Cutting Room: Ryan's Junk Drawer

How is it Thursday already? I can hear you now: "It's Thursday because yesterday was Wednesday. A-duh. Didn't your mother ever teach you how to use a calendar? You must be kind of stupid, Ryan." Well, call me old fashioned, but I still believe that telling time is a sin, so I hope all you fancy clockwatching daycounters enjoy your time in hell. Here's what I do know. I know that Thursdays are the days we look at my junk. No, not like a trip to the "special doctor's office." By my "junk" I mean movie tidbits that aren't big enough to warrant their own blog post. We begin each week by looking at the creepy image of a junk drawer that was captured from the nightmare of a child and reprinted in Highlights Magazine (FOR CHILDREN). We select one item from above and make a wacky story about it, because doing so amuses me (and probably no one else). Today's item is the green and red thing in the lower right corner. On the one hand, when Carlos invented the world's first pancreas grown entirely from algae, he was elated. It meant that all those years combining peg fetuses with swamp water wasn't just wasted time. On the other hand, if it could be transplanted into a human, it would likely mean that his mother-in-law would live. Carlos did what anyone would do: He put the pulsating green human/plant organ back into his junk drawer, never to mention his accomplishment to anyone.

Okay, enough weirdness, we have a great show for you tonight, Jay-Z is here, so stick around and we'll be right back.

Here are the top five minor news stories right now:

1.) Muppets + "Lost" = (Sound of Ryan's head popping like a Capri Sun that's improperly poked with a straw) - So...by now you know all about my "Muppet boner," which is maybe the most disgusting and inappropriate way to mention how much I adore the fuzzy creations of Jim Henson that are part nightmare and part pure joy. You also know that my passion for "Lost" may exceed my passion for 99% of humans on this big blue ball. Well if you combine the two, you pretty much just guaranteed I'm not going to get much else done. What you see before you is the merging of two worlds that I can only hope continues. I can only hope that next week I'm showing you a video of Spider-man's guest appearance on "Community" or Evangeline Lilly's surprise cameo in my house. It's rare that things I love merge, so look upon this union of things that are awesome and rejoice.

2.) Mark Millar: Professional Bullshitter - If Mark Millar ever tires of writing comics, he can successfully enter the world of politics, having told yet another in a series of lies that are designed to make him look good. He's like a guy trying to pick up a girl at a bar by telling her he's an astronaut...only it's never closing time and he'll sleep with ANYONE. A recent press release,
which you can see at Forces of Geek, states that Kick Ass 2: Balls to the Wall is going to start filming in 2011 for a 2012 release. Sigh, I don't know why I even acknowledge this, but let's quickly deconstruct this so I can go back to thinking about Muppets. (1) - Matthew Vaughn, director of the very incredible Kick Ass, just signed to direct a movie within the next year called X-Men First Class. He's going to be a little busy into 2011. (2) - Christopher Mintz-Plasse, McLovin', is pivotal to the second film (if you've seen the first, you know why). His official Twitter count basically said that Millar is spewing bullshit....again. (3) - Even though I loved the movie, as clear a sign that I can separate the art from the artist if I've ever done it, it wasn't a huge hit. It was a modest hit. I'm guessing if it does well in DVD/Blu-Ray sales, that will be taken into consideration. Plus, I'm guessing you can do the sequel pretty cheap. I don't doubt everyone is INTERESTED in doing this, but it isn't a sure thing yet. In other words, sell your booze-laced, cologne-infused pick-up lines for some other floozy, Millar. This one's not biting.

3.) Dark Tower is finally coming! Booooooo - Even though people have wanted to see Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series is among the most beloved of the author's works, not one of them should be happy about the news that a movie is finally happening. Why? Because the people who now own the rights are Brian Grazer...and Ron Howard. Howard, who has been sliding from mediocrity to outright hackitude for a decade now, is talking about making a movie that would lead into a TV show. In the right hands, I'd say "this is how the material should be handled." In Howard's hand, I say "ruh-roh, Raggy." You just know he's going to invite crapmaster Akiva Goldsman in to write the thing. His writing is so wretched, so irredeemably awful that we'd be best lighting our minds on fire as an alternative to watching something he wrote. Let's just agree to read some books and pretend that this bit of news never happened, mkay?

4.) Emma Stone all the time - News regarding Emma Stone has been coming fast and furious lately. Good. Ever since I saw her in Superbad I knew she would be superhuge. She's got this great gravel voice, kind of looks like an anime girl would look in real life (seriously, her eyes are half of her face), and she has a personality that, goshdurnit, is just infectious.

It's funny that this next bit of news pairs her with Catherine Keener, who has a lot of those same traits (other than the whole anime thing). Keener is, to me, the actress almost all young starlets should pattern their career after. She makes big hits, little indie gems, and is always awesome. The two of them are not going to appear in a film together. But they've both agreed to voice characters in The Croods, another Dreamworks animated film. Unlike some of the other minor works from the studio, this caveman comedy is based on a screenplay in part developed by John Cleese, who white people know from Monty Python (in one of the funniest conversations I've ever heard, a non-white friend of mine mentioned that any time a white dude said something that made another white dude laugh but my friend couldn't understand why, it was always a Monty Python reference). Nicholas Cage and Ryan Reynolds are also voices in there, but Stone's voice will stand out. She's got a perfect voice for such things. Love.

5.) Trailers, Parked - We've got a raunchy killer, a cool killer, and a killer tire for you this week.

First up...what has been dubbed the "illegal" Machete trailer. You remember that this is the movie that sprang from Grindhouse's fake trailer. It has a ton of people in it that are moderately famous (and DeNiro, who just used to be famous), and has a story that gives the middle finger to Arizona's immigration practices before they were even real. Wrap your mind grapes around that one. This one has naughty language in it, but if you're clicking on the trailer for a movie called Machete, you had to kind of figure, right?

George Clooney as an assassin? I could explain The American more than that, but I don't think I have to. Here's the trailer.

This is a movie about a killer tire with mental powers. It's called Rubber and it will now be your new obsession. Yes it's real. Yes it's a killer tire. Enjoy, America.