Ryan's Junk Drawer

I mostly keep track of time by how often I find myself writing this junk column. Again?! We've made it through another week AGAIN?! Why that's as shocking as it is spectacular! Before we get started, a quick note to whoever has been blowing up this blog lately (especially clicking the crap out of the ads). I love you to the utmost allowance of the law given that you technically are sending me money (I ain't going back to the pokey on no prostitution charge again).

As you know, I named this column my junk drawer in part because the metaphor worked and in part because it allowed me to make a juvenile reference to "showing people my junk." Yes, I do get paid (minimally) for such cleverness. In reality, this is the place where I show off all the movie news that's too small to warrant its own blog post. We begin by looking at the above image from Highlights Magazine (FOR CHILDREN), which is terrifying to me for some reason. We (and by we, I mean I) then select an item from that illustration and make up a story about it for funsies. Today's item is the fuzzy cord in the middle. Tito had spent his whole life terrified of spiders. He dedicated his life to inventing new and better ways to kill them, ranging from "Whack-a-Spider," a spider-shaped mallet, to "Spider-b-Gone," a spray that released a cloud that would follow the spider, raining acid down upon it. Tito thought of little else in his life. Sadly, the last thoughts he ever had were the following: "OHMYGOD IS THAT A GIANT SPIDER IN MY JUNK DRAWER WITH LEGS LIKE A MINI OCTOPUS" and "Is this technically an ironic death?"

Okay, that's enough nonsense. Let's get right to the good stuff! Here's the news that's mostly fit to print.

1.) Like I've always said, don't worry...Costner's on it - What I'm about to tell you is going to sound impossible or at the very least ridiculous. BP has called Kevin Costner to ask for his help cleaning up the oil spill in Louisiana because of an invention he paid for while making Waterworld. No, you haven't switched to the new Hallucinogenic Mint flavor of Crest Toothpaste nor did your spouse finally cause blunt force trauma to your cabeza while you slept. I'm not making this up, the New York Daily News says that Costner paid scientists millions of dollars to make a device that could purify ocean water. They succeeded in creating something that used centrifuge technology to render oil-laden water 97% pure (the other 3% contains Costner body hair). They have devices in various sizes, the largest can purify 200 gallons per minute. I'm serious, stop looking at me like this. I'm not that clever. I couldn't come up with something this ridiculous on my own. Look, here's a newscast talking about it.



See! So, on the one hand, thank God for Waterworld, right? On the other...I don't want Kevin Costner to be responsible for anything good. I don't want to even accidentally respect him. So, let's pause a minute and talk about his press conference attire. Kevin, when you're part of a team that CALLS the press conference, feel free to wear something slightly more upscale than your beer-stained drinkin' polo. This wasn't ambush journalism...you called this conference. Also, it appears to be quite cloudy, so feel free to take your sunglasses of when you address the people who, for once, actually care about what you're saying. For the next few minutes, you are the donor who helped create valuable technology, not the guy who did Swing Vote. I know you're convinced that your unprotected stare may cause ladies to instantly drop their panties, but those days disappeared with your hairline. If your machine, which appears in the video above to make wine not clear oil, actually works, I'll say something nice about you. Promise.

2.) How bad do you have to be to NOT star in Transformers 3 - So far, the only people who appeared in the last Transformers who aren't appearing in this next installment are two racist robots and Megan Fox (and people have supposedly seen the racist robots on set). Claiming it was "her choice" to exit the series, Fox will be replaced, although Michael Bay promises that the quest to find an incredibly hot actress with little talent will be a challenge he may spend years on. Fox, who has committed what I believe to be career seppuku, is set to debut her terrible southern accent in the sure-to-be-a-bomb Jonah Hex before moving on to finding a cure for her toe thumbs.
Most kidding aside, I don't think Fox realizes that she's a flash in the pan. There are zillions of pretty boys and girls in the world. Unless she is able to find something that fully plays to her strengths (presumably a 3D silent film), she's going to disappear faster than Costner's hairline.

3.) Tim Burton to cast Johnny Depp as a psychic, teenage Japanese girl? - Okay, that's a little presumptuous on my part. It's entirely possible that Burton could cast his wife, Helena Bonham "OHMYGODDOSOMETHINGWITHYOURHAIR" Carter as the teenage Japanese girl with psychic powers in Mai, The Psychic Girl. The director is adapting the 1980s era manga comic about a....okay, you get the idea. He was supposed to do this awhile back, but it would likely have not fit his "must repeat myself exactly for the next decade" life plan. Now, he's revisiting the project and it is said to be next on his list. Latino Review has some interesting thoughts on the matter, and if I may crawl out of my angry shell for a moment, so do I. This has the potential, and that is just potential, to urge Burton to at least try something different. I see no fairy tale aspects (it's more sci-fi), I see no immediate place to put the two actors I mentioned above (other than maybe some kind of father and mother cameo), and I see no way in which the gothic style he's repeated ad naseum would instantly transfer here. Let's call me cautiously optimistic that even Burton has gotten sick of Burton.

4.) I'm less horrified that this is going to be a movie and more horrified that it's a book - Someone spent presumably hours of their life writing "Blood Oath," a novel with the tagline "The ultimate secret. The ultimate agent. The President's vampire." Someone else then presumably read that novel (or at least the back jacket of it) and said, "let's make that a movie." Now, Heatvision is reporting that we are going to see a movie about a vampire spy. Let that wash over you for a minute. A vampire spy. When I claimed that Twilight was going to ruin the world, I apparently was understating things. We now live in a reality with vampire secret agent movies where Spider-man will be rebooted to capture more of the Twilight-esque teenage romance. I'm not nearly drunk enough to be recounting these events. Also, to the guy who wrote "Blood Oath": Stop it. Just...stop it. If you have the self-control and patience to actually finish a novel, you have the potential to correct your life before it's too late. If you write a sequel where there's a werewolf working for the KGB, I will stab you with a spork. Also, you can't write that now because I came up with the idea first. Someone get my agent on the phone.

5.) Trailers, parked - I'm not going to make you wait another minute for my favorite discovery of the day. The film is called Iron Sky. You're going to want to see it. Why? Well it's a Finnish-German production filmed mostly in English. It's supposedly got humor to it, although I didn't see much in the trailer. Oh, and it's based on the premise that in 1945, Nazis fled to the dark side of the moon and have now returned to take over earth. Here you go!



There really aren't that many other interesting trailers out at the moment, so I'll just leave you this time to rewatch that one again. Seriously. Nazis in space.

Follow me on Twitter!