Black actors denied presence in “Couples Retreat” international poster

// November 17th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Where's the Beef

The fact that Couples Retreat had its black actors extracted from international posters has gotten a lot of attention in the past few days, but I’d argue that while it’s a bullshit move, it’s an incident that’s threatening to obscure the real issue.

The truth is that in the world of Couples Retreat, something much, much worse than the poster controversy happened this weekend, and nobody seems to be saying a thing about it.

Quietly, as Saturday figures were released, the critically reviled comedy passed the $100 million mark — an impressive hold that indicates that the movie will have no trouble tallying a domestic gross that’s well over three times its opening weekend.

At first I thought that this had to have been Vince Vaughn’s best gross since The Break-Up, but I was horrified to learn that the similarly terrible Four Christmases grossed a stealth $120 million last year. All that the formerly live-wire Vaughn seems to want right now is a paycheck, a vacation, and definitely some new material cause his jokes are as tired as the suitcases under his eyes.

“Leaves of Grass” with Ed Norton not your typical “Stoner” movie..hee hee.

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Trailers

We were beginning to wonder if Leaves of Grass, a pot comedy thriller starring Edward Norton in the role(s) of identical twins, had hit a buzz or release snag. Or worse: try to recall the actor’s Pride and Glory from last year. But judging by this new, rapid-clip trailer, complete with Norton pronouncing “crystal meth” in a thick country accent, Leaves might have yielded a nice return on a visual gag so infamously exploited by Van Damme actioners. Add in wretched black light posters, scenes with Susan Sarandon as the twins’ knowing mom, and Richard Dreyfuss channeling Nic Cage’s iguana rage, and it’s worth a laugh.

“Edward Norton is Bill Kincaid, an Ivy League classics professor, who returns to rural Oklahoma to bury his dangerously brilliant identical twin brother, only to discover that the brother he believes to have been murdered has lured him home to involve him in a doomed plot against a local drug lord (Dreyfuss). Before Bill can flee, he’s implicated in a murder, and his life has become completely unraveled…”

damn this weed is good I'm seeing double norton

The film is written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, who appears in the truck with Norton at the end of the trailer. Some have gone ahead and called Leaves “very brilliant,” “incredibly well-written,” and “anything but a fun, simple stoner comedy.” Also co-starring are Keri Russell, and Melanie Lynskey, who remains best known for “Rose” the “insane stalker” on Two and a Half Men, but received kudos for her roles this year in Up in the Air and The Informant! Anything to escape that show’s obscenely rich kid.

CHECK out the TRAILER:

A-List actors to become a thing of the past in Hollywood?

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Where's the Beef

A Reuters piece that’s been making the rounds this weekend talks about how Hollywood may be thinking twice about banking on A-list celebrities in the future.

The piece points to recent low-budget and star-free fare like The Hangover, District 9, and Paranormal Activity that each went on to be wildly successful, and contrasts them with big-budget, star-studded flops like A Christmas Carol, Land of the Lost, and Funny People. The overall lesson seems to be that star-power doesn’t have nearly the draw that it used to, and that budgets aren’t much of a factor for audiences either.

But of course, I don’t really think this is news to most of us. While some general audiences overwhelmingly support movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I don’t think they did so for hunky Shia LaBeouf. Instead, they were probably looking to revisit the magic from the first film–which, let’s face it, was far better than it had any right to be. (Or the simpler answer, they just wanted to see things blow up.)

In any case, it was the quality of the concept of Transformers 2 (magic revisited and/or ‘splosions) that most likely led audiences showing up in droves, and not stars. You could apply a similar logic to The Hangover and its ilk mentioned above. I’d like to believe that audiences are smarter than we give them credit for—or at the very least, most can tell when studios are pushing crap on them. And sometimes they completely surprise us, just look at how well Inglourious Basterds performed.

Ultimately, the success of these lower budget features is a good thing for cinema. It makes studios less uneasy about moving forward with low budget features, and opens the doors for innovative new projects down the line. And after all, releasing several smaller features instead of relying on returns from a few big-budget films is a much safer bet for them as well.

LFC: EXCLUSIVE-Actor Luis Antonio Ramos behind the scenes

// September 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // What's Poppin

Actor Luis Antonio Ramos shot some great content during his shoot for the EPK of “The Ministers”. Interviews with Florencia Lozano, John Leguizamo and Director Franc. Reyes. All shot from Luis’ perspective. We here at Latinofilmchatter.com thank Luis for being a trooper and getting us this exclusive footage. The Ministers releases October 16th, 2009.

LFC-EXCLUSIVE “The Ministers” behind the scenes EPK shoot from latino filmchatter on Vimeo.