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It's like a scary ghost story. Only with more farting.
Over the years, Marlon Wayans has become a bit of an enigma as an actor. Starting out on the sketch comedy show In Living Color and subsequent sitcom The Wayans Bros., Wayans soon made the natural transition to movie parodies like 1996's Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and co-writing and starring in the first two of the Scary Movie franchise. However, sprinkled amongst missteps like G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra and Dungeons & Dragons, Wayans has shown he can actually act in movies like Requiem For a Dream and The Ladykillers and was even attached to play Richard Pryor in a long-gestating biopic. Yet, Wayans continues to help put movies like Dance Flick into existence.
The conundrum continues. Wayans is back with his latest parody, A Haunted House, which takes aim at the Paranormal Activity movies as well as The Devil Inside. The first trailer shows off not-so-subtle jokes about homosexuality, farts, and getting high, so pretty much what you'd expect from Wayans, only, considering the movie will be rated R, perhaps the final product will offer more than the initial trailer. Cedric the Entertainer (Barbershop), David Koechner (Anchorman) and Nick Swardson (30 Minutes or Less) co-star.
these trailers are a gas!Saturdays 10:00a ET / 7:00a PT
watch the trailer >> Posted 10.20.12 by Ryan -
Now that Paramount has finally chosen Justin Bieber: Never Say Never director Jon Chu to helm the sequel to 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, bringing back the cast was the next logical step. However, Rachel Nichols, who played Scarlett in Rise of the Cobra revealed on her Twitter last night (via SlashFilm) that only a few characters would return for the sequel.
who's coming back? >> Posted 03.04.11 by Ryan -
ReelzChannel Celebrity Rundown
Is Hilary Swank the female Cuba Gooding Jr.? The two-time Oscar-winning actress's Amelia bombed at the box office, as did her most recent pic Conviction. Now The Resident, a thriller starring Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is headed straight to video in March.
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Reports are that Camille Grammer is not returning for a second season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Is it because Kelsey made her do it? Or because her porn star past has been revealed? In the '90s Camille Donatacci bared it all in Marilyn Chambers' Bedtime Stories and The Naked Detective, but her career never took off as porn consumers described her as "having an average body and looks and too-large boobs."
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If reality TV doesn't work out for Jersey Shore's Deena Nicole Cortese, porn — or at least the pole — might be a career path as she stripped off her her bikini bottoms for The Situation on last night's premiere of the hit show, then later claimed "I had no idea my bottom came off." In the same interview she said, "I make out with anything when I'm drunk."
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We're not sure the Deena Cortese stripping incident is related, but Dr. Drew Pinsky is preparing to leave MTV and focus solely on his new talk show, premiering on CNN's Headline News channel in March. He told The New York Post he'd like to have Linday Lohan as a guest, saying, "I want to talk about what's really going on with a woman who's suffering like that."
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Yesterday was a bad day for the Wayans family. First Keenen Ivory Wayans was the latest victim of a death hoax, then brother Marlon Wayans cut his finger during a dance-off to a Jay-Z tune and wondered aloud on Twitter how he was going to wipe his a**.
Posted 01.07.11 by reelz -
When it was announced that Marlon Wayans was going to play Richard Pryor in the upcoming biopic Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?, the youngest of the Wayans clan told the Los Angeles Times that he wasn't surprised to find a healthy amount of Internet skepticism about the casting.
Look, I want to be able to make the stupidest movies ever, because they make people laugh and they make money. But that's not all I want to do. And I think I've proven to some people — the ones paying attention — that I can do more. Everybody else, well, they can wait and see and make up their mind.
While Wayans has proved he's capable of performing in dramas like Requiem For a Dream and being seriously funny in The Ladykillers, the actor who's been in Razzie-nominated movies like Little Man, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and White Chicks had to beat out contender Eddie Murphy for the role. Murphy's publicist said that Murphy left the project due to "differences on the creative front" but has "given his blessing for Marlon to do it." Producer Mark Gordon confirmed that there "were discussions" with Murphy for the role, but that Wayans the "clear choice" for the part after watching a 13-minute audition where Wayans supposedly "transformed into Pryor."
Gordon admitted that "sometimes actors chase roles, more often producers and directors chase stars, but in this case we chased each other, and that's a very exciting place for us to start off on." As much as Wayans wanted the role, he admits the part will be a huge challenge.
This is like an invitation to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro for me, and I've never been more excited in my life than when I got the role. I want to be in dramas, I want to produce, I want to write and I want to prove I can handle a role such as this one. You need to be lucky in life, but it's also what you do with your luck. I'm ready.
Is It Something I Said? will be directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) and produced by Chris Rock and Pryor's widow Jennifer Lee Pryor. Gordon described the project as "a celebration of Pryor's life" that will show both "the light and the darkness" of Pryor's career. The movie will be released some time next year, and begins production this fall.
Posted 02.24.10 by Ryan -
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was recently nominated for 6 Razzie awards, which are the flipside of the Academy Awards and celebrate the worst movies of the year. G.I. Joe was second in nominations only to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Land of the Lost, which led with 7 total nominations apiece. When New York Magazine asked G.I. Joe star Channing Tatum his feelings about the Razzie awards, Tatum's reaction was an odd sort of pride.
Whoa. Cool. Did G.I. Joe win any? Was I nominated for Worst Actor?
Tatum was not nominated, however, his co-stars, Sienna Miller and Marlon Wayans were both nominated for Supporting Actress and Actor Razzies respectively. Tatum doesn't think that Wayans will be crushed by the nomination.
Marlon's Razzie for Little Man is his most prized trophy. I kid you not. He's probably thrilled. Besides, when you do a movie like [G.I. Joe], you aren't trying to break any ground. You just want kids and grown-ups who remember the cartoon to go see it, love it, and have a good time watching shit get blown up. And we did good business anyway. There is talk of a sequel. I know they hired a writer, so I'm crossing fingers.
In fact two screenwriters have been hired — Zombieland's Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were recently tasked with writing the sequel.
Posted 02.08.10 by Ryan -
Entertaiment Weekly is reporting that Marlon Wayans is already in negotiations to star as comedy legend Richard Pryor in the upcoming biopic Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?
Part of the well-established Wayans Brothers clan, which helped pioneer In Living Color and several hit comedies in the early to mid '90s, Marlon Wayans showed his range by dropping a highly memorable performance as a Coney Island junkie in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000).
If we didn't have that performance to judge from, we might think the idea of him portraying Pryor is a big mistake, since he's also written and starred in several forgettable Scary Movie installments.
But according to the EW post, Wayans fought hard for the chance to audition for the role, and he then wowed producers with a 13-minute audition in which he "transforms into Pryor."
Apparently, Eddie Murphy was once attached to this project, but had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts. This seems fortunate, because Wayans seems like a better fit. We think audience's familiarity with Murphy's distinct comedic identity would make it difficult for him to pull off a convincing performance.
The project is being helmed by Bill Condon, who also directed Dreamgirls, Kinsey, and Gods and Monsters. Chris Rock is producing along with Pryor's widow, Jennifer Lee Pryor. No official casting decisions or release dates have been announced.
In the meantime, check out this clip of Pryor talking about kids telling lies (one of the few profanity-free clips of Pryor we could find).
Posted 10.08.09 by reelz -
An interview io9 had with Marlon Wayans revealed that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra wasn't the first comic book movie Wayans has been involved in, just the first one he was able to complete. Back in 1992, Wayans was cast as Robin for the sequel to Batman, only he was never used:
I was actually supposed to play Robin, in Batman Returns, about 15 years ago. But there was too many characters. I was cast, I was paid and everything. I still get residual checks. Tim Burton didn't wind up doing three, Joel Schumacher did it and he had a different vision for who Robin was. So he hired Chris O' Donnell.
Not that Wayans is at all bitter about it:
No, look — I get why they picked Chris O' Donnell, because it would be messed up to have Batman and you've got Robin, and his bulge is somewhat bigger than Batman's. Batman would have a serious problem with that.
Take that, O'Donnell! Little Man just owned you! In all seriousness, avoiding playing Robin, and eventually taking part in the embarrassing Batman And Robin, is a positive move, even for the guy from White Chicks.
Posted 08.06.09 by Ryan -
Reaction to the myriad of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra trailers released so far could be described as either excited or fearful. Early critical reviews have been supportive, and the below trailer capitalizes off of it, specifically using a review from Harry Knowles at AICN and some new footage to highlight the movie.
Even the cynics would have to agree that G.I. Joe poses a tricky adaptation, considering the wealth of back story that several comics books and a TV show have created. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says those difficulties just needed to be simplified.
There are 32 Joes in the comic book, and you couldn't make a movie with 32 characters. So the first challenge is to whittle down the number of characters to where you could do an effective job at portraying them — in my experience that's somewhere between six and ten. Second, when you choose your characters and the relationships between them are so extensive, you have to really think about the evolution of these relationships through the movie and the plot has to then serve those.
So far audiences really like the fact that we spent a lot of time with all these characters and they've given us a good pat on the back for it.
The latest clip of the movie highlights some of the character interaction that di Bonaventura mentioned, but also could be an example of why some fans are leery of the movie with its forced banter between Marlon Wayans and Rachel Nichols:
One small clip can't be indicative of the whole movie, and as LatinoReview points out in their latest review, the movie is called G.I. Joe, so audiences should expect some of the dialogue "is going to be corny." With clips like this one, fans should take comfort in director Stephen Sommers's explanation of the Paris chase sequence, which makes the movie look like it is in assured hands and capable of being a fun and satisfying summer blockbuster.
Posted 07.31.09 by Ryan -
The extended Paris-attack sequence from G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, which shows Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) trying to stop the Baroness (Sienna Miller) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) from destroying a beloved Parisian landmark, premiered before the MTV Movie Awards. Tatum and Wayans show off their "accelerator suits" -- originally introduced in the first G.I. Joe trailer -- and give the Joes amazing, superhuman abilities. Love them or hate them, the suits can be seen in all their CG-glory below:
Posted 05.31.09 by Ryan -
Rumor has it that the second official trailer for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be shown before the new Star Trek movie coming out this Friday, but we found this French trailer over at MovieWeb.
Since an early version of the first trailer was universally panned, fans of the action-figure/cartoon property have been a little worried that this movie might suck. But after watching this newest preview, we think it might actually turn out to be a fun militaristic romp.
Go Joe!
Posted 05.01.09 by reelz