"Oh these? We won these on the crapper."

Back in June, the LA Times reported that Coen Brothers had said they were working on a film about the Greenwich Village folk music scene based loosely on the life of Dave van Ronk, “the Mayor of MacDougal Street,” who was said to have influenced fellow folkies Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Now Variety has confirmed the project, which will be called “Inside Llewyn Davis” (presumably a fictionalized Ronk), written and directed by the Coens, and financed by StudioCanal. No word yet on when it might start shooting, but presumably they’ll have to work around Joel and Ethan’s busy snowboarding schedule.

“Llewyn” centers around Llewyn Davis’ struggles as a folk musician during the genre’s 1960s heyday in New York City.
Pic would mark the third team-up for the quartet, all of whom collaborated on “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit” [the Coens' first $100 million grosser].

Normally, I’d hear about yet another navel-gazing Baby Boomer movie about Bob Dylan and his supposedly-meaningful gibberish poetry and want to puke in my dad’s bongs, but this is the Coen Brothers. They could make a film about a slam poet club DJ in the style of Entourage and I’d still be there opening night. The one thing that could keep me from seeing a Coen Brothers film? You guessed it, Danny Masterson.

Unfortunately, calling it “Llewyn Davis” all but ensures that the title will be unpronounceable in Asia and Latin America.

Remember that graph of M. Night Shyamalan’s career trajectory based on his movies’ RottenTomato scores over time?  Some Poindexter over at Slate put together an actual application that graphs actors’ and directors’ careers based on their RottenTomato scores.  Obviously, movies aren’t math, and as we’ve learned, most critics are stupid, but it’s still fun. Among their shocking discoveries, the highest average film score belongs to French actor Daniel Auteuil.  Among Americans and people you’ve actually heard of, the top spot belongs to John Ratzenberger.  That’s right, Cliff Clavin from Cheers.  It’s a little-known fact that John Ratzenberger is the best actor in America.

Best Actor: Daniel Auteuil. With an average film score of 86 percent, Auteuil has appeared in the most consistently high-quality films of the last few decades. The French star, best known for his role in Jean de Florette (1986), may benefit from the critical soft spot for foreign films. If you prefer to count only red-blooded Americans, the top honor goes to John Ratzenberger (76.1 percent average), who has voiced a character in every Pixar movie to date. [Slate]

Oh right, Pixar.  Meanwhile, if you throw out his voice work, he’s got scores of 0% (House II: The Second Story, starring Bill Maher, among others), 13% (for That Darn Cat, with Doug E. Doug), and who could forget the 2007 Jamie Kennedy vehicle, Kickin’ It Old Skool, which rated 2%.  The lone positive review came from Caroline Kepnes of E, who wrote, “This is the kind of movie in which a fat guy in a bra gets felt up by three guys at once,” which, to be fair, does make it sound pretty good. Meanwhile, worst actor honors go to Chuck Norris (20) and Jennifer Love Hewitt (18.9). Now, it was at this point in writing this post that I realized that this Slate article is from a few weeks ago, but I’ve included a few notable career graphs below, because God knows I’m not wasting all this work.
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The other night when Tara Reid showed up to a benefit to raise awareness for child snatching (she should have pulled out her weather-beaten snatch, to drive home what a terrible thing a snatching can be), neither of her boobs fell out while she was talking, which was considered a great success.  But for me and the two other people who actually paid attention to what she was saying, it was her offhand remark about shooting Big Lebowski 2 this year which caused the greatest (*sound of The Flintstones braking*).   Austin360 recently asked the Coen Brothers what they’d heard about the project, since the people who’d be writing it are usually a good place to start.

Ethan responded with a chuckle, saying, “I’m glad she’s working on it.”
When I asked if they actually had something in the works, Ethan said, “Well, we don’t but we’ll watch it when it comes out.” To which Joel quickly added, “Especially if Tara’s in it.”

Apparently, Tara Reid’s people have tried to clarify the misstep, as well. A spokesperson for Reid told Entertainment Weekly, “She heard Jeff Bridges say that he wanted to make ‘Big Lebowski 2’ and have all the original cast members in it, so she may have misspoke, thinking that included her based on what Jeff said.”

Well that’s why you don’t let the people on weed hang out with the people on coke.  The weed people are always coming up with neat ideas, and the coke people are always demanding follow through, like, “Hey, why are you sleeping?  You PROMISED we are going to open our own casino about pants!”

More importantly, if she was this wrong about Big Lebowski 2, is it possible American Pie 4 isn’t such a foregone conclusion either?  That’s a scary thought.  Someone better tell Natasha Lyonne to try to make nice with her Chik Fil A manager again.

…She’s alive, right?

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The Coen Brothers are currently writing a remake of Gambit, which is sadly not another X-Men spinoff, but a remake of a 1966 Michael Caine/Shirley McClaine film set to be directed by The Last Station‘s Michael Hoffman.  The last time the Coens wrote a movie they didn’t direct was 1985′s Crimewave for Sam Raimi (unless you count Ethan’s co-writing credit on The Naked Man, about a wrestling chiropractor played by Michael Rapaport.

Aaaanyway, Gambit is set to star Colin Firth, and now, Deadline reports, Cameron Diaz has hopped aboard.

Firth plays a London art curator who plans to con a wealthy collector into buying a phony Monet painting. He enlists a Texas steer roper (Diaz) to pose as a woman whose grandfather liberated the painting at the end of WWII. [Deadline]

Normally I don’t find Cameron Diaz’ acting terribly distracting, and since it’s quite possible that I too will be old one day (the jury’s still out, really), it doesn’t feel right to rip on her for being old.  However, I will say that there comes a time when you probably shouldn’t be playing the fresh-faced new secretary anymore, and that time is right around your 37th birthday.  I don’t know if that means she should be playing a Texas steer roper, but at least she isn’t playing a “precocious young steer roper.”   She doesn’t seem very country, but compared to Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz is Richard Petty.

Sidenote: If you turn off the lights and say those three names three times into a mirror, a demon will spit tobacco juice in your latte.

The bad news: Little Fockers was number one for the weekend with $34 million ($48 million since it opened Wednesday).

The good news: Little Fockers still earned less than the studio expected (the last sequel, which also sucked huge donkey balls and thus makes a fair comparison, earned $46 and $70m on the same weekend six years ago).  Meanwhile, True Grit gave the Coen Bros their biggest opening ever with $25.6 million for the weekend, $36.8 since Wednesday.  True Grit’s production budget was less than half of Little Fockers ($38 mil to $100), making it a much bigger hit for investors, not to mention the added benefit of being able to look yourself in the mirror the next morning without having produced Little Fockers on your conscience.  (Child porn is probably lucrative too, that doesn’t mean you should be proud of making money off it).

More good news: Gulliver’s Travels was DOA, opening with $7.2 million in seventh place.  For comparison, How Do You Know opened with $7.6 last weekend and dropped all the way to number 12 this weekend.  I think the rule of thumb here is that if the idea of someone making the movie is funnier than the premise itself, it’s a bad idea.  Did Jack Black help any of the Lilliputian kid win a sailboat race with his farts?  See, there’s no reason to see this movie, it’s much funnier in my imagination.

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