Come on in, Denzel! Dry out!

If a critic’s first responsibility is to help the reader enjoy a particular work – and I’m not sure I agree, but I’ve heard that – with Flight that’s an easy one: stay for the first 20 minutes and then leave. You’ll get an awesome nude scene, Denzel ACTING, and a harrowing plane landing, and you’ll leave forever wondering what could have been. I promise, it’ll be better in your mind, for the same reason your teachers always used to tell you to read a book instead of watching TV. “Go on a FLIGHT, on the wings of your own IMAGINATION!”

If you do happen to stay, though, you’ll be treated to an extended infomercial for AA, an important after-school special about the dangers of alcoholism, a very special episode of the Denzel Show.

Flight is your basic example of a good premise in search of a movie. We open on Denzel, morning, in his hotel room full of empty Miller bottles, where he’s been up all night banging a preposterously proportioned, ludicrously hot flight attendant who has just woken up and is walking around stark naked, as hot babes are wont to do (as I know from my extensive research). Nadine Velazquez plays the flight attendant, and it would be impossible to overstate how fantastic her breasts are. They just sort of haunt the background for a while like chubby apparitions, all perky and ready to greet the day, while Denzel smokes a cig and argues with his ex-wife over the cell phone. He’s got family problems, you see, the poor guy. He takes a bump of coke to sober up and they hit the airplane.

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When you’re talking about Ridley Scott movies, and I’m assuming this is right after your home sock puppet show, it becomes immediately apparent that he’s a rangy English bastard. Just when you think he’s a sci-fi director, he throws uber-lady power Thelma and Louise at ya. Then, after seeing G.I. Jane, you peg him as a “girl power” hero, and he rocks you up with Black Hawk Down. Okay, you say, continuing your odd internal monologue, this guy is all about the military. 2003 comes and he releases Matchstick Men, which proves he’s given up, completely thrown in the towel on making real movies. That proves not to be the case, because while 2010 saw him release one of his worst films (Robin Hood), this weekend he’s got a completely legit sci-fi “think piece” hitting theaters. He’s only getting stronger, or weaker, depending on what phase the moon is in. So let’s break down the thirteen major works of Ridley Scott, leaving Legend and A Good Year completely out of the conversation, mostly because I haven’t those two and no one really mentions them anyway. I blame the system, and HBO, for not allowing me to buy Game of Thrones on my Zune.

So then, Ridley Scott’s worst film EVAR?

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Released in 1974, Uptown Saturday Night told the story of two blue collar dudes played by Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier who get robbed at an uptown night club, only to find out one of them had a winning lottery ticket in his wallet. They go on a chase to get it back, wackiness ensues. Now Anchorman director Adam McKay is in negotiations to direct a remake, starring Denzel Washington and Will Smith, which seems silly because Bow Wow and Ice Cube already remade this movie and it was called Lottery Ticket.

Overbrook Entertainment has been developing the project. Tim Dowling wrote the most recent draft.
The idea is for McKay to helm the film after he completes a sequel to Anchorman, the Will Ferrell-starrer that Paramount has set for an early 2013 start and 2014 release.
There are plenty of remakes that elicit groans. If this package comes together (Smith and Washington have long wanted to work together), with McKay’s comic sensibility, this redo could be exceptional. The original cast was lined with the likes of Harry Belafonte, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor, and the remake could follow suit by star-casting the supporting roles. [Deadline]

Yes, that’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that squeaky clean Will Smith wouldn’t even do Quentin Tarantino’s movie, and if his production company is the one writing and developing this, I have hard time imagining it being anything but incredibly milquetoast. Not to mention, all of Adam McKay’s movies so far have leaned heavily on the improv skills of people like Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who are basically the best in the world at improv, whereas Denzel Washington and Will Smith are actors who are kind of funny sometimes. And this is neither here nor there, but I really wish there was an Urban Dictionary definition for a “Harry Belafonte.”

Hairy Belafonte is Kimbo Slice’s porn name.

[picture source]

"Oh, the Urban Outfitters accessories rack? Right over there."

Forget the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes or even the People’s Choice Awards. When it comes to determining who America’s favorite actor is, the only proper way to do it is with an online poll of 2,237 adults representing four age groups, conducted in just 7 days. And through that foolproof scientific method, we now know that Johnny Depp is America’s favorite actor for the second year running, according to the latest Harris Poll.

Better luck next year, Tom Sizemore!

Age, region, gender and political party and leanings mean different favorite actors. Men cite Clint Eastwood as their favorite while women say it is Johnny Depp. Echo Boomers (those aged 18-34), Gen Xers (aged 35-46) and Baby Boomers (aged 47-65) all say Johnny Depp is their favorite actor while for Matures (those aged 66 and older), George Clooney is their favorite.

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Now I realize this is going to sound farfetched, but apparently there’s more than just a few ways to burn through a large amount of money very quickly: purchasing excess amounts of black tar heroin, investing poorly in a sh**ty rapper’s vodka company, cramming all that money up a body cavity -or, if you happen to reside in Hollywood, you can always just grossly overpay the star of your next big (supposed) blockbuster. Yeah, that’s also a great way to get rid of a bunch of cash -but just how much money constitutes a bunch? Well, in an apparent attempt to answer that question (and inspire mass suicides everywhere) Forbes just released their 2010 list of Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors. You know, just to really help put into perspective how truly underpaid you are at your day job. And just to lay any rumors to rest, neither Nic Cage or Billy Zane made the list this year, sorry.

To formulate their list, Forbes first started with the 36 highest-earning actors from Hollywood. To qualify, during the past five years, each actor would have to have starred in, at least, three films that opened in more than 500 theaters. After this initial categorization, they then began to factor in various other details like penis length and bench press ability.

We used data gathered for our annual Celebrity 100 list to calculate each star’s estimated earnings on each film (including up-front pay and any earnings from the movie’s box-office receipts, DVD and TV sales). We then looked at each movie’s estimated budget [...] and box-office, DVD and television earnings to figure out an operating income for each film.

We added up each star’s compensation on his or her last three films and the operating income on those films, an divided total operating income by the star’s total compensation to come up with a return-on-investment number. The final number represents an average of how much a studio earns for every dollar paid.

Forbes fails to mention how many interns bludgeoned themselves to death with graphing calculators, during the research, but I can only assume the final count was north of ten.

Top 10 Overpaid Actors after the cut.

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