Day: March 25, 2015

I’m attending this evening’s black-tie premiere of the second half of the final Mad Men season, which will debut on Sunday, April 5th. The first-anywhere showing of “Severance,” the first of the last seven episodes, will screen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with an outdoor “Black and Red Ball” to follow. The invitation says that “guests are encouraged to dress in garb inspired by the period show”…meaning what? One way or another I’m going to hunt down Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm during the after-party and ask them to defend their no-sideburns policy for Don Draper, which I’ve been complaining about for a while now.

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Excerpts from Get Hard review by Time‘s Richard Corliss: “The early reviews are in, and the verdict is nearly unanimous: [this] is a war crime of a movie. I’d been warned that this pairing of the 6′ 3″ Will Ferrell and the 5′ 4″ Kevin Hart was all about the fear of prison rape…gay sex [made] both explicit and terrifying. So during the first half-hour or so I was primed for a high atrocity factor. Primed and disappointed. One note I scribbled read, ‘Still waiting to hate this.’ An hour in, I realized to my shock that I was having a good time. Justin Chang of Variety would chalk this up to the ‘unexamined homophobia needed to fully enjoy Get Hard.’ But laughter trumps political fairness, and Get Hard made me laugh at, and with, situations I hadn’t thought could tickle me. The movie has a warm heart beating under its seemingly scabrous shell. [It’s] a modern gloss on the Dan Aykroyd–Eddie Murphy Trading Places: a little ruder and not quite as sharp, but in the ballpark of that 1983 comedy landmark. The adult audience for which Get Hard is designed should be able to get through it without gagging. You needn’t approve ethically of everything in a movie you enjoy. And by ‘you,’ I mean this reviewer. His last words, before he was hauled away by the critique police, were, ‘I kind of liked Get Hard.'”

This Alberto Belli parody spot (i.e., “What if Michael Bay Directed Girls?”) arrived this morning. The sender asked for reactions. “This is beyond dead-horse level. Michael Bay parodies peaked 15 years ago. No need for this. The culture has moved on.”

In an EW exclusive, Jesse Eisenberg‘s appearance as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder‘s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (WB, 3.25.16) has been revealed in a black-and-white portrait. Snyder to EW‘s Keith Staskiewiczs: “He’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure, other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course.”

Did Snyder need to even to offer this assurance? The fans know. Thanks Zack, for sticking to the plan, for honoring history, for doing what the ComicCon low-lifes want to see. Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, etc.

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Maggie (Lionsgate, 5.8) is about a loving dad (Arnold Schwarzenegger) trying to take care of his zombie daughter (Abigail Breslin). I don’t know anything but I’m betting that the most creative thing about this project was the initial pitch by screenwriter John Scott 3, and after that it was all downhill. It’s a little strange but in that brown beard Schwarzenegger has turned into this pale, crinkly-faced guy who’s starting to resemble Chuck Norris. And that’s not cool. For 38 years or since Pumping Iron Arnold has been his own guy with his own formidable vibe, and out of the blue he’s turning into Norris’s brother? I would have the wrinkles sanded off, have a little eye work done and lose the beard.

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On 3.7 I echoed Todd McCarthy’s prediction that George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Bros., 5.15) would open the 2015 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, 5.13. (I had heard Max was locked a few days earlier.) Now Deadline‘s Nancy Tartaglione is reporting it won’t be the opener but will screen out-of-competition on Thursday, 5.14.

Okay, fine…no big deal. Mad Max: Fury Road will almost certainly have been semi-liberally screened in New York, L.A. and Paris before that date, and most of the seen-it-alls and know-it-alls will have their reviews filed a few days earlier. (A friend knows an L.A. guy who’s already seen it.) I’ll be in Paris for four days and nights (5.8 thru 5.11) before Cannes, and it’s possible, I suppose, that, like they did with Godzilla and Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat last year, a big Parisian sneak will happen at the Rex or the Pathe Wepler in Place Clichy the weekend before (i.e., 5.8 or 5.9).

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