Yeah, I know the Farrellys are behind this. But other than Lenny or Chaplin, when was the last time you didn’t wince at watching a contemporary actor try to recreate classic shtick that’s already perfected in memory? (Man on the Moon, anyone?)
And just in case you were holding out hope that this would be a respectably earnest biopic dramatizing the off-screen lives of the Howard boys and Larry Fine, the IMDB plot synopsis suggests you’re going to be deeply disappointed:
While trying to save their childhood orphanage, Moe, Larry, and Curly inadvertently stumble into a murder plot and wind up starring in a reality TV show.
Sounds like The Blues Brothers meets Hollywoodland in a handbasket to Hell’s Kitchen.
This isn’t the clip most people would choose for a tribute, but there’s an eight-year-old part of me that will never forget his performance in the very first episode of The Outer Limits.
Has anyone seen heavy-rotation promo spots on cable? What about shelf-headers or free-standing kiosks at Walmart? Billboards? Happy Meals?
So far, all I can find is this. And once you strip away all the obligatory PR fluff, it sounds like Sarah’s movie is getting the same treatment as Beastmaster 12 and Star Trek: The Musical:
After methodically analyzing the most effective ways to bring this galvanizing film to the widest audience as soon as possible we have determined that Video-on-Demand, Pay-Per-View and DVD sales will be the best modalities by which to deliver this film as widely and as quickly as possible.
Yeah, well, since it sucked air in theaters, I guess that’s all you got left, ain’t it? Duh.
OK, so New British Superman has no pants and a shield that that looks like it’s made out of Fruit Roll-Ups. I guess it won’t matter since we’ll all be too busy staring at his mighty Kryptonian cod.
(More images here, with better detail on his fish scales and Captain Marvel-style sleeve guards. Lovely.)
A quirk of tax law means that Scotland’s currently a good place for overseas film companies to make movies. A quirk of history means that some of Glasgow’s older architecture and grid street layout bears a striking resemblance to Philadelphia’s. A quirk of genetics, climate, and social engineering means that zombie extras apparently aren’t difficult to find.
All this made Glasgow city centre’s George Square and surrounding streets a shoo-in for the shoot of some key scenes from the upcoming movie of Max Brooks’s 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, starring Brad Pitt.
There’s a slideshow of the shoot here, and the Daily What has a fun little quiz to see if you can tell the streets and buildings of Philadelphia from those of Glasgow when they haven’t been all gussied up for $ (I got 80%).
I haven’t ventured into the city during the shoot—the location’s cordoned off to the hoi polloi, and by the look of that pic above, not without good reason. I’ve also not read the book, but if they film the climax on a Saturday night after a Celtic—Rangers soccer match, my money’s on the zombies.
The Undefeated leaps from 10 theaters to 14 in its inexorable juggernaut course to becoming the most incrementally rolled-out summer blockbuster feel-good sleeper art-house niche-market celluloid experience since My Dinner with Batman and Aguirre, The Wrath of Khan.
Several of the opening day markets got the ax for lousy per-screen numbers that were harshing the average. Dallas, Houston, Denver and Orange stay. Phoenix and Atlanta get overflow screens. Second weekend adds Tucson, AZ; West Palm, FL; Milwaukee, WI; Charlotte, NC; and Ontario, CA. By all accounts, only America’s appalling lack of unused movie screens is holding back the latent breakout potential of this powerhouse film THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING, YOU SNIVELLING LIBTARDS!
The Spring and Summer of not-quite-straight-to-video Conservative cult movies continues apace.
Pretty good per-screen numbers for The Undefeated. That’s on a par with Atlas Shrugged, which tanked the week after it opened and never secured a wider release.
Question: What’s the Venn Diagram analysis of Sarah Fans and Atlas Fans? Total overlap, or does she have a broader base? And, if so, will her film have a more devastating impact on Christmas than Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?
[UPDATE:] Looks like The Undefeated will pull better than Atlas Shrugged for the full weekend, so I think we’re officially talking a Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla take in terms of total North American sales, rather than SCCTM. Cultural-impact-wise, I think we’re still well south of Death Race 2000, which is right where we want it to be.
She’s unconventional. She does things her own way. She doesn’t ask directions. She’s never read the Owner’s Manual. And, dammit, she’s so gosh-darn badass that if she blows a tire on the tour bus, she’ll wrap Chuck Norris around the rim and drive on him till he screams “Akirameru!” and explodes in a shower of Chuck-Norris-shaped hunks of rubber and nylon.
Today, her stealth campaign for President begins in earnest — for the umpteenth time — with the ten-city opening of The Undefeated, an independent film that promises to be the Atlas Shrugged: Part I of independent films about boring stuff other than railroads and greed, but with just as many interminable talky parts.
Those attending the premiere of 1/2 Gov. Snowflake’s cinematic hagiography at the Corn Syrup Dispensary in Pella tonight could be forgiven for “spending a penny” or two, if not from desperation as the film reached the ninety minute mark with no sign of wrapping up, then from anticipation of The Malign Sarah’s after-film remarks: where better for her to make The Announcement!
They were not disappointed, either: although the Grisly Mama walked back her eldest daughter’s earlier indiscretion (running? me? not so much) like a pro, she did thank people for working for her! Game Set, QED!
Well folks, THAT was your clue. She is definitely running for the Presidency. You don’t tell your grassroots people to go pound shoeleather, thank them for helping Bannon put on a nice production and organize for the Iowa Caucuses, then turn around and say, “.....NAAAAAAAH, I’M HAVING MY PERIOD”.
Stephen K. Bannon loves the film he made about Sarah Palin. Sean Hannity loves the film Stephen K. Bannon made about his fellow Fox employee, Sarah Palin. Both of them barely escape devastating bukkake-inflicted facial injuries in this steamy exchange of hot Grizzly love.
Thanks to Betty Cracker and Dan Riehl for making Sarah-fapping the most exciting development in big-screen film enjoyment since the false-bottom popcorn bag.
With its rivers, overlooks, funiculars, architecturally-distinctive ethnic neighborhoods and miniature-megalopolis skyline, Pittsburgh gets routinely tapped to serve as the cinematic stunt-double for other, more expensive locations. So it’s not totally surprising — but still kind of geeky-cool — that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises will be filming some sequences here. We won’t be subbing for Gotham, but it’s satisfying enough just to be considered sufficiently strange to fit into Nolan’s idiosyncratic visual universe:
Pittsburgh is an old, oft-misrepresented, and deeply weird city. With its streets that twist about and dead-end without warning, the city’s organizing principle is nonsense. You don’t vacation in Pittsburgh unless you have family or friends there, and even then you need every breadcrumb trail at your disposal to navigate in the post-industrial cacophony of ethnicities and aesthetics.
Casting directors are looking for individuals to play prisoners/thugs, guards, police officers, business men and women and sports fans.
That pretty much limits me to “prisoner/thug” — which is right up my alley, sure. But it’s a popular look in this town, and there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of competition.
