Jason KingThe Ten ($12-)
August 10th 2008 07:22
The Ten ($12-)
With its gleeful hash of the sacred and the profane, THE TEN is a hilarious comedy that takes liberties with the Bible's Ten Commandments. David Wain and Ken Marino re team to poke fun at the Old Testament tenets with 10 stories. Jeff Reigert (Paul Rudd, KNOCKED UP) introduces these 10 chapters, as he also confronts his own issues with adultery. He has the difficult task of choosing between his wife played by Famke Janssen (X-MEN: THE LAST STAND) and his mistress played by Jessica Alba (FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER) - I swear he took this role solely to make out with Famke and then Jessica Alba, most straight men's ultimate fantasy.
Meanwhile, each of the stories tackles the Bible's rules from Thou shalt not have no other gods before me to Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, with equal parts wit and weirdness. From the buttoned-up librarian (Gretchen Mol, THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE) who falls for a Mexican carpenter named Jesus to a doctor (Marino, DIGGERS) who sees his murder of a patient as a joke, these aren't the Sunday school takes on the Biblical rules. Instead, Wain, Marino, and their star-studded cast treat the normally serious topics such as murder and adultery with their irreverent and politically incorrect brand of humor.
To me this reminded me of a mix between attending scouts at a younger age and of Saturday Night Live. It's skits done with a bigger budget, great actors and writers on crack. It is basically 10 short stories and they are SO loosely interpreted with the theme of one of the commandments. Similar to Tropfest each year, there is a theme each year but if the theme is banana then all they have to do is have a banana in the film somewhere and theme has been taken care of. Same with this. And I must add that as a short film in Tropfest I think pretty much all of them are winners.
Not all ten shorts are works of brilliance but I did find them all funny and some of them I swear I was close to peeing a small bit. One thing that drew me to watch this was the cast, it's like they were all friends, all enjoyed acting together and got together for a weekend workshop of debauchery and hilarity. Check out this cast, Paul Rudd, Famke Janssen, Winona Ryder, Adam (I LOVE U) Brody, Ken Marino, Jessica Alba, Liev Schreiber, Rob Corddry, Janeane Garofalo, Oliver Platt, Gretchen Mol and many more!!
This could make for a brilliant stage show and something that they kind of half do with most of Paul Rudd's performance as presenter and performer set on a stage with nothing besides the commandments set behind him. There is many a Woody Allen reference in the film and I think what they did was extremely clever. I do suggest that all religious people stay away from this one and really think that Morgan and John Doe will appreciate this film (this has nothing to do with the religious comment from prior - I just think you guys will appreciate the twisted humor).
One thing of note, the actors are all great, the Liev skit had me crying with laughter but Winona Ryder's performance throughout is BLOODY SENSATIONAL, anyone that can fall in love and make out with a wooden ventriloquist's doll has got to get kudos.
The directors words on the film (printed in full):
While this has been mostly disliked by critics I think it worked fabulously. Out now on DVD. Worth $12-
With its gleeful hash of the sacred and the profane, THE TEN is a hilarious comedy that takes liberties with the Bible's Ten Commandments. David Wain and Ken Marino re team to poke fun at the Old Testament tenets with 10 stories. Jeff Reigert (Paul Rudd, KNOCKED UP) introduces these 10 chapters, as he also confronts his own issues with adultery. He has the difficult task of choosing between his wife played by Famke Janssen (X-MEN: THE LAST STAND) and his mistress played by Jessica Alba (FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER) - I swear he took this role solely to make out with Famke and then Jessica Alba, most straight men's ultimate fantasy.
Meanwhile, each of the stories tackles the Bible's rules from Thou shalt not have no other gods before me to Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, with equal parts wit and weirdness. From the buttoned-up librarian (Gretchen Mol, THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE) who falls for a Mexican carpenter named Jesus to a doctor (Marino, DIGGERS) who sees his murder of a patient as a joke, these aren't the Sunday school takes on the Biblical rules. Instead, Wain, Marino, and their star-studded cast treat the normally serious topics such as murder and adultery with their irreverent and politically incorrect brand of humor.
To me this reminded me of a mix between attending scouts at a younger age and of Saturday Night Live. It's skits done with a bigger budget, great actors and writers on crack. It is basically 10 short stories and they are SO loosely interpreted with the theme of one of the commandments. Similar to Tropfest each year, there is a theme each year but if the theme is banana then all they have to do is have a banana in the film somewhere and theme has been taken care of. Same with this. And I must add that as a short film in Tropfest I think pretty much all of them are winners.
Not all ten shorts are works of brilliance but I did find them all funny and some of them I swear I was close to peeing a small bit. One thing that drew me to watch this was the cast, it's like they were all friends, all enjoyed acting together and got together for a weekend workshop of debauchery and hilarity. Check out this cast, Paul Rudd, Famke Janssen, Winona Ryder, Adam (I LOVE U) Brody, Ken Marino, Jessica Alba, Liev Schreiber, Rob Corddry, Janeane Garofalo, Oliver Platt, Gretchen Mol and many more!!
This could make for a brilliant stage show and something that they kind of half do with most of Paul Rudd's performance as presenter and performer set on a stage with nothing besides the commandments set behind him. There is many a Woody Allen reference in the film and I think what they did was extremely clever. I do suggest that all religious people stay away from this one and really think that Morgan and John Doe will appreciate this film (this has nothing to do with the religious comment from prior - I just think you guys will appreciate the twisted humor).
One thing of note, the actors are all great, the Liev skit had me crying with laughter but Winona Ryder's performance throughout is BLOODY SENSATIONAL, anyone that can fall in love and make out with a wooden ventriloquist's doll has got to get kudos.
The directors words on the film (printed in full):
The Ten Commandments have been a cornerstone of our society for nearly one hundred years. If you've ever taken a Sunday off, or if you've ever stopped yourself from murdering someone, then you yourself have been following the Ten Commandments without even knowing it.
Fascinated by the concept of these simple directives, Ken Marino and I began to spin the tales that make up our new feature film, THE TEN.
Before attacking such a weighty subject in a screenplay, we knew we needed to to do a great deal of research. Taking a tip from a friend, we found google.com, where we learned not only what The Ten Commandments are, but what order they're in.
We were thrilled to learn that all Ten Commandments were available -- they'd been optioned by Universal but had reverted back to the writer last year.
Armed with our newfound source material, the characters flowed out of our imaginations -- so vividly that it was often the characters themselves who wrote the story!
* A guy (Adam Brody) who becomes an accidental hero after falling out of a plane
* A librarian (Gretchen Mol) who has a sexual awakening in Mexico with a swarthy local (Justin Theroux)
* A doctor (Ken Marino) who kills his patients "as a goof"
* A police detective (Liev Schreiber) who covets his neighbor's Cat Scan machine
* A mother (Kerri Kenney-Silver) who enlists an Arnold Schwarzenneger impersonator (Oliver Platt) to be a father figure to her children
* A prisoner (Rob Corddry) who covets his fellow inmate's "wife"
* A woman (Winona Ryder) who falls in love with, and then steals a ventriloquist's puppet
* A Rhinoceros who learns the pitfalls of gossip
* A husband (A. D. Miles) who skips church with his family to get naked with his friends and listen to Roberta Flack
Jeff Reigert (Paul Rudd) presents all of these stories to the audience, while struggling with his own moral dilemma: having to choose between his beautiful wife (Famke Janssen) and his also beautiful but somewhat younger mistress (Jessica Alba).
We began the writing process in June of 2004 and completed our final draft in early June of 2004.
Before production started in 2006, I had to make numerous choices about the visual style. The only one I can remember right now, is that I chose to shoot in color, for three primary reasons:
1) Most movies these days are in color
2) Black & white didn't seem appropriate
3) Black & White having been eliminated, color seemed like the only other choice.
After completing principal photography, we decided to "edit" the film, which is just a fancy way of saying we edited it.
We debuted at 2007 Sundance Film Festival, played in theaters across the country in the summer and now will be on DVD January 15, 2008. I have no pretensions that this movie will change the world; my only expectation is that it will change the way everyone on this planet thinks and behaves.
I hope you'll enjoy THE TEN.
- David Wain
Fascinated by the concept of these simple directives, Ken Marino and I began to spin the tales that make up our new feature film, THE TEN.
Before attacking such a weighty subject in a screenplay, we knew we needed to to do a great deal of research. Taking a tip from a friend, we found google.com, where we learned not only what The Ten Commandments are, but what order they're in.
We were thrilled to learn that all Ten Commandments were available -- they'd been optioned by Universal but had reverted back to the writer last year.
Armed with our newfound source material, the characters flowed out of our imaginations -- so vividly that it was often the characters themselves who wrote the story!
* A guy (Adam Brody) who becomes an accidental hero after falling out of a plane
* A librarian (Gretchen Mol) who has a sexual awakening in Mexico with a swarthy local (Justin Theroux)
* A doctor (Ken Marino) who kills his patients "as a goof"
* A police detective (Liev Schreiber) who covets his neighbor's Cat Scan machine
* A mother (Kerri Kenney-Silver) who enlists an Arnold Schwarzenneger impersonator (Oliver Platt) to be a father figure to her children
* A prisoner (Rob Corddry) who covets his fellow inmate's "wife"
* A woman (Winona Ryder) who falls in love with, and then steals a ventriloquist's puppet
* A Rhinoceros who learns the pitfalls of gossip
* A husband (A. D. Miles) who skips church with his family to get naked with his friends and listen to Roberta Flack
Jeff Reigert (Paul Rudd) presents all of these stories to the audience, while struggling with his own moral dilemma: having to choose between his beautiful wife (Famke Janssen) and his also beautiful but somewhat younger mistress (Jessica Alba).
We began the writing process in June of 2004 and completed our final draft in early June of 2004.
Before production started in 2006, I had to make numerous choices about the visual style. The only one I can remember right now, is that I chose to shoot in color, for three primary reasons:
1) Most movies these days are in color
2) Black & white didn't seem appropriate
3) Black & White having been eliminated, color seemed like the only other choice.
After completing principal photography, we decided to "edit" the film, which is just a fancy way of saying we edited it.
We debuted at 2007 Sundance Film Festival, played in theaters across the country in the summer and now will be on DVD January 15, 2008. I have no pretensions that this movie will change the world; my only expectation is that it will change the way everyone on this planet thinks and behaves.
I hope you'll enjoy THE TEN.
- David Wain
While this has been mostly disliked by critics I think it worked fabulously. Out now on DVD. Worth $12-
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
i've had the promo disc for this one for a few months now but haven't got around to watching it yet..though it does look like something that will make me laugh.
Paul Rudd will always get me in.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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hahaha