Nov 6 2009 New 'Despicable Me' Trailer: Supervillains Wear Scarves
How long have we waited for a film villain to combine equal parts Tiny Tim and Nosferatu?
TOO LONG. Don't wait any longer. He is risen:
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Jul 15 2009 'Despicable Me' Teaser: Bad Guys Hate Popular Landmarks
Universal has released a trailer for Despicable Me, what appears to be another CGI comedy that crams a huge, impressive comedy cast (including Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Danny McBride, Will Arnett, and Jemaine Clement) into "a cute one for the kids." Carell plays Gru, a character apparently self-aware of his despicable-ness, who takes a cue from the G.I. Joe trailer and starts effing with the world's great landmarks. And for some reason he imitates the opening of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I guess that's considered a despicable thing in cultures that shun arbitrary parody.
Here it is:
Continue Reading " 'Despicable Me' Teaser: Bad Guys Hate Popular Landmarks "
Nov 13 2008 Popular Actor/Comedians Providing Voices to CGI Family Comedy
Sorry, trained voice actors, an all-celebrity roster led by Steve Carell is once again dominating the cast of a new animated film called Despicable Me:
Illumination Entertainment topper Chris Meledandri has kicked off his Universal Pictures-based family film unit with "Despicable Me," a 3-D CG-animated film that has Steve Carell voicing the title character.Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Russell Brand, Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords"), Jack McBrayer ("30 Rock") and Julie Andrews are providing the other lead voices. The film will be released in 2010.
Carell's title character is a deplorable man known as Groo who masterminds the mother of all heists when he plots to steal the moon. Egged on by an evil mother (Andrews), Groo finds one obstacle in his way: a trio of orphan girls who temporarily come under his care and won't leave.
I'm normally pretty skeptical about any computer-animated family comedy that isn't a Pixar, but I'll give this a pass for now because:
- This is a really good cast of mostly genuinely funny people, not Angelina Jolies.
- It isn't a sequel.
- I like the plan of stealing the moon. It's like Chairface Chippendale's plan to carve his name in the moon, but even more grandiose. How do you steal the moon? I'm willing to find out for now.
But so help me, first mention of anything equivalent to liking to "move it" and I'm done.
Steve Carell to voice 'Despicable' [Variety]
Aug 15 2008 Steve Carel and Tina Fey Are Having a Terrible Date
Hey, a comedy starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey? Sounds like someone has been watching the only parts of NBC's primetime schedule that don't make you want to die. This could be good, right? Nope:
Steve Carell and Tina Fey are set to play a married couple in "Date Night," a 20th Century Fox comedy to be directed by Shawn Levy.Josh Klausner wrote the script, based on an idea by Levy, whose 21 Laps will produce. Story follows a couple who find their routine date night becomes much more than just dinner and a movie.
Levy, who is shooting Fox's "Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian," intends the pic to be his next directing assignment.
If you didn't catch that, Date Night is being directed by the man responsible for choking the final breaths out of Steve Martin with Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther, giving us our first taste of Ashton Kutcher-married-as-comedy with Just Married, and making Night at the Museum and its upcoming sequel. In other words, Carell and Fey will be the slices of bread holding together a shit sandwich.
Carell, Fey ready for 'Date Night' [Variety]
Jun 4 2008 'Get Smart' Trailer Has All The Classic Gags You Remember
It's nice to see some of the classic Get Smart gags have still made it into this updated version. Like the old To An Onlooker, It Looks Like He's Having Sex With A Man Even Though He Isn't gag, and the the old This Man Almost Died In A Gruesome Car Accident That Would Have Decapitated Him gag, and the old This Can't Really Be This Bad, Can It? gag. All the good ones.
Mar 20 2008 Yet Another 'Get Smart' Poster
As the trend of the previous Get Smart posters forebode, the most recent incarnation appears to now be completely devoid of any comedy at all. Sure, the line "...and loving it" is a direct cribbing of one of Don Adams' famed catchphrases from the original 60's show, but when no one younger than an 80's Nickelodeon kid would get the reference, let alone find it funny, there may be a problem. And how can Steve Carell appear so unenthused as he holds the legendary shoe phone?! I begged my parents to order me one during every Nick-At-Nite commercial for it for years. What an ungrateful asshole.
Get Smart Poster [Internet Movie Poster Awards]
Feb 28 2008 'Get Smart' Trailer Earns an Anger Downgrade
The latest offering in the Nick-At-Nite-programming-turned-broad-comedy genre, Get Smart, has a new trailer. Like in the previous trailers, it still looks bland and uninspired, relying on its impressive cast to pull off weak slapstick gags, but enough works that I'm willing to downgrade my anger level from fuming to annoyed ambivalence. My respect for the original series makes me want them to prove me wrong and make a decent film, but I'm also terribly fearful that might lead to a Green Acres movie (starring Will Ferrell and Paris Hilton?).
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Jan 25 2008 AM Poster Post: Agent 86 Is So Awkward It Hurts
Based on this poster alone, I would be forced to believe the international campaign for Get Smart is based largely on Maxwell Smart being physically awkward to the point of deformity. How was this even made? I know a human being doesn't look or move in this way, so rule that out. A mannequin, a headshot, and Photoshop, maybe? But even then, the designer must have picked up all of their knowledge of human movement from Mario Bros. if they think this is a possible way to run.
Luckily I saw the trailer yesterday, and I know that, aside from physical impossibility, the movie is also based on jumbled concepts.
Get Smart Poster [MoviesOnline]
Jan 24 2008 'Get Smart' Trailer Missed It By That Much
Thanks to Kyle for sending over the disappointing Portuguese trailer to Get Smart. Despite a respectable cast, I'm near abandoning hope for this. At times it looks referential to a fault, with Carell basically doing a half-assed impression of the late Don Adams. Other times, it feels like they let Carell playing himself to the point that the original character is completely abandoned. Either approach might work individually (and sometimes it does), but together it's a jumbled mess, never committing to a style in the fear of alienating either modern Carell fans or fans of the original series. In other words, it's something like you'd expect from the director of classics like Nutty Professor 2 and Anger Management.
They'd have done better to show off more of the supporting cast. The Rock, though distractingly foreheady, is a far more charismatic actor than the cute-but-lifeless Anne Hathaway, as is Carell's fellow Office star David Koechner. And did you realize they somehow got Bill Murray to play an agent? Neither did I, until I looked it up, yet that alone would have been a far more enticing feature to show off than the wink-wink catchphrases they've pieced together into a trailer.
Continue Reading " 'Get Smart' Trailer Missed It By That Much "
Dec 14 2007 'Horton Hears a Who' Trailer is Surprisingly Watchable
After Jim Carrey turned Dr. Seuss's The Grinch into a pointless, disturbing horror show, I was a little upset to learn he was teaming up with the makers of Ice Age to try it with Horton Hears a Who. Yet, somehow--probably through the voice-over of Steve Carell and the co-opted Beetlejuice music--this seem like it could be a reasonable adaptation of the original work.
Nice try, Carrey, but you're going to have to get up pretty early in the morning (for extensive makeup work and the attachment of fur prosthetics) if you want to horribly misinterpret another Dr. Seuss book.
Horton Hears a Who Trailer [Apple]
Dec 12 2007 Maxwell Smart Still Communicating Via Shoe
As Cinemablend has astutely noted, anyone even vaguely familiar with the Get Smart series remembers Maxwell Smart's iconic shoe phone. In a time prior to cellular technology, long before Verizon contemplated the idea of mass stalking as a phone-hocking gimmick, a shoe phone was the perfect blend of James Bond gadgetry meets absurdity. Aside from the door-opening intro credits, it's practically all I remember from the show.
There was a time when Nick at Nite was offering a real version of the shoe phone for use in homes, and though I wasn't sure if it was a joke or not (I'm still not sure), I begged for my parents to buy me it. Surely, a replica plot from a 30-year-old television series was the one element missing from my attempts at adolescent popularity. (I would later learn lack of athleticism and infrequent showering was also hurting my chances.) I still hold some resentment about the whole thing.
So it's nice to see that, despite advances in communications, the new Steve Carell/Anne Hathaway Get Smart is still willing to trade-in technological accuracy for nostalgic laughs by including the infamous device. We can only hope that, in spite of the invention of whispering, the Cone of Silence will make an appearance too.
Steve Carell Makes A Call On His Shoe [Cinemablend]
Nov 15 2007 AM Poster Post: 'Get Smart' Has Carell Hair-Lipped
Hey, if I were Steve Carell, I wouldn't mind Anne Hathaway's photoshopped hair in my face, either! Pubic hair, that is! Booyah! Particularly if, like in this poster, it's only the head of Anne Hathaway pasted on an unreasonably smaller body.
'Get Smart' Poster Premiere [Cinematical]
Oct 24 2007 AM Poster Post: 'Horton Hears a Who' One-Sheet
I apologize for the quality of this poster, but this is he best version I could find, and I thought it was more important to report whatever incident has gone on between Horton and this gentleman in the front.
I don't know exactly what happened, but it's clear from their expressions that some violation has occurred here.
Horton Hears a Who Poster [IMPA]
Aug 15 2007 Dan in Real Life Trailer
I figured Steve Carell would eventually find his way onto the tame, boring romantic comedy scene, but I had hoped we'd get at least one more 40-Year-Old Virgin out of him before that time arrived. Now it seems it may be too late, as I fear Dan in Real Life is the giant meteor signaling the end of the Carell we know and love and the beginning of this banal wiener seen here. He's so likable in this trailer that it would make John Cusack sick.
On the plus side, kudos to them for casting Dane Cook as the douche brother, a role that fits him as well as one of his idiotic leather wristbands.
Jul 16 2007 "Evan Armighty" to be Shelved
A fine mess you've gotten us into...
Poor Evan Almighty. It cost $210 million to make and still hasn't reached the $100 million dollar mark at the box office. And now comes the news that the film won't even be released in Japan.
Sources behind the decision say that it would've been too costly to re-imagine Noah as an attractive school girl whose panties are stolen by a vengeful octopus.
And now I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with all the Steve Carell hugging pillows I made.
Jul 10 2007 Get Smart Teaser Trailer
The teaser trailer for the remake of '60s classic Get Smart has been released, leaving me at a loss as to how to best express my outrage at what they've done with it. It appears Steve Carell has sorrowfully reached the Jim Carrey level of stardom where he's given scripts that include pages of "Steve acts funny, etc."
I guess I should wait until the full trailer to completely shit on this, but I'm at least going to wipe with it for a while.
EDIT: I put up the YouTube version for easier viewing.
Jun 20 2007 Evan Almighty: 8 Minutes of 'Heaven'
There's gotta be something funny under this hair! It worked in 40 Year Old Virgin! And yes, my bathroom has a bidet, what of it?
Eight minutes of Evan Almighty are now online, and it's about as funny as one can expect from a movie that steals premises from Tim Allen. In the clip, Evan struggles to control his hilarious beard growth and tries to explain to his wife why he wants to build a boat.
Don't you get it, hon? God's going to murder all the sinners he created. The lord hates sinners! Or maybe he loves murdering. Anyway, bottom line, we need a boat to survive the drowning of humanity. Isn't life funny sometimes?
And by the way, let's get a bunch of really funny people and make them fall down a lot! Wait, they're not laughing - have him hit himself with the hammer! Ooh, that didn't work either - do it again! Nope. Again! Still nothing. Again! (shrug) Well, shit, I just don't know then.
Jun 12 2007 Evan Almighty Loves Environment as well as Jesus
"Hey, so God, you were just kidding about that whole 'no butt sex' thing, right?"
Roughly $25 million in marketing support is being provided by U[niversal] parent GE (through its Ecomagination campaign), Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, Travelocity, Environmental Defense Fund, Bear Naked, L.A. Zoo, San Diego Zoo, BP Solar and Dell Computers to help U launch its Get on Board eco-awareness campaign and give audiences tips on how to help slow the effects of global warming -- while letting them know "Almighty" is hitting theaters.
You may wonder how a movie that's previously tried to align itself with the God squad is going to reconcile this latest attempt to court environmentalists.
"Almighty" pushes the environmental message in its plot, providing a pivotal reason why God, played by Morgan Freeman, asks the character of Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) to build a critter-filled ark.
Oh! So God is planning to smite everyone not because they're gay or idol worshipers this time, but because they've neglected the environment, I get it. Sounds hilarious!
