nacho libre Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Things certainly seem to be moving quickly for Gentlemen Broncos. Five days ago, Patrick had first broke the news on the follow-up project for Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre creator Jared Hess. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has already announced that Sam Rockwell has signed to star along side Flight of the Conchords creator Jermaine Clement for the teen comedy. The story centers on a teen fantasy novelist who has his story ripped off by his idol at a writer's camp. Michael Angarano (Lords of Dogtown) will play the teen that comes up with the fantasy story with the unfortunate title of Yeast Lords.

Rockwell will play the fictional character in the story and there will be some "book-come-to-life sequences under two guises: one in the teen's story and one in the author's story". Well, if anybody can pull it off, it would be Rockwell -- the man has a knack for playing some of the most diverse characters without breaking a sweat. If you don't believe me, take an afternoon and watch The Green Mile and then Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and tell me those are two pretty impressive ends of the spectrum.

The script was written by the husband and wife team of Jared and Jerusha Hess, and will be produced Mike White and Ben LeClair. Both White and LeClair worked with Hess before on Nacho Libre. So it looks like Patrick's prediction came true and the cast is going to be an 'indie' affair, but with the addition of Rockwell and Clement there's just a smidgen more of 'hipster' cred. Gentlemen Broncos is scheduled to start production this March and arrive in theaters some time in 2009.

Jared Hess loves exploring the nerds, geeks, freaks, outsiders, and weirdos of the world, and God bless him for that. The outcasts are always far more interesting than the cool kids. Hess kicked off his career with Napoleon Dynamite, and if you can measure a film's popularity by how often people quote its dialogue, then Napoleon is one of the most beloved films in recent years. He followed Napoleon up with the less favorably received Nacho Libre. I think the problem most people had with Nacho is that they weren't expecting it to be a kids' movie, but I kind of dug it. It was certainly an original, and had some great visuals. Now Joblo has the scoop on his next project -- Gentlemen Broncos.

From Bronco's description and lead character (a high school outcast), it seems Hess is aiming to recapture that Napoleon magic. The film will focus on "an aspiring fantasy author. He attends a fantasy convention to show off his work and finds his supposed masterpiece - Yeast Lords - ripped off by legendary novelist Ronald Chevalier, who has turned desperate for ideas." It sounds pretty funny to me, and the whole Dungeons and Dragons/Lord of the Rings fanboy world should certainly provide Hess with ample comedy ammunition. And since his mockery tends to be pretty sweet-natured, I doubt he'll alienate those fans. No word on casting, but I wouldn't expect huge names -- it seems he'll be doing Broncos as a pretty indie affair. As with his previous films, Hess will direct and co-wrote the script with his wife, Jerusha. Sweeet.

Announcing their second deal in one day, The Hollywood Reporter tells us scribes Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory have sold yet another pitch to Universal Pictures; this one is being developed as a star vehicle for Jack Black. Hoping to swipe a little thunder from the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel, they're calling this flick The Lost Adventures of Stone Perlmutter Jr. -- and, like Indiana Jones, it will revolve around an adventurer (Black) who goes in search of elusive and mystical artifacts. The story will play out in a faux documentary style, and revolve around recently-discovered footage from 1979 that features Perlmutter Jr. searching for things like Yeti, El Dorado and the lost tomb of Jesus. While he's at it, maybe he'll also search for the three people who actually liked Nacho Libre. That would take some time, though ... he says as he ducks and awaits the Nacho fanatics to attack.

It might be a good role for Black; although I was frightened as all hell, I kind of liked watching him bumble his way through the jungles in King Kong. Give him a good sidekick, and this one can soar. Black will also be producing the film through his Universal-based Electric Dynamite, but currently no one is attached to direct. Huyck and Gregory, who began their careers writing for Late Show with David Letterman and then The Larry Sanders Show, are also attached to the tennis comedy Pros. Black can next be seen in Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, and is out filming another adventure-comedy as the character Jeff 'Fats' Portnoy in Tropic Thunder for director Ben Stiller.

With so many movies crowding the box office these days, distributors have to try to produce marketing for their films that will cut through the cacophony of TV, radio, iPods and ringing cell phones. It can be hard to produce a poster that is eye-catching enough to make you stop and give it a second look. What's the last poster that really caught your eye? The blog Sam's Myth has a nice collection up of his favorite five posters from the past year. While we don't agree with all of his choices (Nacho Libre, really?) -- for the most part they're nice picks from the absurd amount that were seen plastered around a town near you.

Check out the poster for Dave Chappelle's Block Party, which proves that a movie doesn't have to be great to have a fantastic poster. This is basically a concert film, but the poster really pops and has a 60s/70s feeling to it. Plus, a film like Hard Candy, which was barely a blip on the radar, has what is probably the most visually arresting poster from the entire year. I'm a huge fan of retro art and magic, so naturally I rushed out to see both films that were set in the world of turn-of-the-century magic. I thought The Illusionist was extremely engaging, but The Prestige fell a bit flat for me. The same is true for their posters, as well. In fact, The Illusionist is probably my favorite poster from this year, besides the Superman Returns poster that pays homage to the amazing artwork of Alex Ross.

However, this year has also produced some posters that weren't worth the adhesive they were hung with. What's with The Good German directly ripping off Casablanca? That's a classic movie poster that shouldn't be imitated, and there's a fine line between homage and copying.

Look for my inner Grinch to come out as I post the Worst Movie Posters of 2006 just before Christmas. Bah, humbug!

In 1989, Daniel Neman, a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, began counting flatulence jokes in movies, beginning with the lovable cop-and-dog buddy comedy K-9. This year, thanks to Nacho Libre and Click, his list of movies with funny farts has reached a milestone of 100 (that seems surprisingly low). So, to celebrate, he has written a little piece in his paper about the overused gag, which he claims made its first appearance thirty years ago in Blazing Saddles. Basically he tells us what we should already know: flatulence isn't actually funny, especially not after more than 100 movies. So why do filmmakers continue to include flatulence for comedic effect? Neman blames film school, that place where he says future writers and directors learn to copy what has been done before. In fact, according to him, the entire lack of originality in Hollywood these days is because of film school.

Well, I kinda see Neman's point about film students being too obsessed with the filmmakers who came before them, but if film school graduates were actually copying the greats that much, then today's movies would probably be better than they are. Anyway, I went to film school, and I don't recall a class that taught flatulence. Maybe in the ten years that I've been out of school it was added to the curriculum, but I doubt it. The kinds of movies that use fart jokes, except for maybe Blazing Saddles, are just not the kind studied at film school.

So what could be the real reason screenwriters put the gag into their scripts? Easy answer: People still laugh at it. Even if we know it isn't really funny we still sometimes laugh. Especially if we're 10, and exist in the demographic to which Hollywood caters.

[via Fark.com]

So, let's start with the good news for Warner Bros.: Superman Returns topped the box office this weekend! Yay! The film made just over $52 million from 4065 screens, easily out-earning The Devil Wears Prada, which took in $27 million on about 1200 fewer screens. The bad news, however, is that, big-picture, the movie tanked. Its $81.2 million over the first five days of release is good enough for ... 30th place on the all-time, five-day list. Add to that the facts that a)27 of the films that earned more opened on fewer screens, and b)WB is rumored to have spent about $300 million total (including promotional costs) on the movie, and those box office numbers spell a very, very, VERY worried studio. Look for the WB spin to kick into high gear on Monday, featuring sound bytes like "It outdid our expectations among female senior citizens" and "When the World Cup is over, just watch the box office explode!"

Meanwhile, Click and Nacho Libre both dropped about 50%, with Click's $19.4 million placing it in the third spot, and Nacho Libre's $6.2 good enough for fifth, right behind a still-solid Cars. In other news, The Break-Up is still in the top 10. This weekend's earnings of $2.8 million ran the movie's total domestic takes to about $110 million and pushed it even further into the black. The full top 10 is after the jump.

With the entire weekend box office down over 10% from last week, Adam Sandler's Click took the top spot, with earnings of approximately $40 million. The film's weekend total, while less than that earned by recent first week chart-toppers, is about equal to what The Break-Up made in its first weekend, albeit from 700 more screens. Suffice to say that if Click proves to have The Break-Up's surprising staying power (the latter finished the weekend in the seventh spot, with domestic earnings over $100 million), Sony will be very happy indeed.

Taking the second spot this weekend was Cars which, despite numbers that Pixar-watchers are calling disappointing, is now officially in the black domestically with total earnings over $150 million. In third place was Nacho Libre, down a shocking 57% from last weekend to $12.1 million; The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift experienced an even more stagging drop, losing 62% and ending up in the fifth spot with $9.2 million. The weekend's only non-Click major debut, Waist Deep, ended up fourth for the weekend with a total of about $9.5 million on just over 1000 screens. The complete top 10 is after the jump.

This week four new releases, though they all did ok business, were nevertheless unable to surpass Pixar's Cars, which became the first movie in a long damn time to hold onto the top spot in the weekend box office race. Cars, which experienced a (totally normal, though perhaps not for Pixar films) drop of about 48% from its opening returns, took in an estimated $31.2 million from almost 4000 screens. Roaring into the second spot with his fake accent and stretchy pants was Jack Black, whose Nacho Libre made a respectable $27.5 million; on almost exactly the same number of screens (around 3000), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift made about $24.1 million, good enough for third place. The weekend's other two debuts, The Lake House and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, finished in the fourth and sixth spots respectively.

Interestingly, The Break-Up continues to do fairly strong business, finishing fifth for the weekend and running its total domestic earnings to just over $91 million. Since the movie cost $52 million to make, I think it's safe to say the folks at Universal are very pleased with their weird relationship movie and its tabloid-magnet stars. On the other side of the coin is WB's sad, sad Poseidon. After a month and a half in release, it's made about $56 million, barely a third of its reported budget. Dear me.

As you know, full numbers are after the jump.

Just when I thought World Wrestling Entertainment couldn't be more of a joke, I learned through Fark.com that WWE's website features Jack Black -- actually his Nacho Libre character, Ignacio, aka "Nacho" -- in its roster of Smackdown Superstars. If you go to the site, Black can be found hidden among "real" wrestlers. Click on his photo, and there's all kinds of advertising for the new film from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess.

I know that WWE has become interested in Hollywood, but does Hollywood need to be interested in WWE? Maybe giving Black to Vince McMahon is payback for his giving the studios The Rock (I can't think of who got shafted, more)? Actually this is a pretty good cross-promotion for Paramount. As hard as it is for some of us to believe, millions of fans still love wresting and many of them will probably be drawn to this movie. I say WWE fans and Jack Black can have each other.

Since the original studio announcement of the upcoming Nacho Libre film starring Jack Black, I (along with many of you) have been amused by the concept and eager to discover more. The insanity of Black mixed with the sheer absurdity of the provided plot seem like a recipe for comic gold for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. It should be the worst movie ever created -- but somehow I'm drawn to it. And my bug-to-the-shiny-bright-light fascination has grown exponentially today thanks to IGN Filmforce, who has shared a solid, exclusive collection of photos and audio from the film (check it out here).

The top picture shows Jack Black in a monk-esque habit, holding what appears to be a Bible and shaking his finger reproachfully at a pudgy child. As you would expect, this picture is absurd. But Jack Black makes it amusing. The final picture they share has Black riding on the front of a bike styled moped, striking a classic Jack Black pose. Yes, the man is ridiculous and over the top. And yet we love him -- it almost defies understanding. I encourage you to listen to the audio clips as well. I'd list a few of my favorites here, but when they aren't coming from the crazy man himself they just lose the magic.