My dreams for a feature-length version of Funny or Die’s “Bat Fight” are one step closer to reality. The comedy website started in 2007 by Will Ferrell , Adam McKay and Chris Henchy has partnered with Turistas and The Lincoln Lawyer producer Scott Steindorff’s Scott Pictures to produce two or three branded movies a year. The story comes via The Hollywood Reporter on the same day that Funny or Die marked another company milestone — surpassing 5 million Twitter followers — via a video featuring Ferrell sporting another one of his memorable mustaches, touting his knowledge of Singapore, dropping the f-bomb and firing an intern. (“You are shit-canned. It’s a can full of shit, and you are in it.”) On the subject of his lip broom, can anyone out there tell me if that baby is real or not? If it is, Ferrell should really do a how-to book on facial hair. THR reports the deal could make Funny or Die the 21st Century comedy brand equivalent of National Lampoon and its Vacation film franchise. Funny or Die Hard , anyone? I’d love to see that, even if its just a clip on the site, and I bet Bruce Willis would be game. And, by the way, with 20 million unique views per month, I would say Funny or Die has already surpassed National Lampoon as a brand. It’s more like the Original Space Bag of comedy. Here’s Ferrell’s Twitter video, and after that, what I hope will be the first feature to emerge from this joint venture: “Bat Fight,” starring Ferrell and Hot Tub Time Machine actor Craig Robinson . [ Funny or Die , The Hollywood Reporter] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Pacific Rim looks awesome and all, but let’s talk about science for a second. Specifically, let’s talk about the science, or lack thereof, behind completely awesome giant robots. Guillermo Del Toro ‘s upcoming sci-fi action pic is probably going to be as awesome as the trailers make it look, unless you’re the kind of person who hates the sight of huge mecha fighting against equally huge monsters, in which case please show yourself out. How could you not love enormous robots punching out enormous monsters who lay waste to entire cities? Giant robots represents 90 percent of what we want the future to be like (the other 10 percent: flying cars, and a male birth control pill.) They’re extremely cool looking, they transform, and for sheer shock factor they’re impossible to beat. We want them so badly, but could we have them in real life? Unfortunately, hell no. Not because of budgetary constraints, frustratingly missing confirmation of alien life, or the lack of a decent fuel source. There’s a bigger problem facing these robots than any alien invasion: Physics. Yes, the terrible dictator that ruins everything from warp drive to immortality also has a bone to pick with Del Toro’s supersized combatants. And unfortunately, as inherently awesome as it sounds, having giant robots brawling with giant monsters in regular ol’ planet earth gravity runs right up against the twin problems of weight distribution and the nefarious square cube law . The square cube law is a paradoxical-sounding mathematical concept, first identified by Galileo, which states that when a given object increases proportionally in size the new surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier, but the new volume is proportional to the multiplier’s cube. Or restated for those of us whose eyes begin to bleed when the subject of math comes up: When something increases in size, its volume increases faster than its area. If you double the size of an object for instance, surface area increases by four times, but the volume of that object, which is (duh) all the space inside it, increases eightfold. This law has implications for numerous scientific disciplines, including construction and biology. To get an idea of how it works, let’s say you take an average human woman, someone approximately 5 feet, 5 inches tall. Increase her size to 11 feet. You now have a woman whose heart is four times bigger, forced to pump a presumably proportional increase in blood through 8 times the amount of circulatory system her smaller incarnation had. That’s a tremendous amount of stress and likely to kill anyone who grows beyond a certain height*. Of course, animals which have evolved to be big, rather than having had a gene preventing abnormal growth turned off, have developed the respiratory and circulatory systems necessary to handle their needs. But before you break out the snacks for your ‘Yay, monsters for everyone!’ party, bear in mind that all that volume comes with a ton of additional weight. Mice, for example, don’t look like miniature elephants for the very excellent reason that an elephant’s bones have to be much bigger in proportion to its body size than a mouse’s skeleton does, in order to support all that weight. In fact, if you zapped a mouse with magic to increase it to the size of an elephant, its bones would probably be crushed under the weight of its soft tissue within seconds. EEK! And even though the elephant’s bones can support it, it still has to deal with the fact that it’s far easier to break something heavy than something light, which is why a mouse could jump off a waist-high kitchen table with no ill-effect, but an elephant can break a leg simply tripping over something. Complicating things further, all that weight needs musculature capable of dealing with it, and that’s another way the square cube law totally screws over giant animals. It takes considerably more muscles to manipulate the animal’s limbs and moving parts, but those muscles have to deal with a hell of a lot more weight. This means larger animals tend to be slower and less agile than smaller animals and beyond a certain point there’s no amount of naturally evolved biomechanical components that can do the job. In fact, this is why earth’s largest animals are water-dwelling, where buoyancy mitigates a lot of the stressors caused by huge mass and weight. Forget deftly sweeping cars off a bridge with the swipe of a taloned hand; a giant monster like the beasts in Pacific Rim might find it difficult to even stand up. * Read Orson Scott Card’s Shadow series for an excellent depiction of the problem. But ignore his reactionary politics which become insufferable as the series goes on. NEXT: The square cube law and giant freaking robots
Les Misérables director Tom Hooper may have been bypassed with a nomination Wednesday by the British Film Academy for Best Director (though the film itself received nine nominations), but at the Palm Springs International Film Festival this week, he received the event’s Sonny Bono Visionary Award at a celeb-filled event that included Naomi Watts, Bradley Cooper, Helen Mirren, Sally Field and Ben Affleck. At the festival, Hooper talked about the creation of Les Misérables , why the story made him cry and the “dark box” Anne Hathaway traveled to as she took on the role of Fantine. [ Related: Tom Hooper Defends His ‘Les Misérables ‘ Close-Ups & Reveals Who’s The Bigger Musical Geek: Jackman or Hathaway ] Les Misérables became the quickest musical to top out over $100 million last weekend and it has factored heavily on the Awards Circuit this year. The Victor Hugo novel had been on Hooper’s mind even before The King’s Speech won Best Film and Best Director two years ago, saying he hoped the emotional impact he experienced with audiences on that film would translate in his next feature. “I was overwhelmed with how much emotion The King’s Speech was greeted with when I traveled with it around the world and I wanted to find material that would keep that emotion going and even take it further and Les Misérables is famous for creating that feel,” said Hooper. “And I thought it would be possible to make it a more intense emotional experience for the audience.” Hooper, who spoke with Deadlin.com’s Pete Hammond following a screening of the film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, showed his lighter side before a full audience, saying that he had wept after first seeing Les Misérables after seeing the lead character, Jean Valjean (played in the on-screen version by Hugh Jackman) die. “I was weeping and I thought about why I was weeping,” said Hooper. “And it was because I thought about the day my own father will die. And then I thought about something my own father said to me, which was that he said as he gets older he wants to master ‘the art of dying well.’ Continuing he added, “I really thought about that and thought about that last act of grace. This film really does look death square in the face. For Jean Val Jean, it’s all about love…And he dies having done the ultimate obligation of finding love for her and in that moment we feel he has transcended death and that’s the ultimate message of the movie.” Hooper said he auditioned every actor in the film from “Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe on down” because he was committed to doing Les Misérables live. He praised Jackman’s ability to “communicate through song,” which Hooper said was magical. “The Hugh Jackman audition took place last May in New York and it was an extraordinary three hours,” said Hooper. “When Hugh sings, he’s so comfortable communicating through song that you don’t want to hear him speak. Hearing him sing was the best place to be… The other thing I noticed was that Hugh had an emotional side to himself that I had never seen before.” Hooper said he wanted Les Misérables sung live to allow his actors leeway to own their characters and their emotions, adding that the decision was important in portraying the feature’s characters. “Great acting is about being in control of the medium at the time. Because great acting is about you being the author or creator of the dialog or songs you were given to play and to sell that illusion you’re inventing and the joy of doing it live allows you create the moment of invention.” Hooper noted Anne Hathaway’s lauded performance in the seminal number, “I Dreamed A Dream” as an example of how the live performance gave Hathaway, in this case, flexibility. “In ‘I Dreamed A Dream,’ Annie sings and then there’s a long pause, and then says, ‘But it all went wrong.’ In that pause, she’s communicating everything that happened to her: How she’s been raped, how she had her hair cut and everything that’s gone wrong with her life. In musical terms that should have been a moment, but Annie takes ten seconds and earns that moment.” Hooper noted that Hathaway told him after performing the song that she had mentally traveled to a dark space, saying the actress said, “Tom I opened the lid of a box I lived inside and closed that lid and I hope I never go inside that box again.” [ Tom Hooper and actor Eddie Redmayne at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Photo by Brian Brooks ]
… and by better I mean worse, and by worse I mean now that the licensing deal between Universal and toy company Hasbro has ended, Sony has snatched up the Candy Land board game movie project — you know, the one like ” Lord of The Rings , but set in a world of candy” — as a vehicle for none other than Adam Sandler . Said Columbia prez Doug Belgrad: ” Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam. We are thrilled to partner with Hasbro and Happy Madison on this project.” [ THR ]
Taylor Swift may have been offered a role in Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables film, but has she recently been replaced? According to Broadway World , theater impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who is also producing Hooper’s film, announced onstage at a curtain call for Oliver! that stage actress Samantha Barks has been chosen to play Eponine — the role he cast her in for the 2010 25th anniversary Les Mis concert. Les Mis purists, you may exhale in 3, 2, 1… According to Broadway World, reports flew in from audience members in attendance: “He told the cast and audience that he had a big announcement to make before flying to America, and then revealed that Barks would be taking the role of Eponine. It seems to have come as a surprise to Barks – audience members reported that ‘the look on her face was priceless.'” The 21-year-old Barks competed on the 2008 BBC reality musical television show I’d Do Anything and played Eponine onstage multiple times previously in London, and she certainly knows the material (see below); she’ll be joining a cast that already includes Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, and Amanda Seyfried. There’s been no word yet on what happened with Swift and her camp, but Mackintosh’s grand gesture in front of a packed house at the Manchester Palace was a pretty public way to break the news. Oh, don’t you worry, Swifties. The busy warbler has a film coming out this year ( The Lorax ) and is bound to pick up another acting gig sooner or later. UPDATE: THR confirms the initial report here . BREAKING NEWS: Samantha Barks To Play Eponine In LES MISERABLES Movie [Broadway World]
Also in this Thursday edition of The Broadsheet: Tom Hanks will kick-off Oscar night… two early ’90s neo-classics will get the remake treatment … Kristin Davis isn’t interested in seeing a Sex and the City prequel… and more ahead.
The King’s Speech is riding high on guild love after its surprise win for Best Picture at the PGA Awards and Best Director for Tom Hooper at the DGA Awards; it may yet complete the trifecta tonight at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. At this point, it has to be considered the new odds-on favorite for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. But if Harvey Weinstein follows through on his plan to re-cut the film for a more profitable rating, then, frankly, it doesn’t deserve a damned thing.
Also in this humpday edition of The Broadsheet: Ryan Murphy has some choice words for Kings of Leon… J. Edgar finds its icy blonde… a new Oscar nominee is also a new father… and more ahead.
Posted onDecember 2, 2010by|Comments Off on New Poster for The King’s Speech Focuses on Old Timey Microphone, Colin Firth’s Pores
When Movieline asked The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper about his film’s horrible excuse for a movie poster , the candid Oscar contender summed it up like so: “I hate it. I hate it. And it is not going to ever be on any cinema walls. It will be replaced. It’s a train smash. It’s a train smash.” With that in mind, it’s time to take a look at The Weinstein Company’s replacement poster for The King’s Speech , which dispenses from shady Photoshopping techniques for a microphone and Colin Firth’s skin. Progress?
Posted onNovember 24, 2010by|Comments Off on REVIEW: Colin Firth Leaves Us Speechless in The King’s Speech
Now that audiences will finally have a chance to see The King’s Speech, they can assess for themselves whether they can “relate” to a movie — based on a true story — in which a stuttering monarch works with a speech therapist to overcome his deficiency. That’s a question critics, journalist-types and Oscar watchers have been pondering since the movie started gathering buzz in Toronto in September, and plenty of critics have already called the movie middlebrow. While they don’t necessarily mean the word as a perjorative, their use of it does give the sense that a movie is something you examine from the safe end of a long stick, and in the case of The King’s Speech, yes, by golly, the ordinary folk out there just might take to it.
