will smith

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Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith

A 19-year old’s voice-mail rendition of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song caused the entire public school system where he lived to go on lockdown because a receptionist interpreted it as a threat.

Travis Clawson of Economy, Pennsylvania has a recording of himself singing the theme from the popular Nineties sitcom starring Will Smith (right).  The receptionist at his eye doctor’s office called Clawson to confirm an upcoming appointment.  Instead of Clawson answering it went to his voice-mail greeting.  And the receptionist thought she heard Clawson singing “shooting people outside of the school.”

The actual line is “And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school”.

The receptionist then called Ambridge Area High School where Clawson is a student.  The officials then dialed 911.  That contacted the police and put out an alert to all the schools in the system.  The cops finally located Clawson in a ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

IESB.net is reporting that Twentieth Century Fox is about to commit to two sequels to Independence Day: its 1996 mega-blockbuster about aliens arriving on Earth to wipe out humanity on the Fourth of July. Will Smith is already set to return as Steven Hiller, the hotshot pilot he played in the original.

Do we really need this? For its tenth anniversary in 2006 I posted an extensive write-up about Independence Day. As much as I still love the movie, too much time has gone by since the original. It remains a product of its era and to make sequels to it would make a mockery of that. Well, I think so anyway.

I do think that Independence Day could be rebooted (since that’s the route every other movie franchise seems to be going these days). I mean, think about it: who in America wouldn’t want to see the ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

They changed the ending.

And for that, I cannot forgive.

For the first two-thirds of the film, I Am Legend with Will Smith is pretty faithful to the spirit of Richard Matheson’s original novel. I think that Akiva Goldsman (and whatever made it into this final draft from Mark Protosevich’s original script) was hitting on the right cylinders so far as portraying Neville’s loneliness and despair went. The scenes of Smith in the video store, where he’s talking to the mannequins and trying hard not to gaze upon the adult DVD section, seemed especially inspired by the book.

And when we see Neville going to the dock every day at noon, waiting in vain for anybody who might have heard his signal: even though that was never something we saw in the book, it was a nice touch. It’s something that I could see Matheson’s Neville doing.

I don’t even ...

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This is one of two posts that I’ll probably be making today. The other will hopefully share some good news. Otherwise, I’m still trying to take a break from blogging.

The final trailer for I Am Legend hit the Internets yesterday…

This is an amazing trailer! And it’s really starting to look as if they stayed true to the spirit of the book. Love the music in this trailer: I don’t know if that’s some of James Newton Howard’s score but it evokes a lot of the same feeling as Ron Grainer’s music from The Omega Man (which was also based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend). And Will Smith here, looks like he’s hitting on all the right cylinders as Robert Neville. I’ll admit to being a bit taken aback when I heard that Smith was playing Neville (I’ll always wonder how Arnold Schwarzenegger would have done ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Courtesy of Ain’t It Cool News, here is the final theatrical poster for I Am Legend, which is now coming out in December…

I sooooo hope they’ve done this one right. I Am Legend is one of my all-time favorite horror stories. Unfortunately no film adaptation has really come close to nailing the loneliness and desperation of the original novel. Not even The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, which I’ve always loved (‘specially that groovy 70s “get funky with the apocalypse” jive soundtrack by Ron Grainer). Am definitely looking forward to this, just to see what it’s like....

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