Christopher Lloyd Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It can be quite disappointing to see a beloved actor pop up in a terrible movie, but I'd say it's worse to see them in a terrible movie with a cast of people who used to be well-known. There's something about the has-been stigma that just hurts. One could excuse away bad movies to behind-the-scenes conflict or the need for cash (I'm looking at you, Michael Caine and Peter O'Toole), but joining a cast list filled with talent who used to be in big films just adds an extra slap.

See, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Tara Reid is making a Last Call, and she'll be joined by names that include Christopher Lloyd, Tom Arnold, Dave Foley, and Clint Howard. Sure, that last guy's career is all about the questionable gigs, but what's said with the rest of the roster? I don't want to say that these guys are has-beens, but thrown together and topped with the cherry skin-toned Reid certainly suggests as much. This is the sort of casting that screams the idea that names who used to be big will help the project's notoriety, without the need to pay the big bucks.

It seems that a couple of horror trailers slipped through the proverbial cracks last week, so let's catch up, shall we? For starters, there's the creepy-kid thriller Orphan, in which Vera Farmiga apparently learns no lessons from Joshua and takes in an unusually mature girl with a knack for fatal shenanigans. We've embedded this and the other two trailers after the jump. Orphan opens on July 24th.

Next up is October's slasher remake, Sorority Row, in which a prank goes wrong and the girls who covered it up start getting picked off one by one. Come to think of it, I guess some kids haven't grown up on I Know What You Did Last Summer by this point, but hey, the tweens tend to turn out in droves for anything Carrie Fisher touches.

Last and certainly not least (probably my personal favorite of the bunch) is Funny or Die's mock trailer for Gobstopper, in which a crazed candy maker (played by a scary-perfect Christopher Lloyd) terrorizes Martha "Superbad" MacIssac and friends. I'm sorry to report that there's no word on domestic distribution yet, because I'm pretty sure that I'd rather sit through a full version of this than either of the two above.

An era is over, and Wadsworth is shouting, shouting, shouting! If you like the classics, you better hold on to your old Clue boards because the BBC reports that the wonderful characters are biting the dust and making way for new, modernized possible murderers. Colonel Mustard is now a football pundit called Jack Mustard. Miss Scarlet is now a movie star called Kasandra Scarlet. Professor Plum is now a video game billionaire called Victor Plum.

This is up on Cinematical because I can't stop imagining how different, and less awesome, the Clue movie would've been if Christopher Lloyd was playing a DS in the corner, if Martin Mull was supposed to be a football dude. It's just wrong. All wrong!

So, in memoriam of a world with libraries, professors, and retro wonder, enjoy this clip of Clue.

With Toy Story (1995), a studio called Pixar blew the lid off of animated movies as we knew them. Thirteen years later, the other studios have yet to even approach that early level of excellence, let alone match the advancements Pixar has made since. Oddly similar to the most recent clunker Space Chimps, the new Fly Me to the Moon looked infinitely more promising in that it was based on an actual idea: the 1969 Apollo 11 mission as seen through the eyes of three stowaway flies -- in 3D! But sadly it proves itself as technically dull and as creatively stifled as Space Chimps as well as nearly every other non-Pixar movie.

After a totally useless, noisy black-and-white prologue, we get a very cool establishing shot. The camera flows smoothly through the back lots behind Cape Canaveral in Florida. It swoops into a patch of dirt and a tangle of weeds, through some bits of discarded junk, to the world where our little flies live (like humans, in little dollhouses). During this and other traveling sequences, the 3D works beautifully, engulfing us comfortably in this tiny world. But as soon as we meet the characters, the movie starts to sputter. In real life, houseflies can zip across the kitchen pretty darn fast relative to their size, but these flies drift lethargically from place to place, and the movie bogs down in their lackadaisical pace.

Flakes is a neighborhood breakfast fantasy -- a funky, retro shop dedicated to cereal. You walk in, pick your crunch of choice, and are instantly served a bowl of cereal that you can enjoy with the quirky members of your community. But it's not all Corn Flakes and Cheerios -- there's a large wall of selections from the new to the old, discontinued, and hard-to-find varieties. It's history in a bowl, served without the capitalist cleanliness.

In a film, there's a number of ways this can play out that could make for a memorable and lovable indie experience. However, while Flakes mixes the worlds of High Fidelity, Reality Bites, Clerks, and Empire Records, it does so without the verve and life that made each of those lovable classics.

Back in 2005, there was a short film called Enfants Terribles. (See the trailer here.) Written and directed by Terry Nemeroff, the black comedy starred Peter Facinelli, Leslie Zemeckis, and the wonderful Christopher Lloyd -- and focused on the uber-cheery themes of incest, murder, and grave robbery. Now MovieWeb reports that the film is getting the feature treatment under the title Thicker, and according to IMDb, it's about a brother and sister who try to steal back an inheritance that their newly-dead mother had buried with her.

All of the actors have returned (with different names), and will join the likes of Jason Lee, who has a lead role, along with Clea DuVall, J.K. Simmons, Peter Stormare, John Turturro, Rachel Miner, Amanda Plummer, Jon Gries, Bobby Cannavale, James LeGros, Frank Whaley, Jon Polito, and Glenn Plummer -- basically, one heck of a supporting cast. Seriously, it's like a who's who of character actors and well-known indie peeps.

At the very least, maybe this will help old-school Lee fans forgive some of his recent work. There's nothing like dark, deadly comedy to wipe away the Underdog. Production begins this May.

Calm down, they aren't filming Back to the Future IV in Manhattan's meat-packing district. But what they are filming there, or were filming a week or so ago anyway, is a music video for an R&B artist named o'Neal McKnight that will feature both Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown and the DeLorean, to boot. Apparently this McKnight guy is a "huge fan" of the BTTF series and was somehow able to talk Lloyd into reprising his character to create a BTTF-themed video for his hit song, "Check Your Coat." Donning the fright-hair and jacket and tool belt for the first time in a long time, Lloyd as Doc Brown encounters McKnight, who is playing a coat-check clerk, and "the duo leap into the past and future, giving McKnight a glimpse into his life and relationship with a beautiful lady whom he meets while at the dance club." BTTF.com has a bunch of photos from the shoot as well as video and a detailed account of the goings on, and it's actually quite interesting to look at.

I'm not all that surprised that Lloyd would don the outfit again, frankly -- he's never struck me as an actor who is a) all that choosy in terms of what he does or b) one who is likely to avoid his most famous creation. In fact, I'd wager that if there were any opportunity at all to continue the adventures of Doc Brown on the big screen, he'd be there in a heartbeat. Never gonna happen, of course. Robert Zemeckis and Co. have said until they're blue in the face that they are not interested in continuing the series -- they would never want to and Universal would never be interested in doing future installments that would have to be sans-Marty. Oh wait ... Zemeckis is Mr. Motion Capture now ... hmmm ... interesting.

[via Moviehole]

Student films must be graded on a curve, and Flakes is basically a student film. If you overlooked the fact that the three leads are all moderately high-profile actors, I'd estimate the budget to be less than twenty thousand dollars. Most of the action takes place in or around the titular establishment, a cereal bar in which slackers and stoners assemble on a daily basis to eat their favorite cereals -- everything from standard fare like Cheerios to rare delicacies like Fruit Brute -- and make of themselves a quirky movie character. The two leads are a boyfriend-girlfriend, Neal Downs (Aaron Stanford) and the improbably named Miss Pussy Katz. (Zooey Deschanel) Their boss at Flakes is a 60-ish hippie played by Christopher Lloyd, and his performance is the biggest thing hindering my plan to give Flakes a better review than it deserves. Lloyd comes from some long forgotten school of acting where naturalism is never as a good a choice as creating a character with such a forced way of speaking that no one could ever mistake them for a human being.

With a movie like this, they base their plot on whatever is on sale at the 'cliched plot device' factory, and it appears that what was on sale that week was 'business is threatened by newer, flashier rival across the street.' A nerdy businessman comes walking into Flakes one day and is impressed by the concept but dispirited by the stoner attitude -- he doesn't get what Flakes is all about, man! -- and determines to open an upscale cereal bar directly across the way which will put Flakes out of business. This causes much tension. Miss Pussy Katz -- I can't believe I keep having to type that -- and her boyfriend have a number of rows over how Flakes should respond to the crisis at hand and the loyal customers alternately declare their loyalty or decamp to the new establishment across the street. As bad as this all sounds, there are a couple of things about Flakes that I really liked, and I'm more than happy to point them out and to remind everyone that this is from the director of Heathers.

If this isn't one of the stranger projects announced this year, featuring one of the stranger casts, then I dare you to top it. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that a live-action Jack and the Beanstalk flick is in the works. Not only that, but it seems Jack discovered a group of way-passed-their-prime actors to star while up there in the sky. Perhaps the Beanstalk is a time machine, because the last time these folks were popular -- well, let's just say it's been awhile. We're talking Katey Sagal, Wallace Shawn, Gilbert Gottfried, Chevy Chase, Christopher Lloyd and James Earl Jones. I swear -- that's the cast! Next thing you know, they'll be trying to dress up Fred Savage so that he can age-down and play Jack.

As it stands right now, James Earl Jones will play the giant (what, did you think they'd make Darth Vader an errand boy?), Segal will play Jack's worrisome mother, Shawn (who I've always found to be one of the most overlooked character actors) will play the dude who sells Jack the beans, Gottfried will somehow become the live-action goose that lays a golden egg and Chase will play the father of a family who gets lost while on their way to Wally World. Yeah, I wish. Actually, he'll have some sort of cameo as a guy in a labyrinth. As of now, Jack has not been cast. Gary DePew will produce; he was also a line producer on Warner Bros.' Hansel and Gretel, and produced Children of the Corn III and Children of the Corn IV. Well, at least all the films have something to do with children. Beanstalk will mark the first of ten low-budget family films that will be produced through DePew's Avalon production company. Looking at this cast, I can only imagine what will come next: Little Red Riding Hood, starring Cyndi Lauper? Heck, I'd see it.

Now don't you go and get too excited -- it's not like the three boys are coming back together for Back to the Future 4. But, as Jim Hill reports, Zemeckis wants to reunite with good friends Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd for the first time since Back to the Future Part III in the recently-announced Christmas Carol remake thingy. Keep in mind this won't be a straight-up live action film; instead, it will be shot similarly to the way Zemeckis did The Polar Express and the upcoming Beowulf; a performance capture sort of thing, and the first project to be produced by ImageMoversDigital (the performance capture company set up by Disney with Zemeckis). Additionally, Hill also reports that Zemeckis hopes to cast Tom Hanks in the film as well.

As we previously told you, Jim Carrey has already signed on to play a number of parts in the film, which actor Bob Hoskins first broke the news on when he told Empire that Zemeckis wanted him to play Mr. Fezziwig. Apart from the ultra creepy Ebenezer Scrooge, Carrey will play the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-Be. If all goes according to plan, Hanks would play Bob Cratchit, Lloyd would play Marley's Ghost and Fox would play -- get this -- Tiny Tim. Hill later goes on to discuss how some execs are already worried about both Fox (because of his illness) and Carrey (because he's a troublemaker), and so the way it is now might not stand. I mean, Fox, Lloyd and Hanks haven't even been officially announced yet as part of the cast, so don't go geek out until things are final. But it would be cool to have Doc and Marty back together again on screen, even if it is this performance capture stuff. I think it would also be remarkable if Fox can make it through the entire production without any major problems, and still deliver a fine performance. Until we hear more ...