Sony announced today that Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Click) has been hired to direct the Kevin James MMA movie (“Mixed Martial Farts?” “Paul Blart: Mall Cro Cop?”).  I guess it could be worse, they could’ve gotten the guy from I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.  Anyway, I doubt either of these “directors” does more than set up lights and head down to craft services while Sandler shoots the movie.

Deadline revealed the film when it first took shape last fall, with James playing a physics teacher who moonlights as a mixed martial arts fighter to raise money and save the music program his students love. He makes it all the way to the UFC. Sony was eager to be back in business with James after Paul Blart: Mall Cop turned into a sleeper hit, and Coraci’s The Zookeeper tested so high that Sony slotted the film for released on July 8, 2011.

So basically, Sony took a script by Allan Loeb, the worst screenwriter in Hollywood, based on an MMA-saves-the-rec-center idea I came up with in five seconds while making fun of Never Back Down three years ago, and THEY CAN’T GET IT INTO THEATERS FAST ENOUGH! MORE COCAINE!  I imagine this will do for the UFC what Hulk Hogan’s Santa With Muscles did for the WWE.

If Kevin James doesn’t win at least one of his fights by farts and/or groin shots, everything I know about the world is wrong.  “Winner by tap out due to… farts?”

A while back, I brought you the incredible-but-true news of WWE wrestler Big Show’s debut as a leading man in Knucklehead, a film about a retarded orphan who fights MMA to save the church’s orphanage.  It’s a premise ripped from the comments section of this very website.  Tragically, the film is going direct to DVD later this month.  Happily, we can still watch the trailer!  It stars Melora Hardin (aka Jan from The Office) making this face, and features a fart joke, a melvin joke, an implied gay-sex joke, and a really fake-looking bear, all in the same trailer.  It’s important to note, however, (*RECORD SCRATCH*), that it does not contain a record scratch (*sad trombone*).

As with most awesome direct-to-DVD movies, the trailer and actual movie are only about half the fun.  The other half is going to the IMDB page and going down the rabbit hole of the crew’s past credits.  My favorite finds this time include the news that Knucklehead director Michael W. Watkins once directed a pilot for the AWESOMELY TITLED “5ive Days to Midnight.”  That’s right, 5ive. We puttin’ numbers in our letter now, gramps, represent.

“College professor J.T. Neumeyer has five days to solve a murder… his own.”

BOOM! I just got a thrill-boner — how did that not get picked up?  Meanwhile, Knucklehead writers Bear Aderhold and Tom Sullivan currently have three credits to their name: this retarded church MMA movie starring Big Show, the Larry the Cable Guy vehicle Delta Farce, and Bill Engvall’s Bait Shop.  These guys… walk… though… the rain drops.

Please, please, pleeeeease tell me that the moral of the retarded church MMA story is that Jesus didn’t tap.

Have you noticed that pitches for real, serious movies have become indistinguishable from comedic, fictional movie pitches?  It’s true.  Seriously, if I put a gun to your head and demanded you tell me whether this is an article from Variety or something I made up, could you?

Mandate Pictures has picked up the teen dance drama script “Dream On” from Jason Ubaldi for Laurence Mark to produce.  Ubaldi is penning “Treasure Hunters” with Broken Road Prods., and “The Lowenfish Party” for Cheyenne Enterprises. Mark, who most recently produced “Julie and Julia,” and “Dreamgirls” before that, will produce “Dream On” with Rachel Miller, who conceived the idea.

Project revolves around an aspiring Olympic gymnast who discovers the underground hip-hop scene in Atlanta.

That’s right, they’re making Da Hip Hop Gymnast.  That was someone’s idea, and the studio thought it was so good, they not only greenlit, but made them a producer.  I can see it now… A promising young gymnast is forced to drop out of the olympics when her kid sister gets sick.  An experimental operation can save her life, but the operation costs $10,000.  Which just so happens to be the prize money of the Underground Hip Hop Dance Contest.  She signs up, but she’s bad at first.  The laughingstock of the underground hip hop community.  “Yo, that leotard is WHACK!” they tease.  But with an open mind and a little help from a montage, the underground hip hop rec center soon realizes that it’s they who could be learning something from her.  She wows them at the grand finale.  “Damn, girl, what was that move?  That move was NASTY!” they cheer.    “Nah,” she says. “It was GYMnasty.”

*rides into sunset on pommel horse*

   Not pictured: the corner

Via Movieweb:

Lionsgate is gearing up for a remake of the 1987 classic Dirty Dancing and has set Julia Dahl (Uptown Girls) to work on the script, according to Production Weekly.
The original starred Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey as a young woman in the summer where she meets Johnny Castle (Swayze) who teaches dance at a family Summer Camp and in his off hours Dirty Dances with the other dancers. She learns a routine so that one of the women can recover from an abortion and becomes Johnny’s lover [Ed. - That is dark as hell for a movie my 8-year-old classmates were into].

How are they possibly going to update this?  Is Baby going to win a booty shake (NSFW) competition?  Is Johnny going to throw dem poak chops?  Instead of an abortion, is Johnny’s girlfriend going to be raising money to have 12 embryos implanted so she can get a reality show contract? Oh well, if Julia Dahl messes this up, there’s always barber college.

~ robopanda

Short Order is opening in limited release this weekend, but not nearly limited enough. Why am I so ticked at this movie? Because of the official synopsis, that’s why. I put it after the jump (because it’s that damn long). It’s the most pretentious thing I’ve read since this M. Night Shyamalan interview.

I read the entire synopsis and I still have no idea what this movie is about. I just know that it contains a "cigarrillo smoking Felix" and "the mystery and majesty and magic of existence".

No sir, I don’t like it.  – RoboPanda

Food’s up! It’s another night on earth, friends, and up there in space, in the company of the satellites and telecom hardware your host Lenny Green of the Radio World Broadcasting Network sends deep thoughts and musical moments through the misty blue of our delicate planet and eavesdrops on a magical night in the lives of our protagonists: Short Order Chefs, Masterchefs, Delivery People, working out their philosophies between bites of honest to goodness, Onions, Mustard Hot Dogs, Garlic studded, Lemon and Rum drenched prawns, house special Osso Bucco (featuring the freshly chopped fingers of Bill Dodging Customers).

Will Paulo, the proprietor of The Mediterraneo get his revenge on the infamous Bill Dodger, the elusive globe-trotting check-evader who has caused a worldwide epidemic of people running out on their restaurant bills thereby threatening the livelihood of him and all of the other brave souls who slave over a hot griddle? Or will he expire before then, fulfilling his last wish of (literally) making a meal of himself, of returning his body whence it came: back into the food chain?

Or, indeed, will his loyal sous chef Pedro kill a respected food critic who is already choking to death on a finger bone – with a medium sized saute pan and (literally) ruin everything?

Will Fiona, the Short Order Chef at Ishmaels , – whose vivid imagination can transform the most dreary street into an all singing all dancing musical revue as she wrestles with the vagaries of life – rekindle her passion for real cooking, a gift so intense that it can, and does, cause orgasms. And will she redeem herself from the cul de sac of misery and confusion on whose end wall she daily bloodies and bruises her beautiful mind?

Will Catherine, the Ishmael delivery girl find meaning in the company of a Russian prostitute; or will the force of her wonderful honest and funny self get her the chat show she so richly deserves? Will she stop taking photos of all the people she delivers food to; or will she get what she really, really wants – a kiss from someone close to her?

Or will the cigarrillo smoking Felix free Fiona from her frustration and seduce her back to the fancy kitchens of Shanks , his high street eaterie?

Will the philosophical musings of short order chefs from around the world regarding pizza dough and female orgasms, omelettes and maidenhead larceny, hot dogs and sexual frustration in American women during the war years shed any light on God’s plan?

On Planet Earth on any given night, a billion stories unfold describing with their arc the mystery and majesty and magic of existence. And what better metaphor than food can describe the poetry of life in all its forms. Join me, Lenny Green, in the rollicking, exasperating, hilarious, sensuous, violent, intoxicating, wondrous lives of these precious few, the heroes of the hot plate, the brave pulsing hearts who live and die by the frying pan.

Food’s up, my friends. Enjoy. Because Life is a Buffet… 

Jesus.