Comedy »

The Fright Night remake is back on. Back in January, we learned that the project had been halted when they couldn't come up with a good script. Ten months later, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Marti Noxon (executive producer and writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has been hired to rewrite the horror comedy, trading one set of vamps for another.

While Joss Whedon is facing cancellation, Marti Noxon is going strong. The vampire slayer marked Noxon's big break in the biz, and since helping run the show, she's had her hand in a slew of series from Prison Break to Mad Men. This will be her first big cinematic gig, her lone movie credit to this point being the 1998 film Just a Little Harmless Sex. But what will it all mean for a redo of Fright Night, where a kid finds out that a vampire lives next door?

Noxon kicked off her Buffy writing penning the "What's My Line" duo, the terrible "Bad Eggs," and the sex that turned Angel evil. From there, most of her writing gigs were mainly toss-off eps, with occasional perks in episodes like "I Only Have Eyes For You" and "The Prom." In other words: I'm not so sure what to make of this, other than the fact that her strongest writing seems to be linked to big interpersonal moments, which do not make for the best vamp comedy. Thoughts?

Indie movie lovers of the greater Los Angeles area, take note of a wonderful gem from this year's SXSW festival that's coming your way. Make-Out with Violence is an angsty teenage zombie horror comedy that I caught last year at the Oxford Film Festival, and tonight – November 12 – it screens in Los Angeles. For free!

Ok, technically it's screening in Alhambra. But this one-night only engagement will likely be your only chance to see the underappreciated indie film that our own Scott Weinberg called "pretty damn good" – and if I may add my own endorsement, Make-Out with Violence is original and gorgeously shot, a great alternative to mainstream (i.e. made with way more money) films about either teenage life or zombies. The best part? Make-Out with Violence is about both of those things. (It's also got the most attractive zombie hottie of the year, with apologies to Zombieland's Amber Heard.)

Sometimes there's a down side to being considered a comedic genius. Right now in the world of TV comedy, Tina Fey and Steve Carell are the 'Prom Queen and King', and with all that popularity comes the price of raised expectations. The couples comedy Date Night, starring Fey and Carell as a married couple looking to spice up their romance, was bound to be scrutinized. So now that the first trailer has arrived (via Apple), reactions have been mixed. But I think there's hope for this film, if for no other reason than the fact that Fey and Carell are some of the most talented comedians working right now (although I'm still holding out for Fey to start writing some more movies of her own).

Date Night was directed by Shawn Levy (of Night at The Museum fame) and written by Josh Klausner, who only has a couple of credits as a writer (mainly for Shrek films). But Klausner has also worked with the Farrelly brothers, so he must know his way around a joke, right? I guess that's why I'm willing to give Date Night the benefit of the doubt, because on paper, all the elements are there for a good comedy -- the least of which is a strong supporting cast of funny folks like James Franco, Mila Kunis, Jason Segel, and Kristen Wiig. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but the film has also yet to be rated, so there's always a chance the funnier bits weren't 'ready for prime time'.

So watch the trailer and tell me what you think. Am I just kidding myself, or is there a chance that Date Night will surprise us all and turn out to be a pretty funny flick?

Watch the trailer after the jump...

Jason Reitman, whose next film Up in the Air comes out on December 4th, posted a very funny image on Twitter recently – a pie chart detailing the different things that people have asked him in recent interviews. The top three were about George Clooney (111 people), the economy (96 people), and his next project (78 people). The fourth is a little more confusing, as it just reads "Real People," so apparently 77 people asked him about real people. Maybe they wanted to know if the people being laid off in the movie were real people? Who's to say what goes through the murky depths of the mind of a journalist?



I humbly ask Jason Reitman to make a pie chart of his answers. Here's what I picture it to look like.

111 people: "Clooney is such a prankster! But he's also a great serious actor. He's the Cary Grant of our times. Sometimes we have moustache contests."

96 people: "The economy sucks. Seriously though, I've never been laid off, but if I had to be laid off, I'd hope George Clooney would do it."

78 people: "My next project will be with George Clooney. Actually, it will be catching up on all the sleep I lost talking to you people and answering the same damn questions over and over again."

In one jpeg, Reitman manages to sum up the exhausting paces that filmmakers, actors, musicians, et al are put through to get their names and faces and projects out there, the laziness of some journalists, and the terror that faces every journalist that wants to be good at what they do and engender an interesting discussion that is hopefully pleasant and/or illuminating (but at the very least not boring) for everyone involved, including the reader.

If you could ask Jason Reitman anything, what would it be?

Click on the image below to view full poster

Cinematical has just received the official poster for Matthew Broderick's sharpie-smiled Wonderful World. It's been a good two years since the actor signed on to the project, which was then simply described as a movie that "centers on a depressed, divorced, and unemployed father who finds solace in his Senegalese roommate's sister." That now sounds as telling of the story as saying The Lord of the Rings is about a journey to play a fiery game of ring toss.

The directorial debut of writer Joshua Goldin, this feature also marks a reunion with Broderick, who starred in his 1992 script, Out on a Limb. But this flick sounds like it will be even further out on that limb, making Broderick's stint in Election sound like your Average Joe kinda day:

"A pessimistic pothead struggles with his own cynicism after his Senegalese roommate is stricken ill and an insensitive municipal employee inadvertently exacerbates an already desperate situation. Ben Singer (Matthew Broderick) wanted to be a children's folk singer; instead he's become a career proofreader and the world's worst weekend dad. But while Ben's life may be a mess, at least his regular chess games with his roommate Ibou offer some amount of intellectual release. That all changes with Ibou falls mysteriously ill, and his malady is compounded by the indifference of a rude municipal employee. Convinced that his negative worldview has finally been confirmed, Ben channels all of his energy into a frivolous lawsuit against the city before discovering that his misanthropy may be a simple matter of perspective."

Chess, folk singing, Senegalese roomies, proofreading ... I'm getting the funny feeling that there's a lot going on behind that piece of yellow-lined paper, and I'm dying to see it. In one of those VOD-before-theater marketing pushes, Magnolia's Wonderful World will be available on VOD starting December 4, and then have a stint in theaters in the New Year, on January 8.

Check out the full poster in the gallery below.

I know the demographic who watches all of the American Pie Presents films is quite narrow, but when I came across the trailer for American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, I had to step back and give them a bit of a golf clap. Who would have ever thought that a little high school sex comedy from 1999 would go on to spawn two theatrical sequels and four straight-to-video titles? Were there any among us who saw Jason Biggs get intimate with an apple pie and thought, "My God, there needs to be seven of these movies"?

Yet here we are with the trailer for The Book of Love, the seventh entrant to the canon of Pie. And in case you're not a die hard fan of the last three films, they were a trip to Band Camp, a lap running The Naked Mile, and a Beta House whose crowning accomplishment was playing a game of rugby against some aggressive midgets. While the makers of those all found various tie-ins to the original films, mainly through the lineage of Stiffler, the biggest thread tying the franchise together has been Eugene Levy, and Book of Love shows no intention of letting him out of his seemingly eternal contract as Jim's Dad.

This time around, the male populace of East Great Falls High have once again stumbled upon the Bible hidden in the school's library, which you'll recall is the sex guide Casey Affleck gifted to the gentlemen of the first film. Only the book gets ruined in a freak accident, causing the amorous youngsters to track down the Bible's original creator in an attempt to recreate all of the sexual secrets contained therein.

Note: as should be expected from a sex comedy, the following trailer is not work place friendly:

Well, it's November, which means the awards contenders are steadily coming out of the woodwork, and just as we have the Academy Awards to look forward to, we also have their fine print to tolerate. The first of this year's disqualifications naturally come from the music end of things, the same category that didn't see fit to honor the tremendous original scores composed for The Dark Knight last year and There Will Be Blood the year before that.

According to Kris Tapley over at In Contention, both "Up in the Air" and "Help Yourself" from Jason Reitman's Up in the Air have been pulled out of the Best Original Song race. The former was written by Kevin Renick before he met Reitman (the song is presented in the film as it was presented to the filmmaker, with homemade introduction and all), not to mention that it comes halfway into the credits when only the first song over them can qualify. (Really, AMPAS?)

And a portion of the latter had existed earlier in Sad Brad Smith's career and thus means the song itself was not created in full for the film. It's an earnest and catchy tune, used prominently in the trailers and well in the film (and now available on iTunes, cough), but it now looks like those are two more slots left to be dominated by Disney's latest...

Get a few chuckles with a skit, and soon it will become a film. If you're a fan of the BET Awards, you should be familiar with Sheneneh and Wanda. The two made up the super-stylishly named bank-robbing team Skank Robbers, a faux trailer parody (after the jump) that aired during the awards, played by Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx respectively. This skit got enough laughs that it wasn't only deemed successful, but also cinematic -- Variety reports that the pair have decided to turn the brief concept into a film, a la Machete.

Sheneneh and Wanda, two characters dreamed up during the comedians' stand-up days, will be "modern-day independent women trying to make it on their own, one bank robbery at a time." The pair have been wanting to star in a movie together for a while, so this is their big shot -- one that Foxx is writing and Screen Gems is fast-tracking. ...This is it?

Granted, I'm not some old-school Sheneneh fan, but what exactly is it about this pair that makes them worthy not only of a feature film, but also being fast-tracked? Hasn't Hollywood already gotten enough comedians cross-dressing? Don't these men have something better to do than ... this? And if now is the time to bring In Living Color to the big screen, oh, the other characters I would pick.

MacGruber, Sheneneh, Wanda ... what skit is next?

Would you want your children to know you were the real-life inspiration for a famous tale of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Fast Times at Ridgemont High holds up as a heady brew of authentic teen life in the late 70s / early 80s, mixed with a fine sense of the absurd and served up by an amazing cast. It's definitely a teen sex comedy that DOESN'T suck. The movie's 25th anniversary two years ago inspired plenty of "Where Are They Now" recollections; our own Erik Davis offered his observations on an eye-opening gallery of "then and now" images for the cast.

Before the movie, however, there was the book, and before the book, there were the real-life students of Clairemont High School in San Diego, California. Cameron Crowe, then 22, went undercover at the school in 1979 to research a book on teen life. He'd graduated from another area school in 1972 -- at the age of 15! -- and was busy writing for Rolling Stone (as documented in Almost Famous), so he took a refresher course by soaking in the atmosphere at the school. Recently the class held its 30-year reunion and it turns out that some of those students have become very protective parents, according to a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

One graduate won't let his 15-year-old son watch the movie: "We are not going to show it to him until he's in college." The former class president says she finally allowed her daughter, a senior at the school, to read Crowe's book but isn't ready yet to allow her to see the flick, though she admits that it accurately portrayed the sex and drug activity among teens at the time.