Nothing against Tyler Perry or his movies, I’m just not one for heavy-handed preaching or folksy, homespun wisdom. But hey, to each his own, different strokes, that’s why towns have so many different strip clubs, etc. Anyway, Perry was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile last night in which Byron Pitts (great name, btw) repeatedly says, “Most Americans probably don’t even know your name.” Is this true? It wouldn’t be fair to someone so successful. Even if he creepily overenunciates everything and the clips they show do nothing to make me want to see one of his movies.
The whole segment is below. Above is the part where Perry discusses his molefestation as a child. He doesn’t say what age he was, but says when he was young, the mother of one of his friends locked him in the house and wouldn’t let him leave until he had sex with her. It seems like under different circumstances it’d make a pretty sexy letter to Penthouse forum, but he chooses to go a different direction. He also hints at being molested by a man but declines to discuss it. It’s all pretty serious, and pretty hard to write a joke about. See, Tyler Perry? This is why we never hang out anymore. You’re a real buzzkill, dude.
Diary of a Mad Black Woman, 9-12-09: Dear Diary: I just watched Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself. The story was quite life affirming. I leave the theater with a newfound perspective on life and the calm that comes with it. Leaving the parking lot now, hoping to stop by the church social. Hey! A guy just cut me off, even though I clearly had the right of way. I’M A KILL YOU YOU STUPID MUTHAF*CKA!
Aaaanyway, this weekend, black folks proved once again that they like watching dudes cross dress almost as much as the British. Tyler Perry always kills it even though I’ve never seen a movie of his (though my grandpa likes them — true story). His I Can Do Bad All by Myself was number one by a large margin this weekend, earning $24 million and $10,656 per screen, the highest per screen average since Inglourious Basterds three weeks ago.
All About Steve‘s second weekend drop of 48% is shockingly low for a film whose best reviews were basically, “I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here and say maaaybe this film isn’t the cinematic equivalent of a gorilla fingerpainting with its own feces.” Still, at $21 mil total, it’s far from a hit (thank God). Now, can we stop it with the Eve-Steve puns already? We get it, Adam & Steve went to see Stevita on Christmas Steve. It’s been done. Next person who makes one, I’m coming to your house to play “Steve of Destruction” on a ukulele while douching with Summer’s Steve.
Tyler Perry recently announced his next project, a remake of the 1975 play… For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Time out, are we sure this is actually a play and not a Fiona Apple album title or Son of Sam notebook scribbling? Someone should really be checking this things.
“Here’s my dream cast, and it hasn’t been officially announced yet. There are 15 characters in the film and my dream cast is Kimberly Elise, Cicely Tyson, Ruby Dee, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Thandie Newton, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, and Beyonce. I’ve talked to 6 of the women and they have said yes.”
That’s like every black woman I’ve ever heard of, plus a couple I didn’t even know were black.
If you know anything about the play, you know that it’s a bunch of poems. There’s no real story, and that’s probably why it’s never been made into a movie. The way the movie opens is that all of these different women are leading their own lives, and they pass each other and you follow their stories. No one knows each other and halfway in the movie, they end up in this center that this woman started called ‘The Colored Girl center,’ where women go through like a 12-step program for healing. That’s what the script is about.” [via BVonMovies]
I always tell myself I should see a Tyler Perry movie just to see what they’re like, but then I hear words like “poems”, “no real story”, and “a 12-step program for healing” and it’s like an invisible dog fence that keeps shocking my neck when I get close. Also, if the movie is about “a 12-step program for healing”, I think a good title would’ve been “Walk it Off.”
POSTER FOR Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Between this, that indie abortion I posted this morning, and the Inglourious Basterds titles, I think it’s pretty clear that yellow title text is, like, the new thing. It’s funny, because me and Zooey Deschanel were just talking about this at the opening of this new Vegan BBQ place over in DUMBO. [full poster below, via FirstShowing]
MIKE JUDGE’S NEXT movie will be “Brigadier Gerard. It’s based on these short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… So it’s kind of a big movie, I guess. It’s set during the Napoleonic Wars, where this character is kind of like Clouseau, similar to that.” So basically, Napoleon asks Clouseau if he misses fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, and Clouseau says, “I vouldn’ say I’ve been meesing eet, Napoleon…” [ThePlaylist]
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE has a new poster too. Wow, it’s like hipster Christmas. Thanks, Santa, I got everything I could ever want! And yet I still feel vaguely dissatisfied…. [MSN]
COLIN HANKS TO PLAY a serial killer who wins the lottery, then sets off to win over his crush. It’s good casting, because a serial killer who wins the lottery is pretty much the life story of this mouth-breathing oaf. (I’m sure he’s nice, though, really). [Variety]
A new poster and trailer were just released for Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself. The poster is a reference (a reference noted in the studio’s press release, mind you) to Straw Dogs, a 1971 Sam Peckinpah film in which a guy takes brutal revenge on the townies who gang raped his woman. Which makes total sense* when you consider that I Can Do Bad All by Myself looks like a hackneyed redemption story starring a sassy old black woman in drag.
The strategy in the trailer, meanwhile, seems to be throwing a bunch of incongruous elements of a movie together - single mother struggalin ta make ends meet, down-on-his-luck handyman, sass-throwin old lady who’s really a man - then bringing them all together with an earnest piano track and references to Jesus. If Tyler Perry had directed Ace Ventura, Ace would be wrestling the dolphin, then there’d be that dramatic cymbal crash thingie, and next thing you know he’d be teaching the kids to pray while talking out of his butt cheeks. “Go ahead, children, ass Jesus a question.” Tyler Perry movies are weirder than Norwegian porno.
*It doesn’t make sense
