Adam Sandler to star in "Candy Land: The Movie." Yes, this is something that's happening.

At this point, it's not even possible to come up with "joke" versions of these things - it's like there's no light left between "actual movie pitch" and "Robot Chicken sketch pitch" anymore. But yeah, Adam Sandler will star in a feature film version of the "Candy Land" board game.

The "interesting" thing, relatively speaking, is that Sandler pal Robert Smigel - late of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and "TV Funhouse - is coming along to do the script. He's a real talent... but I can't really see his general sense of humor (or Sandler's, for that matter) matching well with what Hasbro clearly will want to be a kid-friendly franchise-starter.

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A Commercial For A Commercial For "The Avengers"

Yup. Marvel has released a preview of their "Avengers" Super Bowl ad, which gives us a brief glimpse of (maybe?) bad guy flying-machines (the main one is still Loki on some kind of jet-bike, though) and The Hulk:

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Big Picture: "Oscars: The Grouse"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Oscars: The Grouse

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Is "The FP" The Next Great Movie About Video-Games?

From Devin at BAD I learn that said BAD's partner/overlord, Drafthouse Films, has picked up distribution rights to the SXSW-buzzed oddity "The FP;" which I'd previously heard spoken of as "the next 'Six String Samurai.'" The basic pitch is a send-up the "such-and-such-familiar-game-BUT-AS-A-GLADATORIAL-BLOODSPORT!!!" genre and the late-80s/early-90s punk-rock-post-nuke aesthetic that often accompanied it, the comic hook being that the rival clans of The FP settle their issues in winner-take-all deathmatches of... "Dance Dance Revolution" (Here called "Beat Beat Revolution.")

Yup. Drafthouse has announced a limited theatrical-release on March 16th of this year. This is real. Here's a (NSFW) trailer.

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Somehow Innevitable

You will be unsurprised to learn that the emerging "modernized fairytale" trend has inspired someone to reboot the Linda Hamilton/Ron Perleman "Beauty & The Beast" series as what sounds an awful lot like "Castle-but-with-a-sorta-wolfman"; but Moviehole's report on the pilot script adds an "are you kidding me!?" detail: the "new" Beast is a guy who got transformed into (more or less) a half-animal version of Captain America... by 9-11.

Yeah, I know. Ten years, Bin Laden is dead, but still... yikes.

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Not The Movie We Want; But The Movie We Need

Hat-tip BAD

Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait has only directed a handful of films, but they're all pretty damn great - pitch-black yet somehow not "gratuitous" stuff that cuts straight to the bone in ways few other comedies would dare. Example: "Sleeping Dogs Lie" starts out as a movie (partially) about bestiality and winds up as possibly the most honest romantic-comedy ever concieved (it's moral: Want a healthy relationship? LIE.)

The word on his newest feature, "God Bless America," has been that it's dark stuff "even for Bobcat;" a bastard lovechild of "Super" and "Idiocracy" by way of "Falling Down" for the Fox News era. The premise? A suicidal everyman has an epiphany: Why kill himself when it's everyone else - particularly reality TV stars, cell-phone addicts, religious nuts and "American Idol" - who're the problem? What follows is either a trailer for the most incendiary movie anyone has attempted in years... or a direct-feed from the inside of MY mind at any given moment:



Holy. Shit.

Yeah. CANNOT WAIT for this one.

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Escape to The Movies: "The Grey"

Go see it. Now.

"Intermission" finishes the convention-rundown.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Grey

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