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10 articles from 2008

27 August 2008 8:35 AM, PDT | From PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news

It's now question of who isn't attending Stand Up to Cancer, the Sept. 5 multi-network TV charity event that's raising money to fight the disease. New additions to the line-up include Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Jack Black, Abigail Breslin, Kate Bosworth, Sheryl Crow, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Garner, Brad Garrett, Angie Harmon, Tony Hawk, Marg Helgenberger, Diane Keaton, Rob Lowe, Mandy Moore, Sharon Osbourne, Josh Peck, Mekhi Phifer, Keanu Reeves, Jimmy Smits, David Spade and Carrie Underwood. They are joining a long list that includes Casey Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Applegate, Lance Armstrong, Josh Brolin, David Cook, Dana Delany,

Michael Y. Park

28 July 2008 8:32 AM, PDT | From Digitalspy | See recent digitalspy news

Doctor Who has been nominated in a record four Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards UK categories. The BBC sci-fi show faces off against The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and Harry Hill's TV Burp in the Favourite Family TV Show category this year. Lead actor David Tennant is nominated in the Favourite Male TV Star category alongside Robin Hood's Jonas Armstrong, Suite Life's Dylan Sprouse, as well as Josh Peck, star of Drake & Josh. The Doctor's companions Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) and Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) are nominated for Favourite Female TV Star, along with Hannah Montana's Miley Cyrus and iCarly's Miranda Cosgove. Finally, the Daleks will compete with SpongeBob SquarePants character Plankton, Wwe's (more)

By Daniel Kilkelly

17 July 2008 11:59 PM, PDT | From GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news

The Wackness

Starring Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, and Olivia Thirlby

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Rated R

Sometimes it's the strangest relationships that can be the most rewarding. Felix and Oscar, Harold and Maude, Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, Gnarls Barkley. The Wackness provides us the most dysfunctional friendship of 2008, but it's one the characters and the audience are both the better for exploring.

Recent high school graduate Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) attends therapy sessions with Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley). At the end of each session, Luke pays his doctor with dime bags of pot. It's a win-win situation; Luke gets the help he seeks and gains a customer, and Dr. Squires gets the high he wants and, for 45 minutes, a friend he needs.

Squires lives a pretty vacant life. He's in a loveless marriage (to Famke Janssen) and he doesn't get along very well with his step-daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby from Juno). Luke,

Colin Boyd

12 July 2008 7:14 AM, PDT | From Rope Of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news

Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck wheel around the marijuana cart posing as a snow cone cart

Photo: Sony Pictures Classics Fueled by not much more than online fanboy joy over a film they mildly connect with, The Wackness is impressive only as a piece of teenage "where do I fit in the world?" questioning, but outside of that it isn't all that interesting. This film just tends to sit there and go through the motions as each and every turn in the plot is foreshadowed prior to anything ever taking place. None of it is a mystery as you follow the slovenly open-mouthed protagonist on his daily jaunts selling weed while the world he inhabits is crumbling all around him. Josh Peck isn't a newcomer to films although it may seem that way considering he has never broken out and astounded audiences. Starring as Luke Shapiro, he has just graduated

Brad Brevet

4 July 2008 10:35 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

In addition to the slew of blockbusters that have taken over the multiplexes for the Independence Day holiday, the critically praised The Wackness, starring Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck, Mary-Kate Olsen and Olivia Thirlby is opening in limited release today (Friday) to largely enthusiastic reviews. Rafer Guzmán in the Newsday indicates the movie "is less a story than a series of moments -- some funny, some poignant, all memorable." Comments Claudia Puig in USA Today: "The writing and filmmaking style are often poetic, and the dialogue, steeped in '90s phrases, sounds believable. ... The Wackness is both darkly funny and life-affirming, in an offbeat and offhanded way." Some critics suggest, however, that the movie was contrived primarily for the film-festival crowd and like many festival competitors is overloaded with preadult angst. Although set in New York in 1994, Jan Stuart notes in the Los Angeles Times, the movie "is ultimately less evocative of pre-Sept. 11 Manhattan than it is of post-Sept. 11 Park City, Utah, where the film had its Sundance debut." And Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News concludes that the film is ultimately a disappointment. The film, he writes, "occasionally stumbles into charm but more often is just wayward and hazy."

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3 July 2008 9:07 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Matt Singer

Many movies wax nostalgic for the good old days; "The Wackness" is the only movie I can think of that's nostalgic for a time occupied by people who are themselves nostalgic about their own good old days. Though writer/director Jonathan Levine's wistful coming-of-age film wants us to miss New York City as we knew it in 1994, the characters are all pissed off: their marriages are falling apart or their high school careers (and, thus, their lives) are coming to an end, and the new mayor is cracking down on drug use.

I guess the grass . the grass, man . is always greener. Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is an enterprising high school senior who makes up for his parents' employment fuckups by dealing pot around his Upper East Side neighborhood. His aesthetic, much like the movie itself, is pointedly old school: cassettes instead of CDs, Nintendo instead of Sega Genesis.

Matt Singer

1 July 2008 8:33 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Stephen Saito

Jonathan Levine calls "The Wackness" a "second first film." In a way, he's speaking for his whole cast. While Levine is making his debut as a writer after helming the much buzzed-about (but still unreleased) teen horror comedy hybrid, "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane," he hired an eclectic cast for his latest film that includes Nickelodeon staple Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby ("Juno"), Method Man, Famke Janssen, Sir Ben Kingsley, and in case you hadn't heard, Mary-Kate Olsen. It's an unusual ensemble for an unusual coming-of-age story of a teen (Peck) who forms an unlikely friendship with a psychologist (Kingsley) by trading marijuana for therapy in 1994 New York. It's clearly a personal story for Levine, but it's not an autobiographical one, though both he and Peck both sweated out sticky summers in Manhattan, listening to Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa" a generation apart. Now, the two have

Stephen Saito

1 July 2008 7:37 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore

In this week's "The Wackness," one-time Nickelodeon star Josh Peck plays a teenager who spends the summer of 1994 dealing pot out of an ice cream cart and consuming plenty of his own product. In honor of the film, and in particular of Ben Kingsley's admirably fried performance as a shrink who accepts weed in lieu of cash for sessions, we're spending this IFC News podcast in the world of drug movies, from stoner comedies like "Smiley Face" to meth dramas like "Spun."

Download now (MP3: 35:06 minutes, 32.1 Mb) Podcast feeds: [Xml] [iTunes]

[Photo: "The Wackness," Sony Pictures Classics, 2008]

Alison Willmore

30 June 2008 12:05 PM, PDT | From screeninglog.com | See recent screeninglog news

Jonathan Levine’s indie comedy “The Wackness” picked up the audience award for best narrative feature Sunday at the 2008 Los Angeles Film Festival. The film stars Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen and Olivia Thirlby, and focuses on a young drug dealer who falls for his psychiatrist’s daughter.

The audience award for best international feature went to James Marsh’s “Man on Wire,” a British documentary about tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring but often illegal stunts.

But “Man on Wire” failed to collect the audience award for best documentary feature, which went to Sacha Gervasi’s “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” a film about a Canadian rock band that never made the big time.

The festival also presented two awards sponsored by Target. Darius Marder’s “Loot” took home the best documentary award, while Sean Baker’s “Prince of Broadway” won best narrative feature.

Other winners included Jennifer Lawrence

Franck Tabouring

30 June 2008 7:46 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Neil Pedley

This 4th of July week finds Will Smith's belligerent man of steel sending the rest of the summer tentpole movies running scared, leaving only the indies to offer any alternative.

"Brutal Massacre"

Does the horror genre need its own "This Is Spinal Tap"? Ready or not, here comes "Brutal Massacre," a mockumentary comedy about a once-successful horror director (played by "An American Werewolf in London"'s David Naughton) attempting to make his big comeback film against increasingly insurmountable odds. Be on the lookout for appearances by Gunnar Hansen ("The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"'s Leatherface), Ellen Sandweiss ("The Evil Dead") and other horror movie stalwarts.

Opens in limited release.

"Diminished Capacity"

Terry Kinney made a name for himself as Tim McManus, the idealistic but world-weary warden of Emerald City in the hard-hitting prison drama "Oz." "Diminished Capacity," his debut as a director, also finds Matthew Broderick

Neil Pedley

10 articles from 2008