'Our Idiot Brother': The Reviews Are In!
Paul Rudd, in the title role, walks away with much of the critics' praise in this ensemble comedy.
By Terri Schwartz
Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks in "Our Idiot Brother"
Photo: Big Beach Films
Even with strong performances from the ensemble cast in "Our Idiot Brother," the Sundance darling is being heralded as Paul Rudd's movie. Reviews for the comedy, which opened on Friday (August 25), are heralding Rudd's turn as one of the best of his career. And although the response has been generally positive, critics did take issue with some of the other idiotic parts of the movie.
Some found the script's approach to the characters too formulaic: Rudd's character might be an idiot, but he is actually a commendable guy when compared to his three jaded sisters, his hippie ex-girlfriend and his wine-drinking mother. Others thought the movie was a bit unconvincing despite its well-meaning message. Still, the jump from "My Idiot Brother" at Sundance to "Our Idiot Brother" in wide-release seems to imply a more inclusive element to the film that resounded with critics.
So will "Our Idiot Brother" charm you? Here's what the critics had to say:
The Idiot Brother
"Though the ensemble cast is uniformly strong, this is Rudd's film. His inherent likability and genial manner are ideal for the character. He plays laid-back especially well. (His aging surfer dude in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' was a variation on Ned.) Watching Rudd bring dimension to what could have been a clownish caricature is the best reason to see this good-natured family comedy. 'Our Idiot Brother' is as irresistible and easy to love as a golden retriever." — Claudia Puig, USA Today
The Characters
"Peeking out from a curtain of shaggy hair and a beard, Rudd invests Ned with every ounce of the effusive, natural warmth that has become his trademark. And like so many movies in his career, he makes Our Idiot Brother much more tolerable than it deserves to be. Screenwriters Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall play up Ned's innocence by making his sisters thoroughly unappealing: Emily Mortimer plays a dowdy, sad-sack hausfrau married to a pompous documentarian (played with withering contempt by Steve Coogan); Elizabeth Banks flails in a misguided brunet pageboy as a ruthless Vanity Fair reporter; and Zooey Deschanel lends spaced-out self-absorption to a lesbian tempted by a similarly navel-gazing male artist." — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
The Script
"You want to laugh at this, except the movie is forcing you to do so. Adultery and dysfunction are cute problems. Deschanel's character shares a loft with her girlfriend (Rashida Jones, underutilized again and still the best thing here) and a gang of bohemians who don't get up to anything interesting. Though Deschanel's compulsion to play another Quirky Performance Artist is satisfied. Banks (shrill careerist) and Mortimer (neurotic wimp) conform to type, too. Ned makes their relationships harder than they already appear to be. He's a gimmick, and yet without him the movie is just Hanna-Barbera and Her Sisters. Either way, it's all emotionally counterfeit, and that bogusness infects the comedy." — Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe
The Direction
"Efficiently directed by Jesse Peretz, (Ms. Peretz's brother, evidently quite capable), Our Idiot Brother is a thin, unconvincing movie made likable by the charm and skill of its cast and by a script (by Ms. Peretz and her husband, David Schisgall) peppered with wit and insight. ... A handful of scenes — a visit to a cultish self-help seminar, a family game of charades with Mom (Shirley Knight), a profile interview gone off the rails — are sharp, funny and surprising. But the filmmakers mostly look for humor in obvious, picked-over places. Can we please have a moratorium on private-school interviews? Like yoga classes (which this movie blessedly leaves alone), they are hard in real life and suspiciously easy in movies." — A.O. Scott, The New York Times
The Final Word
" My Idiot Brother might have made Ned more of a symbol and less of a person. Where the filmmakers, and Mr. Rudd, go right is making him such a round and sympathetic figure, rather than the desperate, pathetic and/or slapstick character he might have been in different hands. Our Idiot Brother — not My or Your or Their idiot brother — is goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect." — John Anderson, The Wall Street Journal
Check out everything we've got on "Our Idiot Brother."
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669773/our-idiot-brother-paul-rudd.jhtml
Mia Kirshner Mía Maestro Michael Michele Michelle Behennah Michelle Branch
'Our Idiot Brother': The Reviews Are In!
Paul Rudd, in the title role, walks away with much of the critics' praise in this ensemble comedy.
By Terri Schwartz
Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks in "Our Idiot Brother"
Photo: Big Beach Films
Even with strong performances from the ensemble cast in "Our Idiot Brother," the Sundance darling is being heralded as Paul Rudd's movie. Reviews for the comedy, which opened on Friday (August 25), are heralding Rudd's turn as one of the best of his career. And although the response has been generally positive, critics did take issue with some of the other idiotic parts of the movie.
Some found the script's approach to the characters too formulaic: Rudd's character might be an idiot, but he is actually a commendable guy when compared to his three jaded sisters, his hippie ex-girlfriend and his wine-drinking mother. Others thought the movie was a bit unconvincing despite its well-meaning message. Still, the jump from "My Idiot Brother" at Sundance to "Our Idiot Brother" in wide-release seems to imply a more inclusive element to the film that resounded with critics.
So will "Our Idiot Brother" charm you? Here's what the critics had to say:
The Idiot Brother
"Though the ensemble cast is uniformly strong, this is Rudd's film. His inherent likability and genial manner are ideal for the character. He plays laid-back especially well. (His aging surfer dude in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' was a variation on Ned.) Watching Rudd bring dimension to what could have been a clownish caricature is the best reason to see this good-natured family comedy. 'Our Idiot Brother' is as irresistible and easy to love as a golden retriever." — Claudia Puig, USA Today
The Characters
"Peeking out from a curtain of shaggy hair and a beard, Rudd invests Ned with every ounce of the effusive, natural warmth that has become his trademark. And like so many movies in his career, he makes Our Idiot Brother much more tolerable than it deserves to be. Screenwriters Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall play up Ned's innocence by making his sisters thoroughly unappealing: Emily Mortimer plays a dowdy, sad-sack hausfrau married to a pompous documentarian (played with withering contempt by Steve Coogan); Elizabeth Banks flails in a misguided brunet pageboy as a ruthless Vanity Fair reporter; and Zooey Deschanel lends spaced-out self-absorption to a lesbian tempted by a similarly navel-gazing male artist." — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
The Script
"You want to laugh at this, except the movie is forcing you to do so. Adultery and dysfunction are cute problems. Deschanel's character shares a loft with her girlfriend (Rashida Jones, underutilized again and still the best thing here) and a gang of bohemians who don't get up to anything interesting. Though Deschanel's compulsion to play another Quirky Performance Artist is satisfied. Banks (shrill careerist) and Mortimer (neurotic wimp) conform to type, too. Ned makes their relationships harder than they already appear to be. He's a gimmick, and yet without him the movie is just Hanna-Barbera and Her Sisters. Either way, it's all emotionally counterfeit, and that bogusness infects the comedy." — Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe
The Direction
"Efficiently directed by Jesse Peretz, (Ms. Peretz's brother, evidently quite capable), Our Idiot Brother is a thin, unconvincing movie made likable by the charm and skill of its cast and by a script (by Ms. Peretz and her husband, David Schisgall) peppered with wit and insight. ... A handful of scenes — a visit to a cultish self-help seminar, a family game of charades with Mom (Shirley Knight), a profile interview gone off the rails — are sharp, funny and surprising. But the filmmakers mostly look for humor in obvious, picked-over places. Can we please have a moratorium on private-school interviews? Like yoga classes (which this movie blessedly leaves alone), they are hard in real life and suspiciously easy in movies." — A.O. Scott, The New York Times
The Final Word
" My Idiot Brother might have made Ned more of a symbol and less of a person. Where the filmmakers, and Mr. Rudd, go right is making him such a round and sympathetic figure, rather than the desperate, pathetic and/or slapstick character he might have been in different hands. Our Idiot Brother — not My or Your or Their idiot brother — is goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect." — John Anderson, The Wall Street Journal
Check out everything we've got on "Our Idiot Brother."
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669773/our-idiot-brother-paul-rudd.jhtml
Mia Kirshner Mía Maestro Michael Michele Michelle Behennah Michelle Branch
Sebastian Bach's Home Flooded By Hurricane Irene
Death toll from weekend's storm rises to 40, as flooding continues in some East Coast states.
By Gil Kaufman
Sebastian Bach's New Jersey home after Hurricane Irene
Photo: FilmMagic
With the death toll from Hurricane Irene rising to 40, five million homes in the dark as of Monday and towns up and down the East Coast still struggling to hold back floodwaters, the cleanup from the storm is expected to take weeks, if not months.
One of the people who will have to put the pieces back together is Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach, whose New Jersey home was destroyed by flooding from the hurricane. The 43-year-old hair-metal vocalist lamented the loss in a lengthy Facebook post, in which he said that not only was the dwelling destroyed, but also that the storm had taken away some one-of-a-kind rock artifacts.
"I am numb, in shock, & devastated to report that my home of 21 years, my house featured on 'MTV Cribs,' has been destroyed, condemned, & deemed uninhabitable due to the extreme flooding courtesy of Hurricane Irene," Bach wrote. "In the 2 decades I have lived in this home, there has never been a single drop of water in the basement or anywhere else in the structure. Now Irene has overflowed the reservoir adjacent to my house. The surging waters have snapped the bridge in half next to my house & sent the bridge straight into my garage, knocking the house off of its foundation."
Bach said he was told he could not pump the water out due to fears of electrocution. Among the "irreplaceable" items lost: KISS Gargoyles from the 1979 tour, a KISS pinball machine, Skid Row master tapes, master tapes from Oh Say Can You Scream and "boxes & boxes" of original Skid Row memorabilia, from the band's first tour to their most recent, which Bach said no one else had.
"I had a library in the basement with every single magazine that had Skid Row on the cover," he lamented. "This library took up a big part of the basement. All of this is lost now. We will salvage what we can of course. But how I wish there was a reason to do a box set or something before Hurricane Irene hit. Nobody cared. Now it's too late. Don't know what you got till it's gone, indeed."
Some of his other treasures, such as his father's artwork — including a 16-foot-tall mural from the band's Slave to the Grind album — were safe after being moved upstairs, but Bach said he hasn't been allowed back in the house yet to assess the damage because the foundation had "crumbled" and the structure could collapse at any time.
"This has really taught me that the best things in life are indeed 'free,' " he concluded. "What makes me happy is that my children & ex wife are safe. My dad's art is unharmed. No one got hurt. My scrapbooks of memories of my life are dry & safe."
And, after 25 years of calling New Jersey home, Bach said he's packing it in and permanently moving West. "I will always love New Jersey, but now there is literally nothing left for me here except memories of a past life," he said. "Hello, Los Angeles. Hello, New Life. Here I am. It's time for a new start. Like I have a choice."
Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669962/sebastian-bach-home-flood-hurricane-irene.jhtml
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Sebastian Bach's Home Flooded By Hurricane Irene
Death toll from weekend's storm rises to 40, as flooding continues in some East Coast states.
By Gil Kaufman
Sebastian Bach's New Jersey home after Hurricane Irene
Photo: FilmMagic
With the death toll from Hurricane Irene rising to 40, five million homes in the dark as of Monday and towns up and down the East Coast still struggling to hold back floodwaters, the cleanup from the storm is expected to take weeks, if not months.
One of the people who will have to put the pieces back together is Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach, whose New Jersey home was destroyed by flooding from the hurricane. The 43-year-old hair-metal vocalist lamented the loss in a lengthy Facebook post, in which he said that not only was the dwelling destroyed, but also that the storm had taken away some one-of-a-kind rock artifacts.
"I am numb, in shock, & devastated to report that my home of 21 years, my house featured on 'MTV Cribs,' has been destroyed, condemned, & deemed uninhabitable due to the extreme flooding courtesy of Hurricane Irene," Bach wrote. "In the 2 decades I have lived in this home, there has never been a single drop of water in the basement or anywhere else in the structure. Now Irene has overflowed the reservoir adjacent to my house. The surging waters have snapped the bridge in half next to my house & sent the bridge straight into my garage, knocking the house off of its foundation."
Bach said he was told he could not pump the water out due to fears of electrocution. Among the "irreplaceable" items lost: KISS Gargoyles from the 1979 tour, a KISS pinball machine, Skid Row master tapes, master tapes from Oh Say Can You Scream and "boxes & boxes" of original Skid Row memorabilia, from the band's first tour to their most recent, which Bach said no one else had.
"I had a library in the basement with every single magazine that had Skid Row on the cover," he lamented. "This library took up a big part of the basement. All of this is lost now. We will salvage what we can of course. But how I wish there was a reason to do a box set or something before Hurricane Irene hit. Nobody cared. Now it's too late. Don't know what you got till it's gone, indeed."
Some of his other treasures, such as his father's artwork — including a 16-foot-tall mural from the band's Slave to the Grind album — were safe after being moved upstairs, but Bach said he hasn't been allowed back in the house yet to assess the damage because the foundation had "crumbled" and the structure could collapse at any time.
"This has really taught me that the best things in life are indeed 'free,' " he concluded. "What makes me happy is that my children & ex wife are safe. My dad's art is unharmed. No one got hurt. My scrapbooks of memories of my life are dry & safe."
And, after 25 years of calling New Jersey home, Bach said he's packing it in and permanently moving West. "I will always love New Jersey, but now there is literally nothing left for me here except memories of a past life," he said. "Hello, Los Angeles. Hello, New Life. Here I am. It's time for a new start. Like I have a choice."
Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669962/sebastian-bach-home-flood-hurricane-irene.jhtml
Shakara Ledard Shakira Shana Hiatt Shania Twain Shanna Moakler
Kim Kardashian's 'Jam' Video Leaks Online
Leaked portion finds newly married reality star flaunting her famous assets.
By Gil Kaufman
Kim Kardashian
Photo: Getty Images
There are a few things Kim Kardashian is known for: her near-ubiquitous reality TV presence, her recent lavish wedding to basketball player Kris Humphries ... and for the rest, you just need to watch the first 54 seconds of the upcoming video for her debut single, "Jam (Turn It Up)."
The opening of the Hype Williams-directed clip showed up on Perez Hilton's site on Monday, and it's pretty much what you might expect. The first image you see is Kardashian lying on the floor covered in sweat, or oil, as her name scrolls by in giant pink neon letters that fill the frame.
Once the thumping disco beat produced by The-Dream kicks in, we are treated to an up-close-and-personal shot of the other thing Kardashian is best known for: her rear. As she crawls across the wet floor, the camera zooms in on Kardashian's assets, sheathed in barely-there pink leather booty shorts. The beat keeps pumping as Kardashian slithers toward a giant spinning exhaust fan.
Her face and hair dripping with greasy moisture, Kardashian mouths, "Turn me up, turn me up, turn me, turn me, turn me up," while nearly subliminal still images of her tongue rolling over heavily made-up red lips pulse on the screen. And those are pretty much the only lyrics we hear, accompanied by more images of a dewy Kim K. rolling around on the floor and touching her hair.
Near the end of the clip she explains, "I'm goin' out tonight/ It's going down/ Headed straight to the front of the line," while conveniently rolling onto her back to give us a peek down her barely hanging-on dirty wifebeater to show off her other most famous lady parts. Kardashian debuted the song back in March on Ryan Seacrest's radio show, while also tweeting out some stills from the shoot, but she has not yet announced when her debut album will be released.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669963/kim-kardashian-jam-video-leaks.jhtml
Daisy Fuentes Dania Ramirez Danica Patrick Daniella Alonso Danneel Harris
Michael Jackson's Legacy, Two Years Later, By the Numbers
Legendary singer's impact continues to blossom in the two years since his death; MTV News breaks down the figures.
By Gil Kaufman
Michael Jackson
Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage
Like Elvis, Bob Marley, Notorious B.I.G. and Frank Sinatra before him, Michael Jackson's influence has continued, and grown, since his untimely death on June 25, 2009.
On the second anniversary of the King of Pop's passing, MTV News took a look at the enduring appeal of MJ's music, videos and imagery, which continue to fascinate and attract fans across the globe thanks to a series of posthumous albums, a movie, video games and two upcoming Cirque du Soleil live shows.
Where Were You Two Years Ago When You Heard the News? Tell Us on Facebook
$72 million: According to Box Office Mojo, Jackson's posthumous concert film, "This Is It," has grossed more than $72 million to date domestically and $189 million in foreign markets for a worldwide take over more than $261 million. It ranks as the #2 music documentary of all-time behind Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never." The film has also generated nearly $45 million in DVD sales in the U.S.
16: In May, Jackson lodged his first #1 on the Billboard magazine Dance/ Club Play Songs chart in 16 years with the latest single from his posthumous Michael album, "Hollywood Tonight."
2: Number of posthumous albums that have been released since Michael's death in June 2009. Last year's Michael has sold just over 510,000 copies to date, while the This Is It collection has moved nearly 1 million copies to date in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
15,000: The number of videos submitted by fans since March for the crowdsourced video for "Behind the Mask." After they were edited down by a five-person team over two months, the resulting clip used submissions from more than 1,600 participants from 103 countries.
3 million: The amount of copies sold of the Ubisoft "Michael Jackson: The Experience" video game worldwide.
$57 million: The reported cost of Cirque du Soleil's traveling MJ show, "The Immortal World Tour, which is slated to kick off on October 2.
$1 billion: That gaudy figure is the reported amount the Jackson estate had generated by last June on the first anniversary of the singer's death. According to Billboard, the revenue was generated by a combination of music sales ($429 million), film/TV revenue ($392 million), music publishing ($130 million), licensing ($35 million) and a $31 million recording contract. (A spokesperson for Jackson's estate declined to provide updated figures for this story.)
$310 million: The amount of gross earnings reported by the executors of the estate in a December 2010 court filing detailing the progress made in paying off the $400 million in debt run up by the spendthrift singer during his lifetime.
16.1 million: MJ was always a big singles artist. Yes, Thriller is one of the best-selling albums of all time, but even in death, fans can't resist cherry-picking some of Michael's best songs. That explains why he's sold more than 16 million digital tracks since June 28, 2009, the first sales week following his passing, according to Nielsen SoundScan. To put that in perspective, from the time Nielsen began counting digital tracks in 2004 until the week before Jackson's death, the singer had sold just over 8.1 million digital tracks, a figure that has doubled in just the past two years.
2013: The projected launch for a second, non-touring Cirque show celebrating Jackson. The yet-untitled show is slated to open in the spring of 2013 at a new theater being built at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
$25 million to $50 million: That's how much Jackson's estate takes in on an annual basis thanks to his stake in the half-million-song Sony/ATV catalog, which includes titles by Elvis, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Beyoncé and Bob Dylan.
Share your memories of Michael Jackson in the comments.
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