Here’s your box office wipe-up for the weekend of October 2-4. Now with helpful section headings.
Zombieland kicked ass
Buoyed by strong word-of-mouth that I thought it didn’t fully deserve, it more than tripled the next-highest new release (and no, I don’t consider a re-release of Toy Story in 3D a new release). That said, it did have its moments. It’s at least a triumph of solid execution, if not of creative thinking. …Or perhaps you prefer your box office roundups with more truthy pop-psychology?
Horror comedy struggles with general audiences because of its awkward thematic and tonal clash: comedy is generally benevolent while horror is inherently malevolent, rendering horror comedy too funny to be scary and too scary to be funny. Zombieland skirted this issue by falling squarely on the side of action comedy in its marketing campaign. [BoxOfficeMojo]
Good point. But on the other hand, go f’ck yourself.
Invention of Lying… not so much.
I wanted to see this more than Zombieland, but ended up seen Zombieland to see what the fuss was about. Perhaps that was Invention’s problem. For a movie you’d expect to have good buzz (who doesn’t like Ricky Gervais?), it didn’t have very good buzz. But you know what does have good buzz? A bee drinking martinis. Remember I said that.
Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut starring Ellen Page, and it’s all about female empowerment. It tells the uplifting story if how one girl whose parents wanted to put her in beauty pageants succeeded in a patriarchal system by flexing and being awesome and kicking ass and Avril Lavigne. So to promote it, Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page decided to liplock like a couple reluctant party lesbians at a beer pong tournament because this totally isn’t played out already. Oh ladies, you gotta use some tongue if you wanna impress the Psi Chis! At least a grope!
More like Drew BOREymore, amirite?? *dodges tomato, rides off on roller skates*
[via Buzzfeed]
At long last we have a trailer from Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut about a girl (Ellen Page) who doesn’t want to be in beauty pageants so she joins the roller derby.
Bliss (Page) tries out as Babe Ruthless for a team named the Hurl Scouts, where she hopes to skate alongside the likes of Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) and Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore). The movie also features Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss’ disapproving mother, and Jimmy Fallon as a hungover announcer named Hot Tub Johnny [if the name sounds familiar it's because Andrew Dice Clay used to talk about a guy named Hot Tub Johnny West a lot]. [via /Film]
Anyway, you can tell it’s about teenage rebellion because all the girls wear plaid skirts, and plaid skirts = subverting the dominant paradigm. “Find your tribe,” reads the title card. Because that’s what rebellion is; you find some people you think are cool and then try to dress and act just like them. Like when I used to rub dirt on my face and yell “Look, I’m Mexican!” Okay, bad example.
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…the camera. USA Today just premiered the first publicity stills from Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, based on the book Derby Girl. She’ll also act in the film, playing Smashley Simpson, alongside Kristen Wiig as Maggie Mayhem, Death Proof’s Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly, Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven, Eve, and Ellen Page.
Page plays a 17-year-old Texas girl named Bliss Cavendar, who hates the beauty pageants her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) makes her compete in and finds a release for her secret aggressive side by joining the underground world of roller derby.
“Everything I’ve learned throughout my whole life, whether it was going to a museum or listening to a certain song, has been going into this piggy bank, and I just smashed it all over the floor for this one,” Barrymore says. [more pics available at USA Today]
Look, I’ll freely admit that 85% of the reason I hate Drew Barrymore is that her speech impediment weirds me out, but I’ll still bet most of my bank account that Drew’s idea of girl power and rebellion is gonna be a lot like an Avril Lavigne song. She’s just a sk8r gurl, she said see ya l8r gurrl….
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Ellen Page, star of Juno (which recently passed Sideways as Fox Searchlight’s highest grossing movie ever, and has also already outearned Little Miss Sunshine) may star in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut.
Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s forthcoming directorial debut, due to start production in March. It’s a coming-of-age tale about a girl who finds her identity through the power of roller derby, based on Shauna Cross’ novel, Derby Girl.
Cross tells FilmSchoolRejects “rumor is the lead could be played by an actress whose name rhymes with Shmellen shmage”, though personally I hope she’s not that schmucking schmumb. She’d have to be a shmodshmamned shmetard to be in this shmiece of shmit.
Jesus, Drew Barrymore has to be near the top of my “How is s/he still working list?” Aside from being a horrible actress who rotted one of Tom Green’s nuts off with her succubus venom, she has an annoying speech impediment that makes it sound like she’s constantly leaking air. You’re rich as hell - hire a goddamned speech coach. Don’t they have rehab for former child actors who can’t talk? I know some asshole casting director thought your inability to communicate was cute once upon a time, but you’re an adult now, and much like skinny dipping in the city pool, some stuff doesn’t fly anymore.
Guh, speech impediments creep me out more than midgets and harelips combined. Honestly, people who are less than perfect should just be rounded up and sent to camps. I wonder why no one’s thought of it before.
