colin hanks Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for The Great Buck Howard, which premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival, and is gearing up to hit theaters on March 20th. Starring John Malkovich, Colin Hanks, Tom Hanks and Emily Blunt, The Great Buck Howard tells of a has-been magician (Malkovich) who stages an unlikely comeback thanks to his new assistant (Colin Hanks). Last year at Sundance, Scott Weinberg called Buck Howard a "smoothly, strongly appealing comedy" that's also a "a feel-good movie that doesn't make you feel stupid for feeling good." Check out the full size poster by clicking on the image below.

Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

A brief, sum-it-all-up-in-one-line description of The House Bunny would probably go something like this: Imagine if a sequel to Legally Blonde and a sequel to Clueless had a child and it was adopted by a sequel to Revenge of the Nerds. That's The House Bunny. Thankfully, a strong and very funny performance from Anna Faris -- as well as decent-enough turns from Emma Stone and Kat Dennings -- save this late summer slacker from flunking out of theaters completely. It's familiar, it doesn't make you work for a laugh and, heck, for some it might be a nice way to cap off a long, dark, foul-mouthed summer full of superheroes, stoners and sequels.

To Shelley Darlingson (Faris), living in the Playboy Mansion is a fairytale come true. Sure, she's not a centerfold ... yet ... and was only featured in a few pictorials (Girls with GEDs, Girls with Charlie Sheen), but that doesn't stop her from bringing half-naked cheer and joy to anyone within shouting distance. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when Shelley's told that Hef doesn't want her in the mansion anymore -- that 27 is, like, 59 in Bunny years. With nowhere to go, a suitcase full of skimpy outfits and the rusty, beaten-up station wagon she arrived in, Shelley wanders the streets until eventually she stumbles upon a whole bunch of mansions that look just like home ... only they're fraternity and sorority houses ... but good ol' Shelley don't know the difference.

Time to play catch up with a couple of indie distribution deals that were completed during the past few days.

In the warm afterglow of Cannes, IFC Films acquired one more title to add to their stockpile, according to The Hollywood Reporter: Italian crime drama Gomorra. Directed by Matteo Garrone, the film is based on a best-selling book and follows five separate stories. "Set in the provinces around Naples," wrote our own James Rocchi, "Gomorra's a sweeping, stirring drama that has the shoot-and-loot tension of the best crime cinema but also has the scope and serious intent of great drama." Gomorra won the Grand Prix at Cannes, which is unofficially considered the "runner-up" prize. IFC plans a theatrical release and will also make it available day-and-date on its video-on-demand service; they are also seeking a cable TV deal of some sort.

Months after it debuted at Sundance, indieWIRE says that Sean McGinley's comedy-drama The Great Buck Howard has finally secured distribution from Magnolia Pictures. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg thought it "might be the most affectionate look back at old-school entertainment since Peter O'Toole boozed his way through My Favorite Year" and called it "a smoothly, strongly appealing comedy." Colin Hanks and Emily Blunt star as an ex-lawyer and a publicist, respectively, trying to help magician Malkovich make a comeback. Magnolia plans a fall theatrical release.

There are two reasons I find this (as yet unconfirmed) story interesting. One is that I'll soon be writing my review of Brett Morgen's new documentary Chicago 10, which comes out next week. The other is that I've been thinking about the 2009 Oscars (I like to jump ahead), which I presumed would include a number of nominations for Steven Spielberg's next film. For a few months now, we've believed that film would be, like Morgen's, about the trial of the "Chicago 7" and would be fittingly titled The Trial of the Chicago 7. First we heard the director was interested in the script, written by Charlie Wilson's War scribe Aaron Sorkin. Then we got that crazy news that Sacha Baron Cohen would play Abbie Hoffman. Finally we heard more people, specifically Colin Hanks, Jeff Daniels and Philip Seymour Hoffman, were joining the cast. However, now we have word from Collider that Spielberg "has decided to move on and will not be making the movie."

Note: It has since come out that the film has been delayed, not completely dumped.

An average to slightly above-average thriller with a noticeable lack of twists, predictable or otherwise, Untraceable is acceptable viewing for anyone who is a fan of Diane Lane or dense enough about the Internet to buy the film's premise, that a hacker of limited means and intelligence could create and maintain a high-profile Website; the origin of which is untraceable by the FBI. It's a conceit that sounds fishy even to the computer know-nothings in the theater and at one point the film acknowledges this, throwing in the caveat that while the technology to trace the killer does exist, it's only available to the National Security Agency, and they aren't willing to share their technology with the FBI. Uh-huh. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's the case. Once FBI agents themselves start getting murdered and their bodies grotesquely displayed on the site in question, wouldn't some responsible FBI chief threaten the NSA with a press conference to let America know that this culprit could be caught if the NSA spooks would only share their toys?

After they're stalked and selected, the killer's victims meet the sharp end of a taser and end up trapped in a Saw-like contraption in a dank basement, staring into a video camera that's sending feed to a website called KillWithMe.com -- yes, Sony has grabbed that particular domain and you should go there now to see some funny marketing. The killing mechanisms, be it a drip of acid into a water tank or the turning on of heat lamps one after the other, are incrementally activated by the number of hits the Website receives. The more people tune in, the faster the victim dies. Much like in Seven, the killer chooses high-profile, prominent victims to draw attention to his crimes and that only adds to the outlandishness of him being uncatchable. Still, there's enough lack of knowledge about the technology in question to make it sound something less than absurd, and the movie works on a the level of a cheap, quick ride that you can ride just long enough before it gets tiresome and irritating.

In The Great Buck Howard, Colin Hanks (King Kong, Orange County) plays the newly-hired road manager to the title mentalist and performer (played by John Malkovich); Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada, Dan in Real Life) plays the publicist assigned to Buck's not-quite-comeback tour. Hanks and Blunt spoke with Cinematical at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival about working opposite Malkovich, the wonder and terror of show business, and the gap between their on-screen romantic scenes and the off-screen preparation for them. As Hanks explains, "At one point (The Great Buck Howard's writer-director Sean McGinley) had us rehearse (romantic scenes) on a dirty floor in an abandoned office, and I remember thinking 'Yeah, I don't know if this is going to do anything ... I don't know if this is going to help us.'"

This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

One might not expect a sweet, funny and warm-hearted crowd-pleaser from the man who wrote movies like Sexual Roulette, Sonic Impact, and Venomous, but I guess filmmaker Sean McGinly has spent the last eleven years churning out schlock flicks just so he could get to something good. And I'm very pleased to report that his newest offering, a smoothly, strongly appealing comedy called The Great Buck Howard, is definitely the "big break" that McGinly's been working for. Backed by a fantastic performance by John Malkovich -- and some really fine work from young actors Colin Hanks and Emily Blunt -- The Great Buck Howard might be the most affectionate look back at old-school entertainment since Peter O'Toole boozed his way through My Favorite Year.

Hanks is a law student who despises law school, so (directly against his father's wishes) Troy Gable bails on higher education and lands a job as a road producer for a serious has-been of a magician. Formerly quite famous (he's been on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show over 60 times), Buck Howard is a relic of a more innocent time. Magician, mentalist, musician and comedian, Mr. Howard is "old-school entertainment" at its most sincere -- and sincerely forgotten. Troy and Buck strike up a professional friendship, although obviously their relationship is due for a few rocky moments.

While Steven Spielberg's name gets tossed around with regards to several different projects (most recently Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), it appears the director is moving full steam ahead on The Trial of the Chicago 7. CHUD tells us that, according to their inside scoopers, both Colin Hanks and Jeff Daniels are now being considered for roles. If brought on, Daniels would play "Dave Dellinger, one of the oldest defendants in the case." Hanks "would be Rennie Davis, an SDS activist who was interested in political change rather than wholesale social change." Another interesting tidbit is that Sacha Baron Cohen (who we thought had accepted the role of Abbie Hoffman) has not officially joined this cast yet. CHUD doesn't know why the actor is not on board (they speculate that it might have to do with scheduling or money issues), but they do know that his is not a done deal.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 will be based on the very real trial of seven defendants who were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Lots of names have been floating around this project as of late; not long ago Vanity Fair interviewed Spielberg and noticed several headshots on his desk of actors they're considering for Chicago 7. Among them were Phillip Seymour Hoffman (for William Kunstler, the attorney who defended the 7), as well as Will Smith, Taye Diggs, Adam Arkin and Kevin Spacey. Aaron Sorkin wrote the script, which may or may not be somewhat based on the recent documentary, Chicago 10, and most expect this to be Spielberg's next film after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Following a long tradition of movie titles based on songs, the previously named House Bunny is now called I Know What Boys Like. And yeah, it's a good bet we'll be hearing the hit tune by The Waitresses in it, probably during the opening credits. Maybe a second time, too. Personally, I prefer for studios to exclusively attach song titles to biopics, but this time I find the new name so much better than the old, that I don't mind. Anyway, the comedy, starring Anna Faris as a former Playboy Bunny, has begun filming in Los Angeles. Recently some hot photos of Faris from the set hit the web, and before that we heard about the rest of the cast, which includes children to the stars Colin Hanks and Rumer Wilson Willis -- get Dakota Johnson and we've got "Spawn of the Bonfire of the Vanities" here -- and real-life Bunnies Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.

Written by Legally Blonde scribes Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, I Know What Boys Like follows Faris' ex-Bunny as she gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion and is taken in by a Sorority comprised of "socially clueless" girls who are about to lose their housing. Guessing by the new title, Faris' character will teach these young women what boys like, how to attract them and other valuable bits of information for females with only a concern for acquiring a husband. But I'm sure the girls also help their new sexy sister learn about more practical things, which don't involve looking like a Playmate. Since the movie has just begun production, it should be at least a year before it hits theaters, giving us plenty of time to forget the similar story of Sydney White, the Amanda Bynes vehicle opening in a few weeks. Of course, the upcoming college comedy is about a hot girl living in a Frat House full of dorks, after she's kicked out of a Sorority, so I guess they aren't too similar.