Despite opening to generally poor reviews due to its been there, done that approach to joke crafting and storytelling, The Hangover Part II still got a ton of people out to the theaters and pulled in record amounts of money. You know what that means: The Hangover Part III is now as inevitable as death and taxes. And, sure enough, THR has a report that the principal cast are negotiating as a team to get a deal for a third film in the books. Because of Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper’s all-for-one attitude when it comes to negotiating, getting this deal together has taken longer than usual. Their united front is allowing them to demand quite a bit of money to get a third Hangover movie made, and of course the studio has been doing whatever they can to drive that number down. They’re not really in any position of power, however, as a third Hangover is pretty much guaranteed to bring in truckloads of greenbacks, so the actors’ demands that each of them bank $15m a piece to come back and get drunk again are looking like they’re going to be met. Comparatively, each only made $1m for doing the modest budgeted original film.

Monologues are to actors what analogies are to bullshit writers who have no idea how to start their list article about monologues. What I mean is that every actor should have a really good understanding on how to perform a monologue – at least I assume so considering that they are the most common tools for auditioning for a part. To someone like myself, who couldn’t act even if Hitler’s death depended on it, I really have no idea what goes into a monologue – however I do know what comes out of a good one. So when I judge the talent of these I’m really just judging how effective they seemed to be, not necessarily the amount of artistic effort that was put into it. Simply put, these are some terrific monologues.

One of the biggest hits of 2011 was The Hangover: Part II, raking in tons of money this summer and giving fans a chance to watch the same shenanigans from the first movie played out again. With recent news that The Hangover: Part III will start shooting next year, this trend doesn’t look like it will stop. Whether you liked the first movie, the second movie or both – or if you hated them – this choice for a drinking game is a no-brainer. Toast the Wolf Pack and get started on your own hangover.

There’s not a single mean-spirited bone in Paul Feig‘s Bridesmaids. This is a rare comedy, in the sense of how sweet and clearly in love the director and cast are with its characters. This is a film about genuinely good people who make terrible, but understandable, mistakes. Whenever the tone skirts towards taking a mean turn, Feig reverts back to honesty and realism. The writer-director is no stranger to that type of grounded comedy; just look at his cult classic show Freaks and Geeks. The only character that many will find despicable is one: Ted (played by Jon Hamm). Ted is that moronic jock who thinks he can take and have whatever he wants. Nearly every other line he says reeks of an idiot, and yet he’s still oddly likable. Someone so narcissistic should never be this charming. Here’s what the friendly and talkative Paul Feig had to say about mean-spirited comedy, shooting comedic sex, and having characters talk like real people:

Many people will come to the defense of outrageous events in movies and otherwise unbelievable activities by claiming movies are all about the “suspension of disbelief.” That’s why cars can turn into robots, animals can talk, heroes can surf anything to safety, and all the Jewish people rode unicorns to Israel at the end of Schindler’s List. See, that last one is a joke about how not all movies are about the suspension of disbelief. Sometimes movies make a greater impact by maintaining a thread of realism throughout. No, Die Hard isn’t the most realistic film in the world, but when a shoeless McClane has to run over broken glass, you can relate to “that must fucking hurt” because you can see it affects him for the next ten minutes of the movie. In movie time that’s like 8 years, so it’s no wonder he’s back to running and jumping by the end of the film. While I’m the first to admit I enjoy action films where a commando can jump from a plane flying 150mph and fall 300 feet into a swamp and be fine, there are a few minor movie injuries that bug the shit out of me.

Seeing as comedian/actor Zach Galifianakis is pretty much the closest modern equivalent we have to a mythical trickster, the things that he says should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Especially things he says in interviews, which he seems to hate doing. So, grain of salt firmly in place, in a cover story for Rolling Stone magazine Galifianakis has said that the plot of Hangover Part III would be about his character, Alan, getting locked up in a mental institution and the rest of the crew having to come together and break him out. Personally, I think that this sounds like a whole lot of nonsense that Galifianakis is pulling out of nowhere, but there is one quote in the article that rings very true. When initially talking about the possibility of a third Hangover, Galifianakis said, “They want to do a Hangover III. I’m getting fricking phone calls already.” The film already has a plot, and one of the leads is leaking it before the second one is even out of theaters? That’s not so believable. Execs are champing at the bit to get all of the main actors signed on to do a third film already? That’s something I very much believe. Despite the fact that The Hangover Part II debuted to a lukewarm critical reception, fans of the first film still came out in droves to get some more drunken obscenity. There is no way that the people in charge of writing and cashing the [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 follows Jamie Chung to Thailand, hoping to get married. Unfortunately, someone slips him roofies, which made him black out and spend a drunken night in Bangkok. Once he got out of that city, he headed over to China to become the new pot-bellied dragon warrior. After all, if a cartoon panda can do it, why can’t he? That didn’t stop him from spending another night in the hospital, and maybe a little time in a Bangkok jail. And then the real horror happened… Kevin saw The Tree of Life.

Episodes and seasons and weeks after its inspiration and its humor have peaked, I still continue to watch new episodes of The Office week in and week out. I don’t know why – I never do this with dramatic shows, only with comedies – but I tend to stick with comedy shows whose legacy I appreciate even if their time has passed, either out of respect, blind hope, or simply the desire to have some noise in the room while I take a break to eat a meal or fold laundry. While The Office certainly isn’t what it used to be, even before Steve Carell left, it’s still an inoffensive and enjoyable way to pass some time. I can’t deny that the affinity I developed for the show’s characters early on in the series has carried me through a lot of its creative droughts (in other words, I hardly watch it only for its comedy) even as more recent network sitcoms like Modern Family, Community, and (especially) Parks and Recreation have made me LOL significantly more often. But in the bizarre cameos leading up to a strange and dry seventh season finale, The Office seems to have encountered much greater problems than a rudimentary lack of inspiration typical for the (possibly cyclical) lifespan of a long-running television show. The Office seems to have rejected the defining characteristics that made it unique in the first place.

All throughout the development of Paul Feig’s upcoming comedy Bridesmaids we’ve heard it be described as “the female Hangover”. Well, it hasn’t even hit theaters and already we’re being given news of another “female Hangover”. This one is going to be called Desperados, and it tells the story of three female friends who go to Mexico to try and deal with a scathing message one of them left a guy she likes (presumably before he can hear it?). Sounds like an episode of Three’s Company or something. The screenplay was written by Ellen Rapoport, who wrote a bunch of episodes of The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and it is being directed by Betty Thomas, who last made Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, so obviously I have enormous faith in this project already. The good news is that the first actress signed to fill out the trio is Isla Fisher. She impressed me with her comedic chops in Wedding Crashers and recently did a phenomenal job voice acting in Rango, so I’m interested to see what other tricks she has up her sleeve. I just hope this movie doesn’t end up being a load that she has to carry.

Another week gone by, another round of Blu-ray buying and trying, avoiding and really avoiding here at Reject HQ. The release slate is slim and for the most part, it would appear as if home video distributors are afraid of the direct to video level junk they are throwing out there this week, as many a title didn’t arrive at our doorstep. Stuff like Jonah Hex and The Lost Boys: The Thirst are probably best left unreviewed by yours truly. Similar to the way a 30-year old man dominates a toddler tee-ball league, I was looking forward to busting some heads. Sadly, we’ll stick with a more intimate collection of releases this week, including a few nice surprises as we go through This Week in Blu-ray.

As I mentioned last night when I wrote about the new Scott Pilgrim vs. the World clip, I didn’t watch a moment of the 2010 MTV Movie Awards. However, I am told that a few interesting and fun things happened. Tom Cruise out-dressed Jennifer Lopez, Twilight out-awarded its Summit Entertainment cousin The Hurt Locker, and the always funny Ken Jeong out-dressed both Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera. Not bad for the movie world equivalent of the Special Olympics.

In Holy Rollers Bartha plays a Hasidic Jew that loses his faith just in time to find the alluring nature of the drug game.

Jack Nicholson has reportedly been offered the role of a womanizing playboy in LASt Vegas, the geriatric version of The Hangover. I wonder if he can pull it off?

The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards are upon us. And while they are on live on ABC as of 8/7c, you may not be watching them. That’s okay, as I will updating our list with the winners as they are announced.

Put simply, it’s going to be a populist kind of year. Once again, the likes of Avatar and Star Trek, along with The Hangover, are hanging around during awards season.

Some years at the cineplex are just better than others. Which years those are can always be debated, hence the reason why FSR writer Paul Sileo and FSR’s resident devil’s advocate Josh Radde sat on their collective asses to hash out whether or not 2009 was particularly strong or notably weak.

Welcome to the 2009 Reject Report Box Office Year in Review, and what a record-settiing year it was. As it turns out, the race for the title of 2009 Box Office Champ remains up in the air as we speak.

End of the year lists usually come in tens or some sort of multiple of ten but here, as you will see, there are only seven slots. No, I’m not purposely trying to be subversive, nor was this result of laziness, and I assure you that it wasn’t an attempt to gyp you out of those bottom three slots. There just weren’t ten great, unequivocally funny comedies released this year.

Often “Best of” lists include a bunch of the Oscar bait roles that we hear about at the end of every year but in 2009 we had some great performances in big movies which sadly isn’t always the case. With this list I tried to balance the two opposing worlds of critical credibility and popularity by considering which roles stuck out in my mind most. This is what I came up with…

Strap in, friends, as we’ve got another turbulent (and potentially expensive) week of selections in This Week in Blu-ray.