Cutting Room

Movie Review: Due Date

2010-11-05T15:18:00.002-05:00

No Crowning Achievement
Due Date breaks water, no new ground

The filth wake of a new Jackass film makes other movies’ attempts to shock with ribald humor futile, even with dialogue like “I vomited in the wound.” Nice try, Due Date, but Steve-O practically gargled human feces. Too unimaginative to be risque, director Todd Philips has made a “blender” film; you know, where they make an acceptable-but-not-delicious cinematic smoothie by pureeing superior ingredients into one shapeless discolored but drinkable mess.

It takes a village to raise a child, and it took four writers to steal from Planes, Trains & Automobiles and The Hangover, from which the producers even stole an actor. Zach Galifianakis, who should ask Jack Black about the legal limit on the number of times a comedian can repeat the same performance, plays Ethan Tremblay. The difference between the good-hearted, dangerous man-child that is Ethan and Alan, the character Galifianakis played in The Hangover, is that one is named Ethan and the other is named Alan.

Because Ethan is a ridiculous cartoon, he somehow manages to get expectant father Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr) tossed off a plane and put on a no-fly list. Because the plot requires them to do so, the two wind up having to rapidly travel across country in an attempt to get Peter home in time to see his wife (Michelle Monaghan) produce his progeny. Do they make it? Do they become weird friends? Is there a bevy of masturbation jokes, including multiple shots of a dog making like a lonely prison inmate, and brief, mostly unfunny cameos from marginally famous actors and actresses? A gentleman never tells.

Yes.

Look, Due Date isn’t bad. It isn’t interesting enough to be bad. The best description is that it feels like a classic comedy from which someone cut out all of the most memorable scenes. It’s perpetually marginally amusing, but whenever an epic moment is needed, the film resorts to barely passable physical gags, most involving "Looney Tunes" car crashes. Due Date takes place in the same plane of reality as “The Office,” in that it sure seems like our world, but people can do anything without actual consequence.

Downey Jr is charming, and Galifiankis is funny. And if Downey Jr and Galifianakis were as charming and funny as they seem to think they are, maybe the sins of Due Date are absolved. Instead, the film is just an unlikable douche and a stoner one-beard heavier than Forest Gump bumbling around as you ask “are we there yet?”

Grade – C-

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Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

2010-11-05T10:42:00.002-05:00

I'll be back at some point with my Due Date review. It was...okay. That's all. It's going to do CRAZY business that first week, that's for damn sure, as my MIDNIGHT SHOWING was pretty much sold out. People love this kind of broad-based, mass-appealing, semi-raunchy comedy these days. It won't be number one because Megamind gets the families, but it's going to be strong, mark my words. As for that latter film, I will also file that one under "meh." Wake me when Dreamworks designs a different looking character. They all look the same. Anyway, onward and upward to some Box Office Haikus!

Here's how I see the weekend:

1.) Megamind - $60 million

The voices are great.
The animation? It ain't.
The verdict is meh.

2.) Due Date - $33 million

Galifianakis.
One name is a haiku line.
Just thought I'd mention.

3.) For Colored Girls - $22 million

It's Tyler Perry!
Directing, but not his script.
No name in title!!!!

4.) Saw 3D - $7.5 million

A one-week wonder,
this franchise now goes away.
Right? IT PROMISED US!!!

5.) Red - $7 million

Keep it up now, Bruce.
That sounded rather dirty.
I meant it that way.

WILDCARD - Paranormal Activity 2 - $7 million

Longer legs than Saw.
But that's because Saw sucks ass.
My last Saw joke? Please!!!!

Okay, that's it until I return with a review for your faces. Enjoy your weekends!

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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 56)

2010-11-05T10:25:00.005-05:00

This is usually something I do on Wednesdays. So sue me, it's late! Actually, please don't, I do not have the money and I don't want to cash in my lifetime annual favor from my lawyer brother-in-law on "got sued for a late blog posting." He's pretty smart, so I figure I'm good for getting out of a major crime of some kind and want time to plan something good.

Speaking of things that are good, you should buy me these things below. You should write me at film@thereader.com, ask for my address, and then send me the awesome stuff I am about to describe to you. Why? Because I'm a wonderful human being and deserve monetary and material goods in exchange for my awesomeness. Okay, fine, I'm not really expecting you to send any of this (I won't send it back if you do, though, just FYI). I do expect you to say "whoa, that crap is COOL" and then buy it for yourself or someone you love more than me. Sadface.

Here's the stuff I want but can't have this week:

1.) Because I'm a fan of things that are plush, even though they shouldn't be - You have to admire the cleverness involved in making this:
That's Alex, a character from A Clockwork Orange. He does bad things. Now he's a plush doll. The product description cleverly says "all of the style, none of the social commentary." Given that this is a Stanley Kubrick movie we're talking of, that description also fits Brian DePalma. Zing! Look, either you're familiar enough with the movie to be like "OMG, they made a doll from a movie that includes a soliloquy that involves rape and Beethoven" or you don't find this weird/appealing at all. Also, he's only $14. That's a small amount for this bizarrely awesome conversation starter. But it Here.

2.) Now for this week's installment of "Which Star Wars Merch is Weird Enough to Want This Week" - Seriously, Lucasfilm, feel free to NOT make an intriguing piece of memorabilia for a week or so. It would be nice to have this be a non-Lucas-friendly zone for a week. Then you go and make these:
Those are ear buds. That's right, they retract. You can shove Darth Vader's hands into your ears and hear through them. Tell me that wasn't concocted by someone on shrooms. "Dude, what if...hear me out here...whoa, I'm about to talk about headphones and I just said hear twice. Anyway, what if you could shove Yoda's hands in your ears...but, like, they weren't his hands...but they were, like, tiny speakers." Now you can buy this somehow insanely cool hallucinated idea for yourself. Yay for brain-impairing drugs!

3.) Make a ninja shirt, I pimp the ninja shirt - It's simple. It's Threadless. It's always going to wind up here if it involves ninjas.
Look, this isn't rocket science. Ninjas are cool. This shirt has ninjas. This shirt is cool. Boom. Done. Buy it.

That's all for my wants this week, sorry they were late.

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Web of Lies: Casting old farts

2010-11-05T10:14:00.004-05:00

Well, it was a matter of time before we moved from casting hotness like this:
To casting hotness like this:
And this:
The new Spider-man movie is apparently determined to cast things as on-the-nose as possible and has selected Sally Field and Martin Sheen (supposedly) to play Aunt May and Uncle Ben, respectively (wouldn't it be great if it was the other way around...now THAT would be some inspired casting). Whatever. I mean, it works. I like both of them as actors, it was just nice to see some people we weren't as familiar with in those roles so they could really become them as people. Don't get me wrong, after all those years as President Bartlett, if Sheen commanded me to do anything, I would respond "I serve at the pleasure of the President" and run into traffic or whatever. It's just...sigh...you know the cast is finally rounded out, and I like Emma Stone (that's an understatement) and think Andrew Garfield could do a nice job, even though he looks nothing like Peter in my opinion. But the villain is Rhys Ifans...who is The Lizard...who kind of sucks as a villain. And they're using Gwen Stacy...but she's played by a girl who should be MJ. And they're casting good actors in the adult roles...but they're so familiar and obvious. Look, it's just that if you're going to REBOOT things, it would be nice to see some creativity. That's all. This by-the-books stuff is just exhausting.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-11-04T09:20:00.007-05:00

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

First off, before I get to the usual "me joking around about showing people my junk" Thursday rigmarole, let me apologize for yesterday. Between the exciting new stuff we're about to unload all over your brains with the revamped Reader Web site and, you know, the job that actually pays for my life, I didn't get to blogging yesterday. Lo siento. I know that means you were deprived a "Things You Should Buy Me," but I'll make that up to you by doing one of those tomorrow. You can still buy me things on Friday, it works just as well. Also, I'm off Monday from the blogging. Hey, if this were more than a one-man junk show, I'd have backup. But unless this empty coffee cup or this Christmas ornament featuring The Swedish Chef for the Muppets I keep on my desk gain the ability to craft semi-offensive blog posts of moderate insight and limited information, that job is solely mine.

But you're not here to hear about this blog's nuts and bolts, you're hear to see my junk. For those keeping score at home, give me +14 points for finally thinking of putting the word nuts into a sentence about my junk. Anyway, when I talk about people waiting all week for a glimpse of my junk, I am not talking about what it sounds like I'm talking about (even though I like making it sound like I'm talking about what it sounds like I'm talking about). I'm talking about little, itty-bitty movie news nuggets that don't deserve their own blog posts. They think they're entitled, but they aren't. Sort of how I feel about a lot of Tuesday's elected officials. POLITICAL ZING!

We start off each week by looking at the image of a Junk Drawer up top. It's creepy, right? Maybe it's just me. It's from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN and for some reason always makes me think that it's from a serial killers house. Like, if the camera panned back from the angle that image was drawn from, you'd see someone wearing another person's face on their face. Just me? Okay, moving on. What I do is pick an item from said image, make up a wacky story about it, and entertain myself.

Today's item is the screw. Martin couldn't understand why it didn't catch on. "It looks like a screw," he would yell, "but it's ACTUALLY a children's vitamin!" It had taken him years at the pharmaceutical company to finally push through his idea: Nailz N' Screws - Kiddie vitamins. "You know, because kids love screws and nails! And who hasn't wanted to eat them." Although wonderfully nutritious, Martin just couldn't seem to get the FDA to approve. "Do they want their kids to die of scurvy?" Dejected, Martin brought his pet project home, where his children loved them. Right up until his son get tetanus from eating what he thought was a Vitamin A-packed treat. "Oooooh, right," said Martin, who now keeps the last remaining vitamins tucked safely away in his junk drawer.

Okay, enough already, let's get to some movie stuffs!

1.) But...but...none of you LOOK like Harley Quinn...OR MARION COTILLARD! - CBM, the only blog I can safely call "friends of this program" for having given me my one and only shout out, has broken the news that we may be in for multiple females in The Dark Knight Rises. This comes as great news for those who were worried about Chris Nolan's treatment of women (go google "Fridging"). Or not, I suppose he could mistreat MULTIPLE women as easily as one. I know that sounds callous, but hey, my brain is really insensitive today. It just told me a terrible joke to use later about Vera Farmiga, but I promise I won't. The scoop is that the following ladies are in talks for

Kacie Thomas

Charlize Theron - She is purty and, based on her performance on "Between Two Ferns" may be cooler than I thought. Also, she does that with her legs sometimes.

Vera Farmiga - Her name is funny, and in this picture she appears to be confused as to who failed to change these sheets or how she was talked out of her pants.

The first and last ladies are apparently battling for the role of Julie Madison, a socialite who will replace the 'sploded Rachel Dawes as Bruce Wayne's loin luster. The middle lady may be Sarah Essex, who was created by Frank Miller in Batman: Year One and is a detective with a relationship involving Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). None of these ladies are apparently playing villains of any kind, which kills my Harley Quinn buzz. None of these ladies are also Marion Cotillard, who is the actress I want in this movie after seeing Nolan direct the crap out of her performance in Inception. I'm not giving up on my Harley Quinn hopes, but it's not looking good. Speaking of not looking good, join me in the next nugget please.

2.) Pay no attention to the man behind the beaver - You have to feel bad for the guy who wrote The Beaver. It's apparently a brilliant script. It lingered around Hollywood for years before finally being scooped up by big name director Jodie Foster and big name star Mel Gibson. Oops. Here's the poster.

After Gibson's douche rampage subsided, he made this movie, which I'm sure is quite good. For a total waste of humanity, Gibson's a damn fine actor. Then he had another douche-tsunami and became a wife-beating, double-strong racist (seriously, he wins every game of Creative Racial Slurs). So now this movie, which struggled forever to get made...because it's about a guy who only communicates to the world through a beaver puppet he found in the trash is now going to slip back into that weird limbo again. I feel bad for Foster and the other creative folks behind it. Not so much for Gibson the douche-a-saur. I actually want to see it, then I want Gibson to fall into a well. A deep well. With spiders. And vomit. And lava. A deep spider, vomit, lava well. That sounds fair.

3.) Now THAT is a sexy beast - So, you're saying that when Sexy Beast director Jonathon Glazer thought about who should star as "an alien on earth disguised as a mesmerizing woman who snares human prey using her voracious sexuality," he thought of this?I am shocked...SHOCKED! I mean, how is it that Miss Johansson, who has made a career out of downplaying her sexuality, has sprung to the top of Glazer's list for Under the Skin? By the way, am I the only one who wants to believe this is a weird sci-fi sequel to In Her Shoes? Something about the title makes me find that funny. Look, I love Scar-jo. She's smokin' hot, and I've had a thing for her forever now. I just want to see her do stuff that DOESN'T involve being smokin' hot and horny. She's a superhero...but it's a leather-bound superhero named Black Widow who poses seductively a lot. She's in a Woody Allen movie (or three), but somehow is sexier than any Allen character ever. Point is, she was so good and vulnerable/nuanced in Lost in Translation. Let's see if she can act. She should have starred in Gravity while she had the chance. Now it's "alien-who-sleeps-with-dudes-to-eat-them" time. Ugh.

4.) It's Shakespeare, only more apocalyptastical - I love me a good Shakespeare retelling. I can't wait for The Tempest, and now I'm geeked for Henry 5. It's going to star Michael Caine and Ray Winstone and is an apocalyptic take on Henry the Fifth. Really? Okay. That sounds, um, AWESOME! I mean, I love apocalyptic stuff AND Shakespeare. What could make this better?

Right, if you can read that, it says Gerard Depardeu is in this. Ooooh, apparently that's what was missing. I wish they'd have Steven Segal in it. I'd just love to see him doing the Bard's work. I believe it's what Shakey would have wanted. Anyway, this is bad-ass. I managed to work Steven Segal and bad-ass into a post on Shakespeare. Give me +23 for that.

5.) Trailers, parked - Finally, here are some trailers. I bookended today's edition. The first trailer is just...wow. The last one is fun. The middle one is a turd. So here's your trailer turd sandwich.

Sucker Punch is my friend Matt Lockwood's favorite movie. Oh, I realize he hasn't seen it yet, but this last trailer just confirmed he doesn't have to. This is pure visual paradise. I don't even care if there are words. Me likey. Me likey a lot. This guy is doing Superman. Everyone feel better about that now?

Gulliver's Travels is going to be awful. There is nothing good that will come of this. If we die out as a people, this may be responsible. This is the day the comedy died.

Blitz stars Jason Statham and is a thriller. That's all you need. Watch.

Okay, that's it for today. Tomorrow I promise to give you things to buy me and we'll talk weekend stuff, okay? Have a good one!

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Cast-a-palooza

2010-11-02T09:57:00.005-05:00

It's election day. Obviously, unless you are intentionally hiding it from yourself, you can guess the direction my voting lever pulls. This is a movie blog, and I won't stand up on this soap box and rail on about who you should vote for and why...or even do the whole "I don't care who you vote for, just vote" schpiel because I DO care who you vote for, and if you're going to vote for someone stupid and evil I would, in fact, prefer that you stay home. This is me asking everyone to just do a little thinking, a little objective research, and THEN vote. I truly believe if everyone voted out of reasonable research and not fear, anger, or because they were told to be some media personality, we would be far, far better off. So do that. K?

Now, I mention the election stuff because it set me back a bit. See, I had to vote this morning, which means not starting this blog writing until later, which means I'm running behind. So I had two choices: I could either give you SOME of the casting news explosion today in multiple posts or I could deliver one giant kablooooooey of casting shenanigans all at once. I opted for the kablooey because, hello have you ever met me?

Ladies and gentlemen...start your moderately-interested engines, it's time for CAST-A-PALOOZA!!!! I ask and answer the following questions:

1.) Wolverine may be in X-Men: First Class? - Hugh Jackman took a cab to the set of X-Men: First Class, according to rumors from....someone. There is nothing backing this up, but it's probably true. Why? Because ever since Marvel did that cool Iron Man/Avengers bit at the end, all comic movies (especially Fox copycats) want to do that too. A cameo from Wolverine would fit, Jackman is already preparing for Wolverine 2: Talk to the Claws right now so probably looks like this:
And he's a good guy, a team player, and probably thinks it would be cool. It's a rumor, yes, but I'd like to believe it so I will.

2.) Leonardo DiCaprio is a serial killer? Take that, ladies. The drool-inducer is now going to carve up ladies in Devil in the White City. Not a whole lot of news beyond that, but it's good news. Apparently the giant book that this is based on is really good and DiCaprio hasn't done his obligatory "I'm a famous actor who everybody loves playing against type as a bad guy" role yet. My prediction? His first Oscar. We love to reward people for shit like this.

3.) Tarsem Singh directing Snow White? - Apparently, visionary director Tarsem Singh, who also keeps himself busy composing my nightmares, is going to do the serious, Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, not to be confused with the potential Johnny Depp/Cameron Diaz vehicle that's more goofy and action based. Singh has done some brilliant stuff with more placid, boring material...so the thought of him uncorking on a fairy tale is pretty friggin' great. This is one of those decisions that moves the film from so far off my radar it's not even a blip to OH MY GOD I CANNOT WAIT! Nicely played.

4.) Cameron Crowe wants Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, or Rachel McAdams? - Just not for the same things I want them for. What? I want them to write haikus for me. What did you think I meant? Apparently one of the following women will be Matt Damon's wife and live in a zoo in We Bought a Zoo, which is the most literal title for a movie since The Dilemma.

She would be a great choice because she loves animals. You can tell by the leopard print.

She would be great to star against Matt Damon because she worked at Hooters. I don't know why that prepares her, but everyone keeps talking about how she used to work at Hooters.

Um, not sure about this one. She was considered for the role of Mary Jane or Gwen Stacy in the Spidey reboot, so being Matt Damon's wife seems a little creepy. Damon's down though.

She deserves the part BECAUSE I SAY SO, OKAY?!

Whoever wins, if this is the actual shortlist, audiences are going to be very happy.

5.) Baz Luhrmann wants Natalie Portman or Keira Knightley? - But not for the same things I want them for. What? I want them to write guest columns on the blog. Jeez, guys, what did you think? Luhrmann is casting his Daisy in The Great Gatsby, which may have Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire in it. He has about 5 names on the list, but you remember how I said I was running behind right? Here's the two that matter, the ones who would do the best job:

She who is rumored for every movie ever: Natalie Portman!!!!

She who only does period pieces: Keira Knightley.

Like I said, there are others, but that's not important right now. I actually think this adaptation could work. Luhrmann is often good (when he's not doing Australia), and the cast seems strong with DiCaprio and Maguire. That's the extent of my thoughts. Gotta run!

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Why Ron Howard is a douchebag for reasons other than Ed Tv

2010-11-02T09:23:00.002-05:00

For those not following The Dilemma kerfluffle, it goes something like this: Hacktastic director and unimaginative boor Ron Howard's new movie, The Dilemma, featured a joke in the trailer that was an "it's gay" joke. You remember those, they're the jokes that some 10-year-old boys find clever, the ones who end up needing help to fight their later DUI cases. Although one could argue that it was not among the most offensive elements of the trailer, which includes Kevin James and Winona Ryder being married and Vince Vaughn continuing to look like somebody microwaving the Pillsbury Doughboy, it's still the equivalent of telling a joke that ends "Electric cars are for N-words." The studio pulled the trailer, replacing it with one slightly less vile, but Howard gets to decide if it remains in the movie. In the interest of being fair, here's his response to Patrick Goldstein of The LA Times...Goldstein had asked several great questions about the inclusion of this lame, tired, offensive joke at the expense of vulnerable people, some of whom have been killing themselves because others have been joking at them.

Patrick, I’ve been reading your posts about The Dilemma with a lot of interest. In the couple of weeks since you started covering the debate over our joke, it seems a larger conversation made up of many questions about all sorts of freedoms of expression has broken out: When’s it okay to walk off of a talk show if you disagree with the guest? Who is appropriate to cast in a movie and who gets to decide that? Should news people be held to a different standard in what they say? How risqué can a photo shoot be for a men’s magazine promoting an all-audience show? What role does comedy play in both pointing out differences and unifying us through laughter? They’re all good questions and I’m certainly not the person who has definitive answers to all of them. The debate about what is appropriate in films and advertising has been going on since well before I started in the business — which is to say a very long time — and will never have a conclusion. But I do have some answers to the five questions you put forth in your post. I suppose you’re right that since our movie about two friends trying to do right for each other has been caught up in this larger debate, I’ll have to face these questions as we start to promote The Dilemma. I figured I’d address your questions here and maybe answer them once and not from, as you said, “every reporter with a functioning brain.” So here we go. So why was the joke in the movie? Our lead character of Ronny Valentine has a mouth that sometimes gets him into trouble and he definitely flirts with the line of what’s okay to say. He tries to do what’s right but sometimes falls short. Who can’t relate to that? I am drawn to films that have a variety of characters with different points of view who clash, conflict and learn to live with each other. The Dilemma is a story full of flawed characters whose lives are complicated by the things they say to and hide from each other. Ronny is far from perfect and he does and says some outrageous things along the way. Was it in the script or was it a Vince Vaughn ad lib? Vince is a brilliant improvisational actor, but in this case It was always in the script. The Dilemma is a comedy for grown-ups, not kids. It’s true that the moment took on extra significance in light of some events that surrounded the release of the trailer and the studio made the decision to remove it from advertising, which I think was appropriate. I believe in sensitivity but not censorship. I feel that our film is taking additional heat as an emblem for many movies and TV shows that preceded it that have even more provocative characterizations and language. It is a slight moment in The Dilemma meant to demonstrate an aspect of our lead character’s personality, and we never expected it to represent our intentions or the point of view of the movie or those of us who made it. Did you think it wasn’t offensive? I don’t strip my films of everything that I might personally find inappropriate. Comedy or drama, I’m always trying to make choices that stir the audience in all kinds of ways. This Ronny Valentine character can be offensive and inappropriate at times and those traits are fundamental to his personality and the way our story works. Will comedy be neutered if everyone gets to complain about every potentially offensive joke in every comedy that’s made? Anybody can complain about anything in our country. It’s what I love about this place. I defend the right for some people to express offense at a joke as strongly as I do the right for that joke to be in a film. But if storytellers, comedians, actors and artists are strong armed into making creative changes, it will endanger comedy as both entertainment and a provoker of thought. And what do you have against electric cars anyway? Nothing! We have a couple of them in our family including the one I primarily and happily drive. Guess what that makes me in the eyes of our lead character? But then again, I don’t agree with everything Ronny Valentine says and does in this comedy any more than Vince Vaughn, the screenwriter or any member of the audience should for that matter.

So much stupid, so little time. Let's get right to it.

1.) Do not defend your cowardly use of a slur as "part of a character." These characters are as well crafted and nuanced as a Doritos chip. This is not f**king Shakespeare. Kids will not be studying the emotional conflicts of f**king RONNY VALENTINE in class. By the way, if you wanted us to consider the character as someone real, maybe don't name him "Ronny Valentine." This is a character, which means he's not real, which means he doesn't ACTUALLY have his own thoughts. They are written for him. If your movie is so thin that this joke is essential to him being proven a douche, your movie is every bit as awful as it looks.

2.) "I believe in sensitivity, not in censorship." Good, now that you believe in those words, let me teach you what they mean. Sensitivity is saying "this bit adds nothing at all to my movie and may hurt someone or perpetuate the dismissive attitude that some people are carrying into polling places with them." Censorship is when someone tells you that you HAVE to take something out. So, follow me on this, if you took this out...you would be behaving SENSITIVELY to those you may hurt. Since no one is FORCING you to take it out, it's not censorship. For our next lesson in definitions, I'd like to teach you what comedy means.

3.) Here's the thing about you saying that you don't consider what's offensive: That's a lie. You do. You just make decisions about what offensive things you will or won't include. You don't include blatant racism in your films. That's a choice, right? Again, your characters aren't real, so they don't decide what they get to do. You do. Also, let's set aside this bullshit about whether edgy, offensive comedy will be hurt by this. Seeing as how it is IN NO WAY FUNNY, it doesn't belong in a discussion about comedy. You need laughter for something to be considered a joke, and let me tell you in a very scientific survey, no one ever laughed at this joke. Beyond all of that, I love offensive, edgy humor. Provided it isn't damagingly offensive. What do I mean? Could someone be offended by something like Jackass, when Steve-O is literally swimming in human feces? Oh yes, that's very offensive. Will people then use that as a basis to look down on others, to perpetuate their belief that some people are lesser-people? Probably not. Other than Steve-O, who is clearly not human. Point is, Ronny, offensive humor still has a limit for those with a conscience.

4.) The most offensive thing in your defense was when you called yourself a storyteller. Yes, weave your tale of legend, you gorgeous craftsman of lore. My favorite part of this transformational tale is when Vaughn falls into poison ivy. You, sir, are an artist. And should anyone interfere with your art, the first amendment itself may well fall prey.

You know why this matters, Ron? Because smart people know you're using this. You're keeping it in so that people remain stirred up about this bomb-waiting-to-happen. Controversy sells tickets, and this isn't even controversy. Your audience, demographically speaking, has a problem with gays. And you know it. You think the Adam Sandler frat-pack is chock-full of tolerance? If a homosexual stood up in the audience of one of Kevin James' movies and revealed himself, he'd get trash thrown at him and you know it. You know the core audience for this film will LIKE that you're keeping it in. You know that those who don't like it and cause a ruckus about it will only increase awareness of your movie. If this is a "slight moment" and there is a CHANCE that it could hurt someone or something, why leave it in? You're not smarter than us, we know what you're doing.

Let me end by saying this: It matters. These little gay jokes...they matter. They matter to the 12-year-old kid that hear people snicker when they use an orientation he's struggling to be comfortable with as a f**king punchline. They matter when adults who are increasingly voting to keep some of our citizens as second-class hear others like them chortle at the mere mention of the word. They matter because the real way that prejudice is enforced and supported isn't by hateful bigots that are obvious and easily dismissed but by subtle, tiny things that people hear and accept without thinking of it. Tell yourself that this doesn't matter, but you're wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am embarrassed that you thought it was okay in the first place. Double embarrassed by the moment's inclusion IN THE TRAILER. Triple embarrassed by this half-assed defense of prejudice and insult. This is a bad thing you are doing, and doing so knowingly and defending it publicly makes you a bad person for doing it. Shame on you, Ron Howard. You should be forced to send that letter to the parents of the children who have killed themselves after being bullied for being gay. Sit down with those parents, Ronnie, and tell them that they're just being too sensitive about a little joke. Shame on you.

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Weekend Box Office Results: With a whimper...

2010-11-01T09:30:00.002-05:00

Yes, this weekend does end with a whimper and not a bang. And that whimper isn't just coming from me. It's the wheeze that represents the death-breath of Saw, a franchise that just lived so far beyond the life it should have had that even 3D-ing it could only reanimate it's corpse ever so slightly. Here's hoping we're done with that franchise...so everybody say hi to the second-place film, Paranormal Activity 2, which has now made $65 million collectively on a $3 million budget. I'm sure we won't be seeing one of THOSE every year now that Saw is leaving. May God have mercy on our box-office souls.

Here's this weekend's wrap-up, haiku style:

1.) Saw 3D - $24 million (Accuracy of prediction - 95.5%)

This is Saw 7
but they left that number out.
Maybe they can't count?

2.) Paranormal Activity 2 - $16.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 89%)

A tiny budget
and zero big-name actors
means big-ass profits.

3.) Red - $11 million (Accuracy of prediction - 81%)

This is holding great!
Mostly because it is fun.
And for old people.

4.) Jackass 3D - $8.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 87%)

Poop jokes are ending.
Nut shots are moving along.
We'll miss you, Jackass.

5.) Hereafter - $6.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 88.5%)

It's an Eastwood flop!
Can we hold him in check now?
His last few sucked ass.

Overall Accuracy of Prediction - 88%

Forgettable week.
That's not good, life is too short.
Viva la MONDAY!!!????

Okay, that's it, gang. Go be productive. I'm going to try not to hurl and count down the minutes before I get back in bed.

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You got your Depp in my Theron

2010-11-01T08:44:00.003-05:00

Everybody must be pooped today, as the biggest news scoops are a few images from a magazine of the motion-capture animated film from Spielberg and Jackson: Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. Since I have a strict, no-unicorns-on-Monday rule, I'm going to just mention that the books on which they're based are uber-popular GLOBALLY, but not so much in the U.S. and that no matter how pretty it is, motion capture still mostly freaks my shit out. We'll cover Tintin down the road, but let's leave the reprinting of images from magazines to Captain America only, okay?

So here's the biggest news story I have for you after this weekend...and mind you, I am (as I mentioned earlier) in the scientifically defined, medically acknowledged realm of "pukey tired." Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron may star in Snow White and the Huntsman.

They look great, yes. Perhaps one would even long to see those two symmetrical faces smash into one another repeatedly, but rumor has it one will be playing the evil queen and the other will be playing the titular huntsman. Sure, you can probably guess based on gender, but you think they'd stop Depp from playing the evil queen if he asked for the role? Hell, they'd let him play Snow White. Then I'd want to see this. The movie apparently has a killer script, which features the huntsman chained to Snow White while they're being chased down by bounty hunters. It's obviously some crazy "reimagining," but everyone seems to be pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing. Then again, "Dancing with the Stars" has like millions of people call in every episode, so I'm not entirely sure what qualifies as actual valuable enthusiasm anymore. Anyway, whether or not this happens (as EVERY Depp project is a rumor until we actually see it), here's the only thing worth mentioning on this pukey Monday.

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Movie Review: Never Let Me Go

2010-11-01T08:40:00.002-05:00

Justin turns in a review of a movie I desperately want and need to see but just haven't had the time for yet. It sounds as though it's going to be imperative for me to locate that time, however, after reading what he has to say about it. That fact is rather depressing after a weekend that saw me rising at the crack of 4:30 am on both Saturday and Sunday. Can you say Monday-morning-pukey-tired? Anyway, here's Justin's take on Never Let Me Go.

Lives for Sale
Never Let Me Go is a time-trapped tragedy
Justin Senkbile

In the special club of music video directors turned mainstream feature filmmakers, Mark Romanek is certainly one of the least visible members. That's probably because he hasn't actually made a film since 2002's creepy-but-minor Robin Williams vehicle One Hour Photo. Who would've thought, with only a handful of music videos made between then and now, that his latest feature, Never Let Me Go would be so good?

A medical breakthrough in the early fifties, which we learn all about soon enough, has precipitated the need for special boarding schools that keep their students regimented in health and behavior…and completely isolated from the outside world. One such school is Hailsham, located in some dreary English countryside, where we meet Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield, from The Social Network and last year's fantastic Red Riding Trilogy).

Without giving too much away, it's important to mention that, although a title card informs us that the average life-expectancy has passed 100, the students of Hailsham are destined for a short, controlled existence in service of “the greater good.”

We watch Kathy, Ruth and Tommy as children at Hailsham, puzzled by the mysterious outside world and the looks of guilt and pity elicited by deliverymen and teachers (primarily the one played by the always wonderful Sally Hawkins). As adolescents, they gain a bit more freedom and a painful awareness of their destiny. Anger, malaise and hormones swell but are assumed to be particular to their own special societal status and not necessarily typical traits. For all three, adulthood seems to bring a calm but fragile acceptance of fate.

Although the foundation of the story (based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro) is an inherently political bit of science-fiction, Never Let Me Go keeps itself staunchly apolitical, with no denouncing or indicting. That's the key to this film's success and also what makes it so bleak. The idea of our heroes escaping the life laid out for them, or overcoming the authority that laid it out, isn't even so much as whispered. The most they ever hope for, and gingerly fight for, is a little extra time.

And time is what Romanek is most interested in here. The always-too-few precious moments, the interminable distance between them and, in the case of these particular characters, the ache that accompanies having to live in the past-tense.

Mulligan, Knightley and Garfield are all exceptionally good here, but special attention should be paid to the young actors portraying the child versions: Izzy Meikle-Small as Kathy, Ella Purnell as Ruth and Charlie Rowe as Tommy. It's their work that grips us from the beginning, and these kids play out the intricacies of this love triangle just as impressively as their older counterparts.

Never Let Me Go is depressing as hell—no one is going to argue with that. But it's also very beautiful; it’s a sincere, totally unassuming movie that has you drawn in long before you realize it…perhaps even in spite of yourself.

Grade: A

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Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

2010-10-29T10:41:00.002-05:00

I'm just going to get right to it because I really don't have that many deep thoughts this weekend. One crappy new movie comes out, that will be number one. Other than that, you enjoy the last nice weekend of weather, have yourself some trick-or-treating shenanigans, and generally frolic and be merry. K?

Here's the box office prediction haikus all the kids love these days.

1.) Saw 3D - $26 million

This is the sixth Saw.
So why not call it Saw 6?
Those guys can't count good.

2.) Paranormal Activity 2 - $20 million

Look! Now you see it,
now you don't...or now you won't.
In which case, nice call.

3.) Jackass 3D - $9 million

One day, we'll look back
and we'll ask why everything
was in damn 3D.

4.) Red - $9 million

Old people need love,
or at least movies to see.
That explains this one.

5.) Hereafter - $8 million

This one is scary.
Not in terms of on-screen stuff,
just scary boring.

WILDCARD - The Social Network - $6 million

Soon this will be gone,
but it's legacy remains!
See you Oscar night!

That's it. You have a blast this weekend. Figuratively, no more explosives for you.

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Really quick note about Lost-related news

2010-10-29T10:22:00.002-05:00

I will never be finished talking about something involving "Lost," no matter how peripheral it may be. News broke today that the show being created and pitched by the producers of "Lost" is called "Once Upon a Time," which I hate. It's also totally about "modern fairy tales," is a "mix of sci fi and fantasy with a strong mystery element" and features a "female protagonist." Well, other than the title, I am totally pumped. I mean, obviously a lot depends on who you hire as the female protagonist.
Yes, the mix of sci-fi and mystery is compelling, but it really comes down to who anchors your show as the lead.
I mean, with a show that's going to be this far on the edge, and given the loyalty that many fans had to "Lost," you're going to need someone that fans can really cling to and hold on to with all their hearts (and minds and other things).
There's no one right answer. I mean, there are so many talented, talented young actresses out there. Let's just say that I'm thrilled that they are not going with another boring, stale old male in the lead. It's nice to have a powerful female character, no matter who plays the part.
The important thing to remember is that it's about what will work best for the show, not what will work best for momentary buzz or short-term attention. Who has the talent to steer a show for 5-6 years?
THAT's the real question, you know? Like does anybody out there that we're familiar with, that these producers in particular are comfortable with, have the ability to really take the first show post-"Lost" from these creators in an exciting direction?

Because excitement is what this is about, you know.

If anyone has any suggestions as to who should be the lead, you just let me know.

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Captain Ameri-HOLY CRAP DID CHRIS EVANS GET HUGE

2010-10-29T10:12:00.006-05:00

Sometimes I forget that there's a Captain America movie actually shooting right now. As much as I love me some Spider-man (always number one in my book, Wolverine can suck it), Captain America has always struck me as the character with the best chance of translating to the big screen...if only because we can all totally believe that our government would inject a skinny dude with chemicals to fight a war. Now, we finally get to see some shots from Entertainment Weekly that prove that not only is there a movie being filmed somewhere in Europe, but it looks...really good.
That first shot really gives me goosebumps. It just works, doesn't it. He somehow is capturing that whole "I'm just a kid who is thrown into war and suddenly I'm a superhero" with the whole "I have the confidence to lead" thing...and this is just a picture.

This next one is going to bulge eyes (and for some folks, other parts) for other reasons.
HOLY CRAP YO. I mean, I'm not saying he used steroids, but that dude used a lot of schmeroids. He's like twice the size he was a few months ago. That's not a normal thing. It's like they injected him with some kind of chemical that made him get...whoa...I just got that.

How great is that? You see Hugo Weaving pre-red face as The Red Skull AND you get to see the device they put Steve Rogers in to MAKE him Captain America. Again, somehow this is crossing the line between real and fantasy just perfectly. I mean, it looks comic booky AND some how 1940s sci-fi authentic.
If it's me, I go with that as the poster. Good God does that make me thrilled. I just love it so very much. Folks, we may have something great on our hands here. It's too early to tell, but unlike the Green Lantern photos in EW which made my sphincter recoil, these just delighted me to no end. Again, DC...feel free to TRY to be more like Marvel.

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They will change the title of this movie

2010-10-29T08:49:00.002-05:00

First off, happy Friday. All you have to do is make it another few hours and you are granted your weekend reprieve...which you will undoubtedly use doing stuff that is not reprieving (I may have just made that word up).

Second, this is the adorable Aubrey Plaza, who has a name as quirky as her lovably cute look.

Look at her. She snuggles with cats whilst wearing whimsical leggings while sitting atop what may or may not be the body of a dead hipster. How great is that? You may recognize her from "Parks and Recreation." You may know her from Scott Pilgrim vs the World. If you know her from Mystery Team, I love you and we need to hang out more. She is the EXACT type of actress I want to be uber-famous. She has a reasonably proportioned, non-wafer-thin body, a unique sense of style, great comic timing, and a subtle delivery. More please. Well, studios have listened, as she will star in The Hand Job, which will not be called that. The script, which has gotten tons of great press, follows a high school graduate who decides she needs more sexual experience before going to college. It's a raunchy comedy...WITH A GIRL IN THE LEAD?! Oh my God! Will the universe implode? I mean, we're talking about letting WOMEN be FUNNY and talk FRANKLY about sex? FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE?!?! Obviously, this sounds to me like the most refreshingly good idea regarding teen comedies in forever. I look forward to seeing it when it's called something else entirely. Seriously, can you see asking "Can I get two for The Hand Job."

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-10-28T08:39:00.008-05:00

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

I kind of hate this week. It's been all full of weirdness and weak. It's a weak, weird week. Look at what it's done to me! I'm jibbering and jabbering and I don't even know what I'm talking about. It's time to get myself together, if for no other reason than this is the day I expose my junk to you. It may be someone's first time seeing my junk this week, and I want to make a good first impression. Because once someone has an impression about your junk, they will tell EVERYBODY that impression. "Oh, his junk is lame." I don't want that. I can't have people out there saying "Have you seen Ryan's Junk? I have, and it is not good." I want people to say how magnificent it was, how you were surprised at all it contained!

Obviously, I'm talking about my figurative junk...as in the movie news that I deem too small to warrant a full blog post. I realize that it sounded like I was talking about something else, but this is a PG-13 rated site at best. Okay, sometimes I dabble my toes in the R-rated waters...but it always feels like someone peed in that side of the pool. Anyway, as you know, we begin every weekly edition of my Junk Drawer column by looking at the creepy-ass image above from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN and picking an item I write a goofy story about.

Today's item is the green and red tube in the lower right corner. Knowing full well the cycle of fads, what with the resurgence of skinny jeans and such, Karen knew that if she prepared herself, she could be ahead of the game. Armed with a bedazzler, limited sewing ability, and a passion for ridiculous accessories, she began amassing a staggering number of glittery, fuzzy leg warmers. She couldn't for the life of her figure out why people had stopped wearing them in the first place, what with how your shins felt like you were wearing pants even though you weren't and the awesome, raw, potent sexuality they unleashed. She knew it was only a matter of time before the populous awoke and realized that the only thing that would spell their thirst for sweater sleeves you wear on your legs were legwarmers! And she would be ready. Oh yes. She would be ready.

Okay, enough Tomfoolery and shenanigans. Let's get physical! Here's the Junk Drawer items for this week.

1.) Everything goes exactly as expected. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz - These bits of news were splashed across everyone else's Web site yesterday. But I stand from the pack. I mean, do you see other sites out there spending a good portion of time inventing stories about leg warmers and writing suggestive introductions about their junk? I didn't think so. Look, I didn't report on these things in depth because I find both of them as shocking as when CNN pundits press a button that turns Kentucky red on an electoral map. Here we go. Peter Jackson will, in fact, shoot The Hobbit in New Zealand despite all sorts of previous problems with labor unions (sorry, this is about New Zealand, so I think I have to use the foreign labour spelling, because nothing says "we ain't in America" like an unneeded U). Yippee! Look, it's good news because the films will look the same and it should be filmed there, just for consistency, but honestly did anyone think they wouldn't be? Put your hand down Guy Who Falls For Got Your Nose.

The other boring news is that James Cameron will be doing Avatar 2 and 3 next.
First off, this is so stupid that he should be forced to have the guy on the right in this picture follow him around during the entire production of these films. "I LOVE THE NAVI SO MUCH I JUST WANT TO BE ONE! Also, I really want Dave Matthews to get back to his roots, you know." Seriously, take off the face paint and that guy looks like the date rapist in a "Law and Order: SVU" episode. Anyway, I don't care to see sequels to these films, and just because he said these are his next movies that doesn't mean anything. Given his track record with his "next" project, we could be waiting until 2024. And by waiting, I mean not caring.

2.) Double-decker Cruise news - Maybe that should read "upper decker" Cruise news because both ideas are kind of stinky. Cristopher McQuarrie, who shall be forever loved in my book because he wrote The Usual Suspects, says that Maverick is the lead in Top Gun 2. That's in direct opposition to rumors that Tom Cruise would only cameo in the film. Is he willing to do a full-on sequel? I mean, I guess so. It's not like he's too big to ignore the possibility now. I can't wait to return to the character of Maverick, who has such a rich tapestry of emotions to demonstrate...like boning hot chicks and being angry. I hope the villain is somehow Meg Ryan. That would be awesome. Oh, and in the second half of this news, Cruise was offered a role in the big screen Rock of Ages, which I'm told is a musical about rock music but sounds like it would give me ear herpes.

Tommy loved that joke. Anyway, I don't know if he can sing (no, no he can't), I don't know if he can dance (no, no he can't), but he may take this because he apparently really wants to sing and dance. Look for his wife to be given some role in it as well, which is great news because she needs to come up for air soon or she'll die.

3.) I want Harley Quinn. My ideas are the best. - You have no idea how much I want to be right about the upcoming plot for The Dark Knight Rises. I know I'm probably not, but hear me out. We know that Chris Nolan is meeting with young actresses. The assumption is Catwoman or a new love interest. The process is so secretive that not even the people auditioning know what they're auditioning for. I so badly want it to be Harley Quinn. Let me tell you how this would work and why it would be awesome.

How it would work: We know that Nolan has said his plan was to have the Joker return in the next film before Heath Ledger died. We know that he won't replace the role. We also know that, within the film, the Joker was HOPING that Batman would kill him at the end. That was part of his end game, trying to make Batman lower himself. I like the idea that there may have been a plot past that. As in, the Joker either had a contingency plan for if Batman only captured him or a next step if Batman killed him. Either way, he's out of the picture, which would mean that he couldn't be the guy doing stuff. So why not have it set up for someone else to take over the Joker's plan. It's reasonable and consistent with the character as presented to believe that he would have seen this coming. Don't make this a revenge movie where his girlfriend takes up his mantle, make this a logical extension of the last film.
Okay, why it's awesome. Because it keeps things consistent, because it lets you play with the themes you wanted to play with, because its unexpected!!! But beyond that, two more good reasons. 1 - It would automatically represent a great female character for Nolan, who has been accused of not having too many of those. 2 - It would avoid the cliches of every other major villain you could think of. I love this idea. I hope that this is actually what's happening even though I'm sure it's not. Nolan, it isn't too late! Make this happen!

4.) Zach Galifianakis gets my dream job - He's going to play with Muppets. We don't know the role, some have speculated he'll just be a voice. We don't know how big that role will be, but he's only going to be involved for a few days of shooting according to rumors. All I know is that his sense of humor is so completely perfect for the off-kilter universe of Muppets that it makes my heart almost as happy as this:

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Sean Penn from Between Two Ferns

If this was a daily segment it would be the best part of every day. Anyway, Zacky-G is going to chill with the fuzzy folks. All is right with the world.

5.) Trailers, Parked - Two weird ones for you this week. First up is Rare Exports, a movie that involves a creepy take on Santa. It isn't your goofy slasher Santa movie, but a dark comedic/serious take on the origins of the child judger. Lord does this intrigue me.

Brother's Justice is another mockumentary, and I'm pretty much over them. It looks kind of funny, and I like the folks involved, I just can't really get all that jazzed over anything that looks like this anymore. Oh, I'll probably see it, but I ain't all tingly about it.

Okay, that's it gang. Hopefully a weird week means a great weekend, so let's hook up tomorrow to talk weekend plans. Have a great Thursday.

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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 55)

2010-10-27T09:35:00.007-05:00

Greetings throngs of readers who visit this column filled with awesome things that should be bought who never buy those things for me! With Christmas stalking us in the corner like a fat ninja, I would imagine that people would be contacting me at film@thereader.com like CRAZY to start sending me products to test out and enjoy so that I may promote them for the world to gobble up for presents come holiday time. Sadly, my inbox is emptier than the Tea Party's "good idea" box. Oh well, I guess I'll continue to shill for items that I find to be incredibly wicked awesome, even if I have to love them from afar. For those who say "why don't you just buy them for yourself," I hope you click 30 ads on this site today, because that's the only way that will happen. Obviously, this is just dark sarcasm, I only want to share fun things with you. But seriously, though, click the ads.

Here's what I want this week:

1.) Well, there goes my health plan - For the last 6 months I've run about 2 miles a day after doing some light weight lifting. The result has been...well, nobody really saying much of anything. Then again, I don't have a lot of friends or people who look at me in "that way." So, the real way I've consoled myself is knowing that I'm possibly allowing myself to live until they find the immortality pill. Health is its own reward!
Well, there goes that. I know that it's made for kids. I know that the apparent recommended serving size as shown above is a Dixie cup. I also want it. You have no idea how much I love Heath Blizzards...and Boston Cream Pie Blizzards...and Banana Cream Pie Blizzards. You know what, don't buy me this. I know it's only 30 bucks and seems like fun, but for once your unwillingness to give me crap I ask for could save my life and hard work. Damn you, DQ. Damn you to hell.

2.) "Raising Hope" got me thinking - First off, that's a funny show. Second, it reminded me that Shrinky Dinks exist. Then ThinkGeek.com did the same thing.
I know this says "Creativity for Kids" right on the front and, when combined with the above item I want, makes me look really dumb or creepy. I don't care. I just miss Shrinky Dinks. If I had a Blizzard I made while making Shrinky Dinks, I'd be happy. I'd also be 8, but I'd be happy.

3.) This is for a friend - I do love this shirt, which requires two photos.
How great is that? I also may or may not know someone who is currently very invested in The Tin Man. This may or may not be a great idea for him. How great is that shirt? Very. Threadless.com. But you knew that, right?

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Actual Bat information

2010-10-27T09:05:00.003-05:00

I gotta hurry, as everyone with fingers, access to the Internet, and a love of Batman (so, all middle class white dudes) are typing furiously in an effort to finish in fifth or sixth place in the race to bring you the first real, tangible news from the mouth of Christopher Nolan.

First, the really shocking part.
You never bought Rachel Dawes did you? I mean, sure Batman got all blubbery when she went kablooey, but have YOU seen a mainstream, big-budget movie where the hero didn't shag the lead actress? Neither Katie Holmes nor Maggie Gyllenhaal took a ride on the bat pole, and that whole business about those models Bruce Wayne bought to come with him but then never appeared interested in, can you say "the best beards money can buy." Yes, the third Batman film will be a musical titled The Dark Knight Gets His; it will feature Robin, who will earn his boy wonder title, and the villain will be the group behind Proposition 8. As much as I'm kidding, I now want someone to actually make this as a viral video for the Eliminate H8 campaign. Speaking of which, how have we not gotten an update about the fast-tracking of that Prop 8 case in California. Sorry, waaaaay off topic now.

Obviously, Nolan is not brave enough to allow Batman to affirm who we all know he really is. No, the big jaw-droppers that Nolan unleashed were these: The film is called The Dark Knight Rises (which still could feature the plot I mention above), and The Riddler...is NOT the father. Sorry, too much Maury. Is NOT the villain. This (A) lends credence to Mark Millar's rambling lies regarding Killer Croc as the villain (and the role that Tom Hardy was cast in), and that fact (B) is going to make me reconsider bumping Millar down on my master list of lying liars.

Nolan also issued the cryptic utterance that "We'll use many of the same characters we have all along, and we'll be introducing some new ones." Does this mean Two-Face is back? I doubt it. I think Tom Hardy is the villain, and God help me I think he's Killer Croc. I suppose Two-Face could still come back and tie the whole thing together, but I kind of like one idea that was tossed out there and somewhat dismissed. I kind of like the idea of Harley Quinn.

I know, I know. She's always been thought of as the Joker's raunchy sidekick, but what if...what if the best way to get close to the original plan that Nolan had for the return of the Joker is to treat Harley as the reincarnation of that character. To have her so inspired by what he did that she takes over for him. Basically, make her the female Joker. Cast Marion Cotillard in it, who we know has talent, and let the original plan still occur.

This probably won't happen. We WILL get a new female character, and it will probably be the Catwoman. Yawn. But think about how cool that other idea is for a minute. Anyway, there's your first real groundbreaking news: No Riddler. Title is The Dark Knight Rises. Thanks to Hero Complex for giving us non-lies.

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A man machine that isn't Al Gore

2010-10-27T08:40:00.003-05:00

First off, thanks to a DVR glitch (thanks Cox, not only does your internet sporadically reset itself so that I have to cycle my router every 2-3 hours WHILE WORKING FROM HOME, but your DVR sometimes decides to record a program from 6:59 pm to 6:59 pm), I JUST watched last week's "Community." I have to say a few words, even though it has NOTHING to do with what I'm about to talk about.

THIS IS THE SMARTEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. Last week's episode, which was nowhere near the funniest or most enjoyable, solidified the fact that it is not just the most clever, creative comedy on TV. Oh no, it's the SMARTEST SHOW on television. Sorry people-who-think-a-show-has-to-be-dour-and-mean-to-women-in-order-to-be-valuable...and sorry "30 Rock," who just got bumped to second place on the smart show big board. Facts are facts, and after watching a brilliant visual essay on post-postmodernism, "Community" is unparalleled. Not only was it a wink-and-nod at how the show has evolved into non-stop wink-and-nodding, but it tackled issues of naval-gazing filmmakers and blasted close-minded religious folks AND hard-headed atheists...before AFFIRMING the power of filmmaking and creating and embracing those committed to religious beliefs and atheists who are just doing what they believe. That's in a 22-minute COMEDY that also had a pretty funny subplot. It also had the two best lines of dialogue on television this year.

In second place: Said in reference to the time it takes to decipher complex meta-meta-meta filmmaking - "I mean, come on Charlie Kaufman, some of us got work in the morning."

In first place: This is just too great. "The Bible has been called the greatest story ever told." "Ben Lyons said the same thing about I Am Legend." - Folks, it DOES NOT get better than that.

Long, long, long, unrelated aside now complete. Watch "Community" or you're dead to me.

Okay, now the news I've come here to tell you. Darren Aronofsky wants to direct a movie about this guy.
Okay, not really. But kind of. See that IS Marvel Comic's Machine Man. And Aronofsky is directing a movie about Machine Man. Just not that Machine Man. Supposedly, the auteur is climbing behind the camera to direct a movie based on a novel that was released a page a day online. It's about a guy who replaces his body parts with metal. It sounds very Chuck Pahlaniuk-meets...well, Darren Aronofsky. It seems like a really good fit. The big issue this morning was that people were kind of confused how that would fit in with his current task of directing Wolverine 2. That was the moment at which most people realized, "Hey, we still haven't officially heard Aronofsky is directing Wolverine 2." It's been assumed, talked about, discussed, and even mentioned by the lead actor (Hugh Jackman), but we have yet to see official confirmation that the man signed on to direct a trainwreck...I mean, quality superhero film for 20th Century F-you. Chances are, he's just putting another film in the hopper, queuing it up for when he's finished with the mega-budget bonanza that nobody needs. Then again, maybe he's hedging his bets. I'm guessing the sticking point on that Wolvie 2 contract ain't money. I'm guessing it's a "Please don't force me to f**k up my movie at the last minute" clause, guaranteeing the studio can't come at him in the 11th hour with a note like "What if Wolverine suddenly could fly and fought Megan Fox?" Until they've worked out every issue, I remain leery that a guy who has yet to make even a modestly budgeted major studio film is going to agree to be their lap dog. We shall see. At least he has a backup if they balk.

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Movie Review: Hereafter

2010-10-26T09:31:00.003-05:00

Justin reviewed this one so I didn't have to. FYI: I totally got his back and have absolutely no remorse about another Eastwood panning. Suck it, Filthy Harry.

Slow Death
Eastwood almost makes a movie about the afterlife
Justin Senkbile

No matter how deserving it may be, there’s no way to feel good about panning a Clint Eastwood movie. The man is a force of nature: in just the last two years he’s directed and produced four films, composed the score for two of them and starred in one. And he’s 80. His resume certainly demands respect; unfortunately his latest film, Hereafter, is a silly, sappy mess.

Hereafter hops around the globe visiting its three main characters. First there’s Marie LeLay (Cécile de France), a Parisian journalist who’s just miraculously survived a tsunami, albeit with some odd after effects. Then there’s Marcus (Frankie McLaren), a young London boy with a junkie mother whose twin brother has recently died. And finally, our star Matt Damon plays George Lonegan, a disillusioned psychic turned factory worker.

Obviously, what these three characters have in common is their proximity to death, either their own or someone else’s. What's strange is that Eastwood doesn’t ever explore grief, fear of death or even spirituality. He simply describes people who have a close relationship to death. For over two hours. Sounds weird, right?

Death and loss are obviously compelling themes, but to make this story (by Peter Morgan, writer of Frost/Nixon and The Queen) work, they also have to remain pretty evanescent. The simplest explanation for Hereafter’s failure is that Eastwood, a product of traditional Hollywood genre cinema and one of the most classical directors working today, just isn’t suited for such a job. His old world instincts result in a film that, although clearly a very personal work, is so full of plot, details and explanations that there isn’t any room for the audience to reflect upon their own experiences and impressions of death and grief. More than the editing (there isn't nearly enough of it) or the dialogue (needs several re-writes), this is Hereafter’s essential problem. It’s like Norman Rockwell trying to work with Picasso’s perspective. Hats off for giving it a shot, but it’s not surprising that it didn’t quite work.

The overall film is disappointing, but quality tends to vary from scene to scene. And the same goes for the acting, with each of our principal cast members pulling off a genuinely compelling scene or two, only to deliver a strikingly awkward line reading a few moments later. Bryce Dallas Howard, as Melanie, a bubbly night school classmate of George's, leaves one of the film's few lasting impressions in this department, though she only appears briefly.

The bottom line is that in 129 minutes, I found only three reasons to see this movie: one wonderfully acted kitchen scene between Damon and Howard, one hilariously awful scene outside a palatial French hospital, and Miss de France, because she’s adorable. Everything else either feels emotionally shallow or is, frankly, uninteresting.

In spite of all this, let’s keep our hopes up for Eastwood’s next film. God knows its right around the corner.

Grade: D-

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Mark Wahlberg tells a teddy bear to say hello to his mother for him

2010-10-26T09:24:00.002-05:00

If Mark Wahlberg wants us to forget this:

he's going to have to stop doing movies involving animals. Last week he was rumored for The Crow reboot, which did not excite me to a tiny degree. How small was my excitement? Smaller than Wahlberg's permanently exposed widdle nipples. This next project, though, may be a winner.
He's going to star in Ted, which you won't believe is about what it is about. From "Family Guy" creator Seth McFarlane's warped brain comes his first live-action, feature film debut. It's a hard-R, $65 million budgeted movie...about a guy whose teddy bear comes to life and is a drug-using, womanizing monster. This means Wahlberg gets to do the role he does best: angry guy who can't believe what's happening to him. Plus, I get to keep making jokes based on him talking to animals. I swear to God if he does a movie that even sounds like it has a goat in it, I'm going to put the "I like your beard" clip on loop for days. This movie could be as hilarious as thinking about Wahlberg actually talking to a goat.

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I will not see Lives of Saints

2010-10-26T08:49:00.005-05:00

Good morning! 50 Cent is a piece of shit. Sorry, I know it's an abrupt way to start your Tuesday, but I thought I would just put that out there ahead of the story to follow.

Chances are, I wouldn't have wanted to see The Lives of Saints anyway, given that it's a pretentious sounding, multi-character, plotless, "everybody's lives intersect in Los Angeles" flick from writer/director Chris Rossi. Adding the adorable Kat Dennings was a nice move, as she doesn't get enough gigs for as charming as she can be, in comparison to vapid, shallow, wafer-thin starlets who gobble up screen time to compensate for what they're not eating.
Then they added Meg Ryan, or the thing that swallowed Meg Ryan.
Seriously, she looks like someone took a wax impression of Meg Ryan's face and put it on a mannequin. That's how that woman looks now. She did that to herself so she wouldn't "look old" and so she could "keep working." She hasn't appeared in anything in forever and looks like the "after" photo in a "this is what using silly putty impressions as the basis for plastic surgery can do for you" series.

Then they added this douche shaped like a human being.
The talentless mumbler who should never have been famous in the first place has decided to be an actor, most likely because he's looking for a way to stop embarrassing himself with his "hip hop career," which will from now on get quotation marks to indicate how hilarious it is that he calls himself a musician. Why all the rage? Because after those gay teens killed themselves, 50 took to the internets to basically say "that's what all gay people should do." He did this because he's been plagued by rumors of his homosexuality for years. Obviously, the best way to deny being gay is to tear down the community. It works every time, just look at all those hateful closeted Republicans who dedicate their lives to denying the group they are forever destined to belong to the rights they deserve. I don't know if 50 Cent is gay. I think it's bull that most of that comes from his lispy voice, but think it's valid that he's constantly shirtless and writhing in body oil...because straight dudes don't typically do that. If he is gay and is in a violent stage of self-loathing, I somewhat pity him. I say somewhat because NOTHING excuses saying things that encourage tortured youths to harm themselves. He's a piece of shit. Until such time as he comes forward, outs himself, and becomes a dedicated spokesman to the community he betrayed, I will think he's a piece of shit. Happy Tuesday.

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Weekend Box Office Results: Holy crap did you like Paranormal Activity 2

2010-10-25T10:29:00.002-05:00

Well, I can safely say no one saw THIS coming. In a move that ensures we will be watching new low-budget Paranormal Activity movies for at least another few installments, America turned out in droves for the sequel to a film that I honestly can't believe ever got screened in the first place. Also, Red held well, Hereafter is not long for this world, and Jackass 3D plummeted but is still on pace for the $100 million club. Let's take a closer, mathematical look, shall we?

Haikus ahoy!

1.) Paranormal Activity 2 - $41.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 86.5%)

You know what this means?
Just as Saw is closing up,
this will take its place.

2.) Jackass 3D - $21.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 96.5%)

So, how many times,
can you watch poo and vomit
in the theater?

3.) Red - $15 million (Accuracy of prediction - 93%)

This was a nice hold
for folks losing hair and teeth.
Get it? They are old.

4.) Hereafter - $12 million (Accuracy of prediction - 100%)

Eastwood thinks on death.
That's really not surprising.
He just shouldn't share.

5.) The Social Network - $7.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 96.5%)

People still click like
on the flick with a great script
and no good women.

Overall Accuracy of Prediction - 94.5%

Perhaps my best week.
That's not saying all that much,
But I will take it.

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Double dose of interesting lies/truth

2010-10-25T10:10:00.003-05:00

One of these things (possibly both) is probably true. One of these things (possibly both) is probably false. Let's play "Guess What We're In For!"

First up is an extension of a rumor we spoke about last week. Looks like Top Gun 2 is happening. The twist is, Tony Scott is supposedly considering directing it. He doesn't want a remake or a reboot, he wants, as he says "a new thing." So I assume that means less blatant homoeroticism and a plot that doesn't involve the Russkies? If this happens, which is possible maybe even probable, with Scott at the helm, look for his shaky cam, hyper-cuts to make things so confusing you can't even tell when they're flying or not.

Second, and the one you should probably put your money on as being a load of Bantha poodoo, Lucas is supposedly considering more Star Wars movies.

We do this from time to time. We get so nostalgic for the series (the way it used to be), so bummed that what we got from the prequels was underwhelming, that we invent these possibilities of the man returning to form and redeeming himself and the franchise with a new series of films that will never, ever, never-ever happen. Supposedly, someone leaked that these would not involve the Skywalker clan and would take place far into the Star Wars universe's future. Ooh! I know, maybe they can have a group of robots and humanoids crash land on a prehistoric earth, since the first series took place "long ago." Maybe they can secretly abandon technology and start humanity on earth as we know it. Congratulations, Lucas, you can't get to that bad idea first.

Obviously, the free answer to our little game is that as much as we desperately want the redemption of a great new slate of Star Wars films, that's not going to happen. Especially not with fat human Ewok up there at the helm. I get chills watching video game commercials that are set within that universe because they so completely seem to get the feel that we all love. Lucas is surrounded by those who gets it but doesn't himself. It's kind of like the Emperor has no clothes, only the emperor has a neckbeard in this case.

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Bringing sexy back

2010-10-25T09:25:00.003-05:00

First off, good Monday mornin' to ya. I followed last week's business week productive output with a productive weekend, so I'm on what they call in my world "a roll." Other than the Chicago Bears doing their best impression of the Washington Generals, I have few complaints. I have a headache, but it's nothing to write about...which I just did. Anyway, on to the light quantities of movie news that have emerged like a fart bubble in a bath this weekend.

Let's just go ahead and definitively state that if you are the human responsible for Sex and the City 2, you should just thank God we don't live in a region that endorses public stoning or your days would consist of ducking rocks. You should not, however, be allowed to make another movie with a high-profile cast that ensures your return to a position whereby you can deploy more refuse upon the world. The following ladies have agreed to support the career of a man (Michael Patrick King) who so clearly hates all women that he created Sex and the City 2 just to show them how wretched and lowly he finds them.

Those two are somewhat expected for what is described as an ensemble-based piece involving the Home Shopping Network (wow, sorry I was disparaging earlier, this sounds awesome...awesome means bowel-emptying right?). The final piece though is the one that will get attention.
Boom. There it is. Enjoy the fresh bowl of crap you're about to be fed, ladies. Just tell yourself it tastes like chicken.

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Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

2010-10-22T10:29:00.003-05:00

Get ready for fun and excitement at the box office this weekend. And by fun and excitement I mean movies involving scary, undead people and other movies that don't involve Clint Eastwood. Get it? Cause he's old. And scary. And I don't really like his movies that much. Anyway, we've got us a sequel to a horror movie, that comes the week before a sequel to a horror movie, and Matt Damon doing a Whoopie Goldberg impression (I mean talking to dead people, not storming off the set of "The View"). I'm not quite Reganing it this week like Jack on "30 Rock," but I am really being productive, so let's stop with the jibber jabber and get to some haikus.

Here's what's gonna happen, fools.

1.) Paranormal Activity 2 - $30 million

More low-budget fun,
with night vision camera work.
And zero Paris.

2.) Jackass 3D - $20 million

This will drop off big,
but it already won huge.
The rest is gravy.

3.) Red - $13 million

I hope this holds well,
because I love Miss Parker,
and violence as well.

4.) Hereafter - $12 million

More boring Eastwood.
It's full of heaven cliches
if that is your thing.

5.) The Social Network - $8 million

Still respectable,
this comes back near Oscar time.
Should win some statues.

WILDCARD - Secretariat - $7 million

Go away dumb horse.
This should not do well at all.
It is really bad.

Okay, that's it gang. Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!

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Meet your dwarves and elves

2010-10-22T09:29:00.007-05:00

Meet Bilbo.
That's Martin Freeman, and as long as we've been speculating whether we would or wouldn't be actually returning to The Shire, this is the dude whose name has refused to leave Bilbo alone. We all knew it was likely, now it's confirmed. Congrats to him on scoring the best character to ever have a name that sounds like a self-pleasuring device.

Beyond that, now that things are actually advancing on the project, Peter Jackson has let fly a slew of names associated with characters whose names mean something to people one rung up from me on the nerd ladder. In addition to Sir Ian McKellon and Andy Serkis presumably returning as Gandalf and Gollum, although surprisingly NOT confirmed in Jackson's press release, the following dudes are going to be real famous.

Richard Armitage will be playing Thorin Oakenshield, who has an iron shield and thus invents irony.

Aidan Turner and Rob Kazinsky will play Kili and Fili, who despite their names are not twins appearing in Playboy.
Your other dwarves are Graham McTavish as Dwalin, John Callen as Oin, Stephen Hunter as Bombur, Mark Hadlow as Dori, and Peter Hambleton as Gloin. I would post these dudes pictures, but they aren't really famous enough to have one. One of them is a Power Ranger. No lie.

This is mostly just exciting because it proves this is happening, really truly happening. We're going to get a double dose of The Hobbit.

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I too prefer Mike Tyson to Mel Gibson

2010-10-22T08:52:00.003-05:00

First off, good Friday morning to you. You look great today, really ready to conquer the world and scratch off those remaining "to-do" items before plunging ahead into a delightful weekend. I love you. Now I'm going to talk about racism, rape, and hate for awhile.

A few days ago, I told you that the Internet was trying to ruin something for you. I can now tell you all about it, as that ship has sailed...sailed on a sea of antisemitism, sexism, and general hate.

Mel Gibson was going to be the surprise cameo in The Hangover 2. It's set in Thailand, rumor had it he was going to play a tattoo artist, it probably would have been funny because Gibson is really great at comedy, an incredibly talented actor, and one of the worst people in the world.
Turns out, everyone in the cast of The Hangover kind of agreed on all those points, and refused to work with him. Supposedly this is what happened, mind you, it could also just be that the cat was so out of the bag that there was no need to have this surprise cameo anymore, what with there being no surprise around it.

This has inspired several blogs and movie sites I follow to stand up and point out the hypocrisy of this stance, as the cast was more than willing to work with Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist. These opinion pieces are all puffed chest and clenched fist, indignant that movie actors would have the gall to stand up and say no to what would clearly be the first real step in the Mel Gibson image reclamation project. To those writing these pieces trashing the cast of The Hangover 2, allow me to be the first to say YOU are in fact the near-sighted morons. Here's why.

Mike Tyson served his time. Do I like him? Not really. I don't have any need to hang out with him and pet his tiger (I didn't mean that like it sounded...okay, kinda). I don't think that means we give him a hug and say "all better now, Mike," but he was punished for a crime, has spent years since then in therapy, and seems at least to be a better person than he was before. Contrast all of this with Gibson, who has been unrepentant in his racist tirades, apologizing for the first bout just long enough to record messages including such creative and colorful racism it would be hilarious if it wasn't being left on a machine of a woman whose jaw he supposedly broke. Until all of that comes out in the wash, until he is either held accountable for brutally beating a woman and spouting gallons of verbal hate that took down various ethnic groups as collateral damage, I'm pretty okay saying I think Mike Tyson is a better person than Mel Gibson right now. Yes, I think it's perfectly fine for them to have worked with Tyson and reject Gibson.

2.) Gibson is one of their own, and they understand what this part means to him and what he means to them. It's like this: the self-deprecating cameo is step one in the "make people like Mel again" campaign. You know it, I know it. So do they. They realize that if they allow captain hatebeard in, they will directly have a hand in helping him get back to making millions of dollars again and being famous before the dust even settles on his abusive, hate-spewing last half decade. Tyson is an athlete. Gibson is an actor. It's fine for me that the cast would say "we don't accept this from one of our own and we will not help him get back on his feet." I'm good with that, and anyone who isn't is a chickenshit coward. Period. If I overhear a guy at the office leave a message for his wife that refers to her getting gang raped by a pack of "n-words," and he gets fired, I'm not going to give him a few bucks to help out at my garage sale until he gets back on his feet. Introduce me to a guy I've never met before who has a checkered past and wants to get back on his feet, I'm inclined to help him out.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Whether or not this is even what happened, that the actors bulled up and said no, I'm glad Gibson is out. Not just because I hated that the surprise cameo was so obviously ruined, but because I don't think he's deserving of a comeback. He's shown no remorse, is still embroiled in controversy, and hasn't earned redemption. Beyond that, I strongly advise Internet writers not to posture and judge a group of people trying to make a decision like this. I'm not going to drop into some personal-attack arguments where I malign the usually very smart and creative writers who penned some of these editorials, but I am going to just say shame on you for your limited-scope oversimplification. You're wrong on this one.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-10-21T09:12:00.006-05:00

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

Oh Thursday, how you continue to sneak up on me like a fat ninja; I see you coming, but you still shock me. As you know by now, Thursdays are special to me, because that's the day I show you my junk. And I'm really proud of my junk, it's something I have that nobody else does. And I've heard a lot of compliments on it. People often say how much they look forward to my junk, and it gets a lot of buzz on Twitter.

Obviously, I'm not actually talking about the thing you think I'm talking about, although one day I will talk about that and really freak everybody out. Maybe not. Anyway, by junk I mean movie tidbits too small to include as full blog posts. I call this my junk drawer in part so I can use that awesome illustration up top that is so creepy cool that I can't believe it's from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. Shudder. We begin by picking an item from said illustration and writing a goofy story about it for funsies.

Today's item is the drawer itself. Sarah had always been lucky. Whenever she forgot her homework in high-school, the assignment got moved to another day. Whenever she needed money for lunch, she'd find a $20 bill on the ground outside the cafeteria. In college, when she decided she needed a major, a famous archeologist stumbled upon her and gave her an internship overseas. Her first day on that job, she found an old wooden ship that everyone seemed to be quite impressed with. The problem is, Sarah was also incredibly stupid. This is the reason why Noah's ark was cut up and made into a quaint junk drawer in Sarah's house.

Okay, enough already, let's get to my junk!

1.) M. Night Shyamalan kinda listening - Shown here re-enacting his first twist ending ("Just do it, put your hands like this and then slide them between mind, then open them and look in the middle...it will totally blow your mind!"), M Night has a new project.
According to Heat Vision's blog, Shyamalanadingdong has been reading MY blog. Probably not, as I haven't gotten a cease-and-desist order yet nor have I received the kind of revenge The Last Airbender money can by you (hey, those paper bags you light on fire with poo in them are expensive). Still, for his upcoming One Thousand AE, which instantly calls to mind 10,000 BC, a project everyone clearly aspires towards, ShyamalalalalaIdon'thearyou is having someone else write the script. ABOUT DAMN TIME! He's FINALLY going to have someone else write so he can focus on directing this sci-fi opus that will star Jaden Smith (uh, oh). And the dude he hired to write it is the guy who wrote The Book of Eli. Ooooh, so close and yet, so far away. If you're scoring at home, Shyamalanotgonnaseeit gets +1 for not writing his next movie, +1 for trying sci-fi, -1 for trying to direct ANOTHER kid after The Last Airbender, and -15 for hiring The Book of Eli guy to write it. When you consider the point total he was starting at, he's now at -379.

2.) I take strong offense at the "middle age" designation here - A few days ago in the print version of this column, which you should be reading in The Reader because (A) it's how I actually get dollar-dollar-bills yo and (B) ink smudges on fingertips are straight-up sexy, I mentioned that Zack Snyder put the ka-bosh on the idea of an older Superman with his statement that it would "go back to his early days." Combine that with rumors that David Goyer's treatment has something to do with Clark "I'm the least interesting alter-ego in history" Kent deciding whether he should even BE Superman, and you had another yawn-inducing origin type story sure to be low on action. As Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend. Just yesterday, Slashfilm.com ran a headline reading "Zack Snyder Looking for a Middle Aged Superman" and then revealed that casting is looking for someone 35-40. MIDDLE AGED? You jerks, 35 is NOT MIDDLE AGED. Dill holes. Anyway, this is good news for Jon Hamm, who needs to be Superman (if only to make up for his misogynistic role on "Mad Men"...try to argue THAT ONE with me people who argue with me about whether or not the show is misogynistic, you have to concede his character is). Anyway, this is good news potentially, as we don't need another Gorram origin story for Superman. Oh, and middle aged Superman in the comics totally looks like Morrisey.

3.) Ben Affleck ready to take big bite out of next projectSeriously, this photo will never get old. I don't even understand how it is physically possible. I mean, there is some SERIOUS jaw detachment going on there. I would make some lewd joke about "maybe that's why Jennifer Garner is married to him" but that doesn't even make any sense. Maybe his butt chin hides some kind of button that when you press on it releases his jaw fully? I don't know. Anyway, he's passed on a billion other projects after the success of The Town but may have settled on Replay, which is my cousin's favorite book. The plot is this: "The protagonist is a 43-year old radio journalist who dies, wakes up in his 18-year old body, and gets to relive his life over and over. With his original memory intact, he takes the opportunity to travel down roads he passed up the first time around." Sounds like it could be really nicely handled. That touch of magical realism that's awesome if it never explains HOW this happens. Maybe Affleck's detachable jaw is the gateway to the past?! No word on how Replay will be rewritten to include Boston.

4.) Sandra Bullock keeps taking movies, not making movies - I don't know how many movies Sandy B is attached to, but we have another to add to the list.
She's going to appear in a movie for the director of The Proposal, and it's being described as having elements of An Unmarried Woman and Saturday Night Fever or, more simply, my worst nightmare. I like S-Bulldog. I really do. She's sweet, cute, has a great self-deprecating sense of humor, and I'm one of the 2 people who reviewed Miss Congeniality 2 positively. That said, what the sam hell is this? You have the option after WINNING AN OSCAR of doing work with Alfonso Cuaron, and instead I hear you're lining up a project like this? Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. I like you, but that can change. Oh, and if you had forgotten about my Miss Congeniality 2 review...I was totally kidding. I didn't give it a positive review. Not me. Must have been somebody else.

5.) Trailers, parked - This is Halloween-time, right? I have barely had a bit of candy corn to snack on, have yet to consider what half-assed attempt at a costume I'll try to pass off as clever, and haven't watched a scary movie yet. So I forget. But let's get you in the right mindset by showing you something scary: Anthony Hopkins slumming it.

The Rite is YET ANOTHER exorcism movie, albeit one that thinks it's higher class because it has Sir Anthony Hopkins. It isn't. See for yourself.

Next up is another pseudo-horror flick, one that's a little more anticipated. Scream 4 is finally arriving, and now the most interesting part is this: If they make a Scream 5, how cold with the scenes between Courtney Cox and David Arquette be?

Finally, let's class the joint up a bit with Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Biutiful, which will win some Oscars and shit.

The only thing scary about that one is how much my wife is attracted to Javier Bardem. She saw No Country For Old Men and STILL thinks he's dreamy. Yuck. Anyway, that's it for my junk today, hit me up tomorrow for weekend plans!

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The endless humor of Venn diagrams

2010-10-20T15:01:00.002-05:00

I was going to be done for the day, but then I saw this on Slashfilm.com.
That is the greatest graphic for a movie I've ever seen. I wasn't even going to tell you that apparently Robert DeNiro and Sylvester Stallone are teaming for Grudge Match, about two boxers who agree to fight 50 YEARS after their title fight. This Venn diagram is the best thing that will come of this, I promise you. How incredibly bad does this sound? I'm thinking CBS Films already bought the distribution rights.

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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 54)

2010-10-20T14:41:00.006-05:00

Sorry I've been M.I.A. today, and I don't mean the cool female hip-hop artist. The only reason I'm dragging my tired, wretched carcass to this point right now is because this is the 54th edition of Things You Should Buy Me (but don't because you hate me), and 54 is Brian Urlacher's number. I can't very well fail to come to the internets and beg for people to email me at film@thereader.com to get my address and send me the following cool stuff on the volume numbered the same as the best linebacker of my adult lifetime! Obviously, I'm kidding. About the sending me stuff, you don't have to do that. You DO have to acknowledge the greatness that is Urlacher though. That's non-negotiable. Here's the top 3 things I want but won't be sent for free despite deserving it this week:

1.) This is almost too awesome to be real - Thinkgeek amazes me from time to time. This is one of those times.
This is "The Avenging Unicorn" playset. It's $14.99 here. If you buy it, you get four different "stabbing horns" and the opportunity to re-enact a mime being gored by a friggin' unicorn again, and again, and again, and again. The best part to me is the hippie girl who is just mortified. Oh, sure, the accountant douchebag is shocked, but I think that's mostly because he had a thing for the mime. See how much fun you can have with this. One more time, in case you didn't notice, these are action figures that allow a unicorn to impale a mime. I love America.

2.) 'Tis the season FOR MURDER - Amazon.com is having a great sale on some awesome Halloween-related Blu-Rays. Evil Dead and 28 Days Later are less than 10 bucks. Wow.
That's not the best part. Follow this link and you'll see the horror/Halloween-themed movies. Last check it went Evil Dead, Let the Right One In, The Omen, Letters to Juliet, and Daybreakers. Yes, that's totally correct, between the movie about the spawn of Satan and a vampire infestation, you have the Amanda Seyfried movie that is scarier than both of them. How great is that? Good deals, better humor.

3.) He sleeps on a black cloud of death - How bad ass is this shirt?
Teefury has a really great Scare Bear shirt, which I adore because they really got the face and body right. Oh, and he's holding a bloody scythe. I like that too. See, my wife loves Care Bears, and I love subversive uses of popular culture and fun Halloween mayhem. It's a win win. But you have to get it NOW because it goes away at midnight. It's like a reverse Gremlin. And reverse Gremlin sounds like a dirty sex position. I'm done now.

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How's it goin' crow?

2010-10-20T10:48:00.003-05:00

Sorry this is so late today, guys, but I was up until almost 4 in the morning last night and I'm currently a little compromised. And by compromised I mean I've been yelling at demons that have been dancing on my computer monitor that I'm beginning to believe are just figments of my imagination and OH MY GOD THERE'S ONE RIGHT NOW! BACK FOUL BEAST!!!

Where was I? Oh, right, blog stuff. The most interesting development in the last 24 hours is that Bloody Disgusting (a great site) has discovered that the lead in The Crow remake has been offered to someone who is great with animals.

As much as I loved Mark Wahlberg's remake of The Crow when it was called Max Payne, and by "loved" I mean at least it had Mila Kunis looking trashy, this seems like a terrible idea. I don't need The Crow to be Boston-emo, which is like, wicked sad. Sure he has the rage and abs to pull the part off, but I was hoping for someone with a little more gravitas, a little more talent, a little less having-appeared-in-The Happening. I'm already dubious of this entire remake debacle, but this is definitely not the way to get things rolling.

WARNING: THE ENTIRE INTERNET IS RUINING SOMETHING FOR YOU

2010-10-19T11:45:00.002-05:00

Chances are, if you're reading this, you like movie news sites. That being the case, you probably already know the "surprise" cameo in The Hangover 2. Thus, the entire function of HAVING a SURPRISE cameo in The Hangover 2 is now worthless. I get reporting it, I really do. I would have run it if I had found it first. But I would have done so with this headline "Want to know who is cameoing in The Hangover 2" or "Spoiler Alert, Dummies." I mean, seriously, you don't put a headline that reads "BLANK is the surprise cameo in The Hangover 2." Do you tell knock knock jokes like this: "Orange you glad I didn't say banana, knock knock." It's a shitty way to do things, and this is from a nonspoilerphobe. It works like this: I don't care if spoilers are out there. I don't care if people want to look at them. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It depends on what it is. But what I am a big fan of is a choice, one that was taken away from my by a damn twitter feed. Okay, so you are at risk of denying yourself the joy of something like this (this is a movie that came out a year ago, so if you haven't seen Zombieland yet, it's on you).

I think the cameo that's been described COULD be epic. But if you want to be fooled, it's going to take some doing. If I'm the guys making that movie, I instantly whip up another secret cameo that's even more insane. But that's just me. Anyway, thanks internet for ruining something else.

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People lining up for xeno-death

2010-10-19T09:21:00.002-05:00

If we don't get Natalie Portman being chased by weirdly phallic, double-jawed acid spewers, looks like our consolation prize may not be too shabby.

God I wish the rest of life worked like that. I'm not sure the exchange rate on such things, but trading a Portman for a Hathaway (if it comes to that) seems beyond reasonable to me. It just occurred to me I never mentioned officially that this is for the Alien prequel for which Damon Lindelof apparently wrote a treatment that's beyond awesome. James Franco is also circling the project, presumably as the alien. I'm kidding, I like J-Frank, he's got personality, is willing to spoof himself on "30 Rock," and may just be the actual meltdown that Joaquin Phoenix faked waiting to happen. Portman hasn't passed yet, and Noomi Rapace (that's a real name, I swear) and Casey Mulligan are also swimming in the waters around. The point is, I really thought this project was hot bread (toast) but it looks like Lindelof has taken something that was dead and made it appear alive...there's a joke there, if someone who is a fan of "Lost" could help me with that...

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None of this is made up, although you will think it is

2010-10-19T08:56:00.003-05:00

I swear on anything you want me to swear on, I am not making the following information up. Not even a little bit. First off, all hail Slashfilm.com for what is the best image I've ever seen accompanying a horror remake story:
Yeah, how incredible is that. Okay, now the really funny stuff: The Weinstein company, who I cannot believe are still in business, is going to remake Hellraiser as...wait for it...a PG-13 rated, teen horror movie. Yep, the film with the most demented visuals barfed up from the nightmares of an S&M enthusiast is going to be turned into a perky-boobed, hard-bodied remake that teases and titillates without ever torturing anyone. The movie is called Hellraiser and you're going PG-13? You think parents will be all "Hey, Johnny who is only 15, what are you going to go watch this weekend?" "Oh, no worries mom, I'm going to go see Hellraiser." "WHAT?" "Don't worry, it's only PG-13." "Whew, I was worried there for awhile. Take your sister with you then." Remarkably stupid. Also, we're not at the part you won't believe yet. Amber Heard is going to be the female lead. She's the girl standing next to Bert-as-Pinhead up there. She's very pretty. That's all. I have yet to see or hear convincing words come from her face whole, she's incredibly nondescript in her attractiveness, and she's done this sort of crap before. Also not the news you won't believe. Okay, are you ready? Here's the best part: The PG-13 remake of Hellraiser will be directed by....Christian E Christiansen. That is not a joke. He directed a movie called The Roommate, which my brother in law will see because it stars Minka Kelly. He's a real person. So, there you have it, Weinsteins are remaking Hellraiser into a teenage-friendly movie directed by Christian E Christiansen. Now that's funny.

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Weekend Box Office Results: Wow, do you guys like crotch hits

2010-10-18T09:09:00.002-05:00

I knew Jackass 3D would be big, but I don't think anybody knew it would be THIS big. Apparently, we have all collectively underestimated the public's insatiable lust for dudes smacking other dudes in the naughty parts, sometimes with poo. Whatever. It's funny, it's harmless (to us), and I think enough ink has been spilled on pages and online contemplating the comic genius of the physical brand of comedy the merry junk-sters have created. If y'all want to spend a bunch of money to see 3D images of bodily fluids, have at it. It won't have a long box office shelf life, but it already cleared $30 million in profit, so I'm guessing nobody cares.

Here's how the rest of the weekend went, haiku style:

1.) Jackass 3D - $50 million (Accuracy of prediction - 78%)

The demand is high
for gross-out, violent humor.
I should have figured.

2.) Red - $22.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 88%)

Better than I thought,
both in terms of box office,
and in quality.

3.) The Social Network - $11 million (Accuracy of prediction - 100%)

Can't be mad at this.
Good movie does good money.
That's how it should be.

4.) Secretariat - $9.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 82%)

Are you shitting me?
This CAN'T have good word of mouth.
Man, I HATE those mouths.

5.) Life As We Know It - $9 million (Accuracy of prediction - 84%)

Listen up, Heigl.
I've had enough of your crap.
Go back to TV!!

Overall Accuracy of Prediction - 86.4%

That's respectable.
But I'm not here for respect.
I'm here for love, man.

Okay, that's it for now. Happy Monday. Get to work.

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Movie Review: Red

2010-10-18T09:05:00.003-05:00

Gray-Haired Black Ops
Red shows the AARP can kiss kiss, bang bang

Wry sense-of-humor, sly sexuality, potent and visually stimulating violence? Oh, Ernest Borgnine, is there anything you can’t do?

Okay, fine, although the 93-year-old gap-toothed thespian pops up infrequently in Red, a film for which all those previous descriptors do actually apply, his inclusion is a metaphor for the inexplicably kinda-awesome ha-ha/bang-bang extravaganza as a whole. Populated with a cast familiar with a time when ensemble was king, oozing charisma from their aged pores, Red is the anti-Social Network: The script is meh, the concept is as haggard as the lead actor. This proves once more that although words are king, actors can be gods.

Let’s start at the top. Bruce Willis, fresh off not appearing to have aged in more than a decade, is Frank Moses, a retired C.I.A. black ops agent currently bored out of his gourd and obsessing over Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), the lady who answers his phone calls regarding his pension. Just as Frank is about to launch “Operation Get Me Some,” he is ambushed by a squad of assassins. Frank nabs Sarah both for her own protection and because he never abandons an operation and begins searching for answers.

Frank’s first stop is to a nursing home to talk with 84-year-old former-spy-turned-stage-4-liver-cancer-patient Joe (Morgan Freeman), who can still kill you with a Bic pen. Joe gives Frank a list of names that leads him to Marvin (John Malkovich), a retired operative whose drug-addled brain should be a wake-up call to current real-life starlets. Constantly pursued by good-guy-conned-into-doing-bad-things, Agent William Cooper (Karl Urban), Frank also enlists the aid of a wily Russian (Brian Cox) and a slinky silver-haired sniper (Helen Mirren) before embarking on a rather ambitious final gambit filed under “only in implausible movies.”

That implausibility is actually the best thing that screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber culled from the source material, a graphic novel (the politically correct term these days for a comic book) by Warren Ellis. Although we are all willing to believe Willis will be a physical marvel capable of death dealing throughout his Depends era, Red is one of those stupidly awesome flicks that also sees no need to capitulate to the laws of physics or reasonable decision making. It’s a “domino movie,” where each tiny plot point limply falls into the next one: it’s only fun when viewed as a whole.

Thankfully, Robert Schwentke was thinking big picture with his treatment of his uber-cast, with loosey-goosey directing that acknowledged the biggest weapon in the film was the collective nuclear bomb of charm. Try not to have fun while Willis and Malkovich are hamming it up, or when Mirren and Cox are gettin’ their dirty flirty on. Even Urban, by far the spring chicken in this out-to-pasture collective, delivers the goods, notably in a wicked fight scene with his elder, Willis.

With a dose of noninventive but still giddy-goofy-fun visual shoot-em-up and a heaping helping of old-school actor elbow grease, Red is a surprising nugget of entertainment. It will be quickly forgotten, but as the cast knows, memory isn’t everything…they just can’t remember what is.

Grade = B

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Let's just pretend NOTHING happened this weekend

2010-10-18T08:42:00.003-05:00

I watched Nebraska lose on Saturday, then watched the Yankees lose (with my wife and her brother) immediately afterward, then watched the Bears lose on Sunday. If we just want to go ahead and pretend this weekend never happened, I'm good with that. That seems to be what the rest of the world is doing, as the movie news consists of recycled nuggets I've shared with you before and leaked trailers of gritty superheroes from Thailand (yep, that's a real thing). So, here's the plan: I'm going to give you this one semi-interesting but wholly non-original news item to start, then I'm going to drop a review or two on you, then I'm going to recap box office, then I'm going to bounce. I gots things to do this week, peeps, and when there's doings to be done, you'd best get to doing them.

Here's the news item of moderate interest I promised.
Keith Richards is returning to piracy in On Stranger Tides, the next Pirates movie. Can we just call them Pirates movies now? Because (A) they have traveled a little beyond that Caribbean we spoke of previously and (B) I really hate spelling Caribbean. It's not like people would be confused, and it would make it a whole lot easier to type out during the inevitable short-lived box office takeover it represents. Featuring just Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp, this actually COULD be my favorite in this series, because the dead weight was always Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley...okay, so it was a combined 115 pounds of dead weight, but it was still dead weight. Having Richards cameo again does nothing for me, but if you're into dudes who look like rotted, warty pumpkins, rejoice!

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Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

2010-10-15T10:32:00.002-05:00

This week needs to end so I can start over. I need a clean slate and a clear head going forward. I doubt I'll get either, but it's nice to want things. This weekend is full of revenge, both in Red and with the Big Red taking vengeance upon the Longhorns of Texas for their bullcrap win last year in college football. It's also full of nut shots, hopefully for the jackasses of Jackass and the jackasses of Austin. I'm tired, you're tired, it's been a terrible week, let's just do this thing, k?

Here's how I see the weekend, haiku style:

1.) Jackass 3D - $28 million

Nothing is timeless,
quite like the classic nut shot.
It's always a hit.

2.) Red - $17 million

Bruce Willis is back!
But not the baddest ass here.
That's Helen Mirren.

3.) The Social Network - $11 million

This is a huge hit.
It is now worth a hundreth
of what Facebook is.

4.) Life As We Know It - $8 million

No one likes Heigl.
No one has heard of Duhamel.
So why is this here?

5.) Secretariat - $8 million

Wow did I hate this.
There is nothing good in it.
I am not kidding.

Okay, that's all I got this week. I'll try to do better next week, but I make no promises.

Kisses.

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Hulk smash on weekly basis?

2010-10-15T09:21:00.004-05:00

I don't know how many mediums they have to try before they realize that the Incredible Hulk really, truly only works as a comic or cartoon. The best version of him may well be the "Super Hero Squad" version, in fact. Yes, I'm serious. You can't very well realistically have the kind of conflicts that occur in the monthly comic occur with actual actors. Look:

How do you make the giant green guy punch the giant lizard guy with two toes and have it look like anything near something would happen in the real world? I mean, honestly, the budget would have to be astronomical, something that the recent semi-floppy movie returns haven't warranted. So, obviously, they're developing a new "Incredible Hulk" television show. Good choice.

Look, I admire the moxy of Marvel to refuse to give up on their un-jolly green giant. I get it, he's recognizable. But if it were me, I would spend some time trying to think of properties that don't involve tons of CGI or painting steroid-users green. This is why I welcome the second half of the story, which is that they're considering a Cloak and Dagger TV series.
The comic, which is not about an angry black man who ate a skinny white blond girl contrary to the image above, follows two teenagers who are dependent on one another. She's the light, he's the darkness; she can throw light daggers, he can open his cloak into another dimension of darkness. Okay, so it may be a little out there, but I think you can have some simple effects and have kind of a cool story to tell in a serialized way. Unlike "The Incredible Hulk" TV show reboot, which hasn't been created yet and I'm pretty sure is almost canceled. Oh, and that means in the last decade, four actors will have played the Hulk. Five if they lather up another body builder in green spray paint for the series. That's a lot of Hulks. I know it's a murder of crows and a gaggle of geese, but what's a bunch of Hulks? A horde?

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Muppet-lover's delight

2010-10-15T08:25:00.005-05:00

And a good Friday morning to you, my bloggy devotees. As I may have mentioned one or one thousand times, I have yet to get my bearings on this week and, oh look at that, now it's Friday. Oh well, I suppose being immortal means I don't have to care about flushing a week of my life down the toilet because I couldn't get my head right. Hmm? What's that? I'm NOT immortal? Really? Well, I guess the only thing that will comfort me about throwing precious life away like a half-eaten burrito is more muppet news.

As I told you last week, former "Hooters" girl (hey, that's a less shameful introduction than "star of Leap Year") Amy Adams was considering whether to join one of two art films or star in the new Muppet Movie. She chose well.
The delightful redhead is now among my favorite humans, as she has decided to forgo the flesh in favor of felt and fur! And she's not alone. I reveal to you the muppety villain!
I think that short, buzz-haired, black and white Chris Cooper is the scariest...but blonde, thinning-haired Chris Cooper does also want to eat my face.

Don't worry, though, there's another cutie to combat the Coop.
That's Rashida Jones, and she will be bringing her delightful brand of sweet whimsy and adorableness alongside Amy Adams and a slew of creatures that have hands inside of them. Folks, this Muppet movie is happening, and I could not be happier about it. Okay, if I were in it, if muppets were real, and if I hung out with Rashida Jones and Amy Adams, I could be happier.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-10-14T08:41:00.008-05:00

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

I swear to you it feels like I was just talking about my junk yesterday. Oh, don't get me wrong, my junk is almost always on my mind, but since I save public discussion on the subject for just one day a week, it is odd that it seems like I was just telling everyone about it. This could be a function of me having been in a wedding-induced time warp from Thursday of last week until Tuesday of this week, a time-warp made of whiskey, beer, and bad decisions, or it could just be a function of me not being particularly smart. The jury's still out.

Now, as you know by this point, I use the term "junk" to refer to the various tidbits and nuggets that I compile once a week in lieu of composing four or five separate blog posts. I also use the term because it pleases the fifth grader that still lives inside my brain and laughs anytime someone says the word "duty," as in "You have a duty here." Heehee. We always kick off by looking at the image above that is clearly a serial killer's junk drawer, an image taken from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. I pick an object from said image, write a goofy story about it, then shuffle along like nothing happened. Why? Tough to say, really. I'm going with massive head injury at some point that I've forgotten about, probably due to the massive head injury.

Today's item is the white light in the upper middle. Ryan had been trying very hard to work lately, but he was suffering from creative constipation. Sadly, although there are thousands of medications to help raise "other" types of "junk," there are zero prescriptions designed around unblocking the blocked creative artery. Suddenly, Ryan realized that there was something else at work, something far more sinister. Quickly, he jumped up, ran to the junk drawer...and there it was: his inspiration. Someone had taken it from its normal resting place between his ears and relocated it to the junk drawer. With the creative constipation gone, everything returned to its normal flow.

Now, enough chicanery, let's get to it!

1.) Comic book movie-related reptile news (volume one) - We reported earlier this week (he says as though he wasn't beaten to the punch by every news organization and several kids at whatever school you attend) that Rhys Ifans had been hired on to play the villain in Spider-reboot. We didn't know which villain, but I assured you it wouldn't be the Lizard as some had speculated because the budget was too small to allow for an entirely CGI character, which is what that would entail. I couldn't promise which villain, but knew it wouldn't be that one. It wasn't going to be the Lizard. It's the Lizard. At least, that's what's being reported on various places across the Internets. Then again, those same places had Emma Stone a "lock" for Mary Jane, when she was actually cast as Gwen Stacy. Is it possible that this is right? Absolutely. Is it stupid. Yep. Because of the budget, he may end up looking like this:

But worse than that, the character doesn't make a lot of sense as a foundational bad guy if they're doing a full-on origin story. Unless they aren't. Unless they're doing a reboot that only resets everything back to a reasonable level. What if they're in college, not high school (this rumor has been circulating too), and what if we just see Peter as Spider-man already? We basically reset the cast and location, but maybe do the "origin" as a flashback? The Lizard still doesn't make much sense there, but it works better. Is this true? Have I cracked some kind of code? Is there going to be more than one villain thus negating any significance of this anyway? No one knows anything at this point. So, let's just continue with wild speculation because it's fun.

2.) Comic book movie-related reptile news (volume 2) - Tom Hardy is your bad guy in Batman 3. Actually, that's not even confirmed. Jeezaloo do we speculate like mad. Tom Hardy, the buff and cool guy from Inception, is going to appear as SOMEONE in Batman 3, which I'm guessing will be called The Dark Knight Returns even if it doesn't actually follow that storyline because marketing will want them to capitalize on the brand recognition of the last movie. Mark Millar, professional liar and comic book hobbyist, has suggested that he's playing a bad guy and then specified what bad guy Hardy would be.
Killer Croc. As much as I trust Millar, which is not one bit at all on anything, this seems to be nonsense. Or does it? The original incarnation of Killer Croc was as a shadowy mafia figure, which does fit into the world that's been created on screen thus far. Plus, if there are two villains this time, it would be a nice balance to have the physically imposing, visually striking Croc-based character along with The Riddler, who is the obvious choice for the other baddie. Let me just toss this one out there: (A) It's not reasonable to have two major superhero sequels both use lizard-based bad guys. (B) Is it possible that some wires were crossed and that The Lizard ISN'T in the Spidey reboot but Killer Croc was what was being spoken of? (C) This is a really weird news week. Really reptilian. I don't like it.

3.) WTF? Mo MIBs? - The cast for MIB3 keeps getting better. Yeah, I know, I'm shocked too. In addition to the obligatory Smithage and expected Jonesing, we're getting Josh Brolin and Emma Thompson. That would be significant, but now comes word that we're getting a triumvirate of interesting.

We've got Sharlto Copely, Alec Baldwin, and Gemma "Yum Yum" Arterton all signing on for some level of involvement. Obviously, Gemma is there to entice, Sharlto is there because he's now synonymous with aliens, and Baldwin is there to bring the funny. Are these cameos? Are they actual roles? Could this be the good film in the series that finally capitalizes on the limitless potential of the franchise? Will I ever answer any of the questions I am relentlessly asking today?

4.) Good news for, um, volleyball enthusiasts - They're still trying to do some measure of Top Gun 2. Right now the plan is to have a small role for Tom Cruise (get it, because he's a wee person), but that can be expanded if he's interested. If I were him...whoa, let's not go there. The number of things I would do are just overwhelming. Let's just say he should do this, and not just because the gay community really, really wants more volleyball from Top Gun.

He should agree because his career needs a lift. If Sylvester Stallone can will The Expendables to $100 million, Cruise should easily vault that mark with a Top Gun sequel and declare himself back on top. And by back on top, I refer you again to that volleyball scene.

5.) Trailers, parked - These trailers aren't that exciting. I'm only putting them here because that's what I'm expected to do. I'm not happy about it.

The Way Back is Peter Weir's directorial return and involves the Gulag. It looks standard and predictable. I told you this wasn't overwhelming.

Blue Valentine does look very, very, very good, so I shouldn't have said it was underwhelming. It features Michelle Williams, who doesn't get enough respect, and Ryan Gosling, who I thought was dead given his on-screen absence. It got an NC-17 for some reason involving sex, but that will change because it has a chance at acting Oscars. I apologize for saying I wasn't thrilled about this movie. I just didn't get excited to show you the trailer is all.

Okay, that's it for my junk. Until next time, which I'm sure will feel like tomorrow, I bid you adieu. Oh, and let's meet up tomorrow to talk about the weekend, okay?

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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 53)

2010-10-13T11:25:00.005-05:00

I've been such a good boy for so long now that I'm overdue for presents of all kind. So if it sounds like I'm more demanding than usual about people contacting me at film@thereader.com to get my address to send me more free stuff, that's because I deserve it. Really, I do. Of course, this is where I say I'm kidding and that this is really just me showing you some cool stuff on the internet, but I don't know that I am today. Today I feel as though I should be bribed and pampered, should be showered with things I will own without purchasing. You should make it so.

Here's what I want this week:

1.) No more free shows for people watching me after a shower - I don't know abut the whole bathrobe thing, seeing as how the only dude that comes to mind when I think of one is Hugh Hefner, and I'm not going that route with my life. Not that he hasn't had a good life, it's just that we all I know I can pull that sort of existence off. That said, I think if someone wanted to plop down $99 at ThinkGeek, I would totally wear this:

That's a Jedi bathrobe. Okay, technically it's a bathrobe cut to look like a ceremonial Jedi robe, and it's further proof that there is not one merch idea that Lucasfilm will not conceive of. I'm fully anticipating Yoda Wart Cream and Leia-but-don't-get-pregnant Condoms.

2. A Halloween decoration I can stand behind - For $17.99 at ThinkGeek, you can have the best October decoration I've ever seen.
Unlike the people in my neighborhood, who decorate more for Halloween than Christmas, this tiny, inexpensive object is somehow both tasteful and fully in the spirit of the season. Seriously, nothing says weird like suburbanites decorating their lawns with fake severed heads. It's so trippy.

3.) I like cows, so what? - I do. I like cows. I like T-shirts. Thus, ergo, and therefore, I like cow T-shirts.

This one is called "Fail" and is available at Threadless. Come on, you know this is cute.

That's what you should give me this week. I'll have more next time.

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Lindelof lift off

2010-10-13T11:13:00.002-05:00

Things were looking bleak for the Alien prequel that nobody needs. After Ridley Scott talked up an awesome, gritty, R-rated version that would tear our souls from our bodies, we all got pumped. At least, I know I did, as few things get me as excited as soul-tearing alien killing. Then came word that Fox balked at the price tag, a mere $150 million. Cue Damon Lindelof, "Lost" creator/arrogant-SOB, who was tasked to write a treatment that came in somewhere below that dollar amount and had mass appeal. I see where Fox was drawn to him, what with him delivering things that came in below expectations (zing!). Apparently, they think he aced it, as the movie has life again...and a PG-13 rating that doesn't sound as "bloody" and "savage" as Scott teased. So my excitement went from "why are you doing another Alien movie" to "oh, Ridley Scott's doing it and says it's going to be crazy, I'm in" to "Lindelof borked it down to PG-13 and made it cheap, ugh." But wait, there's more. Natalie Portman is being sought for the lead, presumably because she hasn't been rumored for a sci-fi production in the last five minutes.

So, now my excitement went from "NOOO, unnecessary prequel" to "YAY, Ridley Scott returns with an R-rating" to "BOOO, Lindelof and low-budget" to "OMG, will Natalie wear a tank top and underpants only to fight evil phallic-shaped aliens like Sigourney Weaver did?" My emotions are being toyed with here, people.

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Avenue Q meets LA Confidential? Yespleasethankyou

2010-10-13T09:02:00.003-05:00

The best news in an otherwise rather-challenging week is this: Lionsgate has picked up Happytime Murders, a dark comedy about muppet murder.
Jim Henson's son, Brian, is set to direct this tale of a world where muppets and humans coexist but the fuzzy folk are treated like second-class citizens (or third-class citizens, depending on your view of how we treat various minority elements in this country). When the puppet cast of an old kids TV show get murdered one by one, it's a disgraced LAPD puppet detective pairs up with a human to solve the case. This makes me think three things (1) MUPPETS CAN DIE? WHAT THE HELL?! That's a heck of a thing to burden me with when I'm already fussy. I thought those things were immortal! (2) I hope this is rated R and we get to hear muppets curse. The only thing funnier than muppets saying dirty words is a homophobic senator who is revealed to be gay. (3) I know they aren't ACTUALLY using recognized muppets in this movie, but how great would it be if Gonzo was the killer? Years of pent up rage released in glorious felt murder. I cannot wait for this movie. God bless Lionsgate for greenlighting this one!

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Ryan's Ketchup

2010-10-12T09:45:00.012-05:00

Read this column or I'll haunt your fridge

I have two versions of this opening joke.

If you're in Omaha, this is yours: "Just when you thought you were rid of me forever, I have roared back from the dead to remind you that you're never really done with me! I'm the Hal Daub of blogs!" If you're anywhere else, just substitute Newt Gingrich in for that politician reference.

Since last we spoke I (A) saw my Brother-in-Law finally marry his beautiful wife, (B) drank twice my body weight in liquor over 3 days, ensuring that I will never drink again, and (C) have become so exhausted that if there were gun to my head demanding an answer, I'd have to ask to see a calendar to tell you for sure what day it was.

In an effort to save my sanity, I'm doing just one post today, but I'm doing it epic-style, in one huge Catch-up (get it, Ketchup) column.

Here is all the news I missed over the weekend through Monday.

1.) There's no Jason Bourne in the next Jason Bourne movie - In a great move, Tony Gilroy has turned in a script for The Bourne Legacy, which does not feature Jason Bourne. Interesting approach, not including the title character of your franchise in the next movie in your franchise, but it may make sense. Apparently the plot will allow room for more of Jason Bourne himself down the road, but will broaden the "world" that he lives in by exploring more of the espionage and intrigue that surrounds his existence. Presumably the action will still be shot and cut so crazy it remains incomprehensible.

2.) I'm GLAAD we solved that - When I saw a preview for The Dilemma, I was friggin' appalled. Not just because Vince Vaughn's schtick is the only thing more tired than I am.

Although, seriously dude, stop it. No, what was appalling was two-fold: First, that nobody has hobbled Ron Howard yet. His name on a production sheet should come with an asterisk that reads "may cause mental diarrhea and vomiting." His hacktastic hackitude is ridonkulous. Second, the first thing in the joyless, soulless trailer (of a movie that features KEVIN JAMES for the love of God), is a "that's gay" joke. Really? Really? It's 2010, you idiotic douchenozzles! Assuming there was a script, how did that joke even stay in there? Thankfully, GLAAD stepped in and dropped the hammer, prompting Paramount to pull the joke from the trailer and the movie. Score one for progress. Now, if only they had shelved this entire abomination altogether. I have no respect for anyone associated with this film. Period.

3.) Technically, lying is a sin - Okay, Robert Rodriguez is challenging Mark Millar for the title of "lie shaped like a human." Nevermind that he's been circling Deadpool like a vulture or that his list of possible next projects grows daily, let's just focus on how he's said that Sin City 2 was coming for the last five years.

He SWEARS it's his next project after the next Spy Kids movie, but if you believe him, I think perpetual football misser Charlie Brown is the only creature more gullible than you are. Do we even need a Sin City 2 now? I mean, the first one was groundbreaking in a lot of ways, but it wouldn't be anymore. Okay, if they get Jessica Alba back to strippin', it may be vital. It's just not going to happen no matter what RR says.

4.) Your new Spidey baddie is.... - Well, technically, we don't know who he is but we know who he is. What do I mean? Well we know that this is the bad guy:
That's Rhys Ifans, and apart from having the weirdest spelled name in the world and looking like a a stretched out Ron Stewart, he's kind of fun. The speculation has gone three major places: (1) The Vulture - He's lanky, he's bird-looking, and the Vulture WAS the villain in the last known script that was scuttled for this one. (2) Electro - One of the remaining villains that may look cool on screen, provided they change him out of his green-and-yellow footie pajamas that he wears in the comics. (3) Venom - The least likely choice, but the studio knows that Venom is the most profitable bad guy in terms of merch and popularity.

My guess? Probably the Vulture, but I wouldn't rule out either Kraven or The Chameleon. Why? Low budget. The film only has an $80 million budget and is shooting 3D. The effects would be less necessary for the villain if you go with someone who doesn't have massive powers. Personally, I think Venom is out because of that reason alone. Could be the Lizard, but I think he's out for that same reason. Oh, and incidentally, just make the damn movie already. The only thing I've done more than report on rumored casting for this movie is make jokes that only I find funny.

6.) Flash news! - I don't know why they insist on making a new Flash movie when we already have the amazing 1990s TV series.
I loved that show when I was younger...because I used to like things that were terrible. Now comes word that the script for the new movie version is due by the end of this year and that Bradley Cooper is in the lead to play the fast-runner who runs fast...and that's about it. Cooper seems like a good fit, even though he also seems like kind of a jerk. I have nothing to go on there, just a gut feeling, but this is a blog so I don't have to fact check or use real information or anything.

7.) Super lie - I'm not spending much time on this one. Someone supposedly saw Brad Pitt around where Super 8 is shooting, suggesting he may have a secret cameo. It's filming in a small town. So what is far more likely is that someone who looks something near what Brad Pitt looks like was around town. Incidentally, even looking somewhat like Brad Pitt probably rules, so don't feel bad guy-who-just-started-a-false-rumor.

8.) Jackasses return in front of Jackass - The return has been...anticipated?
That's right, the dynamic douche duo is back...sort of. The animated pair will be talking about 3D to kick off the 3D extravaganza that is dudes doing things with poo and harming their genitals! Jackass 3D will feature an animated opening with these knuckleheads, which is great news to a few people who confuse nostalgia for quality.

9.) Danny B to hit up a sequel - Danny Boyle doesn't like repeating himself...and so repeating himself may be a way to not repeat himself. What do I mean? Well the director hops genres with nearly every film but has never made a sequel. Now comes word that he's considering returning to the world set up by my favorite true horror movie ever.
Great pic from Slashfilm by the way. We don't think it will be 28 Months Later, and we don't know the idea that prompted Danny B to consider actually directing it himself, but let me be the first to say how excited I am. The prospect of a great director returning to do a horror sequel is just drool-inducing. I'm a big fan of this potential load of malarky, considering I can't actually see him agreeing to do this.

10.) Because this is how all posts should end -

Christopher Lambert may be in Ghost Rider 2. Also, he may be in your garage right now. I'd check.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-10-07T09:13:00.006-05:00

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

Today is Friday. Don't check your calendar, just trust me. God, how great would that be if someone failed to show up to work and gave the reasoning "this dude on a blog lied to me." I only wish I had that power. No, today is MY Friday, because it's my brother-in-law's wedding, and tonight is his bachelor party, during which I can only assume he will drink all the beerses and alcohols available. Should be fun, could be dangerous. Since I'm out tomorrow, that means no box office predictions, so just assume I got everything right.

But today is not tomorrow, and today there are doings to be done. Of course, by this I mean my junk. That's right, it's time for us to do my junk. I know a lot of people out there live their lives by the appearance of my junk (if not by the content inside of it), so I have a responsibility to provide the strongest junk I possibly can. It's a busy week, so it may not be long, but I promise my junk will be satisfactory.

Of course, by junk I mean movie tidbits that aren't fit for a full blog post and not the lewd sexual innuendo that you clearly thought I was hinting at. I'm pure as the driven snow (after a semi-truck spilling diesel drives through it that is). We begin each week by laughing at the image up top, which is creepy and belongs to Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. I pick an item, write a wacky story, laugh at it myself, and never hear about it from anyone again. I do this every week because I am a slave to tradition and because doing so amuses me (like a fart in church). Today's item is the braid in the upper left corner. Marcus was a huge music fan, and his favorite artist was the one, the only Johnny Cash. After years of research into the origins of Johnny's music, Marcus was shocked to find that the original version of "Walk the Line" varied greatly from the finished product everyone knows. Turns out the original lyrics were "I keep my pants up with a piece of twine/if you'll be mine/just pull the twine." Obviously, the radio stations weren't ready for such progressive material, and the lyrics were changed. At an auction in Nashville, Marcus finally tracked down the item he had always sought after making the discovery about those lyrics: In Marcus' junk drawer now resides the twine that once kept up Johnny Cash's pants.

Okay, enough chicanery and horseplay, let's get to some movie nuggets!

1.) Turns out, lots of people can resist Gravity - Alfonso Cuaron has been rejected more times than a penniless Kevin James would be. He's been turned down more times than a hotel bed. He's been shot down more than a low-flying drone in North Korea. He's been told no more times than George W Bush when he asked to fly Air Force One.

Natalie Portman, ole Natty P, is the latest to flip Cuaron's Gravity the bird. So what do you do when you can't have the most beautiful, talented actress in the world? You get the lady from Miss Congeniality 2.

Sandra Bullock will reportedly be starring in the film, and must really be happy about being the director's 27th choice. If the movie is a huge hit, she gets to laugh at all the other actresses. If it turns out that the other 26 passed for a reason, maybe we get Practical Magic 2.

2.) The great and powerful Raimi? - Oz is officially open for business, as the glut of rumors and potential movies is about to birth it's first real flick from the womb of imagination and lax copyright laws. Sam Raimi is going to do The Great and Powerful Oz.

Slashfilm has a great writeup (and this awesome image above), which reminds us that (A) Robert Downey Jr may play Oz and thus make this whole thing cool, (B) the project has been flipping around for awhile now, so until we actually see it start shooting, we should treat this like rumors of your nerdy high-school friend's "girlfriend from Delaware," and (C) it could suck. It's going to be written by one of the "it" screenwriters right now, but I don't care enough to look up his name because this project disappears like aqua-phobic witches.

3.) I would have gone with SUPERROBOTSPLOSION - The new Transformers movie finally got its "after colon" subtitle. I know we were all hoping for Transformers 3: Michael Bay will still eye-f**k you or Transformers 3: You thought the LAST one was racist, wait until you see what we did with this el Camino. Sadly, it's going to be dumber and worse than all of those. It's Transformers: The Dark of the Moon, which makes no sense. They clearly were smoking something Pink Floyd would give the thumbs up to when the Transformers themselves were created, but aping a classic album title and then changing it enough to make no sense...is oddly appropriate for this series so nevermind.

Also, I find this hilarious.

4.) Hanks for the Depp - If you were wondering what Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were doing besides shining their multiple Oscars, the answer is prepping Sleeping Dogs, a story about various dudes working on the "triple frontier" border of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Expect mafia, drugs, and terrorists...which automatically makes you think of Tom Hanks, right? Perhaps realizing that he'd best get his shit together or this new generation of film goers will only know him as the guy from those boring church movies, Hanks may costar with a certain minority-capable French enthusiast with pervy facial hair that everyone still loves.

The story goes that Depp is choosing between another Tim Burton movie and this project. Here's some free advice: DON'T DO ANOTHER GD TIM BURTON MOVIE. Go get your Oscar. Go be in a movie that isn't a retread of what you've already done. Go earn your love and fame, which you are freely given. If Johnny Depp opts for a Tim Burton movie above this, he is hereby sanctioned 100 cool points. This moves him slightly below Matt Damon but still significantly above Shia LeBeouf.

5.) Trailers, Parked - Some really good ones this week, which is nice for a change, as I most often just plop crap here.

Faster is notable not because it's original sounding but because I like The Rock when he's mean, I like Clint Mansell when he does anything, and the movie looks pretty for a violent revenge flick. Sure it kind of resembles a WWE movie starring John Cena, but I think I may have fun. It's like Payback only with less racists.

The Tempest is like my second favorite Shakespeare play, so combine Helen Mirren, Julie Taymor, and Russell Brand and you have one of my most anticipated films this coming winter. I mean, how good does this look? If your answer was anything other than "very," you're kind of slow.

Burke and Hare is a return for John Landis to the director's chair, which is noteworthy. But not as important to me as Simon Pegg's presence. I will watch anything he does. I mean, with his permission, not like when he goes to the bathroom or anything.

True Grit...I don't really have more words. It's a new Coen movie...and...just look at it. I want to go to there. I want to go to there now.

Okay, that's it. Take care of yourselves this weekend. Behave, because I won't be. Much love.

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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 52)

2010-10-06T11:51:00.005-05:00

Sorry this is late today. Maybe it would be on time if you bought me more things. It's not like I don't make it easy for you to bribe me. If you contact me at film@thereader.com, I send you my address, you send me free things, and then I'm more inclined to capitulate to your whims. Like, let's say you really like the word googleplex and want me to use it more often. You send me some free swag and whammo, I'm talking googleplex left and right. Of course, this is really just a place I gather the weekly cool findings from across the interwebs so that you can see them and buy them for yourselves, because you're selfish. I kid. And by that I mean I'm kidding about the "across the interwebs" part, I usually just check a few sites. The rest of it I meant, as I know somebody out there is buying this stuff and keeping it. Jerks.

Here's what you'll buy yourself this week:

1.) Huggable murder - Nothing is cuter than things with large heads and little bodies. I should amend that to say things other than actual human beings with large heads and little bodies. Dudes who walk around looking like human bobbleheads do not get love. Far more lovable are these fellas:

Sure, they want to poke you with murder sticks until you die, but you want to love them now, don't you? Look at that Freddy, you just want to make him feel loved despite what he did to those kids and what he wants to do to you. It would be great if they made him smell like deep-fat fried chicken. Anyway, these are the cutest way to say "I love horror, but not like that."

2.) Brain food - So Thinkgeek loves to make me want to eat funny things.

The packaging alone here is fantastic. Plus, it comes with an extra vial of blood, you know, for flavor. I love everything about this and really don't care how it tastes. I don't know that I would ever actually EAT these, because I love how they're presented so much, but you have to applaud the nerds of the world for figuring out how to further capitalize on this zombie craze.

3.) The ponytail makes this work - It's obvious, yes, but also awesome.

Threadless has the only homage to Steven Seagal you'll ever need, Steven Seagull. I will point out that the only thing better would have been showing that he also flies like a girl. I wonder if his bird incarnation also engages in terrible behavior toward women and racism? I'm guessing yes.

That's all I want this week. Now go buy it for yourselves.

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Is this comic movie bizarro day?

2010-10-06T11:41:00.002-05:00

There is literally exactly ONE way I would be excited for X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Part Deux, and that's if Darren Aronofsky signed on to...MOTHERFU...are you kidding me right now? Darren Aronofsky is seriously circling this movie? For realz? What's next, Martin Scorsese doing Daredevil? Actually, that would be awesome, he should do that. Seriously though, this makes a measure of sense in the insanity: Hugh Jackman worked with DA on The Fountain, a criminally underrated visual poem that's dismissed as snooty when it's really gut-wrenchingly earnest. Plus, DA needs a bank-account-padder to keep making his crazy stuff. Beyond both of those, this guy seems to want to make a comic book movie. Between Batman and Superman, not to mention the non-comic-but-still-nerd-related Robocop saga he got embroiled in, it's clear this dude is determined to try something like this. My biggest concern is that he's working with the douche-legion at Fox. They so badly rogered that last Wolvie go-round that hiring the best director in the business right now is only moderately turning me on to the project. They are going to straight-up Kathy-Bates-in-Misery hobble him. The Japanese setting and bizarre mental backstory does allow some room for cool visual interpretation, but that's provided he gets a story that isn't as grotesque as Rush Limbaugh's politics. It's possible that this is somehow awesome, but it's definite that it's interesting. So kudos if this deal goes through, I will officially move the project from "Oh God, Oh God It Burns" to "Warning: May Cause Mental Diarrhea" in my list of upcoming movies.

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Emma Stone FINALLY cast as...WAIT WHO?

2010-10-06T11:28:00.003-05:00

You sing and dance it up, Emma Stone! You just landed a role everyone knew you were going to get: You're going to be in the new Spider-man as Gwen Stacy. Wait...what? But...but you were supposed to be MJ! How can people look past your red hair (that's really blond but you dye it red) and spunky personality? Why, you'll have to...ACT now!!!! Look, I love that she's in this movie (and that we can stop with the rumors about it), but I do kind of hate that she's Gwen Stacy. Why? Because I always envisioned Gwen as that shy, sweet girl-next-door, the girl who never did anything wrong in her whole life, who is sweet but not full of life and personality, who is your first love but not complex or varied enough to settle down with. What always struck me about how they handled it in the comics was that you could love Gwen AND love MJ for two very different reasons, and there were ways in which MJ was superior. I can't imagine them casting a better MJ than Emma would have been. So maybe they won't. All this speculation has been based around them having two ladies in the movie, but I don't know that has ever been 100% confirmed. If they cast someone else as MJ, they are missing the boat. If they only had a role for one woman, I'll take Emma Stone any day of the week. I didn't mean that how it sounded (yes I did).

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Ladies wish there was a dislike button

2010-10-05T10:25:00.003-05:00

Jezebel, Entertainment Weekly, Devin formerly of Chud, and legions of others have begun an engrossing and thoroughly important discussion that, it should be noted, has mostly been divided by sex. Headlines are trumpeting "The Social Network has a woman problem" or, if they're a dude, "Does The Social Network have a woman problem?"

Many women apparently feel that The Social Network probably doesn't do right by them, and some penis owners are quick to point out that this was "based on a true story" and that additional female characters of strength or importance would have had to have been invented solely as works of fiction. The gist of the battle is that a movie GUARANTEED to be nominated for a boatload of Oscars once more has no real use for 51% of our population. This is the kind of vital discourse and conversation that needs to be had, so I'm throwing my hat into the ring not because I think I have any particular unique or crucial insight but because I refuse to play passive witness to a discussion of this magnitude.

There are three parts to this argument: the under-representation of women in the film, the use of those women lucky enough to be included in the film, and the overall message. Let's take these one by one.

Under-representation

As much as I understand the argument of those who say "to include any additional female characters would be to add too much fiction to this fact-based film," that's not what I think was needed. We know that Erica Albright existed, and that she played at least a vital role in the catalyst for Facesmash which begat Facebook. When Mark Zuckerberg's hateful, vile blog screed against her takes place, we are given exactly one hurt reaction from her. When she reappears later, she is classy as hell and whip-smart. I don't think it would have been a bad idea to have a little more of her in the film. I understand that this isn't "her movie," and that folks like Devin would argue that we don't see rounded out versions of other small characters, but this isn't a small character. The film begins and ends with her. She IS significant, and insofar as Zuckerberg's hatred of her, and perhaps dismissal of women in general, is the spark that fired the invention about which this whole movie is concerned, I don't think it would have been factually unfair or tonally dishonest to check in with her to see her reaction to Zuckerberg's triumph.

Yes, there is a scene in which Zuckerberg is passed a note that represents how most women feel about him after his Facesmash creation, but I also feel it would have given a nicer voice to see a bit stronger of a reaction to this. We get a note passed in one scene, but then a full-on groupie sex scene later. As far as screen time and significance goes, we are shown far more nookie-as-reward than hatred for where his project originated.

This is a great movie, but I do think that it didn't consider the significance of what it WASN'T saying, and the fix would have been relatively easy. Toss in more development of Erica, stronger reaction of women to Zuckerberg, and perhaps given the intern at the very end more to do than be sexual (why couldn't she have been attractive through intelligence and sass, would that have really been such a stretch), and suddenly we're not talking about this...well, not quite as much anyway.

Misuse

Then there's Christy. Oy. Did I laugh when she was shown to be the psycho-girlfriend? Sure. Was it probably that entire reason she was used in the film, which needed a bit of levity and range? Yep. Was that a bit uncomfortable...yes. Christy shows up to instantly pork Eduardo, before drooling over Sean Parker's awesomeness, and then go batshit crazy and start becoming insanely jealous. Feel free to cut all of that out. I would rather have had that time go to Erica or someone else, or have lost it all together, than to add a boob-thrusting, bed burning stereotype into the movie for some levity. Her character is not a problem in a different movie, one not dealing with someone who becomes a billionaire because he started an online movement to get back at a girl. If Aaron Sorkin had shaped her character a bit to be smart or funny, again, we're not having this conversation and it wouldn't have been some terrible rewrite of reality. This was a misused opportunity to be sure.

The other rally cry is the sluts shown at the Pheonix party. I have no problem with this. The point is to show how crude and disgusting the people in that group were, and you cannot look upon the dudes in that scene and think anything other than "wow are they vile." I also have no problem with them showing women who are lowering themselves by engaging in that behavior. These are presumably smart girls who either go to Harvard or are at least aware enough to know and care who the "next Fed chair" will be, so them debasing themselves by making out with one another for the entertainment of rich boys is obviously intended to be vile. This was fine with me.

Finally, you have Rashida Jones' character, which has been pointed to as redeeming by some out there. Disagree strongly. Her kindness and intelligence is great, but she basically is the agent of absolving here. She gives him the personal pardon of "you're not a bad guy, you just try hard to be." Really? How does she possibly come to think that after hearing all the wretched things he's done to good people? I don't have a problem with her pitying him, that would have been good. Had she demonstrated some superior intellect and then pitied him, then we cut to the Erica befriending, again I think it works better and we're not talking about this.

Overall

The problem is this in my opinion: Facebook was created from a Web site that was primarily used by dudes to scope chicks and was inspired by Zuckerberg's attempt to get revenge on an ex. The subsequent portrayal of Christy and Erica and lack of a strong female response does probably leave a little to be desired. I remember thinking that while I was watching it, before this discourse began, so I feel it is totally valid. I do not think it was mean spirited or even intentional, I think Sorkin and David Fincher were keyed in on presenting the story of Zuckerberg and the important cultural shift he represented, mindful of staying focused on the main elements of the story to keep the running time reasonable.

I feel like the criticisms are warranted and important, that we ought to hold accountable films of this magnitude that had missed opportunities or misrepresentations. I don't think this is even on the list of most problematic female films even within the last year, but as a high-profile awards contender, we need to be discussing it.

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Snyder will kneel before Zod

2010-10-05T09:48:00.003-05:00

For the record, being right kicks ass. I mean, it doesn't kick as much ass as this guy does but close.
Zack Snyder is going to direct Superman. Yeah, who called that? I'll give you a hint, his name sounds like Schmyran Schmearick. Chris Nolan, who probably didn't have total autonomy when it comes down to hiring, at least had to see the writing on the wall. Giving an artist unfamiliar with visual spectacle this gig would have been yet another misfire waiting to happen. You have a guy with crazy limitless powers, you need to have a bit more action than most indie-converts are going to bring to the table. You want to give a budding cinematic auteur a superhero movie, you give them anyone but Superman to tackle. Further proof that they are concerned with the action angle: The villain is going to be Zod. I read a write-up on Slashfilm that talked about how this is being done because they want it to be an accessible film, and that having Brainiac or Darkseid be the villain just would have been too out there for audiences. Maybe. That probably did partially influence the thinking, but I actually think there's a better reason: They're evenly matched. The problem is always that Superman is the strongest, fastest, bestest hero out there, so the only thing you can do is pit an evil character who isn't as powerful as him against him. Or...you use the one character who is EVERY BIT as powerful as he is. People are already launching their "super-slow-mo" jokes and 300-based cracks on Snyder's hiring, but let me say this: For the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm actually totally excited to see what this Superman movie is going to look like. I think it can kick ass. I think it can be something amazing. But most of all, I think it kicks ass that I totally called it. Ya-boo!

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Um, there is no choice here

2010-10-05T09:08:00.003-05:00

Did you know that Amy Adams used to be a Hooter's girl?
So let that be a lesson to all douches making lewd comments and considering inappropriate touching, as well as an inspiration to those working for a tasteless establishment named after slang for your body parts who are constantly besieged by the gropers and the pinchers! Be nice to Hooter girl because Hooter girl may one day become hella-famous! If, by some chance, you do end up walking in Ms. Adams' overpriced pumps, hopefully you do not make a simple decision more complicated as the delightful redhead is currently doing. See, she has a choice between three roles right now:

Opposite Matt Damon in director Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo, in which she would play the wife of a man who...um...bought a zoo
Opposite Chris Pine in first-time director Alex Kurtzman's Welcome to People, in which she would play a single mother and struggling alcoholic
Opposite MUPPETS IN THE NEW MUPPET MOVIE

For real? This is a dilemma for you? Is the dilemma how to tell Crowe and Kurtzman they can suckity suck suck it? Is it that you don't want Damon and Pine's feelings to be hurt that you'd rather rub up against Gonzo? Seriously, what the problem is? You get offered a chance to act with Kermit, YOU DO IT! I can only hope for the sake of the legacy that is "The Girl from Hooters who Made Good" that she chooses well. That, or I'm going to have a new preemptive tip to hand out to those Hooter waitresses. I kid, of course, as I've never set foot in a Hooters because I value dignity.

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Weekend Box Office Results: Embracing the douche

2010-10-04T10:38:00.002-05:00

This weekend, movie audiences spoke...and they loudly declared "We are somewhat interested in the development of social media but not to the point where it's like a phenomenon or anything but just the appropriate amount of curiosity!" Wow, what a statement! Let Me In got shut out, the creepy owls dug in their talons, and The Town continues to look like it's maybe a $100 million movie waiting to happen...and don't sleep on Easy A, as that $8 million gem keeps pulling audiences in even in its third week (probably because it's awesome). Let's take a quick deeper look, haiku style:

1.) The Social Network - $23 million (Accuracy of prediction - 95.5%)

A nice opening
for a movie with unknowns.
No offense, J.T.

2.) The Legend of the Guardians - $11 million (Accuracy of prediction - 60.5%)

Well, this is good news!
We've downgraded from major
to minor failure!

3.) Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - $10 million (Accuracy of prediction - 100%)

Money never sleeps?
Like, not even a catnap?
That sucks for money.

4.) The Town - $10 million (Accuracy of prediction - 97.5%)

You can't stop Affleck,
you can only insult him.
Keep it up Big Ben!!!

5.) Easy A - $7 million (Accuracy of prediction - 93%)

Emma Stone kicks ass.
She deserves this huge success.
I deserve a kiss!!!

Overall accuracy of prediction - 89%

This would be higher
if it wasn't for the owls.
Damn you, dirty birds!

Okay, that's it gang. Happy Monday. Stay alive out there.

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Movie Review: Let Me In

2010-10-04T10:35:00.004-05:00

Here's Justin's take on Let Me In.
Let Her in, Again
Swedish vampires move to New Mexico
Justin Senkbile

It'd be safe to assume that fans of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In have, at best, mixed emotions regarding the idea of a big, Halloween-season American remake. Good news: writer/director Matt Reeves seems to be a fan too, and his Let Me In is one of the best Hollywood remakes you're likely to see.

Between his mother (Cara Buono), who is drinking her way through a divorce, and the regular beatings he faces at school, 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives a brutal existence. As he begins to fantasize about taking drastic measures with a cheap pocket knife, a new neighbor moves in.

Her name is Abby (Chloe Moretz). She lives with a man who is presumably her father (Richard Jenkins), and she can only be found outside at night. Quickly, and despite her warnings, Owen befriends her and begins to experience a different kind of cruelty: frustrated young love.

It's no spoiler to reveal that the apparently adolescent Abby is actually an ageless vampire, although she doesn't define it that way, and her faux-father does the dirty work of scouring the town for fresh blood. The bodies he leaves behind bring a shaken but determined police investigator (Elias Koteas) on the scene, but we spend most of our time watching the progression of Owen and Abby's strange friendship.

If Jenkins' and Koteas' presences here aren't reason enough to see this movie, I don't know what is. Two of America's greatest character actors are both at the top of their game here, with relatively small, mostly thankless roles that are impossible to forget. But it's our tragic lovers, Smit-McPhee and Moretz, who make it all work, and they are as good as you could hope for. They're both fragile, frightening and vulnerable, in very different ways.

Instead of harvesting only the exclamation points, as we've come to expect remakes to do, Reeves has created what really feels like a loving adaptation. He takes great effort to capture the same eerie atmosphere and let the relationship between the two kids remain the essential point.

So Let Me In is both very good and very similar to the original…then what's the point? Besides being a convenient solution for the subtitle-averse (which isn't really a good thing), it's worth it just to see how Reeves has managed to take this Nordic story and make it feel quintessentially American. Set in suburban 1983, with a perfectly utilized pop soundtrack, it becomes a sort of twisted, poetic John Hughes movie. The setting also inevitably draws us back to the last golden age of American horror, when Jason Voorhies and Michael Meyers were problems counted alongside bullies and acne to their high-school victims.

With that in mind, Let Me In becomes less of a remake and more of an American counterpart to Let the Right One In. And although that might seem useless, the end result is just as magnetic and heartbreaking. Turns out, Reeves has made a movie good enough to survive any fan's comparison test.

Grade: B+

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Superheroine-ism

2010-10-04T10:11:00.003-05:00

I figure I died sometime around 1:30 yesterday morning. As I suspected, going to a midnight movie on Thursday, writing a review and driving to Manhattan Kansas on Friday night, getting up at 5:30 am on Saturday and Sunday, before driving back to Omaha at 11:30 or so and watching my Bears get molested and broken by the Giants until 1:30 in the morning was a recipe for the death of my soul and mind. Oh, and this week just happens to have in it my brother-in-law and dear friend Cody's wedding at the end of it...and his bachelor party I'm throwing on Thursday night. So, you're going to have to forgive me for this week's bloggery, which will be absent totally on Friday, cut somewhat short today, and will likely be mediocre on the remaining days of the week, whatever those may be (Smorklesday? Is that a day? The one between Tuesday and Flootlesday?).

Let's kick off the shenanigans with a double-dose of the only real movie/TV news of the weekend...and it's all about the ladies.

First up: Here's MJ if she'll take it. Word is out that Emma Stone has been offered the role of Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-man reboot. The second piece of good news about the movie, after the fact that The Social Network proved Andrew Garfield is pretty damn good as an actor...even if he has a weirdly long neck. I'm not saying I'm EXCITED for this reboot now, because I'm not. I still think it's stupid. But if you have Garfield, Stone, and a really good villain (like Philip Seymour Hoffman as Venom...as has been drunkenly rumored), I may just end up liking it. That's the best I could hope for.

Second: Someone will be putting these on.
David E. Kelly, he of law shows, law shows, and law shows, is going to adapt a TV series out of "Wonder Woman," which is a terribly stupid idea. Superheroes should work on TV, but don't because the budgets are too small, so you inevitably have a lackluster confrontation in each episode. What we'll get will be some relationship-heavy, silly take on a relatively simple character. They should just make a movie, beef up her Greek origins, and really make something DC can be proud of. Oh, right, DC makes terrible entertainment outside of their comic books. Nevermind. This is about right. I look forward to the wave of nubile actresses from Nickelodeon and Disney Channel who will be targeted to slink into Wonder Woman's underoos for a series that will be canceled 5 episodes in. I give it that long because we all know it will go to the WB and they don't cancel things quickly, because if they did, their channel would be all-static all the time.

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Movie review: The Social Network

2010-10-01T12:42:00.002-05:00

Poke of Genius
The Social Network shows smarties suck
Ryan Syrek

Whether owed to a ritual goat sacrifice or a cauldron-cooked potion, mastery of the dark arts is the only way Aaron Sorkin’s script about an insufferable prick compelled by hubris and hormones to create a Web site out of spite could sizzle like an unpoked hotdog in the microwave. Although The Social Network is surfing atop a hyperbole tsunami that has included Citizen Kane and Godfather II name-checks, it is several degrees short of a full-on revolution. Brilliant but slightly contrived, let’s just say there’s a reason why Facebook doesn’t have a “love” button.

If the real Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) even approximates the vengeful narcissist Sorkin invented from Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction book “The Accidental Billionaires,” the screenwriter can expect to get Zucked at some point. We meet the soon-to-be social media pioneer mid verbal spar with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). It takes all of four sentences to drink in the entirety of his person as Sorkin sees him: He’s desperate for people to revere him, unquestionably brilliant and a Defcon Level 1 asshole.

The spine of the nonlinear story is composed of two lawsuits. The first was brought by Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmates Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) and twin brothers Tyler (Josh Pence) and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer), who alleged Facebook was stolen from their idea for HarvardConnection. The second, and far more emotionally loaded, was leveled by Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg’s first investor and only friend. The film flashes back and forth from depositions to the drunken, revenge origins of Facebook to the expansion of the site through the involvement of Napster creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). It’s all so damn engrossing, you barely notice nothing inherently interesting happens.

Part character sketch of a bitter, smug louse, part reflection on the rise of geeks to the top of the corporate food chain, The Social Network is perfectly cast. From Eisenberg’s squinty, snark-spewing to Timberlake’s charismatic abhorrence, director David Fincher inherited so much in terms of talent and writing, he likely just ensured the camera was still recording and went to lunch. Even the low-growl score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross operates like an angry, well-oiled machine.

Sorkin’s manipulation is so complete that he renders sympathetic the privileged Winklevosses while simultaneously making Zuckerberg, the little guy, into a douche Goliath. By the time the saintly Saverin is sabotaged, the audience doesn’t know whether to root for their central antihero or hope for a back alley shanking we know won’t happen. Without ever pandering, Zuckerberg’s tiny comeuppance is as sly a subtle scene as a script has seen, involving a desperate refreshing of a Web page.

Masterpiece status is dodged thanks to the barely-a-whimper resolution and the fact that most of the zeitgeist commentary isn’t actually inherent within the film but is loaded on externally by smart observers. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The Social Network never nears Orson Welles’ orbit, but that’s not an insult. It should be content to sport the year’s best script. It’s a very good movie about programming a Web site. That’s accomplishment enough.

Grade = B+

Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

2010-10-01T09:14:00.002-05:00

Okay gang. We're almost at that point where we part until I'm finished with my Social Network review (spoiler alert: I press the like button). But before we separate, we must consider the dollars and cents about to be parted with by movie goers. The movie we once mocked in concept form ("A movie about Facebook...yeah, like that'll be good") is now set to hit the tops of the box office, riding the wave of critical buzz and the curly hair of Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake...seriously, them boys got CURLZ...with a Z yo. Less popular will be the American remake of Let the Right One In, which people who loved the original loathe for existing and people who never heard of the original have no real interest in seeing. So, much like people who spend too much time at the gym, this weekend is pretty simple.

Here's how I see it, haiku style:

1.) The Social Network - $25 million

Much as with Facebook:
I like it, but how is it
that this makes money?

2.) Let Me In - $10 million

Why remake a gem?
Because folks hate subtitles.
"Readin' is like work!"

3.) Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - $10 million

Money never sleeps
that's why my cash is tired.
I'll be here all week.

4.) The Town - $9.5 million

Ben's flick keeps rolling,
he's now the hot director...
and has a hot wife.

5.) Legend of the Guardians - $9 million

Who went to see this?
Get it? Because owls say "who!"
Yep, still here all week.

WILDCARD - Easy A - $8 million

Good for Emma Stone!
She may soon meet with Spidey!
I wish I was there.

Okay, that's it! I'll be back later with my review!

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ET to class up E.T. series

2010-10-01T08:52:00.005-05:00

Let's face it, Men in Black III is a cash grab as sure as if it involved a ski mask and pistol. I don't care, provided they actually capitalize on the limitless idea by making with the funny...oh, and as long as there's no song. Seriously, Big Willie, if you bust out a return to rhyme for MIBIII, I'm going to finally give Jazzy Jeff your address...and we'll see how that turns out for you. The third installment of the unnecessary-but-potentially-cool series is getting a touch of class in the form of Emma Thompson, who is just incredibly talented as an actress and capable of looking really beautiful. What? SHE IS I SWEAR!

Okay, so the last time you saw her, she looked like this:
And the time before, she looked like this:
But believe it or not, she actually looks like this:
Yeah, I know, right? The idea is that she's likely out of the age range for Josh Brolin and Will Smith's love interest, because I believe the rule for male actors in movies is that you divide their age in half and round up to legal and that's the target age of the actress paired opposite them. Thompson is also kind of not the right age for Tommy Lee Jones, who is 97 years young. So my thought is that she's going to be the new boss. Rip Torn isn't quite up to the task (and may or may not be in prison or rehab), so it's likely that the MIB will answer to a WIB...although I'd prefer it if the ladies wore white, just to really balance things out. Either way, the woman is funny, talented, beautiful, and classy as all hell. What I'm saying is, this franchise just married up.

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Loop, there she is

2010-10-01T08:20:00.002-05:00

Happy Friday, you delicate blog flowers. Programming note: We're going to do that traditional Friday four-step: 2 regular posts, some box office haikus, and a late review (in this case, we're gonna poke The Social Network). I tell you this because it's always good to plan. It's also good to look at Emily Blunt.

And today, we have a good reason to do so, as the lovely Brit (who married Jim from "The Office"...so keep hope alive oversized, jug-eared grinners!) is going to star in Looper, which is not a pulse-pounding action adventure set in the world of knitting (much to the chagrin of the kind Miss Robyn). No, it's a sci-fi flick from Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed the brilliant Brick and the sort-of-brilliant (but deliciously Rachel Weisz-filled) Brother's Bloom. The film will reunite Johnson with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and unite him with Bruce Willis (perhaps in the bonds of holy matrimony). The film follows killers who dispose of people sent from the future in an attempt to hide the evidence of their murder. So we've got time travel, murder, and Emily Blunt. That's a recipe for awesome. Wait, sorry, that's a recipe for Apple Brown Betty. My bad. No, wait, I was right the first time.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

2010-09-30T08:38:00.008-05:00

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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Things You Should Buy Me (Volume 51)

2010-09-29T08:58:00.001-05:00

Welcome one and all to the weekly extravaganza you anticipate for 6 days in a row! Yes, it's once more the time for me to show you the coolest products out there that I want to own without paying to own them. I have managed yet another week without anyone sending me the free swag I demand (by contacting me at film@thereader.com for my address), so the streak is alive. Yay. Yay for not getting free stuff. Obviously, I don't ACTUALLY expect you to send me free stuff. I just hope you feel insecure enough to try to buy my affection, which will TOTALLY work.

Let's see how you can buy my love today?

1.) I'm a fan of fake stabbings - As a proud owner of ninja throwing star "coat hooks," which are actually being used to hold my headset and headphones near my desk, I am instantly drawn to these magnets.

ThinkGeek has finally found a way to say "yes, I put things on my fridge that I find interesting or cute...SAY SOMETHING AND I'LL CUT YOU." Seriously though, it looks like a Hobbit ninja just riddled your cooling device with tiny throwing knives. How is that not a big bucket of awesome?

2.) FINALLY, I can cuddle Legolas...I mean... - Admit it. You've always wanted to grab Gandalf, love on Legolas, feel-up Frodo! Well, now's your chance.
These plush figures are available from Thinkgeek, and let you do this:

Look how happy he is. Ever since he saw Orlando Bloom unload those arrows into those orc chests, all he's wanted to do is cuddle him. Now he can! This is a great way to get really young children to appreciate a book and movie series riddled with the kind of violence that will make them better people.

3.) There's nothing minimal about my superhero love - How great is this shirt?

Threadless has tapped into the minimalist movement to really capture the best parts of how I believe people thought up superheroes in the first place. "Um, what about a roach man? No? Um biscuit man? No? Um, sock man?" This lasted until they stumbled on items that they could really pass off. Now we have this wicked cool shirt. Seriously. Gimmee.

That's all I want for this week. It's another 6 days until I share more, so you have plenty of shopping time.

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George Lucas gets further in our faces

2010-09-29T08:49:00.002-05:00

They're coming. Again. It was announced that starting in 2012, George Lucas is re-releasing a Star Wars movie into theaters one at a time (once a year)...and they're going to be in 3D. Oh, and they're starting with The Phantom Menace. So, starting in 2015, they're re-releasing Star Wars. Look, it is what it is, right? We knew this was coming, we knew that Lucas would find a way to get more money out of us, and we knew 3D would be involved, because instead of finding a new story to tell with new technology, it's much lazier and easier to retrofit something that's ALREADY DONE and just cash in on it. It is a business move, as everything Lucas has done for the last 3 decades has been, and has nothing to do with fans, creativity, or art. And we're going to see them. We are. Maybe not in the droves and waves that we have in the past, but we are going to go watch them. Because watching this series on the big screen makes us feel good. It's why there are one-man shows about Star Wars, puppet reenactments, comics, cartoons, and so on. As much as it disgusts me about myself, I know that I'll go see these on the big screen because I am still drawn like a moth to the flame that will burn me. Who cares? At some point we have to be beyond the shock, right? We have to have realized what the game is and accept it anyway, right? Lucas is lazy, marginalizes his own previous work by continuing to diddle it, and bilks the fans who made him everything he is while insulting us. We can either become angry and totally reject him and the series, or accept it and move on. I'm in the latter group. So, yep, this is annoying and stupid...and expected.

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If you buy an Aronofsky, they throw in a Portman?

2010-09-29T08:38:00.000-05:00

The buzz about Aronofsky taking over Superman has escalated from threat level mauve to threat level auburn. I'm not sure if that tells the full story, so let me explain. Apparently, the studio or Chris Nolan had also been discussing the possibility of directing with Ben Affleck, a choice I would have loved, and then Affleck pulled out (come on, you're better than that). Then the discussions moved to Aronofsky, primarily because of his pull with a certain ladyfriend of mine.

The thought is Natalie Portman will play Superman. Sorry, Natalie Portman will play Lois Lane. As we all know, you want only the most talented, most exceptional actresses to be the ones kidnapped and shouting for their boyfriends to save them. Is it worth handing the red banana hammock and back drapery to someone like Aronofsky, who is fully capable from a talent perspective but may give us some really weird or (worse yet) really boring version of the character just to snag your lead actress, when we all know she will be sorely underwritten? Is Nat-po that much of a draw to anyone but me? Remember, Aronofsky may be my favorite director, I'm not bagging on him here. I like both steak and ice cream, but I don't put them on top of one another. Anyway, this is an interesting wrinkle to this whole development, but the refrain remains the same: More as we have it.

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Oh DC, I thought we talked about this

2010-09-28T09:41:00.003-05:00

Today we had a battle of opposing comments from creative contributors of comic cinema.
Joss Whedon, while considering how to direct (and write) The Avengers, noted that with his talented cast and character-based style, he wanted to "put them all in a room and have them do Glengarry Glen Ross." Ha! How clever! That incredibly insightful guy who clearly "gets" what's going on just reassured me and millions of others that he sees this as an actor's movie, as a dialogue-based encounter, as something he is perfectly suited for.

Then you have Greg Berlanti. He wrote the first draft of The Green Lantern (and was set to direct it). He also turned in a draft for The Flash. He also directed Life as we Know it, the new movie with Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. Oh, and he created "No Ordinary Family." Ruh roh. Then he said that The Flash was influenced by him thinking about Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. And that it was more The Dark Knight than anything. This is The Flash he's talking about. The fast guy. Who runs and stuff. So we have a respected comic talent for Marvel putting his film in context of a famous play by a brilliant writer and a guy from DC on a press junket for a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy talking about how The Flash is like Se7en. DC was TOTALLY right when they said they don't feel pressure to do things like Marvel. Things like "make good decisions."

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Twilight films to finally have Grace

2010-09-28T09:34:00.002-05:00

It was nice to see Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) so quickly and eloquently describe the point of Twilight last week on "Community." He explained that the message is "men are monsters who crave young flesh." Yes that seems to be the point. Now, if he'd have thrown in a few notes about how stalking is really just a guy's way to show he loves you and some stuff about falling in love with a baby, you'd have gotten it all in there.

Oh Twilight, it's been too long since I mocked you. Thankfully, I have a reason to pay attention to you today, and that reason is this:

Maggie Grace, shown above in what she wears to church with her mom, is going to star as Spoodlenork, the grand wizardess of the shamalamadingdongs who loves or doesn't love someone and is really pale. The end. Seriously, that's what I read when I read descriptions like "A member of the Denali coven, considered cousins to the Cullen clan as the only other “vegetarian” vampire group. When Irina blames the Cullens for the death of her lover, her actions set in motion a terrifying chain of events.” It's like Charlie Brown's teacher starts translating it to me. I predict Grace will slightly overact but still look amazing, as that's what's written on her business card.

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Requiem for a Superman?

2010-09-28T08:50:00.002-05:00

First off, sorry about the lack of chatter regarding "The Event" today. As far as I can tell, "The Event" is that the Bears are 3-0. So my theories are still aliens or time travel, as there is no natural way that should have happened. So, if you're blinded by some kind of light today wherever you are, it's just my ear-to-ear grin at having a Bears team that is atop the NFC North, defeated the GD GB Packers, and are the only undefeated NFC team. Great Googily Moogily!

Speaking of eye-popping things, I may have been more than a little precognitive when I posted this image.Because apparently, in addition to the short list that was...listed...previously, we now have one more name to add to the Superman sweepstakes: Darren Aronofsky. Um...weird. I thought his name being tossed into the Batman hat pre-Nolan's anointing was offbeat but understandable. He is pulled by dark materials, as is evident in, you know, EVERY FILM HE'S EVER DONE. Can a director that talented stretch himself? Sure. Sure he can. But then do we lose the very aesthetic that made him great in the first place? I don't know. I still say if you want the best, most entertaining version of Superman, you want Snyder on that film. I really mean that. Anybody else may make a truly captivating, interesting film that presents a unique and original take on the character...and it will underperform and we'll be having this relaunch discussion AGAIN. And I don't like this discussion. I'd rather talk about the 3-0 Chicago Bears more.

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