school for scoundrels Tagged Articles at Cinematical

From looking at this weekend's box office numbers, it's quite obvious parents were desperate to get the kids out of the house and into a nice, comfy darkened theater. The animated flick Open Season (starring Ashton Kutcher and Martin Lawrence) topped all with $23 million, while Kutcher's live-action pic The Guardian sank into second place taking home a decent $17.7 million.

Both Kutcher films proved to be a bit too much for Johnny Knoxville and friends, as Jackass: Number Two (last week's number one) slid all the way down to third place with a crisp $14 million. However, I'm sure they're not complaining about a sweet 10-day total of $51.5 million. Not a whole lot of folks were interested in yet another dorky Jon Heder performance ( I know I wasn't), as School for Scoundrels opened in fourth with $9.1 million, and Jet Li's Fearless rounded out the top five with $4.7 million. It's also important to note that The Queen (which debuted Saturday on three screens in NYC) took home a ridiculous $123,000 in just two days, while The Last Kind of Scotland (four theaters in NYC and LA) nabbed $143,252.

Full numbers after the jump.

Todd Phillips has made a string of comedies -- Frat House, Road Trip and Old School -- all springing from bad male behavior, capturing the seeming link between heightened testosterone and reduced I.Q. Phillips' biggest success, Old School, shone probably not thanks to any directorial touch he brought to the material, but rather because he had a triumvirate of charismatic, funny leads in Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughan and Will Ferrell. In School for Scoundrels, starring Jon Heder as Roger, a nebbishy New Yorker who takes bad cad Billy Bob Thornton's dating confidence course, Phillips doesn't have three funny, charismatic leads; he only has one.

The fact that Jon Heder has somehow become a leading man is a mystery that will be puzzled over by future generations. Much like Owen Wilson in Bottle Rocket, Napoleon Dynamite exploded Heder onto the scene with a bravura performance in an independent film, a film full of the energy you get from a young actor giving a part everything he has. Unlike Wilson, though, Heder is a zero-charisma screen presence, a wispy, insubstantial figure who cannot hold his own against any other actor -- or even hold our attention. Some might make the case that hey, Heder's character is supposed to be a bit of a gimp in this film -- uncharismatic, not forceful -- but that's a load of hooey: Heder's Johnny one-note skill set is getting tired terribly, terribly fast.

I used to have such high hopes for Todd Phillips. Not only was Old School a film so funny that I literally watched it repeatedly for days, its success was not caused solely on the talents of its cast -- which is the case with so many comedies these days. Phillips actually showed promise as a director, too. Then came the wretched Starsky & Hutch, which couldn't even be helped by its cast, and now coming this week is School for Scoundrels, which really can't make up for its casting of the bland monotony of Jon Heder. So, I for one am excited about his returning to Old School for a sequel, if it moves forward.

If it doesn't, Phillips' production company has a project about Russian brides at Warners (previously at Miramax) based on David Benioff's article "Goodbye to Romance", originally published in the magazine Arena. Phillips isn't set to direct the movie, which has a treatment written by E. Max Frye, but with Old School Dos, a remake called Men, a film listed on his IMDb paged called The Dogs of Babel and the postcards-from-god movie The Disassociate, it is obvious that his plate is already overfilled. If he does go with this film, though, I suggest he casts Vince Vaughn and Billy Bob Thornton (who probably doesn't really need another character in the style of Bad Santa/Bad News Bears/School for Scoundrels) as the men who go to Russia in search of women to wed.

Time to check in with some film blogs:

• Nistagmus, submitted to me a while back, is based in Argentina. Unfortunately for those of you who don't speak Spanish, that's the language it's in. It's a nicely-designed site, and co-administrator of the site, Martin, who submitted it to me, describes it thusly: "We just blog about the kind of movies we love, and we love "geek" films. I mean, is it a strip/cartoon/graphic novel/comic book based feature? Is an asian pop-culture weird film? It´s a 20k slacker garage film? It is a surprisingly buzzy indie horror film from middle east? We may be interested... It´s the next Brangelina of J-Lo Housewives-targeted flop? We probably don´t want to hear about it... Well I think you get the point.". I can muddle my way through just enough Spanish to figure out that if I was really fluent in Spanish, this site would be a regular read. You folks out there who do speak the language, check it out.
• Over in England, Matt Grover runs The Matte Reviews, "Film reviews by Englishmen who watch films (if only we'd get paid for it!)." Most recently, Matt has written up reviews (from a "regular guy" viewpoint, not a film critic one) on Japanese flick Haze ("I just didn't know what was going on by the end"), Spielberg's Munich ("ok, film, long but good performances and some good sequences"), and a low-budget UK flick called Crooked Features (which he highly recommends). Nice versatility -- if you want a Brit point of view on film, this is a good site to peruse.

Whether it's an emotion, a memory, an event or another person, we often find ourselves unable to move past certain things and get on with our lives. We constantly question our thoughts, our actions -- how do we make this work? Is therapy the answer? Meditation? A hot bath? Perhaps packing up and shipping yourself halfway across the country will solve everything ... or not.

The following films all feature characters who either need help moving past their insecurities, or are brought in to help others deal with a heavy load of emotional baggage. From simply talking to a girl or fixing a marriage to nurturing those coming to terms with a horrific tragedy, sometimes, with only a nudge or a push, the grass can be green on both sides of the fence. Welcome to this week's Trailer Park:

Today could qualify as semi-orgasmic for those of you who like them movie photos. I use the word semi only because, unfortunately, Christina Ricci's face is covered in her pic. Oh, how they love to tease. Here's what's floating around the web right now:

• The first pic has been released for this summer's School for Scoundrels, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Heder. Yeah, we don't know how Napoleon keeps getting roles either. In the film, Heder plays a man who enrolls in a confidence boosting class so that he can learn how to pick up the girl of his dreams. There's just one problem: His teacher (Thornton) has a thing for the very same girl. Scoundrels hits on July 14th.
• Not too long ago, I told you how Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon was riding along with a pizza delivery guy as part of her training for the film Penelope. Well, in these new pics, we get to see the biker bad-ass chick in action. Co-starring alongside Christina Ricci, the film is said to be some sort of modern-day fable that finds Ricci's character attempting to break away from a family curse.
• For a film that's not coming out until the fall, they are really pimping the hell out of Casino Royale. Even better than the various recent set visits, these new pics give us a good look at Bond girls Eva Green and Caterina Murino. Yum. There's also a few action shots as well as three showing Daniel Craig pointing a gun. We get it - he knows how to hold a gun. But does he ever shoot it?

[via JoBlo]

Harvey and Bob Weinstein have reached an agreement with Toshiba that their spandy-new company, The Weinstein Company, will support the HD DVD format. The boys based their decision on a number of factors, most notably that they think they can make more money by supporting the format. In a mutual statement, the brothers said, "We are impressed by Toshiba's technology and very much look forward to working with them."

The Weinstein Company will have a slew of films coming out on DVD, including Kevin Smith's new film The Passion of the Clerks, School for Scoundrels, with Billy Bob Thornton, and Grind House, which will unite one of my fave directors, Quentin Tarantino (who, hopefully, will not be acting in the film) with one of my least fave directors, Robert Rodriguez (yeah, I know Sin City rocked, but I still haven't forgiven him for the 90 minutes of my life I wasted screening The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D).