Author Archives: russ

Aug 08 2012
Site News

Movie Movie Podcast LIVE: The Bourne Legacy

Hey guys, so now that the summer movie season is starting to wind down, and we’ve gotten a number of podcasts under our belt, we’ve decided that it’s time to get everyone else in on the fun.

Next thursday (Aug. 16th) after our monthly show Pig Pile (9:30pm at The Creek and the Cave) we are going to record a live podcast.  We are going to get the audience involved and get your guys’ opinions of the film we review.  With The Bourne Legacy coming out this weekend, we figure this is the biggest and best film that a lot of people are going to see, so it should work perfectly. It also might be terrible, so it’ll be fun to talk about either way.

If you want to not only come to Pig Pile and enjoy all the improv,sketch,and standup that we typically have and then stick around to podcast The Bourne Legacy with us, it will be an awesome time.  Also if you want to come and see The Bourne Legacy with the four of us at MMP, we are going to see it this Sunday morning at 10:15am at the AMC Loews 34th Street in midtown.  Tickets are only $7, so it’s even more worth it.

Come be a part of Movie Movie Podcast history!

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Aug 07 2012
2 Comments
Movie Movie News

Avengers 2 is Happening the Way it Should

Joss Whedon has been signed on to write and direct Avengers 2.  We can now all breathe a bit easier.  Not only will he be shepherding the Avenger franchise, but he’s also being brought along to help flesh out the Marvel TV Universe.  They haven’t done anything with the TV verse yet, so taking Whedon’s already stellar TV past and connections, he will be a lot better at helping bring that world along well.

I am pleased.

I would love it if Marvel took some of their darker characters and retrofitted them for TV, like Punisher and Daredevil (especially with his rights likely reverting back to Disney).

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Aug 03 2012
2 Comments
Fake Movie Friday

Fake Movie Friday – The Caan Men

The Caan Men is a self-referential big hollywood action buddy film starring none other than James and Scott Caan playing themselves.

The film opens up at the premiere of the latest Oceans film, Oceans 15 (I’m calling 15, just incase 14 actually happens, and it probably will) at Mann’s Chinese Theater .  We see tons of celebrity cameo’s on the E! red carpet.  Ryan Seacrest is in the middle of interviewing George Clooney and Brad Pitt and they are hamming it up talking about how the film is a real piece of art or something, all the while, no one wants to interview Scott Caan.  For whatever reason, Pauly Shore has a cameo at this point telling Caan to get used to it.  Guys like them will never get the big interviews. Scott is obviously dejected, but he attempts to interrupt an interview with Seacrest and Matt Damon and it comes off as really pathetic.  He starts talking about how he’s on Hawaii 5-0 while drunk and everyone just sorta tries and play along, but at the same time get him off the camera.  He then stumbles on the red carpet spilling his drink on Matt Damon, who flips out on him.  Casey Affleck rescues Scott from his embarassment and tells Scott to just hang out in the bathroom and get himself together.  Scott obliges.  He goes to the bathroom to clean up, and starts drinking from his flask.
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Aug 02 2012
1 Comment
Movie Movie Trailers

Brad Pitt in New Orleans Killing People

Brad Pitt’s a good actor, New Orleans is my favorite city, and Killing People is something I love seeing in my films.  So watching the trailer for Killing Them Softly, I am convinced this is going to be a great film.  It is directed by Andrew Dominik, who directed the brilliant, albeit long The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

I don’t know why The Weinstein Company swapped release dates with this and Tthe Master between September and October, but even if The Master is a lock for best picture nods, I think Killing Them Softly can also be a dark horse in the race.  Brad Pitt is an oscar favorite, though he hasn’t won, and the film has such a wealth of talent in it between Richard Jenkins, and James Gandofini etc, and Dominik.  I think this can break through.

But look at the trailer for yourself and be the judge:

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Aug 02 2012
Movie Movie Trailers Video

The Paperboy & Zac Efron’s Legitmacy

The Paperboy trailer premiered this week and it looks very interesting.  It’s Lee Daniels latest film.  You might remember him from the Depress-O-Fest that was Precious based on the novel Push, by Sapphire.  It was raw, pulpy, depressing, but excellent.  With a cast of Matthew McConaughey, who is having a resurgent year, Nicole Kidman, David Oyelewo, and John Cusack, it looks like it could be very good.  Zac Efron appears to be at the center of the film and I think this is a good role for him to take.  He’s never been a necessarily good actor, but I think a good way to start is by surrounding yourself with better talent in front of and behind the camera.

Check it:

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Aug 02 2012
2 Comments
Movie Movie News

Doctor Who Vs. Thor

It appears as though Christopher Eccleston has been cast as a villain (something I feel like people end up saying alot), Malekith the Accursed in Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World.  Eccleston is probably best known as playing the “dark” Doctor in the relaunch of Doctor Who.  While his interpretation is my least favorite of the three, he brought a necessary dark side to the character.  Between that and his penchant for playing villains in everything, I think this is a good piece of casting.

I’m assuming that because Malekith is the ruler of the Dark Elves, the “Dark World” that the subtitle refers to is the world of the Dark Elves, Svartalheim.

I don’t care either way, I just want to see a Thor film take place primarily in realms other than Earth.

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Jul 31 2012
2 Comments
Movie Movie News

Fast Six Has Started Production!

Yesterday, Fast Six began filming in London and that news really excites us dudes over at MMP.  However, this film which apparently wants everyone in the world to be in it just released another bit of casting news.  Joe Taslim, the lead actor of the future cult hit action film, The Raid: Redemption, has been cast as Jah who according to Variety is “a cold-blooded killer who uses martial arts and parkour to fight the films protags”

Ugh I can’t wait any longer!

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Jul 30 2012
1 Comment
Movie Movie News

Taylor Kitsch & And A Change of Course

Taylor Kitsch is about to hang up his guns and muscles and try something different while he can.  He has just agreed to star along with Brendan Gleeson in the film The Grand Seduction, which is an American adaptation of a french film Le Grande Seduction.

The film centers on a small fishing village that is falling apart and needs the business of a large factory looking to move there in order to stay afloat.  However terms of the factory contract state that the small town must get a town doctor in order for the factory to move there.  Brendan Gleeson would play one of the central townsfolk and Kitsch would play the doctor that the entire town attempts to seduce to stay there.  The original is a comedy and this film will be written by Michael Dowse who wrote and directed the criminally underseen Seann William Scott film, Goon, so I imagine a lot of the original tone will remain in tact.

This is an interesting move for Taylor Kitsch.  It is the type of move that suggests someone got in his head and recommended he start saying no to by the numbers brainless action films and show some range before he loses any shot at the career, people really seem to want him to have.  As a fan of his from Friday Night Lights, I would not think of him for a small independent comedy about a small town, but stranger things have happened.  Needless to say I think this will help him in the eyes of casting agents get more roles other than a sullen action hero.

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Jul 27 2012
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Fake Movie Friday

Fake Movie Friday – Polly and Max: Time’s Up

Today’s Fake Movie Friday comes along from the desire for hollywood to mine anything into profit no matter how ludicrous it sounds.  So why not take two moderately popular toy-lines from the early 90’s and spruce them up for a new generation of kids who knew jack shit about them, and make them so far from what they originally were that older people like me who remember it, think it’s an abortion.  READY. SET. GO!

Ok so Polly and Max stars AnnaSophia Robb as Polly Pocket and Alexander Ludwig as Mighty Max.  Since these toys never really crossed over, for film purposes Max and Polly are orphaned cousins who were taken in by their eccentric uncle Virgil played by Jim Broadbent.  It’s clear that he is some kind of scientist, but he’s wacky like Doc Brown.  Anyway as they both turn 18 on the same day, Virgil tells them that it’s time they knew the truth about their parents.  They come from a long line of Timekeepers.  Timekeepers are the balance of the world.  Anytime the catch wind that a bad guy is trying to go back in time or forward to change the course of history it was up to the Pocket family to stop them. Unfortunately 5 years ago (flashback sequence), an evil unlike anything they’ve ever seen named Erik Von SlechteMal, played by Jared Harris, defeated them.  He killed them by time jumping (which is ostensibly teleporting) them into a volcano.  Ever since then he’s been making slight changes to our timeline and gathering up an army to take over the world.  The feeling of deja vu you have is the slight changes he’s been making.  Now it is up to Polly and Max to learn how to be Timekeepers and put and end to SlechteMal before it’s too late.

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Jul 25 2012
Movie Movie News

When Spinoff’s Attack: Despicable Me Edition

I saw Despicable Me two years ago and I was awestruck at how simply funny and cute it was.  It didn’t go for the dick and farts of Dreamworks, or the heartwrenching heart-ness of Pixar, but it was well-balanced and great.  When a sequel was announced it made sense to me because it did really well, and they could always have Gru go up against another villain or something.  It’ll be out next summer, and I am relatively excited for it.  However, when they announced that they are also preparing a spinoff film starring the scene-stealing Minions, that when I got nervous.  The Minions were great cause they cause they were funny for adults and kids, and were always seemingly getting into some kind of trouble.  They were really fun to watch.  But heres the problem with them:  THEY DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH.  Speaking in a garbled language with no subtitles works when you are side-characters built on body language, but their exploits for an entire film might be way too much to sustain a film.  They’ll probably have to add an english speaking character just to serve as the straight man of sorts.

When Madagascar decided to make a spinoff cartoon and now a movie based around the Penguins that made sense.  People loved the penguins and they spoke.  So you got what was going on.  The Minions are the same type of character only far less intelligible.  My recommendation would have been to make a series of shorts based around the Minions for any new Illumination-based animated films.  Kids would eat those up and it’d keep the franchise alive between films.

Oh well.  Maybe it’ll good?  Probably not.

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