411 Fact or Fiction Movies 03.21.08: Week 118
Posted by Ben Piper on 03.21.2008
Will Owen Wilson's presence fail to elevate Drillbit Taylor to must see status? Are people interested in checking out HBO's historical mini-series John Adams? Is it a smart move to split the last Harry Potter book into two separate movies? 411's Joseph Lee and Jeffrey Harris debate theses topics and more in week 118 of Fact or Fiction: Movies!
Hello, my friends! I hope everyone is on their best behavior as we settle in for some hard-hitting Fact or Fiction action! This week Joseph Lee and Jeffrey Harris are at odds. Let's see how they hold up.
1. You're interested in checking out HBO's new historical mini-series John Adams.
Joseph Lee: Fact - I watched a clip on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last week and it does look like another knockout role for Paul Giamatti. I'm a very big fan of his and hopefully this mini-series will be another hit for him. Unfortunately I do not have HBO but will definitely try to watch it however I can.
Jeffrey Harris: Fact - Dude it's Paul Freaking Giamatti as John Adams and the forefathers. Can you dig that suckas? I'm definitely looking forward to it to see how it turns out. However, I saw Brent Spiner as John Adams in 1776 on Broadway. And that was pretty awesome . . . also had Pat Hingle as Benjamin Franklin.
Score: 1 for 1
2. You don't think the presence of Owen Wilson can elevate Drillbit Taylor to being a must-see comedy.
Joseph Lee: Fiction - Drillbit Taylor actually looks funny to me. Owen Wilson is good to watch in the right roles. It's usually as a sidekick of sorts (Zoolander, Wedding Crashers) to a wackier character. It will be nice to see him break out on his own and hopefully steal the show. Also, Seth Rogen had a hand in the script and it's produced by Apatow Productions, so I have faith in it.
Jeffrey Harris: Fiction - I agree with Lee, and I think it looks pretty entertaining. Not to mention it will be an interesting test for Judd Apatow and Co. to see if they can come back after Walk Hard. Wilson only really has one character, but it's typically funny. Plus it's got a guy that looks like mini-Jonah Hill in it.
Score: 2 for 2
3. You're looking forward to the return of CBS's Monday night comedy line-up.
Joseph Lee: Fiction - This is only because I don't watch CBS's comedy lineup. Shows like Two and a Half Men and King of Queens (is that even still on?) don't appeal to me and while I find How I Met Your Mother funny, I can't ever catch it due to other tv shows that come on the same night.
Jeffrey Harris: Fact - Joseph Lee is dead to me for not knowing about the greatness of The Big Bang Theory, the best show to come out of the 2007-2008 season. Lee you are on my list of "Dead To Me" people. So fact or fiction, your responses no longer matter ever again. That is in fact if you do start watching The Big Bang Theory every week you can work toward getting off the list. You can take or leave How I Met Your Mother or Two and A Half Men, but if you aren't watching the return of The Big Bang Theory you do not deserve to breathe. 'Nuff said.
Score: 2 for 3
Switch!!!
4. It's a smart move to split the last Harry Potter book into two separate films.
Jeffrey Harris: Fiction - It's a stupid, money-grubbing beyond retarded move that is going to bite Warner Bros. in the ass just like it does every time this happened before. The Pirates of The Caribbean, The Matrix, and Back To The Future. History is on my side here. And before you flame my head off, all I ask is . . . why? Think about it. The other books got longer and longer, but instead the movies just got shorter after the first two films. They kept a good 2 plus hour length, and moreso than the first two films they were fine cinematic endeavors. They draw people in who aren't just fans of the book. And more than making good adaptations, they made the books into great, quality movies. Years ago they had stupid ideas like splitting the third of fourth movie into two films two months apart, or changing the kids after three films. Didn't happen because both of those were stupid, dumb ideas. Why does it need to be split into two movies? If anything just make one longer movie like The Return of The King instead of the old split two movies into one crap which always ends in disappointment.
Joseph Lee: Fiction: Maybe a smart move for the studios, but ultimately a really stupid way to end the series. If you've actually read the book (I have), you'd know that the story consists mainly of the the three main characters in the woods trying to figure out what could be possible horcruxes. It's basically a bunch of conversation. The action happens here and there but it doesn't really pick up until the last half of the book. Splitting the movie to include everything tells me there's going to be a lot of boring scenes in these movies and I'm not as interested as I may have been before.
Score:3 for 4
5. You're looking forward to the return of The Riches.
Jeffrey Harris: Fiction - Really not a big fan or excited about this show at all. Maybe I should be, but have to be selective about what shows to watch these days, even with DVR. 6. Shutter will suck egregiously.
Joseph Lee: Fact: Fact, Fact, a million times Fact. The Riches was such a great show the first time around. It was quirky, fun and the story was very good at drawing the viewer in. We're only getting seven episodes for this season due to the Writer's Strike but they're going to be seven GOOD episodes and will leave me wanting more. I've been eagerly anticipating this new season.
Score: 3 for 5
6. Shutter will suck egregiously.
Jeffrey Harris: Fact - It looks terrible and undeserving of my money, so I believe so yes. But it could still probably be profitable since it's low budget horror.
Joseph Lee: Fact: It's another Asian horror remake, of course it will suck. Remakes, as a rule, tend to suck anyway, but with Asian horror it's like they don't even try. This one feels like The Grudge 3 and probably will be about the same quality level.
Score: 4 for 6
Many heartfely thanks to Jeff and Joe for taking part. I mean that in all seriousness. While I enjoy the weekly interaction with my fellow 411 staffers it's not often that they actually take the time to plug in the required html coding correctly. So Kudos to them both for that.
Useless Trivia Question of the Week
There wasn't a contest last week because I'm trying to figure out a way that everyone (not just those within lower 48) could also win some sort of a prize and a mention in the column. There's still some bugs I have to iron out so until I do we'll still work off of the same rules as before…
Rules: The first person to email in the correct answer as well as provide their home address within the continental US shall receive a hand-written letter from me. Previous winners are ineligible.
Question: Who were the first interracial TV couple presented as ongoing characters on a network show, who were the actors that portrayed them, and on what show did this occur?
I think it's a little early to trash Potter. One thing we know is that the final battle will be EPIC!
Posted By: Capt. Smooth (Guest) on March 21, 2008 at 08:24 AM
I've been a fan of the Harry Potter books since I first picked them up. I thought that while very few if any movies live up to the books on which they are based, the first 2 Harry Potter films were pretty good. Since the 3rd movie, I've been saying that it makes no sense for a book with 300 pages and a book with 600 pages, both written in the same style, have movies that run equally long. Granted, every Harry Potter sequel has some recap, but still... Had all the movies from the third one on been split (like Kill Bill), the studios would have made more money by having summer AND Christmas releases. Furthermore, the fans would have not had parts cut out or shortened and the movies would have been better representations of the book.
Posted By: Raunchy Ron (Guest) on March 21, 2008 at 03:49 PM
I watched the first two episodes of John Adams and it is FANTASTIC.
CBS Comedy Mondays are awesome.
Posted By: JLAJRC (Guest) on March 21, 2008 at 05:16 PM
John Adams was awsome 1st 2 shows
Posted By: Guest#8574 (Guest) on March 21, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Raunchy Ron, splitting the movies would've saturated and diluted the franchise and hurt them A LOT. Plus most people would've seen it as a cheap money grab anyway.
Posted By: Jeffrey Harris (Registered) on March 22, 2008 at 05:02 AM
Epic? You mean killing curse! Oops... There was nothing EPIC about the last 2 books.
Posted By: Guest#1736 (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 08:06 AM
if you think that splitting the last Harry Potter movie in two is a money grubbing idea, then please go to your dvd collection or, alternately, the nearest Best Buy, and tell me exactly how many 'uber special super duper editions' of the LOTR series there are.
answer?
enough to keep Weta from bankruptcy as well as enough to keep Peter Jackson from getting the 'we aren't giving you a major budget anymore' letter like Uwe Boll got.
simple fact is that each movie has impressed me in how it was able to excise the irrelevant and distracting side stories and offer up a well balanced story.
since not one of us has any idea how a two part finale will unfold, i think it is kinda bullshit to slam it as either a bad idea or not.
a first part movie dealing with the search for the horcruxes and a second dealing with an extended (probably much more so than in the novel) battle between good and evil is...as Smooth said...epic.
but it is too early to trash it now, especially with the overwhelmingly positive previous 5 (to date) movies thus far.
Posted By: Darth Mortis (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 11:17 AM
Guest#1736, actually the last two books provided BIG deaths(I'm still mad about Fred!), got overwhelmingly good reviews from critics and readers alike, and actually got some people to feel a bit of sympathy for the Malfoys. As far as it not being epic, in the final battle, you will have witches, wizards, giants, centaurs, and Mrs. Weasley calling someone a bitch!
Posted By: Capt. Smooth (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 11:29 AM
I checked out Drillbit last night, and found it to be very funny. They showed the preview for Tropic Thunder, and it didn't go over so well. :-{
Posted By: Capt. Smooth (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 11:35 AM
I do not get Harris's history. What the hell is he talking about looking at Pirates, the matrix and BTTF. Am I missing something? They are talking about making a huge movie and splitting it into two volumes. As far as I can tell there was a part 1,2 and 3 of each of the series that he spoke of. A better comparison would have been Kill Bill. One large movie split into two parts and the last I remember that worked just fine. So am I totally missing something in his comparison? Please let me know.
Posted By: Liquid (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 02:23 PM
The trailer for Tropic Thunder looked funny to me. I guess the whole Vietnam thing might turn some people off, but dont go see it if it does. I'll go see it.
Posted By: Tropic Chunder (Guest) on March 22, 2008 at 03:46 PM
The splitting one movie into two sequels doesn't work.
Posted By: Jeffrey Harris (Registered) on March 22, 2008 at 11:37 PM
Darth Mortis,
Too early to trash it? It is too early to praise it as well. You have to play the "wait-n-see" game.
About RotK, you are dead wrong. Was RotK horrible prior to the release of the extended cuts? NO. The theatrical cut won 11 Oscars. There are only two other movies to win that many(Ben-Hur and Titanic).
Posted By: Guest#4077 (Guest) on March 23, 2008 at 05:24 AM
On the Harry Potter topic... I do agree with some of the posts that the first two were well made adaptions, then the last three got jumpy and were cut too much. I am glad that they decided to make a longer more in depth 7th movie, and wether it's one 5 hour movie or 2 2.5 hour movies, I', glad they are doing it as close to the book. Also to agree with Capt. Smooth, it was almost embarrassing that I, 32 year old man, got pissed when they killed Fred Weasley.
Posted By: BALman (Registered) on March 23, 2008 at 10:09 AM
i am praising it on the potential of the source material.
with LOTR, i gave each movie a fair shake, and was bored and horribly disappointed with each of them. especially knowing the source material as well as i do.
LOTR is a series of overrated movies, and they are being exploited time and again by Jackson to hide the fact that he is a terrible director.
i remember saying to my idiot brother in law that if King Kong flopped, you would see another 'special edition' LOTR set...sure enough, here in canada, we caught wind of a new LOTR set in the works 2 months after people realised that King Kong sucked donkey balls.
as for oscars...who cares? oscars are based on popularity, not quality, and all you have to do is go back to the beginning of the oscar awards and look really hard. you will notice that every movie nominated with RotK is nothing more than a niche film , and honestly, Mystic River was a hundred fold better than the rest of the movies that year.
the fanboys cried hard enough, hollywood listened...doesn't make the LOTR series any less rubbish.
Posted By: Darth Mortis (Guest) on March 23, 2008 at 12:31 PM
BALman, you shouldn't be embarrassed about being mad about Fred, no matter what your age is. I know that society's norm is to tell people to "grow up", but lets just face it, there is more than ONE way to "grow up". What does it mean anyway? Luckily, with the "geek' culture rising up, the social norm may change.
Posted By: Capt. Smooth (Guest) on March 23, 2008 at 04:49 PM
