Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

A while back, I read an article, that I can no longer find to link to, that stated that Paul Reubens' infamous man-child comic character Pee-Wee Herman would be returning to the big screen once again. I have always felt Reubens got a really raw deal when it came to his public image after the porn theater scandal. I mean, sure, he was the star of a children's show, but did the mothers' that kicked against his career ever care to look up the source material of his act, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, or the much viewed HBO special of it that was released to home video during his heyday. The generally subtle raunchy nuances was if anything, just a cliche in the very popular CBS morning show Pee-Wee's Playhouse. But since those days, we haven't seen much of the television personality with the red bow tie. Reubens, of course, went on to star in a few things like Mystery Men, Blow and a pretty funny guest spot on Reno 911! just off my memory, but the days of being the star of a feature film like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure passed long ago. So, with this thought of injustice over the misunderstood comic, I was devastated to read today, via Variety, that The Pee-Wee Herman Show was going to return for a special engagement in Hollywood, leaving many to speculate that plans for a new feature is a dead project. The article doesn't confirm it, but with no mention of a future for Reubens' creation, we cinephiles cannot expect much.

Just when it seemed that Michael Jackson would finally be out of, at the very least, the movie blogsphere, it was announced that a documentary of his final tour preparation would be released on October 30th, entitled This is It. The close to Halloween release date is fitting, as the article at Reuters states that some of the test footage was shot in 3-D, therefore we can only hope that this means a performance of "Thriller" in full, glorious use of the marketing gimmick. A Cinematical article also points out that the director of the documentary will be 80's choreographer Kenny Ortega, known from such great decade fare as Dirty Dancing and the late John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Speaking of which, with all the talk about one 80's icon being memorialized on screen with the King of Pop, when is all the blogs going to pick up and start talking about Don't You Forget About Me, a film chronicling a road trip to find the director before his death, by unknown filmmaker Matt Austin-Sadowski. I first read about the film in Geek Monthly, and just Google searched it for to find the directors' name for a reference point, and found an article on The Guardian stating that it had found a distribution deal. If some stranger happens up on this blog, and you do nothing else I implore you to do, look up this film, read a bit about, and if it pops up online, comes out to theaters, to DVD, jump aboard. It sounds very intriguing, and outside of a few blogs from Internet nobodies, it does seem that even in death, Hughes has been vastly overlooked.

Vulture has an interview with Bill Hader up, in which one of the topics discussed is the upcoming Saturday Night Live-inspired film MacGruber, including an apparent hard-R rating. For some reason, I've been gaining a bit of faith with the new cast of SNL after harboring some negative feelings by thinking they should do the impossible and live up to the likes of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, etc. Yet, I've still never really gotten aboard the enthusiasm train for the MacGruber skit, but Hader and Will Forte are both decent enough comedians and a hard-R rating at their capable hands probably gives me enough reason to get in the seats for this.

Cinematical's Kevin Kelly has a story up on how J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof has bought the rights to Stephen King's epic series of novels The Dark Tower. The article declares that the pre-production wouldn't even begin until after the 2010 conclusion of Lost, so we're still some time away; however, Kelly does sell me on reading The Dark Tower.

Finally, a star-studded (Zach Galifianakis, Henry Rollins, Ben Stiller, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, Julianne Moore, Alexis Bledel, Sargent Slaughter of WWF fame, Chuck Liddell and many more) video from FunnyOrDie has been released, in a bit of a mock-up of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Enjoy.

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