[Trailer 2] 22 Jump Street
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A new trailer for 22 Jump Street was released yesterday. Riding high on 22 Jump Street writers' Phil Lord and Chris Miller's written/directorial success with The Lego Movie, the lens on 22 Jump Street has been heightened a bit. This second trailer for 22 Jump Street is admittedly similar to the first trailer released in December. However, it features an "alternate ending" that is definitely worth rehashing the same footage for.
Following the events of 21 Jump Street, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) continue on with the 21 Jump Street initiative, this time moving to a church across the street, hence the film's title of 22 Jump Street. In their new assignments, the two infiltrate a local college to bust a crime ring being run by a fraternity. However, as is expected, the two face different circumstances that throws their friendship and their lives into question.
22 Jump Street will be jumping into theaters on June 13th.
Russell Brand Releases DVD on The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is like the Napster of the contemporary Internet era. Founded in Sweden in 2003, the BitTorrent site has skirted the edges of the web, providing free movies and music to the masses and becoming public enemy No. 1 for recording companies, film studios and actors and musicians alike. With this as the backdrop, it's interesting that comedian Russel Brand chose to release his latest DVD, Messiah Complex, via the unapologetic piracy website.
Interestingly, the stand-up DVD is available online on Amazon or BBC for £10. While he stands to lose money that could be made from the actual sales, Brand is somewhat following in the footsteps of fellow comedian Louis C.K. who released his 2011 stand-up routine, Live at the Beacon Theater online in an easy-to-pirate format, simply asking for $5 with a request not to steal it. Surprisingly, C.K. made just over $1 million in the course of a couple days with the ploy-perhaps spurring the move by Brand.
While the entertainment industry continues to persecute the open-source piracy community, it will be interesting to watch how certain aspects of free releases have seeped into popular culture. Today, musicians put out free releases everyday in the forms of mixtape and albums-whose to say we can't see a similar trend begin to occur in the film/comedy realm as well? It's not completely out of the question and may be a breath of fresh air.
Before Sean Fanning and Napster turned the Music world on its head in the late 90s, record labels dictated who was hot and what was good-today music is as open as its ever been, allowing fans to dictate prices and artist's popularity. With movies these days getting less and less creative as directors increasingly pull from remakes, maybe a few free releases wouldn't be the worst thing.
[via Complex]
[RH Review] The Spectacular Now
I'll admit something: When I saw the first trailer for The Spectacular Now, I said, "The Spectacular Now is indie film bait with the common trope of self-discovery, coming of age themes, but that’s exactly what I’m attracted to." After watching the film, I can confirm that I was only half-right. Spoiler alert: The Spectacular Now wowed me in a way I haven't been wowed in a very long time. Allow me to try to find the words to convey exactly why.
http://youtu.be/0dCfbBwFI2Y
The Spectacular Now
Director: James Ponsoldt
Rating: R
Release Date: August 2nd, 2013 [NY and LA]
Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) is the popular class clown that everybody can't help but like. He's the life of the party, has an equally popular and awesome girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson), and truly embraces living for the now. However, when Cassidy breaks up with him, Sutter's life begins to change, although not in the way you'd expect. After a long night of drinking, a girl from his class, Aimee (Shailene Woodley), finds him sprawled across a yard on her newspaper route. What began as a budding friendship becomes something more as Sutter's attempts to essentially mentor and guide Aimee transition into a deeper connection that Sutter might not be able to comprehend.
Behind the jokes and public facade, Sutter has a dark side to his life that can serve as a bit of a warning to audiences. Despite being only 17, Sutter is a budding alcoholic always seen with a flask full of whiskey. The characteristic defines his actions, sure, but the point doesn't come heavy-handed by director James Ponsoldt (Shamed) or screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber ([500] Days of Summer). The Spectacular Now can be seen as a warning against underage drinking or alcohol dependency, but it never feels like an outright propaganda-filled activist statement. Rather, it's understated and subtle, or as subtle as it can be every time Sutter takes a drink out of his super-sized "big gulp" or flask.
When Sutter and Aimee get together, and she begins to pick up on his habit, I kept worrying about where it would lead. The tension was never overbearing, but I had the chilling feeling that something would happen, and it wouldn't be good. It wasn't too dissimilar from the suspense in horror films, but at least in those films, you know for a fact something's coming; in an independent drama, you don't know when, if, or how that "something" would come. This foreboding notion not only helped humanize Sutter and Aimee, but it also makes you actually care for these characters, and what's more important for a film than an audience empathizing and connecting with them?
There are some common tropes in the film, such as father-son dynamics, popular boy falling for a not-so-popular girl, relationship drama as a narrative crux, and the obvious "coming-of-age" epiphany that characterizes the genre. However, such tropes and cliches are tropes and cliches because they're taken from real life, and sometimes I forget that. The Spectacular Now featured real characters who, for better or worse, find themselves in these situations because they're real situations that we have or will find ourselves in.
As I walked out of the theater and reflected over the film, all I could think about was just how right it felt. Sure, I'm biased, because it truly played to my film interests, but it did everything right and what I love in independent dramas. Ponsoldt, Neustadter, and Weber wanted to create a high school film that was devoid of everything that "high school films" have become, reintroducing a level of reality to a film that isn't reliant on an overbearingly dark drama or sophomoric shenanigans. Honestly, Films like The Spectacular Now truly affirm why I've dedicated an extensive period of my life towards covering films.
[Trailer] Ride Along
http://youtu.be/MPHcT-cEepU
Buddy films are some of the most formulaic and lazy films to create. The entire "gimmick" is reliant on pairing people of completely contrasting personalities, throwing them into an asinine situation, then allowing them to look past their differences/embracing their differences to overcome the odds, thusly becoming better friends in the process. The Heat is the most recent example, but the buddy film (more specifically, buddy cop films) genre has extended as far back as the early beginnings of cinema.
Of course, such films are wholly dependent on the chemistry between the pair; some buddy films have been very successful (Rush Hour), critically-acclaimed (End of Watch), or god awful (White Chicks). Ride Along, directed by Tim Story (Barbershop), stars comedian Kevin Hart and rapper/actor Ice Cube as a high school security guard aspiring to become a cop to impress his girlfriend's older, successful police officer in order to receive the blessing to marry. So, basically, there's the annoying, overreaching loudmouth paired with the hard-nosed veteran. While it appears the chemistry between the two should help the film find an audience, aren't we beginning to run out of interest in buddy cop films?
Whatever the case may be, Ride Along will be riding along to theaters in January 2014.
[Trailer] Hell Baby
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Fans of Comedy Central should remember Reno 911!, a parody of COPS set in Reno, Nevada. Running from 2003 to 2009, the heavily improvised comedy featured a number of comedians and comedy actors (with the majority of them spinning out of the short-lived sketch comedy show, The State) taking on outrageous crimes. Reno 911!: Miami was the film spin-off that showed that the TV series' brand of comedy could easily transition into the largely different format of films.
Two of the Reno 911! stars, Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, have reunited to co-write, co-direct, and co-star in their upcoming independent horror-comedy, Hell Baby. Also starring Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine) and Leslie Bibb (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby), the film is about Corddry's and Bibb's characters as expectant parents that move into dilapidated haunted house in New Orleans with intentions of being fixed up and sold. However, the demons haunting the house possess Bibb's character, causing Garant's and Lennon's characters, two super Vatican exorcists, to come and expel the demons away.
Based off of the trailer below, it seems like Hell Baby is going for a few cheap laughs. While it's billed as a horror-comedy, I don't expect there to be much horror. However, knowing the duo's pedigree and style of comedy, there should be a solid amount of humor. Hell Baby will find life on Video on Demand first on July 25th, followed by a theatrical release on September 6th.
[Trailer] Prince Avalanche
http://youtu.be/ewpjHDZzT7A
Prince Avalanche serves as writer/director David Gordon Green's return to the independent comedy drama genre. Following his last directed film, The Sitter, Prince Avalanche stars Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) as Alvin and his girlfriend's brother, Lance, respectively, during a summer spent painting traffic lines on a highway. While the two don't initially get together, they begin to warm up to one another as time passes. It's definitely a character-driven film that balances drama with comedy.
Don't let Green's recent films fool you: his dramatic films (Undertow, Snow Angels) are a lot better than his comedy films(Pineapple Express, The Sitter). And while Rudd is primarily known as a comedy actor, he definitely has the chops for drama; on the same hand, Hirsch's best role to date was in his award-winning film, Into the Wild.
Prince Avalanche should definitely be on your "to-watch" lists when it hits theaters on August 9th.