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2008 Razzie Award Nominees Anounced

Kofi Outlaw — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:58:13 +0000

The Oscars attempt (emphasis on the word, “attempt”) to recognize cinemas greatest achievements each year. The Razzies, on the other hand, recognize cinema’s greatest underachievements each year.

After seeing the nominees for this year’s Razzie Awards, I’m beginning to think that the Razzie judges need to be given jobs on the Oscar selection committee. Maybe then the Oscar noms would be a little bit more spot-on.

Here are the 2008 Razzie Award nominees for your viewing displeasure.

WORST PICTURE

Disaster Movie & Meet The Spartans (Two bad movies, one tired-ass concept)
The Happening (Ouch, M. Night that’s gotta hurt!)
The Hottie and The Nottie
In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
The Love Guru (Like no one saw that one coming.)

WORST ACTOR

Larry The Cable Guy, Witless Protection
Eddie Murphy, Meet Dave
Mike Myers, The Love Guru
Al Pacino, 88 Minutes & Righteous Kill (double ouch!)
Mark Wahlberg, The Happening & Max Payne

WORST ACTRESS

Jessica Alba, The Eye & The Love Guru
The cast of The Women, (Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Meg Ryan)
Cameron Diaz, What Happens In Vegas
Paris Hilton, The Hottie and The Nottie
Kate Hudson, Fools Gold & My Best Friend’s Girl

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Uwe Boll, Uwe Boll’s Postal
Pierce Brosnan, Mama Mia!
Ben Kingsley, The Love Guru & The Wackness
Burt Reynolds, Deal & In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Verne Troyer, The Love Guru & Uwe Boll’s Postal

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Carmen Electra, Meet The Spartans & Disaster Movie
Paris Hilton, Repo: The Genetic Opera
Kim Kardashian, Disaster Movie
Jenny McCarthy, Witless Protection
Leelee Sobieski, 88 Minutes & In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

WORST SCREEN COUPLE

Uwe Boll and any actor, camera or screenplay
Cameron Diaz & Ashton Kutcher, What Happens in Vegas
Paris Hilton and either Christine Lakin or Joel David Moore, The Hottie and The Nottie
Larry The Cable Guy & Jenny McCarthy, Witless Protection
Eddie Murphy IN Eddie Murphy, Meet Dave

WORST PREQUEL, REMAKE, RIP-OFF OR SEQUEL

The Day The Earth Blowed Up Real Good
Disaster Movie & Meet The Spartans
Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull
Speed Racer
Star Wars: Clone Wars

WORST DIRECTOR

Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats, In The Name of The King & Postal
Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, Meet The Spartans & Disaster Movie
Tom Putnam, The Hottie and The Nottie
Marco Schnabel, The Love Guru
M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening

WORST SCREENPLAY

Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, Meet The Spartans & Disaster Movie
M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening
Heidi Ferrer, The Hottie and The Nottie
Doug Taylor, In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Mike Myers & Graham Gordy, The Love Guru

WORST CAREER ACHIEVEMENT (SPECIAL CATEGORY)

Uwe Boll (”Germany’s answer to Ed Wood”)

Personally I’m just happy that I didn’t see most of the movies on this list. The Happening caught me off guard, though; if I could get my time and money back for that one, I would. And poor Uwe Boll–The Razzies are really raking him over the coals, creating a special category just to highlight his failures.

On a side note, I’m glad to see that the debacle that was Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is also getting the recognition it deserves: as a steaming pile of…well, you know.

Do the 2008 Razzie Award Nominations seem about right to you? Let us know.

Source: The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation Official Website

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End Of Year Discussion – December 31, 2008

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:01:38 +0000

It’s Wednesday so it’s time for our weekly open discussion, but as it happens this one is hitting on the last day of 2008! Can you believe this year is over already?

And what an incredible year it’s been for movies… 2008 was a banner year for superhero movie fans with the likes of The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and yes – even Hancock and Punisher: War Zone.

Other great genre films included Rambo, Cloverfield (do you even remember that opened this year?!), Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kung Fu Panda and more.

Of course we’ve had our share of not so hot movies this year like The Happening, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Meet Dave, Meet the Spartans, X-Files, etc. Then there those we were looking forward to that left some of us disappointed like Indy 4 and Quantum of Solace.

I think this would be a great place to post your comments regarding your faves and not so favorite movies of this year… Hits, misses, surprises – whatever floats your boat (within our usual guidelines of course).

All of us here at Screen Rant wish you a very Happy New Year and here’s hoping that 2009 turns out to be as great a year for movie fans as 2008 was!

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Review: The Happening

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:30:58 +0000

Short version: If you’re in the mood for an absurd film that alternates between boring and comedy, this is the movie for you.

I thought The Sixth Sense was awesome. I loved Unbreakable. I thought Signs was OK, except for the premise of aliens allergic to water invading a planet 2/3 covered by it. I didn’t hate The Village, but I thought Lady in the Water was terrible.

Are you seeing a trend there? Well guess what, it hasn’t been broken.

I don’t know how reviews for M. Night Shyamalans’s The Happening are going to roll, but this one isn’t going to be pretty.

Going in, I was hopeful that this might actually turn out to be decent, despite what I had heard regarding the ultimate plot of the film. I even hoped that maybe that was a new twist by Shyamalan – misdirection outside the confines of the movie itself… but sadly this was not the case. It is indeed as absurd as I had feared.

The film opens rather abruptly, not really giving the audience any time to get to know anyone. We’re in Central Park in New York City, watching a couple of attractive twenty-something women (presumably on a lunch break) sitting on a bench enjoying the day, chit-chatting about whatever. One of them hears what she thinks is a faint scream off in the distance, and asks her friend if she heard it. The friend who was normal a second earlier, starts to seem disoriented, having lost her place in the book she’s reading, and begins repeating this. When the other woman looks up and sees everyone within view frozen in their tracks, and then they start to walk slowly backwards (which I thought was weird).

Her pal then pulls what looks like a long knitting needle out of her hair (it was holding her hair in a bun), and proceeds to do something rather unpleasant to herself with it. From there we cut across the city and see people committing suicide en masse. One thing I’ll say I was impressed with: finally someone showed a realistic depiction of what someone who’s fallen from a great height looks like when they hit the ground. It’s not comfortable to look at (remember, this is Shyamalan’s first R-rated film).

We soon meet mild mannered science teacher Elliot Moore, played by Mark Wahlberg. He’s so low key he’s likely to put his students to sleep, but is witty enough to coax an answer to a science question from the class “hunk.” Soon the faculty is gathered to hear what’s going on in NYC (they’re in Philadelphia) and that school will be dismissed. Among the faculty is a math teacher played by John Leguizamo.

Elliot is having wife troubles and mistakenly confides in his pal who is not a master of subtlety when he comes face to face with her (the ever-ephemeral and doe-eyed Zooey Deschanel). Anyway, it seems that whatever hit NYC (it’s assumed to be a terrorist attack) seems to be also affecting other cities, so they decide to get out of town by train.

Things rapidly get out of control as whatever is happening spreads to more and more cities and towns, eventually leaving our intrepid band (including the little girl in the image above) stranded in some nowhere town. How far will it spread and when will it end? No one knows.

The Happening is slow-moving, as M. Night’s movies tend to be, but aside from one scene in an old house that actually gave me the creeps for a few moments, there is no payoff. At least none that won’t leave you rolling your eyes and possibly laughing out loud. I know Wahlberg is a good actor – I’ve seen him deliver a good performance in other films, but here he’s so washed out and hokey that he’s hard to look at in some scenes.

At the most general level, one might cut the story concept some slack, but the devil is in the details here – ascribing sentience and the ability to communicate instantaneously to the source of this pandemic to a degree that is simply ludicrous. There was one scene in particular where I just had to laugh out loud… when they’re trying to stay away from whatever it is that’s causing people to kill themselves and Wahlberg says “We have to stay ahead of the wind!”

How in the hell does one “stay ahead of the wind,” exactly?

It gets more ridiculous as it goes on, and when we get to the end and we hear one scientist’s speculation on what happened all I could think was “Oh, PLEASE.”

The opening credits state: Written/Produced/Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, so I guess the buck stops there. Personally, I think the guy is done unless he lowers his level of hubris and starts collaborating with others.

Unless you’re anyone but the most rabid environmentalist, I just can’t see folks thinking this is anything but a very silly movie.

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Red Band ‘The Happening’ Trailer Wants To Prove It’s Rated R

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:50:42 +0000

The early word (granted, based on just ONE review) is that Shyamalan is not breaking his losing streak with his latest film The Happening.

Joblo.com has managed to get their grubby little hands on a new trailer for the movie and I’ve embedded it below.

Be warned that the trailer below is a “red band” trailer and contains images that viewers may find disturbing.

I don’t know if it will be any good and no, I don’t know if it has a twist ending as all of Shyamalan’s films have had to date. After a while if you expect the twist is it even worth doing? To me, with the way it’s shot in a muted fashion as far as colors and performances, the trailer almost has a “Faces of Death” vibe to it.

Considering the imagery in this trailer and the fact that it’s restricted, I certainly hope that means the movie will be rated R this isn’t another one of those weird things like they did with Beowulf where they distributed a restricted trailer for a PG-13 film.

The Happening opens on June 13th.

Source: JoBlo

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The Happening: Official Trailer And Website Finally Online

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:30:24 +0000

Geez, sometimes it feels like you’ve got to twist a studio’s arm to get a trailer out.

First there was a crappy YouTube version that made the rounds on movie websites. Then there was the teeny tiny version you could watch on a French website. Finally, 20th Century Fox has released a full trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie, The Happening.

You can see the trailer below and rest assured that it’s not going anywhere.

I know I’ve ragged on M. Night a bit of late, but based solely on the trailer, The Happening looks pretty effective. Does that mean that the end product will necessarily be great? No, but at least we won’t be writing this one off right off the get-go based on a terrible trailer.

They’ve got some popular actors in the movie including Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo to try to get people to come see the movie. I like all three and I’m always willing to give Shyamalan another shot, so I’ll be there when the movie opens.

There’s not much going on at the official website yet, but you can watch the trailer there as well and sign up for email updates.

For higher res versions head on over to Apple.com

So are you suffering from Shyamalan burnout or do you think this may turn out to be his return to making effective and creepy movies?

The Happening opens on Friday the 13th, June 2008.

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M. Night’s The Happening Teaser Trailer Is Super-Creepy

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:26:01 +0000

[UPDATE: Ok, it's finally online here.]

Sorry it took a little while to get the teaser trailer for The Happening online, but I was hoping to find a higher resolution version. No luck yet, so here is what’s available.

In my last post about this movie I wasn’t terribly kind, for reasons you can read for yourself, but I have to admit that this teaser gives off a very effective and extremely creepy vibe. Who knows? Maybe Shyamalan can make up for his, shall we say, less than impressive Lady in the Water and break out of his downward trend with this one.

It’s a very effective trailer that starts out creepy and gets even moreso as it moves on.

I’m probably hoping in vain, but now if only the plot of the movie wasn’t that the Earth is doing this to protect itself from those nasty, Global Warming™ inducing humans. And no doubt even though this is the story of mass, worldwide suicide it’ll get that handy little PG-13 rating.

The Happening opens on Friday the 13th, June 2008.

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Shyamalan’s New Poster And Cheesy Tagline For The Happening

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:34:26 +0000

It seems to me that each subsequent M. Night Shyamalan film has gotten progressively worse. The guy is probably just a victim of his own success… after all while we all like the idea of starting out on top of the world, the problem is that there’s nowhere to go but down from there.

Hey started out amazingly with The Sixth Sense and followed up with Unbreakable, which really split people down the middle (personally I loved the concept but wanted more at the end). But after that came Signs (a movie about aliens that are deathly afraid of water trying to invade Earth, which is 2/3 covered in the stuff), and then The Village, another split opinion movie.

But to me Lady in the Water was the worst of the bunch. Not only did I not like the movie with it’s weird cast of characters, but (and you may call this minor but to me it’s inexcusable) there must have been more than half a dozen scenes where the boom microphone dropped into the frame, bobbing around as if it was an intentional joke. The audience actually laughed as it became a regular occurrence throughout the film.

So now we have a new movie with an apocalyptic them: The Happening. He seems to crank out a new film every two years so I suppose we’re due. Here’s the poster:

I’ve gotta tell ya, the inclusion of eye-roll inducing taglines referring to his previous films does not start this off on the right foot for me:

We’ve Sensed It.

We’ve Seen The Signs.

Now… It’s Happening.

Are they kidding? Yeesh. Why not just go all out?

We’ve Sensed It.

Can It Be Broken?

We’ve Seen The Signs.

Now… It’s Happening.

Not In Just A Village, But Everywhere.

And Only One Lady Can Stop It.

If you’re going to do it, go big.

The Happening open on June 13, 2008

Source: Coming Soon via First Showing

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M. Night Shyamalan’s Next Movie

Shane — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:14:43 +0000

M. Night’s next movie, The Happening, sounds like it has the potential to be pretty good. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it will star Mark Wahlberg as a father who takes his family on the run as a result of a global crisis. I really hope that this movie is well written and does well as I like Shyamalan and think he is pretty gifted. The Sixth Sense genuinely surprised me and I thought that Unbreakable was a neat concept and an interesting take on the superhero genre.

Having said that, I hope that Shyamalan decides against his usual trick ending. It worked in his first two movies because he was new to the scene and no one expected them. I spent all of my time watching Signs and The Village looking for the surprise. Based off the review posted here, I didn’t even bother with Lady in the Water.

Hopefully, Shyamalan will drop the trick ending and put out just a straight thriller which seems to be where his talents lie.

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