"TURN IT SIDEWAYS!"

Troubling news out of Sundance today, friends. It seems that Channing Tatum’s film The Son of No One has been met with less than stellar reviews. In fact, people walked out of its very important screening, including a number of studio execs. There’s just no respek in this Hollywood game these days.

The film, about a young cop (Tatum) who finds himself embroiled in controversy that could tear his family apart, features heavy star power, including Ray Liotta, Al Pacino, Katie Holmes and Tracy Morgan, which indicates that there should still be a demanding market for Son, despite people crapping all over it yesterday.

C-walk out of my theater, Hollywood Reporter…

Though the theater wasn’t full, the room was crowded with acquisitions execs wanting an early look at the film. Reps from Samuel Goldwyn, Paramount, Summit, the Weinstein Co., Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group, IFC Films, Morgan Creek, Screen Media, Miramax and Relativity made it into the theater by the film’s opening credits.

Some of them, however, were gone well before the end credits. In addition, enough regular audience members left early for one observer to describe it as an “exodus.”

Baloney. Pure baloney. I’m so angry right now that I could just cuss. But I won’t because I know that this movie is going to be a success. Even worse, I’m going to have to explain this to my good friend C-Tates, because he actually sent me this link with the following message:

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH BOYYYYYYYYY, C-TATES IS DA MUTHA F*CKIN’ BOMB, YO!”

Poor guy. At least the poster lists some of the more positive reviews…

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Here’s today’s trade-news round up.  It’s not all retarded, but it mostly is.

Adam Sandler’s real movies are worse than his fake movies, plus, Al Pacino. Al Pacino and Katie Holmes are set to join Adam Sandler’s “Jack and Jill,” in which Adam Sandler plays Jack and his twin sister, Jill, who shows up for Thanksgiving and then won’t leave.  Holmes will play Sandler’s wife and Pacino will play himself, in a script from the writer of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  (*90-minute mouth fart*). This will be the cinematic equivalent of a glass-bottom boat. |HollywoodReporter|

Eli Roth working on a full-length version of Thanksgiving, based on his Grindhouse trailer.  I really like this idea.  Mainly because that Judy chick seems like a real slut. |CinemaBlend|

Oscar the Death Cat. So there was this cat in a nursing home who would start hanging out with old people right when they were about to die, who supposedly correctly predicted the deaths of more than 50 people.  A doctor at the home wrote a book about it, and now the story is becoming a movie.  I don’t really know where you go with a movie about a cat that can predict old people dying any more than you could with an old man’s knee that could predict the weather, but I think a buddy flick about Oscar the cat that kills old people and the dog that hates blacks could be cool. |GordonandtheWhale|

Ghost Rider 2 happening, with Nic Cage, in 3D.  Unfortunately, they’ll have some technical kinks to work out first as the first guy who tried to capture Nic Cage’s forehead on a 3D camera traveled through a worm hole and ended up in a Victorian-era opium den.  |IESB|

This clip never gets old:
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Al Pacino has broken down and filmed the first commercial of his career, an ad for Australia’s Vittorio Coffee for director Barry Levinson, who directed Pacino in the Kevorkian biopic You Don’t Know Jack. It’s not quite as embarrassing as Marisa Tomei doing a Bertolli commercial with Dan Cortese, or as pathetic as Orson Welles mumbling about wine, but there’s still something kind of… icky about it.  Assorted dialog:

In the morning when you’re making a movie, you get up real early.  So you need all the help you can get.  When I’m reading the script, when I’m rehearsing — coffee goes with my line of work.

Most of my scripts have coffee stains on them.  That’s how you know it’s a Pacino script.

…This is good coffee.

Yuck, misdirected gravitas. Gives me gas.  And Levinson is a hack.  This is how the commercial should’ve gone:

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Dino, Sinatra, and Birthday Dog's great uncle, Geno P. Birthday Dog Sr.

Alternate Headline: OLD ITALIAN WANTS OLD ITALIANS TO PLAY DEAD ITALIANS.

Marty Scorsese has a lot of rumored projects on his plate, including The Irishman and a 3D adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but while promoting Shutter Island in India recently, he dropped some bigger news.  Why, I read it, and den I get-a so happy, one-a mama’s a-meatballs squirt-a right inna my lap!   (*grabs crotch*)  Look, mama’s-a meatball, she land-a right-a here!  (*gesticulates wildly, smokes cigarettes*)

The conversation veers towards his plans to do a film on the life of Frank Sinatra. “I’ve had it in mind for a long time. Even the initial script is ready. I’m yet to spot the actor who can bring back Frank Sinatra alive on screen. My choice is Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro as Dean Martin.” [TheHindu]

Scorsese had previously said about the project:

“We can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life. We tried this already. Just can’t do it. So the other way to go is to have three or four different Sinatras. Younger. Older. Middle-aged. Very old. You cut back and forth in time – and you do it through the music. See what I’m saying? So that’s what we’re trying for. It’s very tricky [laughs].” [ThePlaylist]

My favorite line in Anchorman is still “He wore suits so fine it made Frank Sinatra look like a hobo.”  Anyway, this project is still firmly in the “nothing concrete” stage, but I can’t imagine a studio not wanting to finance a Scorsese Sinatra biopic, nor can I imagine DeNiro or Scorsese turning down the chance to play Sinatra and Dean Martin.  Al Pacino playing Frank Sinatra would be for Italians what Al Pacino playing Tony Montana is for black dudes.   You can read about it and more in my upcoming book, Vaguely Racist SAT Analogies.

This is the video for Owl City’s fruity song, “Vanilla Twilight.”  The director did a wise thing in interspersing Shaquille O’Neal cameos throughout the entire thing, astutely anticipating that even a few seconds of random, Shaq screen time would be enough to keep me watching through the whole thing even though I had no interest in the song or video.  Am I retarded for laughing at this?  Or is it just brilliant?  Shaq needs to be a movie star again. I know, I know, Kazaam. But I think the mistake was in trying to make Shaq carry entire movies, especially ones about genies and whatnot.  A better use would be to just have him around for reaction shots in Roland Emmerich movies.

*Meteorite destroys Eiffel Tower*

CUT TO:

SHAQ:  Whoa.

Tell me that wouldn’t make the movie at least 50% more entertaining.  …Oh I’m sorry, was this not movie-related enough for you?  Okay, fine.  After the jump, check out Al Pacino in the HBO biopic of Jack Kevorkian, You Don’t Know Jack.  I’m guessing it’s about a guy who helps people kill themselves when they get depressed about computer trivia games.  God that’s an awful title. See, people?  This is why you don’t name your movie after the Variety headline.

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