The dish on parenting ... check out the new ParentDish!
Moviefone
Posts with tag TenCommandments

Review: The Ten



Maybe the best thing about The Ten -- a new anthology comedy assembling ten short vignettes, each based on one of the ten commandments -- is how it starts with that premise (famously used by Krysztof Kieslowski in The Decalogue) and immediately, casually, chucks it in the dustbin. "Honor thy mother and father" leads to a vignette where a mother (Kerri Kenney-Silver) explains to her two African-American sons that their father's never been part of their lives because they were conceived during the '80s, when she was having lots and lots of sex with celebrities. Their father is, in fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger; since having their real father bond with them would be impossible, she's hired a local Arnold impersonator (Oliver Platt) to come hang out with the boys. ...

No, the scene's focus isn't parent-and-child interaction and the currency of respect that should flow through that relationship; the scene's focus is Oliver Platt in a leather jacket and wraparound shades, playing football with his two long-lost not-sons, murmuring fatherly endearments in the strangulated Teutonic tones of a bad Arnold imitation. That, to me, is funny; who cares if it really explores the ideas in the correlating commandment?

Continue reading Review: The Ten

Interview: David Wain and Ken Marino of 'The Ten'



The Ten, an anthology comedy comprised of ten vignettes inspired by the ten commandments, is a bit of a throwback to scatter-shot comedies of the past like The Groove Tube and Amazon Women on the Moon; at the same time, it's possessed of an ultra-modern deadpan sensibility, with highbrow ideas sharing screen time with lowbrow cheap laughs. The Ten was co-written by Ken Marino and David Wain; Wain was also the director. The two have collaborated on other films (most notably Wet Hot American Summer) and also worked together in the comedy collaborative "The State." Wain and Marino spoke with Cinematical via telephone about the challenges of making The Ten, how you fake 40 CAT scan machines on a low budget, method mustache acting and cute-yet-terrifying animated animal orgies.

Ken Marino: (Singing) "... Band on the run! Band on the run!"

Cinematical: Is there nothing like Wings to cut the strain of the all-day, conducted-by-telephone promotional tour?

KM: You took the words right out of my mouth.

Cinematical: So let's start by just getting our praise of Krzysztof Kieslowski and his hard-to-pronounce name out of the way. Was The Decalogue really an inspiration for The Ten?

David Wain: Well, insomuch as it's exactly the same premise, yes.

Cinematical: But you guys didn't actually think ... Was the actual starting point "Let's do the Ten Commandments ..."?

KM: The starting point was 'Let's steal Kieslowski's idea and do our own funny version of it. ..."

Cinematical: Which you certainly succeeded in doing, but: Do you feel like maybe he's stolen the ten commandments and no one else can do them?


KM : I feel like he stole the ten commandments from some other book -- some other, dare I say, good book. ...

Continue reading Interview: David Wain and Ken Marino of 'The Ten'

Cinematical Features



Take a step outside the mainstream: Cinematical Indie.

CATEGORIES
Awards (824)
Box Office (548)
Casting (3607)
Celebrities and Controversy (1780)
Columns (216)
Contests (202)
Deals (2913)
Distribution (995)
DIY/Filmmaking (1809)
Executive shifts (98)
Exhibition (599)
Fandom (4209)
Home Entertainment (1148)
Images (617)
Lists (344)
Moviefone Feedback (5)
Movie Marketing (2176)
New Releases (1706)
Newsstand (4286)
NSFW (83)
Obits (284)
Oscar Watch (493)
Politics (792)
Polls (23)
Posters (133)
RumorMonger (2111)
Scripts (1476)
Site Announcements (269)
Stars in Rewind (59)
Tech Stuff (407)
Trailers and Clips (485)
BOLDFACE NAMES
James Bond (204)
George Clooney (150)
Daniel Craig (80)
Tom Cruise (230)
Johnny Depp (144)
Peter Jackson (120)
Angelina Jolie (146)
Nicole Kidman (44)
George Lucas (169)
Michael Moore (66)
Brad Pitt (146)
Harry Potter (155)
Steven Spielberg (266)
Quentin Tarantino (141)
FEATURES
12 Days of Cinematicalmas (59)
400 Screens, 400 Blows (103)
After Image (33)
Best/Worst (36)
Bondcast (7)
Box Office Predictions (76)
Celebrities Gone Wild! (23)
Cinematical Indie (3847)
Cinematical Indie Chat (4)
Cinematical Seven (222)
Cinematical's SmartGossip! (49)
Coming Distractions (13)
Critical Thought (347)
DVD Reviews (197)
Eat My Shorts! (16)
Fan Rant (41)
Festival Reports (826)
Film Blog Group Hug (56)
Film Clips (32)
Five Days of Fire (24)
Friday Night Double Feature (24)
From the Editor's Desk (68)
Geek Report (81)
Guilty Pleasures (27)
Hold the 'Fone (426)
Indie Online (3)
Indie Seen (7)
Insert Caption (112)
Interviews (315)
Killer B's on DVD (71)
Monday Morning Poll (47)
Mr. Moviefone (8)
New in Theaters (301)
New on DVD (263)
Northern Exposures (1)
Out of the Past (13)
Podcasts (99)
Retro Cinema (77)
Review Roundup (45)
Scene Stealers (13)
Seven Days of 007 (25)
Speak No Evil by Jeffrey Sebelia (7)
Summer Movies (40)
The Geek Beat (27)
The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar (33)
The Rocchi Review: Online Film Community Podcast (27)
The Write Stuff (25)
Theatrical Reviews (1536)
Trailer Trash (443)
Trophy Hysteric (32)
Unscripted (33)
Vintage Image of the Day (140)
Waxing Hysterical (42)
GENRES
Action (4634)
Animation (945)
Classics (935)
Comedy (4219)
Comic/Superhero/Geek (2272)
Documentary (1257)
Drama (5437)
Family Films (1083)
Foreign Language (1410)
Games and Game Movies (279)
Gay & Lesbian (219)
Horror (2089)
Independent (2976)
Music & Musicals (850)
Noir (184)
Mystery & Suspense (762)
Religious (94)
Remakes and Sequels (3434)
Romance (1117)
Sci-Fi & Fantasy (2881)
Shorts (257)
Sports (260)
Thrillers (1717)
War (228)
Western (64)
FESTIVALS
Oxford Film Festival (1)
AFI Dallas (45)
Austin (23)
Berlin (89)
Cannes (278)
Chicago (18)
ComicCon (88)
Fantastic Fest (63)
Gen Art (8)
New York (52)
Other Festivals (287)
Philadelphia Film Festival (13)
San Francisco International Film Festival (28)
Seattle (64)
ShoWest (3)
Slamdance (20)
Sundance (596)
SXSW (274)
Telluride (61)
Toronto International Film Festival (340)
Tribeca (258)
Venice Film Festival (10)
WonderCon (1)
Friday Night Double Feature (0)
DISTRIBUTORS
Roadside Attractions (5)
20th Century Fox (569)
Artisan (1)
Disney (540)
Dreamworks (274)
Fine Line (4)
Focus Features (143)
Fox Atomic (16)
Fox Searchlight (167)
HBO Films (31)
IFC (108)
Lionsgate Films (350)
Magnolia (101)
Miramax (65)
MGM (181)
New Line (369)
Newmarket (17)
New Yorker (5)
Picturehouse (9)
Paramount (570)
Paramount Vantage (40)
Paramount Vantage (11)
Paramount Classics (48)
Samuel Goldwyn Films (7)
Sony (479)
Sony Classics (135)
ThinkFilm (105)
United Artists (37)
Universal (632)
Warner Brothers (887)
Warner Independent Pictures (92)
The Weinstein Co. (438)
Wellspring (6)

RESOURCES

RSS NEWSFEEDS

Powered by Blogsmith

Featured Stories

Sponsored Links

Recent Theatrical Reviews

Cinematical Interviews

Most Commented On (60 days)

Weblogs, Inc. Network

Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: