- Why the heck is The Help doing so well at the box office?
- A few last minute thoughts on the impending anniversary of 9/11.
… This will work once the stupid file I’ve been trying to upload for over 24 hours to my podcast company decides to work.
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With the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming large this weekend, news broke tonight that an unconfirmed, but credible threat has been discovered aimed towards New York City and Washington D.C.
While details have been sparse thus far, the rumors are that the plot uncovered by law enforcement say that three people are involved in the plan, and one of them is a U.S. citizen. While there have been many other uncovered plots, some of which fail to have any credibility in the end, with such an important anniversary looming large, it is definitely hard to ignore.
Hopefully this will be another case of there being nothing to the story, but to everyone, everywhere, while paying attention is always important, a few extra thoughts of anything you see suspicious at this time would not be a bad idea.
Ben & Jerry’s has teamed up with Broadway Video, the company behind Saturday Night Live, to release a new “limited batch” ice cream flavor for the holidays named, “Schweddy Balls.”
For those of you unfamiliar with the sketch – you can see it at the bottom of this post, sorry to those of you outside of the U.S. – it ran several years ago when Alec Baldwin was guest hosting, and in my book, it is one of the funniest sketches to ever run on the show.
The “Schweddy Balls” flavor will be a “limited batch” flavor meaning that it will be available nationwide, but only for three to four months. Should it prove to be popular, it could come back again, but it will depend on sales. Even if you don’t get the joke, it actually sounds pretty tasty: Vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum with fudge covered rum & malt balls.
Speaking with Ben & Jerry’s Alec Baldwin said, “For a long time, I thought that ‘Here Lies Pete Schweddy’ would end up on my tombstone. Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry’s, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won’t go with me to the great beyond.” He went on to add, “It is immortalized here, right now, and it’s an ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s and Schweddy. Two great names in American dessert, together at last.”
Ana Gasteyer who also starred in the sketch said of the unique honor, “The Schweddy Balls sketch was a personal favorite from my SNL run, so I am pleased as holiday punch that Ben and Jerry’s has taken it upon themselves to share the Schweddy Family recipe with the world. As a person and a performer, I am a sucker for holiday balls. And I have no doubt this ice cream will cause many to scream ‘Good Times.’”
Personally, I’m calling my local grocery store tomorrow to make sure they will be carrying Pete Scweddy’s family recipe ice cream.
Apparently the 84th Annual Academy Awards will be telecast from the 1980′s judging by the highly odd choice of Eddie Murphy to be the host.
It was announced today that former comedic icon Eddie Murphy will be hosting the 84th Annual Academy Awards next February. While it is safe to say that the choice of Anne Hathaway and James Franco did not go over as well as hoped at this year’s show, swinging this direction with a hosting choice makes about as little sense.
While it is true that Eddie Murphy was once an unstoppable force on both television and at the movie theaters, his heyday has long since passed. In recent years he has been plagued with scandals, flopped projects and has pretty much faded from existence. Don’t get me wrong, I was once a huge fan of the man’s work, but in the recent past he has become a shadow of his former self.
Why the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has decided to go with this option for the host is truly beyond me. Perhaps bringing back Billy Crystal wasn’t on the table as some thought it might be after his brief guest appearance this year? Who knows, but if they were looking to alienate even more people from the telecast this year, they may have hit on a winning formula.
The Help won a third weekend in a row, and some amazing stats to go along with it.
Theoretically you could say the fact The Help only lost 2.3% of its business from last weekend could be chalked up the fact less screens were open last weekend due to Hurricane Irene. If those screens had been open, the film would have made more last weekend, meaning it’s take this weekend would be a bigger drop, but any way you slice it, it still brought in $14.2 million, bringing its domestic gross to $118.6 million off of a $25 million budget.
The new releases this week were subdued, and no match for the might of the three week title holder. Coming in second was the thriller The Debt. It scored a modest $9.67 million in its opening weekend.
Third and fourth place were separated by a mere $60,000. Apollo 18 took third with $8.7 million while Shark Night 3D came in with $8.64 million.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes continued to beat its chest, coming in fifth this week with $7.8 million. It hasn’t set box office records, but it has certainly done a healthy business bringing in a total of $160 million domestically.
Overall the summer film season is closing out with a whimper, with nothing but The Help catching on with audiences. All of last week’s new releases - Colombiana, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Our Idiot Brother - all fell out of the top 5. The title for the most embarrassing August release has to go to Conan the Barbarian which fell to 17th place this weekend with a paltry $1.3 million in its third weekend for a domestic total of $19.6 million. It hasn’t even been able to beat the dollar total of the 1982 film of the same name which brought in $39 million. Adjusted for inflation the new one is a complete train wreck.
The only major release for next weekend is Contagion, with a couple smaller films also taking their opening bows.
Filming on The Dark Knight Rises has moved to Los Angeles, and some new photos have surfaced of Anne Hathaway filming a stunt fight scene … with an apple.
Just Jared posted the images of Anne Hathaway taking on a street thug as Selina Kyle (Catwoman) in the third Batman film. While some images that leak out from production, these particular ones intrigued me. If I was a gambling man, I’d say the street thug threatens the kid, Selina walks up and tells him to stop, lunges at her and she subdues him. What intrigues me is the apple. My guess would be this is an early scene introducing Selina as a bad ass that can take care of herself, even without losing her apple. Cheesy? Yes. Potentially a kick-ass moment on screen? Definitely.
Enough with the leaked photos, lets just get this blasted movie into the theaters! (Yeah, yeah, July 20, 2012 … best birthday present ever to me.)
The pseudo-horror film Red State may be the finest film director Kevin Smith has made, but also his most infuriating at the same time.
Set in the fictional location of Cooper’s Dell, Red State tells the story of Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) and his Five Points Church; a group so radical that even Neo-Nazis have distanced themselves from the congregation as we learn very early on in the film. It seems that pastor Cooper and his congregation have come to the conclusion that it is time they hasten the coming of the Rapture, and help God to sort out the sinners from the faithful. They lure the evil people into their fold with promises of fulfilling their carnal desires, and then take care of ushering these evildoers to their greater reward.
What appears above is the most simplistic explanation of the connecting thread of this film, but there are so many concepts circulating around the edges that you could never precisely do a summary of it without spoiling a ton of the story. And that, sadly, is what keeps me from saying I love this movie as opposed to just liking it.
I am an unabashed fan of Kevin Smith. Even since the first time I watched Clerks – his 1990′s ode to slacker/service industry culture – I have followed every move of this man’s career, and to this day I listen to hours of podcasts he produces each week, but even I can admit when things go slightly awry with his work. Red State is an ambitious film filled with ideas, theories, proclamations and acting moments that will leave you amazed. It is also the next to last film of Smith’s career, and that seems to make it suffer somewhat. Smith was clearly overflowing with ideas he could base around the Cooper family, but instead of focusing on just one or two, he essentially ended up making three vignettes that were strung together and clocked in at under 90 minutes. The frantic pacing of some scenes left you puzzled as other scenes were given a tremendous amount of breathing room such as Michael Parks fantastic sermon scene. You would then speed through other story points to leap to another mesmerizing scene from John Goodman or Kerry Bishé. Smith knew he had some fantastic material and talent on his hands, but he seemed unsure of how to fit it all into one neat little package without sacrificing other moments.
From a directing standpoint, this is is clearly his most mature film. This is no longer the film school kid trying his hand at making a movie in a convenience store, this is a seasoned veteran who has grown up and acquired more faith in his own talents. When he isn’t racing you from one scene to another, when he allows the actors to perform they’re craft, you are in for a treat that makes the entire film worth it. All of the onscreen talent is at the top of their games here, and considering how the majority of them took next to no pay to help bring this film in on a budget of $4 million, it is all that more impressive.
As I watched the film, I quickly realized that there was really enough material here for three films, and Smith also seemed to realize it as evidenced by the fact the end credits are broken into three sections: Sex, Religion and Politics. Perhaps if the film had even a slightly longer running time, or Smith had found a way to cut one of the three sections – Sex could have easily been trimmed to expand the other two – this would have been one of my all time favorite films, but instead I found myself just really liking it as opposed to loving it.
And that is where I need to clarify myself to you, the reader. Despite everything I have said here, I still recommend this film, but as someone who has followed it’s creation from day one, I was left wanting more. Going into this movie with no knowledge as my mom and dad, they both loved it, and both thought it was Smith’s best film to date. As someone who is rabid in his love of all things Smith, I know what it could have been, and that just left me at the level of “like” as opposed to “love.”
As anyone who reads this blog knows, there are two things I love: Star Wars and complaining about things. Sometimes those two things even seem to come together thanks to constant stupidity of series creator George Lucas. Other times … I just don’t care.
The complete Star Wars saga is due out on Blu-ray soon, and as is his want, it appears that George Lucas has once again decided to change a few things in the films to update them. While there are several noted changes, the one drawing the most attention is he fact that Darth Vader now yells “No!” before he throws Emperor Palpaltine down the reactor shaft in Return of the Jedi. In the original he does this in silence, but now there is a moment of emotion.
Some fans are outraged and they’re calling for a boycott.
I’m asking, “You do know Lucas doesn’t give a flying hoot what we think, right?” If Lucas ever cared what we thought, the whole “Greedo shot first” wouldn’t have happened, but at this point we should all know Lucas is going to do whatever the heck he wants to when it comes to these films. If you wants to insert a scene of Jar Jar doing the hokey pookey for 20 minutes, you know what, he’s going to do it, and you’ll still end up paying to see it at some point.
You would be hard pressed to find anyone who loves the original three films as much as I do, but you know what? I’ve come to accept the fact these films belong to Lucas and not me no matter how much I might like them to.
So, yell, “nooooooooo!” all you want and don’t buy it, but talk about your wasted efforts on someone who just will never care. Yeesh.
Filming on Man of Steel, the Superman reboot film, is currently taking place in Plano, IL which is doubling for Smallville in the film. Thanks to this outdoor filming we have some images and … no.
We saw the first picture of Henry Cavillin the costume early last month, and it didn’t look too bad, the colors were just slightly off, but it didn’t look horrible. Now we’ve seen some unofficial images which reveal some of the detailing and … what has Zack Snyder done?
Now, in his defense, this looks a little bit like the just released redesign in the comic book series, but not quite. I never released how important the red briefs were until I saw this, and boy are they needed.
I have to say that Cavill looks amazing, and eerily like Christopher Reeve, but that costume … what in the world were they thinking? I can even somewhat take the piping, but the oddity of the “S” symbol just makes no sense.
Oh this has left a bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach for this project.
It’s episode #160 and Scattercast is back after a one-week unexpected break.
With the tenth anniversary of the 
Ben & Jerry’s has teamed up with Broadway Video, the company behind 
Apparently the 84th Annual 
A total of 35 this week.
The pseudo-horror film 
As anyone who reads this blog knows, there are two things I love: 
