Death At A Funeral

I'm always uncomfortable to see people reposessing material to appeal to a different demographic. I suppose it's related to seeing mainstream music and culture being assimilated and imitated for commercial use by Christian bands and t-shirt companies.

But I'm more uncomfortable with this because Chris Rock is a stand-up comedian of the highest order, who assumably obeys that code that comedian's are famed to follow: never steal a joke. It's considered incredibly reprehensible within that fraternity. Remember Joe Rogan's campaign against Carlos Mencia for stealing his material (rather than just for his awful TV show and truly horrendous delivery)? I recall a fairly lousy "Studio 60" episode ("The West Coast Feed") focused entirely on this code, where comedians walked down hallways at high speeds, waving their arms and yelling "I never stole a joke in my life!"

It's one thing to re-make a movie for a different time, to update a story and give it new life. But Death At A Funeral was made in 2007 and just happened to be a film that not many people saw. Rock recast the film with black actors and is re-releasing it to a larger audience. It's almost the exact same film: shot in a similar location, with all the same jokes, even some of the same actors (though to be fair, who would you ever pick for that slot other than Peter Dinklage?). Check the trailers:

2007 Version:

2010 Version:

 Eerily similar, no? And having seen the original film, I can promise you that there are no jokes in this trailer that did not, in some form, appear in the first version. Which, just to remind you one more time, came out three years ago. Three.

One final note: you could make this same argument concerning television - the British and American "Office's", for example - but that's a unique medium. I could go on about this for a long time, but in brief, TV works based on the concept that original premise is simply the jumping-off point for characters. Writers adapt to the individual actors playing the parts and the producers adjust the series' tone as time passes. It's nearly impossible to truly recreate anything in television for more than a few episodes in a row. More importantly, TV creates a weekly relationships with its viewers, and that's something that can't be communicated through a DVD set released two years after the fact.

Top 5 Movies I'm Most Conflicted About In 2010

The through line here is that I'm simply not sure whether these movies will turn out to be awful or the best movies of the year. Based on the trailers, though, I'm more than willing to give them a shot.

Youth In Revolt
It looked mildly awful until, a minute into the trailer, it suddenly it took a turn into Awesomecrazyland. My goal for 2010 is to make "I've decided to create a supplementary persona named Francois Dillinger" into a catchphrase. Plus, two Michael Ceras for the price of one.

Daybreakers
I would also accept "we're the folks with the crossbows" as a catchphrase, if it comes to it. This film has some real shades of Children Of Men, though it seems like it'll feel a little more Hollywood than that. Still, judging by its scope and cast, I think it's worth a gamble.

Hot Tub Time Machine
This trailer has "little comedy that could" written all over it, mostly because it - bereft of all logic - stars John Cusack in a nonsensical frat comedy.

Book Of Eli
I've got almost nothing to work with here. The trailer tells me little except that it's going to have a lot of cool fight scenes and panoramic shots of people walking under a dead sky. Other than that, we're not working with much here, outside of a vague hint of some sort of theological bent to the narrative. We'll have to wait and see.

Legion
I've got mixed feelings about this trailer and its bizarre, backwards theology, but it looks to be loads of hardcore angels-fighting-demons action in the midst of a lonely American desert, and I'm always on board for that.

Top 5 Movies I'm Most Excited To See In 2010

Inception
It's the first film Christopher Nolan's made since The Dark Knight, and stars one of those amazing collection of actors that Nolan seems to be able to nab so easily: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy. The fact that the trailer makes absolutely no sense dissuades me not a bit. I'm more pumped for this movie than anything else this year.

Kick-Ass
This may be the first and only time I ever say the phrase "I absolutely cannot wait to see that Nicolas Cage movie. It looks unbelievable." This is the restricted trailer, for those of you who are at work or squeamish.

Iron Man 2
If this trailer doesn't rev you up for this thing, I don't know what will. It tells us for sure that the franchise hasn't run aground just yet, the way the Spider-Man 3 trailer did. Speaking of which, anyone seen a Spider-Man 4 trailer yet? I'm curious to see what's happening with that.

Green Zone
It's Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, making a movie that they pretend isn't a Jason Bourne movie, but is clearly a Jason Bourne movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Worrying preachy overtones in the trailer give me pause, though.

Robin Hood
For a movie that looks nothing like Robin Hood, I'm awfully sold. It still looks epic and at least moderately swashbuckling, and it is, after all, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. You've got to assume that they know what they're doing here. It's still gonna be the fattest Robin Hood we've ever seen, though.

Worst Dwayne Johnson Trailer?

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has had an interesting career. A former WWE wrestler - including a brief stretch as household name in that profession - he gracelessly transitioned into a film career, playing in quick succession  a bounty hunter, a former US soldier bent on ending corruption in his small town, a character in a movie based off a video game no one had played in 10 years, and (twice) a large half-man-half-scorpion. Not exactly a John Cazale-type run there.

However, Johnson has now reinvented himself as a family movie star. After appearing in Gridiron Gang as the tough-love coach of a juvenile detention football team, he followed it up with The Game Plan, where an arrogant, self-absorbed quarterback discovers he has a precocious 8-year-old daughter with an old girlfriend, and he must learn to get over his love of himse.... well, you get the idea. I haven't seen the movie, but I'm assuming at the end the girl comes up with a trick play involving glitter or something that wins them the Super Bowl.

It was at about this time that movie execs realized "man, The Rock will do anything." And so The Game Plan was followed by disasters like Race To Witch Mountain and now, these two movies.

I was in a theater over the weekend where these two trailers played back-to-back - it was almost too much pain for one man to humanly handle. I was gasping for air by the end.  First up is Tooth Fairy, where an arrogant, self-absorbed hockey player (guess who) is punished for his non-belief in magic by being forced to serve as a tooth fairy for a short time.

Second is Planet 51, where an arrogant, self-absorbed astronaut finds himself on an alien planet where - wait for it - wait for it - he's considered the alien.

Embedding was disabled, but here's the link.

I was gonna do a whole post about voting for the "Worst Trailer Of The Year," but then I realized that it's pretty much down to these two. So go ahead and vote: which one of these trailers is the Worst Trailer of the Year?

Where The Wild Things Are

The trailer for Where The Wild Things Are, the live-action adaption of the beloved children's book, is out today. Despite its heady resume: visual master Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaption, every music video ever) directing and indie god Dave Eggers ("A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") writing, I have been predicting for about a year now that this movie is going to be unbelievably terrible and will lose huge amounts of money.

Then I watched the trailer today, and I don't know if it's the visual style, or the indie aesthetic, or the raspy growl of James Gandolfini, or the wise decision to use an Arcade Fire song on the trailer, or the fact that the kid who plays Max seems to really be that actual kid from the story (the actor's name is - get this - Max Records. How cool is that?), but I am one million percent on board. It's still going to make no money, but the trailer alone is all sorts of heartbreaking. Click the link and see for yourself.