“Put ‘er there. Now let’s go out there and get us an easy paycheck.”

Yesterday I posted the poster for RIPD, a graphic novel movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, that I described as “White Men in Black.” Now we have a trailer, and my initial impression still seems accurate. Directed by Robert Schwentke, who previously directed Flightplan, Time Traveler’s Wife, and Red (which Burnsy loves, as he’ll often scream from his stoop at random passersby), it tells of a newly dead police officer played by Ryan Reynolds, who joins the “Rest in Peace Department” (why do I get the sense that coming up with this acronym was where this idea started and ended?), a crew of dead cops who stop other dead folks from… uh… I dunno, taking over the world or something, f*ck you. (“Your job is catching deados, the bad souls that escape judgment,” Mary Louise Parker helpfully explains). He teams up with another dead cop from the cowboy days, played by Jeff Bridges, and they get to use big ol’ guns that are apparently better for shooting dead people, and making them double dead or something, who cares, f*ck you. So yeah, it’s Men in Black,  but with ghosts. My only question is how this is opening in July and not January.

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Back in November, Vinnie wrote that the copyright owner of the wildly popular book Fifty Shades of Grey and Universal, the studio bringing that saucy literary romp to the big screen, were suing Smash Pictures, the company responsible for Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaption. Of course, there’s a great deal of irony in the people behind a porn parody of Twilight suing the porn parody of a porn parody, but this world is full of idiots, so here we are.

Anyway, it appears that the miscreants behind the porn-within-a-porn have been whipped into submission, as the porn producers have agreed to a settlement with Universal and the other people.

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I could never hate this man.

Rex Reed went on Mark Simone’s show on WOR 710 AM in New York this morning (don’t worry, I don’t know what that is either) to respond to the controversy surrounding his Identity Thief review. If you’ll remember, that was the one Burnsy told you about where Rex called Melissa McCarthy a hippo, and described her as “tractor-sized.” This controversy, according to Reed, has culminated in death threats, and emails wishing he’d get cancer. Speaking with Simone, and you knew this was going to be a favorable news outlet when Simone hilariously said during Rex Reed’s introduction that “telling Rex Reed how to review a movie is like telling Babe Ruth how to hold a bat,” Reed seemed to think that the controversy was all something planned and orchestrated by Universal’s “publicity machine.” He also ascribed Daniel Craig’s success, in part, to having “a good, hard, well-toned body,” but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

With a voice that sounded a little like the late Huell Howser, Reed said of his haters “This is an organized group of people, believe me. And it’s all being fanned because of Universal’s desire to sell tickets to a bad movie,” which does seem somewhat plausible. He then went on a side rant about Facebook groups “telling kids obesity is good”, saying “only carefully-organized plots can turn into this kind of out-of-control mess.”

That is, the out-of-control mess confined mainly to Rex Reed’s email inbox. To rebut, speaking only for ourselves, we had zero contact with anyone from Universal before writing that post (or after writing it, for that matter). Burnsy saw Reed’s review (likely in the course of writing up a Weekend Movie Guide) and thought it was funny, especially so considering we’d already known Rex Reed as enjoyably un-PC and kind of nutty. We like to bust his balls because it’s fun. I hope he keeps writing and doesn’t get cancer, but I do feel a little bad about focusing the Eye of Sauron that is the internet on poor old Rex Reed (or at least contributing to it).

Reed, after proudly proclaiming that movie reviews are protected speech, defended bringing McCarthy’s weight into his review, arguing that she was already trying to capitalize on it herself. “I object to using health issues like obesity as comedy talking points, ” Reed said. “That’s what this girl does! This Melissa Manchester…”

That’s right, Rex Reed called Melissa McCarthy “Melissa Manchester,”  which is just about the most Rex Reed goddamn thing ever. He went on to make fun of people who emailed him about ‘Declined,’ mistakenly thinking the headline of his review was name of his movie. This without acknowledging that he’d just called the star “Melissa Manchester.” A+ for Rex Reedness.

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Oh, just some fan art from Vin Diesel’s Facebook page, that’s all.

This week in remaking properties the target audience is way too young to remember, Universal has hired Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (a team that’s written five Bond movies and one Johnny English movie) to update the Telly Savalas detective show Kojak for a contemporary film. What’s more, Vin Diesel is set to play the lead role. Which makes perfect sense, because they’re both bald!

The series, which ran from 1973-78, was a popular procedural with an iconic cop, and the scribes will re-imagine and contemporize it for the big screen. Diesel, who just wrapped Fast And Furious 6 for the studio, will play the chrome-domed cop in the film, which he’s producing with Samantha Vincent for their Universal-based One Race Films. [Deadline]

You may remember that Ving Rhames played a modern version of Kojak for 10 episodes on the USA network back in 2005. Ha, just kidding, I’m not even sure Ving Rhames remembers that.

I’m sure you’re all huge Kojak fans and you own the box set on DVD, but just in case it’s been too long since you read the novelization, here’s quick refresher from Wikipedia (yeah, I know).

The series was set in the New York City Police Department’s Eleventh Precinct (the building shown was actually Ninth Precinct), Manhattan South Patrol Borough. The show revolved around the efforts of the tough and incorruptible Lieutenant Theodore (“Theo”) Kojak (Telly Savalas), a bald, dapper, New York City policeman, who was fond of Tootsie Roll Pops and using the catchphrase, “Who loves ya, baby?” The Greek-American Kojak was stubborn and tenacious in his investigation of crimes—and also displayed a dark, cynical wit, along with a tendency to bend the rules if it brought a criminal to justice. Savalas described Kojak as a “basically honest character, tough but with feelings—the kind of guy who might kick a hooker in the tail if he had to, but they’d understand each other because maybe they grew up on the same kind of block.“

That is an amazing description. I love that Savalas – who died in 1994 – was trying to explain that his character was a little rough around the edges but essentially good, and his first thought was, “well, he’d beat a whore’s ass, but only because he had to, and she’d respect him for it afterwards.” Was being a borderline personality a prerequisite for starring in a cop show in the seventies? Seems like it.

Meanwhile, I imagine that in the update, Vin Diesel will play dapper, mixed-race New York City policeman Alonzo Salvatore Kojak, who favors fur coats, feather boas, dark goggles, and blue tooth headsets, who isn’t afraid to BASE jump or rail grind if it’ll bring criminals to justice, who’s fond of NOS energy drink™ and is known for his iconic catchphrase, “get some.”

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Brian DePalma’s 1982 version of Scarface was a remake of the 1932 Howard Hawks film, updating the original Italian gangster based on Al Capone to a Cuban drug lord in Miami, to properly reflect the specific ethnic menaces of their respective times. Now Donnie Brasco writer Paul Attanasio is doing another remake for Universal (rewriting an earlier draft by David Ayer), and while the original report said the plot was under wraps, Latino Review quotes a source close to the project saying the new Tony Montana will be Mexican. (*throws out black beans, buys pinto beans*)

[quoting the original Deadline scoop] “Scarface was first done in 1932 and then turned into the iconic 1983 film that starred Al Pacino as Cuban gangster Tony Montana. The film is not intended to be a remake or a sequel. It will take the common elements of the first two films: An outsider, an immigrant, barges his way into the criminal establishment in pursuit of a twisted version of the American dream, becoming a kingpin through a campaign of ruthlessness and violent ambition. The studio is keeping the specifics of where the new Tony character comes from under wraps at the moment, but ethnicity and geography were important in the first two versions.”

Keeping the specifics of where the new Tony character comes from under wraps at the moment?  Why so secretive?  What is the big deal?

Well, according to sources, we have discovered that the new Tony Montana is actually Mexican and the remake takes place in the world of drug cartels. [LatinoReview]

I’m not convinced the most overrated movie of our times really needs a remake, but if they are going to do it, I’d like to see an extremely outdated and borderline racist caricature of a Mexican out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, where Tony’s big drug dealer chair is now a saguaro cactus, and his big pile of cocaine is an empty tequila bottle, and when the FBI shows up to beat down his door, he just sings a sad ranchero song and falls asleep.

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