william h macy Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Mice have enjoyed a great ride in the movies. The animated variety first rose to prominence thanks to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the late 20s, enjoyed a rebirth as heroes in the late 70s and 80s with The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail, and overflowed into live-action territory a few years later with Stuart Little. More recently, Flushed Away was a superior entertainment about a spoiled upper-class mouse who must learn to survive in the wild and wooly sewers, while the superb Ratatouille gave a rat a rare favorable turn in the spotlight as a culinary artist.

Adapted by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Dave) from the award-winning book by Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux features both a rat and a mouse in leading roles, but the self-described fairy tale is much more than a slapdash character study of two rodents. The setup makes it sound like a cousin to both Flushed Away and Ratatouille: a disgraced rat must learn to survive in a dark dungeon, a mouse develops a friendship with a human, and gourmet soup features prominently. Yet as the tale unfolds, it deepens and broadens its themes to a welcome degree. Though it never climbs too far above average and too often embraces the familiar, Despereaux remains a gentle and nurturing children's story, imparting lessons without being too condescending to its audience.

While Despereaux is aimed squarely at the little ones, adults may enjoy the top-notch animation and appreciate the above average performances by a celebrity voice cast (Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci) that is well matched to the characters they play, which is a rare pleasure indeed.

Wow, this is awesome. Usually we have to wait for a DVD release to be offered a meaningless (and generally entertainment-free) collection of movie bloopers, but the marketing team behind the motorcycle comedy Wild Hogs has decided to dole out those goodies extra early. Click right here to see if this material makes Wild Hogs look more appealing ... or less. (Still, it's a bit funnier than the trailer.)

Starring Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy, Wild Hogs comes from second-time director Walt Becker (after Van Wilder) and first-time screenwriter Brad Copeland -- a man who has penned a few episodes of Arrested Development and My Name is Earl and must therefore have some talent. Plus the flick seems to have a Ray Liotta cameo, and really, doesn't every movie need a Ray Liotta cameo? The Disney comedy opens on March 2.

If the idea of seeing John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and William H. Macy do the following things sounds appealing to you, then by all means you should click right -->HERE<-- and watch the all-new trailer for Wild Hogs. Ready for the list? OK...

• Scream at children
• Search for internet porn in a crowded coffee house
• Get hit in the crotch with softballs
• Fall off motorcycles
• Get hit in the neck with birds
• Blow up a bar
• Get hit in the butt by a bull
• Spoon in bed together

Now, far be it for me to judge a movie I've not seen, but I'd be willing to bet my Criterion Edition Brazil DVD that I just described the very best jokes to be found in the whole of Wild Hogs. Aside from the intriguingly odd foursome, there's nothing about this comedy that looks even remotely fresh or appealing. (Plus, the trailer has the one little "wistful" moment, which means the fart jokes and pratfalls will, somewhere around the end of Act II, give way to some really mawkish sentimental crap ... and I've got no patience for pap like that.)

The screenplay comes from first-timer Brad Copeland; the director is Walt Becker, last seen cinematically as the man who helmed Van Wilder. (Yes, it's taken Becker four years to rediscover his muse.) In addition to the four aforementioned knuckleheads, Wild Hogs also promises bit parts from cool folks like Ray Liotta, Marisa Tomei, John C. McGinley and Stephen Tobolowsky. The "City Slickers meets Masters of Menace "opens on March 2.

Wait ... Tobolowsky's in it? Sold!

Okay, I admit it. Now that I've seen the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada, I actually kinda want to see it. Meryl Streep, with short, smartly styled silver hair, delivers her lines in the trailer with an icy-cold softness that says, "I'll rip you to shreds with my manicured nails and eat you raw for lunch if you piss me off." And casting sweet-and-innocent-looking Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries) opposite Streep as the recent college grad from the Midwest who goes to work for the biggest bitch in the fashion biz, could end up being genius. The trailer looks smart, sharp and funny (of course, it's always possible that the rest of the movie doesn't live up to it, but a girl can hope), and now I'm actually interested to see the film. I mean, it's Meryl Streep! That gives it some potential, right?

Streep, who had slowed down a little over the past couple years, is suddenly churning out work like a woman on a mission. She has no fewer than eight projects in the works at the moment, from voicing the Queen Ant in the upcoming animated flick The Ant Bully, to the beleagured Jodie Foster-helmed circus-freak flick, Flora Plum (currently listed on IMDb as costarring Ewan McGregor), to Conquistadora, with dream cast William H. Macy, Patricia Clarkson, and Chris Cooper, to First Man, in which she will play a presidential candidate whose businessman husband (Robert DeNiro) quits his job to run his wife's campaign. That's a whole lotta Streep coming up. I hope this signals the start of a revival for her, because she is one of my fave actresses, and I will see just about anything she's in.

(Editor's note: As reader Seth so politely pointed out, "smartly styled" does not require a hyphen because 'smartly' is an adverb. I corrected my error, so now my own J-school grammar-police professor can stop spinning in his grave.)

Just one week ago, we shared some news about an all-new Re-Animator trilogy that producer Brian Yuzna seems pretty darn psyched about, and today Fangoria brings us some even cooler news:

William H. Macy, one of the most talented, admired, and gosh-darn likable character actors in the known universe, has been signed to play the President of the United States in Stuart Gordon's House of Re-Animator! Returning for the third trilogy are director Gordon, producer Yuzna, screenwriter Dennis Paoli, and Dr. West himself: Jeffrey Combs. (Someone get Bruce Abbott's agent on the phone ... or his wife if he doesn't have an agent anymore. And please don't forget the lovely Barbara Crampton...)

Ready for the plot? The U.S. President dies, so one high-ranking moron calls Dr. West in to bring the Commander-in-Chief back to life ... and if you've ever seen, say, 5 random minutes of Re-Animator, then you know precisely what happens next. (Yay!)

(Y'know, while the gorehounds stress and worry about Sam Raimi's potential return to the Evil Dead series, I'm of the opinion that the Re-Animator trilogy gets a pretty raw deal. True, everyone loves the first one cuz it's a splatter-tastic mega-classic, but those sequels aren't all that bad, you know. And now that a new trilogy is getting the kick-start (and with the original filmmakers, no less), I think this is pretty big news indeed. For the horror geeks, anyway. Like me.)

Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman's first feature film premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was featured this year at Sundance. Reitman was in Seattle recently for a screening of his film at the University of Washington, and graciously sat down with me for over an hour in the lobby of his hotel even though he hadn't eaten lunch yet. Reitman strolled into the lobby in casual attire, looking relaxed and confident. We started out joking about the lengthy production notes for the film ("I had to read them like, five times - all 40-something pages, and I was like, do they have to be this long?" Reitman noted), then moved on to discussing what it's like to be a famous director's kid, how he came to make Thank You for Smoking, and what it was like to direct Robert Duvall and William H. Macy.

Cinematical: You wrote in your director’s notes that you fell in love with Nick Naylor from the opening sentence [of the Christopher Buckley novel on which the film is based]. What drew you to that character?

Jason Reitman: Like love at first sight, it’s an emotional reaction. Here’s a guy who knows he’s the devil and he’s fine with it; he’s unapologetic. He’s comfortable with who he is and he has a thick skin. When you live in a world of spin, you understand that everything is spin, and everything is affected by spin from the other side. Nick has to be always calm, he can’t lose his cool. The other side is very emotional - the anti-smoking crowd is very emotionally reactive. Nick gives nothing away, he’s charismatic, he’s perfectly dressed, he’s well-read and charming.

Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking is a wickedly funny political satire that takes a long, smirking, sideways glance at the hypocrisy of spin, both corporate and political. The film, Reitman's feature film debut, was highly anticipated - Reitman, of course, is the son of director Ivan Reitman, and there's nothing like having a famous-director father to plop an ambitious young director squarely in the fishbowl, with everyone waiting for him to either live up to their lofty expectations, or fall flat on his face. No pressure, kid.

The script is based on a book by another famous "kid of", Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley. It's hard to know whether to give more credit to Buckley for the excellent source material or Reitman for the adaptation; taking a 272 page book and condensing it succinctly into a 92 minute film, while retaining both the heart at the center and the sharpness at the edges, is no easy task, but Thank You for Smoking is slick (in a good way) and well-packaged from beginning to end. It rather reminded me of another adaptation about the cigarette biz, 1993's Barbarians at the Gate, which starred James Garner in one of the best performances of his career as H. Ross Johnson.

Wilmer Valderaama is soooooo cute; Joseph Fiennes is shy.

Apparently being repeatedly killed and resurrected by your boss is not the worst job you can have.

 Sundance Rule #387 - Rich celebs love free stuff! Picking up free stuff at the Nintendo swag suite: Joel Madden, Lucy Liu, John Malkovich, William H. Macy, Rob Lowe and Tommy Lee. Quick! Someone grab a camera and shoot an indie film with those folks as the cast.

Overheard after a screening of The Hawk is Dying, starring Paul Giamatti: "That hawk was not free. Not a single character in that movie was free."

Flavorpill Sundance has a video interview with  American Blackout director Ian Inaba.

Our friends at GreenCine Daily have some good reviews up of a trio of docs.