Recently, it was reported that Universal Pictures ended their deal with Hasbro – meaning that movies adapted from Hasbro products that nobody wanted to see in the first place, like Ouija Board and Monopoly, now have very questionable futures. Or, at least, you would think that they would have very questionable futures. In actuality they all seem to be getting scooped up by other studios pretty quickly. First, Relativity Media acquired the rights to Stretch Armstrong, and now, in news that surely must be ushering in the end of the world, Sony and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison are teaming up to make Candy Land, which Sandler himself intends on both co-writing and starring in. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) is attached to direct the project, with Robert Smigel and Sandler in talks to pen the screenplay. Why make a Candy Land movie? Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad says, ”Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam. We are thrilled to partner with Hasbro and Happy Madison on this project.”

Tomorrow is the big day when the Academy is set to announce this year’s Oscar nominees, and traditionally that meant that today was supposed to be the day that The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation announced the contenders for The Razzies, the annual set of awards that are unique in that they recognize the worst in the world of moviemaking instead of the best. This year things are being done a little differently over at Razzie headquarters, however.

Scientists have heatedly argued as to whether Adam Sandler‘s career is still in existence or went extinct after Jack and Jill stepped on the last egg. Since then, millions have headed into the wild to see if they could spot some sort of proof that the comedian is still allowed on film sets. Or still inviting himself onto the the ones he’s financing. Luck struck Cinema Blend today when they acquired the highly sought-after evidence that Sandler is still, in fact, working. There’s no explanation as to why Sandler is wearing a Bon Jovi costume here, but it beats a fat suit any day. Hopefully, Donny’s Boy (retitled from I Hate You, Dad) will be the home run that knocks the old big leaguer out of his slump. He’s got Andy Samberg co-starring in a role that almost ensures a ton of comedic sparring between the two, and Leighton Meester on board as Samberg’s character’s fiancee who does not get along with dear old dad. Sitcom set up, possible gold. Why? Because the script was rewritten by The State alumnae Ken Marino and David Wain who also delivered Wet Hot American Summer. It’s the feature directing debut of third film directed by Sean Anders and John Morris, who used their Sex Drive writing cred to get work on Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Hot Tub Time Machine. The hope/dread factor is still up in the air, but scientists need something to argue about. Correction: In a previous version of the article, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Amidst the pinky-out prestige of awards season sits the manic pixie of The People’s Choice Awards. Perhaps they can easily be dismissed by the cinephile crowd for not being nearly well-rounded or interesting enough, but looking at the nominees and the winners can provide a bird’s eye view into the abyss of mass-entertainment. With over 200 million votes cast, according to a press release, the winners included Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern, Adam Sandler‘s comedy and Bridesmaids. To put that into perspective, that’s a ridiculous amount of people. To really put it into perspective, it’s 7.6 million more people than the entire population of Brazil, and it’s 2/3rds the population of the United States. The giant, faceless wad of “the people” have made these their movie champions of 2011:

Sadly, this article arrives far, far too late. I come to bury Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, not to praise them. But they’re not dead. No, they are both very much alive and making movies, which is a little unfortunate. Not that they’re alive. That they’re making movies. Or at least that they’re making the movies they do. Yes, this article is years behind, but after revisiting some comedy classics like Ace Ventura: Pet Detecitve and Billy Madison, I just can’t look at another fucking Jack and Jill billboard without saying something. What happened to these guys? Money, success, power, time. Yes, all of those things happened to them and generally that leads to a downslide in movie quality. Or at least a downslide to a different type of comedy. Maybe there is an age where even the most immature of us suddenly grows up and doesn’t want to talk out of his asshole or argue the finer points of shampoo versus conditioner. Fear not, dear readers, for I have not yet reached that age.

I’ve found that this list comes up fairly often on the Internet – however every time I read one I’m surprised by how many redundancies they all share. While a few of said redundancies will also appear in the following (because sometimes you just can’t deny a good performance) I’m going to try and mix this up and give a you a few of my personal favorite and slightly less talked about non-funny roles some real funny people took on. Let’s get started with a picture of a pen jabbed into Jon Stewart’s eye.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes to war. He strips down to his muscular awesomeness and shimmies into a codpiece. After applying a solid gold breastplate, he’s too exhausted to actually go to war, so he heads to the local movie cinema to catch Immortals, wondering if Isabel Lucas has ever eaten a carbohydrate in her life. Then he slips into a housedress and sneaks into an early screening of J. Edgar. After a quick nap, he tries to escape the horror that is Jack and Jill, but alas, that did not happen. You can send him care packages now, courtesy of his local mental institution.

The initial moments of Jack and Jill, a new comedy in which Adam Sandler plays twins, filled me with a small measure of hope. The opening montage of twins talking about their relationships was a nice touch. For its first few minutes, Sandler’s drag routine was actually funny. Maybe this wouldn’t be the cavalcade of self-parodying garbage that its trailer seemed to promise. Alas, poor Sandler, ’twas not to be. After all, this is a Happy Madison production, ensconced in Dennis Dugan land, where once-young comic actors fast approaching middle age still make the same basic movies they were making fifteen years ago. Only now, they movies are worse.

When it was first announced that Adam Sandler and his friends were going to be providing the voice cast for the upcoming animated monster movie Hotel Transylvania, I didn’t panic. Even though Adam Sandler movies have been traveling on an increasingly downward slope to the point where he’s now one of the most embarrassing figures in Hollywood, and even though these are the guys who are responsible for the crime against humanity that was Grown Ups, I didn’t throw a fit. And that’s mainly because the movie is being directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who has done pretty universally amazing animated work on things like Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Surely he wouldn’t mess this movie up, right? And Sandler and his buddies won’t have near as much opportunity to goof off, throw a bunch of half-baked, juvenile crap at the screen, and call it a day when working in the world of animation. So there wasn’t much to fear here, right? Well, I must have either missed the fact or blocked out the fact that Miley Cyrus is going to be voicing the character of Dracula’s daughter Mavis, because now I’m really starting to get scared about this movie. There are few things in the world I find more gratingly incompetent than the sound of Disney actresses trying to deliver comedy on Disney TV shows. If Cyrus brings the comedic sensibilities of Hannah Montana to the big screen, where comedic delivery means shouting things as [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? For starters, it’s not a nightly movie news column that would usually lead with such a weak top story. However, any chance to lead with Tom Selleck’s mustache should be seized. So there you have it folks, now lets get on with it. Until this evening, I was not even aware that there were rumors of Adam Sandler putting together a remake of Three Men and a Baby starring David Spade, Chris Rock and Rob Schneider. Or perhaps I did know and have since blocked it out of my memory. That happens. Anyway, we can all rest easy, as Disney says it isn’t happening.

Normally, when I hear that either Adam Sandler or Kevin James has a new movie coming out, I wince in anticipation of it. Kind of like when you know you’re about to get hit by a baseball. I didn’t quite have this reaction to the news that they’ve signed on to Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania, however, and there are a couple reasons for that. The first reason is that the new film is set to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who has done some great TV work with Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Dexter’s Laboratory. Everything I’ve seen from Tartakovsky has been slick, stylish, and interesting. I’m excited at the prospect of what he might come up with when jumping from small screen to big, and Sandler and James’ recent track records aren’t enough to deter me from seeing this one.

If you’ve been keeping track of Adam Sandler’s career (and in 2011, who hasn’t?), then you have probably already heard that he’s going to be playing Andy Samberg’s dad in the upcoming film I Hate You, Dad. This is an interesting proposition because Samberg is a young comedian who has utilized digital media to skyrocket his career into the stratosphere and Sandler is an aging funnyman who hasn’t done anything good in over a decade, yet still keeps making billions of dollars on name value alone. What will happen when the irresistible force meets the immovable object, funny or no funny?

I am going to attempt something that many have tried and failed to communicate to people for the purpose of arriving at a reasonable understanding for years. It’s mainly been attempted by persons defending their own personal profession and therefore really only speaks to those who have already been listening all along. In that sense this will be no different. However, I haven’t quite yet seen (though, I haven’t quite yet looked either) an explanation from the one side being attacked that says, in more words, “this is really who we are.”

Why? For the same reason we get dismissive of the lump assumption that all are one. This may not be what is always done in every case, but I don’t really think I’m going to over-generalize anything I will soon say. I will admittedly assume, though, that generally speaking I think this analysis of one side brought upon because of a somewhat popular perception from the other side typically holds true.

These are those perceptions:

Critics don’t like what the general public likes

Critics are irrelevant

Critics are self-absorbed

Critics are biased

Critics. Hate. Movies….and life…because they’re bitter they’re not talented enough to make movies themselves so their only pleasure is to tear down the works of those who successfully accomplished what they never could.

You hear the phrase “This movie could never be made today” quite often, and it’s typically a thinly veiled means by which a creative team allows themselves to administer loving pats on their own backs. But in the context of at a 35th anniversary exhibition of the restoration of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver with a justifiably disgruntled Paul Schrader in attendance, such a sentence rings profoundly and depressingly true. Like many of you, I’ve seen Taxi Driver many times before. For many, it’s a formative moment in becoming a cinephile. But I had never until last weekend seen the film outside of a private setting. And in a public screening, on the big screen, I’m happy to say the film still has the potential to shock and profoundly affect viewers so many decades on. For me personally it was the most disturbing of any time I’d ever seen the film, and I was appropriately uncomfortable despite anticipating the film’s every beat. Perhaps it was because I was sharing the film’s stakes with a crowd instead of by myself or with a small group of people, or perhaps the content comes across as so much more subversive when projected onto a giant screen, or perhaps it was because the aura of a room always feels different when the creative talent involved is in attendance. For whatever reason, I found the film to be more upsetting than in any other context of viewing. But one of the most appalling moments of Taxi [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr spent the night in jail after trying to sneak in and see Justin Bieber: Never Say Never 3D. The cops didn’t believe him that he was trying to watch the latest remake of Thunderball. Sadly, they just saw a pervy looking fat guy squealing and crying with a group of thirteen year old girls. Fortunately, he had a chance to catch the other movies of the week, including Gnomeo and Juliet, Just Go With It and The Eagle. He also gives a little bit of love (what’s left of it anyway after spending the night in lock-up) to the Oscar-Nominated Shorts.

There’s an unspoken agreement between Adam Sandler and American audiences… basically he guarantees to make (at least) one terrible movie per year, and they guarantee to make it a hit. Sandler’s reaped large sums of money from the arrangement, but it’s unclear what viewers get out of the exchange. If one was to hazard a guess though it’s probably the gamble that his next comedy may be his last a truly fun and well made movie. Well guess what… Just Go With It comes pretty damn close to being okay! Other surprises contained within this latest gem from the Happy Madison sausage factory include: Jennifer Aniston is the best part of the movie, and not just through the process of elimination! The child actors are talented and only slightly annoying! The funny sidekick (Nick Swardson) is less funny than the lead! Rob Schneider is nowhere to be seen!

It would come to this point eventually, but Adam Sandler might be circling a project called Fat Man that would see him playing an 800 pound man falling in love with his nurse. That can only mean one thing: fat suit. Or some intense, dedicated weight gain that will win him an Oscar. Sensible people vote for the latter, but according to First Showing, the project is written by a Simpsons alum and might be more heart than gimmick. They spoke with director Miguel Arteta (Cedar Rapids, Youth in Revolt) who claimed he was highly interested in the project as well (especially with the prospect of working with Sandler). So, the validity of the rumor (not to mention its fragility even if true) is questionable, but if the script was truly “beautifully written,” “very funny,” and “very touching,” it might be the sort of thing that uses a fat suit to break someone out of the bland comedy mode they’ve been in for a while. In a way, Sandler is perfect for the role – or at least better than Zach Galifianakis. This sort of thing might be expected from Galifianakis (if it really is both grounded and off the wall), but not from Sandler. It would be a risk, and risks are what make great movies.

I believe firmly that movie reviewers and critics should have their work cut out for them. All they do all day is watch movies, eat cookies and raw goat meat, and drink expensive beers you’ve never heard of before sitting down to their computer to pass judgment upon the latest feature film thousands of people poured their lives into. Thus, the least reviewers could do is make up their own puns. Sadly, Adam Sandler is making it too easy. According to The Hollywood Reported, Sandler will co-star with Andy Samberg for I Hate You Dad. The movie features a father who starts crashing at his son’s house shortly before the son is set to be married. The dad then starts fighting with the fiancee. Hilarity hopefully ensues, and I’ll let you guess who’s playing which role. Oddly enough, this could be a chance for Samberg (a guy most known for jizzing in his pants) to reach a wider audience that doesn’t know that he won a silver medal in the Space Olympics. On the other hand, it could also attempt to be a little edgy and actually,  I don’t know, be funny for the first time in Sandler’s career since 1999. Sidenote: If Adam Sandler were actually Andy Samberg’s father, he would have sired him at age 12. Movie magic!

The gravy train was bound to end someday. Unfortunately, for Adam Sandler and Kevin James (and for audiences) it seems to have broken down outside a hotel where both men are planning on seeking employment. According to Deadline Rochester, Sandler and James are both aiming to star in Valet Guys – a movie about two middle-aged parking attendants who witness a murder and have wacky stuff happen to them after that. Essentially, it’s Men At Work with valets instead of garbage men. Of course, they may need to keep a few garbage men nearby for when the movie is done. James and Sandler have both had strong careers and played their parts in subverting comedy. They should realize that the world expects more from them than falling down a lot and making funny voices. Apparently, they haven’t gotten that memo yet. Sony is probably hiding it from them behind the giant MIB banner at the entrance.

If the purpose of a teaser trailer is to bring you slightly forward in your chair, raise your eyebrow and get you interested in a film, the new teaser for Zookeeper is what it might be to see a strip tease from that lazy janitor that never empties your trash can and eats hot pockets while he buffs the floor. The voice casting is already blatantly bad. Sylvester Stallone sounds like he’s doing his best Sylvester Stallone impression, and it appears as if they’re attempting to make the animal mouths correspond with the speech to disastrous results. Mr. Ed did it better with peanut butter. Long live middling comedy. What’s the over/under on how many times Kevin James falls down in this?