to be associated with Captivity???), the inaugural winner of the prize was the Media Blasters’ DVD entitled Booby Life. Here’s the synopsis, courtesy of DVD Planet:

Naoto, your run-of-the-mill young dude with a thing for top-heavy women, is the luckiest bum in the world. Ayane, a busty babe he's known for almost all his life, has a thing for him and lets him have his way with her anytime he wants. On top of that, Chika, another one of his chesty childhood friends, has just a big a crush on him too. When she says to him, "My boobs belong to you," there's no way any guy with a healthy sex drive can resist. There's now only two hard things in Naoto's life now, and one of them is choosing between two gorgeous hotties!

So much for a slow DVD week, eh?

Morning Deal Report: Jackie Chan Kicks Around “Karate Kid”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

We already knew a Karate Kid remake was in the works, with Will Smith’s son Jaden set for the lead role. Now it looks as if the new Kid has his Mr. Miyagi – and, really, could it be anyone other than Jackie Chan? The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Chan is in negotiations to take on the role “made famous by Pat Morita in the original franchise…Like the original, which starred Morita and Ralph Macchio, the movie will examine the relationship between a martial arts expert and a boy who is picked on by bullies.”

Speaking of remakes, here’s one of the more bizarre Variety stories in a while. It’s not that I’m surprised to read that “Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer have set John Adams helmer Tom Hooper to direct and Christopher Hampton to write East of Eden, an adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel.” No, what surprises me is that nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a rather famous adaptation of this novel already exists. James Dean? Elia Kazan? Do these names ring a bell? Instead, Variety notes that “U and Imagine first optioned Steinbeck's book in 2004, when it shot to the top of the bestseller lists right after Oprah Winfrey chose it as the first selection when she revived her book club.” OK, so it took Oprah to bring this obscure work to their attention. Gotcha.

A Steve McQueen biopic is on the way, based on the book Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, which “delves into McQueen's offscreen penchant for motorcycles, fast cars and drugs. Project will examine his three marriages, including his stormy relationship with Ali McGraw, as well as his battle against lung cancer,” Variety reports.

Related:
Video of the Day: "Karate Kid III" After Dark
Bullitt: The Greatest Car Chase Ever Google Mapped

Screengrab Presents: The Best Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:30:00 GMT

SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (1985)

It’s probably not a great sign that two of my heroes wound up killing themselves once old age began to creep in. After famously inserting himself into the gonzo dispatches he filed from the trenches of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson infamously inserted a ball of hot lead into his cranium as a permanent cure for depression and the nagging pain of various medical conditions. Likewise, the late, great monologist Spalding Gray jumped off a ferry in 2004 after years spent battling his own depression (stemming partly from his mother’s 1967 suicide) and pain (from a 2001 car accident) while also chronicling his own misadventures and neuroses in a series of seriocomic one-man shows for New York’s experimental Wooster Group theater company. Several of Gray’s monologues were filmed over the years (by directors including Steven Soderbergh and Nick Broomfield), but the first and best screen adaptation of his stage work was Jonathan Demme's Swimming To Cambodia, a rambling, fascinating (and extremely quotable) collage of national and personal history encompassing the Thai sex trade, the weird insanity of Richard Nixon, the horrific reign of the Khmer Rouge and Gray’s own search for a perfect moment while employed as a character actor on the set of Roland Joffe’s 1984 biopic The Killing Fields.

BILOXI BLUES (1988)

I understand my wife’s disdain for Neil Simon. His schticky, schmaltzy brand of lowbrow theater ain’t for everyone (and he extended the career of Marsha Mason way past its natural expiration date). Yet there’s a lot to recommend Biloxi Blues, the charming middle installment of the playwright’s alliterative autobiographical trilogy (bookended by Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound). For one thing, Matthew Broderick is at his Ferris Beuller best as a World War II-era army recruit forced outside his blue state comfort zone during basic training in a deep red Mississippi boot camp. The film, which never feels the least bit stagy, is two parts nostalgic coming-of-age comedy and one part “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture war drama, but the true highlight is Christopher Walken in a memorable supporting role as a deceptively affable, quietly menacing drill sergeant just as scary in his way as the more traditional expletive-spewing Full Metal Jacket variety.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (1993)

John Guare's finest play, a steadily escalating comedy of modern manners, was given the instant-classic treatment by director Fred Schepisi and a cast headed by first lady of the theater Stockard Channing, grizzled counterculture figure turned acting eminence Donald Sutherland, and Will Smith, then best known as the Fresh Prince. A movie whose wit and sophistication can make your head swim, it looks easy enough to make you wonder why all deserving plays haven't gotten as deft a movie treatment. Your first clue to the answer to that question may be that not even any other play of Guare's has made it to the Hollywood starting gate.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

Working with Tennessee Williams' great play and the director Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando created thunder and lightning onstage during the Broadway run. Then he and Kazan packaged it in film cans and sent it out across the country to poison the minds of lucky youths everywhere. (Though there have always been people who expressed their regrets that Brando's performance hadn't been filmed early in the run -- you know, when it was really good.) Most of the rest of the Broadway cast came along for the ride, but the one key exception, Vivien Leigh as Blanche, turned out to be one of those uncanny marriages of a great, difficult role to a performer with an unsteady career who had something of her own that the character had always needed. The movie lives as a record of one of the most startling and sublime acting duets ever performed.

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE (2002)

Clare Peploe, a gifted director probably best known as the wife of Bernardo Bertolucci, had a small, too-little-seen triumph with this joyous and charming version of a romantic comedy written by the French Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux in 1732. The plot, which involves Mira Sorvino as a seductive royal and Ben Kingsley as a crackpot philosopher who has taught the object of Sorvino's romantic designs (Jay Rodan) to regard love with disdain, is a roundelay of schemes, masks, and mind fucks that Peploe weaves into a comic celebration of theatrical artifice itself.

LES PARENTS TERRIBLES (1948)

Jean Cocteau had already enjoyed a scandalous triumph with his play, an explosion of the form of the "boulevard comedy" likened to "Noel Coward on opium." He dove in head first when he decided to film it, resisting the urge to open up a text that has the small, overheated cast waging familial warfare in the confines of their cramped Paris apartment. The masterful handling of the farcical complications within the claustrophobic setting can make a viewer happily delirious.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

DVD Digest for November 25, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a surprisingly small selection leading into the so-called “biggest shopping day of the year.”

Recent releases coming to DVD include Will Smith and Charlize Theron in Hancock (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn making a grab for your Christmas cash in Fred Claus (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Eddie Murphy inside Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and Andy Samberg going from talking to animals as Mark Wahlberg to playing a talking animal himself in Space Chimps (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

In classics this week, Criterion releases two seminal nineties films, Wes Anderson’s debut effort Bottle Rocket and Wong Kar-wai’s awesome and Tarantino-approved Chungking Express. But don’t fret, Blu-Ray fans- they’ll be coming out in that format in December, so don’t cross them off the Christmas list.

In TV on DVD, this week brings the season-bridging special 24: Redemption (Fox), plus everyone’s fake wingnut in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All (Paramount).

Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only releases are a Jamie Foxx double feature, Jarhead and The Kingdom (both Universal).

Morning Deal Report: From X-Men to X-Boys

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The X-Men franchise won’t end with the upcoming Wolverine spinoff – but then, you knew that, didn’t you? In addition to a standalone Magneto movie already in development, Fox is going younger with X-Men: First Class. Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz will pen the script, “using the younger characters introduced in the previous pics in future installments -- teenagers with powers taught at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Resulting film would likely draw from elements of the Marvel comic of the same name, launched in 2006, and enlist such characters as Iceman, Rogue, Angel, Colossus, Jubilee and Shadowcat, who have appeared prominently or made cameos in prior pics,” Variety reports.

Will Smith and Steven Spielberg are collaborating on a remake of Old Boy, the 2003 Korean film co-written and directed by Park Chan-wook. “The original film, which like much edgy Asian cinema includes some disturbing material, detailed a man's mysterious kidnapping, 15-year imprisonment and feverish quest for revenge upon being released,” The Hollywood Reporter reminds.

Not to be outdone, Gore Verbinski will remake The Host, the 2006 Bong Joon-ho-directed Korean thriller. Per Variety, “Story follows a town terrorized by a giant mutant squidlike creature hatched by toxins that flow into a nearby river from a military base.” Where Hollywood is concerned these days, it seems “Made in Korea” is the stamp of quality.

Related:
Steven Spielberg: Teacher's Pet?
Attack of the Half-Assed Hollywood Remakes of Asian Horror Movies

Morning Deal Report: Nicole Kidman Marries Charlize Theron

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

If the voters of California had visualized that headline, Prop. 8 might have had a completely different outcome. Alas, it’s a match made only for the movies (as far as we know): Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron will star in The Danish Girl. Kidman plays artist Einar Wegener, a man with a very smooth forehead who, with the encouragement of his wife Greta (Theron), adopts a female guise for a series of portraits. “What began as a harmless game led Einer to a metamorphosis and landmark 1931 operation that shocked the world and threatened their love,” per The Hollywood Reporter. That operation? Well, it ain’t liposuction.

As we await Werner Herzog’s highly unnecessary version of The Bad Lieutenant, news reports of an even less essential remake have surfaced. Larry Clark (Kids) will direct an update of Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, per Screen Daily. But that’s not all! “Hayden Christensen is in formal negotiations to take the lead in HandMade's remake of Mona Lisa. He will take on a younger version of George, the character made famous by Bob Hoskins in the original.” I’d rather see Bob Hoskins as Anakin Skywalker, but maybe that’s just me.

More! We demand more bad remake news! How about this: “Columbia Pictures is back in the dojo with a new version of the 1984 hit The Karate Kid, which has been refashioned as a star vehicle for Jaden Smith,” Variety reports. That’s Will Smith’s 10-year-old boy, who co-starred with his dad in The Pursuit of Happyness.

Related:
Charlize Theron Is a Sexual Creature
Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea

And Bob Hoskins As Joe The Plumber

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Well, we figured it was only a matter of time. I suppose we're just lucky it's the still somewhat respectable Los Angeles Times who's doing it, instead of, say, the New York Post, or worse yet, the National Review.

We're talking about casting the lead roles in the 2008 election, which, if it ends anything as crazily as it's played out so far, will be in theaters near you by around 2010 at the latest. (Of course, that depends on who wins. There may not be any theaters near you by 2010 if it's the G.O.P. candidate.) The Times has decided to put their best guesses to filling the big-screen roles of the candidates and their various First Ladies and Gentlemen, and their choices run the gamut from obvious (Tina Fey as Sarah Palin) to intriguing (James Caan as Joe Biden) to inexplicable (Paul Giamatti as John McCain?).

Will Smith as Barack Obama seems like a boringly safe choice; why not Don Cheadle, or our personal favorite pick, Anwan Glover? You gotta take risks sometimes, in casting no less so than in politics. What about you, Screengrab readers? Who would you cast as the 2008 contenders and their spouses?

Warners DVD Keeps John McCain Interview Under Lock and Key

Trailer Review: Seven Pounds

Paul Clark — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

This has to be more complex than it looks, right? Because from the looks of this trailer, this is going to be a movie about a workaholic who suddenly decides to help seven people, for reasons known only to himself. But there must be a catch, I’m guessing- maybe he’s mortally ill or has recently had a life-changing brush with death that’s caused him to see the light. Part of me hopes that maybe his sudden altruism springs from him being mentally ill. But somehow, I doubt it. Will Smith is a fine actor, and is constantly getting better. But I actually prefer him in his recent genre films like Hancock and I Am Legend, in which a blockbuster template affords him the chance to show his darker side. This, on the other hand, is looking a lot like feel-good claptrap, which might appeal to the folks in the Academy but I believe actually limits Smith as an actor by keeping him intent on being lovable and sympathetic. A shame, really.

Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Hooper

Release Date: July 28, 1978

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Field, Brian Keith, Robert Klein, Adam West

The Buzz: “It just ain’t summer without Burt!” (That is, assuming Jimmy Carter is still the president.)

Keywords: Stuntman, Driving Backwards, Rocket Car, Bar Fight, Person on Fire

The Plot: Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) is the greatest stuntman alive, but some fear he’s getting a little long in the tooth. His latest gig is doubling for Adam West, star of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. (The notion that West would be headlining a big action movie as late as 1978 is one of Hooper’s more implausible elements.) During a barroom brawl at the Palomino, Hooper bonds with up-and-coming golden boy Ski (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is also working on the film. They develop a friendly rivalry on the set, with each trying to top the other with ever more outrageous stunts. This does nothing to help Hooper with his escalating dependence on painkillers, nor his deteriorating relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Gwen (Sally Field). Hooper’s doctor informs him that one more big jolt could paralyze him for life, but that doesn’t stop Hooper from taking on a risky rocket-car gag that could end his career. Take a wild guess if it does.

The Test of Time: Who knew what a cornucopia of embarrassing admissions this Summer of ’78 feature would turn out to be for me? I’ve already copped to owning novelizations of all the Omen movies as well as the Heaven Can Wait Fotonovel, but I can probably top all of that with the admission that I also had the Hooper soundtrack album. At least Smokey and the Bandit featured songs by Jerry Reed; the title track from Hooper is performed by someone named Bent Myggen and is perhaps the only song in recorded history to feature the line “Set him on fire, it will amuse him.” Of course, this latest revelation of mine comes as no surprise to the bazillions of you who keep copies of my book Hick Flicks within reach of your toilet seats. (And if you aren’t one of them, why not buy a copy today? Come on, people, I’m currently ranked # 1,090,823 on Amazon. Help me out here.) As far as the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham southern fried ouvre goes, Hooper falls short of Smokey but finishes far ahead of Stroker Ace and the Cannonball Run collection. Allow me to quote myself from my magnum opus: “What sets Hooper apart is its insider’s view of a working class subculture within the motion picture industry. The stuntmen are a tight-knight group, clowning around on the set and playing bumper cars on the freeway en route to their favorite watering hole. They know they’re the workhorses of the picture, but even though they’re basically blue collar guys, they’ve got show biz hearts. They do impressions of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck to crack each other up, and get together to drink beer and watch their stunt reels for the thousandth time. There’s an improvisational spontaneity to such scenes; a “morning after” sequence in which Reynolds and Brian Keith slowly roust themselves from hangover oblivion is particularly well-observed.”

Quotable Quote: “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Zylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

2008 Equivalent: This is a tough one, but I’ll give it to Hancock. Like Burt in the '70s, Will Smith is our current Mr. Summer, with a similar “It’s me, your buddy!” persona winking through every role. Plus Hancock is a two-syllable character name title starting with H – just like Hooper!

Previously on Summer of '78: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Thursday Morning Poll for July 10, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Last week, we celebrated Independence Day, which just so happens to be the name of both the holiday and the movie that made Will Smith a box-office titan. Yet when polled as to which July 4 Weekend release they preferred, Screengrab readers overwhelming chose his blockbuster from the following summer, 1997’s Men in Black. Alien-bustin’ beat out E.T-asswhuppin’ by a vote of 73% to 23%, with this summer’s Hancock accounting for the other 4%. At least no one voted for Wild Wild West or Men in Black II- that would’ve just been wrong.

This week’s poll is what you might call a real heartbreaker. A few days ago, I was having a conversation about actors with some friends when the question arose, “has there ever been an actor who never made a bad movie?” I thought for a few seconds, then it dawned on me- John Cazale. Not counting a 1962 short titled The American Way and archival footage from The Godfather, Part III, Cazale’s feature film career was one classic after another. Hell, even the Academy thought so, giving three of the movies Best Picture and nominating the other two for the same award. But while everyone has their favorite movie in which he appeared, I’m more curious as to what our readership’s favorite Cazale performance might be.

To me, this is a pretty easy question- one word: “Wyoming”- but you might disagree. And that, as always, is what the comments section is for. See you next week!

Morning Deal Report: David Fincher Gets Goony

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Hancock soared above the competition for the holiday weekend box office dollar. It took in an estimated $66 million from Friday through Sunday, bringing its total since its Tuesday night release to $107.3 million. As those of you who participated in last week’s poll have figured out, that makes Hancock Will Smith’s fifth Fourth of July weekend at number one, following Independence Day, the two Men in Black movies and the immortal Wild, Wild West. Wall-E dropped to the number two slot in its second week of release with $33.4 million, bringing its total to a respectable $128.1 million, while Wanted took a predictable 60% dive, still good for third place.

With Hancock’s success, you can bet the graphic novel adaptations will keep rolling out. David Fincher is looking to bring the Dark Horse title The Goon to the screen as a CG animated feature, it says here in the Hollywood Reporter. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with The Goon? “Created by Eric Powell in 1999, the comic follows the adventures of a muscle-bound brawler who claims to be the primary enforcer for a feared mobster. The stories have a paranormal and comedic edge to them and concern ghosts, zombies, mad scientists and ‘skunk apes.’” You had me at “skunk apes.”

Variety reports that the multi-tasking Spike Lee, already committed to a Michael Jordan documentary, an Inside Man sequel and an adaptation of The Time Traveler, will be filming performances of the Broadway musical Passing Strange. “Plot centers on young black artist from L.A. who flees his middle-class upbringing and heads to Amsterdam and Berlin in an attempt to find himself.” Lee will shoot three performances of the piece, with the current plan being to debut the filmed version on cable.

Related:
Morning Deal Report: Time Traveling with Spike Lee
Fincher's Musical, The Canon of Thor, and Justice on the Rocks

Thursday Morning Poll for July 3, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It took almost three months, but it’s finally happened- it’s a tie! When polled about their favorite of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 5 Movies of the last 25 years, Screengrab voters overwhelmingly chose the critics’ favorites over the crowd-pleasers. After a tight race, it was Blue Velvet (my pick) and Pulp Fiction in a dead heat, garnering between them all but two of the votes, which were claimed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even with the release of WALL*E, it appears that Pixar’s inaugural feature Toy Story couldn’t get any love, and the Titanic reassessment is just going to have to wait until next year’s release of Jim Cameron’s Avatar.

Just in time for the holiday weekend, we’re getting’ jiggy with Mr. July 4th himself, Will Smith. After years of non-Independence Day releases, Smith returns to the weekend that made him a superstar to reclaim his throne. To commemorate the occasion, we’re polling you- our loyal readers- for your favorite of his movies released on the weekend of or preceding July 4, which rules out such later-July releases as I, Robot and Bad Boys II. Sorry, Nick Frost.

As always, the comments section is open for you to sound off on your thoughts. I’m especially curious to hear from anyone who would defend Wild Wild West because, I mean, come on.

Morning Deal Report: Dueling Sherlocks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As if Guy Ritchie didn’t have enough problems, what with the gossip sheets running wild with rumors that A-Rod is shtupping his wife. Now it turns out that his Sherlock Holmes feature will face competition from Borat himself. Per Variety, Columbia Pictures has announced “an untitled comedy that will star Sacha Baron Cohen as master detective Sherlock Holmes and Will Ferrell as Watson, his crime-solving partner.” According to Columbia president Matt Tolmach, this re-teaming of the Talladega Nights stars is a sure-fire knee-slapper. "Just the idea of Sacha and Will as Sherlock Holmes and Watson makes us laugh…having them take on these two iconic characters is frankly hilarious." Thank you for speaking frankly, Mr. Tolmach. Of course, this is not the first time rival productions involving the same iconic character have gone head-to-head, as we recall from the great Robin Hood war of the '90s. But then, that was a war nobody won.

The cast of Roland Emmerich’s latest rendition of the end of the world is coming together. Triple threat Thomas McCarthy, who most recently wrote and directed The Visitor, will join John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Danny Glover in Emmerich’s 2012. “As an actor, I've never worked on anything with this scale before, and I always go see these movies,” McCarthy tells the Hollywood Reporter. “This does have a big budget and I do make more money, which is nice, but I know if you take a job like this just for the money, you'll be miserable.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell it to Nicolas Cage.

Meanwhile, the French hit Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks) is being remade not only in America (Will Smith will star for Warner Bros.) but in Italy. Variety describes it as a “heart-warmer about a postal worker forced to relocate to a small town in the north where he can't understand the patois, the food or the many quirks.” We’ll wait for the Portuguese version.

Related:

No Shit, Sherlock: Guy Ritchie Reimagines Holmes
1949 vs. 2012: John Woo/Roland Emmerich Deathmatch!

Yesterday's Hits: Independence Day (1996, Roland Emmerich)

Paul Clark — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The more research I do into potential Yesterday’s Hits titles, the more I begin to think that true classics that were hugely popular in their time are an anomaly. This seems especially true of big, effects-driven summer blockbusters. When throwing tens- or even hundreds- of millions of dollars behind a movie, the studio is reluctant to take any unnecessary risks. Of course, there are still films that try to be unique and special, but they’re a risky proposition, since for every Back to the Future there’s a Hulk. More often than not, studios leave little to chance in order to make a splashy, inoffensive movie that appeals to as many people as possible. And while movies like this sometimes make a lot of money, they rarely linger in the public consciousness for very long. By way of example, and just in time for Independence Day, I offer up… well, Independence Day.

What made Independence Day a hit?: A few months ago, I spotlighted one of the biggest hits of the 1970s Irwin Allen disaster movie cycle, The Towering Inferno. The key to that movie’s success was the combination of big stars, state-of-the-art effects, and plenty of destruction to keep audiences entertained. When making Independence Day, the major inspiration of director/producer team Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin was to fuse the Irwin Allen formula with an alien-invasion plot a la War of the Worlds. And while Independence Day lacked the megastars of its 70s-era predecessors- its top-liners were Will Smith, then best-known to many from TV’s The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, a post-Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum, and Bill “Not Paxton” Pullman- the relatively low-wattage cast only served to direct more attention to the effects-driven mayhem.

Realizing this, Emmerich, Devlin, and 20th Century Fox mounted a highly effective advertising campaign that played up the movie’s effects. Even today, the movie’s most iconic image contains no actors whatsoever, but simply shows an alien craft blowing up the White House. And despite the lack of box-office draws, the ads paid off magnificently, with the movie earning over $300 million in the United States alone, making it the highest-grossing movie of 1996. In addition, Independence Day propelled Smith to movie superstardom and launched his self-promoted reign as the king of July 4th releases.

What happened?: For a movie that enjoyed such popularity on its initial release, Independence Day enjoyed very little long-term love. The major reason for this was because there was very little about that movie that hadn’t been cribbed from earlier, better-loved blockbusters. The plot was formulaic, the characters were one-dimensional, and the aliens bore a strange resemblance to the extraterrestrial baddies from the Alien franchise. Even the movie’s major selling point- the effects- suffered in the long run. Independence Day was made to enjoyed in theatres, so inevitably the movie’s effects would suffer on the small screen, and as the years passed they became less impressive in light of more groundbreaking effects like those in Titanic and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And really, without plot, characters, aliens and special effects, what’s left to Independence Day?

Does Independence Day still work?: Surprisingly, yes. Of course, for the movie to work it requires some willful suspension of disbelief. And by “some,” I mean “a whole truckload.” To put it bluntly, Independence Day is pretty kind of stupid, and the more one thinks about the plot the dumber it gets. Even more than most alien-centric thrillers, the logic behind the invasion just doesn’t hold water. Similarly, the human race’s eventual solution to the threat is so harebrained that one could hardly be blamed for rolling one’s eyes.

Likewise, most of the characters are pretty standard-issue. Each is assigned a quirk and a conflict and set loose within the story, and their separate character trajectories all proceed more or less as we expect them to. Some of the actors do a better job than others at making them work- Smith has an easy charm and Goldblum’s nebbish routine is almost always fun, but Pullman is clearly keeping his more eccentric impulses in check to play the President. In addition, the film’s most entertaining supporting character (Brent Spiner’s endearingly daffy alien expert Dr. Okun) isn’t around nearly long enough, while the most irritating (Judd Hirsch as Goldblum’s perpetually kvetching dad) has far too much screen time. Of all the characters in the movie, he survives?

Yet the movie does more or less what it sets out to do- that is, to entertain the audience by blowing stuff up real good. Emmerich and Devlin’s hearts might not be in Independence Day’s story or characters, but they’re certainly in the explosions, and they definitely deliver in this area. I think it’s telling that many of the effects in the movie were accomplished at least in part by using detailed models, as the filmmakers were so excited to set the world ablaze onscreen that they actually constructed the models to be blown up rather than simply using all-CGI effects like many other movies of the period. As a fan of old-school analog effects, I appreciated the extra effort that went into doing this.

Listen, by any rational standards Independence Day is not a very good movie. It’s formulaic, and I’m pretty sure I killed some brain cells just by watching it again. But deep within the heart of many a moviegoer there’s a part that can’t resist movies that are loud and dumb and willfully cheesy with plenty of explosions, to say nothing of Will Smith talking about “whupping E.T.’s ass.” To ask for intelligence from Independence Day is like reading Strindberg for the jokes- that’s not the point, so why bother looking? As Pope John Paul II once said of another potential Yesterday’s Hits entry, “it is what it is,” and for what it is, it gets the job done. Sometimes, that’s enough.

M. Night Shyamalan Straight Up, Hold the Twist

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

We’ve already gone on record with our Screengrab prediction that M. Night Shyamalan’s latest opus The Happening will be one of the five biggest bombs of the summer, even going so far as to suggest that the next Hitchcock has instead become the new Ed Wood. But in an interview with the New York Times, Shyamalan tries to make the case that’s he misunderstood – he’s not just “the guy who makes the scary movies with a twist.”

Some experts feel it doesn’t matter who he is – that unless the name above the title is Steven Spielberg, audiences don’t really care who directed the movie. “It never really worked,” argues David Weitzner, the former head of worldwide marketing for Universal and an adjunct professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. “It’s pomposity on the part of studios to think that the public is going to respond to an advertising message that says to see the film because it’s from the director of another film. It’s stupid and to some degree, it’s fueled by ego.”

Ego is something that has gotten in Shyamalan’s way lately, particularly in the case of his last big screen effort The Lady in the Water. According to the Times, the director “committed the greatest sin of all — he criticized a meeting with Disney studio executives, Nina Jacobson, Dick Cook and Oren Aviv, in a book by Michael Bamberger, The Man Who Heard Voices. In the book, which received a huge amount of press, Mr. Shyamalan accused Ms. Jacobson of not giving his Lady in the Water script ‘a truthful reading” and said that he thought that it had been rejected because Disney 'no longer valued individualism.’…The Hollywood establishment was outraged by the book and Mr. Shyamalan’s public recitation of what are considered very private matters.”

Lady in the Water didn’t make much of a splash (sorry), maybe because it was a departure from Shyamalan’s string of “scary movies with a twist,” or maybe just because it was so damn silly. Whatever the case, he’s back in creepy thriller territory with The Happening, his first R-rated picture, and he still thinks his name is a viable brand. “The problem is the assumption that if I am selling the movie — because I’m selling me — that I’m being egotistical. If Will Smith did the same thing, it would be perceived very differently,” he said. “You’re supposed to be hidden if you’re a director. That’s a rule that who said in the movie business?” If The Happening flops, maybe he'll find out.

Related:
Trailer Review: The Happening
The Five Kinds of Twist Endings

Summer of '78: "Capricorn One"

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

Capricorn One

Release Date: June 2, 1978

Cast: Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, Hal Holbrook, Sam Waterston, Karen Black, Telly Savalas, OJ Simpson

The Buzz: A conspiracy thriller with a dash of sci-fi intrigue.

Keywords: NASA, Astronaut, Fraud, Chase, Reporter, Scorpion, Helicopter Crash

The Plot: Three astronauts (Brolin, Waterston and The Juice) are onboard their spacecraft ready to launch the first manned mission to mars when a NASA suit rushes them out of the capsule and onto a waiting plane. When they arrive in Los Angeles and meet with NASA chief James Kelloway (Holbrook), they learn that the ship’s cheaply made life support system was deemed unsafe, and that their ship has left for Mars without them. Appealing to their patriotism – and when that fails, not-so-subtly threatening the lives of their families – Kelloway coerces them into participating in a hoax. The Mars landing is faked on a Hollywood soundstage, as is their return to Earth. (You can imagine how this would be a scandal on par with Milli Vanilli lip-synching on the Grammies.) When the ship splashes down, Kelloway announces that the heat shields have failed and all aboard have disintegrated. Figuring that they’ve been duped, the astronauts escape and split up, heading in three different directions. At this point, you will guess correctly that Brolin will be the lone survivor. (The black astronaut is, of course, the first to die, but since it’s OJ, it’s hard to get too worked up over it.) Meanwhile, reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould, doing a broader take on his Philip Marlowe from The Long Goodbye) is sniffing around the story and figuring that something isn’t quite right.

The Test of Time: I’m actually a little surprised there hasn’t been a remake of Capricorn One yet, and not surprised at all that a Google search of “capricorn one remake” turns up dozens of rumor sites. The urban legend that the moon landing was faked persists to this day (see the recent NASA documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, in which exasperated lunar module pilot Charlie Duke points out, “We went to the moon nine times. Why would we fake it nine times?”), and Mars is back in the headlines this very week. Granted, the most recent cycle of Mars movies (Red Planet, Mission to Mars, Ghosts of Mars) met with little support from critics or the box office, but Capricorn has a solid premise, even if the execution is half-baked. In the hands of sci-fi hack Peter Hyams (Outland, 2010), it’s a lumpy thriller with no real momentum and little suspense. Also, the ending SUCKS - it's one of those '70s freeze-frames that thinks its so profound and ambiguous, when really it's just denying us a well-deserved comeuppance for no good reason. It's not like they'd be messing with a classic, so I can easily picture a more sophisticated Capricorn One, in terms of both conspiracy and technology, from, say, Steven Soderbergh. Yes, I can see it now: George Clooney, Will Smith and Steve Carrell as the astronauts. Call me, Stevie! We'll do lunch!

Quotable Quote: “You know, when Apollo 17 landed on the moon, people were calling up the networks and bitching because reruns of I Love Lucy were cancelled. Reruns, for Christ's sake! I could understand if it was the new Lucy show. After all, what's a walk on the moon? But reruns?”

2008 Equivalent: Let’s see…conspiracies, outer space, an investigator who stumbles onto something big…it’s gotta be The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

Previously on "Summer of '78": Thank God It's Friday

A “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” By Any Other Name

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In Jack Mathews’ book The Battle of Brazil, which recounts Terry Gilliam’s struggle to get his director’s cut of Brazil released by Universal Pictures, the author reprints a list of alternative titles the Universal suits presented to Gilliam. Apparently they felt Brazil was confusing or misleading – after all, the movie didn’t take place in Brazil, and they certainly didn’t want to give audiences the wrong impression. And you can certainly see how these titles would have proved clearer and more appealing to the masses: If Osmosis, Who Are You?, Explanada Fortunata Is Not My Real Name, The Girl in the House on the Truck That's on Fire, and my all-time favorite, Gnu Yak, Gnu Yak and Other Bestial Places.

The point is, choosing the title of a movie can be a multi-million dollar decision, as Josh Friedman reports in the L.A. Times. It’s so important, there’s even a consulting firm called TitleDoctors, started by marketing consultants Seth Lockhart and Jamil Barrie. Imagine, this is a job you can have – meeting with movie executives and presenting them with a list of old song titles you think would be a perfect fit for their new romantic comedy or crime drama.

“Getting studios to agree on a name change is never easy (none of the titles for the 13 films Lockhart and Barrie consulted on during their first year in business has been adopted),” Friedman writes. “Filmmakers and production executives can become enamored of a movie's ‘working’ title. And studios may have already invested millions in marketing a project under a particular name, making it financially costly to alter.”

Some title changes are for the best; it’s hard to imagine Annie Hall achieving classic status under its original moniker Anhedonia, after all, and if you’re making a comedy about a pampered pocket dog from the 90210, you might as well call it Beverly Hills Chihuahua. But as Friedman points out, audiences are likely to flock to Hancock as much as they would the proposed alternate titles Heroes Never Die and Less Than Hero. And it’s probably for the best that the original title, Tonight, He Comes was jettisoned. As star Will Smith told Entertainment Weekly, ““You don’t want your movie to already have the porno title.”

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now, The Screengrab’s predictions for the Top 5 box office disappointments and/or outright disastrous flops of Summer 2008!

(Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Bombs, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS AN IMAGINARY FANTASY DATE WITH MIKE MYERS AND/OR SARAH JESSICA PARKER!)

5. SEX AND THE CITY

I guess I shouldn't exactly say that I'm confident this movie will be a huge failure. More like I'm praying to any god that will listen that it will be. (LP)

What kind of sick, twisted, topsy-turvy world do we live in where the promised Deadwood TV movies have never materialized, yet Sex and the City gets the full-fledged big screen treatment? No sort of world for me, I know that much. As hard as it is for me to believe that anyone on the planet still cares about the sex lives of Sarah Jessica Parker and her pals, I'm sure there are a few fans left out there. But they'll all see this on the first weekend and then it will sink like a stone. (SV)

Yes, the show has a built-in fan base, but will it be enough? The fact is, this is opening the week after Indiana Jones, and there are many more women who will buy a ticket for Indy than there are men who'll pay to see Carrie and Company on the big screen. Perhaps an early-fall release would have been a better idea? (PC)

4. SPEED RACER

Who was this movie made for? Everyone's heard of the show, but who remembers it all that well? Looks too kiddish for most adults, and too hyperkinetic for the family audience. Factor in the film's release date- the second week in May, historically a bum weekend- and the outlook here isn't promising. (PC)

Dissenting Opinion: Intersecting that demographic sweet spot where NASCAR fans, nostalgic hipsters, Japanese animation buffs, and people with nothing better to do on a hot afternoon meet, this cartoon revival will score big, and drive up sales of Steve Albini records and pet monkeys. (LP)

3. THE HAPPENING

It's not happening anymore for M. Night Shyamalan, who has seen his stock drop from Hitchcock heir to 21st century Ed Wood with each successive release. (SV)

Five years ago, the M. Night Shyamalan name would have been enough to guarantee box office. However, after The Village and Lady In the Water, the studio is going to have to step up their game to recoup their investment here. And without a Bruce Willis in the lead role, it's going to be that much harder. (PC)

DISSENTING OPINION: While I am on record as a LeBeouf hater, I’m an ardent Shyamalan apologist. For me, even his stinkers are interesting (or at least amusing), and I’m apparently the only guy in America who actually enjoyed Lady In The Water enough to put it on my year-end Top Ten List. Oh, sure, it SEEMS like it’s going to bomb...but the SHOCKING TWIST ENDING is that, y’know, it might not be a TOTAL fiasco. (AO)

2. THE LOVE GURU

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this looks like total shit? Mike Myers appears onscreen for the first time in five years, but let's not forget that his last leading-man role was- UGH- THE CAT IN THE HAT. (PC)

Coroners examining the bomb crater will have trouble separating the remains of The Love Guru from the remains of Heather Graham’s The Guru in an adjacent crater, and will thus bury them together in the Tomb of the Unseen Faux-Indian Musical Comedy. (AO)

1. THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Taking a movie, based on a very hard-sell Marvel character (whose entire existence is predicated on violence and stupidity), which was one of the few recent superhero movies to totally bomb and remaking it only a few years later with a much worse director? Now that's a formula for success! (LP)

Marvel Studios has gone out of their way to sell this film as a completely different creature than the last movie. But will people get the message? I think they underestimate how much people disliked the last Hulk, and it's going to take a lot of good press to make audiences believe they won't get fooled again. (PC)

By the way...does anyone else think a giant green ‘roid-ragin’ CGI depiction of Ed Norton is inherently hilarious? What’s next, Sean Penn as Martian Manhunter? (AO)

Memorandum Opinion: I don't want to say I'm rooting against The Incredible Hulk exactly, but as one of the few defenders of Ang Lee's version, I would feel some satisfaction if the presumably louder, faster, dumber sequel/remake/whatever-it-is met with an even worse box office fate. (SV)

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK

Recent presidential elections have shown us time and again that America has no tolerance for poor moral values, like this movie with 'cock' in the title and which features Will Smith, and yet does not have a single occurrence of the phrase "Aw hell naw". (LP)

GET SMART

The appeal of the old TV show -- a number of episodes of which were written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry -- wasn't its spy satire; it was its smart, character-driven comedy. The movie looks to go for cheap retro thrills and ultra-broad laughs, and America's love affair with Steve Carrell may have peaked. (LP)

People like Steve Carell on TV, but after last summer's Evan Almighty, his box-office clout is pretty questionable. This uninspired-looking TV spinoff probably won't counter that. (PC)

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

Does anyone still actually care? (PC)

WANTED/HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

2008 is the summer of comic book movies, but there's such a thing as overkill. Without the name recognition of Batman or the marketing push of Iron Man, these will probably be lost in the shuffle. (PC)

**************

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Hancock

4. Get Smart

5. Sex and the City

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Happening

2. Sex and the City

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

4. The Love Guru

5. The Incredible Hulk

Paul Clark

1. Speed Racer

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. The Love Guru

4. Get Smart

5. Wanted/Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Andrew Osborne

1. The Love Guru

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Speed Racer

4. Wall*E

5. Hancock

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Studio executives, like TV weathermen, can be wrong half the time and still make a pretty fine living. One major difference, of course, is “The Suits” in Hollywood spend zillions on publicity and advertising campaigns to attempt to make their forecasts come true...and even then, they’re only right about half the time when it comes to cinematic hits and misses.

We here at the Screengrab will take that action. With the 2008 Blockbuster Season bearing down on us LIKE A RADIOACTIVE SPACE BUS THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A GIANT ROBOT LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, we hereby offer our predictions for the summer’s Top 5 Hits and Misses, in hopes of scoring ourselves sweet development deals based on our uncanny pop culture pulse-fingering prognostication abilities.

For the purposes of this experiment, “HIT” and “MISS” will refer not to the critical reception or cinematic quality of the films in question (because, really, who cares about that stuff?). Instead, we’ll calculate the accuracy of our predictions based on each film’s domestic box office gross in relation to its marketing/production budget and the hype/expectation surrounding it.

Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Hits, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS A BRAND NEW IMAGINARY CAR!

And now, our picks for the Top 5 HITS of Summer 2008:

5. KUNG FU PANDA

This one's pretty easy to explain: (1) Kung fu. (2) Pandas. It's got something for everyone! (LP)

Plurality Opinion: Dreamworks' annual summer animated movie doesn't have the built-in audience of the Shrek franchise, but it should still do good family business for the three weeks before Wall*E hits screens. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I haven’t seen that Panda on any big plastic soda cups yet, but maybe I haven’t been hanging out in the right fast food restaurants or convenience stores. This movie just squeaked onto our list as a result of numerous split votes elsewhere...but who knows? Maybe panda is the new penguin! (AO)

4. IRON MAN

Another gamble here, but one worth betting on due to it being the first high-profile summer release. Iron Man isn't an icon like Batman or Spider-Man, but Paramount has done a bang-up job promoting the film, and the re-emergence of Robert Downey Jr. as a high-profile leading man is the kind of story that can do wonders for a movie's public awareness. (PC)

3. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Come on, like it could possibly be anything else. Indiana Jones is one of the iconic characters in cinema. Who's not looking forward to this? Add to that the fact that the film's got next to no competition for the month or so after it's released and this is the one to beat. Here's hoping it's actually good. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I'm going to call this as a slight box office disappointment that nevertheless cracks the top five. Indy's heyday was a long time ago, and even Lucas and Spielberg seem to be trying to downplay expectations. (SV)

Dissenting Opinion: First of all, that title is just way too long. Titles more than 20 letters long are for artsy foreign movies. Second, is there really that big an audience for this outside of hardcore geek circles? The key demographic for summer action flicks wasn't even born when the LAST Indiana Jones movie came out. (LP)

2. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

Advance word is that the second in the Narnia series outdoes the first in terms of pacing, script, and special effects, but my guess is that it'll succeed because conservatives bitched so much about the previous movie not getting enough attention that America will guiltily drag themselves to see it just to shut them up. (LP)

Dissenting Opinion: The last installment in the Narnia franchise was a blockbuster, but that was released in December. In a more competitive summer season, it should have a solid opening weekend before getting trounced by Indiana Jones. (PC)

1. THE DARK KNIGHT

There's pretty much no way this thing will bomb. Even if it had a bad director, a crummy script, an unpopular main character, and a poorly-designed set, geeks would flock to it in droves. But it doesn't have any of those things, AND one of its stars died mysteriously during filming! That's money in the bank, people. (LP)

Let's see: blockbuster sequel, over a solid year's worth of hype, extensive viral marketing campaign, hugely popular hero and villain, and to top it off, a much-buzzed final complete performance by Heath Ledger. Even non-Batfans are going to want to get a load of his Joker, which should push The Dark Knight to the top of the heap. (SV)

Batman is back in the public's good graces after the awesomeness of Batman Begins, and this one's got the most popular of Bat-villains, The Joker. And sad to say, but the hype around the late Mr. Ledger's performance will only help the movie's chances at the box office. (PC)

HONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK:

Will Smith. July 4. Action, comedy, superheroes, you name it. It's got practically everything one could ask for from a midsummer release. (PC)

WALL*E

Here's where things get a little less certain. Sure, WALL-E is a Disney/Pixar release, with all the family cachet that implies. However, it may not be as cuddly as some of the family favorites Pixar has made in the past. Still, this is the highest-profile family-friendly release of the summer, so this is the one to beat. Besides, if Pixar can strike box-office gold with rats in a kitchen... (PC)

TROPIC THUNDER

Historically, August is the time when comedy re-emerges as box-office gold. After months of blockbuster bloat, audiences will want to laugh again, and this movie- starring Ben Stiller and newly-hot Robert Downey Jr.- looks to have the most potential for success. (PC)

AMERICAN TEEN

An instant America’s sweetheart cuddly “rebel” poster girl and a trailer that’s so John Hughes accessible that megaplex audiences may not realize it’s a documentary until it’s too late to get their money back may turn this Sundance fave into an indie hit (at the very least) and maybe even a real live mainstream smash. (AO)

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

If the rabid anticipation of this flick by the teenage dudes at my last family gathering bears any relation to the feelings of teenage dudes across the nation, this could be a sleeper hit. Plus: Apatow. (AO)

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

With a combination of everyone's favorite annoying jackass, Ashton Kutcher, and a title drawn from an ad campaign predicated on date rape, fatal drug overdoses, and dead hookers, how can it miss? (LP)

***

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. The Dark Knight

2. Kung Fu Panda

3. Speed Racer

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

5. What Happens In Vegas

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Dark Knight

2. Iron Man

3. Hancock

4. Prince Caspian

5. Indiana Jones

Paul Clark

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. Hancock

3. The Dark Knight

4. Wall*E

5. Iron Man

Andrew Osborne

1. Indiana Jones

2. The Dark Knight

3. Prince Caspian

4. The Pineapple Express

5. American Teen

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Trailer Review: Hancock

John Constantine — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:41:00 GMT

Superhero movies. Now that is novel! I kid, I kid. In light of the fact that filmed superhero fiction has more cultural currency today than it ever has (in both film and television), it’s interesting to observe the diversification of the genre over the past five years across movies like Sky High, parody trash like Epic Movie, and now Will Smith’s summer vehicle Hancock. In superheroes’ native soil of comics, the down and out, irascible hero who undergoes a change of heart on the road to destiny is old hat. But it’s a treat to see it get the big budget treatment. Watching Will Smith drunkenly bumble across the California skyline is entertaining even in this small dose so Hancock is looking promising as a two hour investment. It’s also nice to see Jason Bateman getting back to making people laugh after his skeevy turn in Juno. You guys remember that movie?

I Am Legend With a Smile

John Constantine — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:40:00 GMT

Well, only kind of. This alternate ending, an inevitable bonus feature on some version of I Am Legend’s home release, leaked onto the internet yesterday. It’s markedly sunnier than the original despite being equally sentimental. Will Smith’s Robert Neville, instead of sacrificing himself to blow up the sticky, CG zompires, realizes that the lead zompire isn’t crazy evil, he just wants his vambie girlfriend back. It doesn’t redeem the movie’s lackluster fourth quarter but it does provide a far more satisfying conclusion to Will Smith’s fantastic performance. Hit the jump for the “What If” satisfactions.

What did you think of I Am Legend? Personally, I thought it was pretty swell.

Academy Awards Also-Rans

Phil Nugent — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Now that the Academy Award nominations have been announced, we can all buckle up and wait to find out who the lucky non-winners are. Don't get us wrong: an Oscar win has a lot to recommend it. It bestows upon the recipient not just bragging rights but a new, higher pay ceiling and, if he doesn't screw it up the way Kevin Spacey did, a privileged glow and a long-term shot at juicier roles. But as anyone who's spent ten minutes reading about Cary Grant or Alfred Hitchcock knows, there's nothing that sets a major Hollywood figure apart like never having won an Oscar — that is, a real Oscar, and none of that special lifetime career achievement bullshit. Then, every time someone writes a profile of you, they can set aside a moment to tear their hair out over the fact that you never got the big prize — and everyone, including the people who'd never given it a second's thought before, will automatically do you the honor of agreeing that, yes, it is a shocking thing now that you mention it. In recent years, the sudden realization that Paul Newman and Martin Scorsese, to name two examples, had never won Oscars set off palpitations in the entertainment media, and cries went out urging the Academy to do the right thing, to make sure that they did not go to their graves un-Oscared, even if it meant honoring, by association, such lesser works as The Color of Money and The Departed. It's hard not to feel that, by finally joining what sometimes seems to be the majority, these men lost a little something that had previously set them apart from the likes of Red Buttons, Cliff Robertson, Roberto Begnini. One would think that Scorsese, with his ravenous enthusiasm for obscure and neglected filmmakers whose posthumous reputations glow with the luster one associates with misunderstood genius, would get this as much as anyone, but the lure of the little gold statuette is a powerful one. Let's take a moment to honor some of the people who will have to content themselves with asking Marty how it feels to hold one.

BEST ACTOR: Except for Johnny Depp and Viggo Mortensen, all the nominees here are already lost souls, with Oscars already stashed in the broom closet. Still, George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones have only won for Best Supporting Actor in the past, so I'm sure it would feel a little special if they were able to corral one for being top banana. (Jones's nomination is also notable for being the only direct evidence included in the list of nominations that there was something this past year called "movies about the Iraq war.") Notable among the missing: Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr. of Zodiac, two very fine performances that could just as easily have been shoehorned into the Supporting Actor category, but which had the misfortune to have been included in a movie that really took it on the chin for having been released early in the year. (The Academy has traditionally favored movies that were released late in the year and so were fresh in the minds of voters, a tradition that the development of home video has done surprisingly little to reverse.) The Academy did reach back to movies released in the first half of 2007 in order to bestow a Best Actress nomination on Julie Christie for her work in Away from Her, but Gordon Pinsent, who had to carry that picture, and whose performance was equally fine, was slighted, which may have something to do with the fact that no Academy voters have fond memories of having used a picture of him torn from the pages of Vogue to help them get through puberty thirty years ago. Similarly, Will Smith's performance in I Am Legend, a movie that he was obliged to keep alive single-handedly for long stretches, was in its way every bit as impressive a feat of movie-star acting as Clooney's glamorously world-weary turn in Michael Clayton, but he was in a movie about fighting rabid vampires, whereas Clooney was in one about reaching deep down into the pit of one's soul and learning to say no to the forces of evil, represented by a bunch of lawyers who could easily be taken for rabid vampires if you squint.

BEST ACTRESS: It's really no surprise that one of the most remarkable performances seen this year, that of Molly Shannon in Year of the Dog, isn't here: the movie was, again, released a very long time ago, it wasn't a hit, and in the ranks of people remembered for having been on Saturday Night Live, Shannon is probably closer to Chris Farley's side of the scale than Bill Murray's in the public mind. That could change if she gives many more performances like this one, but God knows where she's going to find the roles. It's a bit more surprising that Angelina Jolie's A Mighty Heart has sunk without a trace; it's not the best performance of the year, nor is it Jolie's best performance, but in a year that, as usual, was not overflowing with instances of women being given the chance to strut their stuff in big, juicy parts, you might think that Jolie's lending whatever muscle she has a movie star to telling the story of Daniel Pearl's widow would get her a token nod. Maybe all the factors that it had going against it — released in the summer, box-office failure, heavy subject matter, plus the mixed feelings that so many people seem to have about Jolie (is she a star, or a tabloid freak?) created a kind of perfect storm. Ashley Judd's wild-eyed, insane sexy mama in the off-Broadway sort-of-horror picture Bug was something to see. I don't know if the studio even bothered to send out screener copies to Academy voters, though if they were on the fence about it, I'd have chipped in for the cost of the postage, just so I could fantasize about how many of them would end up calling in priests to exorcise their DVD players.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Chris Cooper punted two good shots the Academy's way, first with his creepy performance as treasonous spook Robert Hanssen in Breach, then with an excellent demonstration of the character actor functioning as secret star in the big action flick The Kingdom, but the Academy passed on both. Steve Zahn was amazing and heartbreaking as a doomed P.O.W. in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn; he didn't get nominated either, but just last week he was amazing again, effortlessly channeling Robert Duvall as the young Gus McCrae in the Lonesome Dove prequel, so maybe the Emmys will make it up to him later. Jeff Daniels' straight-talking blind man in The Lookout deserved more attention than it got, and Clarence Williams III made a solid meal of about two (uncredited) scenes as Bumpy Johnson in American Gangster. (Ruby Dee did get nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Denzel Washington's mother in that movie. Her performance isn't nearly as rich as Williams', but she's certainly due for a little attention, and maybe the Academy figured, regarding her and Williams, that it was either one or the other.) The funny thing is that the category is padded out with people — Casey Affleck, Javier Bardem — who got enough screen time in their movies to qualify as lead actors. Bardem's Supporting Actor status feels like it's rigged to make it easier for him to claim the award, though I'd look for a late surge to form behind Hal Holbrook after people realize that he's not only nominated but actually still alive and capable of being cheered by a win.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: I don't get the universal consensus that Cate Blanchett was a supporting actress in I'm Not There. I guess that, again, it comes down to amount of screen time, but nobody else in that movie had any more screen time than she did; certainly nobody else put theirs to as good a use. I probably wouldn't mind so much except that, by shoving her into this category for her phenomenal performance, it feels as if the Academy is shafting Amy Ryan, nominated for a hair-raisingly skanky performance as a bad mother for the ages in Gone Baby Gone, and Tilda Swinton, whose completely reprehensible and yet completely understandable corporate villain gave Michael Clayton a surprising amount of its soul. A little tinkering might have left room for Marisa Tomei, who in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead made Philip Seymour Hoffman's faithless wife convincingly empty and slow-witted and shallow in her dissatisfaction with her existence, yet still made her seem very much worth screwing up your life over. This would have also been the place to honor little Nina Kervel-Bey, who made one of the year's most remarkable debuts in the French film Blame It on Fidel. She's actually the star of the movie, but from Tatum O'Neal to Abigail Breslin, the Academy has traditionally shoved little girls into the Best Supporting Actress category, as if "supporting" were synonymous with "short." Appearances to the contrary, Ellen Page turns twenty-one next month, so her nomination in the Best Actress category (for Juno) does not break this trend. It would have been nice, though, if Page's co-star Jennifer Garner could have been sandwiched in here. In The Kingdom, Garner is still trying to prove herself as an action heroine, with mixed results, but she gave the performance of her career so far in Juno — a carefully nuanced performance and a brave one, one that depended for its (and the movie's) full effectiveness on the actress's willingness to slowly open up to the audience and reveal what's on the inside of a woman who has the shell of a frosty yuppie robot.

BEST DIRECTOR: The fun in this category has usually been in thinking about how it feels to be the one director who wasn't nominated even though his movie was nominated as Best Picture. However he may laugh it off in public, you know that the message he thinks he's getting is, "And last but not least, nominated for Best Picture in spite of having been directed by..." This year it is the director of Atonement, the esteemed young filmmaker what's-his-name, who has to wonder if everybody thinks the actors built the sets while he was in the bathroom and came up with their blocking while he was at lunch. Suffice to say that Julian Schnabel, the director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, fills out the category just fine, though it might be even finer if, say, Jason Reitman had somehow been overlooked in favor of Zodiac's David Fincher. Another surprisingly plausible contender might have been Ben Affleck, who sure did a hell of a lot better job behind the camera on Gone Baby Gone than he's ever done in front of it. Affleck may not have the face of a director — that's a compliment, Ben — but I'm in favor of anything that encourages him to stay back there.

Trailer Roundup: Hancock

Paul Clark — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

After lording over this December's box office with the surprisingly-good I Am Legend, Will Smith returns to his natural domain, both in terms of release date (July 4 weekend) and the affable, jokey tone of the trailer. The premise could go either way- the idea of a superhero who's kind of a loser may be fertile material for a bit on Cartoon Network, but it remains to be seen whether it can be sustained at feature length. Oh, and I love you Jason Bateman, but slow down, man- it seems like the guy's starred in half the movies Hollywood has released since 2006. Oh, and according to the IMDb synopsis Bateman's wife is played by Charlize Theron, so if she isn't wearing the "MR. F" wristband I'll be sort of disappointed.

Comic Book Legends

Phil Nugent — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

An inside joke tucked into the futuristic Times Square setting of I Am Legend has some fanboys excitedly dreaming aloud (or at least on-line). As Future Will Smith duck walks through the talk grass hoping to bring down one of the free-range deer that are now plentiful in the ruins of Manhattan, a billboard overhead emblazoned with a combination Batman-Superman logo can be seen, with a promised release date of May, 2010. A sneaky piece of viral marketing for the ultimate comics-to-movies crossover wet dream? Sadly, as Michael Moran reports, it's "just a sight gag from producer Akiva Goldsman, who was at one involved in the Superman/Batman movie project which has been stuck in development hell for some years now." Moran points out that "particularly observant I Am Legend audiences can also spot a fleeting glimpse of the Alex Ross-illustrated poster for an imaginary Green Lantern DVD as Will Smith passes a video shop window." Unfortunately, this too is but a long-cherished fantasy that shows no signs of being realized anytime in the immediate future. As anyone who's ever covered the industry can tell you, Development Hell makes the Phantom Zone look like a revolving door.

Morning Deal Report: Will Smith = Cultural Pollution

Peter Smith — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:45:00 GMT

Earlier this month, in an attempt to stem the flow of cultural pollution from the West, the Chinese government instituted an unofficial ban on Hollywood films. Rumor suggested the ban would last three months, but it turns out The Pursuit of Happyness is on the way. How 'bout a heartwarming tale of Will Smith pulling himself up by his capitalist bootstraps, ya commies? Har!

A bigger-budget sequel to The Host is on the way.

No WGA waivers for the Golden Globes or Oscars, but the Independent Spirit Awards will go on.

I Am Legend Too

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

I Am Legend broke all box office records for December, taking in over $77 million over the weekend. For those of you who are too busy finishing up your Christmas shopping to wait in lines that stretch around the block, we present an alternative that can be enjoyed on your own schedule in the comfort of your home: The Omega Man. Based on the same 1954 Richard Matheson novel as the Will Smith blockbuster, this 1971 sci-fi extravaganza stars Charlton Heston as plague survivor Robert Neville. Seemingly the last human resident of Los Angeles, Neville fills his days with one-sided chess games and repeated screenings of Woodstock. At night, however, albino mutants emerge from the underground, wielding torches and firing arrows at our hero. But as the trailer narrator intones, “the last man on earth always carries an automatic weapon. Of course he does – and you can have it when you pry it from his cold, dead hands. The special effects may not be as impressive as in the current version, but can anything in I Am Legend match the paranoid intensity of this “ringing phones” sequence? We think not.

Trailer Review: 10000 BC

Peter Smith — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Roland Emmerich makes noisy crap that's entertaining when it isn't being too noisy and crappy. Take, for example, Independence Day. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum firing a nuclear missile into a spaceship the size of the moon and screaming "PEACE!" is awesome, but Emmerich ruins the moment with a screen full of yelling Randy Quaid heads ten minutes later. 10,000 B.C., unlike Emmerich's other movies, is Quaid-less all around, so it's off to a promising start. But this trailer is odd. It looks like Mel Gibson trying to remake Stargate. And why are all these cavemen so pretty? Only one movie is allowed to have pretty cavemen, and that's Encino Man. — John Constantine