burt reynolds Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Time for your daily AOL /SlashControl fix of deliciously free movies! After Henry Fool and frightening Frogs, I'm going with my second choice for pick numero uno: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Is it weird that this was one of my favorite flicks as a kid? My youthful bad taste not withstanding, I have no idea why or how I saw this flick a number of times as a youngin'. It was rated R after all. My best guess is that I saw 9 to 5, adored it, and somehow convinced one of my family members to let me rent and watch Dolly Parton's next film. In fact, I know I rented it a number of times. Oh, the perks of being an only child who can hide away with saucy Burt Reynolds movies...

Based on the play, the film stars Parton as Mona Stangley, a woman who operates a whorehouse that's been around for more than 100 years. Her illegal shenanigans are safe because she's canoodling the sheriff (Reynolds). But then a reporter (based on Marvin Zindler, played by Dom DeLuise) starts messing with her business and things get complicated. It might have a paltry 5.3/10 user rating on IMDb, but it not only has a great kitsch factor -- it also has Charles Durning as the Governor, in a role that won him an Oscar nomination. Need I write more?

Head to /SlashControl and get your free fix of Burt and Dolly.

The story behind the making of Delgo is heartwarming and inspiring. Fathom Studios, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been creating commercial computer animation for more than ten years. When they decided to produce their own feature-length narrative film, they did it completely independent of the Hollywood studio system. They labored long and hard with a much smaller budget and a much smaller staff than the animation behemoths. They bravely posted "digital dailes" throughout production, a kind of progressive, online series of "making of" snippets. They recruited a slew of actors with name recognition -- Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Louis Gossett Jr., Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds, Chris Kattan, and the late Anne Bancroft in her last performance -- to voice the characters.

If only the film as a whole was as dramatic and lively as the behind-the-scenes story. Under the direction of Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer, the 3-D animation is quite lovely to behold, but the characters are one-dimensional and the script, credited to six writers, spends too much time on convoluted plot mechanics. Delgo falls into an uncomfortable place where the technical achievement can be admired without the emotions ever being engaged, provoking nothing more than a tepid response ("meh") when the end credits begin to roll.

Set in a lush fantasy world of flying creatures, colorful reptiles, and the odd monster, beast, and giant insect, Delgo pits two races against one another. The proud, dominant, invading race lords it over the humble, subjugated, native race. Sound familiar?

Could this be the spoof savior? The one that makes us forget about the wretched influx of crappily made spoofs?

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Chevy Chase, Burt Reynolds, Vinnie Jones, Michael Madsen, and "Stuttering" John Melendez have signed on to spoof spoofs with Not Another Not Another Movie. The brainchild of David Murphy, the comedy will star Chase as the head of struggling studio who leaves the gig to his ex-con brother (Madsen). Then, "their equally inept gangster friend (Jones) takes over and assigns a production assistant (David Leo Schultz) to direct a spoof of spoof movies." Burt comes in as "an actor playing the director of the chaotic film within the film."

Oh, but there's more -- the film will be full of cameos that have actors playing themselves spoofing previous roles like Richard Tyson as the villain in Kindergarten Cop and Wolfgang Bodison as the marine on trial in A Few Good Men. James Duval also stars, so maybe we'll see him spoofing Frank the Bunny.

The optimist in me is thinking about all the comic possibilities with Chase, Reynolds, and the rest. But the cynic in me, bred through years of utterly disappointing spoofs, isn't holding her breath. How about you?

A good comeback is like a great third act in American lives; it's the triumphant return, the end of the story. James Cagney retired in 1961, then made a triumphant comeback in 1981 with Ragtime. But a good movie never deals with the aftermath of the comeback. Just as often as not, the comeback leads to nothing. Cagney died a few years after the hubbub. Though we all love a good comeback, the following is a list of comebacks that weren't the end of the story, and didn't provide the inspiring coda that they could have.

1. Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land (1997)
Stallone's is one of the most fascinating, dramatic careers in cinema. His fame is so huge that his name and face -- or at least his characters -- are known the world over. He had a fairytale rise to fame with Rocky (1976), complete with tales of writing it in a weekend. He has a lot of charisma, and earned an Oscar nomination for acting. He has directed eight feature films and contributed to the screenplays for nearly twenty. People whisper about how smart and savvy he is behind the scenes.

Nothing fancy this week. I'm tossing darts at the latest trailers and writing up whichever ones I hit. Time now for a random sampling.

Righteous Kill
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino doing a cop movie together? Sounds like a license to print money. The last police drama I saw was the tepid We Own the Night which really soured me on a genre that has already been beaten to death on television, but the star power behind this one sets things at a whole new level (despite some of the uninspired comedies with which De Niro has padded his resume). Our two stars play a pair of world weary police detectives who have no sympathy for the scum who make a mockery of the justice system. Apparently they aren't the only ones who feel this way, because our heroes are soon on the trail of a vigilante killer. As with most teasers it's hard to get a feel for the movie. We get the basic idea of the plot followed by lots of quick cuts set to The Stones' "Sympathy For the Devil." I'm still probably going to see this, but more for who's in the film than what's in the trailer. Here's Monika's take on the trailer.

The Incredible Hulk
The onscreen representation of Marvel Comics' jade giant has come a long way. I first saw him as a crappily animated character who barely moved in the Marvel Superheroes animated series in the 1960s, then as a body builder wearing grease paint and green tights (easier than applying makeup to his shins, I suppose). And let's not forget the 80s animated incarnation whose clothes would magically reappear when he returned to human form. The all CGI version seen in Ang Lee's Hulk made many mistakes, but I think the biggest one was to make his face too sympathetic. The Hulk is not a superhero, people, he's a monster and should look like one. That problem appears to have been addressed in this latest incarnation. This is one badass Hulk, and his foe -- the equally gamma irradiated Abomination -- looks pretty cool too, though his head is tiny. I never thought Eric Bana had much screen presence, and what we see of Edward Norton as the new Bruce Banner has a lot more appeal.

I was already taken with the idea that Burt Reynolds was going to star in an upcoming theater film called A Bunch of Amateurs, which I told you about earlier this month. The film focuses on aging action star from Hollywood (Burt) who joins a Shakespearian theater company thinking that its the Royal Shakespeare Company. Instead, he's surprised to discover that it's a group of amateurs in Stratford St. John. Due to marketing and charity, he has to stick with it and be King Lear on the amateur stage.

Now the film has just gotten 100% irresistible. Variety reports that Charles Durning (who got a hugely-deserved lifetime achievement award from SAG recently) has joined the cast as "a sleazy Hollywood agent" who tricks Burt's character into the theatrical company. I wish he was going to be one of the players, so we'd get more screen time and Charles doing Shakespeare, but I'll take what I can get.

The character actor is a total scene stealer, as Jette Kernion blogged about back in 2006. He has been in a slew of great films, but to me, he'll always be the angelic Charlie from Two of a Kind. Yes, I realize I have weird tastes sometimes. So... What's your favorite Durning role?

I suppose that reviewing an Uwe Boll film is a lot like having a fancy restaurant critic do a write-up on McDonald's new McGristle sandwich -- but I'm not "fancy" by any definition of the word, and I've grown madly in love with Uwe Boll's enthusiastically slipshod filmmaking techniques. So to those who thought miracles were actually possible, I have some disappointing news: Boll's latest, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, is every bit as consistently awful as the director's earlier offerings -- only it's 126 minutes long. And that's just not fair.

Also unfair is the stunningly blatant way in which Mr. Boll tries to rip off the Lord of the Rings trilogy in this chintzy little epic. Every other sequence has a musical cue, a costume, a bit of dialog, or a background character that just fell off the Hobbit truck. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Uwe Boll just spent 126 minutes telling Peter Jackson how thin, talented and gorgeous he is. To be completely fair, I did notice a few components (mainly the action scene editing and a few moments of strangely effective cinematography) that manage to improve upon films like Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and BloodRayne -- but really, you could probably improve upon those three movies using only a cell phone camera and a powerful flashlight.

For a flick that runs two hours, the plot is distressingly skimpy: Villains are ransacking the countryside, so a farmer called Farmer takes up arms, grabs a few sidekicks, and heads out to destroy the evil and perpetually cackling Boss Villain. That's it, really. But we're not going to see an Uwe Boll video game adaptation for the plot, are we? No. We're usually watching his flicks for the sheer unintentional hilarity of it all, but King is even better because it's an ensemble piece! We've got...

What kind of amateurs could Burt Reynolds be joining? He's had a lot of roles in his almost 50 years in the business. Considering his past career, perhaps it would be an amateur group of cops, football players, bandits, porn professionals, judges, or even thieves. Nope! The reality is so very much better. Believe it or not, he's going to be joining some amateur Shakespearian actors. Variety reports that he's heading to Blighty this February to star in A Bunch of Amateurs. To be helmed by Andy Cadiff, from a script by Jonathan Gerschfield, John Ross, Ian Hislop, and Nick Newman, this is the first movie to come from the new production shingle, CinemaNX.

The film is being described as a fish-out-of-water comedy about "an aging Hollywood action star who accepts an invitation to play King Lear at Stratford, in the hope of reviving his career. When he arrives, he discovers that the play is not being staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, as he thought, but by an amateur dramatic society in the rural village of Stratford St. John." I am a man. More sinned against than sinning! He wants to back out, but it's a charity performance with lots of marketing, so he has to stick with it. Yes, that's right, he's going to be King Lear. I have to say, that's something I never thought I'd see. Reynolds' amateur co-stars will include the likes of Samantha Bond (Goldeneye), Derek Jacobi (The Golden Compass), and Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). Are you ready for the Bandit to take on Lear?

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.

Look out, America: The country music stars are coming! Both Tim McGraw (Flicka) and Toby Keith (Broken Bridges) have movies coming out this fall, and Paramount Classics is planning to sell the hell out of Keith and his film. According to this morning's Variety, Paramount is teaming with Ford Trucks (which is sponsoring the whole thing), Big Screen Concerts and CMT Films for a big fancy world premiere on September 7.

For the small fee of $12.50, fans in about 100 cities (as well as soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, who one assumes will get in for free) will get to see a special screening of the film, preceded by a 30-minute feature consisting of "taped performances by Keith and his co-star Lindsey Haun" and red-carpet interviews with Keith, Kelly Preston, Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, as well as other cast members. (The red carpet is outside a theater in Tennessee, where I guess the movie is being show. Or maybe they're all going to see a concert -- is Madonna playing Nashville?)

While this fan-friendly premiere successfully targets Keith's current audience, one wonders how necessary it actually is -- won't his fans go see the movie, even without all these bells and whistles?