footloose Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The biggest enemy of the Footloose remake isn't a music-hating preacher, but its own Creative Differences. After it finally recovered from the loss of Zac Efron by recruiting Chace Crawford and Julianne Hough, Variety reports that Footloose has now lost its captain. Director Kenny Oretega has left the project due to "differences over tone and budget."

Reportedly, Ortega's vision included elaborate dance sequences and a budget of $30 million or more. But Paramount's Adam Goodwin had something different in mind. He saw Footloose with a little less dancing, a little less music, and a lot more edge. He was also hoping the budget would come in around $25 million. Who is right? I don't know. If you want something closer to the original, I'd say Goodwin is spot on. Kevin Bacon did his lithe dance moves in barns and car washes. It was on the cheap. It was also pretty edgy (relatively speaking) in its handling of teenage sexuality. Is any remake going to feature its heroine yelling "I'm not even a virgin!" in the middle of a church? Nah. They'll just dress her sexy.

Paramount is now on the hunt for a new director in order to kick off its Sunday shoes and begin filming by 2010. I was going to say "Maybe this'll be the end of this silly remake" but there's no way that'll happen. Instead, I vote that this Footloose be made with two simultaneous storylines. As they tell the story of the repressive Midwest, we'll also learn about the behind the scenes drama that mirrors the onstage action. Will Ortega's lush vision of music and dance win out? Or will the repressive Goodman crush his freedom of expression? It would be like The French Lieutenant's Woman for high schoolers.

Is it just me, or are there any other children of the '80s out there experiencing a strange case of Déjà Vu right about now? As we speak, those brilliant Hollywood innovators are currently churning out remakes and re-imaginings for films like Footloose, The Karate Kid and Red Dawn, while old TV shows like The A-Team are also feeling the big-screen love. And because it's our job to sicken (or, heck, excite?) you on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, we've brought with us some bodacious images from The A-Team and The Karate Kid, both of which are now right smack in the middle of production and due out next year.

We'll begin with the first image from off the set of The A-Team (courtesy of Splash News, see above), and, naturally, it's a shot of the new A-Team van, which, thankfully, greatly resembles the old A-Team van. Growing up I had a toy version of the A-Team van (with its awesome sliding side door), but lost it at some point -- so I'm actually looking forward to a potential A-Team van toy comeback, if only to watch my kid play with (and enjoy) something that's so totally mid-80s.

This new version of The A-Team is due in theaters on June 11, 2010, and stars Liam Neeson as John "Hannibal" Smith, , Sharlto Copley as Capt. "Howling Mad" Murdock, Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck, and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson as Sgt. "B.A." Baracus. Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces) directs, and Jessica Biel also stars as a general/love interest on the hunt for the renegade team, while Entertainment Weekly tells us that Patrick Wilson has joined the cast as a CIA operative.

Images and art from The Karate Kid remake after the jump.

Welcome to a new series here on Cinematical where we look back at some of our favorite movie montages over the years.

I can't think of a better way to kick off this series than by kicking off my Sunday shoes with this fantastic montage from Footloose. The reason this montage is so great, so memorable and so iconic is because something like this will never happen again. Sure, they're remaking Footloose with a couple Abercrombie underwear models -- and there's a chance some of those classic tunes may pop up (remixed by Kanye West, of course) -- but never will Hollywood spend this much time on one dude teaching another dude how to dance to a song like "Let's Hear it for the Boy". It'll never happen. Hollywood is way too homophobic to even attempt to recreate this scene. No way.

C'mon, they're running through fields full of flowers! Who would try something like that in 2009? If this awesome montage were to ever be recreated for a new generation, they'd throw at least three cute girls into the equation -- and maybe one of the girls would be, like, half naked in order to draw attention away from the guy who's learning how to dance. So I say let's celebrate the original Footloose! Let's celebrate one of the great 80's bromances between Kevin Bacon and the late Chris Penn. Heck, let's hear it for those boys!

Watch the montage after the jump

When you can't get Zac Efron to bring Footloose's Ren McCormack into the singing and dancing twenty-first century, who do you get? Do you twist the race? Grab a girl? Get creative and go in an entirely different direction? Naw. You go for the guy who looks the most like the High School Musical star!

Two months after Efron exited from the musical Footloose remake, fearing the woes of a type-casted life, Cinematical has received a press release that reports that the rumors are true -- Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford has nabbed the gig. Along with this casting announcement, Paramount said that no female lead has been picked yet. However, EW sources are throwing around names like Hayden Panettiere and Julianne Hough. Production will begin in March, 2010.

Beyond smooching Blair on GG, Crawford has got a slew of thrillers and horror under his belt, from The Haunting of Molly Hartley to the upcoming Twelve. And now he's moving to the smile-heavy world of musicals, taking on a role that Zac Efron backed out of, and doing so as a look-alike. Am I missing something? I'm going to assume this gig has a huge paycheck, because I can see no other reason Crawford would want to make himself an Efron replacement -- especially when he's already got some solid gigs.

Is the lure of cutting loose really that powerful?

I was less than pleased when word hit back in 2007 that Zac Efron was leading a musical adaptation of Footloose. It is said to be a whole new musical twist, free from the singing-heavy stage treatment. But now, nearly two years later, Entertainment Weekly reports that Mr. Disney is out.

Paramount issued a statement explaining that Efron is no longer attached to the film, but they're still going full-steam ahead with Kenny Ortega, Neil Meron, and Craig Zaden's twist on the franchise. However, EW then explained that their sources think the remake could very well depend on whether they can find a similar "song-and-dance dude" to fill Efron's now-vacant Sunday shoes. Their sources also say that the young actor left the project to run from the woes of typecasting. It seems that he's set on adding versatility to his roster, and taking on Footloose right now certainly wouldn't help Efron make a name for himself outside High School Musical and Hairspray.

So that leaves the new Ren McCormack out there and ready for the taking -- a high-school aged kid who can sing and dance. Will it be another HSM alum? Maybe a Jonas brother? It's not too easy to find a bankable name that fits all the parameters, especially when the role was once given to the It boy of musicals. Perhaps they'll have to throw on "Let's Hear it For the Boy" and teach a new dude how to dance.

Do you think anyone else can handle the world of Bible-thumpers, singing, and dancing? Or are you just hoping this is one stop closer to neverending development hell?

I usually don't heavily rant here on Cinematical, but one of the stories that fired me up was the news that Footloose was getting remade into a cinematic musical with Zac Efron. No, this isn't a remake of the live musical a la Producers, but rather a straight remake from the film. Now, Variety reports that the project is being fast-tracked and could start production this spring. First, however, Peter Sollet (the director of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) is penning a rewrite of Jon Hartmere's script. Then we can watch our beloved '80s classic get Efronized. In the meantime, the songs are being cooked up -- ones that will combine new tunes with some of the old favorites. Yeah, I'm still not sold.

In more drug-centric news: It looks like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which Gus Van Sant grabbed in June of last year, is still moving forward. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Fox Searchlight has picked up the project. However, they're not sharing any news about when the film will get made or released. Maybe never? Yes, I'm bitter about this project too, but that's just because I was not happy with how he handled Tom Robbins and Blake Nelson's work, so I really don't want Tom Wolfe added to the mix. What do you think? Can Van Sant handle the lives of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters?

Remember the '80s? Ah, those long-ago days when MTV actually showed music videos and had the occasional black screen when someone was changing a videotape, and the five original VJs (can you name them all without Googling it?) ruled our lives, spinning videos that were, in the beginning at least, mostly concert footage outtakes or whatever else they could get their hands on.

In 1983, MTV was two years old, a toddler tottering around on unsteady feet, but just starting to get the hang of it. I was a freshman in high school, and Joe Eszterhaus and Paul Verhoeven were still 12 years away from unleashing Showgirls on the world. We'd been inspired by Fame just three years earlier, the world was ripe for another dance musical -- and a film called Flashdance -- an unlikely Cinderella story about a blue collar girl who works as a welder by day and an exotic dancer (the kind who doesn't take her clothes off) by night, while dreaming of a better life as a ballerina -- took the world by storm.

To me, nothing defines my awkward childhood better than those irresistible 80's movie tunes. Back in the day, before I saved up my hard-earned cash to purchase the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack on a cassette tape (true story), I would take my boom box, hold it up to the TV and record the songs like that. Some of the time you'd even hear the actors' dialogue pop in -- but I didn't care; if that was the only way to get The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News right that second, so be it. There were loads of songs to choose from while writing this list, and I was tempted to include two from the same movie on several occasions (Footloose, to give one example), but in the end I decided to go with the songs that meant the most to me. The songs I would sing in the shower when I knew my parents weren't home. The songs that showed up at a certain point, kicked tons of ass, and defined a movie. So, without dragging this on any further, I present to you Seven Great 80s Soundtrack Songs ...

Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds), The Breakfast Club -- Perhaps the most memorable for any angst-ridden teenager trying to sort out their feelings about high school and the opposite sex, this song and this movie helped define a generation. When the time finally comes in the film for this song to be played, you feel like you've gone through such an emotional journey with the characters -- all of whom found their lives change forever over the course of one, long weekend detention session. Who knows if they ever remained friends after that; if their brief chats in the hallway progressively got shorter and eventually became friendly nods until, finally, they graduated, moved on with their lives, raised families and that whole experience became a distant memory. If it wasn't for that song, The Breakfast Club might have gone the same route -- and instead of becoming a classic, it may have gotten lost amidst a long list of films you remember from time to time, but quite often forget. -- Most Quotable Line: Don't you forget about me.

Since I'm well over the age of 18, you can probably understand why I'm not all that familiar with the work of Zac Efron. With only a passing familiarity with High School Musical and my refusal to sit through the Hairspray update (since they weren't bringing Pia "I play my bongos, listen to Odetta, and then I iron my hair" Zadora back), most of the time I'm just looking at the heartthrob wondering why he has chosen to revive Gwyneth Paltrow's haircut circa Sliding Doors. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Burr Steers (writer/director of Igby Goes Down) has just signed to direct the teen comedy 17 starring Efron. Written by Jason Filardi, the story centers on an adult man who suddenly finds himself to be 17 again and having to navigate the social mine field that is high school -- think of it as Mean Girls meets Big. Considering Steers' somewhat acidic take on young adulthood, it might help cut through the fairly cutesy premise of 17.

New Line snapped up the original pitch for the film back in February, and last June, Erik had given us the news that Efron had signed for the lead. The addition of a director must mean that the project is on its way to production. Efron has been recently linked to a remake of the 1984 classic, Footloose -- but as a musical! -- and our own Monika Bartyzel totally adores the idea. We kid. Of course, there is still the small matter of High School Musical 3 -- although, if you've been keeping on top of the gossip lately, you probably know that HSM producers might be facing a delay of in order to look for a new squeaky clean female lead.

While most movie-watching eyes were on the theatrical box office this weekend, wondering if Superbad would surpass expectations and if The Invasion would crash, another demographic had a higher priority -- the hotly anticipated premiere of High School Musical 2 Friday night on The Disney Channel. If you don't have a tween, it might not have been on your radar, but if you, like me, have a girl between the ages of 9-12 in your house (and be honest, a lot of you high school girls were watching it too) you've been hearing of little else for weeks.

In our house, we became aware of the phenomena that is High School Musical when the first one premiered on January 20, 2006. Our daughter, then almost-nine, DVRed it and she (and we, by default) watched that movie so many times that it wasn't unusual for me or my husband to be caught absent-mindedly singing "We're All in This Together" or "Get Your Head in the Game" -- two of the shows most popular tunes -- while we bopped about the house doing chores. Then they had the karaoke version, and the version where the cast taught you the moves to the choreography for "We're All in This Together" step-by-step, and pretty soon even the two-year old was showing off his "cool moves" to company.