Chris Marquette Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Okay, whatever, so the Fanboys premiere is, like, soooo last week, but a friend just pointed me toward this pretty cool video from the evening and I thought you folks might want to check it out. Very rarely do I wish to be in Los Angeles (as someone who grew up in NYC, I'm afraid I'd literally melt if I spent too much time over there), but this premiere -- with its stormtroopers, Jedi knights and good vibes -- looked like a whole lotta fun. And as someone who's followed the uncomfortable three-or-so-year journey this film has taken on its way to the big screen, watching video of the actual premiere was pretty neat.

Our peeps over at Gen Art hosted the premiere, post-screening Q&A and after party, and you'll be able to check out brief snippets of it all below. On hand were Fanboys director Kyle Newman, his lovely wife Jaime King, Sam Huntington, Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell and Chris Marquette. And since you're probably wondering when Fanboys will be arriving in a city near you (it's currently screening in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin), then I'm happy to say that on February 20 the film will be expanding to Boston, Washington DC, Detroit, Atlanta, Denver, New Haven, Orlando, Phoenix, Columbus, OH and Raleigh , NC. So keep and eye out, fanboys (and girls).


Fanboys premiere hosted by Gen Art & The Weinstein Company from Gen Art Film on Vimeo.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Fanboys (which I can safely say is a film we've all been waiting a long time to see), along with a handful of brand spanking new images. Luckily Mr. Weinberg and myself managed to catch a screening of the flick back in July during Comic Con and I'm happy to say Fanboys is a funny, heartwarming geeky trip full of countless movie references (most of them Star Wars related) and plenty of memorable quotes. Oh, and did I mention Kristen Bell in a Slave Leia costume? Yes sir. (And you can see two pics of her as Slave Leia in the gallery below.)

For those of you who've been living on the Death Star for the past couple years, Fanboys tells of a group of friends who, prior to the release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, decide to drive across country and break into Skywalker Ranch in an attempt to show their friend the film before he dies of cancer. Fanboys stars Dan Fogler (in his funniest role by far), Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Chris Marquette, Sam Huntington and more cameos than you know what to do with (let's just say Seth Rogen plays two roles). As of right this very second, it looks like we'll finally be able to catch Fanboys in theaters on February 6, 2009.

Click below for a larger image of the poster and below that to enter our gallery of exclusive new photos.

Remember these tots, Tia and Tony? In 1975, they made an Escape to Witch Mountain to get away from a money-hungry millionaire. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that both Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann will be returning for Disney's reimagining, Race to Witch Mountain. Of course, they're a little too old to play Tia and Tony, so that job is for AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig. Instead, Richards will play "a waitress at a roadhouse called Rays, in a town called Stony Creek," while Eisenmann plays a sheriff.

Also added to the cast are Tom Everett Scott (Because I Said So), Chris Marquette (Fanboys), Billy Brown (Cloverfield), and Cheech Marin. The first three roles are all sorts of special -- Scott plays a medical specialist, Marquette plays a computer specialist, and Brown plays a military specialist working for the bad guy. Cheech, meanwhile, is a helpful mechanic.

There's nowhere, however, to race right yet. The film is getting released next Spring.

Spring isn't just a time when things finally get sunny, warm, and bright, prying away the last grips of winter. It's also school crunch time and the countdown for graduation. For many, both in real life and on-screen, that means exams and then the final hurrah of drinking and teen shenanigans. For a select few, it means a time of crime in Mike Mayer's upcoming indie flick Graduation, which has been picked up by Truly Indie and Magnolia Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Although it may be a low-buzz indie film, there's one name that grabbed me immediately, and a few others that make this worthy of a little attention. The ever-awesome Huey Lewis plays one of the dads, along with Adam Arkin, and the young cast includes Shannon Lucio from The O.C., Riley Smith from Freaks and Geeks, Chris Marquette from The Education of Charlie Banks, Chris Lowell from Veronica Mars, and Aimee Garcia from Spanglish. Heck, I'm just happy to see Lowell in a role where he doesn't get called "Piz."

Though most probably know him as "that guy in the background who always looks familiar," Christopher Marquette is finally getting top billing; the Hollywood Reporter tells us that he's just signed on to star in a new horror-comedy from writer-director Kyle Rankin called Infestation. For those who obsessed over the HBO show Project Greenlight before it moved over to Bravo (why is everyone looking at me?), you might remember Rankin as one-half of the directing team that took on The Battle of Shaker Heights. However, what you might not know about Rankin (and his disappearing partner-in-crime Efram Potelle) is that prior to Shaker Heights (and after), the two wrote and directed a couple of very cool shorts -- one of which is eerily similar to this new flick announced today.

They're calling this one 28 Days Later meets Shaun of the Dead, as it centers on some office schlub (Marquette) who wakes up to find himself wrapped in webbing and cocooned to the wall of his office. After realizing that giant insects have begun to take over the world, our hero must band together with a "ragtag group of strangers" to fight for their survival. Back in 2003, Rankin and Potelle directed a very awesome short called They Came to Attack Us; in that pic, some stoner dude is told that he must keep a valuable orb and protect it from the aliens that are invading. Since Cinematical is all about giving you more bang for your buck, you can check out that short here. Heavy Duty Entertainment is producing Infestation along with Icon Prods., who are also handling worldwide distribution. Personally, I think the idea sounds pretty fun, and Marquette proved he can pull off comedy fairly well when he played Ryan Reynolds' perverted little brother in Just Friends. Sure, the bar is set pretty high when you compare a project to Shaun of the Dead, but the comparison alone has me extremely interested. How about you?

Well, for you fanboys out there, this could be the moment you've been waiting for. That's right, the first official Fanboys trailer has finally hit the net and, honestly, I'm more than a little underwhelmed. Dare I say The Force is not very strong with this one? Before I continue, Fanboys (in case you did not know) is a film about a bunch of Star Wars geeks who attempt to pull off what appears to be an impossible mission: Sneak into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch and swipe a copy of Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (before it comes out in theaters) to honor the final wish of a dying friend.

As far as cast goes, we have a bunch of "Yeah, I think I've seen that dude somewhere" type, including Sam Huntington (Superman Returns), Dan Fogler (School for Scoundrels), Chris Marquette (Just Friends) and Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars). Granted, I'm not a fanboy, have never dressed up as a Storm Trooper just for the hell of it, attended one of them fan conventions or lived my life according to Yoda's teachings. So, perhaps, this is why the trailer (which reminded me of Road Trip, except with a slew of Star Wars references) did not dazzle me. However, the part when they clash with a bunch of Star Trek fans did make me chuckle just a little bit.

What do you Fanboys think? Am I coming down a bit too hard on the flick? Do you think it has potential?

Casting for the upcoming Revenge of the Nerds remake (or re-imagining) is heating up, and we now know who will be playing the main nerds. IESB reports Chris Marquette, Dan Byrd, and Efren Ramirez have signed on as members are the Lamda Lamda Lamda fraternity, with Marquette and Byrd playing the lead roles. They also tell us Kristin Cavallari will be joining Katie Cassidy as Kailey, best friends and sisters in the Pi Delta Pi sorority.

This marks Marquette's second time working with director Kyle Newman, as the two also paired up on Fanboys. He'll be taking on the part of Max Foster, lead nerd. Byrd will play his sidekick, Owen DiMarco (aka "horn dog"), the kind of guy who majors in women's studies. Not surprisingly, Ramirez will portray a foreign exchange student (a la Napoleon Dynamite) named Santiago. In a recent interview with Coming Soon, Ramirez noted his accent will be "quite like Mr. Deeds' John Turturro with the personality of Raul Julia in The Addams Family." Okay, that sounds a bit bizarre ... but I dig it. When asked whether any of the nerds will be based off characters from the original film, Ramirez replied, "They're all new."

So, what do you think about the new cast? Any chances they'll screw it up?

As I'm sure you all remember, late last year Fred Durst told MTV about his rather impressive cinematic ambitions. And I quote: "I want to be beside Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola. I'm a real director." Make no mistake about it, haters, Durst has big plans. And now, finally, The Education of Charlie Banks, Durst's long-discussed feature debut, is going ahead. The movie, which has a budget of about $10 million, was written by Peter Elkoff, and revolves around "a Vassar College [Holla!] student who gets an unannounced visit from the scariest kid from his old New York neighborhood." (What Vassar has to do with it is anyone's guess, but I'm preparing to be offended.)

Durst has scored a surprisingly solid young cast for his film, including Jesse Eisenberg (the big brother from The Squid and the Whale), who will play Banks, and two of the shockingly talented male leads from Joan of Arcadia, Jason Ritter and Chris Marquette. The movie starts filming this June and, with those stars and a $10 million budget, Durst has a great start on that movie career of his. He better not screw it up, dammit.

Because the buzz on her work in the Pulse remake is so damn good, the Weinstein Company is in final negotiations with Kristen Bell to join the cast of Fanboys, in which she'll play a Star Wars maniac. Also in talks to become fanboys are a fleet of other TV "stars," including the incredibly annoying (but undeniably dorky) Jay Baruchel, Chris Marquette (Joan of Arcadia's Adam Rove), and Sam Huntington, who will soon be known to the world as Jimmy Olsen. Already cast in the film is some guy named Dan Fogler, who grabbed the highly-coveted role of "a hot-headed pizza boy."

Despite a largely unproven cast and an inexperienced director (Kyle Newman), the movie's plot is rather charming, albeit in a really geeky way: set in 1999, it's about a group of Star Wars worshipers who decided to honor their dying friend's last wish and take him to George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, where they hope to see the not-yet-released The Phantom Menace in what they consider "its most optimal setting." Sort of cute, right?

The movie starts filming next month in New Mexico.