But first they are probably going to work on a project called Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which is apparently a video game adaptation. If both of these films end up getting made, the Wahlberg and Russell team is going to start looking like one of those important Hollywood power duos. They might have to challenge Scorcese and DiCaprio to a three-legged race. I’m not so interested in video game movies, but I’m ready and willing to be surprised, and Russell seemed to be enthusiastic about Uncharted when talking to The Playlist. He said, “I’m really digging it, I think the story’s coming together in a really intense, cool way …” That’s all well and good, and I hope it turns out great, but the project I’m instantly interested in is Cocaine Cowboys. It will be a dramatization of a 2006 documentary of the same name that was about the ins and outs of the Miami drug scene of the 80s. The doc, directed by Billy Corben, was a pretty interesting watch. It had turf wars, illegal plane flights to Columbia, secret boat rendezvous off the coast, a hitman that talked like Benicio Del Toro, and an evil kingpin lady who chops everyone up into little pieces. Plus it’s one of those classic, “hey look at all this coke, money, and girls; everything in the world is perfect right now and nothing could possibly go wrong” stories. If Boogie Nights taught us anything, it’s that Wahlberg is at his very best when [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]

The power that The Fighter displays is immense. As unconventional a conventional sports film as has been seen, David O. Russell has directed a film where the comedic impact is just as strong as the emotional. It is a triumph of real people on screen in a film culture that has become more and more frightened of stories that are well-rounded enough to not need a dimension tacked on. Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a blue collar worker with a dream of making it big as a boxer. In his corner is Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and has lived off the local fame and crack cocaine ever since. His mother (Melissa Leo) is the older version of a pageant mom who desperately wants success for her boy but struggles against her own selfishness. Everyone in his corner is working against him until he meets Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams) who helps him get his career and his life on track.

The Fighter is the perfect type of film for David O. Russell to followup I Heart Huckabees with. I Heart Huckabees was a very divisive and alienating film for many, most not being into the ‘existential comedy’ vibe. It isn’t what you would call the most accessible film to certain audiences, and O. Russell even referred to it as an experiment. The Fighter is a lot safer, on a commercial level. It’s the type of film that practically excludes no one, but instead is a film with open arms. With I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell went unrelentingly artful, in an excellent and under-appreciated way, but now with The Fighter he strikes a perfect note of art and commerce. Russell and I spent most of the time in our 13-minute interview discussing this. If you’ve ever seen one of his films, then you know he shows a true love for his characters. No matter how moronic they act or how much they do wrong, David O. Russell still strives for nothing but empathy and love. This is even more understandable when you talk to the acclaimed filmmaker, who was quite friendly and talked very passionately about his process. He took time in his responses, and gave what felt like honest answers.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr heads to the movie theater to enjoy the holiday releases and the award films. But how do they stack up against each other. After being swept into Narnia in post-converted 3D, Kevin takes a trip to Venice where he watches a portly Johnny Depp play an everyman to Angelina Jolie walking around a lot. Finally, he takes another award season trip to Boston to watch Mark Wahlberg get punch drunk..

The Peruvian director who earned some buzz for the action-fueled, CGI chase scene The Raven will have a chance to stretch his feature length legs now that Paramount has acquired the rights for the short. The plan is to have Justin Marks (the abysmal Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) write the film as a starring vehicle for Mark Wahlberg. The concerns here are obvious. The short is fun, but it’s just a chase scene, and while other shorts have had the foundation to become larger stories (like District 9), others turned out to be butter spread thin over far too much bread (like 9). The Raven doesn’t seem like it has the meat to be anything more substantial, but it also has the blank slate of potential that doesn’t have the burden of a plot. Either way, it’s good news for directors trying to make a mark with calling cards, it’s another chance for Paramount to dip into the world of sci-fi, and it’s another opportunity for Mark Wahlberg to run away from something shooting at him. Check out the original short below:

The web is abuzz with the confirmation from Mark Wahlberg that he will take the lead in David O. Russell’s video game adaptation Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. “I’m obviously in whatever David wants to do,” the star of Russell’s The Fighter told MTV News. “But the idea of it is so off the charts: De Niro being my father, Pesci being my uncle. It’s not going to be the watered-down version, that’s for sure.” He also added: “Say hello to ya mother for me.” (He didn’t, but in my mind he did.) This has sent the movie blogosphere into a feeding frenzy over the thought of Wahlberg, who is no stranger to video game fare, as Nathan Drake.

It’s a cult classic in the exact meaning of the phrase, so it’ll probably upset more than a few diehards to know that Mark Wahlberg has been offered the lead role in the new film baring the Crow pedigree. Even though I’m not obsessed with the original, the idea of Goth Wahlberg doesn’t sound all that appealing. Isn’t pro wrestler Sting still around somewhere? He owes the franchise his livelihood. Nick Cave is busy with script duty (although his mustache could probably play the role all on its own), and Stephen Norrington is set to direct so it’s a toss up between the popcorn brilliance of Blade and the giant mess of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Either way, Wahlberg just isn’t right for this role. The Crow isn’t even from Boston. [Bloody D]

Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer for David O. Russell’s The Fighter, a boxing drama starring Mark Wahlberg as “Irish” Mickey Ward, a 30-something brawler from Boston who takes a long, bumpy road to redemption and a fighting chance at a title. Christian Bale stars as his good-for-nothing druggie brother, the guy who taught him everything he knows about punching holes in other dude’s faces. Amy Adams, lovely as always even hidden behind that thick Bahhston accent, plays his supportive (and at one point combative) lady friend. If you remember back, this is the film that went through something like 35 casting changes before settling on Wahlberg and Bale. Looks like they got it right, from a distance…

No doubt you’ve read about it if you haven’t seen it. The Other Guys, the latest collaboration between masters of the sophomoric Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, concludes with an animated chart-and-graph sequence over its end credits detailing the inner workings of Ponzi schemes, the exponential disparity between the wages of corporate CEOs and their average worker, and the rather comical eventual release date of currently imprisoned white-collar criminal Bernie Madoff. It seems startling at first, for one of the most hilariously dumb comedies of the summer (I certainly don’t mean this as an insult, as true silliness is hard to come by and McKay/Ferrell routinely pull it off masterfully) to conclude with something of a visual lecture. It’s confounding for a film that asks the bare minimum of its viewer to conclude with what seems to be a message built from populist outrage, a message for which there seemed, on the surface, little if any buildup toward. The best course of action – for most critics, anyway – has been to read and enjoy The Other Guys wholly separate from its end credits (films, after all, are often misread as ending before their credits; we’re conditioned not to any pay attention to them). I find this reading of The Other Guys too selective, and its end credits – as didactic and ill-placed as they may seem at first to be – paint a rather different film in hindsight to the one we think we have been seeing.

It would be easy to say The Other Guys is the funniest ‘buddy cop’ movie of the past several years. Or that it’s the most consistently entertaining action/comedy since Hot Fuzz. Or that it’s easily the best Will Ferrell movie since Anchorman. Or that even if Kevin Smith’s Cop Out was remade as a comedy the result still wouldn’t be anywhere near as as hilarious as The Other Guys. All of that’s true, but you won’t catch me saying it here because the hyperbole (and cheap digs at Smith) can’t hide the fact that the movie also has a glaring problem with plot and an overly long running time. But then again, those problems can’t hide the fact that The Other Guys will have you smiling and laughing aloud from beginning to end either. Detectives Danson and Highsmith are heroes in blue. They catch every criminal, they break every rule, and both their co-workers and the public view them as NYPD super-cops. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are not Detectives Danson and Highsmith.

The Other Guys is a bit of a change of pace for the Mark Wahlberg we all know and think of him as. For one, he’s become known particularly for his “tough guy” onscreen persona. And two, have we ever seen Wahlberg go full-on comedic? No, we have not… but in about two weeks we all will. Apparently, it’ll be a nice welcome for Wahlberg. If The Other Guys lives up to the buzz coming from the press screenings or can stand amongst Adam McKay’s other (brilliant) comedies then expect something good. How does Wahlberg feel about this so-called change? Well, Wahlberg didn’t see it entirely that way. While he’s correct that plenty of his previous roles have had comedic elements, he did agree upon this being his first straight comedy. 

The television show now entering its 6th season might be headed to a new medium if Mark Wahlberg has any say in the matter. Hint: he does.

Without knowing anything else about The Other Guys other than seeing this trailer, you might very well think that it’s going to be just another dumb comedy. But there’s a reason why you should be optimistic about it…

Date Night works because it isn’t really trying too hard. That sounds terrible doesn’t it? But in a way that’s the brilliance of the movie. (Yeah, I’ll be hearing about that choice of words.) Why struggle to emulate the genius misadventures of After Hours when you can aim for the decidedly lighter but still entertaining Adventures In Babysitting?

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr woos the FSR audience on a Date Night before giving a grade to the high school rockers in The Runaways

Leonardo DiCaprio is moving from one thriller, the recently released Shutter Island, to another, the upcoming Aaron Guzikowski-scripted drama Prisoners. The film has been making the rounds for a while — at one point Antoine Fuqua was set to direct, but has since moved on. According to Deadline Hollywood, the film follows “a small-town carpenter who takes matters into his own hands when is daughter and her friend are kidnapped.”

This week’s Culture Warrior looks absolutely fabulous in that suit.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if The Book of Eli, The Spy Next Door and The Lovely Bones can make the grade.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if The Princess and the Frog, Invictus and The Lovely Bones can make the grade.

One of the few television series that I’ve ever bought that I just can’t get into is HBO’s Entourage. Which would explain why I’m not excited at all by the prospect of an Entourage movie…