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10 articles from 2009

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Is Will Ferrell Too Much Like George Clooney?

9 June 2009 5:32 PM, PDT | From Cinematical.com | See recent Cinematical news

One big-budget box office disappointment does not usually signal the end of a movie star's reign. The woeful under performance of Land of the Lost has observers looking for someone to blame, however, and Will Ferrell is under suspicion. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, columnist Patrick Goldstein suggests: "He's in danger of becoming the comedy equivalent of George Clooney, someone who enjoys a great deal of goodwill but who isn't actually a real movie star."

Goldstein doesn't provide his definition of a "real movie star," but in the context of his column, it clearly is all about the ability to open a big tent pole production to big box office numbers. Goldstein claims: "The verdict in Hollywood: Ferrell hasn't done a good job of managing his brand. [Adam] Sandler is the master of dumb hijinks. Eddie Murphy has become a cuddly family star. But who is Will Ferrell? No one knows anymore.

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Peter Martin

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Ferrell's Career Looks Lost Indeed

8 June 2009 1:54 PM, PDT | From newser.com | See recent newser news

Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost is so far a box office bomb, and that’s no accident, Chris Nashawaty writes in Entertainment Weekly . It’s “just the latest proof that Ferrell’s shtick—the clueless, self-deprecating blowhard man-child—is growing stale.” Step Brothers , Semi Pro , The Producers , and Bewitched were either painful or been-there. “It’s time to change it up, man,” Nashawaty advises. If you bothered to laugh watching Land of the Lost previews, it was just “out of conditioned response to Ferrell’s previous track record.” It’s not that Ferrell wasn’t funny in movies like Anchorman , but his problem is predictability. “You ...

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Weekend Report: 'Hangover' Gets High, 'Up' Hangs On

8 June 2009 1:50 PM, PDT | From Box Office Mojo | See recent BoxOfficeMojo.com news

The Hangover hit the jackpot over the weekend, narrowly edging out Up for the top spot. The ribald comedy had been projected to trail the Pixar adventure in Sunday's studio estimates, but was revised upward once actual grosses poured in. Hangover's Friday dominance combined with a better-than-expected Sunday haul cinched its position, despite Up soaring past it on Saturday as well as being marginally ahead on Sunday. Both pictures were highly successful for their genres and wound up less than two percent apart. Less fortunate was Land of the Lost, which debuted at a distant third. The weekend as a whole came in at $165.5 million, off six percent from the same period last year when Kung Fu Panda opened. The Hangover packed a much greater wallop than the norm for its genre, taking in $45 million on around 4,500 screens at 3,269 sites. It was hyped as the preordained raunchy comedy hit of the season,

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Brandon Gray

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'The Hangover' Beaten Down by 'Up' at the Box Office

7 June 2009 7:13 PM, PDT | From Aceshowbiz | See recent Aceshowbiz news

Though it managed to steal the #1 slot at the North American box office on Friday, June 5, "The Hangover" should settle for a runner-up position following the weekend tally. Taking in an estimated $43.3 million, the raunchy comedy came in a close second to this week's champion, Disney/Pixar's "Up".

"The Hangover" exceeded expectation and scored much greater sales than 2005's Owen Wilson-starring "Wedding Crashers" even when adjusted for ticket price inflation. "We were positioned to be a solid No. 3," Warner distribution president Dan Fellman responded to the impressive opening weekend. "The wonderful results clearly put us in an interesting place."

With "The Hangover" falling short to capture the box office's top, "Up" became the first movie to retain the #1 spot for two straight weekends. Though experiencing a 35% decline in sales, the animation movie about a grumpy 78-year-old man, an inquisitive 8-year-old adventurer and a floating house, has proven to be

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AceShowbiz.com

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Friday Report: 'Hangover' Wakes Up in First

6 June 2009 1:58 PM, PDT | From Box Office Mojo | See recent BoxOfficeMojo.com news

After last weekend's high-flying start, Up seemed poised to hang on to the top spot for a second weekend, but The Hangover rang in with a punchy opening day gross to top Friday and has a shot at maintaining that lead for the weekend as a whole. The Hangover drew an estimated $16.5 million on approximately 4,500 screens at 3,269 sites. That's more in a single day than the entire opening weekends of pictures like Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and The Heartbreak Kid. Not only that, first day attendance was around 40 percent higher than for Wedding Crashers and more than 60 percent higher than Knocked Up, among past raunchy summer comedies that were pre-ordained hits like Hangover. On this same weekend last year, You Don't Mess with the Zohan had a $14.9 million Friday and wound up with a $38.5 million weekend. If Hangover follows the same path, its weekend would come in at $43 million.

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Brandon Gray

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‘Land of the Lost’ With Will Ferrell Should Never Be Found

5 June 2009 9:29 AM, PDT | From HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news

Rating: 1.0/5.0 Chicago – “Land of the Lost,” starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, and Anna Friel, is horribly conceived, almost entirely laugh-free, and with absolutely no personality of its own. It’s one of the most inert, dull, and dead-on-arrival major summer films in a very long time with no target audience likely to be satisfied by it.

What exactly is the target audience of “Land of the Lost”? I’ll admit that I assumed it would be a PG-rated family comedy going in. Little kids love dinosaur poop jokes, right? Much to be great surprise, “Land of the Lost” is not for kids. Sure, it sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old, but parents may blush at jokes about characters getting “wet” or sitting on a vibrating crystal. Even pre-teens will roll their eyes when Chaka gropes Holly for the fifteenth time.

Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Land of the Lost

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adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)

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Ferrell To Join Neighbourhood Watch

5 May 2009 11:20 PM, PDT | From EmpireOnline | See recent EmpireOnline news

Will Ferrell and director David Dobkin are in talks to make Neighborhood Watch (or Neighbourhood in this country, we hope), a new comedy that will see them teamed up for the first time since Ferrell took a small cameo role in Dobkin's Wedding Crashers.The story follows a big city guy (Ferrell, we're saying) who moves to the suburbs and joins the Neighborhood Watch. There, he uncovers a conspiracy.Jared Stern wrote the screenplay, which Shawn Levy was set to direct before deciding to back out in favour of Dobkin, who last directed Fred Claus. Let's hope this turns out more The 'Burbs and less Bewitched on the suburban comedy scale.

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'Julie and Julia' Welcomes First Trailer

29 April 2009 7:08 PM, PDT | From Aceshowbiz | See recent Aceshowbiz news

The first trailer of "Julie & Julia" is finally up for viewing pleasure. Posted at Moviefone, the promotional video introduces Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell. It also reveals that the two women though are separated by time and space, are going through a similar crisis in their lives.

Combining stories from both Julie Powell's book "Julie & Julia" and Julia Child's book "My Life in France", this drama film depicts events in the life of famed chef Julia as well as temp secretary Julie. While it covers the years Julia and her husband Paul spent in Paris during the 1940s and 1950s, it also chronicles Julie's trials and tribulations when she embarks on a year-long culinary quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking".

Marked as the first major motion picture based on a blog, "Julie & Julia" comes from "Bewitched" director Nora Ephron.

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AceShowbiz.com

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Blu-Ray Review: Jim Carrey Continues to Stumble With Mediocre ‘Yes Man’

8 April 2009 1:33 PM, PDT | From HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.0/5.0 Chicago – What has happened to Jim Carrey’s career? The comedy superstar has stumbled more in the last few years than he ever had before with the awful “The Number 23,” dull “Fun With Dick and Jane,” and now the mediocre “Yes Man”. This return to the slapstick style that made Carrey a star isn’t a complete disaster but it’s just not that funny and the average movie has been given average special featues on its Blu-Ray release.

“Yes Man” is more forgettable than awful and that kind of mediocre comedy can sometime be all a renter is looking for on a rainy Saturday night at Blockbuster. It’s not the hit that it could have been but it’s also not the worst comedy to come out this month in HD. Heck, it’s not the worst comedy to come out this week.

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adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)

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The birds of prey are circling

8 January 2009 7:46 PM, PST | From blogs.suntimes.com/ebert | See recent Roger Ebert's Blog news

Why do we thirst for movie stars to fail? Why are so many showbiz journalists like hyenas circling a crippled prey? Why do so many gossip columnists behave like jilted lovers or betrayed investors, livid with anger at what they once valued so highly? Why are a few stars singled out like the victims of school bullies? Why do the box office receipts of "Australia" appear in almost every news outlet, but an actual review of it appears in so few?

Here is a recent headline: "Australia" Another Nicole Kidman Letdown. We learn in the attached story from Reuters:

Twentieth Century Fox appears to have given up on director Baz Luhrmann's latest period epic in North America, and is hoping that foreign sales will rescue the costly picture. The movie has sold just $44.3 million worth of tickets at the U.S. and Canadian box office after five weekends, and

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Roger Ebert

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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003

10 articles from 2009

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