Weekend at Pajibas!
The Daily Trade Round-Up / Dustin Rowles
Trade News | March 6, 2007 | Comments (32)
Don’t ask me why I remember this — besides having spent what must have been a solid year in law school, hungover, watching “Friends” reruns — but a remake of Rachel Green’s favorite film is in development. And no, it’s not Dangerous Liaisons; it’s Weekend at Bernie’s (please tell me someone caught the reference — Chanandler Bong! Oh never mind, I’m embarrassing myself).
Anyway, the film that has probably spawned twice as many bad jokes as box-office dollars since the original was released in 1989 is reportedly being produced by MGM, which has brought aboard Jon Jashni (Poseidon) and Ashok Amritraj (Battlefield Earth) to develop the project, the script of which will … well, what the hell else could it do? It’ll be about a dead guy and two dumbasses who try to pretend that Bernie Lomax is alive so that they can get laid and/or avoid losing a job. However, the twist in the remake is that it will take place at a ski lodge. Envision it now, folks: A dead guy on skis! Dropping the dead guy off a ski lift! Skiing between the dead guy’s legs! Cannibalizing the dead guy after getting stranded on top of a mountain for days! That’s comedy gold, folks. Comedy gold. And, for the hell of it, here’s my own casting speculation: Dane Cook as Richard, Jon Heder as Larry, and Rowan Atkinson as Bernie. It won’t be any damn good, but hopefully it would do the same for Cook and Heder’s careers as it did Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman’s. And let’s go ahead and hire Haggis to write the script — it’s actually congruent with his writing abilities.
In casting news, Daniel Radcliff has been signed on to finish out the Harry Potter run. I don’t have anything else to say about that except that it’s kind of creepy how a lot of the older ladies (and certain gay men I know) sexualize the guy. That’s just weird, man. Weird.
Elsewhere: You know, it’s funny, for what now — three or four years? — no one has really paid that much attention to the Valerie Plame scandal, such as it is. It’s one of those headline stories, i.e., we skim the headlines to keep up with the gist of the events, rarely skimming past the lead paragraph. It would’ve been a better story, at least for liberals, if it hadn’t turned out that Joseph Wilson was such an insufferable prick. And aside from the Libby criminal trial, the whole debacle is still unresolved, what with Plame and Wilson filing civil suits against pretty much anyone who ever warmed a chair in the Vice President’s office. I’m not suggesting that the lawsuits aren’t merited, or even that leaking the name of a CIA agent wasn’t a dick move, I’m just asking, really, how much cinematic drama can you extract from the account? A bunch of phone calls, Robert Novak douching it up, and Tim Russert offering up some defensive testimony. All the President’s Men it ain’t, but that hasn’t stopped Warner Brothers from buying the rights to Wilson and Plame’s life, to be adapted into a film developed by Akiva Goldsmith and Jerry Zucker (which is one hell of an odd combination — the writer of A Beautiful Mind and the guy behind the Naked Gun series?). The script will be written by John and Jez Butterworth (the latter of whom wrote and directed Nicole Kidman’s Birthday Girl) and will be based, in part, on Valerie Plame’s memoir, assuming that the CIA allows her to publish it. In fact, the only bit of intrigue to the entire project is whether or not they make the obvious choice and cast Brian Cox as Novak and a huge, self-righteous inflatable penis to play Joseph Wilson.
As for the slate of DVD releases this week, anyone who didn’t manage to catch Borat at the multiplex can now see it in the comforts of his or her own home, where the more prurient can treat the wrestling scene between Sacha Baron Cohen and Ken Davitian as porn and act accordingly with complete privacy. For those who have already seen it, I must warn you: It doesn’t hold up particularly well with multiple viewings. Otherwise, anyone with an itch to endure 90 minutes of prison-rape jokes can’t do much better than the embarrassment that is Let’s Go to Prison. Also making themselves available to your Netflix queues: the mediocre wedding mockumentary starring with Martin Freeman, Confetti, and Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation.
Finally, in today’s trailer watch: I don’t know if it’s my fondness for Isla Fisher (even if she’s barely distinguishable from Amy Adams), or if it’s because I was so smitten with Brick that I’m willing to give Joseph Gordon-Levitt the benefit of the doubt, but I actually think that The Lookout looks like a surprisingly decent heist flick. Am I completely wrong?
Dustin Rowles is the publisher of Pajiba. He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York. You may email him, or leave a comment below.
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Comments
Posted by: A guy at March 6, 2007 10:16 AM
Actually it's Ms. Chanandler Bong. I am as ashamed as you are...