Clips from Sam Rockwell's screen test for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

However bizarre, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was a great movie. I've previously mentioned that Sam Rockwell is becoming one of my favorite actors around, and it started with this movie. These clips make me all the more impressed (George Clooney makes an appearance at the end). I'm definitely going to make time and watch that film again.

I thought Rockwell was great in the role of Chuck Barris, even though I didn't know much about Barris aside from being the host of The Gong Show. Here's Barris in action:

GQ with Bill Murray on Ghostbusters 3, Garfield, SxSW, among other things

Bill Murray has to be one of my favorite actors of all time. Not because he's a great actor (which he is), but he's a great personality - on camera, or off (when I say 'off' I mean in interviews, etc.). He's not always happy or chirpy. In fact he's rarely "on" in the same way that many comedic actors of his time seem to be (see: Robin Williams, Martin Short, Jim Carrey) which makes him more real and more likeable.

The above pic is taken from a scene in Kingpin, where he played Ernie McCracken, one of my favorite Bill Murray characters.

I love when people of power and/or celebrity give honest, frank interviews even though it may rub some people the wrong way, including their friends. This is well worth the read - it's great to hear him talk about stuff like Harold Ramis' Year One being among the worst movies every made, wondering who wrote the piece of shit that was Garfield and realizing it was Joel Cohen & not Joel Coen (of the Coen brothers), doing movies that he thinks won't have a chance, and copping to the fact that he barely ever watches any popular TV & movies. I mean - who hasn't seen Seinfeld!

Here's a snippet:

Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What's the story with that?

It's all a bunch of crock. It's a crock. There was a story—and I gotta be careful here, I don't want to hurt someone's feelings. When I hurt someone's feelings, I really want to hurt them. [laughs] Harold Ramis said, Oh, I've got these guys, they write on The Office, and they're really funny. They're going to write the next Ghostbusters. And they had just written this movie that he had directed.

Year One.

Year One. Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone. But it's the studio that really wants this thing. It's a franchise. It's a franchise, and they made a whole lot of money on Ghostbusters.

Oh, sure, I remember. The soundtrack. The lunchboxes. The action figures.

Right. And it's still one of the biggest movies of all time. And ever since that story broke, everywhere I go people are like, "So are you gonna make that movie?" I was down in Austin at South by Southwest, and you go at it hard down there—fun but, man, you need to sleep for days afterwards. Anyhow, I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.

Read the whole thing at GQ Magazine.

GQ is really putting out some great articles lately. If they get an iPad version of their magazine, I might have to start buying it.

EDIT: GQ DOES have an iPad app. Kudos GQ, I will be downloading and purchasing your contents.

The Social Network Trailer


The Social Network - Trailer / Bande-Annonce [VO|HD]
Uploaded by Lyricis. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

I like the idea of Facebook, I used it quite a bit for a few months when I first joined. Now it's just kind of there - I barely touch it anymore, it's kind of a pain (another thing I have to check) - but I still see the point/value. At the same time, Facebook, and it's founder Mark Zuckerberg in particular, drive me a bit insane. I'm not breaking any news here, but neither Facebook or Zuckerberg seem to have any respect for a person's privacy. In my opinion, their attitude towards users' (and non-users') rights is scary and borders on criminal (depending on jurisdiction and your thoughts on a person's right to protect their private information).

I realize that they are running a business and that the issue of dealing with user-generated content that people want to share with each other isn't an easy thing to navigate. At the same time, I have a lot more (although not endless) respect for companies like Google and how they deal with the same issues.

This movie sounded stupid to me when I first heard about it. It seemed like a rah-rah effort based around a nerdy kid's ability to make one of the most influential products of our time while he was still in school. No interest.

David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg upped the intrigue. Then the movie poster. Now the trailer... and now I actually really want to see this thing.

The selection of "Creep" for the trailer's music is epic.

It would've been better without Keanu

Ever wonder what a film would've been like with different casting? Imagine Will Smith instead of Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, Robert Redford instead of Dustin Hoffman as the Graduate, or Kurt Russell instead of Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

This site takes a look at who else was being considered in some of the biggest career-defining movie roles, and what the movie poster would look like had the casting gone differently. I'd pay to see half those movies... Tom Hanks wooing Winona Ryder in Jerry MaGuire seems weird to me though.