‘ACT OF VALOR’ TV SPOT & FEATURETTE TAKE YOU IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Today, we have a new TV spot for Act of Valor, as well as a five-minute long featurette that offers a better look at the overall filmmaking style of the project, along with the hazardous locations, up-to-date Navy technology/vehicles, and physically-exhausting combat maneuvers on display in the movie.

Act of Valor was scripted by Kurt Johnstad (300) and is reportedly based on several real-life incidents involving Navy SEALs. Those stories were thereafter reconstructed and tied together to form the film’s central narrative, which follows the Bandito Platoon as it works in collaboration with the C.I.A. and sets out to stop a global terrorist plot that threatens to result in the coordinated killing of thousands of U.S. civilians.

GEORGE LUCAS: OTHER THAN A FIFTH ‘INDIANA JONES’, I’M DONE WITH BLOCKBUSTERS

King George is butthurt and taking his ball home with him:

Lucas seized control of his movies from the studios only to discover that the fanboys could still give him script notes. “Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

In the interview Lucas acts all astonished that after he tinkered with three of the most beloved films ever made, fans got upset. And he apparently holds the opinion that we shouldn’t be upset because he has the “right” to tinker with his films.

Lucas can’t possibly be this stupid.

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The star of “Bridesmaids” isn’t sure she wants to revisit one of 2011’s most popular films. The screenwriters of “Horrible Bosses” are gearing up for round two.

Both film projects help define the sorry shape of mainstream movie making today.

Let’s start with “Bridesmaids 2,” a project which apparently lacks the support of its star/co-writer Kristen Wiig and uber-producer Judd Apatow. Both don’t see a need for a sequel at this point, and they’re right. “Bridesmaids” was a one-of-a-kind hit, and re-staging the film’s antics for a sequel will likely be as enjoyable as “The Hangover Part II.”

Good for them. But the bean counters behind the film won’t let that stop them. We might even see a second “Bridesmaids” without Wiig. Can’t some hits simply be left alone?

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Politico:

The video stars Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as part of the foundation’s celebrity division, pumping out ideas like not breathing to save the environment. There’s even a cameo from Bubba at the end.

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Bridesmaids is a chick flick in the way that a Rolls-Royce is a ride. True, the movie is focused on female concerns. But it’s also a Judd Apatow production, directed by Apatow’s old Freaks and Geeks colleague, Paul Feig, and starring Apatow veteran Kristen Wiig, who also cowrote the script. So while a vein of sweet feeling runs through it, the movie’s distinguishing feature is its grenade-like blasts of breathtaking raunch. Reflecting on an ex-husband’s new squeeze, one character says, “She’s still a whore. I’m sure she greets him in the evening beaver-first.” Another describes what life is like with teenage sons: “There’s semen all over everything—I cracked a blanket in half.” You’ll notice that Kate Hudson was not invited to participate in this picture.

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Wiig, so long a fixture on Saturday Night Live, makes a persuasive claim to movie stardom here. She plays Annie, a woman edging into her late thirties with little to show for her life to date. Annie once had her own business, a specialty cake shop; when it went under she lost all her money and, shortly thereafter, her last loser boyfriend. Now she’s back to sharing an apartment with an obnoxious roommate (Matt Lucas) and his annoyingly ever-present fat sister (slobalicious Rebel Wilson). Her love life consists of demeaning hookups with a slick creep (Jon Hamm must do more comedy) for whom she’s a third-tier booty call. And she’s been reduced to working in a jewelry store, where she struggles, often unsuccessfully, to stifle nasty wisecracks about the engagement rings she has to sell.

When her lifelong best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) suddenly becomes engaged, it throws Annie’s dead-end life into stark relief. She gratefully agrees to be Lillian’s maid of honor; but then a new friend of Lillian’s moves in on the big event—rich, beautiful, hyper-organized Helen (Rose Byrne)—and Annie is slowly edged out of her key nuptial role. A series of head-butting confrontations ensues—among them a bout of snarling champagne toasts at Lillian’s engagement party—on the way to the climactic Annie-Helen showdown you know must ultimately come.

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“MacGruber” is an awful film. It’s the worst film that I’ve seen in a movie theater this year. Based on an intermittently funny Saturday Night Live” sketch, “MacGruber” ultimately falls flat and is often both unfunny and obscene.

A typical “MacGruber” “SNL” sketch looks like this: MacGruber is tasked with disarming a time bomb within 30 seconds or so, he gets distracted by less urgent matters which causes him to fail in his mission, and the bomb explodes killing everyone. It’s a spoof of the show “MacGyver,” where the lead character was often an expert at getting out of tough situations and escaping from death traps set out for him. (For the record, if there is one thing that “MacGruber” should point to, it’s the fact that the show “MacGyver,” and not this limp satire of it, merits its own motion picture.) (more…)

Writer/director Mike Judge’s “Extract” is being promoted as: “The creator of OFFICE SPACE heads back to work,” but this isn’t exactly true in the purest “Office Space” sense. Our protagonist Joel (Jason Bateman) does spend time at the company he owns, a flavor extract plant, but for the most part those goings on are a subplot to what is essentially a relationship comedy — and only a mildly amusing one at that.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics. (more…)