All About Steve Tagged Articles at Cinematical

With the summer crashing in a fiery heap this weekend, burning away all memories of blockbusters like leaves curling in a bonfire, it's time to bid adieu to the most popular season of the movie year and turn our attention to the fall, the season of festivals and award-worthy cinema. It's already begun, of course. Eugene Novikov has been sending in fine reports from the Telluride Film Festival, which is the unofficial starting point of the race for next year's Oscars, the Venice Film Festival is in full swing, and the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off on Thursday.

Before we get out a tissue, we ask that you share with us how you spent your Labor Day weekend. Via Twitter, I know many film fans were celebrating the start of the college football season (Texas and USC romped, Oklahoma got upset, and Ohio State narrowly escaped), and some people were rooting for their division-leading baseball teams, while "family" types were spending time with their loved ones, playing and basking in the warm sun, grilling burgers, or building a closet bookcase to house hundreds of DVDs and finally get them out of moving boxes (which is what I did).

What about the movies, though? Did you bravely venture into Gamer (William Goss had a mixed reaction) or All About Steve (Jeffrey M. Anderson was disappointed)? Or did you try Extract (Jette Kernion didn't love it as unreservedly as I did, but still thought it was "much funnier and more fearless" than other grown-up comedies she's seen this year)? Or catch up with one or two indie or other limited releases? Or watch DVDs? Take our poll and let us know!

Sandra Bullock may yet be one of our great living movie stars, capable of stealing just about any scene from any other actor. If only she could just find her place. Her role as the woman who winds up driving the bus in Speed was the breakout performance of a lifetime. In one scene, the bus approaches a lady crossing the street pushing a baby carriage. There's nothing anyone can do, so Sandra just screams and covers her eyes. The baby carriage goes flying, and -- not a baby -- but empty cans go flying and rattling all over, with the angry woman shaking her fist at the departing bus. Keanu Reeves tries to calm Sandra down by explaining that it was just cans. Her hysteria lasts a few more seconds, but it's so over-the-top utterly charming that Keanu can't help but smile at her. I've always suspected that that was a genuine smile from Keanu, not in character, and that director Jan de Bont just left it in.

After that she starred in While You Were Sleeping (1995), an above average Hollywood romantic comedy that made a nice profit. From there Bullock found herself locked in a struggle with her own career. She was perfect for romantic comedy, and whenever she made one, it was a hit, up to and including this past summer's The Proposal. The trouble is, it seems, that Bullock doesn't really want to make romantic comedies, but whenever she tries anything else -- like her great performance as Harper Lee in Infamous (2006) -- no one notices. She even became her own producer several years back in an effort to grab the steering wheel of her own career, but she's wrestling with a much older problem. It's called typecasting. Nobody ever wanted to see Charlie Chaplin make serious movies, nor did anyone ever want to see John Wayne play meek and mild-mannered.

Last week's scream-off finished with the new Final Destination flick beating out Rob Zombie's Halloween sequel by about $11 million. Here's the top five:

1. The Final Destination: $27.4 million
2. Inglourious Basterds: $19.3 million
3. Halloween II: $16.3 million
4. District 9: $10.3 million
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: $7.7 million

Three new releases this week, two looking for laughs and another providing futuristic thrills.

All About Steve
What's It All About: Sandra Bullock stars as a love-struck crossword puzzle designer who falls obsessively in love with with a news camera man played by Bradley Cooper.
Why It Might Do Well: The film gets points for having Thomas Haden Church in the cast.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I'm sorry, but this looks just dreadful.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $12 million

Extract
What's It All About: Jason Bateman plays the owner of a flower extract plant whose life begins going to hell when an injured employee sues the company.
Why It Might Do Well: Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space is behind the camera. Bateman is joined by Ben Affleck (who still rocks despite some career killing over exposure) and the lovely Mila Kunis.
Why It Might Not Do Well: People seem to either love or hate Judge's Idiocracy. Might this new film have the same polarizing effect?
Number of Theaters: 1,600
Prediction: $8 million

Ah, another week, another jumble to the calendar -- specifically, to 20th Century Fox's release slate.

According to Box Office Mojo, the studio has moved The Tooth Fairy back from November 13th to next January (because where else are you going to stick a Dwayne-Johnson-as-hockey-player-as-tooth-fairy outing?), and Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox has moved back a week from 11/6 to 11/13 as their choice contender for the family dollar. This now places it right after Disney and Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol (really, the first week of November?) and just before Warners' Cats & Dogs sequel (really, the second movie of Cats & Dogs?).

I'm not sure how much Johnson's recent Race to Witch Mountain cost, but I can't help but think that he'd like to outperform that film's good-not-great $60-ish million gross, and January could be just the grounds to do that in. (Paul Blart: Mall Cop opened within a week of the proposed new date and has raked in... almost $144 million? Yep, over $140 million.) Mr. Fox, on the other hand, is a mainstream proving ground for the ever-quirky Anderson, and with a voice cast that includes George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Anjelica Huston, let's hope it has reason to top the $28 million gross of that last animated adaptation of a Roald Dahl book, 1996's James and the Giant Peach.

But of course, none of that matters, because the real news is that Sandra Bullock's apparent psychological thriller rom-com All About Steve has found itself a home on September 4th. Sure, it's a little early in the awards season to stake a claim, but I'll leave the for-your-consideration campaign in their hands...

When I first wrote up the trailer for The Haunting in Connecticut back in October, I made the following prediction: "In fact, I'm willing to bet that it'll land somewhere between next Feburary... and maybe next April, before hitting DVD just in time for Halloween renters to settle for anything vaguely supernatural on the 'new release' wall." Well, as sure as Virginia Madsen shrieks, Lionsgate has moved the film up from a summer release to a March 27th bow -- probably wise, given the genre's less-than-successful streak with that particular season.

The fairly reliable Box Office Mojo also confirms that Sandra Bullock's own shriek-worthy rom-com All About Steve has now been bumped from its slot opposite Watchmen to the ominous "Fall 2009". Maybe Fox'll put that Watchmen settlement dough to good use and market that instead as a horror film -- forget Saw; if it's Halloween, it must be Sandra!

Hey, one can dream.

It appears that the only way for Sandra Bullock to make us grateful for her merely tepid rom-com fare (see: the trailer for this summer's The Proposal) was to offer something worse in comparison. As such, here's a trailer (watch below or over on Yahoo) for this spring's All About Steve, in which her bumbling Mary falls for eponymous cameraman Bradley Cooper -- despite indications that his interests fall elsewhere.

What Steve doesn't seem to understand is that Mary appears to be... um, well, how you say, special.

By which I mean mentally deficient.

Oh, how she loves her red boots and drives through hurricanes after one-night stands and snickers at her own jokes and has hair like a Pomeranian and splits Moon Pies with strangers and falls down gaping holes in the ground while anchor Thomas Haden Church reports nearby -- isn't that all just melon-farmin' adorable?!? No wonder this puppy's attached to Bride Wars this weekend.

Oh, wait -- I'm actually being informed that her character is merely 'quirky' and 'eccentric'. Go figure.

All About Steve (which has no discernable connection to Fox's own 1950 classic, All About Eve) is opening on March 6th, 2009, and I suddenly understand why the studio is so desperate to get Watchmen bumped back.

If there is a woman (other than Julia Roberts, of course) who has traversed most of the romcom actors in the world, it's Sandra Bullock. She's been romantically linked on-screen with men who include Tate Donovan, Keanu Reeves, Bill Pullman, Chris O'Donnell and Benjamin Bratt. If current talks for her upcoming comedy All About Steve continue as planned, her next cinematic interest will be none other than Thomas Haden Church. Erik Davis last told us about Bullock signing to the stalker comedy back in April. The flick follows Bullock who goes nuts stalking a CNN cameraman after one date, positive that he's her true love. She then follows him across the U.S., ultimately failing to lure him in (duh) but finding a "band of misfits who appreciate her for who she is."

Alright, now I get strange attractions. I've been teased a number of times for my taste in leading men. People think I was crazy for always getting distracted by Gary Oldman's screaming Wanted poster in Harry Potter, and very few understand my attraction to Christopher Walken. I get it. But when and how on earth did Thomas Hayden Church become a leading man? Seriously. We're not talking about a case where some people happen to find him attractive, we're talking about his roles that cast him as a luscious piece of meat to the female sex. Just yesterday, I was watching Sideways and I just didn't get it -- especially during the hotel sex scene. So now he's going to be the guy that makes Bullock go crazy with lust and love. Am I missing something?

Though we already told you about Sandra Bullock's quest to stalk a cameraman in the new romantic comedy All About Steve, her participation was not set in stone. However, now it is, and the Hollywood Reporter tells us newbie director Phil Traill has signed on to direct. This will mark Traill's directorial debut; the guy first made a name for himself after his two short films, Flipped and Dangle, won Europe's Cinema Jove award in 2002 and 2003. Though I haven't had a chance to check out his shorts, they must have been pretty damn special for him to land this gig. Sandra Bullock is still hot, right? And I don't mean hot as in "Holy crap, that girl is, like, totally hot!" I mean, "That Sandra Bullock -- her films are hot!" Wait ... then again, I'm not sure what I mean.

Anyway, Bullock (who likes to go between awkward thriller and romantic comedy as if she was trying to decide which pair of underwear to throw on in the morning) will star as a woman obsessed with crossword puzzles and equally obsessed with a CNN cameraman. After going on one date together, she gets it in her head that the two are meant for one another, and begins to follow the dude all over the country in an effort to prove she's a) completely nuts and b) perfect marriage material. Yeah, so it's like a romantic comedy ... for stalkers. Which is always a nice thing to watch on a rainy Friday night alongside the person you're thinking about breaking up with. No word yet on a co-star or release date; Fox 2000 will distribute.

If there's one person I wouldn't mind following me around day in and day out, it's the beautiful Sandra Bullock. Heck, what's better than going up to your friends and saying, "Hey everyone, this is my stalker Sandra Bullock. Sandra, this is everyone." In what has to be one of her more bizarre roles, Fox 2000 has picked up the spec script All About Steve, with intentions to have Bullock play the leading role.

Written by Kim Barker, the broad comedy revolves around a "brilliant but eccentric crossword-puzzler" who stalks a TV cameraman across the country. A TV cameraman? That's sort of an odd person to form an obsession around. Most of the cameramen I've run into are quite large, have big guts, wear a lot of hats and never shave. Of course, since this is a movie, I imagine they'll get someone like Matthew McConaughey to play the hottest TV cameraman in existence, while they'll dirty Bullock up a bit (maybe go with a Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich look) and then throw in a moment where she takes off her glasses and realizes she's beautiful on the outside, as well as on the inside. Oh, and somehow crossword puzzles will fit in to the story.

Here's a puzzle for ya: How would one describe Bullock's last few films? Four letters down, starts with 'C' and ends with 'P'?