Funny or Die Releases the First STEVE JOBS Biopic

April 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

isteve_long

I was planning on going to the Sundance London Film Festival this week, but the lineup was pretty weak. A lot of the big hitters from Colorado were unfortunately left out, thereby making it hard to justify the expense of travelling all the way to London. I was hoping to see Ashton Kutcher’s potential train wreck…I mean passion project, jOBS, about the former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. I figured there would be plenty of shitty acting and laughable seventies inspired fake beards to make a scathing review enjoyable, but alas this will have to wait. Fortunately though, FunnyOrDie has beat Kutcher to the punch by being the first to release their own feature length biopic.

iSteve is a comical love letter to the Apple founder that I’m willing to bet has more ‘heart’ than Kutchers film will. Justin Long, of the Apple vs. PC ads and Dodgeball fame, takes on the lead role of Jobs. An inspired choice indeed. The film clocks in at a succinct 78min, so pop some clothes in the dryer break open a beer and put your iPhone into airport mode…shits about to get real deep y’all. One of my favourite bits is when Jobs, Wozniak and Gates are programming the Apple 2, and all they do is smash a bunch of motherboards with hammers, which is frankly more realistic than any Hollywood hacking tropes using virtual reality and quacking ducks* to access the sub-routine**. There’s also a an encounter with Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan, in which the two drop acid at Woodstock ’94 – Spoiler Alert – Billy Corgan may have invented the iPod.

There’s also a disclaimer at the end which is refreshingly truthful…

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. In fact, everything you just saw is totally fictitious. A few of the names used might belong to real people, but literally everything that happened in this story was totally fake. Also, you have to admit some parts were pretty far-fetched or just plain impossible. Those scenes should have been a dead giveaway that this is a work of dubious realism. Point is, none of it happened. It’s all fictional, phoney baloney, a big crock of shit

You can see the full film here. [http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/d2e0f617e3/isteve]

*As seen in Hackers, starring a boyish Angelina Jolie.

** I have no idea what those are…also in Hackers.

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So…that Ashton Kutcher jOBS film looks kinda shit….called it!

January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

aston-kutcher-josh-gad-APPLE

Ashton Kutcher’s passion project on the late Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, will only be making its début at Sundance Film Festival this weekend, but it’s already been picked up by a distributor. As a result the first few promotional stills have been released and today we got a taster for what to expect performance-wise form the two lead actors; Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak. If you’ve been following my coverage of the film through its development, you’ll know that I’m not the greatest fan of this project. I’m still patiently waiting for Aaron Sorkin to finish his script over at Sony, before I ask Siri to launch my iLighter app and gently wave it in the air of a crowded cinema, like I’m at a Led Zepplin gig.

Josh Gad isn’t a terrible actor, per se, but he doesn’t stand a chance making me believe he’s Wozniak with that terrible wig and fake beard. Is it me, or is that poor excuse for a hairdo, just a 70′s porn stars merkin? And Kutcher, well…he’s always just playing variations of himself, with fluctuations in facial hair. I can see why Kutcher was drawn to the role. He’s made a name for himself in silicone valley, making astute investments in Twitter, Facebook and AirBnB to name just a few, way before they came to mainstream consensus. But good intentions aside, this clip below doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film. My money on an Oscar winning performance for a Jobs biopic will be a Sorkin written script and a Noah Wyle lead….mark my words!

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HAS SORKIN ALREADY CAST HIS LEAD FOR JOBS BIOPIC?

June 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

Aaron Sorkin is currently working on the script for Sony’s untitled Steve Jobs biopic, after being awarded the gig last month. Since then speculation has been running wild on who will take the lead role. Sony must be spoilt for choice as every actor under the sun must be dying to play the part in an almost certain oscar-bait performance. Even Ashton Kutcher has decided not to wait around and made the bold move of creating his own biopic, entitled Jobs: Get Inspired - sounds like a film that will get two and a half (men)stars in a review, am i right? [You just know someone will do that]. I’m not too keen on that project, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, so I’m glad Sorkin is taking his time over at Sony.

Stanley Tucci and George Clooney are names that have been thrown about so far, but with all that speculation in the air, one name has stood out for me the most…Noah Wyle. Let me tell you why.

The actor, best known for playing Dr. John Carter in ER, played Jobs in a previous film, 1999′s Pirates of Silicon Valley – and absolutely nailed the performance. Capturing the mannerisms and look of Jobs so well that even Jobs himself felt compelled to acknowledge him in a humorous publicity stunt, for the Mac-world Expo, that same year.

[Noah Wyle] is a better me, than me – Steve Jobs, 1999

Yes, Wyle might look older now since his last portrayal, but rather than rehash Jobs’s earlier life, as shown in Pirates of Silicone Valley, it wold be better to continue on from where it ended. Start the new film from Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. Show how he rescued the company from near-bankruptcy, fought his battle with cancer and end with his Stanford commencement speech. Well at least that’s how I would do it.

But of course casting Wyle to play Jobs is all speculation at this point, until I happened to see a video of Aaron Sorkin’s commencement speech to Syracuse University, back in May. In it he name drops Wyle, while reminiscing over a story of missed opportunity, which may give us an insight into who Sorkin will champion to play the role. See the clip below from 4:45 min.

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IT’S OFFICIAL – SORKIN WILL WRITE STEVE JOBS BIOPIC

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

STEVE JOBS BIOPIC FILM WILL BE WRITTEN BY AARON SORKIN

Sorkin has been ‘courted’ for this gig since Walter Isaacson’s Biography of the late Steve Jobs was released back in November 2011. And so speculation has always been that Sorkin was the first pick, but with his commitments to writing and producing the new HBO TV show Newsroom, it was still up in the air as to whether he could spare the time needed for such an important film.

It seems that today he’s signed on the dotted line with Sony to pen the official script, which is a huge relief, considering the alternative Kutcher project was the only game in town for a while. Sorkin has become the go-to-guy for any serious intelligent writing. He’s probably best known for his award winning TV series The West Wing and more recently, the Oscar winning, Social Network.

The press release included a statement from the co-chairman of Sony saying:

Steve Jobs’ story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin.

So now that we have two Steve Jobs biopics on the table, which will you see? The one written by an Oscar winning scribe (who coincidentally, jobs was a noted fan of), backed by Job’s official biographer or would you rather see that…uh hum…Ashton Kutcher one?

*Still hoping Noah Wyle get’s the gig

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KUTCHER’S iJOBS BIOPIC, GETS EVEN WORSE!

May 13, 2012 by 4 Comments

steve jobs, ashton kutcherAs if it wasn’t bad enough living in a world were Asshole Kushton gets to make a Steve Jobs biopic, TMZ (see images here) managed to capture some, not so promising, snaps of Kutcher wearing what appears to be the iconic jeans and black turtle neck worn in all of Jobs’s major keynotes.  The problem I have with this is that Jobs only started wearing this uniform around the early 2000’s and if Kutcher’s film is supposed to be set in the early years of Apple, as evidenced by the hairstyle and beard, why is he wearing the wrong clothes? If I try to see this in a less pessimistic way and give Kutcher the benefit of the doubt, you could argue that he was just wearing the modern Jobs-gear to get into character – or maybe this is just an elaborate viral marketing technique to spark up controversy and keep people talking about his shitty passion project.

As long as Aaron Sorkin is working on an alternative script somewhere I’m cool – we all know what a great writer he is. Since he stopped snorting coke, Sorkin’s dialogue in movies has slowed down just enough for mere mortals to understand, but lost none of the wicked-smart banter. And how could someone who wrote the West Wing and the Social Network screw this one up?

PREVIOUS POSTS BELOW:

[The cherry on top would of course be Noah Wyle reprising his role as Steve Jobs for Sorkins script]

[A few week ago we heard that Josh Gad has been cast in the supporting role of Steve Wozniak]

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