Anchor Bay Entertainment and The Weinstein Company has information regarding the upcoming DVD and Blu-Ray Release of "Our Idiot Brother", which stars Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel. The film will be released to shelves on November 29th. The DVD and Blu-Ray will feature director's commentary, behind the scenes featurette and deleted/extended scenes.
Press Release:
The OUR IDIOT BROTHER Blu-ray™ and DVD bonus features include an audio commentary with director Jesse Peretz; a “The Making of Our Idiot Brother” featurette; and deleted and extended scenes. Note: Special features are subject to change.
Press Release:
Anchor Bay Entertainment and The Weinstein Company announced today the Blu-ray™ and DVD release of the “outrageous” (David Walters, Details) comedy, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, from the producers behind Little Miss Sunshine. Starring Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man) in the title role, OUR IDIOT BROTHER is a comedy about an idealist who barges into the lives of his three sisters, played by Elizabeth Banks (W.), Zooey Deschanel ((500) Days of Summer) and Emily Mortimer (City Island), along with Rashida Jones (TV’s “The Office”), and funnyman Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder). Directed by Jesse Peretz, with screenplay by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall (story by Evgenia Perez and David Schisgall and Jesse Peretz), OUR IDIOT BROTHER heads to retail on November 29, 2011 for an SRP of $39.99 for the Blu-ray™ and $29.98 for the DVD.
In her review for Entertainment Weekly, film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote OUR IDIOT BROTHER is “a bouncy, bighearted comedy!” Newsday’s Rafer Guzman described the film as “genuinely irresistible!” People magazine film critic, Alynda Wheat, proclaims “Paul Rudd is so funny you’ll leave feeling high on humanity.”
Paul Rudd stars in this witty and highly relatable comedy, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, about that one family member who is always just a little bit behind the curve. For sisters Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) and Liz (Emily Mortimer), that person is their upbeat brother Ned, an organic farmer, whose willingness to trust humankind allows for an oddly trouble-free existence. Ned may be utterly lacking in common sense, but he is their brother, and after his girlfriend dumps him and boots him off the farm, his sisters must once again come to his rescue. As Miranda, Natalie and Liz each take turns at housing Ned, their brother's unfailing commitment to honesty creates more than a few messes in their comfortable routines. But after seeing life through Ned’s optimistic perspective, his family comes to realize that maybe Ned isn't such an idiot after all.
The OUR IDIOT BROTHER Blu-ray™ and DVD bonus features include an audio commentary with director Jesse Peretz; a “The Making of Our Idiot Brother” featurette; and deleted and extended scenes. Note: Special features are subject to change. announced today the Blu-ray™ and DVD release of the “outrageous” (David Walters, Details) comedy, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, from the producers behind Little Miss Sunshine. Starring Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man) in the title role, OUR IDIOT BROTHER is a comedy about an idealist who barges into the lives of his three sisters, played by Elizabeth Banks (W.), Zooey Deschanel ((500) Days of Summer) and Emily Mortimer (City Island), along with Rashida Jones (TV’s “The Office”), and funnyman Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder). Directed by Jesse Peretz, with screenplay by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall (story by Evgenia Perez and David Schisgall and Jesse Peretz), OUR IDIOT BROTHER heads to retail on November 29, 2011 for an SRP of $39.99 for the Blu-ray™ and $29.98 for the DVD.
In her review for Entertainment Weekly, film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote OUR IDIOT BROTHER is “a bouncy, bighearted comedy!” Newsday’s Rafer Guzman described the film as “genuinely irresistible!” People magazine film critic, Alynda Wheat, proclaims “Paul Rudd is so funny you’ll leave feeling high on humanity.”
Paul Rudd stars in this witty and highly relatable comedy, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, about that one family member who is always just a little bit behind the curve. For sisters Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) and Liz (Emily Mortimer), that person is their upbeat brother Ned, an organic farmer, whose willingness to trust humankind allows for an oddly trouble-free existence. Ned may be utterly lacking in common sense, but he is their brother, and after his girlfriend dumps him and boots him off the farm, his sisters must once again come to his rescue. As Miranda, Natalie and Liz each take turns at housing Ned, their brother's unfailing commitment to honesty creates more than a few messes in their comfortable routines. But after seeing life through Ned’s optimistic perspective, his family comes to realize that maybe Ned isn't such an idiot after all.
The OUR IDIOT BROTHER Blu-ray™ and DVD bonus features include an audio commentary with director Jesse Peretz; a “The Making of Our Idiot Brother” featurette; and deleted and extended scenes. Note: Special features are subject to change.
Gigantic
Year: 2009
Director: Mike Aselton
Studio: First Independent Pictures
Stars: Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 98 Mins
Official Website: http://www.thegiganticmovie.com/
“Gigantic” recently premiered in New York, yesterday. The film is about a mattress salesman (Paul Dano), who desperately wants to adopt a Chinese baby. Then one day, he meets a young woman (Zooey Deschanel), who has a potty mouth. The saleman begins to fall for this young woman. To finally have her, he must compete with her art-coll
ecting father (John Goodman) that has a bad back and deep pocket for her and deal with his eccentric parents while waiting for the call about his adoption.
I was really looking forward to “Gigantic”, because of it’s stars Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel. After watching this film, I was very disappointed, at the fact that this should have been a good film.
The reason this film should have been good, the performances and the direction were good enough. Co-writer and director, Matt Aselton does a very good job with his direction. I liked how, he makes most the scenes seem very weird, like the first time that the two main characters meet at the mattress shop and one of them fall asleep for a couple of hours or the fact that John Goodman’s character has to lay down in the truck of the family’s car, everytime he goes out. Scenes like that make a film like this, different and not so grossed-out, like other comedies. The acting was also good here, as I have no problem with the performances here. I though the chemistry, between Dano and Deschanel was very good, as they kept my interest, for most of this film. Also, it
was nice to see Ed Asner get some work, as he has appeared such films and television programs, like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Disney’s upcoming 3D movie “Up”. He’s very good everytime he appeared on screen, as the performance helped me get though some of the dull moments that film has.
This film ultimately fails in the end, because of its screenplay, which was written by Aselton and Adam Nagata. There were two reasons to why this screenplay and film fails. First, there are noticeable flaws in this screenplay that takes this film off track. Every time this became interesting and fun, the whole subplot, with the homeless man slows this film down and it become very dull to watch. The reason for this is simple; the character felt out of place, as it made no sense with the tone and development that was going on. That’s when this film became very dull. Everytime that character came onscreen, the movie stopped doing the positive things that it was achieving with the development of the relationship and the film’s tone. It hurts the tone of the film, especially in the last act.
The other reason for why this film does not work, there really wasn’t much c
onflict between Dano and Goodman’s character. In order for comedies to work there has to be some sort of conflict, where the two characters that you think are going to have problems, do. There really wasn’t much of this here, as the writers had opportunities, where they could generate some conflict over Deschanel’s character, but I didn’t get the sense that there was any here. They missed the boat there, as there could have been some humorous moments with the two, but there was none.
“Gigantic” is a disappointing film that should have been good, if it wasn’t the fact that this film has a flawed screenplay, along with miss opportunities to generate some humor and interesting conflict. The film is now playing in New York and will hit Los Angeles on April 17th
Review Rating: 2.5 Stars
-- Dr. Harold Medford from Them!
“Well, I think Bill's got a point. If you look at the whole life of the planet, we... you know, man, has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.”
-- Sergeant Farrell from 28 Days Later
“As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up ways to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?”
-- Ollie Weeks from The Mist
The Happening is a very lazy film. It is a shame because the idea showed a great deal of promise. The premise seemed like the perfect film to make M. Night Shyamalan relevant again. Is it as awful as many critics claim? I am afraid it is the worst film that Mr. Shyamalan has ever made. He seems especially disengaged from a film that he is credited with directing, writing and producing. How does he expect the audience to care for the characters and the situations in his films if he does not care? There is something rushed about the whole enterprise. The Happening should be a very terrifying film given the premise. I am not an apologist for the director nor am I one of his many haters. I have always had mixed feelings about his films. I like some of them and others I think are incredibly mediocre. There is a common problem with his films like The Village and to a greater extent with The Happening. He has interesting ideas, but the execution is sloppy and sometimes unwatchable. The Lady In The Water suffers more from the director’s hubris than anything else. It was the casting himself as a very important character in the film that showed me he really did believe his own hype. I like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable-- they were great showcases for Bruce Willis. Signs has some of the director’s most chilling scenes. In these three films, it is the actors who make the films come to life. All the good scenes are in the trailer-- a big mistake. The film is as bland and dull as they come.
The film opens in New York City. People get confused in Central Park, start repeating their words, stand in place and some of them even walk backwards. Then we hear screams. People start killing themselves. Whether it is a traffic cop who shoots himself, a woman stabbing herself in the neck with a hair pin or construction workers falling off a building, people are starting to commit suicide. After the cop shoots himself, several others follow suit and use the gun on themselves. What the hell is going on? They must have read the script. Why is this going on? What is causing this behavior? For the first several minutes I was willing to follow Mr. Shyamalan on his latest venture. After the initial set up, the film loses its direction. People kill themselves in a variety of ways. The creative suicides seem to be the only thing that interests the director. In Lady In The Water, he was intent on giving it to the critics via Bob Balaban’s character. In The Happening, he is intent on giving it to the audiences who did not like or did not show up for his last film.
High school science teacher, Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) fills in for Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson this time. In the film’s beginning, he is quoting Albert Einstein on how the disappearance of the honeybees will affect humanity. It sets up the theme of the film, but sadly, the film never gets anymore more interesting than this high school lecture. Elliot is called out of class. The schools are being closed because an event is happening-- the word “happening” is used so many times in the film that drinking games can be built around the film. He goes home to his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and they leave for the train station where they join Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). While on the train, they learn through cell phone conversations from various passengers that the suicides are going on all over the Northeast. The train stops in Filbert, Pennsylvania. The train conductors have lost contact with everyone. Julian decides to leave Jess with Elliot and Alma to go find his wife. The three of them are on their own.
What is causing these violent disturbances in the Northeastern United States? Is it a plague? Is it a terrorist attack? Is the government behind it? A terrorist attack is ruled out as time goes on. The falling bodies at the New York City construction site are meant to evoke memories of 9/11. Speaking of 9/11, the initial fear and tension wear out very soon in the film. This worked much better in films like Frank Darabont’s The Mist, Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds and Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield. The fear and tension that he displayed in Signs is nowhere to be found in this film. What we do learn is causing this “happening” is ecologically driven. What is causing these winds of doom? Is Mother Earth having her revenge on the human race? Did I not just see a variation on this in The Ruins? The mass exodus of people leaving the train and wondering the countryside reminded me of the refugee scenes from War Of The Worlds and the mass evacuations from Cloverfield.
There are a lot of scenes that remind me of elements from other films. When Elliot, Alma and Jess end up at an abandoned farmhouse where an old woman lives, it reminded me too much of the Tim Robbins sequences in War Of The Worlds. Betty Buckley plays Mrs. Jones and her character reminded me of Tim Robbins’s Harlan Ogilvy. Mrs. Jones is not playing with a full deck as we quickly learn; she is completely isolated from civilization; she is completely independent of the outside world. She seems to be a stand- in for M. Night Shyamalan who has always prided himself for operating outside of Hollywood-- living and making movies in Philadelphia. This is nothing to sneeze at, but given that he may have committed career suicide with this film, I am not sure he will be able to operate outside the studio’s perimeter for much longer.
Many have said that the acting in this film is dreadful. I think Mark Wahlberg is an excellent actor, but as Elliot he is not given much to work with. He barely registers in the film. Zooey Deschanel seems perplexed as to why she is in the film. She is a great actress and has a strong comedic presence. She seems to be doing a bad variation of Kat, the character she plays on Showtime's Weeds. John Leguizamo has a throwaway part in the film; he does not have much to do at all. This is the first film from Shyamalan where the acting is utterly non-existent. At least Paul Giamatti registered in The Lady In The Water.
I love bad movies just as much as the next person. They are essential and necessary. This film is not even guilty pleasure kind of bad. I have mentioned several recent films that The Happening reminds me of or is trying to emulate. It does not come close to capturing the moods and intensities of films like War Of The Worlds, The Mist, Cloverfield or even The Ruins. In the ways the event is finally explained, it reminded me too much of last year’s The Invasion with Nicole Kidman.
The Invasion which was another version of The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The epilogue of The Happening is lifted straight from 28 Weeks Later. It is safe to say that The Happening is M. Night Shyamalan’s polemic on the environment and how we are harming the planet. I am getting tired of all polemics. Not many people liked it when George Romero preached to us in Diary Of The Dead-- well I did not mind the film, but many people did not like when the subtext became the whole film. Still, Shyamalan’s lecturing is never a good idea. When we learn that is essentially ecological vengeance on the human race, it feels cheaper than his notorious twist endings. No one would ever confuse this film for An Inconvenient Truth. To be honest with you, Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster has more credibility than The Happening as far as environmentally themed films are concerned. The Happening could have done with some much needed direction and engagement from Mr. Shyamalan. He should leave the social commentary to the professionals. Do not preach-- show the audience your beliefs with a great script filled with artistic merit.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Written, Produced, & Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
The influence of Alfred Hitchcock has always been very visible in M. Night Shyamalan’s films. Shyamalan lifts a lot of what is great about Hitchcock for his own work: the slow build up of tension, surprises, and making the viewer picture some of the darkest moments of the film in their minds rather than throw it up on the screen.
“The Happening” is the story of an event in the Northeast of the United States. There really isn’t much more you can say to describe the movie without giving away the story. Not that there is much of a story here. But in the interest of protecting readers who do not want to know what happens, I will warn you right now the rest of this review (minus the final paragraph) will be nothing but spoilers.
The movie starts at the same time that this strange phenomenon begins and point to Shyamalan for diving right into the action. We open in Central Park on a weekday morning where suddenly everyone just seems to stop moving. Some begin to walk backward. Some do nothing. And then they start to commit suicide. The film follows the progress of the event as it radiates, but considering the explanation for the phenomenon and the rapid way is spreads, it never quite makes sense how New York media can report on the story in the city. Yet this is just what happens.
In nearby Philadelphia, panic starts to set in over the possibility that the event is a terrorist attack that might soon be repeated in their city. Mark Wahlberg is Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher who is preoccupied with the recent distantness of his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). Elliot’s very neurotic best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) is the high school math teach who is hustling to get his wife and daughter Jess as far away from town as possible. Julian has a bad feeling about the event in New York and invites Elliot and Alma to join him and his family at his house out in the country. Elliot, Alma, Julian, and Jess manage to catch one of the last trains, but Jess’ mother gets caught in traffic and is left behind. Thus starts the downward slide of Julian and the fall of the Northeast.
The acting in this movie was surprisingly wooden and full of pregnant pauses. These kinds of issues are usually the fault of the director and it is a very strange thing that after having so many opportunities to make films that Shyamalan had these problems here. Wahlberg and Leguizamo are very capable actors but the first half of the film felt like the line readings of a student film. It was a very strange thing to watch. Even though I really loved the characters of Elliot and Alma, I felt like the script kind of failed them in a lot of ways.
The story was an interesting idea though it came off a bit heavy handed. I like the idea of the every day ordinary things like plants becoming deadly so suddenly. Not since “Day of the Triffids” has shrubbery been so threatening. The idea has a lot of built in tension and in the case of one really great scene with Mark in an office, great set up for comedy as well. However, the story just does not really seem to work in the end. The event is never fully explained to anyone’s satisfaction and the cop out of saying that nature is a mysterious beast does not cut it for me. It is especially frustrating for the answer to be “it just happened and we don’t fully realize why” and then see the main characters moving back to the city. Really? You just narrowly escaped a phenomenon with a 100% kill rate that starts in highly populated cities and decide that when it subsides you just have to move back there and start a family? I don’t think so. I don’t care how much I love cheese steaks, Constitution Hall, or “Rocky,” that town would be dead to me. And not only because it is filled with the rotting corpses of a couple million people that committed suicide, but also because “it just happened” is not a good enough answer for me to consider Philadelphia as a viable place of residence.
In some ways I really liked the film. The tension was so well done, and I really respect that element of the film. On the other hand, it fails as a movie because it is only entertaining for the first half of the film really. Once the explanation starts to come out, the film really falls apart. Shyamalan has always been able to nail tension in the first act and sometimes the second act of his films. However, he seems to have a lot of trouble with the final act. Although a vast improvement over the terrible “Lady in the Water,” this movie is still difficult to recommend. I can’t imagine DVD would do the tension much justice, so seeing it in the theatre might be your best bet to enjoy this film. However, as the ending is a bit of a let down, spend your money with caution if you are thinking of catching it in theatres.
