Daily Archives: July 19, 2011

TV

Showtime’s ‘House of Lies’ – Coming Soon to a Boob Tube Near You!

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House of Lies - Book

Summer is still in full swing, but one thing is captivating the minds of TV execs – Fall TV programming!  With so many shows crashing and burning in the last year (The Event, Camelot, Detroit 1-8-7) and so many veteran programs having seen their last (Friday Night Lights, Smallville, Rescue Me), there are some large spots to fill.  Showtime promises to provide some interesting heavy hitters under the regime of new president, David Nevins; including an order for 12 episodes of House of Lies, written and executive-produced by Matthew Carnahan (Dirt).

House of Lies is loosely based on the novel House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time by Martin Kihn, a satirical commentary that attempts to break down the fluffy misconceptions of the consulting business.  His stance is that consulting is mostly a joke that became profitable; and that anyone will listen to an Ivy Leaguer with an MBA who wears a nice suit and uses fancy-pants words like “paradigm” and “granular.”  Even if this finely pressed suit is spooning you information that you already know and taking credit for a success that isn’t theirs.

House of Lies (the TV show) will be a dark comedy that follows the career of consultant, Marty (Don Cheadle), who is described as “cutthroat,” without a moral compass to guide him as he does anything and everything necessary to succeed.  The show will also star Kristen Bell (that native Detroiter that we love!) as Jeannie, a razor-sharp Ivy League grad, who is alleged to act as a voice of reason.

The show will also star Ben Schwartz (Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation) who is  about twelve shades of hilarious, and Josh Lawson, who has been in only B-movies and crappy TV shows.

I think this show has the power to premiere to strong numbers.  Not only does it have an all-star cast lineup, but it sounds pretty darn interesting and hilarious.  Having worked for a consultancy firm, I’m curious to see how much steam they take from Martin Kihn’s book.  I’ve heard he really tears the whole institution apart in it.  Which is funny in my book, because consultants are all self-righteous stuffed peacocks who think that the ground they walk on turns to gold and that they shit sunshine and rainbows.  If the show makes fun of consulting as much as I hope they do, I will be a fan for life.

Kristen Bell, Don Cheadle, Josh Lawson, Ben Schwartz

[Editor’s Note: I’ve included an interview with Bell that has almost nothing to do with the show. How can you not like her?!?!]

House of Lies has started production and will begin filming soon.  Look for it to hit Showtime in the Fall 2011 or Spring 2012 lineups!

Movie Trailers

Jack and Jill: The Worst Trailer Ever?

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Adam Sandler left SNL and got huge in the 90s. From vehicles like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, to ensemble flicks like Bulletproof and Airheads, Sandler was gold. Everything he did was funny. Then it culminated in ’98 with The Wedding Singer. That was his peak, and it’s been all down hill from there…

As the 90’s came to a close he did some decently funny/likable films – The Waterboy and Big Daddy. I even liked Punch Drunk Love, though it crashed and burned at the Box Office. From there the drop off got steeper and he set a new bar for ‘mediocre’ with Anger Management and 50 First Dates. Then he started piloting remakes like Mr. Deeds and The Longest Yard. And then he just stopped trying – Click, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan , and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry were all terrible.

So in an attempt to revitalize things and get more mature, we got Grown Ups and Funny People. Neither was any good. Something did seem to click in Funny People though. In the movie he attempted to make fun of himself and the ridiculous movies he’d starred in. Now he’s actually made one of them, and not since White Chicks has there been a trailer that made me less interested in a movie. Check it out…

And George C. Scott seems even less impress than Stan…

This is what it’s come to.

And Yes – You did see Katie Holmes and Al Pacino in there. How sad is that?

Holmes presence is no real shocker, as her career has been in the shitter since she skipped out on all the Batman Begins pub to be Tom Cruise’s beard.

But Pacino. He was once counted amongst the greatest actors alive. And now, outside of some really good TV stuff he’s done, he’s not been in a decent movie since 2003, and even that was’t great. But it’s not like he’s the only one – Harvey Keitel was in Little Nicky, Christopher Walken was in Click, and Jack Nicholson did Anger Management.

“This movie looks terrible! nom nom nom”
TV

AMC’s The Walking Dead: Season 2 Preview

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First is a clip from back in March in which we see an interview with Gale Ann Hurd, producer on The Walking Dead. She explains how the first month that the cast is in town, they go over characterizing and talk with the writers about their take on the show. I love that they do this. She said that before they ever write, this is their process. She also describes season 2 as the “road season” – meaning that you don’t know where they are going to end up, or what they will run into. (Something that I did not know: Gale also worked on the Terminator and Aliens movies.)

Next, AMC did a “looking ahead” piece after the end of season one. The co-producer Denise Huth said in this that she spoke to the creator of the Walking Dead comics – Robert Kirkman – and asked him if he had any thoughts about the way it would all end. He responded by saying that it will never end. Again… extraordinarily exciting.

The Walking Dead will premiere this Fall on AMC.

The Man, The Myth, The Legend – Robert Kirkman
Movie News & Opinions

Tom Hardy To Play Capone In ‘Cicero’

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It seems like Al Capone is making quite a comeback these days. With the famous gangster known the world round as “Scarface” already featuring more and more prominently in the hit HBO show Boardwalk Empire, it would seem that Harry Potter director David Yates may be the next one to tackle him in the movie Cicero. And who to play the famous Alphonse Gabriel Capone? Well who better than Tom Hardy, fresh off his venom injected stint as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises?

According to IGN, the Inception alum, and soon to be Mad Max, will star in the biopic following Capone’s rise to power – and also his fall… into syphilis. Check it out from IGN below:

Dark Knight Rises actor Tom Hardy is reportedly going to play infamous Chicago mob boss Al Capone in Cicero, a biopic that Harry Potter helmer David Yates may direct.

Vulture has the scoop: “Hardy has attached himself to the project, which was originally written in the seventies as a TV pilot by Walon Green (the screenwriter of Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece, The Wild Bunch) but is now being readapted as a film. And possibly more than one: There is talk that, like The Stand, it could be stretched out, with a first film only tracking the gangster up to his rise to the top of the Chicago criminal food chain; his reign and downfall would be in a subsequent film(s).”

I like the idea of any movie involving Al Capone, I can’t get enough of the character on Boardwalk Empire where he is played marvelously by Stephen Graham. But I do have some misgivings about subsequent movies about the guy unless they are some of the best crime-drama’s ever made. I’m thinking they would have to be Godfather caliber to merit two or even three movies about the life of Al Capone. But then again, Tom Hardy seems to have all the makings of an up and coming star to help make something like that happen. So hats off to whomever gets the directing job on Cicero and make it good! What do all of you fools think?

Does Tom Hardy have what it takes to follow in the footsteps of the great Robert Deniro in portraying Capone?

Movie News & Opinions

Johnny Depp To Revive ‘The Night Stalker’

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As a child, there were a lot of shows that my mom watched that I had to suffer through whilst being in the same room: Columbo, Perry Mason, In the Heat of the Night and a whole slew of others. Normally I would have tried to understand what was going on in the court room during Perry Mason or wondered why Columbo always played dumb, but I would quickly lose interest and continue playing with my Transformers and He-man action figures. But one show that always caught my interest, and I still watch whenever it is on SyFy channel was Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Sure it looks cheesy as hell now, but some of the shit on that show used to scare me as a kid. I always thought about how cool it would be to be Carl Kolchak as he investigated cases that would run him afoul of creatures such as Zombies and Vampires. Plus he had a really awesome camera he always carried with him. (Even though with the shoulder strap it always looked like he was carrying a purse.)

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Now, the late Darren McGavin (The dad from ‘A Christmas Story’) will pass the torch posthumously to none other than Johnny Depp. According to IGN, Depp will show more love to the 70’s by taking on the role of my favorite tabloid-supernatural-investigative reporter Carl Kolchak. Check out more below:

Deadline reports that Depp is reteaming with Disney (the studio behind his billion-dollar blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland) to bring the ABC series The Night Stalker to the big screen. The site claims “The Night Stalker will push the boundaries of the family film formula that Disney is following (under current management).”

Depp will produce via his Infinitum Nihil company and will star as tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak, a role first made famous by the late Darren McGavin. Kolchak’s intrepid investigations often entangled him with various ghouls and creatures of the night.

 

Now there might be those of you out there who are just plain sick and tired of seeing Depp in movies, but if that’s the case just ignore certain movies you know will suck such as The Tourist and Alice in Wonderland.

I think Depp will play the role of Carl Kolchak pretty well, which will be sort of a hybrid of his characters from the Secret Window and The Ninth Gate. Then again they may go a whole different direction with the story and the era it is set in, but personally I would like to see it take place in the 70’s when the TV show was released.

So are there any other fellow Night Stalkers out there who can’t wait for this movie to get underway? (Unfortunately there was no tentative release date) Anyone not liking Depp in the role?