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Movie Preview: Ben Stiller Plays It Straight in Greenberg

BuzzSugar — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:30:41 -0800

I have a love/hate relationship with Ben Stiller movies. Over the years, I've grown tired of seeing him in the same everyman role again and again (with a few exceptions, like There's Something About Mary), but every now and then he throws a curve ball that pulls me back in. Greenberg already looks like one of the latter films.

The upcoming indie movie from The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach follows Roger Greenberg, a middle-aged New Yorker who heads to LA and decides to "do nothing" in an attempt to figure out his life. The movie looks like it could be a tearjerker, but maybe that's just because LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" is playing in the background. (The band's James Murphy lends a few new songs to the movie). Rhys Ifans is Roger's best friend while Greta Gerwig is the woman he befriends and beds. If you're ready to see Stiller take a break from slapstick, check out the trailer when you read more.

Buzz's 10 Favorite Actors With Famous Parents

BuzzSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:30:39 -0800

Mery Streep's 23-year-old daughter Grace Gummer just landed a new gig at Nickelodeon - and it got me thinking about all the big names out there with famous actors for parents. From A-listers like Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to small screen stars like Spencer Grammer, take a look at 10 of my favorite actors with famous parents.

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Buzz News Roundup, 5/22

BuzzSugar — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:00:52 -0700

Ben Stiller's getting this year's Generation Award at the MTV Movie Awards. - The Futon Critic
Apparently there's still hope for Shonda Rhimes's TV newscaster pilot. - New York Times
Rosario Dawson and Leslie Bibb have joined Kevin James in romantic comedy The Zookeeper. - ComingSoon
Danish director Ole Bornedal will direct the film adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel The Husband. - Variety
Jay Leno says there's "underdog appeal" to his new role at 10 p.m. on NBC. - TV.com
Michael Moore's new documentary feature about the global economic meltdown will be released domestically on Oct. 2, 2009. - ComingSoon
VH1 has The Great Debate and Tool Academy 2 on its Summer slate, while MTV has Paris Hilton's My New BFF, America's Best Dance Crew, and The Real World. - The Futon Critic
Jay-Z has officially left the Def Jam record label - Billboard

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Buzz News Roundup, 5/4

BuzzSugar — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:30:46 -0700

Fringe has been renewed for a second season. - The Futon Critic
Fox has also asked for a second season of its Family Guy spinoff, The Cleveland Show, even though the first season won't air for a couple of months. - Zap2it
Hugh Jackman is attached to star in a film version of Ghostopolis, an upcoming graphic novel from Doug TenNapel. - ComingSoon
Jenny McCarthy will get her own syndicated talk show through a deal with Oprah's studio. - The Hollywood Reporter
Ben Stiller has been set to direct Help Me Spread Goodness, "a drama with comic overtones." - Variety
Sugar Ray's next album, releasing July 21, is titled Music For Cougars. - Billboard
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has reportedly been cast in Disney's reworking of 20 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. - ComingSoon
Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut for a segment of the film New York, I Love You, shot in black and white and starring Kevin Bacon, has been cut from the film and will appear only on the DVD release. - Zap2It

Photo courtesy of Fox

Would You Want to See a Zoolander Sequel (Twolander)?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:30:44 -0700

The screenwriter of Zoolander recently hinted that there might be a sequel to the movie on the horizon - and the title might be Twolander. Here's more:

"Ben [Stiller] and I have talked about it for a little while," revealed the film’s scribe, John Hamburg, about a film that would reunite Stiller's Zoolander with his nemesis-turned-comrade Hansel (Owen Wilson). "I think someday we will make that movie."

Do you think a Zoolander sequel would be fun, maybe to see these male models deal with getting older? Or would a sequel just be pointless?

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Buzz News Roundup, 12/12

BuzzSugar — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:30:05 -0800

Iconic pinup model Bettie Page has died at age 85. - AFP
Summit Entertainment has moved the release date for its comedy The Brothers Bloom (starring Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, and Rachel Weisz) from Dec. 19 to May 15. - Zap2It
American Idol is canceling Idol Gives Back this year and might have 36 instead of 24 semifinalists. - MSNBC
It's confirmed: There's a "reimagining" of A Nightmare on Elm Street in the works. - ComingSoon
Comedy team Lonely Island (consisting of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer) has signed a record deal and will release its debut album, Incredibad, on Feb. 10. - Billboard
Don't worry: The Full House remake is completely dead. - E! Online
Oliver Stone is planning to make a documentary about Venezuela's controversial President Hugo Chavez. - Variety
Dawson's Creek's Grams (Mary Beth Pell) will guest-star with Joshua Jackson on Fringe. - TV Guide
Ben Stiller is set to replace Mark Ruffalo in the Noah Baumbach dramedy, Greenburg. - The Hollywood Reporter

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Tropic Thunder Is No. 1 For the Second Week in a Row

BuzzSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:15:55 -0700

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder won the top spot at the box office for the second weekend in a row, earning an estimated $16.1 million. This makes Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight the only movies to have stayed at No. 1 for two consecutive weeks this Summer (so that's two major box office winners for Robert Downey Jr.!).

Following closely behind in the No. 2 spot was The House Bunny, which earned an estimated $15.1 million its first weekend out. Coming in third was the Death Race remake with about $12.3 million. In fourth place was The Dark Knight, followed by Star Wars: The Clone Wars at No. 5.

I didn't think the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker would do very well, but I'm surprised to see how badly it did. The comedy failed to crack the top 10 and only earned about $2.7 million.

Hamlet 2, which was all the rage at Sundance this year, had a limited release and brought in an estimated $435,294. The offbeat comedy will have a wider release this Wednesday.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Tropic Thunder: Clever and Explosive

BuzzSugar — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:30:10 -0700

I never really thought I'd say a Ben Stiller comedy was genuinely smart and funny, but here I am, saying just that. It's partly the talented cast and partly Stiller's collaborator on the film, Justin Theroux, but whatever the cause, Tropic Thunder is a hilarious movie that doesn't completely rely on gross-out humor or cheap shots for laughs. The entire thing exists to comment on the hypocrisy, egotism, delusional sense of self-importance and backward moral codes of the people who keep the Hollywood machine churning. And it's all set against the backdrop of one of the most serious film genres: the war movie.

Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, a has-been action star who hopes that the filming of the war movie Tropic Thunder will restart his fading career. Soon, however, the film's director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) decides to drop the film's stars into the middle of the jungle to get some "grittier" footage. The group of actors includes the Australian Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Academy darling who has surgically changed his skin color to play a black character, an actual black actor named Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), newbie actor Kevin Sandusky (the beloved Apatownian Jay Baruchel) and goofball comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black). The men find themselves in a real combat situation, and it takes them a while to realize that they're not actually on a controlled movie set. The whole thing is a series of jokes, explosions and gunfire, resulting in a kind of giant comedic spectacle. Those are just the basics, though, so read more.

One of the most talked-about things with this movie, Robert Downey Jr.'s brownface and portrayal of a black man is remarkably well-done. The insane offensiveness is placed squarely on the actor Kirk Lazarus's ignorance and ambition to nab yet another Academy Award. Every time this is played for laughs, it's done so at Kirk's expense. What's even better, he butts heads with the actual black man of the group, Alpa Chino, who voices reasonable arguments against Kirk's outrageous actions and is met with hilariously misguided justifications from Kirk. And Alpa Chino is never actually OK with the whole thing, hinting that though the filmmakers use this brownface device for laughs, they never take it so lightly as to imply that it's a genuinely OK thing to do.

By contrast, the jokes revolving around Stiller's character playing a mentally challenged person are less carefully done. Sure, we're supposed to be laughing at the Tugg's self-centered idea that doing this kind of role will earn him an Oscar, but in the scenes with "Simple Jack" we're not laughing at the actor's misguidedness, we're laughing at his impression of a mentally challenged person. I guess it comes down to how comfortable you are with that sort of thing. I do believe the intention was to comment on Stiller's character, and I'm not saying the film is mean-spirited, because I don't think it is. It just doesn't make me feel good to laugh at Stiller's impression of a retarded person.

There are many happy surprises in the movie, not the least of which is Tom Cruise as abusive studio mogul Les Grossman. He's incredibly good at playing an over-the-top abhorrent human being. Similarly, Matthew McConaughey's performance as Tugg's well-meaning but shallow agent is completely hysterical (there's something satisfying about such a pretty man embracing such a goofy, ridiculous role). There are also funny movie-within-movie moments that are actually quite meta, like when Stiller's character thinks an actual severed head is a prop and plays with it: his character thinks it's a prop, and in real-life we know it's a prop, but in the world of the movie it's an actual head that his character thinks is a prop. . . which it is, but it's not supposed to be. . . See? It's actually weirdly smart.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Stiller and Witherspoon to Pair Up for Cameron Crowe Movie

BuzzSugar — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:31:27 -0700

There's no real information about this project - not even a title - besides the following:

It's a "romantic comedy adventure."
Cameron Crowe is directing for Columbia Pictures.
Reese Witherspoon and Ben Stiller are set to play the lead lovebirds.

Well, the Cameron Crowe part could be pretty awesome. He's responsible for bringing us Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous (I can ignore Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown).

But is it bad that the first thing I thought of when I saw this news was, Oh, man, I so don't want to see Reese Witherspoon have to kiss Ben Stiller? Does anyone else find this pairing slightly odd? I mean, she's an Academy Award-winning actress and
he's. . . Ben Stiller.

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Movie Preview: Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder

BuzzSugar — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:30:35 -0700

With Tropic Thunder, director Ben Stiller and his cast of comedic actors attempt to poke holes in the movie industry, spoofing everything from iconic action heroes to the embarrassing obnoxiousness of professional comedians to racial stereotypes facing non-white actors. It has a lot of potential for humor. But is it funny? Eh. Kinda.

Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. - that's Downey in the middle up there, wearing makeup to look like a black man - play vain, clueless actors shooting a big-budget war movie who inadvertently find themselves in an actual war zone and have to become real soldiers. Parts of the trailer make me chuckle, though a lot of it's just OK. Also, I'm a little torn on the use of black face in spoofing Hollywood. Then again, if anyone's going to do something like that, Robert Downey Jr. is probably our best bet.

Tropic Thunder opens August 15. To check out the trailer, read more.

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