Owen Wilson Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sorry, folks -- while it may have been a few months since we learned about that dreaded Marmaduke project, it hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, the sucker has found its lead voice. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Owen Wilson has agreed to voice the infamous Great Dane in the Fox adaptation.

While the details weren't ironed out initially, the project is now set to be a live-action/CG mix "which has shades of Fox's surprise smash Marley & Me" -- focusing on the Winslow family as they movie from Kansas to Orange County with their slobbering dog. But no, it's not as simple as a travel/fish out of water story. The dog will "navigate a volatile Mutts vs. Pedigrees turf war, woo the purebred of his dreams, and overcome a fall from grace." And here I thought the simple idea of a Marmaduke feature film was vomit-inducing enough. And while I have no interest in the tear-jerking Marley story, I'm pretty sure it's not a CG flick with doggie turf wars that will undoubtedly be rife with ridiculous stereotypes.

I wonder why Wilson would take this on, and possibly label himself as the dog guy, but it looks like he's not the only one drinking the spiked water. The humans will be played by Judy Greer, Lee Pace, and William H. Macy, while Marlon and Damon Wayons, Steve Coogan, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, George Lopez, Emma Stone, and Fergie voice the pups and other CG concoctions. Yeah, sure, actors sometimes need money and take on things for the paycheck, but this just takes it to a whole new level. And does Wilson need the cash? Between Marley and the Smithsonian, and some Fockers on the way, it's not like the dude is in a drought.

A few months ago, a good friend of mine saw a test screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox (no 'The') and described it as very much the union between Roald Dahl's story and Wes Anderson's style. Now, it looks like the trailer up on Yahoo! and after our jump confirms as much, and I actually find myself genuinely charmed by it -- like, 'now on my radar' charmed.

This tale of a sly fox (voiced by George Clooney, natch) taking on some grumpy farmers reminded me a great deal of Chicken Run, if it were inspired less by The Great Escape and more by Ocean's Eleven, and while it does look perfectly family-friendly, it really does seem to be a Wes Anderson film through and through -- only Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman are all talking animals in stop-motion. (Hell, it's probably the most animated Murray's been in years!)

(Pun half-intended.)

Also starring Meryl Streep and apparently released by Fox proper (as opposed to Fox Searchlight), Fantastic Mr. Fox is due to open on November 13th.

Sunday afternoon seems like the perfect time to check in on our friends from Worth1000, whose latest movie-related photoshop contest has to do with taking any celebrity image and transforming it into a Star Wars character. You can find an example above; that's Wall-E and Eve as R2-D2 and C-3PO. And they definitely get wackier -- with President Obama showing up as Yoda multiple times, and Princess Leia merging with folks like Angelina Jolie and Kevin Spacey (probably the oddest and most random image of the lot). Ever want to see Elvis as Han Solo? It's in there. And ever wonder what Goofy mixed with General Grievous would look like? No? Well it's in there, too ... with the Please Let Them Never Do This In Real Life award going to an image of Han Solo (as Jim Carrey), Chewbacca (as Jack Black), Luke Skywalker (as Owen Wilson) and Obi-Wan (as Jackie Chan) onboard the Millennium Falcon. Creepy.

Check out some of our favorites down below and the rest over at Worth1000.

Like its predecessor, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is a mix of genuinely funny performances and highly lazy storytelling. You know how it goes: the plot is inane, but a lot of the dialogue makes you laugh. It's hard to respect a movie like that -- but, then again, I'm pretty sure "respect" isn't really what they were going for anyway.

In the sequel, Larry Daley, the hapless former security guard played by Ben Stiller, is now a successful TV pitchman, having invented such handy products as the glow-in-the-dark flashlight. It's been a couple years since he visited his pals at the American Museum of Natural History -- you know, the exhibits and models that come to life after dark, thanks to the magic of an Egyptian artifact -- and when he does, he's alarmed to learn that most of them are being shipped off to the Smithsonian archives in Washington D.C., where they'll sit in storage crates for the foreseeable future.

This is progress, it seems. Dr. McPhee (Ricky Gervais), Larry's old boss, tells him that people are bored with dioramas and wax figures. They want holograms and robots. All these old-fashioned pieces are going to be replaced with state-of-the-art technology like a talking Teddy Roosevelt -- which, strangely, speaks with the same voice as the waxwork Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) from the first film. What, did the graphic artists who created the computer program see him come to life late one night and record his voice? (Sorry. I'll try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum for the rest of the review.)

Slightly reminiscent of Tropic Thunder, Judd Apatow has revealed to MTV that his upcoming film Funny People will feature scenes and marketing materials for a whole bunch of fake films starring Adam Sandler. Only in the film he's not Adam Sandler -- he's George Simmons; a stand-up comedian-turned-mega-successful actor who stars in a whole ton of crappy high concept movies. Not exactly too much of a stretch for Sandler (ahem, Click, Zohan), which is why it sounds pretty funny. Here are some of the mini-movies within the movie:

• My Best Friend is a Robot -- This one co-stars Owen Wilson, and shows up as a poster in Simmons' (Sandler) house.
• Redux -- Apatow describes this one -- which they actually shot a few scenes of -- as a cross between Little Man and 17 Again ... "except he [meaning Sandler] becomes a six month old baby."
  
• Mistake -- This one, featuring Elizabeth Banks, is a romantic comedy.
  
• Mer-man -- Picture Splash ... but it's Adam Sandler. Says Apatow, "I've heard they already sold [Mer-man] to be a real movie after we made it as a joke."

According to Apatow, they've created "all sorts of posters" for these films, and shot actual scenes for some of them. Knowing Apatow and Universal, they're going to have a good time marketing Funny People alongside all these weird fake Sandler films ... and Cinematical will definitely attempt to premiere one of these posters so stay tuned. Funny People hits theaters on July 31.

Oh, Breckin Meyer, what happened to you? In the '90s, things were going well. You got a little Clueless, got mixed up in The Craft, led Lovebürger -- all sorts of successful teen fare. But then ... Road Trip got you on the wrong highway until you were suffocating in projects like Herbie and Garfield.

If it wasn't for his animated gigs, I don't know what would've happened to Meyer. But now Production Weekly says he's turned to scriptwriting -- penning the Harry Elfont and Deb Kaplan-created Superguys. They say: "think Ocean's 11 with idiots set at Comic-Con." Man, Con is hot right now. Anyway, this reunites Meyer with the duo who created Can't Hardly Wait. Could this mean something good? Maybe? Or am I just fooling myself with hope?

Meanwhile, the much more successful Clueless alum Paul Rudd has a new gig lined up. He and Owen Wilson are in talks to star in Reese Witherspoon's latest romantic comedy. Yes! Should these talks work out, Wyatt Trips and Ivy Miller will be reunited! (Monsters vs. Aliens doesn't really count.) The untitled feature would pit Paul and Owen against each other to grab Reese's heart -- Paul as a "white-collar executive" and Owen as "a professional baseball pitcher."

Please. There's no way Mr. Wilson can come between the spazzy loves of Overnight Delivery. Actually ... this is probably a bad idea because I love that movie so much that it'll just leave me with ridiculously high expectations. I'd want snarky Reese, great Kevin Smith-influenced dialog ("It's no Jesus walking on water, I give it a six."), and most definitely at least one scene of classic, wacky Rudd dancing.

Reese and Paul might want to remove their last project from our memories, but I will clutch to it 'til the end!

I can't vouch for John Grogan's 2005 best-selling memoir, Marley & Me, in which owning a yellow lab helped the journalist (Owen Wilson) and his wife (Jennifer Aniston) tolerate any number of trials and tribulations that came their way -- many of which could be chalked up to the carnage-prone canine himself. I suspect that, unlike their on-screen counterparts, the Grogans actually showed some indications of aging after thirteen years and three kids. I doubt that John had a perpetual bachelor of a best bud (Eric Dane) who lingered around to both knock and envy his marriage with convenient doses of sarcasm and handsomeness. I question that the couple could own a picturesque Pennsylvania estate on just one reporter's salary. But I'm fairly sure that both the book and the film shared a common goal -- to make its audience sit, stay, laugh, cry, and then get on with their lives -- and at those modest aspirations, the movie version pretty much succeeds.

The very first trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian has arrived online ... via the McDonald's Happy Meals website. Not exactly ideal viewing (who knew McDonald's was fighting their way into the trailer premiere game), but if you want to watch the preview, head on over here.

There doesn't look to be anything groundbreaking here -- if you were a fan of the first film, you should dig this one quite a bit. In fact, this looks just like the first Night at the Museum, except, like any sequel, there are more characters, more special effects and more gags. Story once again follows our clumsy night watchman (Ben Stiller) who rushes to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. after his friends Octavius (Steve Coogan) and Jedediah (Owen Wilson) are accidentally shipped there. Also starring in the film are Amy Adams, Bill Hader, Ricky Gervais, Hank Azaria, Eugene Levy, Christopher Guest and more. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian hits theaters on May 22.

Gallery: Night at the Museum 2

I read the last hundred pages of Marley & Me at the counter of a neighborhood diner. Waiters and busboys and cooks milled around in front of me; fellow customers chomped on burgers to my left and my right. It was with around forty pages to go that I had the mortifying realization that I was crying. Sitting there in full view of what seemed at that moment to be all of San Francisco, reading a bright red book with a Labrador retriever puppy on the cover, tears streamed from my eyes.

Now, I won't try to sell you on the idea that Marley & Me is a great book. I can't even, in good conscience, recommend it as a "good book," which is what makes my teary diner incident so embarrassing. It's a sappy, sometimes shameless, thoroughly unremarkable memoir, consisting mostly of strained attempts to extract life lessons from mischievous-dog anecdotes. But there's something in it that pushes a certain button in those of us who melt at the sight of a grinning, tail-wagging canine. You know who you are. You may have wept watching My Dog Skip.