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Thursday Threes: The Answer

*kristYn from CALI*, come on DOWN! Long-time poster, first-time Threes winner! Now get to work on that construction-paper medal--you earned it!

Others guessing correctly for yesterday's Threes were: Chelsey and... um... that was it. We had a couple decent guesses (Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery), but for the correct answer, hike up your pants and get ready to Inviso-Text!

It was Liam Neeson, star of this weekend's new release Taken. Sorry to have to go obscure on you with the clues, but I always get a kick out of finding today's big stars hiding in the corners of yesterday's early-career gigs. So yes, Neeson was Gawain in the wacky, disjointed (and yet, really very effective) King Arthur film Excalibur, from John Boorman. (Hence the Connery confusion--Sean played the good king in First Knight.) (And trust me, you do not want to get me going on the Arthurian Legend--it was my absolute favorite subject  back when I taught high school English.) In The Dead Pool (that's where the Eastwood guess came in), Neeson was the amoral film director at the heart of the case Dirty Harry was investigating. (Extra trivia: A very young Jim Carrey played the hedonistic rock star.) And of course, in Next of Kin, Liam was the older, vengence-seeking brother of Patrick Swayze's hillbilly hero. (And if you ever want the absolute perfect Drive-In Movie DVD night, gather the gang and the booze and serve up Roadhouse, Next of Kin, and Point Break--let the Swayze Holy Trinity heal all your ills!)

It Pays to be Blunt

Like It Girls Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams before her, Emily Blunt is suddenly everywhere.

Now that she's proven her star power in The Devil Wears Prada, The Jane Austen Book Club, Charlie Wilson's War and Dan in Real Life (hello, Ruthie "Pigface" Draper!), Blunt has two major studios vying for her time this coming spring.  Marvel Entertainment wants her to play a Russian spy who doubles as the dangerous Black Widow in Iron Man 2, while Twentieth Century Fox intends to cast her as a Lilliputian princess in Gulliver's Travels.  The problem is that both films begin shooting at essentially the same time.  Fox currently has the upper hand, however, as part of her contract for The Devil Wears Prada included a clause that gave the studio rights to cast her in one of their future films.

So what is this belle of the ball to do?  Get "her people" to work it out so that she can take part in both projects, naturally.  Even though Emily would have to join Jack Black and Jason Segel in the UK in March for GT and then hop over to LA for Iron Man 2 less than a month later (with several trips back and forth afterward), it's looking likely that we'll be seeing Blunt in both sure-to-be blockbusters. In the meantime, she'll be gracing the silver screen with her presence in five (?!?) different films this year -- Sunshine Cleaners, The Young Victoria, The Great Buck Howard, Wild Target and The Wolf Man.  I'm getting tired just reading about her skyrocketing career.

On that note, how will her busy schedule affect her new relationship with John Krasinski (Leatherheads, The Office)?  After all, she broke up with her ex-boyfriend, crooner Michael Bublé, because they were never able to see each other.  If I were Krasinski and wanted to hold on to Miss Thang, I'd get ready to earn a ton of frequent flyer miles...

Puss in Boots Charms His Way to a Spin-Off

Would you look at that face?  It's easy to see how no one at DreamWorks could deny Puss in Boots his own movie.  Millions around the world adored him in Shrek 2, Shrek the Third and the TV movie Shrek the Halls, so now he's ready to take over the spotlight in Puss in Boots: The Story of an Ogre Killer.

Seeing as how Shrek Goes Fourth isn't scheduled to hit theaters until May 2010, I can only assume that PiB won't be released for at least a year after that.  Otherwise they wouldn't be able to milk as much money out of the multibillion dollar franchise, right?

If you can't wait 1.5 years for your next Shrek fix, however, remember that you could always go see the Broadway musical in the meantime.  But wait a second, Puss in Boots isn't even in that production!  (If the show ends up closing down, I think we will all know the reason: Puss is the real talent in the kingdom of Far, Far Away.)

New in Town

New in Town stars Reneé Zellweger as a hardened veteran of the corporate trenches who's sent from HQ in Miami to New Ulm, Minnesota to lay off half the staff and re-tool the plant. It's a romantic comedy that's neither especially romantic nor comedic; it finishes exactly as you'd expect, with Zellweger learning a lesson from the plucky New Ulm-ites and finding love with hunky labor leader Harry Connick Jr. while, at the same time, saving the entire plant with hard work and know-how.

And I don't feel a need to say "Spoiler alert!" about that recap anymore than you'd warn someone "You're going to fall down!" if they jumped off a building. Romantic comedies these days seem to be made with a formula as mathematical and exacting and soulless as the equations of gravity: One fish, a new location out of aforementioned fish's water, a suitably dignified love interest -- preferably widowed -- and a surrounding cast of wacky characters lining the approach to the finale like trees on the side of the fairway at a golf course, and about as naturally and subtly.

The fact is that everyone in New in Town is good. Connick's grown into a rascally charm, and he's more and more willing to look silly as he gets older. (I can't quite explain it, but there's a physical comedy bit with Connick, a bowl, a remote control and some bad timing that's the funniest thing in New in Town.) And Zellweger's a fine actress, but the problem is that fine actresses don't get jobs these days unless their names rhyme with 'Schmeryl Schmeep"; New in Town feels like an attempt to reinvent Zellweger as a comedic movie star, backed by people who think having Zellweger fall down, fall over or fall backwards is the funniest thing in the history of comedy itself.

Narnia Fans, Prepare to Set Sail in 2010

Remember when things weren't looking too good for poor old Prince Caspian?  At the end of December, Disney backed out of financing the rest of the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia adaptations, and therefore the third film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, looked dead in the water (pun intended). 

Until today.  Twentieth Century Fox has agreed to work with Walden Media to dole out the big bucks (we're talking $140 million) for the next installment of the franchise -- but that's all they'd commit to.  There's a Christmas 2010 target release date for Dawn Treader, and I think it's safe to say that if it isn't a blockbuster, we won't be seeing the wondrous world of Narnia on the big screen again for a long, long time -- if ever. 

Are you listening, Aslan?  You better use your magical powers to bring people to the theater two years from now!

Your Thursday Threes

If you're new to the Threes, on Thursdays we give you three films and you tell us, in the comments, what actor was in all three.

And if you are first to answer correctly? You go home with a brand-new construction-paper medal you can proudly wear for all to see. Actually, you have to go home and make the medal yourself, but the glory is still real.

So what actor was in all three of these films?

Excalibur

The Dead Pool

Next of Kin

Into the Wasteland: The Fourth Weekend of February

We are officially halfway through our coverage of the Wasteland months!  (Or perhaps we should be crying, "Good God! We're only halfway through our coverage of the Wasteland months?!?") 

(SCHEDULING NOTE: If you were looking for Sarah Michelle Geller's "my brother-in-law/my-husband" thriller Possession in theaters last weekend--January 23--you came up empty. It has been moved off the release calendar and not yet rescheduled. One of the many pitfalls of the Wasteland!)

You can see all the previous Wasteland entries here. Today, we turn our attention to the final weekend of February:

February 27

Assassination of a High School President -- High school student and wannabe detective Bobby Funke (Reece Thompson, Rocket Science) teams up with "the hot girl" in class (Mischa Barton, The O.C.) to solve a mystery involving stolen SAT tests.  Bruce Willis is also along for the ride as the school's principal.  This is the first feature film from music video director Brett Simon.

Erika says: Hot on the heels of Fired Up and Youth in Revolt comes yet another film set in high school... but guess what? I'm totally excited for this one. I've heard nothing but exuberant praise for AoaHSP since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival over a year ago. Sure, I still have my doubts because Mischa Barton is in it, and she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag in The O.C.  But everything I've read said that Reece Thompson's performance as Bobby Funke is so brilliant that it will win over even the most stubborn of cynics. Might AoaHSP be this generation's darker, smarter Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

Locke says: Ditto everything Erika just said. Is that enough? No? Okay, lemme just add that I'm a huge fan of the "smart, savvy, well-written" high-school film, the most recent examples of which include the amazing hard-boiled noir Brick and the uneven-but-charming Charlie Bartlett. And yes, the "Hughes" word is being bandied about a lot in connection with AoaHSP. The catch is these days (post-Hughes) this kind of small gem rarely does big business. (Mean Girls is an exception.) This one may not be as easy a box-office winner as something like Fired Up (though we can always hope for a surprise breakout), but I'm betting it has DVD-cult-hit written all over it.

More end of February Wasteland wandering after the jump...

It's Like That... and That's the Way It Is

If Notorious didn't quench your thirst for rapper biopics, then get ready for Tougher Than Leather.  This time, Run-DMC gets the big screen treatment in an adaptation of Bill Adler's biography of the same name. For all you youngsters out there, Run-DMC (who will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this April) is the trio that many credit with bringing hip-hop to the masses in the '80s.  I still vividly remember watching Steven Tyler bust through the wall in the video for the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration, "Walk This Way."   Those were the days.

Tougher Than Leather will cover the group's rise to fame and the lives of Run, DMC and Jam-Master Jay, who was killed in his recording studio in 2002.  Cheo Hodari Coker, the screenwriter for Notorious, is tied on to the Run-DMC project as well. 

I'm calling it right now... If the film is even remotely successful, there will be a huge uptick in the sale of Adidas... 

Begone, Bad Memories!

If, like me, you were thoroughly disappointed with last summer's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might want to check out the trailer below for a new Indiana Jones video game.  It will help heal the wounds left by the termite attacks, jungle vine swings and Shia LaBeouf's awful hairdo.

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings will be available in the spring for the Nintendo Wii (prepare for a workout!) and a few other platforms. I think it looks pretty impressive, and for a few seconds there I got my hopes up that perhaps our beloved adventurer will be able to redeem himself and go out in style via this game.  Then I remembered the buzz about Indiana Jones 5. Grrrrr.

Lakeview Terrace

Lakeview Terrace, starring Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington as a young couple who move in next door to Samuel L. Jackson's older, lonely L.A.P.D. patrolman, looks like a fairly generic thriller -- a revamp of the Kurt Russell-Ray Liotta 1992 thriller Unlawful Entry, where Liotta's psycho-cop gets obsessed with Russell and wife Madeline Stowe. Cop, neighbor, bad, good, yawn, stretch; been there, done that.

Except, as you watch Lakeview Terrace, you realize that there's something much more interesting than just good neighbor-bad cop going on in the film; watching Wilson and Washingon, you realize that this seemingly trivial thriller is actually willing to talk about interracial marriage and the challenges of marriage, about money, about power -- all while delivering real suspense and scary jolts. Watching Jackson, you realize that he's not just turning in another of his slack shouting-and-swearing performances but delivering a real, fine performance. Director Neil LaBute (who previously made knockout dramas like In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things) seemed like an unusual choice for a movie as seemingly ordinary as Lakeview Terrace ... until you watch it and realize it's anything but ordinary.