Thursday, September 2, 2010

Ryan's Junk Drawer

"Junk Drawer"
With great junk, comes great responsibility - "Better Off Ted"

When Netflix for the Wii brings about world peace and cures cancer, I'm not going to be surprised. I was enjoying the revolutionary awesomeness of its existence last night whilst watching some "Better Off Ted," a criminally underrated show, when I encountered the quotation that now resides beneath my creepy image. That quotation will stay there forever now. I love it.

And how true it is! My junk is powerful, lots of people look forward to seeing it week in and week out, over and over. Obviously, by junk I mean movie tidbits that aren't important enough for a whole post, and not whatever untoward thing it was you thought I was suggesting with all the "in and out" and "over and over" business. I can't help it if I get most of my verbs and adjectives from unsavory characters. Each week we begin this charade of awesome by staring at the image up top, the creepy one from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. We pick an item from it and make up a story, because doing so amuses me and helps me celebrate Thursday. Today's item is the small pink square in the upper left corner. Despite rumors and myths to the contrary, Bigfoot loves to get his picture taken. Willing to pose in whatever semi-erotic or rugged position he's instructed, his only caveat is that he hates how everything associated with him is referred to as "big." He works hard for those chiseled-six-pack-monkey abs, but all anyone ever says is "OH MY GOD THAT THING IS ENORMOUS." Thus, his requirement is simple: He will only take incredibly small photos that can be reproduced in incredibly tiny formats. At least a half dozen National Geographic employees have junk drawers full of unusable, incredibly small portraits of a grinning Sasquatch. And the world will never know.

Now, on to the junk!

1.) Things are getting heavy for Gravity - Two bits of Afonso Cuaron news today, neither of which is particularly encouraging. First, they offered St. Angie another chance to star in the sure-to-be-brilliant Gravity, in order to secure financing.
She gave them that look, which apparently means "no" in crazy. What this means is that all of a sudden the sure, sure thing is no longer sure at all. This has to do with the second bit of info: ScriptShadow reviewed the November 2009 draft of the project, and says there's no way the rumored replacements can take on the role.
I know, ScarJo seems to be laughing at the implication that audiences will not want to watch her and only her for 2 hours. Blake Lively, on the other hand, is probably not the person you want handling a movie in which she is the sole star. I will grant you that. See, the review of the script reveals a few lightly spoilerific things, like the fact that 90% of the project involves a stranded female astronaut jumping from object to object to stay alive after her space shuttle is badly damaged. Oh, and by the way, the whole thing may take place in real time with no defined cuts. WHA?! HUH?! That's pretty incredible. For SURE the first 20 minutes is a continuous shot, but reports are that the WHOLE THING may be envisioned that way. Insane! The review also mentioned that the character is woefully underdeveloped and that the action is pretty repetitive, but this was an early draft. Look, I hope we get to see this, and I hope that the studio realizes there are other actresses out there other than Angelina Jolie. The problem is, she's quite literally the ONLY bankable female star, and they want one to justify a sci-fi budget. Where does this leave the project? Floating weightlessly. Let's hope it comes down to earth.

2.) Please, please, please bring us a dream - THR says that Warner Bros. TV is getting the rights to Sandman, a fact that should inspire terror in you.
The show-runner for "Supernatural" is on the job, supposedly, which is a good thing according to quite a few people in the blogiverse. I know Devin from Chud (formerly of Chud...God that's weird) claimed that he now believes "Supernatural" to be better than "The X-Files," which made a whole bunch of geeks from 1995 really mad. Now, on the one hand, a TV version of the material is absolutely the way to go. It's episodic by nature, not some defined story that you can tell all at once. On the other...well, it's weird. You can't possibly do a third of the things that Neil Gaiman wrote on the same network "Gossip Girl" and "Vampire Diaries" are on. I mean, the conceptual issues, the weird design and concepts, the offbeat sense of humor is just going to cruise past the heads of the target demo. The most likely incarnation will be an action-heavier version that is dumbed down, which nobody wants. So, in the win column: Sandman is going to TV and not the movies! In the loss column: Alongside the worst lineup in television history. Could really go either way at this point...kind of like some of the characters IN the comic.

3.) The slow, limb-dragging shamble toward justice - Pajiba has reported that Scarlett Johansson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are going to be in love whether they like it or not.

Boo ya! It's a two pictures of Scarjo kinda day! Not too shabby, eh? The two incredibly attractive humans are going to have a tough go of it, though, as JGL will be Andy, a zombie forced to endure a society that denies him basic human...er...zombie rights. The project is Breather, which is going to be penned by Diablo Cody from a book that you can read right now! Seriously, it has words and stuff all printed out, so you can spoil the movie by reading the source material! This pitch sounds interesting enough, described as District 9 meets Shaun of the Dead by Slashfilm, but I worry about the overexposure of zombies. And I'm not just talking about their often exposed internal organs and skeletons. That said, I like these two actors, I like Diablo Cody, and I like zombies, so I am throwing my full support behind this project.

4.) I want to see "Small Faces" - I wish Joss Whedon were writing The Runaways too. His run on the comic was absolutely brilliant, and I am not sure who can step in and make the young kid superhero team really work. But it's happening without him, as Production Weekly is now reporting that Marvel Studios will begin production in March 2011. The film is being shot under the fake title “Small Faces,” which is some clever song reference but has no purpose now that everyone on the internet knows the fake title. Kudos to whoever leaked that bit of info, you've officially rendered it useless. Drew Pearce is supposedly helming the adaptation, with Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist director Peter Sollett directing. I'm okay with the latter to some degree, as I really enjoyed that movie more than I should have. I do have one, rather huge question though.

How exactly are you going to feature a character whose power is a psychic bond with a velicoraptor? I mean, it works in the comic, but I'm unsure of the budget necessary to feature a CGI dinosaur in a bulk of the film. Also, I'm guessing it's going to be hard for audiences to get behind the whole thing with the dino involved...but you really need the dino, as it plays a huge part in the story! This could be a really inspired and original little take on superheroes, or it could suck like few projects have sucked before. We'll have to wait and see.

5.) Trailers, parked - Just one this week, sorry. Nobody wants to show us their movie trailers, I can't say why. This is the preview for Virginity Hit. I'm sorry I'm posting it.



Okay, that's it for today. I'm off tomorrow and Monday (probably). You have a sexy Labor Day and a fantastic weekend!

Follow me on Twitter!

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Custom Search

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home