Pajiba

Exclusive Rumor: Rachel McAdams Attached to "Orphanage" Remake and Shirley Jackson Adaptation

2010-03-20T21:00:00Z

This is a rumor at this point and does not come from our usual source, the incredibly reliable Hollywood Cog, so take it with a grain of salt. Just don't rub it in your eye.

First up, it's been a few months since he heard anything about the American remake of the Guillermo del Toro produced The Orphanage, which was also originally written by del Toro. The needless remake (as they all are) will be directed by Mark Pellington. My source, however, tells me that Rachel McAdams is attached as the lead, a woman who brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. There, her son begins to communicate with an invisible friend, the same friend who terrorized the mom when she was a child.

I am hedging my bets on this one, however, as while I was attempting to get some confirmation on this casting news, I also saw a copy of Production Weekly note from last December which had Sandra Bullock in the lead. Given the genre, neither female seems a natural fit, but it feels like a movie better suited to McAdams. But then again, Bullock is a better age to play a mother. So, it's hard to say, but I guarantee that the female role will be played by McAdams, Bullock, or some other woman. I'm leaning toward McAdams, if only because the source on this story seems to have some insight into McAdams' career.

I say that because the source also revealed to me that McAdams is attached to the Michael Douglas produced We Have Always Lived in the Castle, an adaptation of a 1962 Shirley Jackson novel. Horror scribe Mark Kruger penned the script, which is a horror story that revolves around the Blackwood Family -- two sisters and their uncle -- forced into seclusion after the poisoning of several of their family members. Complications arise when a dubious long lost cousin arrives to secure the family fortune.

In addition to McAdams, Saoirse Ronan is apparently attached as the other sister, while Michael Douglas is set to play the uncle. If, in fact, both of these casting stories pan out, that'd put McAdams in two horror movies. It's possible that she is attached to both but may drop out of one before the cast is set. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is still searching for a director.

McAdams is also attached or rumored to be in a Terrence Malick project, a Woody Allen movie, and a movie based on the life of Elliot Ness. I'd also expect her back for the Sherlock Holmes sequel.

A Weekend Comment Diversion: Road Rage

2010-03-20T19:00:00Z

I don't know about where you live, but the fucking awful winter we Mountaineers have just endured was just brutal on the roads. There are swimming pool-sized craters every 10 feet in every road in town, and I don't mean kiddie-pool swimming pools, I mean Olympic-size swimming pools.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate, just a little. It's really every five feet.

Anyway, what I notice while driving around in my '03 Civic is that people who drive those big honkin' SUVs and "Ford TOUGH" trucks and all those bigass badass vehicles you see in commercials, driving over sequoias and boulders as if they were Lincoln Logs and reaching the pinnacle of Everest -- all those vehicles that sneer at what shows up at the Monster Truck jam at an arena near you -- those people are scared to death of little bitty obstacles like potholes. Nothing quite like cruising down the road and suddenly spotting a fucking Suburban coming straight at you, in your lane, because the driver went around an inch-deep pothole.

Cheese and crackers, what did you BUY that fucker for?

I hate that. HATE it.

I also hate it when people treat the turn lane like a through lane. You know the type? She'll make a left out of a parking lot intending to make another left maybe a half mile down the road, but won't bother to get in the actual lane you're supposed to drive in, no way, she'll drive RIGHT DOWN THE FUCKING TURN LANE.

Lazy ass.

One day this winter, on a spectacularly bad night, I was driving home from the office and had to use a road that has several steep hills. It was bad enough that cars would stop at the bottom of a hill and wait for the driver ahead to slide and spin up, giving plenty of room, before taking on the hill themselves. Anyway, my turn comes and I'm doing the spinning and sliding part up the hill and trying to stay out of the ditch and in my rearview all I can see is a set of headlights RIGHT ON MY ASS. I had come to enough complete stops at dips in the road that this guy could have gone around me anytime he wanted, yet he rode my ass up these ice-covered hills.

Finally we came to a red light and -- I'm not really proud of this -- I got out of my car, tromped back to his (it was a Jeep or Suburban or some such, of course) and when he rolled down his window I shouted, "If you want to go around me, go around me, but GET OFF MY ASS."

And tromped back to my car and went home.

Check that: I AM fucking proud of that.

Anyway, this diversion is guaranteed to get you going, and I anticipate around 500 comments on:

Your Driving Pet Peeves.

*sits back to watch the fun*

TATER BARLEY BANKS is not to be trusted. He probably makes up everything he writes about himself, especially the stuff about living in West Virginia. Don't be fooled. In truth, he lives in Pajibaland, where he speaks gibberish as , (TCFKAB), spends his time sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent, and is developing a 25-letter alphabet, now that his key doesn't work. He has no blog, no Facebook page and no MySpace page, so don't try to find him. If you're so inclined, you can email Tater.

Warner Brothers Developing a Straight-to-DVD Sequel of "Training Day"

2010-03-20T18:00:00Z

For reasons only the studio and their maker knows, Warner Brothers Premiere is developing a straight-to-DVD sequel to 2001's Training Day, the film that garnered Denzel Washington an Oscar and Ethan Hawke a supporting actor nod. The interesting wrinkle here is that the script was penned by Antwone Fisher, who also wrote Denzel Washington's directorial debut, Antwone Fisher (which was based on the writer's life, natch). I assume that the relationship played some basis in Fisher's role in writing the sequel, although neither Denzel Washington nor Ethan Hawke are expected to return.

That doesn't mean that they can't use the same character. The story picks up eight years after the original. Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke's character) is still working the narcotics beat, but he's an old and grizzled veteran now. He's teamed up for a day with a new trainee, a black officer. Now, it's Jake's turn to train the young cop in the ways of the street, as they go after thugs and murderers. What Jake doesn't realize, however, is that he's also being pursued by someone else, who is seeking revenge.

That's typical straight-to-DVD fare. It's Fisher's second feature effort since his biographical film; the other was ATL.

I wonder who they'll get to play Jake? Who is the poor man's Ethan Hawke these days? Shawn Hotosy?

Repo Men

2010-03-19T22:00:00Z

Repo Men is a gleefully violent film that is currently getting hammered by just about every movie reviewer with access to an internet connection. I fucking loved every minute of it. It's gory, frenetic, and absolutely hilarious from start to finish.

In a mildly futuristic semi-dystopia, we've got bigger skyscrapers, better drugs, electric cars, and much fancier artificial organs. It's Blade Runner-light. The organs cost as much as a house, but if you're going to die of pancreatic cancer, a second mortgage is worth it to hang on to living. Of course if you fall behind on payments, the company can legally repossess the property that you've defaulted on, be it eyes, liver or heart. And by "repossess," we do mean that they send repo men to tase you, cut you, and rip out the organ on the spot. There's a legal requirement that the repossessor offer to call an ambulance, but it's mostly a formality since you can't be fitted with a replacement organ since your credit is ruined. It's got major issues as a sustainable business plan, almost as unbelievable as giving thousands of people mortgages that no rational financial institution would believe they could pay back. But it is science fiction, so we do have to suspend some disbelief.

Jude Law and Forest Whitaker play Remy and Jake, repo men who have been friends who beat the crap out of each other since the fourth grade. Jake loves his work and Remy doesn't mind it other than the fact that his wife finds it morally repugnant and wants him to quit. Liev Schrieber plays their boss with a fine sheen of used car salesman. As the trailer already revealed, the major plot movement comes from Remy ending up with an artificial heart, and a sudden case of conscience that leaves him unable to do his job or pay the bills for his new ticker. Get it? He has a change of heart?

The film's humor is very dark and very situational, emerging from a gallows absurdity rather than clever retorts or witty rejoinders. At one point in the middle of a barbeque, Jake sneaks out to repo an organ. In the backseat of a cab. With a kitchen knife. While wearing his chef's apron. Remy's son sees and snaps pictures on his phone. In his defense, Jake holds up the bloody piece of machinery and protests "it was only a kidney!" Even more darkly: a billboard in the background advertises The Fast and the Furious X.

Whitaker and Law really bring their characters to life, inhabiting them with actual texture. Whitaker's Jake butchers people for a living, but still has drinks with his buddies, complains about the people from whom he repossesses and is absolutely broken hearted when Remy can't do his job anymore. He's psycho, but he is so devastated by losing his best friend, that you just want to hug the poor guy. He even has a beautiful screed of why rules and enforcement matter, the kind of logic that has you nodding your head up until the conclusion of "and that's why I need to tase you and cut your lungs out without anesthesia." Both Jake and Remy are abominable human beings, but they're evil in exactly the way that people are in the real world: banal thugs just doing their job.

The film works in the end because in addition to the humor, character and bits of old ultra-violence, it doesn't collapse under its own weight in the last half hour. It takes its time establishing that these are not good guys at the beginning and then sticks to its guns and doesn't let them off the hook with unearned redemption in the end.

Look, the film is definitely derivative of other better done dystopian science fiction. While it pushes some buttons about health care and home repossession that certainly resonate, the plot itself is fairly straightforward. But it's entertaining as hell.

Steven Lloyd Wilson is a hopeless romantic and the last scion of Norse warriors and the forbidden elder gods. His novel, ramblings, and assorted fictions coalesce at www.burningviolin.com. You can email him here.

The Bounty Hunter Review | How Arrogance Killed the Movie Star

2010-03-19T19:00:00Z

There's nothing to The Bounty Hunter that can't be completely described in its logline: "A bounty hunter (Gerard Bulter) learns that his next target is his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston), a reporter working on a murder cover-up. Soon after their reunion, the always-at-odds duo find themselves on a run-for-their-lives adventure."

That's pretty much it, except for the adventure part. There's no adventure in The Bounty Hunter. And it's not a case of wasted talent. Nor is it a case of poor execution. It was a bad concept to begin with, and there's no talent on hand to waste. It's an inept movie put together by completely inept people (save for Jason Sudeikis, who tried his little heart out, God bless him). There's not a joke one -- if you can even call them that -- that flies in The Bounty Hunter. There's not an iota of chemistry on screen. There's not a scene that doesn't fall completely flat on its ass. It's an incompetent script, from Sarah Thorp, rife with enough clichés and idiomatic expressions to short-circuit an ESL speaker. To call it paint by numbers would be a disservice to the linearity of numerals. The direction from Andy Tennant is about what you'd expect from the director of Fool's Gold: Zero style and no interest in making anything other than what he's being paid to produce. You can't even call it dumb because that would suggest that it has a personality. It doesn't. There's really not a moment in The Bounty Hunter that's not completely exhausting to suffer through.

Of course, it's all symptomatic of the Hollywood Movie Star system. Every six months or so, a major news publication -- in an effort to troll for readers -- will essentially republish the same piece with different names attached. There are many variations, but the headline usually reads something like, "Is the Hollywood Movie Star Dead?" and then they will cherry-pick a lot of A-List movie stars, cite their latest box-office failures, and conclude their thesis until the next publication comes along and writes the same story. And yet, somehow, that Hollywood Movie Star system continues to exist. The problem, of course, is that the Hollywood Movie Star has no interest in selling anything other than a bland product. The Hollywood Movie Star believes that, because he or she starred in a long-running network sitcom or was a featured star in a highly-stylized gladiator movie, that they've done enough for the rest of their careers, and they can simply coast on their evergreen shrubs. If the Hollywood Movie Star system is broken, it's because the Hollywood Movie Stars have broken it.

It used to be that a Hollywood Movie Star was a pitch man for his or her own movie. They would stand by their work, and their image was supposed to represent the quality of that work. It seems the opposite now. The Bounty Hunters doesn't have the "Jennifer Aniston Stamp of Approval." Her name is there to dupe you into seeing it. The Hollywood Movie believes that all a movie needs is his or her name attached to it. It's a system borne out of complete and baffling arrogance. There's an expectation on their part that an audience will follow them anywhere, and that the final product is moot. It's their name they're selling, and not the movie. And if the Hollywood Movie Star system is, in fact, broken, it's not the audience's fault, it's the Hollywood Movie Star's fault for believing that we would blindly follow her into whatever slow-moving, crickety, broken-down vehicle she straps herself into. Credit certain audiences that are finally catching on to this phenomenon. Unfortunately, the studios are way ahead of the game; now they're selling an old title repackaged for a wide-eyed Millennial audience. Titles are cheaper than movie stars, anyway.

What this has to do with The Bounty Hunter is obvious: Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler are selling themselves, and not their stamp of approval. Of course, there's nothing they could sell of the latter, since there's nothing they could approve of in the movie. It's an ass-cracker sandwich -- and not one of those fancy Ritz crackers. It's a store brand saltine. Sure, if you eat enough ass crackers, it will fill you up, just as The Bounty Hunter acts as a perfectly adequate time killer. But it's not an enjoyable one. Or a satisfying one. After all, it tastes like dirty unwashed hobo ass.

MacGruber Review

2010-03-19T18:00:00Z

It's been ten years since the release of the last film based on a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, and a lot has changed since the era of The Ladies Man. It's not that the show's humor has become less fratty since the 1990s, the decade of Adam Sandler and Chris Farley; it's that the type of fratty-ness has changed, evolving from a beer-bong chugfest into something much sillier and more absurd. But the biggest change between then and now, and the one that makes MacGruber both better than expected and more fleeting, is the rise of the SNL Digital Short. The brief films spearheaded by cast member Andy Samberg have grown from cheaply shot goofs to videos like "I'm On a Boat" that make the most of their budget and create something that looks high-quality but still has the lurking feel of a production thrown together in an afternoon. In other words, they've made it possible to fake the look of style. As a result, MacGruber doesn't so much look and feel like a feature as an overlong short, right down to the low-rent glitz and half-done effects. It's a stylistic hybrid designed to feel both like a cheesy action movie from the 1980s and a self-aware modern spoof of such movies. It exists in a weird world crafted by director and co-writer Jorma Taccone, another member of the Lonely Island comedy troupe that includes Samberg, that mashes up the past and present with no aim other than their own brand of laughter. The film is frequently funny but ultimately insubstantial, offering laughs that last no longer than the sketches that spawned it.

MacGruber (Will Forte) is a highly decorated soldier who's served an improbable number of tours in every possible conflict for years, and who's since retired to live a life of solitude after his wife, Casey (Maya Rudolph), was murdered by the villainous Dieter von Cunth (Val Kilmer) on their wedding day. It's clear from the get-go that MacGruber is the kind of comedy that tells you you're watching a comedy; the point here isn't to watch funny or unbelievable things happen to people in a slightly believable universe, but to watch outrageous things happen to people in a parody world that openly acknowledges its falseness. MacGruber is called into active duty once more by Col. Faith (Powers Boothe), who informs him that Cunth has stolen a nuclear weapon. After a few early mishaps, MacGruber is teamed with Faith's young lieutenant, Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe), and an old friend who's always carried a torch for him, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig).

The story hits every beat you'd expect as MacGruber chases down Cunth to save the world, but there's no point in remotely caring about the plot. The only thing that matters in a parody this flimsily constructed are the jokes, and the good news is that there are a few entertaining ones. Like a lot of "SNL" gags, they're funny but not hilarious, and though they're diverting in the moment, they offer none of the fun promise of rewatchability that comes with best comedies. This is largely attributable to the fact that Taccone's never directed a feature before, and his few writing credits include 2008's Extreme Movie. He's a nice guy with some obvious talent, but MacGruber feels too much like a sketch blown out to feature length, with jokes cute enough for a filler sketch just after midnight but not strong enough to sustain a film.

Forte's got his shtick down pat, though, and the cocksure but idiotic action hero is one of his better characters. Similarly, Wiig is fantastic at underplaying her delivery, and Phillippe does the only thing he has to do, which is look serious and mouth the lines. Yet there's not quite enough going on to make Forte stand out, and that's again in part because the character was never meant to be an original one, just a joke based on an old TV series. The funniest moments in the film are when the screenplay briefly diverges from trying to make MacGruber a parody of "MacGyver" and just lets him be this weird, sexually impulsive, immature screw-up of a hero. There are only so many times you can watch him try and fail to make a bomb out of household items, but seeing him swagger away from his Miata with his Blaupunkt tape deck in hand, or hearing his bizarre pleas to trade sexual favors for squad gear, is more entertaining than you'd think.

As you can probably guess, the weirdness starts setting in pretty much from the beginning. The film is set in 2009, yet MacGruber drives that tiny Miata with detachable tape-deck and listens to songs like Toto's "Rosanna," Vicki sports feathered hair and unfortunate pantsuits, Faith has a Reagan poster hanging in his office, etc., etc. There's no attempt at all to explain MacGruber's sartorial or musical tastes, and in fact Taccone acts like it'd be stupid to even ask. On a meta level, it's because the character is a parody of "MacGyver," but on another, it's because Taccone and co-writers Forte and John Solomon just think this is funny. Bits and pieces of the 1980s are grafted onto a world 25 years older for no other reason than that Taccone think it's entertaining to see Wiig with padded shoulders. This is really why the film never rises above the level of extended sketch: It lacks a sense of purpose and any kind of consistency. It's too polished to be a failure and too noncommittal to feel like a real comedy. The focus is on quick, one-shot laughs that start to lose their effectiveness the moment they're delivered. MacGruber comes to inhabit a maddening middle realm: It's funny but forgettable, disappearing as soon as it arrives.

Daniel Carlson is the managing editor of Pajiba and a member of the Houston Film Critics Society, as well as a TV blogger for the Houston Press. You can visit his blog, Slowly Going Bald.

Pajiba Love 03/19/10

2010-03-19T17:00:00Z

Ha ha ha ha! Katherine Heigl had a wardrobe malfunction at the ShoWest awards. Is it totally, totally evil of me that I kind of hope the uncensored photos pop up on the internet? Yes? (Celebitchy)

Here are the ten most ridiculous scenes from SyFy channel movies. Or, as I like to call them "Lifetime movies for men." (Unreality)

Oh now here's a shocker, Jesse James' mistress is a white supremacist who has happily posed in Nazi-themed photoshoots. And she seemed like such an upstanding young lady. (Yeeeah!)

Here's Bob Odenkirk on "Breaking Bad," which premieres on SUNDAY, bitches!!! Sorry, I'll shut up now. (AV Club)

Corey Feldman has been privately grieving the loss of his other half ... On his public blog for the whole world to read. (Evil Beet)

So far I don't think any of the guys have covered this -- probably because their heads all exploded when they heard the news -- but Michael Bay is remaking Monster Squad. (Film Drunk)

This is stupid. Supposedly some of Hollywood's most talented directors are being looked at for the next Twilight movie. That's like hiring Michelangelo to paint a picture of a turd. (Famous Dead White Guys)

And in other Twilight news, (yes, there's more) Robert Pattinson's famous luxuriously greesy mane of hair might be ... Enhanced. Even though I've never seen a single Twilight movie, I feel so betrayed. (Agent Bedhead)

True story: Snooki from "Jersey Shore" once killed someone. Nope, didn't phase me in the slightest, either. (IBBB)

With that stupid Jennifer Aniston movie coming out today, here is a list of a bunch of bounty hunters in movies. (Cinematical)

Some guy on the internet cloned himself so he could annoy you with renditions of popular TV theme songs. I was going to embed the video, but even I couldn't get past like 20 seconds into it. (Warming Glow)

Here are the five saddest bars to drink in. Come on though, some bowling alley bars can be kind of nice, right? OK fine, still sad. (Holy Taco)

Oh yeah, they did another one of those Between Two Ferns things with Zach Galifianakis, and Ben Stiller is in this one. Enjoy!

Pajiba Love brought to you by Stacey Nosek, who can be reached via email here.

Pajiba's Trash TV: "Jessica Simpson: The Price of Beauty" Review

2010-03-19T15:00:00Z

It's probably fair to say that in the nomenclature of beauty, Jessica Simpson is "sexy" rather than "pretty." There's a quality of exaggeration to her appearance, one that suggests a cubist painting or an anime fantasy, instead of the presence of an actual person.

Beneath her fluster of distracting blonde hair extensions, resides an extravagantly large head, into which are sunk receptive and unquestioning eyes. The smile is full of immense, white, teeth and her bee-stung lips are in a permanent state of pout, and of course, her tits, her atomic tits, are always first and foremost. And when you look beyond that and into her face, it's next to impossible to discern character. Absent of any communicable depth or complexity, she's just there, a bland reflection of male lust, and perhaps as a result of that, men seem to want to fuck her, rather than love her.

It's the Jessica Jinx, this, and honestly, it must give rise to all sorts of insecurity and self-doubt, especially after the likes of Tony Romo and John Mayer have passed you around like a party favor.

To make matters worse, the marginally talented Simpson-- now 29-- has been trying to reinvent herself as a country music star along the lines of Dolly Parton, only without her intelligence and musical brio. So no, Simpson's future prospects were pretty bleak, and in 2009 when she showed up at a Chili cook-off in Florida looking fat, well, the end was nigh.

However, when life gives you lemons, you make tuna sandwiches, or something, and so Jessica Simpson is now foisting upon us the reality series "Jessica Simpson: The Price of Beauty." A presumably sadder and wiser Jessica, having come out on the losing end of both celebrity and romance, will now travel the world investigating different cultural standards of feminine of beauty, and the toll the pursuit of those standards extract.

The ridiculous thing about this premise is that Simpson has consciously and willfully been the beneficiary of those ridiculous standards, and now, after being called fat by the media, has decided that she's actually a victim in this system rather than a predator. It's ironic in the extreme, obviously, and it would all be well and good if she actually got religion and saw the light, but it feels like an entirely hypocritical posture, one that she's only assumed to prop up her flagging career and keep her name in the news.

As Jessica lacks any sort of non-visual presence, she enlists two other people to accompany her on her journeys and help fill out each episode. There's Ken, a pleasantly effete hair stylist who's billed as Jessica's best friend, and CaCee, the funniest person Jessica has ever met, apparently. Their first destination is Thailand, and as their plane lifts off, Jessica, in a somber tone, tells us, while crappy, triumphal pop music soars, that it's all about the journey.

Guide us, Jessica, guide us.

Their first mission is to secure an authentic Thai massage. We watch as Jessica grunts and groans, her body getting bent about in a number of provocative and suggestive ways as she pretends a chummy innocence to her seductions.

We're then introduced to a "beauty ambassador," a Thai model who will serve as a kind of tour guide to Jessica's investigative team. Instead of being an average woman who might work on the streets of Bangkok or in a factory, she's a stunning supermodel who happens to host the Thai version of America's Next Top Model. In order to get in touch with the real women of Thailand, this flawless celebrity who stands head and shoulders above actual Thai women, takes Jessica to a market, where their first stop is a fortune teller.

This is the only time that Simpson seems wholly engaged and interested. With wide bovine eyes and an open mouth, she gratefully receives the prophecy that she would soon REALLY fall in love, confessing to the camera that she got chill bumps when she heard this news.

Summoning the gravitas of "Fear Factor," "The Price of Love" then takes us to a street vendor that sells fried crickets, worms and cockroaches as snacks. We're told that these edibles speed up your metabolism and are excellent catalysts for detoxification. Jessica and her buddy CaCee--the brave one--attempt to eat the most benign offering, shuddering, gagging, and screaming throughout. It was like being smack-dab-in-the-middle of a 12 year-olds slumber party.

But soon things turn serious. The beauty ambassador tells Jessica that many women in Thailand want to have fair complexions, lest they are thought to work outdoors, and be designated lower class. Jessica, perplexed and stunned, turns this over in her brain machine, observing that it's the opposite in North America where apparently, tans make you look skinny and rich.

No matter, we're then shown the horrible cost of the Thai pursuit of fair skin in the form of a nightclub singer who had irreparably damaged her face, in an attempt to achieve her cultural standard of beauty, by applying bleach to her skin.

This woman, who is presented without any sort of useful context, is revealed like a circus freak, and as she's telling us that her husband abandoned her because of her crumbling appearance and that she now lives a life of painful regret, Jessica begins to resemble a sad puppy on the verge of tears. And then she does cry, or at least she lifts a Kleenex to the places on her face where tears might emerge. Seized by this empathy and compassion, Jessica then gives the woman a "hug," but in so doing she manages to pretty much avoid using her arms, choosing instead to instead put her enormous head next to the woman's, as if posing for a photo with a fan.

We then visit a Buddhist monk in order to find out where beauty comes from, discovering that that it comes from inside. Team Jessica is then instructed to meditate with the monk, but half way through, Jessica, for no apparent reason, breaks out into a senseless, uncontrollable giggling fit, as if quiet for too long, she had no choice but to do something to demand attention.

Constantly clad in 3-inch stiletto heels, Jessica Simpson tromps through Thailand with her guileless entourage in a patronizing and self-serving attempt to portray herself as a kind of working-class hero. It's an embarrassingly stupid and cynical enterprise that chooses to subordinate a very complex and worthy subject to the unexamined vanities of a truly dull person. "Jessica Simpson: The Price of Beauty" is little more than an infomercial, a realm to which the fading celebrity will undoubtedly be very soon relegated.

Michael Murray is a freelance writer. For the last three and a half years he's written a weekly column for the Ottawa Citizen about watching television. He presently lives in Toronto. You can find more of his musings on his blog, or check out his Facebook page.

Tim Burton Is Punishing Us With a 3D Stop Mo Version of "The Addams Family"

2010-03-19T14:30:11Z

Well, well, well. Do you people see what your curiosity about Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland has wrought? You can't give a man $225 million in three weeks of box office and not expect him to punish you. And this is how Tim Burton is going to punish your asses:

3D. Stop Motion. Addams Family.

You just let that sink in, why don't you. Maybe sing the theme song in your head while you let that information wreck your internal thought process.

How's that feeling for you? Oh, good. Good. I'm glad. Yeah. There's a little coffee dribbling down your chin there. You may want to get a napkin. I know, I know. It's hard to swallow right now. Give it a minute. I think feeling will start to return to your fingers momentarily. Ride it out. Ride it out. It's like an ice-cream headache, right? But it just won't go away. No worries. No worries. Maybe close your eyes for a few seconds. Ummm. Yeah. Dude, your arm is twitching. Try to keep your head still. You know what, I think I'm going to call an ambulance. Just precautionary.

Anyway, word is: Burton is going to ignore both the previous two big-screen adaptations AND the television show and he's going to based his 3D Stop-Motion The Addams Family movie on the original Charles Addams illustrations, which appeared in The New Yorker for 50 years.

No writer has been brought on board yet, but you can rest assured that both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter will likely be a part of the project.

Now, seriously: You're bleeding from a nostril. Let's get you to the Emergency Room.

They're creepy and they're kooky. They're all together ooky! Sing it with me! In a round. Carter Beauford on the drums! "The Addams Family!"

The Greatest Movie Trailer | I Want to Take this Trailer Behind the Middle School and Spoon

2010-03-19T14:00:00Z

I don't mean to sound pushy, or bossy, or like I'm telling you what to do, but if you like good actressin', you need to line the hell up behind Carey Mulligan. She's just flat-fucking-out amazing. Jaw to the floor, thank you very much, come back and see us, don't let the door hit your ass amazing. If you could buy stock in an actress, I'd go all in, and go long, on Carey Mulligan. In 30 years, she's still going to be collecting Oscar nominations. She's got this fantastic bittersweet heartbreak quality about her -- she's like Keri Russell, only with genuine acting ability. I just dig her to China.

Below is the trailer for The Greatest. Carey Mulligan stars as Rose, who falls in love with Bennett (Kick-Ass's Aaron Johnson). Bennett soon thereafter dies in a car accident, and Rose arrives at Bennett's parents house a few months later pregnant. She ends up moving in with that family; the father (Pierce Brosnan) and brother welcome her, but the mother (Susan Sarandon) resents her, and feels she's the cause of her son's death.

I haven't seen the movie, but spoiler alert: When Rose has the baby in the end and Susan Sarandon's steely resolve gives out, there's going to be a whole lotta fucking tears shed.

I wanted to say that the trailer reminds me a lot of Moonlight Mile, a movie with a similar premise from a few years back starring Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman that ended up being something of a letdown, particularly given how much I had looked forward to that movie that year (it would be the first movie I took my now wife too). Unfortunately, Russ over at Slashfilm has already made that comparison. But then again, if you've seen Moonlight Mile, it's hard not to see a tonal connection.

Check out the trailer. It looks sublime. And since they're not allowing on on YouTube, you'll need to check it out over on the Apple Trailers site.