dan fogler Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Love Happens isn't just an unfortunate title because of the obvious pun I'm biting my metaphorical tongue over (okay... sh*t happens! I said it!), but because it's boring and lazy, and that pretty much sums up the movie itself.

Aaron Eckhart is as bland as pudding as Burke Ryan, a psychologist who lost his wife in a tragic accident, and for some reason turned his grief into a cottage industry for other people in mourning. Even with an incredibly successful book and seminars across the country that teach people how to be "A-OK!" instead of, say, dealing with their grief Elisabeth Kübler-Ross-style, Burke is miserable. Small details that are meant to humanize him and illustrate the grief and anxiety that is inevitable after a life-changing loss feel small and clichéd. He always takes the stairs instead of the elevator. And those lemons he tells his readers to make into lemonade? He pours a little Grey Goose into his glass when no one else is around. One of the other characters even makes a point of mentioning what a teetotaler he is.

Click below to view entire poster

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Hysterical Psycho, which will enjoy its premiere in the Midnight Section at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Actor Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, Fanboys) makes his directorial debut here with a film described as a "hilarious horror lampoon of the stuck-in-a-cabin-with-the-phone-lines-cut-and-the-car-battery-dead ilk." When a New York theater troupe heads upstate to "find themselves" at the Moon Lake Inn Motel, what they don't realize is that Moon Lake is home to the world's strongest amount of insanity-inducing lunar radiation and that one of the troupe members is already slowly losing their mind. The synopsis promises "bloody, fun-filled kills and inventive animation," and if that's not the perfect recipe for a successful midnight crowd pleaser, then I don't know what is.

Definitely check out the entire freak-tastic poster in the gallery below, and find out more about the film over on the Tribeca Film Festival's official website.

For some, Michel Gondry's addition to The Green Hornet was a breath of fresh air to an increasingly stale project. To others, it was yet another cause of worry. It's a fair fear -- Gondry certainly hasn't established himself as an action director -- but it's one that might be quelled soon. In a talk with MTV, Seth Rogen said that Gondry whipped up an action scene on his own dime to get the gig, showing off "some of the weird filming techniques he has and some of the stuff he can pull off. I mean, this is something he did in two days and it was instantly unlike anything you've ever seen before." Yeah, Rogen needs to talk up his pet project, but we are talking about the man who solved a Rubik's Cube with his nose. I don't think we can give up hope quite yet.

Next up: Scott Evil is reuniting with his mom! The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Seth Green will star in Disney's Mars Needs Moms, which was brewing eons ago, and he'll be joined by Austin Powers mom Mindy Sterling, as well as Dan Fogler and Joan Cusack. This is a Berkeley Breathed piece, so it will be performance-capture, detailing the adventures of a kid who stows away on a spaceship in order to rescue his mom from Martians. Green will be Milo, while Sterling will play the terrifying leader on Mars, Fogler will play Milo's friend, and Cusack will play the poor, abducted mom. Green's already using his voice lots with the likes of Robot Chicken and Family Guy, but could this foray into motion capture make him the next Andy Serkis?

For more ... hit the jump!

Okay, whatever, so the Fanboys premiere is, like, soooo last week, but a friend just pointed me toward this pretty cool video from the evening and I thought you folks might want to check it out. Very rarely do I wish to be in Los Angeles (as someone who grew up in NYC, I'm afraid I'd literally melt if I spent too much time over there), but this premiere -- with its stormtroopers, Jedi knights and good vibes -- looked like a whole lotta fun. And as someone who's followed the uncomfortable three-or-so-year journey this film has taken on its way to the big screen, watching video of the actual premiere was pretty neat.

Our peeps over at Gen Art hosted the premiere, post-screening Q&A and after party, and you'll be able to check out brief snippets of it all below. On hand were Fanboys director Kyle Newman, his lovely wife Jaime King, Sam Huntington, Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell and Chris Marquette. And since you're probably wondering when Fanboys will be arriving in a city near you (it's currently screening in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin), then I'm happy to say that on February 20 the film will be expanding to Boston, Washington DC, Detroit, Atlanta, Denver, New Haven, Orlando, Phoenix, Columbus, OH and Raleigh , NC. So keep and eye out, fanboys (and girls).


Fanboys premiere hosted by Gen Art & The Weinstein Company from Gen Art Film on Vimeo.

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Fanboys (which I can safely say is a film we've all been waiting a long time to see), along with a handful of brand spanking new images. Luckily Mr. Weinberg and myself managed to catch a screening of the flick back in July during Comic Con and I'm happy to say Fanboys is a funny, heartwarming geeky trip full of countless movie references (most of them Star Wars related) and plenty of memorable quotes. Oh, and did I mention Kristen Bell in a Slave Leia costume? Yes sir. (And you can see two pics of her as Slave Leia in the gallery below.)

For those of you who've been living on the Death Star for the past couple years, Fanboys tells of a group of friends who, prior to the release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, decide to drive across country and break into Skywalker Ranch in an attempt to show their friend the film before he dies of cancer. Fanboys stars Dan Fogler (in his funniest role by far), Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Chris Marquette, Sam Huntington and more cameos than you know what to do with (let's just say Seth Rogen plays two roles). As of right this very second, it looks like we'll finally be able to catch Fanboys in theaters on February 6, 2009.

Click below for a larger image of the poster and below that to enter our gallery of exclusive new photos.

When Demetri Martin joined the cast of Taking Woodstock, it was set to begin production in late August. In a nice change of pace, the movie is still on schedule, and will begin shooting at the end of the month, SAG strike be damned. But that isn't the only reason to anticipate Ang Lee's project. Variety reports the ensemble cast has been set, and it's insanely good. Get ready for a film that includes the likes of Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eugene Levy, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Dan Fogler, Mamie Gummer, Henry Goodman, and Jonathan Groff.

Martin stars in the memoir adaptation as Elliot Tiber, a closeted gay man and aspiring interior designer who gives up his Big Apple dreams to run the family business in a Catskills motel. In 1969, he offered the hotel as home base for Woodstock organizers while his neighbor Max Yasgur (Levy) offered his farm. Staunton and Goodman play Tiber's parents, Groff will be festival organizer Michael Lang, Hirsch will play a Vietnam vet just back on American soil, Schreiber is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma, Morgan will be a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, Dano and Kazan play a hippy couple going to the concert, Fogler will be the head of a local theater troupe, and Gummer will take on the role of Lang's assistant.

I have a feeling this will be so very, very good.

Let me just say first that, I consider Bo Welch's The Cat in the Hat (2003) the worst movie I've seen in my more than ten years of reviewing movies, and Ron Howard's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) is not far behind, and would no doubt rank somewhere in the bottom fifty. Jim Carrey returns from the title role in The Grinch as the voice of the title role in Horton Hears a Who! so I was skeptical at best about the quality of the new film. Not to mention that most CGI animated films not produced by Pixar tend to range from forgettable to awful. What a happy surprise, then, to see one of those rare animated films -- and an even rarer family film -- which ventures into that elusive middle ground, providing wholesome entertainment for kids as well as a few belly laughs for adults.

Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, both making their feature debut, Horton begins by effortlessly rendering in 3D space that familiar 2D world of Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss), with its curvy trees and oval-shaped hills and dales. We meet our hero, Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey), a pachyderm whose personality teeters between dutiful and lazy, helpless and self-reliant, goofy and dedicated. He teaches a class of young animals about various forms of jungle life, but not without a bit of inadvertent, entertaining slapstick. One day, a speck of fluff floats past his sizable ears and he hears a voice emanating from it. He rescues the speck, deposits it on top of a clover and learns that, living upon the speck, is an entire miniature society called Whoville (not to be confused with the Whoville in The Grinch) and run, more or less, by the Mayor (voiced by Steve Carell).

When word first came up about Traveling, I was all sorts of excited. In a moment of spot-on casting, Aaron Eckhart was picked to play a widower who writes a book about grieving, becomes a self-help guru, and then falls for another woman and realizes that he's not over his loss. Hearing that Jennifer Aniston was going to play that new woman -- well, I wasn't excited, or disappointed. Just meh. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, we've got five more cast members who should perk things up a bit.

Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury) will play, surprisingly enough, "the guru's overzealous manager." This is just about the last thing I would've imagined, but I'm game to see it. Judy Greer (27 Dresses) will play an employee and friend of Aniston's at the florist, which isn't surprising at all. And Martin Sheen, well, he's going to play Eckhart's father, who has a strained relationship with his offspring. Thinking about it, it seems strange, but there's just something in Sheen's face that makes it feel right. And besides, who couldn't do with more Martin Sheen? Rounding out the cast, there's Joe Anderson (Across the Universe) as Aniston's musician boyfriend, and John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac) as a "reluctant seminar attendee."

Balls of Fury
Does anything more need to be said other than that Balls of Fury is a ping pong action movie co-starring Christopher Walken? Frankly, that's enough for me. But if you happen to be a Bruce Lee fan, the fact that it's a spoof of Enter the Dragon may entice you. The comedy details a former Pong phenom called Randy (Dan Fogler), who is sent on a special mission to nab his father's killer, Feng -- who just so happens to be played by Walken. With Maggie Q and a spiritual guide, Randy gets back into ping pong shape and heads to Feng's jungle compound and his ping pong tournaments.

This DVD includes an alternate ending, a small serving of deleted scenes, a comedy bit about, erm, ball handling, and a "Making Of" featurette that includes cast and table tennis guru Wei Wang, who also helped out this year's other ping pong movie, Ping Pong Playa.

Check out James' Review | Buy the DVD

Blade Runner
It has been 25 years since Blade Runner first hit theaters, and now we're getting one hell of an anniversary DVD gift just in time for the holidays. Originally stemming from the mind of Philip K. Dick, the film is a cyber-heavy vision of the future where replicants (human clones) are whipped up to work on colonies outside of Earth. However, when some escape and head to the planet, Deckard (Harrison Ford), a cop and replicant terminator, must put aside his visions of retirement and stop them. The flick also starred the likes of Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah -- and of course, it's one of the biggest and most loved sci-fi films to hit the screen.

Fans can choose one of 3 main sets -- the 2-Disc Special Edition, the 4-Disc Collector's Edition, or the mack daddy of collections: The Ultimate Collector's Edition. The 2-Disc set offers Ridley Scott's new, final cut of the film with three commentaries, plus a feature-length documentary on the film's creation. If that's not enough, you can up it two more discs and also get all the different cuts -- theatrical, international, and director's, as well as another disc with 90 minutes of rare footage and featurettes. Finally, you can add one more disc and store it all in a sweet, metal case. The extra DVD shares a "Workprint Version" that changes things up a bit (such as no Deckard narration and no happy ending) and includes one more featurette and commentary.

Check out Ryan's Review of the Final Cut | Buy the 2-Disc, 4-Disc, or 5-Disc DVD


Other New DVD Releases (December 18)
Stardust
Underdog
Halloween
Rush Hour 3
Evil Dead: Ultimate Edition DVD
Bring It On: In It to Win It
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True

*And apologies to Simpsons fans: The Simpsons Movie

Check out Peter Martin's Indies on DVD for even more new releases.