The Avengers is Marvel’s answer to DC’s Justice League, a comic book that unites all their heroes into one supergroup, a lá the Traveling Wilburys. Hollywood can barely get a movie with one superhero made, but every year I have to post 20 or 30 of the latest development rumors about one of these projects that never seem to get very far. The latest is that Jon Favreau says he won’t be directing The Avengers, which is the kind of critical thinking skill we wish he’d displayed before signing on to Couples Retreat.
“They’ll have to [find a different director], because I’m not going to be available,” he explained. “It’s something I’m being the executive producer on, so I’ll definitely have input and a say.” “It’s going to be hard, because I was so involved in creating the world of Iron Man and Iron Man is very much a tech-based hero, and then with ‘Avengers’ you’re going to be introducing some supernatural aspects because of Thor,” he continued. “How you mix the two of those works very well in the comic books, but it’s going to take a lot of thoughtfulness to make that all work and not blow the reality that we’ve created.” [via MTV, video below]
I would say that I don’t like the idea of these superhero supergroup movies because each character sort of exists in his own alternate reality, and trying to put them all in one is not only hard, but it can ruin the particular strengths of certain characters. I would say that, but then I’d be a grown man arguing the finer points of dudes in spandex beating people up. What I will say is that as long as we’re doing supergroups, one of the characters should be Ted Nugent.
This is a new behind-the-scenes featurette from the set of Iron Man 2. The first 45 seconds are in French (the boom mic guy can’t keep his equipment out of the shot, but if they fire him they still have to pay his salary for three months, so it looks like they’re stuck with him, c’est la vie), but the rest the interviews are in English. Although the nerds who control the internet demand I post anything Iron Man-related immediately, I don’t really find these ‘making-of’ videos all that interesting. To me, making movies is kind of like making sausage. I don’t want to see what goes into making the sausage, I just want to cook it up and eat it out of a homeless woman’s vagina. I guess I’m old fashioned like that.
[via ComingSoon]
(Amerikki devil, cannot spell infidelity without… infidel! Ululululululu!)
One of Hollywood’s strange, or at least totally unrealistic clichés is that in comedies, no one, not even the bad boys and anti-heroes, cheat on their spouses unless they’re clear villains. (See: Vince Vaughn in Old School). Which is why it was a little odd that cheating showed up in the trailer for Couples Retreat, Vince Vaughn’s latest half-assed paycheck movie. Oh yeah, about that…
I was struck that one subplot appeared to involve Jon Favreau vigorously, enthusiastically cheating on his wife (Kristin Davis) and that Universal would actually advertise that. [...] Well, guess what? All those scenes of infidelity in the trailer (including Kristin Davis’s own assignation [hehe, 'ass' -Ed.] with her personal trainer) have been cut from the film, something I should have suspected when Favreau was dragged away from Iron Man 2 to do Couples Retreat reshoots shortly after the trailer’s release. Both Favreau and Davis still have wandering eyes in the film, but temptation is the couple’s main problem rather than onscreen cheating. Aside from an argument the two have late in the movie (which feels like it’s referencing the original storyline), there’s no indication that either one has ever been adulterous. [MovieLine]
I’m always amazed at how often mainstream entertainment will neuter itself because some unemployed dogwalker in the focus group cried when the movie barbie rubbed her crotchlump on a doll that wasn’t ken. So now what’s the story, they saw other attractive people and then had a funny argument and stayed married? Oy. The romantic comedy has long been losing any male audience that wasn’t specifically dragged there by a date by shutting out any storyline that isn’t sorority girl wish fulfillment. Comedy characters are supposed to be less traditional than you. It’s why George Carlin is funnier than Jay Leno, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is funnier than Two and Half Man, and why Kenneth from 30 Rock sucks. Entertainment, and especially the romantic comedy, needs to grow some balls in a hurry. And they can start by greenlighting my script for Planes, Trains, and Auto-erotic Asphyxia. God, I drank way too much coffee this morning.
Entertainment Tonight has been hard at work this week, sending not one, but two of their trained seals to the set of Iron Man 2, where they asked the stars the tough questions, like “How’s your diet going?” and “Why come you’re so pretty?” (There’s briefly a cool part at the 56-second mark where Whiplash cuts a Rolls Royce in half with his whips). They didn’t talk to Mickey Rourke, probably because if E.T. anchors get dog fur on their clothes they melt like the wicked witch, but they spent plenty of time with Gwyneth Paltrow, who we see as the only person on the set breathing into a gas mask. Probably because her lungs are more important than yours, they live in England, you know. She also had this to say:
“Pepper’s evolving a little bit in her look, you know, but she’s still rocking all the high heels. I can’t believe that I can put on a bathing suit, or wear these costumes that are tiny and short or whatever, and still feel good about myself!”
It’s true, Gwyneth, you’re so amazing! Come on, everyone, let’s build a Paltrow monument that you can see from space! It’s almost as if she has all day to exercise and have private chefs cook her healthy food while immigrants take care of her kids or something. Anyway, ScreenRant has a nice, spoilery breakdown of what clues to the Iron Man 2 plot this video may have revealed. You know, if you’re some kind of Schloimo Dorkowicz.
Cowboys and Aliens is your basic aliens-as-metaphor-for-imperialism graphic novel, and has been in development for quite some time. But sh’t got real back in June when Robert Downey Jr. signed on to star, and sh’t’s about to get mega super real now that Jon Favreau has signed on to direct a script written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Damon Lindelof. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s the writer/director team behind Iron Man plus the writers of Star Trek and Transformers, plus one of the top dogs at Lost. If hotness were bricks, this project would have plenty.
The story centers on an Old West battle between the Apache and Western settlers, including a former Union Army gunslinger named Zeke Jackson (Downey), that is interrupted by a spaceship crashing into the prairie near Silver City, Ariz. The story draws a parallel between the American imperialist drive to conquer the “savage” Indians with its advanced technology and the aliens’ assault on Earthlings, who must join together to survive the invaders’ attack. [THR]
Kurtzman, Orci & Co. (Kortzi) are taking over scripting duties from Iron Man writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Fergby), which is interesting, as it’s well known in Hollywood circles that Kortzi/Fergby is a professional rivalry the likes of which some say hasn’t been seen since Beatles/Stones, or Brando/Schwarzenegger. The dueling duos frequently attend the same parties, and after a few Zimas, have been known to engage in some heated chicken fights.
[via HeatVision]
