There’s a good reason Sandra Bullock took the title of “Queen of the Romantic Comedy” away from Meg Ryan in the middle of the 1990s. Bullock projects a naturally awkward adorableness which makes the audience feel very protective of her: we empathize with her romantic plight and we want her to succeed because she obviously deserves the attention she’s so desperately craving.
Shane Black, who wrote and directed the neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, loves to throw together characters who really shouldn’t become friends but do exactly that — usually in spite of their better instincts. Take two characters with very little in common, stick them in circumstances which continue to throw them together when they’d rather be apart, and watch the fireworks pop and burgeoning bromance grow.
More than once I’ve casually known — or even just known of — people (friends of friends, usually) who have made me think “That’s someone I need to be friends with.” Usually it’s a realization that we have similar interests, sometimes it’s a touch of envy because that person is already doing something I want [...]
Man, Trey Parker has got no love for Michael Bay. Not only is Team America: World Police constructed as a brutal satire of the lamebrained explody Bay oeuvre (Transformers and the trainwreck Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Bad Boys flicks, The Rock, Armageddon), he even has a song in the movie devoted entirely [...]
At some point during the last few years–I think quite likely it was during the making of Charlie’s Angels, if not earlier–Bill Murray decided it was time for him to put away his trademarked schtick for awhile and do some actual acting. Oh, he’d tried doing the dramatic stuff early in his career, of [...]