Screenhead

You know, I really don’t like the thought of an angry Bill Murray.  It gives me the creeps, to be honest with you.  It’s unnatural.  You think of Bill Murray, you think of one of the greatest funnymen on the face of the earth today.  Thinking of him angry is like thinking of a black sun.  It’s just not RIGHT, you follow?

Anyway, Bill Murray is, apparently, SUBLIMELY torqued at McG.  How do I know?  I”m about to prove it with a couple choice quotes from the man himself.

You may have heard that, once, Bill Murray headbutted McG on the set of Charlie’s Angels.  If you did hear it, you heard it from McG because he’s told that story a few times.  Bill’s response?  Advance warning: it’s not for young eyes:

“That’s bullshit! That’s complete crap! I don’t know why he made that story up. He has a very active imagination.”

Okay, this by itself isn’t terrible…but it’s what Bill had to say after regaining his composure that’s got me freaked out:

“No! He deserves to die. He should be pierced with a lance, not headbutted.”

Whoa.  Bill.  Few deep breaths, huh?  Got to calm DOWN a tick.  You know if McG winds up dead now you’re the first person they’re going to be looking at.  I’m not fond of that jumped up video director either, but you can’t go around slinging the “die” word like that, man.

I really hope you were just joking on that one.

Before I start this one, I’m going to have to ask you to sit down.  Get a cup of something soothing in front of you—coffee, tea…maybe you want to pour a knock of something stronger in there.  Okay, you ready?  Because what I’m going to tell you is going to blow your mind wide open.

Today, I’m talking about a movie called City of Ember.  And the best way to describe it is as a family-friendly version of Bioshock.

See, yeah. That got me too.  Because City of Ember is all about the city of Ember, an underground, self-contained city that runs on hydroelectric generators run by an underground river system due to some kind of disaster that took place on the surface.  Before entering the city, a box was created, containing tools and instructions to exit the city after two hundred years.  But the box, in the fullness of time, is lost, and the city of Ember carries on.  The only problem is, Ember was designed to function for two hundred years without incident.  Problems don’t appear right away…but they begin to show up.  Ember’s residents make do, and work around many of their troubles, but the problems are starting to get larger and much less fixable with the passing months.  And it doesn’t help that Ember’s residents seem to be forgetting a lot of the technological prowess that got them underground in the first place.  So now, it’s pretty much left to two kids to figure out how to get out of the city by piecing together some of the clues left behind from the fragments of over two hundred year old instructions left behind.

It’s a very subtle movie, City of Ember—it’s got some interesting political commentary, and a nice treatise on how those in power have the potential to abuse that power for their own aggrandizement.  It’s also interesting how, if you move past the status quo, you can find a whole new and wide open realm to work with.

But for those who were hoping for more action and adventure, well, it’s true that you’ll be gravely disappointed.  City of Ember is almost what amounts to a family-friendly suspense title rather than an adventure movie.

However, there’s also something to be said for the appearance of Bill Murray.  Bill Murray is good in just about anything, a fact that’s been used to improve several run-of-the-mill movies with a little extra spice, and City of Ember definitely benefits from Murray.  It doesn’t hurt that they cast him as a venal, callow, corrupt mayor who’s been secretly funneling off supplies for his own use.

When you stack it all up, you get something of a specialist movie in the end.  This is a good one for people who like really great visual work—City of Ember is full of it.  It’s a good one for people who like puzzles in their movies—City of Ember is stuffed with them.  And Bill Murray fans will definitely not be disappointed.  But unless you fit part of a very narrow set of people, you may well not enjoy this movie.  But since I did, I definitely have to recommend it, but take my recommendation with an appropriate grain of salt.  After all, I’m a Bill Murray fan who likes really good looking movies that have puzzles in them.

The period dramatic thriller Get Low has signed on Bill Murray and Lucas Black to play partners at a funeral home.

Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek are also set to star in the true story about Tennessee recluse, Felix “Bush” Breazeale, who orchestrated his own funeral in 1938 while he was yet alive and could enjoy it.  Aaron Scheider is set to direct the film which starts shooting this week in Georgia.

Columbia is taking a serious move to call the Ghostbusters back to the lens. The studio’s hired “The Office” co-exec producers, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, to write the script for the original cast of Harold Ramis, Dan Aykyrod, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.

Both the 1984 and 1989 movies were written by Rami and Aykyrod with direction by Ivan Reitman.

Deals will be made with the original cast once the script is in place. Ramis has offered evidence that the other ghostbusters are interested in returning for another go at the franchise.

Ghostbusters was Columbia’s highest grossing film until Men In Black and then Spider-man came along to bring the gross even higher.