caddyshack Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The lovable and hilarious Steve Carell is a bona-fide TV star, but his big screen career has never taken off quite the same way. There were plenty of successes along the way, and he hasn't had an honest to goodness flop (actually, Evan Almighty lost a whole lot of money), but he just hasn't had that movie role that makes you think "Uh-oh, I think Scranton is going to get a new branch manager," you know? I don't know if Carell's latest will be the role that makes him into a full-fledged movie star, but The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business Blog is reporting that the comedian is in talks to star in the golf-comedy Missing Links.

Links is based on Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly's novel by the same name, and it centers on a group of working class friends who scheme to sneak into an elite country club to escape their crappy public golf course. Reilly has some experience as a screenwriter, having already written the period sports comedy Leatherheads, but for Links, The Break Up's Jay Lavender will be in charge of the script. Carell has yet to commit to Warner Bros for Links, and he already has a pretty tight schedule with his role on The Office, the upcoming sequel to Get Smart, and Brigadier Gerard, so I guess we will have to wait and see if he signs on the dotted line.

After the jump; moments from other great golf comedies -- and no, I didn't include Dorf...

Twenty-nine years later, Carl Spackler dresses much nicer, but talks the same. Bill Murray, of course, made an indelible impression as the disheveled, constantly muttering, yet wily groundskeeper Carl in Harold Ramis' comedy classic Caddyshack way back in 1980, roaming the Bushwood Country Club and waging a fierce battle with an even more wily gopher. In his youth, Murray worked as a caddy, and in recent years he's become a familiar, popular player at pro-am events.

It's no surprise, then, that a local TV reporter caught up with Murray at the U.S. Open Championship in Bethpage, New York, which started yesterday. The tournament was plagued by torrential rains, which delayed play, so the reporter asks him questions about the weather until finally Murray smiles and slips into his Carl Spackler voice as he minimizes the rainfall: "This is by no means a downpour."

Naturally, it's reference to the sequence in Caddyshack, where Carl accompanies a bishop as he plays the round of his life in a steadily increasing storm. When the minister asks if he should keep playing, Carl says, "I don't think the hard stuff's coming down for quite a while." The scene is so well-known in golf circles that ESPN.com used it to introduce an article about the first, rainy day of the Open. And even though it's only a fleeting glimpse, it's a welcome reminder of a very funny movie and a very funny character.

After the jump: Watch the clip!

Okay, I've officially discovered my first favorite piece of geeked-out awesomeness of 2009, and it comes in the form of these excellent 1960s-inspired paperback book covers of novelized movie adaptations. Artist Mitch Ansara created these illustrations as part of his own Make Something Cool Every Day project, and all of them come from his (fictional) I Can Read Movies series. What we have are paperback book covers for films like Back to the Future, Mean Girls, Ghostbusters, Shaun of the Dead and Caddyshack, among others. My personal favorite (as seen in the gallery below) is the freaky Japanese paperback cover he created for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Check out some of our favorites down below, then head on over to this page and click on the paperback cover to read more about how Mitch went about creating it. Nice work, sir.



[via LaughingSquid]

This particular Cinematical Seven took awhile to sort out. First, I needed to decide whether I would focus solely on women who play sports in film or if I should open it up to women who play sports and/or appear in sports films. As you can see from the photo above, I went with the latter. Then I needed to decide whether I would only select drop-dead gorgeous women, or if there was room for the girl next door in the list as well. I'm sure you sympathize with the tough choices I had to make this afternoon. Anyway, in honor of Superbowl Sunday (Go Giants!), here are my picks for the hottest sports girls on film (a title which took me all of about an hour to come up with -- after all, there are so many different ways to write it):

Kelly Preston as Avery Bishop in Jerry Maguire -- She's harsh, she's intimidating and she doesn't exactly use those legs to kick a long field goal. Before Jerry (Tom Cruise) had his moral epiphany and wound up wooing the adorable Dorothy (Renee Zellweger), he was attached at the hip to the cunning, yet super sexy Avery. She'd come a long way from Space Camp, and after watching Jerry Maguire, I was extremely jealous that John Travolta got to spend every boot camp with this gal.

The comedy villain is one of the trickiest characters to pull off. Too often, the villain's scenes are there simply to further the "plot," which, in a lot of comedies, is pretty inconsequential. If a comedy even has a true villain, and many don't, scenes focusing on him or her usually drain the movie of life and make the audience eager to get back to the laughs. But a smart comedy creates a villain every bit as funny as the hero(es). Below are my favorite movie slimeballs, in order of release date. I'd love to hear some of yours.

John Vernon as Dean Vernon Wormer in National Lampoon's Animal House

One of the best traits for a comedy villain to have is that he or she is an "Enemy of Fun." You've met people like this. They hate fun. They hate people who have fun. Dean Wormer is a perfect example. In fact, unlike the other bad guys on this list, you can't imagine Wormer ever having had fun at any point in his life. Smileless, humorless, joyless...but hilarious. The crusty, bitter dean is almost a requirement for college movies, and you can feel Wormer's influence in every flick of its type released since. You certainly wouldn't have Dean Pritchard in Old School without Wormer. Animal House is a movie brimming over with jerks, Doug Neidermeyer would have made a perfectly good choice here, too -- frat guys always make great villains. But you've got to have some sympathy for that dude-- he got killed in Vietnam by his own troops.

Best Line: "The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me."

Ted Knight as Judge Smails in Caddyshack

Stopping just short of actually chewing on pieces of scenery, Knight's work in Caddyshack is a masterpiece of taking it over the top. A master of the slow burn, the man is made of simmering anger and rage. Knight more than holds his own against three incredible comedians: Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, and Chevy Chase in his prime. In a lesser movie, Judge Smails would be a generic authority figure, enabling the three comedy stars to do their riffs around him and act out against him. But Knight's Judge is a worthy opponent, and manages to grab just as many laughs as the goofballs. Every bit as influential as Dean Wormer, you can draw a straight line from Judge Smails to say, Shooter McGavin.

Best Line: "I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them."

The producers behind the recent critically-acclaimed biopic Ray are taking on Thornton Melon himself, Rodney Dangerfield. Producers Howard and Karen Baldwin think Dangerfield's life will get the respect it deserves as a movie. I wonder if the making of Caddyshack, the movie Dangerfield is most closely associated with, will be covered like the makers of Man on the Moon did with Andy Kaufman's making of Taxi? Opens the door to all kinds of possiblities as far as casting, not only Dangerfield himself but also finding actors to play Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and others. But where will they find a stuntman who can do the Triple Lindy for the Back to School scenes?