MOVIE REVIEW
The Internship (2013)
Phil Bray/20th Century Fox
“The Internship” reunites Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn eight years after the Frat Pack blockbuster “Wedding Crashers.” Instead of crashing weddings for free food, free booze and hormonal women, this time they are crashing Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus for prospective employment and, O.K., free food. The freewheeling naughts have made way for the fruitless teens. Even those perpetual slackers who talk a good game can’t talk their way out of the paper bag that is unemployment nowadays. In the face of the rippling foreclosure and broken marriage, though, the Frat Pack keeps its sunny side up: Who cares if the Google internships are only open to college students? Let’s enroll in the University of Phoenix!
Continue reading “The Pursuit of Haplessness” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Real Steel (2011)
HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE THE DREAMWORKS WAY
A fictionalized retelling of the pitch meeting for “Real Steel”
by
Sarah Manvel
INT. DREAMWORKS STUDIO OFFICES – DAY
The OFFICES in this fictional, imaginary story are large, expensive, sunny and full of tie-in merchandise from blockbusters past. FIVE EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS are sitting in elegant, expensive chairs around a polished boardroom table. STEVE is a bald man with a beard and an Oscar who is the professional partner of JACK, a close-shaven man in his mid-50s who got his start as an agent. They have long experience with producing movies aimed at children. MARY, in her mid-50s, has bright blond hair and grew up in the movie business before becoming a producer. Her brother JOSH, in his early 50s, has significant assistant-director experience and is also building his career as a producer. At the head of the table is STEVEN, a bearded, bespectacled man in his 60s who is an Oscar-winning geek turned studio mogul.
A SECRETARY is also at the side, taking notes.
Continue reading “Raging Mechanical Bull” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Date Night (2010)
Myles Aronowitz/20th Century Fox
“Date Night” achieves the impressive feat of squandering Steve Carell and Tina Fey behind the wheezy action-comedy aesthetic of director Shawn Levy. In films ranging from “Cheaper by the Dozen” to “Night at the Museum,” the now-veteran helmer has demonstrated a far firmer grasp of hoary broad clichés than the nuances of human behavior studied on “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Though well cast and sprinkled with the occasional dose of realistic emotion in its portrait of a marriage gone stale, “Date Night” mostly just spins its wheels through frenetically rendered, meaningless plot developments disguised as a narrative.
Continue reading “Must Flee TV” »