Comedy At Its Best

The year 2008, just like any year, brought us a lot of really bad comedic films. We had a couple new installments to the Friedberg and Seltzer spoof series, a few of Will Ferrell’s flicks where he once again plays an adolescent man in an adults body and a fair share of teen titty comedies that get by with boobs, beer and bongs as humor material. However, 2008 also brought us a few of the best comedies to date like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Zack & Miri Make A Porno and the best of them all, Tropic Thunder. 2009 has thus far followed the same pattern. Millions of dollars went to waste making movies like Paul Blart Mall Cop, Fired Up, Observe & Report and Dance Flick. Fortunately we have also already gotten a few good ones into the year as well. In fact, I am going to go as far as to say that we have seen the best comedy of the year already and it can only be downhill from here till 2010.

Hangover, a movie title that summarizes the synopsis of the movie in perfect simplicity, was a plain old good time with countless laugh out loud moments and a cast that kept the whole audience in the theater I was in smiling the whole time. The trinity of actors who made up the main characters in the film, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms & Zack Gailifianakis, had perfect chemistry that got better and better as the movie progressed. The script was near perfect with dialogue that was funny in nearly every line they spoke. I love that this movie took 3 actors who have had great success to a small select group of people who actually know them, put them together in a feature length film and made the world realize how talented they all are.

Todd Phillips, whose only real success in his directing career can be called Old School, did a fanastic job with the script Jon Lucas, another not so successful film maker, wrote. The movie is not for the squeamish or conservative but I recommend it to anyone who is a little daring and wants to have a real good time at the theaters.

5 Reasons Why New Moon Will Be Better?

With the recent release of the first official New Moon trailer everyone is once again thinking about Edward and Bella and what happens next in their romantic saga. Fortunately I believe fans will be greeted with a much better film this time with the November release of the second installation to the series than with the first film. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed Twilight and think the production team and studio heads did the best they could with what they had to work with. But lets be honest, Twilight, without the adoration of its already enormous fanbase, would not have been even close to as successful as it was after its premiere in theaters. The movie had a diminutive budget, a crew of film makers who were more seasoned in TV than film, a production company that was unsteady on their feet from the beginning of production and an unseasoned director that was never really suited for taking on such an anticipated movie in the first place. If not for the strong screenwriting and impeccably perfect cast the movie would have slumped and the series might not have continued.

But it is continuing and this is where things get interesting. Things are going to be better this time and here is why…

1) Money, Money, Money!

Studio heads set up an estimated number that Twilight would need to reach in ticket sales in order to continue the project into the remaining books. Twilight not only met that number but blew it out of the water and kept on running. New Moon has a much bulkier budget behind it than its predecessor so quality control on all lanes of the film will not be a problem.

2) If you film it (and are successful), they will come!

By they I mean higher list actors and this movie has them this time. Not only did they take special care in setting up the roster for the new quileute pack, the casting coordinators have pulled in some big guns for the Volturi clan in Italy. Michael Sheen will be seen in the vampire trinity who runs their secret world and Dakota Fanning will be appearing as one his most honored guardsmen.

3) Like a good wine…

Good actors and actresses only get better as time goes by. Especially when they have more and more time to develop a character they are playing for multiple movies. All the familiar faces will be returning for New Moon from Twilight including Rob Pattinson & Kristin Stewart, the two people who literally made the Twilight film the success that it was. No one is getting left behind on the cast in this one, the only new actors are the ones filling in new roles.

4) Woooooah, listen to the music!

Carter Burwell may have brought us the real life melody of “Bella’s Lullaby” but other than that the film score for twilight was amateurish and bloated. Alexandre Desplat will be taking the reigns for the music in New Moon. You may have heard some os his work. His portfolio includes a couple big ones like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “The Queen” & “Syriana”.

5) Out with the small time, in with the big time.

Catherine Hardwicke did her job well in Twilight but the books only get bigger and more intense after Twilight and everyone knew that she was not going to be the pick from the studios to handle anymore chapters in the franchise. Summit Entertainment chose Chris Weitz as the director for New Moon whose most recent success came in the form of The Golden Compass’ film adaptation.