(Sunday proper) Oh, but that was so last week. What a difference a week makes, especially in Hollywoodland. Learned that from The Larry Sanders Show. It's all about access. Any time there was a new guest host in Larry's chair, the network bigwigs got all excited and started thinking about what could've been. Why, Dana Carvey could do his short list of SNL catch phrases every night! Why, Hank could epically fail the second night every day! ...is it epically or epicly? The auto-spell check is telling me that "epicly" is not right... epic-ly? Nope. But, give it some time. A few months from now, all the bloggers will be saying "epicly." You'll see.
But I guess even the bigwigs at Disney are just hoping for the best, praying that they're never exposed for the frauds and charlatans that they are. Maybe a reboot of Cinderella will make some money! We don't know! But the days of Aladdin and The Lion King are definitely over. All we need is one Cal-Arts intern to do a bunch of green-screen crap, pay them $5,000, and boom. We got us a bonafide two-hour masterpiece. Do like Spielberg during Raiders of the Lost Ark! Just eat Spaghetti-Os the whole time. Suffer a little for your art!
That being said, there's an even more beloved young girl on the block, and her name is "Insurgent"... I mean, Beatrice. The movie's called Insurgent, and ... I'm just figuring all of this out my own damn self here. It's a series of books by Veronica Roth, the hot new Stepenie Meyer on the block. Well, give them bonus points for going public, unlike J. K. Simmons... I mean, Rowling. But when you've got a blockbuster like Harry Potter on your hands, apparently that's the risk you have to take. You can't risk alienating the potential boy readers if they find out an icky girl is writing their favourite books! Ewwwwwwwwww!!! That's been my big downfall in life; that kind of thing never mattered to me. Anyway, so my best friend in the whole world, the Internet, tells me that the series of books goes like this: Divergent, Insurgent and the big two parter finale: Allegent... I mean, Allegiant. HAH! Some writer Veronica is! Couldn't find a third word ending in "gent." How about "detergent," which is what you'll need after rolling around in that big pile of dirty, dirty money you're making. See, because in that commercial, when that person ate the wadded up dollar bill, they have to put up a warning. "Warning: money's actually quite filthy. Even the fresh stuff you just got from the bank; it's probably got trace amounts of cocaine and fecal matter on it. DO NOT PUT IN MOUTH."
All I know is, the filmmakers are lucky they didn't make this during the previous administration, because back then, all the White House had to do was come up with the title of "Enemy Combatant" for something, and it's off to Gitmo you go. Different era. If you remember the 2000s, you probably weren't in that White House!
Of course, looking at some of these IMDb photos of Veronica Roth, I can see that twinkle in her eye, much like Jennifer Jason Leigh's as she gazed upon Bridget Fonda in that one movie... Single White Female. (thought I was gonna have to look that up! Boy, that While We're Young is on to something) But that's the unfairness of the world. You have to pick one craft and specialize, and that takes time, and while Veronica wants desperately to play the role that Shailene Woodley gets all the credit for, she'll just have to resign herself to writing her dialogue instead, while Shailene swings around like Spider-Man far above the maddening crowd. Okay, maybe it's just one scene, but still... what the hell? Did you see the trailer? Yeah, I like Spider-Man as much as the next guy, but I don't grab a rope and try to fly around my own damn self! Because let's face it: movie star is kind of a craft, too. Sure, trashing hotel rooms and dating supermodels looks like fun, but it probably has its own unique flavour of boring after a while.
...where was I? Dang, that took longer than I thought. Meanwhile, Sean Penn's latest, The Gunman, debuts at a disappointing #4. Well, he wasn't expecting it to do that well, anyway. The director, on the other hand... The only other debut this week is the kind of thing I go to the A.V. Club for to read about how bad it is, and it's called Do You Believe? and it debuts at #6, but that's a six on the liberal Hollywood, reality-based scale. Now, in the Christian community, on the other hand... oh, it's #1 with a thorny crown! This is the kind of thing that bus trips are made for. You know, where all the elderly residents of someplace get forcibly shuttled to a church somewhere in Far From Water, Wyoming, and they all sing and praise Jesus, and then the movie starts on the screen set up in the giant tent. The old people who aren't already asleep look up at the screen and say "Isn't that Paul Sorvino's daughter? Wow, has her career taken a dive..." and then they fall asleep. Yes, poor Mira can speak seven different languages fluently; unfortunately, hit movies isn't one of them. But, like father, like daughter, I always say. Let's face it! Paul Sorvino was foundering before GoodFellas came along. Why, all you have to do is check out his IMDb Top 4! What's in there? Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter? I think not. And he was the star of that! Ray Liotta's the star of GoodFellas! Sorvino's just a bit player... nah, no one's going to respond to that, probably.
But Mira Sorvino's not the only fallen Hollywood star debasing themselves in Do You Believe? There's quite a Who's Who. There's Samwise Gamgee, Sean Astin, another child of Hollywood Nepotism. I don't understand his thinking either. Cybill Shepherd, Brian Bosworth, Lee Majors, sure. I can see that, but... Delroy Lindo? Really? Seriously? Oh, dude. Dude, what were you thinking? I'm sorry that Believe didn't become another J. J. Abrams TV mainstay, but did you really need to waste your time with this? Why not just take a little time off with your family or something? Anything? You'll be working with Tyler Perry soon enough!
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