pledge this Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Would you pay one million dollars for this woman? Paris Hilton was paid $1 million to star in Pledge This!, an otherwise low-budget ($8 million) production that, not surprisingly, was a box office flop. An investor claims "she broke her contract because she failed to promote the film on talk shows and in media interviews," according to the Telegraph UK. Hilton is facing an $8.1 million lawsuit in a Florida district court, which we first reported on last year.

Dressed for court in a black dress and "six-inch stilettos," Hilton waved at the judge before giving evidence. "I've never had a witness wave at me before," the judge said. (Oh, Paris, you're such a trendsetter!) She testified: "If I have my name attached to something, I want it to be as big as it can be." (You're free to make up your own jokes about that one.) She says that she did promote the film for two years before it was released, but when she was called upon again to promote the DVD release, she was too busy with "rehearsals" for her comedy classic, The Hottie & The Nottie. She was asked it that was a better movie than Pledge This! and "with a giggle" replied: "It was really good."

Pledge This! is alleged in court to have made $2.9 million. The allegedly "really good" The Hottie & The Nottie made $27,696 domestically and another $1.5 million worldwide. So maybe the Pledge This! investors should be grateful that Paris didn't promote the movie any more than she did.

In the vast wasteland of crappy movies Paris Hilton has popped up in is a little film called Pledge This! If you follow bad movies, you might recognize the title, and if you peruse IMDb's Bottom 100, you would see that it's resting at #15.

But it seems that the poor movie's bad luck is at least partially due to Paris' lackadaisical promotion of the film, not the fact that out of those who bothered to watch and rate the film (almost 5,000), it gets a 1.6/10. The AP reports that a lawsuit has been filed in Miami, claiming that she owes $75,000 for not making good on her promotional obligations. She was paid $1 million for her "acting services" as well as "reasonable promotion and publicity." So I guess she filled over 90% of her contractual obligations, but just slacked in that last 10. Bad worker Hilton.

This is an interesting scheme -- hire a rich celebrity with no cinematic discretion to star in a crappy film, and if the film tanks and she wasn't going wild publicizing it, blame her. Here's to hoping this keeps her from making another Hottie film, at the very least.

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.