Ryan's Junk Drawer

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

Once more I must quote from the terribly racist Asian sidekick Short Round: "No time for love, Doctor Jones." My next 24 hours consists of seeing the midnight show of The Social Network because I missed the screening because I was at speech practice because there's a big speech meet in Manhattan, Kansas this weekend followed by doing the radio show with Steve King at 7:30 tomorrow morning before working all day before driving to Manhattan, Kansas. I'm already tired. Oh, and next week is my brother-in-law's wedding, and I love that kid, so I want to make sure I do everything I can to make things awesome for him.

What I'm saying is, you'll forgive me if my junk is not up to regular standards. If my junk isn't as impressive as usual, it's just that I'm stressed out. This doesn't usually happen to me. I always want you to say "Wow, look at Ryan's junk!" or tell others "You really need to check out Ryan's junk today." But I fear today is one of those days you may look at my junk and say "it's okay, I know you're really busy and you're probably just thinking about something else." Obviously, by junk I mean movie tidbits that are collected here because they don't merit full blog posts. Although, I think you thought I meant something else...

We begin each week by looking at the creepy image of what I believe to be a serial killer's junk drawer from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. I choose an item, make up a story, laugh at my own story, then nobody ever comments on it again. Today's item is the screw in the middle of the drawer. Gerald was the least funny person in the world. That wasn't a personal belief. There was a poll taken, and the results conclusively demonstrated that if Gerald were to do stand-up comedy next to Pol Pot and Hitler, he would come in third. One day, while he was joylessly enduring his job with coworkers who were saddened by his very presence, he was assembling a metal scaffold. As he was working on his end, he heard a clank down by where all 10 other employees had gathered to tell humorous stories as far from Gerald the Joke Killer as possible. Gerald turned and yelled "What was that?" One employee slowly held up the screw that had fallen. Gerald saw it and was enraged, as per usual. "You think that's not important? You think we can just let parts of this fall out? You'll die if it's not properly constructed. Now get that back were it belongs or we're screwed." It wasn't intentional, nor was it particularly humorous, but at the mere prospect of Gerald making a joke, the gang burst into laughter. Gerald kept that screw forever in his junk drawer, as a reminder of the only joke he ever made, the one everyone laughed at as he fired them.

Okay, enough shenanigans, on to the movie news!!!

1.) "So, why exactly is this mission so impossible, shorty?" - I don't know the plot of Mission Impossible 4...or even the title, as some folks are suggesting they rebrand it something else entirely, a decision suggested by a stupid, stupid person who hates money. What I do know is that there will be naked, heaving bosoms complete with full nipple exposure. How do I know this? Because Josh Holloway, aka Sawyer from "Lost," has been hired as part of Tom Cruise's impossible mission crew. We all know that dude hates wearing a shirt almost as much as Matthew McConaughey, so I imagine he'll have to "seduce an enemy agent" or "disarm a bomb using only his nude abdomen." He's also likely to toss out a few nicknames, just so we remember where we know him from. If he calls Cruise anything from short-stack to Xenu, I'm going to love MI4 an MF-ton.



2.) Finally, someone feels the pull of Gravity - Honestly, I could do a Natalie Portman story every day for the rest of my life and not feel bad about it at all. Hell, I'll make up reasons to put her in this blog. "I just watched a documentary on how quicksand is formed, which reminds me how much I'd love to see Natalie Portman on the beach." I'll do it. Luckily, her agent is giving me better excuses, as the day AFTER we hear her rumored for Lois Lane, we hear she may be in negotiations for Gravity, the project that refuses to die.

I chose this image because it looks like she's being forcibly pulled into this project, which is entirely possible. Having been offered first to Angelina Jolie, then to everything in Hollywood with boobs and v-jay, Nat-Po would have been my first choice anyway. It's a project from an artistic director (Alfonso Cuaron), with an insane amount of screen time for one actress (I could stare at Nat-nat all day) who needs to show a diverse range of emotion (she's playing a possessed ballerina and stars in a stoner comedy set in medieval times later this year...boom, diversity). I'm happy this movie is getting made because I want to see it as much as I want to stop talking about it.

3.) Zemeckis tired of stealing souls - Robert Zemeckis last made a movie when Clinton was in office. Sorry, last made a REAL movie in the pre-Bush era. He did use technology to steal the souls of Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks, and Jim Carrey in the meantime. Having finally decided that not EVERY movie he makes needs to be motion capture, the word on the street is that the Z-Dog is returning to using humans in ways that doesn't damn them to hell by shucking their soul from their body using a PC. Supposedly, he's circling Timeless, an "action time-travel movie," which we know nothing about whatsoever...and he considered Superman! Jeez Louise, who HASN'T been offered or considered Superman? Me. That's who. I haven't considered directing Superman. Or, in Hollywood-speak, I've decided to remove my name from consideration. Z-mecks is a good director who made some classic movies, and I hope he returns in full force. Oh, and totally unrelated, but Tom Hanks in Polar Express (one of Z-bone's motion capture soul suckers) totally looks like Vikings coach Brad Childress.


4.) The casting for 360 does make my head spin around - Obviously, when you say your film is a sexytime thriller with an "investigation of sexual urges," then tell me this lady is starring:I'm in. Even if the next name that you put out there to appear in 360, which was based on a play, is a little surprising.
Uh...as near as I can tell, the last bit of acting Eminem did was convincing everyone that "Relapse" was something he was proud of. This isn't to say Slim Shady can't act. He can. I just don't want to see him acting opposite Rachel Weisz...because I'll be jealous of him more than usual. I mean, I can accept that he can headline with Jay-Z while I lack those skills, but if this is about him playing a person who wants to make it with Rachel Weisz, I promise I am more qualified. Whether or not this casting actually occurs, it's weird, right?

5.) Trailers, Parked - This week's trailers are sci-fi-riffic, as we have an emo-teenage alien drama and a "don't look at the light" aliens eating you blockbuster.

I am Number Four was the second work of fiction from James Frey, and the first one called that. It's about aliens who came to earth running from something that has to kill them in a specific order. All fear the evil obsessive-compulsive monster! Also, they are teenagers who seem mopey. That will never catch on.

Skyline looks batshit insane. But like others, I fear that we're seeing all of the effects in the trailers, as the budget was low for this. I think we're being led to believe this is a giant epic slugfest when it's really a low-budget, closed space film. I could be wrong though. And I hope I am, because if this is actually what we're getting, it looks like so much fun.

Okay, that's it for my junk this week. Hope you had fun. See you tomorrow when I am hella tired.

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