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Thread: The Spy Next Door

  1. #1
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    The Spy Next Door

    We needed a new thread on this. Jackie films always deserve their own threads

    Jackie Chan to star in 'Spy'
    Action comedy to be directed by Brian Levant
    By Steven Zeitchik and Borys Kit
    Aug 5, 2008, 01:00 AM ET

    Jackie Chan is taking his martial-arts high jinks to the neighbors, signing on to star in "The Spy Next Door," an action comedy to be financed by Relativity Media and directed by veteran studio helmer Brian Levant.

    Robert Simonds, a longtime comedy producer on such movies as "The Pink Panther" and the Adam Sandler films "The Wedding Singer" and "Big Daddy," will produce. Solon So will executive produce. Relativity's Ryan Kavanaugh will produce, and Tucker Tooley will exec produce.

    Jonathan Bernstein and Jim Greer are penning the screenplay for "Spy," which centers on a man (Chan) who is called to baby-sit his neighbor's children and winds up having to fight off secret agents after one of the kids inadvertently downloads a secret code.

    Chan is one of the biggest-grossing comedy action stars of all time, with his "Rush Hour" films earning more than $500 million in the U.S. alone. "The Forbidden Kingdom," a which showcased his trademark brand of action chops and comic timing, earned $51 million in North America for Lionsgate in the spring.

    Chan recently has turned to action drama, starring in and producing "The Shinjuku Incident," about a Chinese immigrant who moves to Japan to pursue his former girlfriend.

    Levant is the helmer behind such studio comedies as "Are We There Yet?" the Ice Cube film that earned $82 million for Sony in 2005.

    Chan and Levant are repped by WMA, as are the writers and producers on "Spy."

    The project continues a torrid pace for Relativity, which has been snapping up projects at a rapid clip since the WGA strike ended. Kavanaugh's outfit also is behind the Judd Apatow creation "Pineapple Express," which opens Friday, and the upcoming Paul W.S. Anderson action film "Death Race."
    Gene Ching
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  2. #2
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    this movie doesn't deserve ****. i'm ****ed at jackie for taking on a crappy film like this one. i think he just takes anything they throw toward him. its sorry

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    Albuquerque

    Jack Tu said something about being in NM. Now that makes sense.

    Jackie Chan Movie to Film in Albuquerque

    Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan will be high-kicking his way around Albuquerque soon.

    Gov. Bill Richardson announced Chan’s new flick, “The Spy Next Door,” will film in and around the city in November and December. The production expects to hire about 150 local crew members and more than 600 actors, including principals and extras.

    Chan plays a man who is asked to baby-sit for his neighbor’s children and winds up having to protect them from secret agents after one of them accidentally downloads a code.

    The film will be produced by Relativity Media and directed by Brian Levant, who directed “Are We There Yet?” “Snow Dogs,” “The Flintstones,” and “Beethoven.”

    Mayor Martin Chávez recently announced that over the past five years, film productions in the city have produced a direct economic impact of about $300 million. In June, he said the industry was on track to bring in $150 million this year alone.

    The film industry has exploded in New Mexico over the last several years, due in large part to the state tax incentives that encourage film production and were put in place by the Legislature and Richardson in 2003. Since that time, more than 100 major film and television projects have shot in the state with an economic impact of more than $2 billion.
    Gene Ching
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    Hannah's dad

    Eraserhead, Hannah Montana and Jackie all in the same article. Nice!
    'Eraserhead' director inspired Billy Ray Cyrus
    August 25, 2009 -- Updated 1440 GMT (2240 HKT)
    By Lisa Respers France
    CNN

    (CNN) -- Billy Ray Cyrus may be a country boy at heart, but he is also pretty savvy when it comes to navigating Hollywood.

    When others wrote him off as a novelty act after the 1992 hit "Achy Breaky Heart," Cyrus kept making music and eventually turned to acting.

    It was a decision he said came after some well-timed fatherly advice.

    "In the mid-'90s, my dad said to me 'Son, you've got all of your eggs in one basket and you are living and dying by music,' " Cyrus recalled. "He said 'I want you to have a career like Kenny Rogers.' "

    Cyrus said his dad suggested he branch out into acting. Cyrus eventually auditioned for and won a role in what appeared to be an unlikely vehicle -- David Lynch's 2001 film "Mulholland Drive."

    After Lynch, known for such works as "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks," suggested that Cyrus should continue to pursue the craft, he went on to star in the television drama "Doc," which also helped spur the career of Cyrus' greatest production -- "Hannah Montana" star, and Cyrus' daughter, Miley Cyrus.

    Now, with the release of "Hannah Montana: The Movie" on Blu-ray and DVD, a music tour and an upcoming role in a film featuring comedian George Lopez and martial arts expert Jackie Chan, Cyrus is staying busy.

    He recently took some time out of his hectic schedule to talk to CNN about how he keeps it all together, how he manages raising a family full of performers (son Trace is a member of the band Metro Station, daughter Brandi performs with the band Frank and Derol and also acts, as do younger children Braison and Noah) and what makes him a good fit for Hollywood.

    CNN: What do you like about "Hannah Montana: The Movie?"

    Billy Ray Cyrus: I think it's got a certain amount of realism to it with art imitating life imitating art. It certainly parallels a lot of things in mine and Miley's real world and real lives.

    I wrote the song "Back to Tennessee" and as I read the script for the movie, "Back to Tennessee" became a cornerstone of the film and the title track off the album. The realism of the film translates into the music, and I think vice versa.

    CNN: The film speaks to never losing touch with your roots. How important is that to you?

    Cyrus: Extremely. My dad told me as a kid to always be aware of where you are, always have a vision for your future, but never forget where you came from.

    CNN: You've had careers in both music and acting. Do you still feel a bit like a fish out of water dealing with Hollywood?

    Cyrus: I love Hollywood as far as being an actor. Getting to work with Jackie Chan and George Lopez in this new film we have coming out in January ["The Spy Next Door"], working with Heather Locklear and Patricia Neal in the Lifetime movie "Flying By" and Brooke Shields, who has appeared as my deceased wife on "Hannah Montana."

    I look back at it now and think that I may fit in more to the film community than I do Nashville, to tell you the truth. I love what I do.

    CNN: Do you have a preference, then, for acting over music?

    Cyrus: My preference is to find projects that can combine the two. I also love to write scores. I wrote a lot of the scores for "Doc" and I love to write scores for other projects.

    CNN: How do you balance being a star with being a dad?

    Cyrus: The very best I can. I just take it one step at a time and do the best I can.

    My dad was to me what I try to be to Miley, which is somewhat of a best friend. I try my best to be a good daddy and if she wants to talk about business or music I try my best to be a good manager. I try to be all of those things because that's what my dad was to me.

    Unfortunately, my dad passed away four years ago from mesothelioma, but I feel like in some ways my dad is looking down on me and smiling.

    His name was Ronald Ray Cyrus and a lot of people say Miley changed her name to Miley Ray because of Billy Ray, but that's not true. She did that in honor of my dad, because the two of them just loved each other to pieces.

    CNN: So will Miley ever remake "Achy Breaky Heart"?

    Cyrus: I doubt it, but anything is a possibility. In 1991 I recorded "Achy Breaky Heart" and we are not too terribly far away from the 20-year anniversary, and there are some major stars who want to re-do that song.

    I'm flirting with the idea. There's one cat in particular that if I told you who it was, it would blow your mind. But I've got to keep it under my hat right now.
    Gene Ching
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    The trailer

    This looks...harsh.

    Spy Next Door trailer

    Gene Ching
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    KFM, KFTC & The Spy Next Door

    Enter to win a deluxe prize pack for THE SPY NEXT DOOR, in theaters January 15th. Contest ends 12:00 a.m. PST on 01/18/2010. Good luck everyone!

    SPECIAL OFFER! During January 2010, THE SPY NEXT DOOR will receive a special Prize Pack for Jackie Chan's THE SPY NEXT DOOR, in theaters January 15, 2010.
    Gene Ching
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    The Prize Packs

    I've had some inquires about what exactly is in the prize packs.

    The complete SPY NEXT DOOR prize pack includes a poster, an ID badge holder, binoculars and a laser pointer. All the sweepstakes winners will receive this. The new subscribers will receive the same pack, depending on supply. We have less binoculars and laser pointers and may run out of those before the end of the promotion.

    The laser pointers are really cool.
    Gene Ching
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    Jackie on Conan

    You can catch the recap on the Tonight Show site:
    part 1
    part 2
    part 3
    Gene Ching
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    Jackie channels Elvis on Ellen

    I think Ellen's interview was better than Conan's.

    Jackie is really plugging his clothes line. I got to get me some of those J.C. collection threads. He Tao said he could hook me up. I should call in that favor.
    Gene Ching
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  10. #10
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    my mother and i have a bet going on for this film...i told her it would crack the top five...she says it will. and im like only rush hour and its sequels and shanghai knights and its sequel... were hits for jackie chan in his american made movies. the rest flopped(except the forbidden kingdom, which honeslty doesnt count because that was technically an independent film). my mom is a giant jackie chan fan and i mean giant and has been that way for literally my entire life. every since she saw snake in the eagles shadow, she's been a chan fan and doesnt want to admit that he has declined...so i feel sorry for her when i win....lol, besides that im really good when it comes to box office numbers, i havent been wrong in five years.

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    I realize I'm pre-judging this movie without giving it a chance, but I'm going to give it a miss. I like Jackie's movies up until Drunken Master II, though a couple of his post-DMII movies had some good fights (Who Am I? and Gorgeous).

    IMO, Jackie's recent movies, esp. his American productions, have been sub-par. And they only seem to be going downhill. It's as if he'll take any role offered to him. Many of his roles are getting more and more demeaning, something unimaginable when he was at his peak. I could foresee his next American movie role as something like this: Jackie plays the owner of a Chinese laundry who is suddenly thrust into international intrigue when he discovers a top-secret microchip hidden in a customer's sport coat (or something to that effect).

  12. #12
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    I saw a screener

    It's a great kid's film. If you're expecting hardcore kung fu action and extreme stunts, you best check your calendar. Jackie is 56 now. He's past that. You would be too if you'd taken as many hard knocks as he has. I enjoyed it, but I'm a stalwart Jackie fan. I cherish his films from the 70's, 80's & 90's (three freaking decades!). I respect what he's doing now too. At the very least, SND is far better than Tuxedo. If you're looking for something recent from Jackie that's not a kid's film, check out Shinjuku Incident.
    Gene Ching
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    Jackie's Western face

    He's already talking sequel. Another Hollywood Jackie franchise?!
    Jackie Chan still kicking
    By Jamie Portman, Canwest News ServiceJanuary 12, 2010 11:03 AM

    LOS ANGELES - There's a moment in The Spy Next Door when Jackie Chan performs one of his age-defying acts: leaping nimbly onto a roof to rescue a stranded kitten.

    Ask Jackie about the challenge of bringing off the scene, and he responds with a disarming grin.

    "The roof was nothing," he shrugs. "But the cat was not easy. He grabbed me a few times."

    Actually, Chan was badly scratched. However, that sort of injury he can still handle. There's no way he'll make a big deal out of it. But there was another, far worse mishap during the filming of the family adventure opening Friday - and it shouldn't have happened.

    "I tore a hamstring - doing nothing," he sighs. Basically, he was careless. There's no way anymore that he can skip essential warm-up exercises before starting a strenuous day before the cameras.

    "So these days, I have to tell myself, 'Warm up! Warm up! Warm up!' But on location, you forget some days to do it."

    At 55, the world's most likable action star can no longer afford that kind of negligence. There was a time when he could be breezily casual about the nose that has been broken three times, or the 1986 misjudgment that led to a collision with a rock, emergency brain surgery and a permanent hole in his skull.

    When he broke his right ankle 14 years ago in the Vancouver-filmed Rumble In The Bronx, he was jumping from a bridge onto a hovercraft - and miscalculated. He was back on the job 48 hours later with his leg in a cast, and, off-camera, was on crutches for the rest of the shooting. But when he had to go before the cameras to perform another awesome feat, cast and crutches were nowhere in sight. He coped without them.

    In a 1995 interview, Chan joked that he had broken "everything from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet." It's less easy to joke about such things now. Chan is still an exuberant, outgoing personality, but beneath the bonhomie, there's a realistic acknowledgment of the passage of time.

    Still, there remains this readiness to try new things and break new ground - even to have his first onscreen kiss in The Spy Next Door.

    He's lost count of the number of movies he's made - both in China and in North America - but he's firm on the fact that this is his first Hollywood family movie. And yes, it's different from anything he's tried before.

    He plays Bob Ho, a nerdy pen salesman in his public persona, hopelessly in love with his next-door neighbour Gillian, played by Amber Valletta, and actively disliked by her three children, who see him as a threat to their own home life.

    If Bob is ever to marry Gillian, he's going to have to win over three hostile kids, played by Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley and Canada's Alina Foley. Adding to his problem is that he hasn't told her about his real profession of undercover super-spy for the CIA. On the very weekend when Bob is babysitting the children while their mother is away, he's forced into a confrontation with a Russian terrorist gang - a confrontation that reveals his true identity to the kids, and places the whole family in jeopardy.

    Chan ended up feeling like a babysitter throughout the entire shoot; he constantly worried about his young co-stars during the action sequences.

    "It's not easy being a babysitter. You have to protect people on the set, make sure everybody's safe, especially the children."

    He had never worked with youngsters to this extent. And they were worshipful. "Oh, they asked so many questions. They want to see this. They want to see that. They want to hold my hand. They want me to do magic. They just loved me. And I liked them, but it was my first time with kids - and difficult." Then there were the household animals: a pet pig, a turtle who plays a key role in an action sequence, and that formidable feline.

    Jackie manages to sound cheerful about the whole thing because, after all, he hopes to reunite with this brood in a sequel. "We get married, adopt all these extra children. I don't know if it will happen, but everybody hopes for that."

    As for kissing Valletta: "It's my first, ever. I finally get the girl!" But this doesn't mean romance will become a fixture of future movies: The Spy Next Door is an exception to the rule. "In my movies, we don't have kissing or love scenes. I don't want to see Jackie Chan naked. Also, so many children watch my movies, but a small kissing scene is OK."

    After all these years in the business, Chan seems to have a firm idea of what his international audience expects of him. But he's also clear-eyed about the fact that he's now middle-aged. There's no denial, but rather, an honest pragmatism, leavened by his own personal Jackie Chan brand of humour.

    Talking to Canwest News Service, he insists that his 55th birthday passed almost unnoticed, because he doesn't worry about such anniversaries.

    "I don't want to have a birthday until I'm 60. For the Chinese, every five or 10 years is the big birthday. Other birthdays, I don't care."

    But fans do observe every one of his birthdays, and that is a problem. "Every time I have a birthday, all these flowers and letters from all over the world remind me that I'm getting older, while I say - no, forget the birthdays.

    "So I try hiding every birthday right away. I'll go on location or I go somewhere else - hiding. But I still get a lot of messages on the telephone. Yeah, I don't like birthdays anymore."

    But that doesn't mean he ignores the signs of advancing age. He can still do a splendidly choreographed fight scene - witness a dazzling Eiffel Tower sequence two years ago in Rush Hour 3 - but now he constantly monitors himself.

    "Every morning, the back, the knees, the ankle can hurt a little bit. Sometimes my mind doesn't trust my body. Every day, I want to go and do something, and my mind says: 'Stop! Can you do it? Let's try, first.' The mind is telling my body, the body is telling my mind. It's not what it used to be, to do whatever you'd like to do."

    Yet he keeps constantly busy, and will be on view later this year in his own personal spin on The Karate Kid. With this one, he will take on a serious role as an aging martial arts teacher. "I have a moustache, white hair, an unhappy life." And there's also the musical he's writing about his life and career.

    Retirement is not in the books. Chan, whose cinematic action style is modelled on the physical comedy of silent-movie great Buster Keaton, abhors the very thought.

    "As soon as I retire, I might just ..." He breaks the sentence off, and slumps into his chair, deflating before your very eyes into a mere fragment of the real Jackie Chan. " ... just not care any more," he says finishing the sentence. "I just might not want to do anything. The work makes me young."

    Which reminds him - he does have a problem with his shoulder.

    "I have to go to hospital to put two screws into it," he says matter-of-factly. The problem is finding time. "I haven't gone for two years, and my shoulder hurts."
    I guess Jackie doesn't want to see Shinjuku Incident released in the west.
    Gene Ching
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  14. #14
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    This is perfect movie for him. He does slapstick and physical comedy so well. I'm a kid at heart so I know I'll like it
    "The true meaning of a given movement in a form is not its application, but rather the unlimited potential of the mind to provide muscular and skeletal support for that movement." Gregory Fong

  15. #15
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    Hey, Gene:
    No disrespect to Jackie, as I have quite a bit of experience with injuries myself, even though I'm not as old nor have I suffered anywhere near the big bumps that Jackie has endured. He's a freak of nature ('freak' meant in a good way), because virtually anyone else having been that hurt that often for that long would be long-finished. My criticism was in the nature of some of the roles he's been given in his U.S. films in recent years, like second billing to Chris Tucker, a butler, and I thought he was a servant or something(??) in Around the World in 80 days. I always felt that Jackie deserves far better than that.

    I'm anxiously awaiting Shinjuku Incident.

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