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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:30
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93150,00.html
quote:
Review: Ben and J-Lo's 'Gigli': It's Turkey Time, Gobble, Gobble
It's not so easy to make a great howler of a bad movie. In recent years, Madonna 's made more than her share: "Shanghai Surprise," "Swept Away," "Who's That Girl," among them.
In 2001, Mariah Carey starred in "Glitter," which has only aged badly since its laughable premiere. And then there's "Showgirls," "Striptease," "The Postman," "Waterworld," "Ishtar," and the perceived king of kings, "Heaven's Gate."
Now add to the very top of the list, "Gigli" directed by Martin Brest, who actually has another title on the list already: "Meet Joe Black."
Witless, coarse, and vulgar, "Gigli" is worse than its advance buzz could have indicated. Starring real-life tabloid lovers Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, the film if you can call it that is a total, mindless disaster. Sitting in a screening last night with reviewers and feature writers, I could only think of one word: stupefying.
As many who were there muttered on the way out: "What were they thinking?"
First, the acting: Lopez and Affleck may have chemistry at home, but they have none here. Affleck comes off the worst. As hitman Larry Gigli, Affleck seems to be doing a bad imitation of James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano.
A thuggish Brooklyn-esque accent comes and goes, and Affleck never figures out whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. While these gears are turning in his head, you can't help notice that he's a hitman wearing a luxurious Gucci leather jacket and gorgeous silk tops. He also appears to be wearing Ted Danson's toupee from "Cheers."
J-Lo does a little better, but not much as a lesbian hitwoman who is nonetheless smitten with Affleck. She makes her first appearance wearing a midriff-revealing halter-top to show off her abs and rear end, and it just keeps getting better.
At one point Lopez is featured in a yoga position called "the crow," which is photographed as if she were a kangaroo hoisted on its hind legs and ready for mating. As I once heard Anna Wintour say of Clint Eastwood with matted hair in a rainstorm scene, "It's not a good look for you."
Like Ben, who actually says the word "heart-throb-a-rama," J-Lo is saddled with ridiculous, offensive, unfortunate dialogue, much of which can't be quoted in proper publications.
Herewith some of her declarations: "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble." "A penis is like a sea slug or a long toe." "I thought you wanted to be my *****."
There's a fourth line, but it can't be repeated here, concerning her offer to perform a sex act on Affleck for 12 hours. Another character, doing an unintentional Joe Pesci imitation from "Goodfellas," later describes Lopez's lesbian with a term that should have women's groups on both sides demanding a recall vote on the screenwriter.
Trust me, the dialogue in "Gigli" is so awful that the groans just come faster and faster. It is also unnecessarily vulgar. I counted the "f-word" no fewer than 15 times in the first 10 minutes and then lost track.
Lopez also makes a long speech to Affleck in which she draws analogies between her female anatomy and one's mouth, ending in a particular vulgarity that sent at least two New York Times writers right out of the theatre.
There are other actors in the film. Sadly, newcomer Justin Bartha , who plays a "Rain Man"-like autistic character stolen directly from that movie but without the manual makes a very bad first impression.
Will he turn out to be a "thumbless, bleeding halfwit," as Lopez's character posits? It's hard to say since Bartha, not getting any direction from Brest, slips from autism to Tourette's Syndrome to ADD to simply being annoying.
But the "Rain Man" lifts are painful to watch. Instead of being obsessed with "Wapner," for example, this character only wants to see "Baywatch." Again, what could Brest, who wrote and directed this junk, have been thinking?
Al Pacino, whom Brest directed to an Oscar in the very bad "Scent of a Woman" 11 years ago, appears in one interminable scene as a New York crime boss. This one bloated moment may completely unravel Pacino's esteemed career from "The Godfather" to "Insomnia."
His expressionless, frozen face though included in the film's trailer as a big deal appears about three-fourths of the way through the film. It's not clear even if Affleck and Lopez, who Brest cuts to occasionally for stupefied reactions, were even on the set when Pacino delivers his numbing monologue. The fact that it ends in his character committing a sudden act of bloody violence doesn't help.
The only performance worth seeing in "Gigli" (which rhymes, Affleck says often, with "really") is another cameo, this one by Christopher Walken as a police detective. When Walken steps into the film, "Gigli" suddenly becomes full of color and oxygen two things that Lopez and Affleck lack.
Unfortunately, Walken's scene is meant to explain the plot. But it's pretty clear that the actor has no idea what he's saying; he just says it so wonderfully that it doesn't matter. Watch the pause he takes at the end of the scene. It's a brilliant comment on the nonsense set before him.
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st_swithin
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10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:30
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I hope it was enough to pay for that $16,000,000.00 engagement ring.
HEE! I heard it wasn't even a 'pink diamond' - just a great big fake (READ: SYNTHETIC) sapphire!
HEE! HEE!!
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st_swithin
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10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:30
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Yep, that's for sure. Buy a diamond ring, brand new, and then try pawning it to find out what it's REALLY worth.
Fvck DeBeers. He can HAVE Africa. That's the only reason they wanted the tribal people out of there in the first place - all for little white chunks of cubic-form carbon.
Duh- that's a SQUARE, folks! A genuine SQUARE!
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st_swithin
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10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:30
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Meh, halide, silicate, - it's all little shiny white squares to me.
Dodecahedron - that's a polyhedron with 12 faces, right?
What's a 12-sided polygon? Dodecagon?
Now, Buckminsterfullerene - THAT'S an interesting configuration. If someone were to show me carbon in that config, I'd probably spend $16mil on it. Hell, I bet even DeBeers would buy one.
Of course, I'd have a he11 of a time explaining why I want a diamond shaped like a soccer ball.
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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:30
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Even The Onion gets into the act...
quote:
HOLLYWOOD, CAFocus groups at advance screenings for Gigli, a romantic comedy starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez set to open nationwide July 30, have demanded a new ending in which both stars die "in as brutal a manner as possible," sources at Sony Pictures said Tuesday.
"The movie is pretty good, I guess," read one comment card from a test-screening audience in Culver City, CA. "I liked the Al Pacino character, but I had a hard time buying Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian. I also really, really wanted [Affleck and Lopez's characters] Larry and Ricki to die, to get shot or blown up or run over by something. I would prefer to see the blood and the looks on their faces."
Above: Focus-group participants suggest possible violent deaths for characters played by Lopez and Affleck.
On Monday, 3,000 people in markets as varied as Dallas, Chicago, Albany, Atlanta, and Seattle screened Gigli, a gangster-themed romantic comedy written and directed by Martin Brest, in which lowly thug Affleck lets his love for hitwoman Lopez get in the way of a high-risk mob assignment. Of those viewers, 2,965 "strongly agreed" that the ending should be changed to include a graphic scene in which its main characters die.
"Many participants wrote 'shot to death' in the space provided for comments, probably thinking that it fit in with the gangster characters' stated realities," Columbia Pictures director of marketing Peter Zitterman said. "Some comments showed a lot of careful thought, such as 'point blank through head from right side,' 'both at once with single shot from elephant gun,' and 'several hundred times, with multiple camera angles showing their bodies jerking as they're shredded with a heavy hosing of lead, spraying the lens with gobbets of meat and bone and blood, with the sheer number of fist-sized exit wounds obviously precluding any sequel.' And shootings weren't the only ideas suggested, believe me."
According to the exit cards, other popular methods of achieving Lopez and Affleck's on-screen demise included car bombs, multiple stab wounds, acid baths, rabid wolf attacks, lightning strikes, and, in one case, a "hammer party."
"We never expected this kind of reaction," Zitterman said. "We've had odd results from focus groups before, but I don't recall an audience ever agreeing on such a sweeping change. If only we had done this survey in pre-production."
Although the various test audiences differed on the preferred methods of death, they seemed unanimous on one point.
"We were very surprised at how many viewers thought that, no matter what, Affleck and Lopez should not be entwined in a romantic embrace at the time of their deaths," Zitterman said. "Everyone was perfectly clear on that."
Although Brest said he is satisfied with the final cut of Gigli, he briefly considered incorporating some of the test audience's ideas into the film.
Above: One of the many focus-group comment cards calling for Gigli characters' deaths.
"The danger here is succumbing to what people in the business call 'option paralysis'being caught with so many good ideas that you're not sure which one to use," Brest said. "Getting shot is fine, but what about an automobile fire in which Ben and Jennifer are shown perishing in a slow-motion montage, their newfound love discarded as they try desperately to claw their way past each other's melting bodies, while slowly roasting to death in their own fat? You'd be surprised at how many people came up with that one. Or having them crawl through a field of broken glass while a safely booted and gloved Christopher Walken casually advances on them with a spray bottle of acid and a pair of bolt-cutters? I must say, a part of me loves the idea of them chewing each other to death during a 14-minute dolly shot."
Added Brest: "Believe me, after the singular experience of working with these two for several months, it would be a joy to get back together just to make these changes."
Even if time were not prohibitive, Columbia executives remained skeptical about the validity of the focus-group results.
"I find it hard to believe that audiences would harbor hostility toward such major media figures as J. Lo and Ben," Zitterman said. "With her magazine covers, clothing and perfume lines, and constant radio presence; his roles in Daredevil and Project Greenlight; and their recent joint appearances on Dateline NBC and numerous entertainment shows, how could anyone wish for anything but a resolution that unites these two attractive, highly visible celebrities?"
Insiders confirm that time constraints will prevent the much-requested death-scene additions to Gigli, which already underwent several days of fine-tuning when earlier focus groups noted a lack of romantic chemistry from the real-life couple. In light of the results, however, director Kevin Smith has said he will consider adding a gruesome double homicide to his Affleck-Lopez comedy Jersey Girl, due in theaters next year. |
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st_swithin
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10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:30
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You know, JLo as a 'lesbian assassin' and Ben Affleck as the second-coming of Tony Soprano as played by James Gandolfini as inspired by DeNiro should have been enough of a clue.
Is it pronounced 'giggly' or 'jiggly'?
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31-07-2003 18:53
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