Jonathan Demme and Stephen King teaming up for cool time trip

It seems like forever since I've seen a movie directed by Jonathan Demme, and even longer since I've seen anything that sprang from the over-active mind of Stephen King. I did, however, enjoy Demme's last movie, "Rachel Getting Married," quite a bit, and I have "Something Wild" just sitting in my Netflix streaming queue. And now also comes word that the director, who doesn't work nearly often enough, is teaming up with King for what should be a pretty epicly fun time trip.

Demme is attached to write and direct a feature film based on King's upcoming novel, "11/22/63," which as you can perhaps guess from the title is a science fiction work that centers on the assassination of JFK. Here's the official plot description from King's website:

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students — a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane — and insanely possible — mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life — a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Sounds like a movie trip well worth taking, so stay tuned for more on this as soon as I see it. And after that today, before a couple of videos, it's all about TV comedy, starting with a show that I was slow to pick up on, but have now become quite addicted to this summer: Psych.

Silly? Sure, but how could a show about psychic detectives be anything else? Luckily, thanks to stars James Roday and Dule Hill, it's also always fast and funny, and it wears its geek flag proudly, especially with the sublime "Twin Peaks" tribute episode "Dual Spires" (get it?), the last one I've managed to catch so far. And now comes word from USA that season six will premiere on Oct. 12 at 10 p.m. Bring it on already!

And in other potentially very funny TV news, Larry David's constant enabler and agent on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the great Jeff Garlin, has just signed a deal with ABC Studios to write, executive produce and star in a half-hour comedy. No word yet on just what it might be about, but with Kid in the Hall Bruce McCullough on board to co-write this, I'm still betting on something very funny.

Now on to a couple of videos to wrap up an admittedly short report so that I can get some housework done before going to see "The Help," starting with the second trailer I've seen for "50/50," one of the movies I'm definitely most looking forward to for this fall. As you'll see from the trailer, Reel Fanatic fave Joseph Gordon Levitt stars in the comedy of sorts based on Will Reiser's battle with cancer, and he's joined by Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick, who I'll watch in just about anything outside of the "Twilight" oeuvre. Enjoy the trailer, and keep an eye out for the movie on Sept. 30.

And finally today, I just bought the album "Watch the Throne" by Jay-Z and Kanye West, and though it's gonna take a little while to absorb all that ego, it sounds pretty epicly good so far. Below is the video for the first single, "Otis," which was apparently directed by Spike Jonze, though you really can't detect many signs of that. What is has, however, is a great sample of Otis' "Try a Little Tenderness" and, for some reason, Aziz Ansari failing pretty miserably at dancing. Enjoy, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend. Peace out.

A trip into Frank Darabont's often-magical "Mist"

For one of Stephen King's shortest works, it's amazing just how much "The Mist" manages to capture all of his strengths and faults in one glass, and what Frank Darabont does in mixing them up makes for one of the best horror movies I've seen in many years (which, given the state of horror flicks now, really isn't setting the bar all that high.)

Like with all of King's best works, "The Mist" starts with an extremely clever premise. I don't know about you, but few things scare me more than what happens to human beings when a few (or a lot of) snow flakes fall to the Earth. Setting "The Mist" in a grocery store with a crowd trapped inside by the mysterious cloud surrounding it perfectly sets up the neuroses that will quickly unfold.

And as is almost always the case with King, he then loads this up with very broadly drawn characters and a plot that stretches things almost too far but not quite, which is for me why he's been much more palatable in short bursts like the novella or the two-hour-or-so movie rather than a full novel.

Darabont's movie adaptation is at its strongest when the monsters that emerge from "The Mist" are off-screen, when Marcia Gay Harden slowly takes over the movie as the Bible-beater Mrs. Carmody. It's a stereotype that would have offended in lesser hands, but it's a delight to watch the trapped folks divide into factions behind her or the protagonist played by Thomas Jane, a commercial artist who's trapped in the store with his young son and is just begging for us to get behind him (which makes Darabont's tacked-on ending all the more sensational.)

And there's one moment before the mayhem is unleashed that is just good, old-fashioned horror flick fun. It comes as some of the creatures, which look like big mechanical bugs, start to land, one by one, on the store's window. I won't spoil it for you any further, but I guarantee you'll be smiling as Darabont uses sights and sounds to build up the suspense. Yes, that's right, suspense, the most noticeable omission from the gorefests that have posed as horror for years now.

Where the movie started to fall apart a bit for me was with the creatures themselves. I liked that their origin, though perhaps related to the military, was left appropriately murky. But they just looked way too robotic and phony to invoke any real terror, though I do confess I jumped a few inches out of my seat more than once.

Now, before I go, I'd like to discuss two things about "The Mist" - one I loved and one I hated - that will thoroughly spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, so please, please, please don't read any further if you haven't seen it yet (and if you're wavering, definitely do.) First is the aforementioned ending, which Darabont cooked up himself (which takes some huevos when you're working with such strong source material, I must say.) The moment when Jayne's David Drayton emerges from the car, even if Jayne overplays it more than a bit, is just the perfect twist that King or, back when he was in top form, M. Night Shyamalan, might have concocted. For a movie that is, at its best, all about the consequences of human decisions, seeing what happens to a character you thought all along was right is pretty darn devastating.

But Andre Braugher, once again, is desperately in need of a new agent. As I warned you, this is 100-percent spoiler material, so I'll just warn again, don't read this paragraph unless you've seen the movie already. What happens to Braugher's very poorly drawn character (basically, to put it as crudely as possible, "the dick"), goes way beyond the notion that the black guy is always the first (or one of the very first) to die in a horror movie. As Braugher led, and I'm not making this up, almost all the black people out of the store (with a "you people" thrown in just for good measure, I guess) and into the mist, I was still hoping they would somehow be redeemed rather than being the opening courses of monster chow. What in the world did Andre Braugher, easily one of my favorite actors, ever do to deserve this?

Even with this rather big beef, however, I can heartily endorse Frank Darabont's "The Mist" as a good, old-fashioned terror yarn, and recommend that everyone go see it along with Amy Adams' arrival to the big time (which I'll be taking in tomorrow.) Peace out.

Drinky Crow is go - for real!

Given that Adult Swim prides itself on living by, well, no rules whatsoever, the details about this are understandably sketchy, but it seems that Tony Millionaire's "Drinky Crow Show" has been given a full-season pickup.

Staying true to its vision of barely organized chaos, Adult Swim unveiled like 30 or so 15-minute pilots on one night last spring and then let viewers vote on the winner, and it seems Drinky Crow was by far the favorite.

Never heard of Tony Millionaire or Maakies? Well, if you can handle your humor extremely juvenile, more than occasionally peurile but also seriously funny, the Maakies comic strip is for you. The adventures of Uncle Gabby, Drinky Crow and the rest of the crew are linked among my favorite sites at right, but be warned, if you have any work to do today don't click on it, because you could easily spend the whole day reading the strips he has online.

Drinky Crow first appeared on TV in a series of rather poorly conceived shorts on "Saturday Night Live" a few years back, but now given new life by Millionaire and Eric Kaplan, he's back in much better condition. No word yet on when exactly more installments will begin appearing, but for proof of just how twistedly funny the pilot was, there's a 30-second glimpse at the end of the post.

And here, straight from the mouth of Eric Kaplan via the great Comics2Film site, is a potential plotline for a future episode that shows that, thankfully, this duo won't be growing up anytime soon:

EK: I'm working on one now where the idea is that Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby are driving their car, smashing into people, beating on people, just having this night of drunken revelry. Drinky Crow comes home and peaks in the window, because they lost their key so they have to climb in. And he sees his girlfriend in bed with an elephant seal who's going ‘Urgh Urgh Urgh Urgh.' Then Drinky Crow is in this bar and Uncle Gabby is trying to cheer him up saying ‘oh, she wasn't good enough for you.' Drinky Crow is like, are you kidding, she was much better than me. And he's like, yeah I guess you're right. So Uncle Gabby says, I know how to cheer you up, you need to get back in the saddle So he finds these two really homely old hags in the bar and he's like hey, would you mind if you buy me a drink. So he's hitting on these two ladies and Drinky Crow is like, oh that's too depressing, I can't do this. Uncle Gabby says, what you need to do is lower your standards. I have these things called beer goggles. They're beer-fueled mechanical contraptions that you put on your eye. Drinky Crow says fantastic, I'll just take out my eye-tearing-out-hooks and he tears out his eyes and puts this thing in and he looks at these two ladies and they look beautiful.

And, as promised, here's a clip from the pilot in which Uncle Gabby learns the perils of using whale blubber to flirt with the captain's daughter. Enjoy!



A glimpse into "The Mist"

I apologize if this is heavy on pics and clips today, but I have far too much work to do after a long holiday weekend, so have to make this as efficient as possible.

There are few partnerships in movies that work better than Frank Darabont and Stephen King, as I'm confident Darabont's upcoming "The Mist" will once again prove. As the trailer I've posted here shows, you get a big dose of Andre Braugher, which is always a good thing in my book. It looks like he may well be playing the traditional role of "the black guy" in horror movies, which means dying early, but it looks like even if that's so he should get some good screen time in first.



Some psychedelic visions of the "Universe"

I'm not sure why, but I just can't get too psyched for Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe," set for release Sept. 14. Though Taymor is a budding visual master, her narrative skills still leave something to be desired. If "Universe," her tribute to the Beatles and the '60s, is as hollow a shell as her "Titus," it's just gonna be a very pretty montage of music videos.

I am still hoping that I'm wrong, which has been known to happen at least a few times before. To get a taste of what she has cooked up, you can see a ton of stills from the flick at Ropeofsilicon, one of which I've pilfered and included here. Click on the link for 47 more or so.


The limits of good taste

I've found, in my fairly long time on this planet, that I get offended by very little. My only real test with comedy is that it be funny.

And it's in that spirit that I'm really looking forward to the hail of bullets that will be this weekend's "Shoot 'Em Up." The viral marketing for this silly little flick has been fun to take in, as this new site proves. Be warned: If you can't, under any circumstances, laugh about infants in peril, don't click on that link. I hope I'll never get too mature for that. Peace out.