Samuel L. Jackson upset over lack of nudity in upcoming film
September 12th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Samuel L. Jackson in “Lakeview Terrace”
Samuel L. Jackson is outraged over a scene in the upcoming Lakeview Terrace that involves clothed strippers. The cop thriller is written and directed by Neil Labute whose In the Company of Men delivered the type of verbal venality one often associates with Nick St. John or Paul Schrader.
The reason for watering down the sex, violence and profanity is simple. There is more money to be made with a PG-13 rating.
Jackson told Showbiz Spy, “There is a big scene in this movie that is really great. It is a bachelor party, and we have three strippers at the party. But it is a PG movie, so there aren’t any titties. We have three strippers at the party, and none of them have their top off.
“How does that work? I’m like, come on! You could show the girl from the back, with her back bare. At least it gives a sense that she was naked.
“You can’t just show them in their bras and panties. You have forty drunken cops in a house with three strippers? And nobody is naked? I don’t f***ing think so!”
A source close to Emulsion Compulsion (God, how I’ve always wanted to write that) confirms Jackson’s ire. “Neil Labute did not want to make a PG-13,” the booking agent informed me. “The script I read was a hard R, but Sony decided they could make more money if it was PG-13.
“My client was supposed to do nudity, but when she got on set, they told her they changed it to a PG-13, so she would keep her clothes on. She was relieved.
“I told her about the Sam Jackson lack of boobage article and she said, ‘Sam was pissed off at me for the two days I was shooting, and I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know. It’s probably because I wouldn’t get naked.’”
Rumor has it that when Sam got ready to shoot the scene, he exclaimed, “HEY, WHERE ARE THE WHITE WOMEN AT???”
The film is produced by role model Will Smith which might explain the R avoidance.
Tags: Lakeview Terrace, Neil Labute, Samuel L. JacksonFiled Under Gossip
JUMPER / Doug Liman (2008)
February 14th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Q: What do this 100% polyester student’s jumper and Doug Liman’s “Jumper” have in common?
A: One is flame retardant gear, the other geared for flaming retards.
Jumper (2008)
Directed by Doug Liman
Written by David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls & Simon Kinberg from the novel by Steven Gould
Starring: Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Samuel L. Jackson & Jamie Bell
Running Time: 88 min.
Aspect Ratio: 
Rating: 
Thumbing through the production notes while waiting for the lights to fade gave reason for hope. Both David S. Goyer (Batman Begins) and Jim Uhls (Fight Club) contributed to the script. Two out of three ain’t bad. Turning the page uncovered a the third participant, Simon Kinberg, the mastermind behind xXx: State of the Union, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and X-Men: The Last Stand.
Guess which writer appears to have yielded the strongest influence on this latest comic book rip-off? No matter what level it tries to function at — a thriller, romantic adventure, sci-fi yarn — Jumper is an incomprehensible blur.
No sooner does young David (Max Thieriot) shyly present high school crush Millie (AnnaSophia Robb) with a snowdome than it’s hurled on a frozen pond by the school bully. Shades of Bedford Falls, as David bravely ventures out to retrieve the gift, the ice cracks and the boy plunges to an almost certain doom. Almost, because at this crucial moment in time David discovers a mysterious power that allows him to zap through worm holes in the space-time continuum. In the blink of an eye, David (along with hundreds of gallons of water) “jumps” to the school library.
In spite of witnesses to David’s inexplicable appearance in the stacks and no corpus in the river to delicti, the townsfolk appear satisfied that David has vanished. Eight years later, after David has matured into Hayden Christiensen, he returns to Ann Arbor to conveniently find Millie (Rachel Bilson) tending bar and the school bully her best customer. Both have the good taste not to bring up his presumed drowning.
The reason for David’s return visit home is not to bond with his surly old man (Michael Rooker). As soon as David discovered his powers, he instantly put them to bad use. “What I loved about David Goyer’s original draft is that it was about somebody who got superpowers and the first thing he does with them is go out and rob a bank. I really liked the honesty of that,” says director Doug Liman. It’s the only honest moment in a film that otherwise has more holes than a Sonny Corleone toll booth.
David soon discovers Griffin (Jamie Bell), a fellow freak of nature who has been on the run since childhood. In hot pursuit of both Jumpers is Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), head of an elite force known as Paladins that are out to save humanity from an enemy they perceive as morally unfit. “Only God,” Roland bellows, “should have the power to be at all places at one time.” It isn’t long before this hyper-real trio are popping off like flashbulbs in all corners of the CinemaScope expanse. Sadly, this digitized Jumper cabal generates nary a spark.
Apart from the ecumenical aspect, Paladins are out to prevent Jumpers from using their powers for ill gain. One look at the stacks of loot David has amassed during his relatively brief career as a teleporting Clyde Barrow makes him an instant target of the merciless Roland.
Even the most remote fantasy universe must have some basis in reality. If you count Liman and the novel’s original author, it took five creative minds to come up with two rules of Jumping in order to set what they call “a solid foundation for the epic story’s complex inner mechanics.”
First, “you can jump anywhere that you can currently see” and second, “you can jump anywhere that you’ve seen before, even in a photograph, so long as you have a strong visual memory of it.”
What kind of lame-ass rules are these? Why not broaden the parameters a little more, fellas? Where’s the inner conflict, what’s David’s Kryptonite? At one point, Griffin transports a city bus to Egypt in hopes of crushing Roland. In their race to the special effects scenes, the filmmakers once again ignore all forms of logic let alone character development.
Even the special effects aren’t that special. The frenetic-CGI work frequently blurs and there is one moment where David looks like a toy Gumby perched atop the Sphinx. And why would anyone choose to dine alone at the peak of a pyramid other than the obvious reason of using the shot as a cool selling tool in the trailer?
Hayden Christiensen is a bore that has found his match in Rachel Bilson. Here are two beautifully formed vacuums that both suck and blow simultaneously. Their painful lack of chemistry is further hampered by the trivial dialogue they’re asked to spew. Thoroughly muddled Millie’s initial reaction to seeing Rome’s Colosseum is, “It’s so cool!”
Basic, S.W.A.T., Twisted, Star Wars pictures, Coach Carter, The Man, Freedomland, Snakes on a Plane, Black Snake Moan…What was the last script Samuel L. Jackson turned down? With the exception of John Boorman’s In My Country and possibly Kill Bill(s), in six years and twenty-five films SLJ has done little more than draw a handsome salary. His bleach blond Paladin is strictly Jackson by the numbers and the shtick is beginning to tire.
It’s not to early to earmark a spot on this year’s Ten Worst list. This is so bad there are moments you’ll want to “jump” to Cloverfield.
Tags: Film Review, Hayden Christensen, JUMPER, Rachel Bilson, Samuel L. JacksonFiled Under Reviews, Theatrical
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