Mr. T and Bill Hader Join 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' - Cinematical

While speaking with Anna about her upcoming projects, she did tell us a little bit more about the voice work she's doing for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, based on the popular book by Judi and Rob Barrett. The film follows "a scientist who tries to solve world hunger only to see things go awry as food falls from the sky in abundance."

First off, I love Bill Hader and Anna Faris so I'm glad they are involved in this. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is probably my favorite children's book of all time. I read it like a billion times when I was a kid and it may or may not have contributed to my large girth. Or maybe that's why I liked it, I don't know. I just really, really loved the pictures. I haven't read the book in years but I can still see almost all of them in my mind, crystal clear.

That being said, I don't remember anything about "a scientist who tries to solve world hunger" being in the book. It's just a town where it rains food. Simple as that. I guess they had to come up with a reason for it for the movie, but for me that was what made the whole story so magical. We didn't need to know why it rained food in Chewandswallow, it just did and for some reason things took a turn for the worse.

Mind you, I don't think the film is going to suck now or anything like that. I'm happy I'll finally get to see the book come to life and I think the animation is going to be great. There's still a ways to go as the release date isn't until 2010. I seriously haven't been this excited for an animated movie in years.

I heard this a while ago, but didn't get around to posting it now because that's just how busy things have been lately.

Republican Enjoys Paying Huge Health Insurance Premiums

Truly, one of The Onion's greatest moments.

My favorite lines:

Kilfoy says he feels privileged to pay a quarter of his income for the 37th best health care system in the world.

Kilfoy says if universal health care is passed in the US he may leave the country, but has yet to find a developed country that doesn't offer it.

I had low hopes for Pineapple Express after the "okay" Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but thankfully, my low expectations opened me up for a fun night at the movies. We went to a late showing, and it was really funny to look across the audience and realize that most of the couples were actually two guy buddies and I was one of few women in the audience. Ric says that when we left, I was probably the only girl who was fine with having spent the last couple of hours watching a stoner comedy.

Seth Rogen plays Dale, a process server who happens to witness a murder right before he serves a subpoena. He runs for help to his pot dealer, Saul, who buys his pot from Red (Danny McBride), who takes orders from the murderer, Ted (Gary Cole). Dale and Saul, who have previously only hung out while smoking pot together, are suddenly being hunted down by some powerful people.

The movie begins in a very relaxed way, pretty much like a high (not that I..). It moves at a stoner's pace, and then when Dale and Saul are faced with trying to save their own lives, the movie moves more towards being an action comedy. The funny thing, too, is that Dale eventually realizes that everything bad that's happening to him pretty much happens because he's high. The hole they dig themselves into gets deeper and deeper the more often they stop to smoke some Pineapple Express.

I think the funniest parts of this movie aren't the obvious jokes - they're just the stoner behaviorisms. From the very start, simple scenes like the one in Saul's apartment that make the movie funny. James Franco is perfect in his role. Later on in the movie, the action and physical comedy scenes are set up to make the audience laugh more, but really the characters are what's funny more than the situation that they're in. One thing I enjoyed is watching regular guys get placed in an action situation, and seeing how they respond to it. They aren't natural men of action, so when they are in the middle of an action scene and stop to say "Ew!" when a guy gets knifed, that's what makes me laugh.

There are plenty of jokes that are misses, but there are many more that aren't. This movie does hit a level of sincerity, but doesn't do that in such a forced way as Sarah Marshall. While the first half rings a little more true, I think the action-based second half works in its own way. It's not going to win any big awards, but it made me laugh, and I'm glad I saw it.

Well, it's a little blurry, but it's an ACTION shot. We had taped squares with points on the floor, and the goal was to land the frisbee halfway in the square for the points, and fully in the square for double points. Pretty much everyone was bad at this, which is why the only person who could land a frisbee in the square won gold. There was a tiebreaker between the two teams who hadn't done well before (see below). My team came in third. The overall three-way tie is now broken, and now we're in last place!