invincible Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Here's another true story that was just screaming to be a movie: Frank Gildea returns to college twenty years after dropping out, joins his son Isaac on the school's basketball team and helps to win the team's first conference championship in 27 years. It sounds so cinematically appropriate you'd almost think the father and son had Hollywood in mind when making their life choices. Whatever the intentions, the duo has apparently sold the rights to their story to Walden Media (Amazing Grace), which will be producing, along with Mayhem Pictures, for 20th Century Fox. Brad Gann, who wrote the similarly against-the-odds sports movie Invincible, is currently at work on the screenplay.

If the story does seem a little familiar, you have probably seen one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures, Back to School. In that comedy Rodney Dangerfield plays a man who enrolls in the college that his son attends and the two end up on the diving team together. The only real difference is that, unlike Dangerfield's character, Frank Gildea had already been to college. Oh, and basketball is typically more cinematic than diving. But really this movie isn't likely to be too comparable with Back to School. In its tone and in its demographic interests, it should share more in common with The Rookie, which features Dennis Quaid as a middle-aged man who returns to a career in minor league baseball. That film was also produced by Mayhem Pictures, which also made Invincible and Miracle and is currently at work on a Secretariat movie.

The Oscars, the Golden Globes and those other movie awards are all well and good, but they're the same thing every year: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Motion Picture, etc., etc. Booooooring! We here at Moviefone thought we'd spice things up a bit, do something a little different just to give you movie lovers an awards program about which you can really be proud. And so this year we tapped Mr. Moviefone himself to distribute awards in categories that you'll most likely never EVER see at the Academy Awards. And you know what? Those other awards are weaker for it. And so we present the first annual Mr. Moviefone Awards.

But first, here's a special message from the one and only Mr. Moviefone ...

Here's what I've learned after reading some of your comments ... you guys are way better at this as I am. So add your very own award, and sometime in mid-February I will choose and then broadcast the top 10 on one of my TV or radio outlets. Probably the one I want to get fired from the most ... because I'm pretty sure it will happen. And of course we will broadcast it right here on Moviefone.com. So let 'er rip. We're not easily offended.

Actor Most Likely to Make You Want to Throw Crap at the Screen: Robin Williams in 'RV'

Actor Most in Danger of Becoming Overexposed: Hugh Jackman for starring in six films this year

Actress Most in Danger of Becoming Overexposed: Scarlett Johansson -- not so much because she's in too many movies; she's just likely to pop out of her dress

Best Actor/Actress Nobody Saw: Tie between Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps, both in 'Half Nelson'

The "Why Can't I Be Matt Damon" Award: Ben Affleck

Lamest Couple: Tristan and Isolde in -- you guessed it -- 'Tristan and Isolde'

Actress Most Likely to Split Six Pitchers of Beer and a Bucket of Wings With You (and Look Sexy While Doing It): Elizabeth Banks in 'Invincible'

Funniest Performance in a Drama: Tie between Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin, both in 'The Departed'

Most Vindicated Actor of the Year: Daniel Craig in 'Casino Royale'

The Most Humiliating Sequel (aka The "No Matter How Old I Get I'm Going to Act Like a 20-Year-Old Tramp" Award): Sharon Stone for 'Basic Instinct 2'

"Biggest Act of Hubris" Award: M. Night Shyamalan for casting himself as a writer whose work will change the world in the not-so-world-changing 'Lady in the Water'

Best Use of a Severed Body Part on Screen: Jack Nicholson using a corpse's hand for emphasis in 'The Departed'

Best Movie Line for Picking Up Chicks: "Very nice. How much?" -- Sacha Baron Cohen in 'Borat'

Movie That Should Have Required Guys to Trade Their Manhood Instead of Cash for Admission: 'The Holiday'

Most Over-Hyped Movie of the Year: 'Snakes on a Plane'

Best Movie Nobody Saw: 'Little Children'

Worst Movie Everybody Saw: 'X-Men: The Last Stand'

Funniest Movie of the Year: 'Borat'

Scariest Movie of the Year: 'An Inconvenient Truth'

Biggest Rip-Off of the Year: 'The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause'

The "Why on Earth Do They Still Let Them Make Movies" Award: Tie between Harrison Ford in 'Firewall' and The Wayans brothers for 'Little Man' (and every other movie they've ever made)

Movie Most Likely to Induce Vomiting: 'Jackass: Number Two'

The Most Porn-Like Movie Title of the Year: Tie between 'Stick It,' 'Little Man,' 'Glory Road,' 'She's the Man,' 'The Pink Panther' and 'Failure to Launch'

POST: What movie awards would you bestow this year?

WATCH IT: Mr. Moviefone's weekly TV spot

All the King's Men -- An all-star cast delivers an all-night snoozer. Sean Penn's spittle-intensive tirades aside, there's just not a whole lot to enjoy here. Extras include five featurettes, some deleted scenes and a really terrible front cover.

American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile -- It's official: "American Pie" is officially the new "National Lampoon." I mean, how creative do you have to be to make an entire movie out of ONE Van Wilder joke? Extra wackiness includes frat-style featurettes, deleted scenes and oh-so-uproarious outtakes.

Fearless and Invincible -- One's a Jet Li kick-fest period piece, the other's a Marky Wahlberg Philly-based football flick. I just like the way the titles sound together.

Lady in the Water -- I really love that he shoots in Philly, but this Shyamalan dude is getting pretty silly. (Six-part behind-the-scenes documentary, featurette, deleted scenes, audition footage, gag reel, trailer.)

Little Miss Sunshine -- One of the year's best indies is slowly turning into a dark-horse Oscar pick. (I'm betting on Best Screenplay and Best Arkin.) Extras include a filmmaker commentary, four alternate endings, music video and trailers.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend -- Underrated rom-com that's sure to find a home on DVD. Uma's dreamy, Luke Wilson is actually funny, and there's some goofy FX stuff too. Extras include a music video and some deleted scenes.

National Lampoon's Pledge This! -- Good god! An American Pie AND a National Lampoon on the same day? And this one stars Paris Hilton? Are we being punished for something??

A Scanner Darkly -- Linklater's finely freaky rendition of P.K. Dick's short story will earn love and scorn in equal measure ... but I'm pretty much split right down the middle. Perhaps the multi-participant commentary track will decipher some of the mysteries, plus there's a pair of featurettes and some trailers.

Step Up -- Wait, is this the one about gymnastics? Volleyball? Girl surfers? No, wait. It's dancing! Yeah, teenagers who step up and dance! Yeah, go dancers. Anyway, extras include a filmmaker commentary, some deleted scenes, bloopers, featurettes and MySpace tie-ins.

The Wicker Man -- Neil La Bute went temporarily crazy and decided to remake one of the all-time cult-classic creepers. Why he did it is still sort of a mystery to me, even if I was one of the very few film critics who actually enjoyed (part of) this remake. Extras include a filmmaker commentary, some trailers and an all-new ending that wasn't seen in theaters ... as if the theatrical-version epilogue wasn't silly enough.

With only $9 million, The Covenant took top spot at the box office this weekend, marking the lowest opening for a number one film in three years. Seriously, $9 million? Man, did anyone go to the movies this weekend? With its PG-13 rating, pic chased after a younger, boy band-ish demographic, however, three-quarters of the audience was 18 or older.

Ben Affleck and the name 'Superman' was enough to boost Hollywoodland ($6 million) into the weekend's number two spot, even though it opened about $1 million shy of what studio execs were expecting. After finishing first two weeks in a row, Disney's Invincible failed to stay ahead of the pack, falling to third place with $5.8 million. Tony Jaa's martial arts extravaganza, The Protector ($5 million), and Jason Statham's Crank ($4.8 million) rounded out the top five.

Full numbers after the jump.

The continuing box-office success of Invincible reminded me of other great football movies and football scenes in movies. Mark Wahlberg's character, struggling against the odds to make it in pro football, recalled another movie in which a guy tries to rise to stardom on the football team: Harold Lloyd in the 1925 film The Freshman. (Don't confuse it with the 1990 Matthew Broderick/Marlon Brando film -- this silent film is Komodo Dragon-free.)

In The Freshman, Lloyd plays Harold Lamb, a mild-mannered if not nerdy guy who plans to become the toast of his freshman college class, if not the entire college. Like other Lloyd characters, he studies books to determine the best road to popularity, but the books don't exactly steer him the right way. For example, I love the little jig he dances when he shakes hands. His football skills provide a number of comic moments. If this sounds a bit like the Adam Sandler film The Waterboy ... well, the Lloyd estate thought so too, and actually sued for copyright infringement (but lost the case). Many of Lloyd's films were finally released on DVD last year, so you can rent The Freshman and compare "Speedy" Lamb to Vince Papale, if you like.

After Disney and Mark Wahlberg ran off with the top numbers at the box office last weekend, Invincible managed to snag the top spot yet again, taking in an estimated $15.2 million -- lifting the film to an 11-day total of $37.8 million. Jason Statham's adrenalin-fueled Crank managed to out-duel Nic Cage's remake of The Wicker Man by sliding into the weekend's second spot with $13 million, while the latter picked up $11.7 million to round out the top three.

Little Miss Sunshine continued to live up to its name as "the little summer indie that could" by finishing fourth with $9.7 million, bringing its total to $35.8 million. However, Talladega Nights:The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (last week's number two film) ran smack into a slew of Labor Day traffic, forcing the Will Ferrell laffer to fall way down into the sixth spot with $7.7 million. Crossover ($4.5 million) and Outcast's Idlewild ($2.9 million) failed to find an audience this weekend, as well as a comfy spot in the top ten. Oh, and those damn snakes have officially left the building. Thank God.

Full numbers after the jump.

On a quiet box office weekend, Mark Wahlberg and his Invincible co-stars effortlessly outdistanced the competition: The film earned about $17 million over three days, while nothing else even broke the $10 million mark. In its fourth week in release, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby took in $8 million, good enough for the second spot; finishing third was Fox Searchlight's indie dreamboat Little Miss Sunshine which, after doubling its exposure to just over 1400 screens, made about $7.5 million, pushing its total earnings to $23 million. Though we still don't know exactly how much Fox spent on the rights to the movie, it's hard to believe they're not extremely please with its success so far -- only the craziest suit could possibly have dream of something like this.

Among the films making their debuts this week, Invincible was really the only success. Beerfest opened on more screens (just short of 3000), but did disappointing business -- the Broken Lizard flick made only $6.5 million, the weekend's fourth highest total (since their stuff tends to blow up on DVD, though, they're probably not going to have to sell the house or anything). In more limited exposure, Idlewild found itself in sixth with $5.9 million, but its average of $6055/screening was easily the best in the top ten. (Oh and yeah, Snakes on a Plane stumbled badly: It dropped almost 60% to $6.4 million from a massive 3555 screens.)

Full numbers are after the jump.

Right now, I'm going to share something very personal with you. Not only is it personal, but it's embarrassing. It's a secret that I have lived with my entire life and, for the people in my life aware of this secret, our relationship with one another has never been the same. I've decided, once and for all, to get this off my chest. Today. To you. And if things change between us, then I hope it will be for the better. Ready?

I have no sweet tooth. Yes, I was born without an ability to crave sweets. My worst enemy: Chocolate. I hate it. I've never liked it. It doesn't matter what form the chocolate arrives in, it can never come anywhere near my mouth. One time a friend of mine tried to pull a gag and gave me a handful of M&Ms saying  they were Skittles. Needless to say, no one has seen or heard from this person since. Yes, it's that bad. Yes, I have a disease. Yes, in a way, this has ruined my life.

I decided to share this with you today because all of the following films have a sweet quality about them and, at the same time, provide a nasty bite. They also prove that, sometimes, we have to put ourselves through spoonful of crap in order to enjoy the gigantic bucket of light at the end of the tunnel. Anyone want some chocolate ice cream? Welcome to this week's Trailer Park ...