Last night Will Ferrell — excuse me, boys and girls, San Diego newsman, jazz flautist, and scotch enthusiast Ron Burgundy — dropped by Conan O’Brien’s set to jam, give Conan unsolicited grooming tips, and OH YES — make an announcement: “As of 0900 Mountain Time, Paramount Pictures and myself, Ronald Joseph Aaron Burgundy, have come to terms on a sequel to Anchorman .” Caress some mahogany, smoke a little tea, and rejoice the good word with a clip of the historic announcement! According to Deadline , the pieces finally fell into place on the long-hoped for Anchorman 2 , which will be directed by Adam McKay and written by McKay and Ferrell. Also according to Deadline, Nikki Finke used to own a set of Anchorman bobbleheads. Great Odin’s raven, let’s toast to the unifying power of Ron Burgundy! [via Team Coco ]
Because it’s always good to remember that when you’re judging famous people on Twitter , they sometimes read it (and weep), Jimmy Kimmel corralled a gaggle of comedians and comic actors to read some of the meanest Tweet-critiques they’ve received for the camera. I think we can all take a few universal lessons from this video: Namely, that celebrities like Jason Bateman , Presidential candidate Roseanne , and Andy Dick really are like the rest of us little Tweeters — well okay, maybe not Andy Dick. Also: Will Ferrell reads his @ messages while on the can, too! If that can’t bring us together as a Tweeple, what will? [via Jimmy Kimmel ]
Will it be as cool as Jonah Hill’s Rolex ? “It is an expensive watch. My dad said — my dad’s a watch guy — when you get any little bit of money, I want you to go out and buy a watch that you can’t afford, because you’ll have it for the rest of your life, and every time you look at what time it is, you’ll see how hard you’ve worked. That you’ve worked for that watch.” [ The Awl ]
For a movie with a comedic premise this simple – essentially: can you believe we made a movie with a premise this simple? – Casa de Mi Padre can feel pretty exhausting. Its comic arsenal is laid bare by the end of the credits sequence: There is Will Ferrell playing a Mexican ranchero and speaking Spanish; Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal as narco peacocks; telenovela melodrama played absurdly straight; self-conscious B-budget goofing; and plenty of guns and flames for ambiance. Are you not entertained? A credits sequence or SNL sketch or Funny Or Die video is the natural habitat for this kind of hit-and-run goof. Conan O’Brien, playing the fiery Conando, made his telenovela riff Noches de Pasión a regular feature on his show a few years back, and a few minutes is really all it takes to get the job done. Ferrell has worked with his collaborators – director Matt Piedmont and writer Andrew Steele – at both SNL and Funny or Die, and like last year’s Your Highness , Casa de Mi Padre has the feeling of a very inside joke. The story of how the cowardly dupe Armando Alvarez (Ferrell) defends his family from drug-war fallout is told in terms so self-consciously broad that the “joke” becomes obscure again, suggesting that rarefied sense of what’s funny that comedians often develop after a couple of decades on the job. For most of the rest of us it quickly becomes a struggle to find – or desperately root out – humor in much of the re-heated genre spoofing. The house of the title belongs to Miguel (Pedro Armendáriz Jr., who passed away this December), father to Armando and the prodigal Raul (Luna), who returns home at the beginning of the film with a fiancée to die for named Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). When it turns out that Raul has actually made his fortune running drugs, he earns the scorn of his brother and a bounty on his head, levied by fellow drug lord Onza (Bernal). Armando and Sonia clamp eyes on each other frequently and for long, fraught moments: Is she the worthless coke whore she seems to be or the woman of his dreams? Ferrell is eminently silly as a Latin buffoon with “the eyes of a small chicken” and a heart of gold, and Luna and Bernal are as fun to watch in polyester leisure suits as they are out of them. A blend of location shooting and obvious sets contribute – along with purposefully jumpy edits and one long memo from the second camera assistant explaining the omission of a coyote attack – to the general celebration of shitty aesthetics. There are also boisterous campfire songs about the joy of knowing nothing, mildly subversive slaps at the DEA and an America full of drug-hoovering babies, lavish shoot ’em ups that linger over the explosion of visible blood packets, and one love scene comprised of extensive butt-kneading and Ferrell’s seamless transition into mannequin form and back again. Every once in a while a laugh might take you by surprise – the chicken eyes line did it for me – but the downfall of this kind of long-con comedy is that too often its terminal drollery feels like having the same joke explained to you, over and over again. At the same time the ironic layering feels tiresome rather than intuitively clever or witty, adding barriers between you and the funny part. Ferrell and company reportedly made the Hispanic audience – a huge moviegoing market – a big part of the plan of making and selling Casa de Mi Padre . Weirdly, that kind of calculation feels completely in line with a comedy that manages to be both as “crazy” and as perfunctory as this one. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In some of the craziest celebrity news we’ve reported in hours, Nadya Suleman is actually going to be paid to dole out parenting advice – and paid a lot, to boot. Octo just locked down a six-figure deal to star in her own show on Ustream. Nadya will stream this live from her home Sundays. So what’s it about? On the Usteam show , the mother of 14 will be talking about subjects like “Parenting, fitness, diet, nutrition, shopping on a budget and all those crazy rumors.” Can you even handle the anticipation? It’s hard, we know. The show will launch later this month. No word on who’s going to watch the kids while mom’s “working” or whether six figures even covers a year’s worth of day care for 14 freaking kids. Seriously. Day care is expensive these days. [Photo: WENN.com]
Will Ferell is apparently a big fan of Old Milwaukee. No, seriously, he is. Frank the Tank would be proud of this new set of ads his real life alter ego shot for the classic American lager that have since gone viral. According to reports, Ferrell pitched the Pabst Brewing Company the idea himself, and agreed to do the spots unpaid on the condition that they aired locally. In the ads, he lampoons his status as a Hollywood celebrity while fishing in the Mississippi River near Davenport, Iowa and drinking a can of his favorite brew. He also engages in hand fishing for a “little piece of America,” and extolls the virtues of Davenport as an “Old Milwaukee kind of town” … one letter at a time. Check out all three Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee ads below! Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee Ad Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee Ad – Hand Fishing Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee Ad – An Ode to Davenport
Will Ferrell and Adam McKay may not be able to coax that Anchorman sequel into development any time soon, but the pair could be collaborating on another comedy starring Ferrell as a narcissistic professional. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has just picked up Swear to God , a pitch from Due Date writers Alan Cohen and Alan Freedland. Ferrell is attached to star as a self-involved “hedge fund manager who thinks he has seen God.” McKay would produce and possibly direct the feature under the pair’s production shingle Gary Sanchez Productions. [ Deadline ]
If you haven’t heard anything about Will Ferrell’s Spanish language comedy Casa de mi Padre , there are a few reasons for that: Even with watchable stars like Ferrell, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Nick Offerman, it does not appear to be funny — at least judging by the following trailer, which was discreetly dropped into the blogosphere on Thursday. Second, it was filmed entirely in Spanish as a hyper-dramatized telenovela. Third, Will Ferrell reportedly only agreed to star in and produce the film as part of a closed-door settlement with its production company NALA Films.
