dodgeball Tagged Articles at Cinematical

With Charlton Heston's stint in Wayne's World 2, Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote about the cameos that take into account the celebrity's personality and comment on it. But I want to take it in a slightly different direction. Love him or hate him (as some commenters seem to), Lance Armstrong managed to take part in one of my favorite cameos, and when he got his shot on screen, he didn't just pop up to say something funny, or show up in the most unlikely of places. He was the only person truly suitable to shame Vince Vaughn's Peter Le Fleur in Dodgeball.

Right before the last big tournament game, LaFleur decides to quit, leaving his teammates stranded. He's drinking, fully wallowing in a self-pity party when he runs into Lance. Armstrong cannot believe Peter is quitting and quickly and casually lays a heap of guilt and shame on LaFleur's shoulders. "Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life."

When you're in full self-pity mode and not showing up to a big game, the last person you want to run into is the man who beat cancer out of his testicles, lungs, abdomen, and brain before becoming a Tour de France hotshot. It's like whining about a scratch to the person who lost a finger. Nothing is abstract, no one is comparing apples to oranges. LaFleur is simply all-out shamed, and with every tick of Vaughn's so-slight facial expressions we can feel the weight of it. Check out the clip after the jump.

But now the big question still remains: Will he get to take his shirt off? According to Entertainment Weekly, Matthew McConaughey was offered the leading role of Thomas Magnum in Universal Pictures' adaptation of Magnum P.I. In fact, right this very second (and possibly shirtless) McConaughey is said to be reading over the script from writer-director Rawson Thurber (Dodgeball); trying to decide whether or not he'd be a good fit. For those youngsters in the crowd, Magnum P.I. was a boss '80s TV show about a Navy Seal-turned-detective who liked Hawaiian shirts and big, porn mustaches.

This isn't the first we've heard of McConaughey and Magnum P.I. All the way back in January of 2007, he was rumored to be up for the part -- a role that, at one point, was going to Ben Affleck, George Clooney and Vince Vaughn. And ... what about Tom Selleck? Will he get to play a part? Probably not. Back in 2006 (oh yes, this project has been lingering in the halls of Hollywood detention for quite some time), Selleck called the movie idea "stupid" and said he'd take no part in it. Heck yeah, Tom! Tell it like it is. But if they were to move ahead on this, I like McConaughey out of everyone. Keep in mind, they'll update it to a point where the only traces from the old TV show come in character names and cheesy Hawaiian shirts.

What do you think about a Magnum P.I. movie? Keep it or kill it?

Leave it up to the folks over at Entertainment Weekly to open up a big ol' can of worms. Basically, they asked readers to name some of the worst supporting performances of all time -- and kicked things off with a still of John Turturro (as Agent Simmons) from this summer's blockbuster hit Transformers. Funnily enough, Turturro was one thing (out of several) that I despised about Transformers. The flick was fun and entertaining, no doubt, but some stuff was just too ... annoying. And Turturro (who's usually fantastic in every role he takes on) was one of them. Checking out EW's featured gallery, I have to agree with a good majority of the performances mentioned. Let me run a few past you:

Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins is on there, as well as Ben Stiller's horrifically annoying supporting performance in Dodgeball. Adrien Grenier gets the "stale, boring and wooden" nod for The Devil Wears Prada, and Julia Stiles joins him in that category for her supporting role in the Bourne films. But the one mention that's sure to upset a few people has to go to Sofia Coppola from The Godfather: Part III. Kidding (although she is on there) -- I'm actually talking about little Emma Watson as Hermoine in the Harry Potter flicks. The person who submitted Emma says that the actress' "heavy sighs" and "eye rolling" are annoying to no end. I'm sure I can find about a trillion readers who disagree with that statement. There aren't many older films on there; I believe the oldest goes to Mickey Rooney's performance as a Japanese neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany's. So check out the list and let us know: Are these the worst supporting performances of all time? And which roles were left off the list?

With the success of Starsky & Hutch, the drooling masses who turned up to ogle Jessica Simpson's Daisy Dukes-clad ass in The Dukes of Hazzard, and the imminent arrival of Miami Vice, it was pretty much inevitable that somebody would eventually decide that Magnum, P.I. would also be a cash cow. That somebody turned out to be both a wise suit at Universal, who have long held the rights, and Brian Grazer, who will be producing the film (through Imagine Entertainment). The screenplay will be written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who penned both Dodgeball and the brilliant Terry Tate, Office Linebacker short that was turned into possibly the best Super Bowl ad of all time.

As someone who loved Magnum as a kid and was shocked to discover as an adult that it's often well-acted and surprisingly well-written, I read this news with a bit of trepidation. Since the big screen version of TV shows that have been most successful have been incredibly campy (affectionate, I admit, but still campy), I was worried that the same approach would be taken with this adaptation. Somehow that just seems wrong, not to mention weirdly disrespectful of a pretty complex TV show. But then I got to the good part of the article: according to the Hollywood Reporter, the film will not be a "spoof but rather something akin to the tone of the show, which mixed humor and danger." Excellent. Now I'm officially not completely scared.

Dreamworks has offered the team (Ben Stiller, Rawson Marshall Thurber and Stuart Cornfeld) behind the hit comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story one million dollars for their high-concept pitch. Yes, you heard that right - one freaking million dollars...for a pitch!

While it shouldn't come as a surprise that studios are now shelling out that much money for nothing more than an idea, it definitely goes to show that ideas are worth a ton these days seeing as it's these blockbuster comedies that are saving the box office from going bye bye. Okay, I admit that, often, pitches offer a bit more than an idea. I've heard stories of writers going in with props, in costumes, in character, while hopping and bopping around the room, reciting lines as if performing a live version of their unwritten script. However, Stiller and company must have one helluva concept for Dreamworks to want it that bad.

Oh yeah, about that concept - they're keeping quiet about it right now. We do know that Thurber came up with the idea, with Stiller and Cornfeld attached to produce through their Dreamworks-based Red Hour Films. The pair is also producing the upcoming Blades of Glory; a comedy based on a pair of Olympic ice skaters as played by Will Ferrell and Jon Heder. Hmm, Dodgeball? Ice skating? I wonder if this million dollar pitch is called Archery: Do People Still Play This?