The Doctor in the Hallway News Report 11.29.06
Posted by Ben Moser on 11.29.2006
Writers' refusal, Chenoweth's chest, Faris' Frequently Asked Questions, plus other alliterative items as well as the return of an old friend. Read it, or your favorite celebrity marriage dies!
Hi kids. I see you've welcomed yourselves to The Doctor in the Hallway News Report already. Good for you.
I finally caught Casino Royale and I'm tired of movies living up the the hype. Between this new Bond flick and Borat, I can't seem to denounce anything as overrated anymore. I'll tell you why this distresses me. As a high schooler, I spent an obscene amount of time in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Some of that time was spent there because of a girl(by the way, dating her friend to get to her never ever works), but most of it was because of the hip indie scene that was going on there. After watching show after show, I was able to cultivate my extreme distaste towards anything in the mainstream to prove how amazingly cool I was. My awkward teenage mantra became "if you've heard of it, I think it sucks."
In college, I made some friends that helped me expand this remarkably annoying attitude to film as well as music. After a few years, the trappings of pop radio got to me around the same time that I found myself turning into the creepy old guy with the beer that I used to make fun of at indie shows. I have no idea what's hip with those kids in terms of music now, but I totally dig the new Christina Aguilera and can't wait for Gwen Stefani to release another album already.
But I still have my bad attitude about mainsteam movies to keep what little indie cred I have left. Or at least I did until I started liking everything. Accepted, the Saw movies, Borat, and now Casino Royale...I can't remember the last time I saw something in a theater and turned my snobby nose up at it, declaring it to be over-hyped and over-terrible. Well, I mean other than X-Men 3...
So there's that tangent. Want some news?
Imagine Jeremy Roenick in a Hawaiian shirt and 100 pounds overweight...
The Writers' Guild of America is going to make Hollywood worry about a strike for the next year. In a move underlining the souring relationship between the WGA and industry toppers, the guild's leaders have spurned an industry proposal to launch negotiations in January. Instead, they've insisted they won't be ready to start until September -- less than two months before the Oct. 31 expiration of the current contract.
Law & Order producer Dick Wolf had some big words and obscure references to add:
"The guild seems determined to ratchet up the likelihood of a strike," he said. "It's a Neolithic tactic, but it's a clear message that they want to have a work stoppage. I don't have to be the Delphic oracle to have seen this coming."
Of course, what this really means is that networks will have an even bigger reason to go to game shows and reality TV for their programming. Which is great, because I'm really looking forward to Loved Ones Being Pulled From Life Support For Cash And Prizes Island having a good showing next fall. And if not, OJ may still have an idea or two.
Chenoweth adds another character to her war chest(see what I did there?)
Kristin Chenoweth has been given the approval by Dolly Parton herself to play the inspiration behind Dollywood. The film is only in early conception stages at present so no word on dates and other involvement.
I could tell you all day and night about whether I thought she had the talent to pull of Dolly Parton for an entire movie or not. I could tell you all about how I think that when you do a biopic of someone who has enjoyed the kind of stardom that Parton has, you're not acting so much as maintaining an impersonation. I could tell you all sorts of things, but most of you are wondering about the two major qualifications one has to have to portray Dolly Parton...
Why don't you just judge for yourself whether or not she stacks up
FAQin' Anna Faris
Anna Faris is toplining Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, a farcical sci-fi comedy that also will star British comic actors Chris O'Dowd, Marc Wootan and Dean Lennox Kelly. Gareth Carrivick is directing the movie about three social outcasts -- two geeks and a cynic -- as they attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum in the middle of a British pub. Faris plays a girl from the future who sets the adventure in motion.
I am almost ashamed about how excited I am over a move about 3 geeks who travel through time travel in a bar. Almost. With as little as I know about the premise here, there are so many things that this flick could be about that my head is spinning. Hopefully, my question about how ethical it would be to go to a bar and get sloshed only to travel back in time to stop myself from entering the bar in the first place to skip out on the tab will be answered. And before you ask, no, I don't care about the ramifications making myself my own designated driver would have on the space-time continuum.
Cowboy Up!
Magnolia has acquired Thai cowboy pic Tears of the Black Tiger from Miramax and will open the film in January, nearly six years after it was first acquired at Cannes. The movie, shot in bright colors and with stylized action scenes, follows a forbidden love story set in Thailand in the 1950s, with many conventions of the Western both depicted and sent up.
Miramax bought this during the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phase of buying up Eastern movies. So I expect this to be either delightfully or painfully over-the-top. It's always fun to see foreign movies poke fun at the conventions of US standards, especially westerns. They just beg to be lampooned. Anyone who can watch a John Wayne flick with a straight face is in a coma.
Maggie rules Sweden!
Maggie Gyllenhaal won the Best Actress prize for her performance in Sherrybaby at the 17th Stockholm Film Festival on Saturday night. Sherrybaby, directed by Laurie Collyer, also picked up the Bronze Horse award for best movie at the Swedish event.
Gyllenhaal is just too talented not to be winning bigger and better prizes than Swedish awards. It's not that I have a disdain for the Swedish. I rather thought the award might be quite prestigious until I noticed that they called the award for best movie the Bronze Horse. I've watched enough of the Olympic games in my life to understand that bronze things aren't awarded to the outstanding. So if bronze is as good as you can do in Sweden, then I'm confident in saying that their film festival's awards are probably used for more trivial things than even a Grammy - which is at best a paper weight.
Flying wedge
Lionsgate Films has acquired the script The Escape Artist from producer Todd Garner. An original comedy by brothers Jim and Brian Kehoe, the film centers on a relationship consultant who gets paid to break people up. Garner helped develop the script with the writers.
I could have used a service like that a few times in my young life. For example, there was the one time I tried to break up with a girl so badly and awkwardly, that she figured out what I was driving at and went ahead and dumped me. Now imagine how smoothly that would have gone if there were a third party who was sent in to drive a wedge between us rather than me trying to break it off seemingly out of left field because she was uncomfortable to sleep next to. Perfect. Of course, kids nowadays can also go ahead and let MTV put them on Parental Control and blame their folks' ability to pick such outstanding replacements as the reason for a breakup. Maybe this movie won't ring as true as I thought...
Can I get a bowl of peroxide at table 3?
Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have become so close since the pop superstar filed for divorce from Kevin Federline that the two are now like sisters, according to Hilton's representative. The party pair have frequently been spotted out on the town over the past several weeks and according to Hilton's spokesman Elliot Mintz it's more than just a passing fancy. He says that the two are "really forming a bond" and that they're "becoming like sisters." Mintz claims 24-year-old Spears "looks up" to 25-year-old Hilton and that she's "extremely grateful" the socialite has taken her under her wing. Mintz says Spears' sexy new style, which consists of wearing barely-there skirts and cleavage-baring tops, has been "inspired" by Hilton. Downplaying reports of a fight between Hilton and Lindsay Lohan over the weekend, Mintz claims the three women have, in fact, created an alliance.
Good for you Britney. The best way to get away from all the jokes about how trashy you were with Federline is to hitch yourself to Paris Hilton. I mean, aside from how to deal with it when Federline attaches copies of your "home movies" to his albums in a last-ditch effort to get people to buy his...um...music, is there a single thing you can really learn from her that you don't already know? The public parenting you've done really shows that you know just as much, if not more, than Paris about public humiliation.
Then, of course, there comes the hint at a trifecta of vapidity with Paris, Britney, and LiLo. This is incredible. The three of them together is more than just a train wreck. This is three separate train wrecks happening at the same time. This is a 30-car pile-up that happens to take place on some train tracks with a sleeping conductor barrelling towards them with 6 or 7 oil tankers being pulled behind him. All of this is just the prelude to two airplanes colliding and falling directly onto the blazing mess. Then, of course, a kid on a scooter happens to run into it for a hilarious cap-off.
This is only the beginning of how bad it can get...
Gossip columnists and tabloids will refer to this grouping as the "holy trinity" as a new golden age is reached for, among other outlets, E!
Life imitates art
Tracy Morgan was arrested Tuesday in Upper Manhattan on drunken driving charges, the district attorney's office said. Morgan was arraigned on charges of driving while intoxicated and driving while impaired. Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew F. Cooper released Morgan without requiring him to post bail, but ordered him to turn over his driver's license. The prosecutor told the judge that he recommended a $1,000 fine, five days of community service and a DWI program. Morgan's lawyer, Sheryl Reich, told the judge they had no interest in the plea offer at this time.
Three thoughts:
If this were Lost, Tracy's character would be dead within a few weeks. I really hope this doesn't derail laugh track free Thursdays in any way. Seriously, does Tracy Morgan just play himself in 30 Rock?
Okay. Now I would accept a Borat sequel.
Pamela Anderson has filed for divorce from husband Kid Rock after less than four months of marriage. The couple married in a lavish "celebration ceremony" aboard a yacht moored off St. Tropez, France on July 29, but made it official when they returned to the US and wed at the Beverly Hills Courthouse. Anderson cites irreconcilable differences. Anderson's representative Tracy Nguyen tells American publication People, "Pamela filed for divorce last week. It wasn't a happy Thanksgiving."
If they went through with all of the weddings they said they'd have, does that mean they'll have to get ten more divorces once this one is done? They just weren't the powerful celebrity couple they thought they would be. No one came up with a clever amalgamation of their names and former playmate Pam was a little concerned that there were actually more topless pictures of her husband than of her.
The return of the SNAKES ON A PLANE hype
Ben Affleck needs a break, and we're barely more than a month away from the DVD release of SNAKES ON A PLANE: the movie that - as it turns out - did not change the Hollywood forever. The fact that the unwashed masses didn't bear witness to this glorious event doesn't mean that we can't get excited about the opportunity to purchase the right to screen SNAKES ON A PLANE anytime we want. We may have to wait until January 2 for that purchase, but in the meantime we can wow ourselves with a little straight-to-video beauty called Snakes on a Train.
It rhymes with Snakes on a Plane, what more can you ask for?
That's right. The Asylum, makers of such completely not ripped off movies as 666: The Child, The 9/11 Commission Report, and The Da Vinci Treasure bring you a truly horrible movie. Click here to see what I'm talking about. While we all thought that SNAKES ON A PLANE was going to hit "so bad it's good" status and then surprised us all by being actually good, Snakes on a Train is every bit as bad as you'd imagine and then some. So have fun with that and, while you're on Asylum's website, browse some of the other truly awful-looking movies that company has to offer.
That'll do it for this week
Thursday night on NBC. My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, and 30 Rock. Four brilliant comedies. No laugh tracks. If the television renaissance doesn't start with this, there will never be one. So I'm going to go ahead and make it required viewing this week, kids. Until next time, don't do anything I wouldn't do...
(This week's sources: IMDB, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety)
