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Whoa! Stop horsing around

Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and his horse Joey in DreamWorks Pictures' War Horse
Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and his horse Joey in DreamWorks Pictures' War Horse

MY MOVIE WEEKwith Mike Shaw

» The new trailer for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War Horse came out last week and it’s bitterly disappointing. Not because the film looks bad – far from it – but because it blows the ending within the first 30 seconds. Even those who have not read the book or seen the play on which it is based will be able to figure out that what they are seeing is a scene from how the story is wrapped up. Stupid! Stupid, stupid Hollywood.

However, I’ve got a pretty good idea that the trailer is representative of how the final product will look. That’s something that can’t be said for Drive starring Ryan Gosling. Or, at least, that’s how one woman feels.

A moviegoer from Michigan, USA, is so hacked off about the trailer for Drive she is suing not only the movie’s distributor but also the cinema where she saw it.

Sarah Deming has filed a lawsuit against FilmDistrict and Emagine Theatres saying that they promoted Drive as “very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” but that Drive “bore very little similarity to a chase or race action film... having very little driving in the motion picture.”

She goes on to claim that Drive is “a motion picture that substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith”.

Deming is demanding that her ticket be refunded and also plans to turn her individual lawsuit into a class action – which means a large group of people can collectively bring a claim to court and crush the evil cinemas who show movies that don’t live up to their trailers.

So, if you’re an American and feel hurt and betrayed because X Men didn’t have enough post-op transsexuals in it, now’s your chance to make a fool of yourself on a bigger stage than usual.

As an interesting side note, there doesn’t seem to be one source that backs up Deming’s claim of anti-semitism in Drive. Could it be possible that she just fell asleep in front of the TV one night, woke up midway through a documentary about Mein Kampf and got a bit confused? She certainly sounds dim enough.

» Talking animals are inexplicably popular so it’s perhaps surprising that it’s taken this long for a studio to grab the rights to 1960s sitcom Mr Ed.

Fox 2000 has decided that the hilarious hijinks of Wilbur Post and his talking horse, Ed, are just what a 21st century audience wants. If you’ve never seen Mr Ed or are fortunate enough to have the part of your brain that stores memories of shoddy horse-based comedy wiped by benevolent aliens, you can pretty much guess what happened in most episodes: Ed says something he shouldn’t and Wilbur gets in trouble. Ho ho ho.

Little Miss Sunshine producer David Friendly is working on the project and wants to go down the route of using a real horse and giving it a CGI mouth. Nothing creepy about that!

“It’s always the perfect time for a four-quadrant family movie,” says Friendly.

“Those are the movies that have the strongest pull. As a producer, I try to envision the poster and this one looks pretty good coming from the studio behind Marley & Me and Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

Sounds like hell on earth to me, but what do I know; I watched Drive and completely missed all the raging race hate.

If Fox 2000 decide to go ahead with Mr Ed though, here’s a tip. Save money on an expensive CGI horse – hire Sarah Jessica Parker instead.

» I’ll keep this short, because I’ve talked about it many, many times. Arrested Development IS coming back, first with a new TV series and then as a film. Definitely. Hooray for the end of years of bickering and Michael Cera hijacking the project because he thought his career was going to last once Superbad faded from popular public memory. Fingers crossed the comeback isn’t terrible and ruins the legacy of the first three wonderful series.

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