jackass number two Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Back in 2007, our own Christopher Campbell (who's back on staff, baby!) told us that, back in 2006, a third Jackass film seemed like a sure thing in the wake of Jackass: Number Two. Steve-O told Howard Stern then that they'd begin shooting at the start of 2008...

Cut to 2009, and the Paramount slate for 2010 in our inbox happens to list a Jackass 3-D, with a release date to be determined. Johnny Knoxville and company don't seem too busy of late, and even with the eye-popping added dimension, this sounds like a relatively cheap production to give the go-ahead to. If Wikipedia is to be believed (I know), Bam Margera confirmed in a much more recent interview for a Finnish newspaper that filming would begin this January around the world.

Since there's really not all that much else to report on this yet, let me just assure you that my pals in the Twittersphere are a bit more psyched to have their gag reflexes back in working order than I might be:

"please be true, please be true, please be true" ... "Party boy's testicles bouncing off our foreheads." ... "there is a God in heaven, and he LOVES me!" ... "Ohpleaseohpleasepohpleaseohplease..." ... "This would make up for anything that goes wrong in the next 10 years."

Yep, there's still an audience.

[Thanks to Brian O. for helping round things out.]

Get ready for more cringing: another Jackass movie is on its way. This was a given after Jackass Number Two made so much money, and there were reports last year that Jackass 3 was officially greenlit by Paramount. But now we've gotten news that it is definitely happening, with sequences to begin shooting at the beginning of the next year. According to /Film, who heard it on Howard Stern, Steve-O has been told to rest up because they begin production in January. Poor Bam, who expressed at the end of Number Two his hope that there'd be no Jackass 3. I guess he could drop out of this round, as could any other regular who can't take another feature's worth of mayhem and injury. Just as long as Chris Pontius and Wee-Man don't quit.

I'll admit that I'm looking forward to it. It's funny, though, because when the first Jackass: The Movie came out, I was working in a movie theater and I refused to watch it, even for free. I didn't even like cleaning up the auditorium during the final credits. It just wasn't my cup of tea. But then some friends dragged me to the sequel -- which I reluctantly paid for (or maybe a buddy bought mine) -- and actually found ways to appreciate it. Plus, I laughed my ass off, too. By the time they dragged Mark Zupan out for some wheelchair shenanigans, I was sold. And I think that most moviegoers have reason to like Jackass too. Aside from not having a plot, it has all that audiences crave these days: gross-out comedy; action-packed scenarios; a little bit of the torture horror; some sports sequences; and, of course, male nudity. Plus, there's occasional homages to people like Buster Keaton and Busby Berkeley for the cineastes. For those who can't get enough of the hijinx, and don't want to wait until whenever Jackass 3 hits theaters (I'd guess a year from now), there's also the straight-to-dvd outtakes compilation Jackass 2.5, which hits stores this Christmas.

Thanks to one of the best casts we've seen in quite some time, Martin Scorsese had the greatest opening weekend of his career with The Departed racking up a dominating $27 million. The director's previous best was $10.3 million, set back in 1991 with the film Cape Fear. While it's a bit frightening to think that a director of this caliber has never had a pic debut with more than $10 million, do keep in mind Scorsese's films usually open on a smaller number of screens before rolling out on a larger scale. However, with an all-star team of talent, Warner Bros. decided to swing big, throwing The Departed into 3,017 theaters. And boy did it pay off.

Though it made a good attempt to keep pace, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning failed to hack its way to the top, settling for a respectable $19.15 million and the weekend's second spot. With only a $16 million production budget, I'd imagine Texas Chainsaw: The Middle and Texas Chainsaw: The End will show up sooner rather than later. The Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson comedy Employee of the Month ($11.8 million) was in third place after Friday, but bad buzz and a whole lot of youngsters demoted it down one notch to fourth, while the animated Open Season (last week's number one) scored spot number three with $16 million. And knocking Jackass: Number Two ($6.4 million) out of the top five for the first time since its release, The Guardian rounded things out with $9.6 million.

Full numbers after the jump.

Despite the fact that Jackass Number Two is the most popular movie in America this week, some people around the country aren't all that happy to be showing the crude new release. Over the weekend, I told you how a theater owner in Hoopeston, Illinois closed his cinema for two weeks because he didn't want to book the movie (or anything else), and now comes this photo from a fourplex in Orange City, Iowa. Apparently the people running the theater aren't familiar with a certain four-legged animal let alone the watering-down of its impact as a curse word.

I wish I could have seen their marquee when it featured the following titles: Buttbuttins; The Buttbuttination of Richard Nixon; Baadbuttttt! and the Ron Jeremy classic Girls Who Take it Up the Butt 21.


[via Fark.com]

Hey, we might not be the biggest film snobs here at Cinematical, but when it comes to Jackass Number Two, we seem to be above it. Erik was surprised and a little bit scared to see it rise to the top of last weekend's box office. James, also shocked, suggested a reason for its successful opening. Even I thought it was too stupid to bother with, and had even planned to avoid phone calls from those friends who might attempt to peer pressure me into seeing it with them. Alas, I'm an easy one to break, and on Saturday night we got boozed up with Texas-size margaritas at Dallas BBQ, headed to the theater with the liveliest crowds in Brooklyn, and watched Jackass Number Two. And, of course, I laughed my ass off. Why? Because I'm a normal human being with a sense of humor. And no attempts at being cynical, snobbish or above it could keep me from splitting my sides for almost 90 minutes straight.

I won't go so far as to say Jackass Number Two is the funniest movie of the year; I'm still sure that I'll laugh more during Borat, but it is at least the funniest thing I've seen this year. And let me point out that without the tequila and the rowdy audience, I would probably have laughed just as much. It isn't simply the ridiculous stunts and pranks and gross-out gags that makes the film so funny, either. It is the wonderful group of guys, who are constantly as curious, afraid, amazed and yes, even above the bits as their audience is. The fact that some of them occasionally show disdain for the whole project and swear off even thinking of doing a third film shows that these aren't just a bunch of idiots who like playing with fire (and snakes, sharks, terrorism, riot weapons, horse excrement and semen and, best of all, Busby Berkeley musical routines); they are witty entertainers who can take a lot of pain and suffering for the enjoyment of the viewer.

Besides, if Murderball's Mark Zupan can allow himself to be shot off a pier into a lake, then surely we can all sit through a silly film like Jackass Number Two for an hour and a half.

Here's a big question: Does Jackass Number Two attract vandals or make them? Now that I've seen my first article about theater vandalism and its link to the release of the Jackass sequel -- reports of vandalism came from all over the U.S. when the original opened -- I have to wonder if people are insinuating one or the other. Does the theater manager dislike the film because it brings riff-raff in, or does he dislike the film because of its influence on the audience? According to this news, the Tinseltown theater in Medford, Oregon had to evacuate 500 people over the weekend because somebody lit toilet paper on fire in the men's room, and the manager suspects that it was not an exiting moviegoer all hopped up on sugar and reckless stunts, but was instead some teens who were denied entry into the R-rated movie.

I would never have imagined such good news in all my life -- for once it is not the entertainment being blamed for violent behavior. This time it's the MPAA! Take that, Dan Glickman. Okay, so the politicians could certainly spin it the other way; the fire would have never happened if it weren't for Jackass, and the rating has now actually protected more people by prohibiting those kids from being exposed to even more dangerous ideas. So, what really came first? The jackass or the Jackass?