The Weekly Showbusiness Report!

This morning, I introduce a new tradition to this young blog -- every Wednesday, I'll be posting a special post full of my takes on all the main film / showbusiness news of the week, with my take on them, in the following form...

Bruce Campbell Spoils Spidey 3 Role? -- Bruce Campbell's announced on his official site, www.bruce-campbell.com, that "all the Sony lawyers will let me say is that once again I have a pivotal role in the movie, and that this time, Spider-Man and I team up!" This could obviously be a joke, knowing Campbell's humor (and the way he mentions that "once again" he has a pivotal role, considering his parts in the first two Spidey movies were, well...less than pivotal), but people on the Net seem to be taking it rather seriously. My take on it? Bruce Campbell rules. If you feel like learning about the film business and wetting yourself at the same time, buy and read his book If Chins Could Kill -- one of the best non-fiction reads since, well...pretty much ever.

Disney drops CGI -- In today's news, head of Disney animation John Lasseter (the man behind the Toy Story franchise, Cars and pretty much the whole success of Pixar as a production company) fired director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch), along with all 150 staff, off their picture American Dog, for the sole reason that the film was designed and intended by Sanders as a fully CGI picture, and Lasseter, who came onboard at Disney in the middle of development, thinks Walt Disney Pictures should solely produce traditional 2D pictures, leaving Pixar to do the CG work (long sentence, still with me?). I'm a huge Disney fan, and a huge John Lasseter fan, and I love the idea of trying to revive 2D animation (hell, if Miyazaki can do what he does with it, then there's plenty of potential there), but I'm not a big fan of how this was done. Sanders has spent over two years working on this and developing it, and he deserved the right to go the whole way with it -- especially considering all the good Lilo & Stitch did to keep Disney animation alive. Firing him, and his whole crew, a week before Christmas is the most ruthless, heartless, dishonest decision I've read about all year -- and John Lasseter drops a couple notches in my esteem for it.

RIP Joe Barbera -- That's right -- the second half of the famous Hanna-Barbera team, co-inventor of Yogi Bear, Tom & Jerry, The Jetsons, The Flinstones, Scooby-Doo, Top Cat, Johnny Quest, Secret Squirrel and Wacky Races, has passed away, five years after William Hanna. Now, I'll be honest -- some of their cartoons are the dullest things ever seen on Cartoon Network (I mean, have you ever watched a full episode of Scooby-Doo in anything less than a comatose state?), but many of them also entertained most of my 5 o'clocks and Saturdays from birth until my balls dropped, and to this day, I still believe Tom & Jerry remains a masterpiece in animation and short film history. So RIP Mr. Barbera -- there's no life more worth living than a life entertaining children.

Will Ferrell's newest -- Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson and Andre Benjamin will star in Semi-Pro, a new comedy about an ABA team in the 1970s, along the lines of and recent-success-I-found-so-unfunny-I-almost-died Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby, to be directed by Kent Alterman (a former executive, who exec-produced Elf and is the current favorite to direct Elf 2). Personally, I think it sounds like a brilliant idea, and a brilliant cast -- and I'm now officially campaigning and networking my ass off so I can get a job on the shoot. Will Ferrell, be warned. I'm bringing more cowbell.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not is back on! -- But with Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura 2, Bruce Almighty, Patch Adams) set to rewrite the script. This is an odd one -- I don't know if I should be celebrating (Carrey, Burton, weirdness, comedy!) or cowering in fear (I mean, Patch Adams?). In either case, I'm intrigued, which is the best thing anyone can say about any film in development.

Golden Globe noms -- Ah, the yearly thrill of the Golden Globe nom calls. My reaction to this year's, in no particular order? 1) Bobby getting nominated proves only one thing -- the Weinsteins are still the best, hardest award-season campaigners in the business. How else do you explain how a film can get slammed by pretty much every critic alive, and then get nominated for Best Picture by a community of critics? 2) I'm a huge Martin Scorsese fan. But you know what? I hope The Departed wins no Best Picture awards this year -- except By Far Most Overrated Movie Of The Year. If you like the concept, watch Infernal Affairs instead. It doesn't have Jack Nicholson -- and for once, that's a good fucking thing. 3) Kudos to Leo on his double nomination. Not sure if I like him as a dude, but I love his work. He was the best part about the aforementioned The Departed, and his afrikaans accent in The Blood Diamond is Cate Blanchett-worthy. Cheers. 4) Sacha Baron Cohen is the only Best Actor - Comedy who even deserves a nomination. Johnny Depp, who I thought should've won an Oscar for his original Jack Sparrow, caricatures himself in overlong-and-boring Dead Man's Chest, and Will Ferrell's performance in Stranger Than Fiction, instead of being subtle and toned down, ended up being dead and energy-less. I love all three actors -- but this year, Cohen is the only one who deserves a little statue (and I also think he deserves an Oscar nom, and hope the Academy will grow a sense of humor and give it to him). 5) Apocalypto and Letters From Iwo Jima as best foreign language pictures? Now, I know both are in foreign languages, but come on -- that's just cheating. Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood up for Best Foreign Picture. Fuck off. 6) You know what? If I keep numbering every one of these rants, I'll be at number 217 before we get done. So let me get it all out: Jennifer Hudson fucks me off, and I hope she loses every single award she gets nominated for -- Best Supporting Actress has to go, in my opinion, to Catherine O'Hara for For Your Consideration (criminally overlooked by the GGs). Emily Blunt even getting nominated for an award? Come fucking on. I can act better than she did in The Devil Wears Prada. She took one-dimensional and gimmicky to a whole new level. Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg getting nominated for The Departed? That's nearly criminal to me. Nicholson doesn't act in The Departed -- he just sets all his craziness loose, and weighs the film down heavily in the process; and as for Wahlberg -- he's in it 30 minutes, just so he can be uselessly vulgar and aggressive to everyone and serve no purpose to the plot whatsoever except wrap everything up neatly in the end. Inarretu getting nominated for Babel? The man's been doing the same film over and over and over again! Does he even KNOW how to structure a film in any other way? All these people getting nominations to me can only mean one thing -- either this has been a terrible year for cinema, or the voters vote based on who gives the best head, and guess what? I know this has NOT been a terrible year for cinema. Where's Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, and all other noms Half-Nelson deserves? Where's the Best Picture and Best Director noms for Children Of Men (granted, it only comes out in the US right about now, but fucking hell, SEND THE PEOPLE SOME TAPES!)? Where's the Little Miss Sunshine noms?

I'm gonna hate this year's Oscars. Oh, well. At least we'll have Ellen.

The Good Shepherd and The Good German apparently crap -- That's right -- both new movies with "good" in their title are, apparently...anything but. Both currently have a 30% rotten rating on Rottentomatoes. The former (directed by Robert De Niro, starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie) is apparently a 3-hour long, paceless, sleep-inducing chunk of crap. The latter (directed, shot and edited by Steven Soderbergh, and starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire) is apparently a shallow, plotless, imperfect exercise in style, which even fails there (it's supposed to look like gritty 40s film noir film, and instead it looks like HD that's so sharp it might just slice your eyeballs right off). There go my last hope for films to defend and protect Oscar from all those undeserving Dreamgirls and Departed hands.

Quick trailer roundup -- Shrek 3 looks funny -- could quite possibly be as good as the first two. Live Free or Die Hard looks absolutely, peculiarly, uncomfortably terrible -- the shaved head doesn't fit John McClane, Justin Long sounds like he's playing the man's daughter, and Maggie Q looks like she just sold the production outtakes of her scenes in M:I3. All in all the film looks like just any other crappy summer blockbuster -- and that's not what a Die Hard film should look like. But hey...thank hiring Len Wieseman for that, I guess. Dickheads. 300 looks absolutely, brilliantly unique -- check it out, if only because one of my friends, actor Michael Fassbender, is in it, and if there's one thing I can guarantee, is that the man's good (he's the guy in the long hair and no-beard who keeps stylishly killing people in the trailers. Used to work as a barman, read scripts after work. Brilliant guy.). Seraphim Falls looks like Pierce Brosnan is back in Matador mode -- letting the weird 'stache and beard act for him. And Smokin' Aces, well, I never thought I'd actually say this, but...

...I think it looks quite crap.

That's it for this one. Talk to y'all later.

Cheers,

Ten Cents