The Screengrab : madea goes to jail

Morning Deal Report: Julia Roberts Meets Jesus H. Christ

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:30:00 GMT

As it turned out, the answer to the question “Who watches the Watchmen” was just about everybody, as the superhero epic topped the weekend box office with $55.7 million. We’ll see how all those high-minded claims about never making a sequel hold up now. It’s a long way down to second place, where we find Madea Goes to Jail with an $8.8 million total, followed by Taken with $7.5 million.

Julia Roberts will star in Jesus Henry Christ for director Dennis Lee. The film is based on Lee's “Student Academy Award-winning short film of the same name, and follows Henry James Hermin, a boy conceived in a petri-dish and raised by a loving, left-wing feminist. At the age of 10, he decides his mother's love is not enough and begins to follow a trail of Post-It notes stuck around town hoping it will lead him to his biological father,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Chris Rock is set to star in a remake of the 2007 British film Death at a Funeral. Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan will join him in the comedy that “revolves around a dysfunctional family that gathers for the patriarch’s funeral. When tensions rise and old conflicts are uncovered, a man arrives saying he’s the dead man’s gay lover and threatens blackmail,” Variety reports. Neil LaBute directs. That’s right, I said Neil LaBute directs.

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Morning Deal Report: Keira Knightley Never Lets Me Go

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Are the Jonas Brothers already over? Hey, I'm not hatin' on them, I’m just pointing out that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience failed to knock Tyler Perry off the top box office perch. Madea Goes to Jail took in $16.5 million, while the brothers had to settle for $12.7 million, a far cry from their expected box office domination. On the strength of its Best Picture win, Slumdog Millionaire jumped up to the third spot, taking in $12.2 million over the weekend.

One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek (whose finest work remains the video for Johnny Cash’s Hurt) will next tackle the sci-fi thriller Never Let Me Go, starring Keira Knightley. “Story revolves around a trio who grew up in a boarding school with no contact or knowledge of the outside world until they discover they are clones grown for the sole purpose of organ donation,” Variety reports. This movie used to be called The Island, and no one asked to see it again.

Can I interest you in a movie called Rape: A Love Story? Not so much? What if I were to tell you it stars Maria Bello, Abigail Breslin and Samuel L. Jackson? Still no takers? “Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novella published in 2003, story centers on a mother (Bello) recovering from a brutal gang rape who is stalked by the perpetrators but is protected by a sympathetic cop (Jackson). Breslin will play the woman’s12-year-old daughter, who witnesses the attack.”

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Morning Deal Report: Big Screen "Galactica"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

As you may have read somewhere around here, the 81st Annual Academy Awards took place last night – actually, I think they just handed out the last award about 15 minutes ago – and Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner. Meanwhile at the box office, it was a whole other story as Madea Goes to Jail took the top honors with an astounding $41.1 million haul. I think Tyler Perry gets to keep pretty much all of that, doesn’t he? Taken and Coraline held strong at second and third, but Friday the 13th plummeted 81%, taking in only $7.8 million.

Battlestar Galactica may be coming to the big screen, but fans of the current SciFi Channel incarnation shouldn’t get too excited. “Universal has quietly entered into negotiations with Glen A. Larson to write and produce a big-screen version of the property he created,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “The movie effort would have no connection to the series and would relaunch the story in a new medium. However, staples such as the characters Adama, Starbuck, and Baltar will remain.” Here’s hoping they bring back the adorable robot dog Muffit.

The good news is: David Lynch has a new project. The bad news is: it’s Twittering. Yes, you can follow the real David Lynch here for such scintillating daily insight as “You can’t fight City Hall” and “Let a smile be your umbrella.” Lynch confirms his tweeting (or whatever the kids today are calling it) in the video below:

Madea Goes To Jail: Tyler Perry in Steroid Bust

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:30:00 GMT

An ongoing investigation into the traffic in steroids and HGH (human growth hormone) has yielded some unexpected names, according to reports in the New York Times and elsewhere. Rather than the usual litany of fair-to-middling baseball players, the most frequently cited figures in the latest probe are entertainers — specifically, rappers like 50 Cent, Timbaland, and (inexplicably) Mary J. Blige. We're not the only ones to be a bit stymied at why a musician would need to take 'roids; while, admittedly, they're cheaper than a personal trainer if you want to hulk out the way Timbo has of late, a personal trainer can only symbolically shrivel your generative organs while shouting motivational slogans at you, rather than literally causing them to curl up and wither on the vine the way steroids can.

If there was one name above all others that was a shocker in this witch hunt ongoing investigation, it was alleged funnyman and beloved chitlin-circuit institution Tyler Perry, the writer/director/star of many a boffo slapstick hit on the urban theater scene and the creator of Madea, the most widely beloved overweight transvestite since Dame Edna Everidge. Tyler isn't noticably buff, his schtick, physical as it is, doesn't seem any more physically demanding than any other theatrical or television work, and he certainly doesn't rely on power-blasted shirtless photos to sell his product. Maybe the fat suit just isn't doing it for him anymore? At any rate, it'll be curious to see how his many fans react to the news; they're a tremendously devoted lot, but on the other hand, unlike any number of bad-boy rappers one could name, Perry's act depends quite heavily on his image as a devout Christian, and his Madea plays as well as his other films and theatrical presentations rely strongly on a traditionalist morality.

Of course, he might be able to rely on the fact that HGH isn't illegal to own or sell. Which brings us to that all-too-often begged question here at the height of anti-steroid mania: if HGH is legal, and if there was no rule (as there wasn''t) against taking steroids at the time most of the players named in the Mitchell Report were implicated, why keep naming names? If no one is likely to face jail time (and no one is, with the exception of baseball's designated scapegoat Barry Bonds), what's the big deal?