A Valentine’s Day message from Mexican Will Ferrell

Will Ferrell’s Spanish-language, faux-telenovela, Casa De Mi Padre, just released this new publicity still in honor of Valentine’s Day. It’s not Valentine’s Day yet, but I’m posting it anyway, for obvious reasons. It opens March 16th, and the marketing for this has been all but perfect so far, but at this point, is there any way the actual movie could possibly be as good as the idea of the movie? Because the way I imagine it, it’s already the greatest movie ever. It could only go down from here.

Little Known Fact: “Chiva” means goat in Spanish. ERGO, by the transitive property, I’d like to think the literal Spanish translation of chivalry is actually “goat dueling.” Consider that next time you’re being nice to a girl.

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Weekend Movie Guide: George Lucas Needs Another $500 Million, C-Tates in 50 First Tates

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE OUT!

Opening Like a Flower in the Morning Sun: Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (in 3D), The Vow, Safe House, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

FilmDrunk suggests: “I’m already in your head.” Go see Safe House. (This suggestion brought to you by the early nominee for the 2012 Taylor Lautner Line That Makes Me Laugh Every Time I See the Movie Trailer.)

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Every Slow-Motion Wes Anderson Shot Set to Ja Rule (Friday Free for All)

Friday Free for All has increasingly fallen by the wayside as I get lazier and lazier on Friday afternoons, but I’m bringing it back, with another sweet supercut/mash-up/montage/whatever you want to call it. (A while back I think we decided “Clipzkrieg” was preferable to “Montage” because it sounds angry and German instead of nice and French, but I digress). Some internet genius (Slacktory, to be specific) has taken every slow-motion shot from Wes Anderson movies and set it to Ja Rule.

Wes Anderson is well-known for getting a lot of emotional mileage out of his slow-motion shots, usually set to classic Rolling Stones tunes or folky indie rock. It works, because it’s cheating. Slow-motion anything set to music always feels important and deep. It’s video editing 101. But here I’d always assumed that Wes Anderson movies were stealing the emotional power of the songs for the visuals. The interesting thing about this edit is that it shows that the reverse is also true: Bill Murray walking through a crowd of photographers with his kid on his shoulders in Life Aquatic actually makes Ja Rule’s music seem less shitty.

You can see the original Royal Tenenbaums scene below.

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Russell Crowe set to star in ‘My Big Fat Australian Dracula Detective’

"Two gravy pies, please."

While that story about Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson punching animals into an Ark for Darren Aronofsky is still just a rumor, Vulture has an insider who claims Crowe is currently onboard to star in a Dracula re-imagining called Harker. No word on how Crowe came to be attached to the script; my guess is barbecue sauce.

Our spies tell us that Warner Bros. is in talks with Russell Crowe about starring in Harker, a reimagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that’s being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. It tells the vampire story from the point of view of Jonathan Harker, who — instead of his traditional role as a lawyer — is now a Scotland Yard detective investigating the Count’s string of grisly murders in England.

The project (co-written by Lee Shipman and Vulture contributing vampire expert Brian McGreevy) began gathering steam at Warner Bros. around this time last year, when director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Orphan) became attached. [Vulture]

If you’ll remember, Orphan was the secret dwarf hooker movie starring mini-Madonna, so I hope for a similar twist here. Anyway, we’ve already got Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter coming out, so under the circumstances, I’m not particularly surprised to hear that we can also expect Gladiator: Dracula Cop (how much better is my title???). My only hope is that for Joe King’s sake, there’s a scene where Detective Harker walks into the crime scene, dabs his two fingers in a pool of blood, smells the fingers, then narrows his eyes and says solemnly, “…This is period.”

cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com

Wil Wheaton makes a good point about SOPA, Hollywood Accounting

Taking a well-deserved dump on SOPA and PIPA recently may have been the internet’s finest moment, but it’s likely we’ll see similar bills before long because the MPAA is pushing hard for it. Producer Gavin Polone even wrote a whole editorial for Vulture on why he supported the bills as they were, even though pretty much anyone sane thought they were heavily flawed. In any case, I doubt you’ll see me quote Wil Wheaton here very often, but I thought he had a pretty good point in all this. Writing in response to Chris Dodd’s threats against politicians who take MPAA money but don’t support the bills, Wheaton said:

Not that it matters, and not that I’m some kind of rich mogul, but I’ll say this again: I have lost more money to creative accounting, and American workers have lost more jobs to runaway production, than anything associated with what the MPAA calls piracy. [WheatonTumblr]

I’m certainly not one of those people who thinks illegally downloading movies is a great thing and it’s totally okay (I’m not sure whether dub-step is Napster’s fault, for instance, and I wouldn’t want movies going that way), but given that “Hollywood Accounting” is a pervasive enough issue to merit its own tag on my site, I thought Wheaton’s response was worthy of a at least a hearty “touché,” or possibly even a “ho, snap.” Hypocrisy isn’t a blanket justification, but it is a little funny to see an industry that’s been excusing thievery for years and where it’s taken as a given that a net-profit deal is essentially worthless complain about theft. That’d be like me complaining about someone not wearing pants.

Alexander Scarfgod

Oh, Alexander ScårfGod, you’re my favorite actor. Leave it to Meekus to remind us that models help people, Derek! They make them feel good about themselves. They also show them how to dress cool, and wear their scarves in interesting ways.

Seriously though, I didn’t even know you could tie a scarf that way.

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