Posts Tagged ‘Cameron Diaz’
5 items.
Jun30
The title of today’s strip pretty much sums up my reaction to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. We saw the film this weekend and I could have sworn any semblance of a plot was overwritten by the copious number of Cameron Diaz ass shots. When that parody came out at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards earlier in June, they weren’t kidding about the number of butt shots in this movie!
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching the movie. It moves along at a zippy pace and you can tell they had a lot of fun making it.
But exiting the theater, I asked myself “What the hell did I just get through watching?” and immediately dumped it from my memory. Only upon revisiting it for today’s blog have I concluded what an awful waste of time it was.
To that end, does it please me that the sequel did less business in its opening weekend than the original? Yes. Yes it does.
There are a lot of big movies coming out this week for the holiday. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde as well as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Cami is seeing Legally Blonde 2 on Wednesday when it opens with some friends. I’ll be out rocking my ass off at the Deftones concert.
I’m a little bummed because I really enjoyed the first one. It totally caught us by surprise when we watched the original while on vacation in Kansas City. I remember it clearly, too. We walked in just killing time (we were in town for a Janet Jackson concert) and were floored by how funny it was. It’s my hope the sequel can capture some of that same magic, but I have a feeling it’ll just be a retread. I’ll have to wait for Cami’s verdict to find out.
One movie I KNOW Cami won’t want to see is T3 and I’m not too sure I want to see it, either. I think I’m going more for the love of the franchise and less because I think it will be any good. There were too many cheesy lines in the trailer (“Desire is irrelevant! I… AM… A MACHINE!”) to make it look any good.
Still, I have hope that director Jonathan Mostow will do something interesting. Both his films Breakdown and U-571 really did a good job in the suspense department. You can say he’s inexperienced if you want, but the man knows how to establish mood. It should be interesting to see how he handles a big-budget picture.
In the meantime, I’m counting down the minutes to the 4th of July. We’re having a bunch of friends over for drinks and a BBQ. It’s a big deal for Cami and I because we don’t do this very often. We lucked out this time. It looks like a lot of our friends will be able to make it. Don’t you just love it when a holiday falls on a Friday?
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It’s this kind of crazed feminine logic that can put weaker men in a tailspin!
I know today’s comic isn’t gut-busting hilarious, but they can’t call be Showtime at the Apollo.
Personally, I find it ∗very∗ funny because it – in fact – happens to be very true.
Cami was more than excited about seeing In Her Shoes for about the last week or so. I don’t know what caught her eye about it, exactly. Maybe an errant commercial flickered across the screen during a Lifetime Intimate Portrait.
And if that sounds slightly condescending, well… I point the finger at Lifetime Intimate Portrait. They started it.
At any rate, I wasn’t particularly bothered by the idea of seeing the movie for two reasons:
1. It was directed by Curtis Hanson. He’s the same guy that made one of my all-time favorite movies L.A. Confidential and the equally enjoyable Wonder Boys. He also lensed 8 Mile for those of you of the hip-hop persuasion.
2. Jeffery Wells – a critic and columnist I tend to take pretty seriously… my "guardo camino" (as it were) in all matters tending to film – endorsed this movie up and down. I’ve come to know Welles as a highly cynical chap, so if he was able to find something life affirming among the "chick flick" trappings, there must be hope.
Then, on Friday, Cami read a pretty negative review by Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum and that was it. The movie was off our radar.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to swap it out with Wallace & Gromit which I feel kind of badly about. But maybe we can see it Wednesday night.
Wait. Oh, no. Shoot. Can’t do that. Lost is on Wednesday night and we can’t leave the house.
Oh, well. At any rate, I got my Curtis Hanson fix in this weekend and watched L.A. Confidential on my own. Amazing how well the film holds up. Russell Crowe is still tolerable! Can you believe that film is almost 10 years old? Either I know the film so well it feels like yesterday, or I’m seriously dipping into "Old Man" territory.
Or, perhaps there hasn’t been anything WORTH remembering in the last 10 years? I like to believe it’s the latter.
As a sidebar, I also sat down to watch Raging Bull with Cami this weekend. No real reason motivated that choice, but it felt good to see it again. Felt like we accomplished something. Cami had never seen the film before and say afterwords that while she enjoyed it, she probably didn’t want to watch it again any time soon. Jake LaMotta is just a really unlikeable guy.
But I’m thinking there will come a time she’ll want to watch it again soon. She used to not like Goodfellas, but now it’s become one of those movies to her where, if it’s on, you have to stop what you’re doing and watch it.
I rib Cami about the chick-flick stuff, but she has good taste. Don’t doubt it. Her and chick-flicks are like me and super-hero movies. Something to get excited about, but not the barometer for our taste in cinema.
If you aren’t already aware, I’m going to stop selling t-shirts, hoodies and baby doll tees on October 31. It’s a semi-permanent solution to a problem I’ve had for a while. I’ll sell these items again someday, I’m just not sure when. So if you’ve been on the fence about buying any of these designs, now is the time to do it. Actually, a handful of them are going to be retired, so you should really look into it if you’re interested.
There’s a much lengthier blog about the subject that I posted on Friday. Here’s a handy link for reference. Scroll down for all the details.
Thanks to everyone for their support.
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The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden comes out this weekend and the plot is built around a delicious ethical dilemma. If someone said they would give you $1,000,000 and the only repercussion is the death of a stranger, would you take it? Strangers die all the time, right? What’s one more?
Of course, in science fiction morality plays like this one, things never end up as tidy as one might hope for. Usually in these scenarios, the button-presser ends up killing an automobile driver mid-journey. His car hops the curb and crushes their only son. Or they end up inadvertently killing the person who had just figured out a way to cure cancer.
The Box is based off an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1986 called “Button, Button.” I won’t tell you how that one ends because I don’t know how closely the movie follows the plot. I know it deviates somewhat – it has to if it’s going to support a longer running time. But I don’t know how much of the original story it uses as a springboard.
All I know is that I can’t imagine a reference to The Twilight Zone without thinking of the parody Futurama made of it with their similarly eerie show-within-a-show “The Scary Door.” Invariably, every episode Fry or Bender watched would end with the zinger “IT WAS MAN!”
My question about The Box is why they chose to set it in the mid 70’s? That doesn’t appear to be an era any filmmaker wants to revist anymore – even ironically. Aside from Zodiac, I can’t think of a recent movie that tried to do a period piece in the 70’s.
It’s not like The Box’s story is time-sensitive, or anything. It’s a morality play. A representation of human weakness. It could be told in ANY time period?
I dunno. Studios always seem transfixed on modernizing everything (if the litany of remakes is any indication). Seems like a bizarre choice to set things up during a time of bad hair and bell bottom pants.
We talked about The Box a little bit on Monday’s Triple Feature. Joe is excited for it because it’s directed by Richard Kelly – the same guy who directed Donnie Darko and Southland Tales – and Joe is a fan.
I don’t know if Kelly’s directorial history is enough to get me in the theaters this weekend, but I admit to being curious about the film. It’ll probably be a rental for me.
What about the rest of you? Are you curious to see what happens after the button is pressed? Who here is seeing The Box this weekend and what is attracting you to the movie? Leave your comments below!
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Originally I was going to do a comic about San Diego Comic-Con. But at this point, I think if I read one more tweet, blog post or status update about Panel “X” or Celebrity Sighting “Y” I’m going to scream.
Good job, internet. You’ve covered San Diego Comic-Con so thoroughly I have no interest in talking about it with anyone else.
Salt hit theaters this weekend and raked in $36 million at the box office. Certainly a very respectable opening. But the big story is that Inception only slid 31% in its second week, earning $43 million in ticket sales. For a cerebral thriller like Inception to have that kind of staying power in its second week is a testament to how good the film is and how strong word of mouth was.
The reviews for Salt have been 50/50. Critical reaction to Knight and Day was practically the same.
This kind of surprised me because I don’t know anyone who saw Knight and Day. Meanwhile, I have several friends that went to see Salt and raved about it. I’d had heard it favorably compared to The Bourne Supremacy and films of that ilk This left me with the assumption that Cruise picked the wrong horse.
I suppose the only way to be sure is to wait around a couple of weeks and see if anyone is still talking about Salt. Although, if it couldn’t unseat Inception in its second week, I find the prospects of that unlikely.
Then again, with Dinner for Schmucks, Charlie St. Cloud and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore as Salt’s only competition this weekend, maybe it’s got a chance!
What do you guys think? Did you see Salt this weekend? Was it any good? How many of you went back for a second helping of Inception? Leave your comments below!
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The red band trailer for Cameron Diaz’s Bad Teacher came out recently and it’s so completely ridiculous, I had to share it with you.
The gist of it is basically that Cameron Diaz swears a lot. Awkwardly. Is anyone convinced by this “bad-girl” persona she’s slapped on? This performance seems specifically designed to counter-act Diaz’s bubbly Every Girl reputation. Instead it comes off as contrived.
Justin Timberlake is acting so unbelievable goofy, it’s like he wandered out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
In fact, I can’t decide if this movie is supposed to be straight up satire or if we’re supposed to take any of the characters seriously?
Jason Segel appears to be approaching his role with some sincerity and, as Forgetting Sarah Marshall proved, he’s endlessly endearing as the underdog.
But from this trailer, it looks like casting Diaz was a mistake. Whatever they’re selling, I’m not buying. To me it looks like some vain attempt to make Diaz relevant again by shocking us into paying attention. She’s like Madonna, or something.
What do you guys think of Bad Teacher? Is it a Bad Santa knock off or something worse? It Diaz at all believable in this role? Leave your comments below!
UPDATE: If anyone needs proof that Cameron Diaz is desperate to reinvent herself as a bad girl, check out this headline from The Huffington Post – Cameron Diaz On ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’: ‘I Love Porn!’
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