Doctor in the Hallway News Report 06.28.06
Posted by Ben Moser on 06.28.2006
Another victory for Pitt, a Good Omen or two, Bloom and Bosworth show off, the Vampire-Western genre returns, and much more! Feel the awesome power of Wednesday!
Ahh, I know what you're thinking.
"But Ben, I've come to anticipate Saturdays as being the time I turn on my computer, go directly to 411mania.com, and gleefully read about Hollywood happenings. I spend the remainder of my weekend wowing my friends with not only news of upcoming movies; but also by telling them exactly what they should think about these upcoming movies thanks to your dead-on opinion, which I have come to accept as the third universal fact(just after "fire is hot" and "water is wet"). Now here I am, innocently coming to 411mania.com on a Wednesday to see if everyone agrees with my opinion of last night's ECW show(I have to form my own opinion since you never tell me what to think about this) only to find the critically acclaimed(Matthew Craggs calls it "wildly entertaining" in the recent Fact or Fiction) Doctor in the Hallway News Report fresh and ready for my consumption. What have I done to deserve such bliss?"
Well, you've done nothing. I've just moved to Wednesday. The change in times will benefit the both of us, however. For example, I will no longer find myself having to hustle to get the column together on a Friday night so I can get my drinking started early enough to bolster my confidence for the karaoke challenge at my local tavern. At the same time, you are no longer subjected to having to read a column that was rushed together for such reasons.
Instead, the news will be more lovingly picked through and the puns more hand-crafted than ever before. Why? Because all of my friends are old, married, and don't go out on Tuesday nights.
So here, in my spankin' new timeslot, is the news.
Eventually, Brad Pitt will get tired of winning.
Photos of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt were reportedly sold to People magazine for $4 million, but pictures of Suri Cruise produced not more than a $3 million bid. As a result of this, parents Tom and Katie have withdrawn Suri's name from the "parents lying down with their baby on the cover of a celebrity-themed magazine in the check-out aisle in my local grocery store" sweepstakes. (source: IMDB)
How does the recently-crowned "most powerful man in Hollywood" not get a commanding sum of money to boost his already-inflated ego for the pictures of his precious little bundle of joy? This has to be Scientology's biggest failure since Battlefield Earth.
Venomous
The Spider-Man 3 teaser hit the interweb Tuesday afternoon. Click here to check it out. I officially can no longer pretend that Venom will somehow not be in this movie.
I thought that Sam Raimi would resist and whatever hack got assigned the franchise when Raimi left would drag my least favorite villain out. Alas, it is not to be.
Don't hate the player, hate the millions of mid-90's idiots who made me a star!
The big question is "where shall I concentrate my denial now?" What's that? Soundwave is going to be a helicopter in the upcoming Transformers movie? Not in my world. In my world, he's gonna be a cassette deck with a smart-mouthed sidekick named rumble that ejects from his chest. Ahhh, that's some good denial.
Order of the Phoenix, eh?
Someone, nay, two someones are going to die in the last Harry Potter book. J.K. Rowling has said so herself, "The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly," she said, "One character got a reprieve, but I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die." The interview was conducted by Britain's Channel 4. (source: Dark Horizons)
In the interview, Rowling also discusses the temptation to kill of Harry himself. This, to me, means that Harry is the one who gets the "reprieve." This is, though, coming from someone who's read none of the books and only seen one of the movies. My predictions may go against the common sense of people more familiar with the story.
Everyone has been speculating that these books, and therefore the movies, will end in the death of the title character. Now readers are being teased with two deaths in the final installment. The whole thing feels like comic book hype. The cover reads "...and one shall DIE!" So you pick it up only to find out that the character that was killed off isn't nearly so big as you'd thought. Maybe the death was even only temporary. I tell you all of this to make one thing clear:
I'm onto your game, J.K. Rowling.
…and I feel fine
Terry Gilliam will direct a move based on the outstanding novel Good Omens, which I just finished reading a couple of weeks ago. Says Gilliam of the upcoming project: "I have struggled to find big projects that inspire me, but this book has. It's very funny, about the anti-Christ and devils and angels, it's very funny and inspiring."
The book is funny. And it does have angels and demons. It also has bumbling satanic nuns that misplace the anti-Christ and put the apocalypse in danger of not happening properly. Good stuff, yeah? I mean, how often do I get to use the word "bumbling"?
It'll be refreshing to see the End of the World treated as light fare in movies. It's normally shown to us in ham-fisted action movies where only Arnold Schwarzenegger or a hot and self-assured nun could protect us from certain doom. There are normally explosions, poor acting, and no humor.
Good Omens is an End of the World I can get into.
Redefining P.D.A.
Orlando Bloom and real-life main squeeze Kate Bosworth will star opposite one another in Seasons of Dust. The depression-era drama will find Bosworths "troubled girl on the run" trying to stay ahead of pursuers along with Bloom's "dashing crook on the lam." (source: Production Weekly)
We're so gonna make out on film. Jealous?
I love it when real-life couples get paired up on the screen. I can play a rousing game of "will they try too hard to act?" You know the deal, a real life couple is so determined to show what kind of on-screen chemistry they can generate, they completely forget that they're actually having sex with each other off-screen and therefore fail to use that in their acting. Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman are Far and Away the best example of when this happens(see what I did there?). Then again, everyone has a theory about that...
(Teen) Angst for the memories
20th Century Fox has picked up the rights to a movie based on a young adult novel called Uglies. The futuristic story is one of those thinly veiled conformity stories, where kids are called "uglies" until they turn 16-years-old. The "uglies" are then surgically transformed into pretties and get to move to the nice part of town. Uglies follows the adventures of a teen who is threatened to have the procedure withheld unless she acts as a spy against a friend of hers who skipped the procedure and joined a group of rebels. (Source: Variety)
That's right, folks. You're only unattractive because you choose to be different. No one is ever treated like they're ugly because they lost the genetic coin flip. It's because they choose not to conform to the popular kids' version of beauty. It's only those who submit to society's standards as dictated by the group of girls who sit at the cool table in the cafeteria who are able to advance socially. Jeez, Mean Girls was less sublte.
No wonder this series(there are three books, which were all optioned in case a franchise was needed) is so high on the best-seller list. It's the book that I would have written in middle school(and, sadly, a good piece into high school) if I hadn't been too busy writing awful songs about being repressed by conformity. Good times.
…with his faithful companion Igor…
Gerard Butler is a go to star in the still another comic book adaptation: Priest, which will be directed by Andrew Douglas. Billed as a genre-mixing Vampire-Western, the book is about a warrior priest who goes against his church and teams with a sheriff to hunt down some vampires who kidnapped niece. (source: Variety)
I just don't understand why people seem so intent on mixing vampires and westerns. It can never fully work. I mean, there's tons of potential here for a fun action flick, but the Vampire-Western genre will never come to its full realization. Why? Vampires simply cannot have a gunfight at high noon. End of story, right there. You can make the vampires immune to the sun, but that takes away from them being vampires. You can come up with a lame deal like an eclipse, but that keeps it from really being high noon. Sorry, kids, but you're far better off getting to work on the great American Zombie-Western.
At least now you should be able to see the view
Star Jones made her last appearance on The View Tuesday morning, finalizing her attempts to get away from Rosie O'Donnell. O'Donnell had been on Jones' bad side ever since she blasted Jones for not being perfectly clear about how she lost roughly one bajillion pounds. O'Donnell and Jones will likely not be on the show at the same time ever, avoiding the first celebrity catfight in history that absolutely no one would have ever wanted to watch for any reason. Ever.
vs
Yeah, so…whatever happened to those Miller Lite girls?
It's like asking Hammer how to invest your money
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell have signed a first-look producing contract with Paramount Vantage and will be looking for "high concept comedies" to produce. (source: Ain't it Cool News)
While for some of you asking the team that brought us Anchorman to deliver us "high concept" anything is like asking Keanu for "high quality" acting, I think we might get some gold out of this. After all, those guys know funny. Maybe they'd just like their funny to climb part-way out of hole that Nacho Libre dug.
Some day, I too shall be pampered
For those of you who feel like you're Fred Astaire-like dance moves have been entirely unrecognized, Yahoo! is sponsoring a contest where you can video tape yourself dancing to a Jessica Simpson song for the honor(is that the right word?) of being in her next video. Now before you turn your nose up at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, just remember how good backup dancers have it. Right, Kevin Federline?
If Brit can be a sugar momma, so can I. Let's go make our version of Chaotic, baby
This week's SNAKES ON A PLANE hype!
Did someone say trailer? That's what I'm talking about! While the trailer doesn't really carry the tone of awesomeness that comes with the title of the movie the way the teaser did, it does deliver some footage of the snakes that will be on board the plane. So there's that. Click here to check it out.
That'll do it for this week…
Oh my Lord, this was a long one. If you kept up until the end, you're a real trooper. Or your job is really boring. I could see either one being the case. Do yourself a favor and blow off Superman in favor of Strangers With Candy if you can. Superman will still be there in two weeks, don't worry. On the plus side, you can even watch it without hearing someone's continuity policing. That guy will have seen it 3 times and be done with it by then. Trust me.
Enjoy the rest of the week, and don't do anything I wouldn't do.
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