Thursday, March 26, 2009

Jason and Paul, the bromance begins

Jason Segel and Paul Rudd had known each other for a while -- they're in a couple of scenes together in Knocked Up -- but it wasn't until the pair were in Hawaii shooting the Segel-scripted Forgetting Sarah Marshall that they truly bonded.
It's a bond that serves them well in I Love You, Man, which is, after all, about male bonding.

"That was a rare experience," says Segel about making Forgetting Sarah Marshall. "We filmed at the same hotel where we stayed. It was a very insulated environment. We’d film during the day and then at night we would all just convene at the pool bar, and Paul and I became really good friends there. I think when we got the opportunity to do a buddy movie together it just seemed right.

"We really are familiar with each other's moods, and we both love comedy... we’re students of comedy, you know. Like he and I will sit around and quote Monty Python or the Mighty Boosh. We learned each other’s moves, which makes it very easy to play off of each other."

Friday, March 13, 2009

"Pilgrim's" progress


Mark Webber, whose directing debut Explicit Ills just opened here, is off to Toronto to start work on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World -- the Edgar Wright-directed adaptation of the Bryan Lee O'Malley graphic novels about a rock-and-roll dude who has to kick into kung fu mode in order to defeat a gang of evil ex-boyfriends of the girl he loves. Michael Cera stars as Pilgrim, and Webber's character, one of Scott's bandmates, is called Stephen Stills.

"I am like SO excited, it’s such a cool project," says Webber. "Edgar Wright is the Man. Shaun of the Dead is like one of my favorite movies of the last five years, the way he was able to blend these different genres together was fascinating to me.... He's the master of the action comedy pop drama."

As for playing Stills, "I'm not literally the guy from Crosby, Stills & Nash," Webber chuckles. "There’s also a character named Young Neil. That’s what's really awesome about the books is that there are all these little inside jokes and this funny commentary on hipsters....

"So me and Michael Cera are in this rock band together, trying to get gigs and play these big shows, and in the process he has to get into these crazy kung fu battles with this girl’s evil ex-boyfriends. It’s wild, man."

Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans and Johnny Simmons also star, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof, Live Free or Die Hard) as Ramona V. Flowers, the girlfriend with the seven maniacal exes.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

3-D blows chunks – right at ya!


Went to an advanced screening of Monsters vs. Aliens at the Bridge Wednesday night and I lasted oh, I dunno, 15 minutes. Trouble with the 3-D projection system rendered the screen images blurry, as everybody sat there in the dark with those dorky Real D glasses on…. Things were fixed momentarily (on screen: a dweeb playing with one of those rubber balls tied to a racket things, and the ball seemingly bounces out right at your nose). But then the screen went fuzzy and double-lined again.

The other problem with 3-D: the tinted glasses makes the screen image darker than it should be, so even a bright, vibrant DreamWorks ’toon loses its luster.

Eventually, the projectionist fixed things, I’m told, but I had already quit the theater – more convinced than ever that 3-D is just another lame gimmick, despite what Jeffrey Katzenberg has to say.