Why It Might Do Well: Because people just plain like Carell -- and the film's plot pitch where a secret agency's having their top people exposed forces them to shove unknown agents out into the field is, in fact, a solid story-driven reason for an incompetent like Max to placed in harm's way. ...
Why It Might Not Do Well: We may be a little tired of Baby Boomer-era nostalgia TV getting splashed up on the big screen; anyone else remember how well I Spy turned out?
Fun Fact: Get Smart was created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks -- yes, the men behind The Graduate and Young Frankenstein.
As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.
The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.
It's only a couple seconds long, but above you get a glimpse of the ongoing Frau Blücher joke from Young Frankenstein. I had always seen it as just a funny joke in that quirky Cloris Leachman and Mel Brooks way, but a story from the San Jose Mercury News has added background to the whole character who brings fear to gentle horses everywhere.
Gene Wilder recently told the publication that the film is his favorite, that it is the "most perfectly realized," and described the creation of Frau Blücher. "When I was writing the first draft, I said, 'I wonder if anybody would get it when someone said "Frau Blücher" and the horses neigh.' Mel (Brooks) said, 'Keep it in.' Well, the audience loved it in the previews. Actually, I chose the name because I wanted an authentic German name. I took out some of the books I had of the letters to and from Sigmund Freud. I saw someone named Blücher had written to him, and I said well that's the name. Later on, I heard from about two or three sources, who said Blücher refers to a horse going to a factory and being turned to glue. I just thought it was a funny name."
So, now you know why those scared horses neigh. Sure, Frau Blücher is a scary old woman, but her name also brings thoughts of factories and glue.
These days, Judd Apatow is the man behind the laughs. He has been comedy gold lately, reinvigorating the struggling world of comedic cinema and offering a selection of laughs you can rely on. It's nice to be able to go to a "funny" flick and be sure that you'll at least laugh a few times, instead of head out for hi-jinx and spend an hour and twenty minutes in awkward silence, desperately yearning for even the slightest chuckle.
Thirty-something years ago, the laugh man was Mel Brooks. He brought the comedy, and he even brought the art. How many comedic filmmakers today would dare to make a silent movie (aside from Guy Maddin), or do the world of Frankenstein comedic justice? I've gushed over the wonder that is Young Frankenstein before, so today, I'm leaving it up to some other blast-to-the-past spoof comedy -- Blazing Saddles and The History of the World: Part I.
As the son of an illustrator, I grew up appreciating movie poster artists more than probably do most movie geeks. And John Alvin, who passed away last Wednesday, was one of the artists I idolized. Alvin is considered one of the most important poster artists of the past 35 years, and it's no wonder. From E.T. to Gremlinsto Blade Runner to The Goonies* to numerous Disney films, his art is as recognizable and iconic as poster design gets. The Smithsonian even named one of his works, for Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise, one of the best posters of the 20th century.
His name may not be as familiar as that of Drew Struzan, another well-known movie poster designer whose work is quite similar. And it isn't that strange to (as I did often in my youth) confuse the work of the two illustrators, both of whom attended the same school as my father, Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, and both of whom worked for many of the same clients and for many of the same films. But there's no doubting that Alvin, who got his start with the poster for Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddlesand worked on many of Brooks' film campaigns from then on, was a distinctly innovative artist.
In addition to designing original posters for more than 135 films, Alvin produced art for many special edition and anniversary releases, as well as collector's art for popular movies such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Ringsand Pirates of the Caribbean. There's probably a good chance that, if you're a real movie geek, you have something of his hanging up in your room or home. I think the closest thing for me is a Blade Runner t-shirt on which his poster art appears. And, of course, I can see a bunch of his talent clearly when looking over at my DVD collection*.
For a good list of his work, check out the filmography on his Wikipedia page, and for a fairly comprehensive look at images of his posters, check out this fan site.
*I just realized that the poster for The Goonies that I'm most familiar with, and which is on my DVD, is the one by Drew Struzan. Oops.
Jonathan Kesselman wrote and directed The Hebrew Hammer, a comedy about an Orthodox Jewish Blaxploitation hero (Adam Goldberg) who saves Hanukkah from the evil offspring of Santa Claus (Andy Dick). The film has become a cult favorite, and you should add it to your holiday viewing list this year. In addition to being a successful screenwriter, Jonathan teaches Writing Comedy for Film and Television at Yale University. He has some great tips for aspiring comedy writers.
Cinematical:When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Jonathan Kesselman: I always loved writing. When I was in the 5th grade, I was pulled out of my class and put onto the 12th grade yearbook staff writing copy. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. In college, I majored in Psychology -- neuroscience was my field. I realized that I didn't like slicing rat brains. I remember really searching for what it was that I wanted to do with my life. And I had always been obsessed with movies. I remember having this existential crisis pre-graduation, and then seeing a documentary on Your Show of Shows, and it hit me that I was put on this earth to make fun of people.
Cinematical:So you threw the rat in the air triumphantly...
JK: I ate the rat -- tasty! Yeah, I graduated, and decided I wanted to go to film school. I eventually went to graduate school at USC for film production.
I really, really love Young Frankenstein, as is obvious from my retro review here. It has always been my favorite Mel Brooks movie, and was one of the first DVDs I ever bought. The film began my love of everything Madeline Kahn; it was one of the few great movies in my youth that wasn't a retro Disney movie or '80s crapfest. It's just damned good. After all the success Brooks had with The Producers on-stage, one would think that the same success could be found with source material like Frankenstein, but unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.
In their Studio Briefing news at IMDb, there's a collection of notes from theatrical reviewers on the Broadway production, and they aren't very positive. In fact, it's looking like this musical is tarnishing all the wonder of the original film. According to Ben Brantley, the production saps the original of its joy, and definitely isn't worth its exorbitant budget and pricey premier seating; Chris Jones called it a "colossal disappointment", while even the nicer reviews still say the magic, spark, and greatness is gone. That's really a shame. On the one hand, at least we'll probably be free of a movie that is based on a musical, which is based on a movie. But it's still sad. Have any of you seen it? Is it as much of a waste as the reviewers describe?
My grandfather was a very sick man. You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind. Dead is dead. Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I'm talking about the central nervous system! I am a scientist, not a philosopher! There's more chance of reanimating this scalpel, then you have of mending a broken nervous system. My grandfather's work was doodoo! I am not interested in death! The only thing that concerns me is the preservation of life! Dr. Frederick Frankenstein
For years, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) has tried to distance himself from the mad science of his grandfather, the original Dr. Frankenstein. He is so desperate not to be linked to it that he swears his name is pronounced "Frankensteen," not "Frankenstein." Yet he is still drawn to the science that his grandfather was enveloped in. The young Frankenstein is also a doctor, and he touts the importance of the central nervous system to fresh medical minds whilst damning the name of the first Dr. Frankenstein. But then he is presented with an ornate box, his grandfather's will, and given the key to understanding his relative's madness.
And this is the brilliance of Mel Brooks' stylish, black and white Young Frankenstein. Based on Mary Shelley's novel, and co-written with star Wilder, the comedy was part of a duo with Blazing Saddles that made 1974 a wonder year for the relatively new director -- one that garnered him five Oscar nominations between the two. The solid source material and stellar writing were only part of the film's success. It boasted one of the best comedic casts to ever hit the screen -- Wilder, Cloris Leachman, and Teri Garr, as well as some of the best faces of comedy who are no longer with us -- the purring and wonderful Madeline Kahn, the world's best monster, Peter Boyle, and the scene-stealing Marty Feldman.
With Father's Day coming up this weekend, a film geek's thoughts turn to watching movies with her Dad. I miss the days when we would stay up late watching something attractively awful on TV that had my dad laughing his head off while simultaneously deriding the film. Dad likes a slightly dirty comedy -- something he can watch while saying, "Thank God your mother's not in the room," or even "You shouldn't be watching this," not that I was ever asked to leave the room, mind you. He is also fond of telling you how terrible a movie is, but then not changing the channel, particularly if buxom young females are onscreen.
I've seen very few movies in a theater with my dad, especially after we were old enough that he didn't have to sneak us off to the movies when my mom was holding some kind of meeting at home. Most of the movies I've seen with my dad have been on videotape or more interestingly, on non-cable TV (often UHF channels at odd times). He usually falls asleep in the exact same parts -- it has to be a pretty lively movie to keep my dad from catching a quick nap at some point or other.
I intended to write a Cinematical Seven that recommended movies anyone might watch with their fathers this weekend, movies that Dad has so much fun watching that you can't help liking the movie yourself, even if it's something you wouldn't watch on your own. I started brainstorming a generic list from The Great Escape to The Empire Strikes Back to Grumpy Old Men and then realized that everyone's dad is different, of course -- I have no idea which movies your father might prefer. So the following list includes movies I would like to watch with my dad this weekend if we weren't living 525 miles apart. If your father is like mine, this will be a perfect list for you. If not, I hope you'll share some of the movies you've liked watching with your dad, grandfather or father figure in the comments.
There aren't too many movies that necessitate sequels. Unless a movie is part of a pre-proposed series or is an adaptation of a series of books, it should probably be able to stand alone. But a lot of sequels come from movies that are perfect by themselves -- sometimes the sequels compliment nicely; sometimes they are easily ignored; occasionally they actually take away from the previously regarded original.
It isn't often that a movie screams out for a sequel, but I think I've come up with seven that at least whisper a request for one. Two actually have source sequels that they would be adapted from. One has a lot of history to mine material from. Three of them have been discussed at length at different points in time by makers of the original(s). The problem is that none of these sequels is likely to ever grace your DVD player let alone your local theater. For whatever reason, they simply have too much against them in the minds of studio execs. For now, though, we can dream.
Even with the incredible cast and the surprisingly faithful-enough script, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was not the epic that I was hoping for. It also wasn't the blockbuster that Disney was hoping for. The filmmakers, Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith (aka Hammer and Tongs) and the necessary actors had signed on for the sequel, to be adapted from Adam's follow-up, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but it appears to be dead in the water. Despite my few reservations with the first film, I would love to see the sequel, as well as the rest of the series (they could end before The Salmon of Doubt, I guess). I remember being bored with some of the prehistoric Earth sequences in Restaurant, but I think they'd make for great cinema. In any event, I think Martin Freeman and Mos Def were a great duo in the original, and they alone should have been propelled to stardom following its release. Maybe they can appear in something else together.
Yesterday, Jeff Wells posted a blurb about the Get Smart remake starring Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway (Monika posted the first pic released for the film yesterday). Shortly after he posted that piece, Wells says, he received several emails -- a draft copy of the script, a pointer to a very negative fan site review of said script, and word from an insider Wells calls "Agent Orange."
According to Agent Orange, Wells says, not only is the script "long considered to be eye-rollingly bad" and a "dumbed down re-do of ... Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English" (ugh, I don't even know what to say to that), but Get Smart series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were not consulted on the script. The reason for this, Wells' various communications with "insiders" allege, is that Warner Brothers is trying to prove that the work Brooks and Henry did on the original series was "work for hire" and that they are therefore not entitled to any compensation from this film should it end up making money. Depositions have supposedly been taken, etc.
As for the script, I'm not a huge fan of script reviews, because so much can change from a draft script to what you see on screen. Nonetheless, a lot of folks have been pondering how exactly they're going to pull off the sexual tension between Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 that so underscored the original series, what with Carrell being quite a bit older than Hathaway. The script's storyline is supposed to go back to how Maxwell Smart became an agent and met Agent 99 (Hathaway), and has Agent 99 as a more experienced "female James Bond"-type who mentors Smart. According to one of Wells' insider reports, the script works around the age issue by saying that Agent 99 is actually older, but has had plastic surgery to conceal her real identity. Not sure about that, it sounds like a bit of an overly convoluted plot idea to me, but we'll see how they pull it off.
There has been no shortage of news coming out of the NYCC this past weekend (including from our very own Ryan Stewart). Now, IGN reports that Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B Productions are partnering to produce a film version of the novel World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War by Max Brooks (son of Mel). Brooks seems to have a flair for the subject of the "living challenged" as he also wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski is adapting the book but there is no confirmation yet that Pitt will star, Straczynski kept it pretty non-committal saying the script was, "For Brad Pitt potentially -- we'll see what happens. He might be the star in it."
Adapting the book won't be easy, since the novel is an anthology of man's survival during the "great" war with the undead. The structure of the book has no main characters and jumps time and place with recollections of the survivors of the decade long fight. During a panel discussion, Straczynski described the story as "very political, very smart, very cagey". Straczynski seems confident that if all goes to plan with the script, production wouldn't be far behind. The project sounds promising, but considering Pitt's plate looks pretty full, I'm not counting on him getting in front of the cameras for this one.
Richard Curnock(1922-2007) - British actor who appears in Paradise. He died February 6, in Stratford, Ontario. (CBC)
Donfeld(1934-2007) - Oscar-nominated costume designer for Prizzi's Honor, Days of Wine and Roses, Tom Sawyer and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? His other credits include Spaceballs, Viva Las Vegas, The Great Race and the television series Wonder Woman. He had a brief stint as a set director in the mid-'70s. He died February 3, in Los Angeles (LA Times)
Victor Griffin(c.1918-2007) - Singer, dancer and actor who appears in Annie. He died February 3, in Syosset, New York. (Variety)
Griffith Jones(1910-2007) - British actor who appears in Olivier's The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France, as well as The Wicked Lady and Miranda. He died January 30. (Telegraph)
Frankie Laine(1913-2007) - Singer of the title songs to a number of westerns, including 3:10 to Yuma, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Blazing Saddles. He also appears in Blake Edwards' He Laughed Last and Bring Your Smile Along, as well as Meet Me in Las Vegas and Make Believe Ballroom. He died of complications from hip surgery February 6. (LA Times)
Every year the Library of Congress announces that it will shelter 25 films for posterity and here's the list for this year, from Variety. Joining the 450 films currently in the vaults are a range of pictures from features to documentaries. This year's pack includes the 1913 protest film Traffic in Souls, a very early American feature film with a then-stunning budget of $25,000. A film "so fast-moving and so packed with direct and veiled references to the vice trade that it's a wonder audiences could keep pace with it," comments ace silent film historian Kevin Brownlow.
More familiar inductees include recent hits like Blazing Saddles, sex, lies and videotape,Rocky and Halloween. Then you haveclassics like Notorious, and key works like The Big Trail by Raoul Walsh, The Last Command by Josef von Sternberg, the debut of Rouben Mamoulian, and the first Garbo-Gilbert picture Flesh and the Devil. The rarities are perhaps even more interesting: the early Chinese-American film The Curse of Quon Gwon and long-time experimental filmmaker and critic Jonas Mekas' Reminiscence of a Journey to Lithuania. A couple of the entries are performance films: St. Louis Blues (1929), a two-reeler that is the only existing film of Bessie Smith, seen singling the W. C. Handy song. And for more current relevance, the documentary The T.A.M.I. Show. with the late lamented James Brown performing "Night Train" and the Supremes doing "Where Did Our Love Go?" for purpose of comparison with The Dreams in Dreamgirls.
It had been awhile since we heard anything about the Get Smart movie, and I was kinda hoping that it wasn't actually being made. But as Erik reported almost a year ago, Steve Carrell is in fact bringing Maxwell Smart to the big screen in an adaptation directed by Peter Segal and written by Matt Ember & Tom J. Astle. Now Agent 86 might have a partner, as Anne Hathaway is about to be cast in the role of Agent 99. And production is set to begin in March, just as soon as Carrell is done shooting the current season of The Office, which picks up in January after the actor finishes up on Dan in Real Life (the guy apparently never takes a vacation).
With both Mel Brooks and Buck Henry still alive, I can't believe that this movie could really be written by a duo other than them -- not that I think they'd write it. I just simply can't imagine that it will have any of the zany tone that the TV show had. That said, I am pretty happy with the casting so far. I can't think of a better pair than Carrell and Hathaway to play the characters originated by Don Adams and Barbara Feldon, respectively. They better not mess it up with whoever they get for The Chief.
I guess there's not much chance of the movie being as bad as the '90s Get Smart series starring Andy Dick (and Adams and Feldon) nor could it be as awful as the Inspector Gadgetmovie (the cartoon was like a spin-off of Get Smart and featured Adams' voice).
These days, Judd Apatow is the man behind the laughs. He has been comedy gold lately, reinvigorating the struggling world of comedic cinema and offering a selection of laughs you can rely on. It's nice to be able to go to a "funny" flick and be sure that you'll at least laugh a few times, instead of head out for hi-jinx and spend an hour and twenty minutes in awkward silence, desperately yearning for even the slightest chuckle.
As the son of an illustrator, I grew up appreciating movie poster artists more than probably do most movie geeks. And 
I really, really love 
Yesterday, Jeff Wells posted a blurb about the 
There has been no shortage of news coming out of the 
Richard Curnock
Every year the Library of Congress announces that it will shelter 25 films for posterity and 
It had been awhile since we heard anything about the 
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SCOOP: Spider-Man 4 and 5 Might be Shot at the Same Time!
Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
