jasonbateman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The title may be generic, but the cast is not. Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, and Faizon Love accompany their significant others -- Malin Akerman, Kristen Davis, Kristen Bell, and Tasha Smith -- on a vacation to paradise in Couples Retreat. There is a catch, however: intensive sessions of relationship therapy are mandatory and counselor Jean Reno doesn't take "no" for an answer. The first trailer is up at the Fruit Factory (AKA Apple.)

While there's a degree of over-familiarity with the basic premise, the trailer is very promising, edging into the naughty side of PG-13. (According to Erik Davis' post on the movie last year, that's the rating they're aiming for.) Bateman and Bell make for a good, edgy couple of Type A-personalities on the brink on break-up who ask three other couples to come along on their retreat to save money. Old friends Vaughn and Favreau have great chemistry, of course, and have worked with Bateman before. I'm not a huge fan of Akerman or Davis -- they're both lovely and have bright personalities but not a lot of comic snap. Seeing Reno as a buff instructor makes me giggle. Favreau wrote the script, based on an idea by Vaughn, and another old pal, Peter Billingsley, makes his directorial debut.

Couples Retreat is heading for release on October 9, a crowded date on the release schedule: The Informant (drama), Night of the Demons (horror), Whip It (comedy), and Zombieland (horror comedy) are also due out that day. Does the concept or the cast -- or the trailer -- grab you?

Cinematical is absolutely, positively pumped up to be bringing you the debut teaser trailer for Mike Judge's Extract, starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, Kristen Wiig and J.K. Simmons. I'm a huge Judge fan; been following the dude since way back during his Beavis and Butthead days, and haven't really disliked anything he's put out. Folks have told me that Extract finds the writer-director returning to his Office Space-ish humor, and this teaser definitely shows some signs of that -- from the workplace mishaps to our hero's random romantic woes, classic Judge hilarity is watermarked all over this sucker.

Extract follows the personal and professional problems endured by the owner (Bateman) of a flower-extract plant, including a wife who won't sleep with him, a new hottie temp and ... Ben Affleck as a major stoner? Believe it. I think it's safe to say Judd Apatow's Funny People now has some serious competition when it comes to funniest film of the summer because this little sucker just shot up to numero uno on my anticipation list. What about you? Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think. Extract hits theaters on September 4.

It took over a year to get cooking, but now we're finally going to see what walking spermatoza look like. Yay? (No idea what I'm talking about, huh? Go read this.) The Blades of Glory duo were creating the story of a woman obsessed not with a family and that white picket fence, but with a baby sans the man. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jennifer Aniston will be the wanna-be mama, and Jason Bateman will play her sperm-having friend.

The twist, that I didn't mention before, is that Tomasina Kassie* (Aniston) plans to get inseminated with some semen that is most definitely not from her sperm-having friend Wally (Bateman). Having some baggage he hasn't gotten over, he switches the donor semen with his own, and "must live with the secret that he is the father of her child."

This is being touted as a romantic comedy, so I imagine that somehow, some way, Kassie and Wally find romance so that they can live with their cute, adorable little ill-conceived offspring. Or maybe he'll pull another Juno and get jerky. Would you mind being mistakenly impregnated with Bateman's sperm?

*In the story, her name is Tomasina, but I guess that isn't chic enough for Hollywood. And yet somehow "Wally" is ...

Now that almost everyone in the cast (holds fist in air, screams "Cera!") has mentioned that they'd be up for an Arrested Development feature film, we turn to any piece of plot information we can get our creepy little perverted hands on. Series creator Mitch Hurwitz was out promoting the new animated show Sit Down, Shut Up (as executive producer) -- which also features Will Arnett and Jason Bateman in its voice cast -- during the TCA press tour, and he provided a much-needed update with regards to a big-screen Arrested Development outing. Hurwitz says, "We want to do it, we have a deal more or less in place from Fox Searchlight, and we're kind of getting all the actors on board."

Sounds good -- a lot of this is stuff we've already known -- but then Hurwitz went and dropped the story bomb on everyone. Do you wanna know what this film will be about? Do you really wanna know? Because it's beyond crazy -- it's so freakin' out there you might need to sit (or lay) down, preferably in a relaxed position with one leg (left?) slightly bent. Ready? Here's what Hurwitz and the gang have planned plot-wise for the film: "We have a story, which is basically Valkyrie meets Hotel for Dogs." Wow. So does that mean the Bluth family will find themselves in a position where they have to hatch a plan to assassinate a group of Nazi dogs? Seems that way, based on that description.

What do you think the movie will be about?

[via Buzzsugar]

If you want to broaden the appeal of a romantic comedy, it helps to grab an array of actresses -- like say, a girl who is not only known as a modern Nancy Drew, but also a hot-tempered Hero, a woman who starred in one of the hot rom-coms of 2008 (Sex and the City), and a girl who can smack down baddies in an alternate time of superheroes and impending doom.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, and Malin Akerman have signed on for a new film called Couples Retreat. Now Akerman, at least, has had some iffy luck with this genre, so here's what ups the ante -- it's written by Iron Man Jon Favreau, and will be directed by collaborator Peter Billingsley (better known as the Christmas Story kid). So, it's not your everyday comedy. In fact, "rom" has been completely left off the genre placement of this project so far, but it is a comedy about romance. (Is there a difference?!)

The story involves four couples working on their relationships at a tropical island resort, so who are the men in romantic peril? Jason Bateman gets to be married to Bell, Favreau is also co-starring as Davis' husband, and Vince Vaughn gets to canoodle Malin. As for the fourth, Faizon Love is attached, but there's no word on his leading lady.

Here's a movie that's getting stranger and stranger the more details we get -- and I'm loving it. First, Mike Judge's Extract was simply a movie that "explores what it's like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you." Then it became about a guy who owns an industrial flower-extract plant and has to deal with workplace issues and a cheating wife. Now, it turns out that one of the "workplace issues" is an employee who loses a body part in a freak accident, and that the wife is cheating on the protagonist with a gigolo. Awesome.

Jason Bateman plays the factory owner -- that, we already knew. We also knew that the amazing Kristen Wiig is playing the wife, and Mila Kunis another employee. The new info is that Clifton Collins, Jr. has joined the cast as the maiming victim, and Ben Affleck as an ambulance-chasing lawyer who, I'd imagine, wants to milk Bateman's character for all he's worth. No word on who's playing the gigolo.

I got pelted with poop for praising Mike Judge's last movie, the largely direct-to-DVD Idiocracy, the first time I wrote about this project, but I stand by comments. It would have been easy for Judge to do Office Space 2, but it's been gratifying to watch him go in some even more offbeat directions instead.

Well here's something you don't see every day: A big, flashy summertime "tentpole" movie that A) takes chances, B) bucks convention, and C) takes some real risks with its subject material. Obviously the safe approach is for Will Smith to do (yet another) easily-digestible (if somewhat mindless) blockbuster like I, Robot or I Am Legend or Independence Day -- but this time the endlessly profitable Will Smith is working with a rather distinctive director who refuses to cater to formula. That director would be Peter Berg, and this guy has yet to make a bad film.

Unfortunately the production history on Hancock is not a fantastic one. There was a revolving door of directors and script polishers before Columbia finally started production -- but there were still marketing issues, last-minute reshoots, and MPAA miseries to deal with. And yet, despite all that, Hancock arrives like a breath of weirdly fresh air for moviegoers who like a little heart and soul mixed in with their hyper-kinetic action mayhem. Toss some sharp wit and an impressive display of edge into the mix, and I think you may have one of my favorite movies of the summer. (Although one can plainly tell that there was some late cutting done to the flick, all in the name of the almighty PG-13 rating, of course.)

After years of Beavis and Butt-Head, there was Office Space. But after red Swingline staplers and the need for flair, Mike Judge took a number of years off from directing -- until the largely ignored Idiocracy. This time around, however, we don't have to wait as long (as Eugene pointed out in April). Extract is on the way, and now EW's Hollywood Insider has shared more of the plot, and who's in talks to co-star alongside Jason Bateman.

The film will focus on a guy who owns a flower-extract plant -- the industrial sort, not the leafy sort. In typical, professional Judge fashion, the guy is having a bunch of bad luck, which includes "workplace issues and a cheating wife." EW sources say that Kristen Wiig is looking into playing the wife, while Mila Kunis might grab a role as a plant employee. That sounds like a set up for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, revisited -- the man can choose between his crappy partner and the wonderful nice girl right in front of him.

Between the possible murk of an actors' strike and Wiig's SNL schedule, the film is slated to start production in August.

I wanted to go into Hancock knowing as little as possible, so I deliberately avoided reading anything about it -- at least, as much as that was possible given the amount of movie blog reading I do on a daily basis. Nonetheless, it was hard to miss that early reviews trickling in from places like Variety and Hollywood Reporter were not, shall we say, overly positive. On the other hand, several of those reviews were written by people who often seem to have cinematic tastes directly opposite mine, so I wasn't too dissuaded.

And I'm glad I wasn't, because I'm here to tell you Hancock is both an enjoyable film and one of Will Smith's best performances ever, even if it is a bit schizophrenic in its execution. The film starts out as one thing -- all we know is we're getting a film about a grumpy, alcoholic guy with super powers who's awfully deficient in the social skills department. The film opens on a scene right out of COPS: three bad guys leading police on a chase down an LA freeway, firing away on police and other cars. In between shots of the action, we see a disheveled guy snoozing drunkenly on a park bench.

Although Will Smith plays an emotionally fragile superhero in Hancock, as a movie star he's practically invincible. By industry standards, the last genuine Smith dud was The Legend of Bagger Vance, but the actor's standing among many audiences has remained decidedly rocky. As a result, he occupies a unique corner of the Hollywood marketplace where quality and taste don't necessarily match up. Unlike, say, The Dark Knight, not many people eagerly await the latest Smith offering -- which currently has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- but they'll see it anyway. Hancock is tracking well, thanks to a poster exclusively dominated by Smith's unshaven mug, and that pretty much seals its potent box office fate. Just as Smith's slapdash onscreen persona is bullet-proof, Smith himself is steadfastly critic-proof.

Which places movie in an interesting quagmire: After pulling in waves of cash, it will probably get relegated to the void of forgettable Smith fare, where spectacles offer passing amusement before scampering off forever. Hancock, however, deserves better than a fleeting moment in the limelight and a crash landing in the bargain bin. It's part of a genre that speaks directly to the modern state of blockbuster cinema: The superhero satire.