If you buy the Farmiga, you get the Monaghan free

I have to tell you that the following combination of names of actors, actresses, director, and musician makes me so happy that I can only present the information to you in verse. Sorry.

I woke up this morning and got of bed,
hadn't even jump started, with coffee, my head,
when what do I see on the great interwebs?
An awesome director joined by two great celebs.
Duncan Jones, who you know as the director of Moon,
joined up with two ladies who make me hella swoon.
Vera Farmiga, who's known from The Departed,
has the looks and the chops to get my heart started.
She'll be joined by a lass who has both traits, as well.
I'm speaking, of course, of Monaghan (Michelle).
Watching just those two, I'd have quite a ball,
but they'll also be joined by Jake Gyllenhaal.
The movie's sci-fi and is called Source Code,
and the actors now gathered are a huge mother lode.
The film follows a soldier investigating terror crimes,
and with those ladies along, I'm sure he won't mind.
His character projects into another man's body,
but not like that sounds because that would be naughty.
He lives in this surrogate, this "avatar" if you will,
so he kind find out who's responsible for the kill.
Jones made such a great film his first time out,
that in this new project, I do have no doubt.
As if they needed more components to sell,
the score may be done by the great Clint Mansell!
This project excites me more than many before,
But until 2011, I'll have to endure,
so to bide my time as the clock slowly ticks,
I guess I'll console myself with these lovely pics.
And ladies, don't worry, I won't leave you blue,
if you look down below, you'll find young Jake, too.

Movie Review: Brothers

Justin reviewed my beloved Natalie Portman and a bunch of people who aren't Natalie Portman in Brothers this weekend. I'm not going to make this post all about me, like it usually is. I'm just going to briefly post a picture of Natalie Portman looking hot and then present the review.

Hotness


Reviewness

No Quiet on the Home Front
Brothers takes a stab at bringing the war home
Justin Senkbile

Encountering a movie like director Jim Sheridan's Brothers is a little confusing. Although it entirely depends on today's world, it somehow remains completely forgettable and uninsightful. It's the tale of a family broken by war, specifically the war in Afghanistan; if one were to leave that detail out, the movie would feel like a melodrama straight out of 50s Hollywood, slapping on emotions hastily but in vivid colors, uneven but exciting. That said, Afghanistan is involved, and thus, in light of today's world and today's war, Brothers seems frivolous and almost unfinished.

Marine Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), prized son, all-American dad and star soldier, is presumed to have died during a mission in Afghanistan. In their mourning, Sam's wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and black-sheep younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) develop an intense bond. The hours with Grace and her daughters (Taylor Geare and Bailee Madison) serve to free ex-con Tommy from his drunken, failure-laden past. Whereas for Grace, Tommy's presence serves as a slight antidote for the void left by the death of her husband.

Of course, that's when Sam shows up. He hadn't died after all but was imprisoned and tortured by vicious insurgents. After the wartime trauma, Sam returns home paranoid, disoriented and completely disconnected. His sudden fits of rage terrify his daughters, and Grace and Tommy start to get nervous as well when they realize Sam is convinced they're having an affair.

Sam is intensely disturbed and intensely played by Maguire, but it's frustrating to imagine the possibilities this character presented that were ignored in favor of clichés. Sam ends up being too one-dimensional to be taken seriously as any sort of victim. In fact, towards the end, Sam seems less and less like a traumatized man and more like a slasher movie villain. Tommy too has his fair share of corny moments, but Gyllenhaal seems totally at ease with Tommy's casual arrogance mixed with sweetness. Plus, he's in all of the film's sharpest scenes, the ones between Tommy and his ex-marine father Hank (playwright Sam Shepard).

Portman is surprisingly convincing as a mother but never gets room to do much more than sob, despite being the emotional centerpiece of the whole endeavor. Tied inextricably to the roles of mother and wife, Grace appropriately gets only one real scene to reveal herself—with two young kids and a supposedly dead husband, such moments must indeed be hard for her to come by. Unfortunately, the scene is yet another cliché, staged in front of a fireplace with Tommy and some pot.

Brothers is almost like the shell of a movie. It cries, yells and flails around but expresses nothing more than that. The idea seems to be to reiterate the phrase "war is hell" but it ultimately fails because it has nothing new to add and has little of interest to show us. In the end, Brothers is just too uneven and unfocused to leave us with much to ponder.

Grade: C-

Ryan's Junk Drawer

I like this image because it's kind of creepy. This guy apparently keeps a mouse tail, a tube of what appears to be "love rocket lightning," a screw, Canadian money, and a snakeskin in his junk drawer. Creepier still, I got this from "Highlights" magazine. There was a poem that went with it, but any poem that doesn't have a line ending with "izzle" is dead to me (unless it's written in haiku form, which we all know to be the superior poetic formula). I'm going to use this image to introduce my junk (the top 5 non-big stories of the week) until I'm legally forced to stop.

Here's the top 5 non-big stories (aka, MY JUNK!)

1.) Red just got red hot - Why do I follow phenomenal comic writer @warrenellis on twitter? I don't know, because he delivers tweets like this: "I have 149,935 followers. The 150,000th must kill someone of my choosing or I will murder their family." That's good stuff. Ellis writes a shitpile of comics, some very good, some just weird. "Red" is one I haven't...ahem...READ yet, but I fully intend to. Back in April, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis were joined in this tale of a CIA operative who is "too old for this shit," quits, and of course "knows too much" and thus gets people trying to kill him. Willis is the old CIA man, Freeman is presumably the bad guy, Helen Mirren has just joined (fingers crossed as the sexy-time love interest...I kid...unless you're into that), and the real exciting news just dropped this week. Apparently, John C. Reilly has joined up...and Willis got his real love interest (no, not Reilly...unless you're into that): this gal.

There were any number of photos of the lovely miss Mary Louise Parker that I could have chosen from in various states of undress, but I think this best proves why she must have made a deal with the devil to be so thoroughly beguiling at 45. LOOK AT THAT WOMAN. The beauty is she's somewhat age-appropriate for Willis's character BUT she still looks like a young hottie, so it satisfies Hollywood's hatred for aged women (other than Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, and Meryl Streep). Spy movie? Written by a comic nerd? With John C. Reilly? AND Mary Louise Parker? Red just shot to the top of my hominhominahomina-gots-to-see-this-NOW list.

2.) So, you're saying you think a Depp/Jolie movie will make money? - I have always admired Johnny Depp for not taking the easy way out. After his "21 Jump Street" introduction, he quickly went batshit insane, taking on roles in a John Waters movie and becoming Tim Burton's muse. Until Pirates, he was a leading man without a signature role or huge franchise hit. I didn't mind that Pirates became all PIRATES but now it looks like he's gotten a taste of the big-time bug and doesn't want to let go. According to Variety, Depp will be taking over for Sam "How the f**k did I get famous" Worthington in The Tourist, a movie about an average tourist who gets convinced to help the government track down an ex who is a major criminal...the criminal in this case being Jolie. It kind of sounds like every other Angelina Jolie movie, and Depp will probably want to play the tourist with a prosthetic leg and a lisp, but to be honest it sounds so commercial I'm shocked Depp is involved. I really hope we aren't losing one of the good ones to the path of least resistance. Also, to show I'm an equal time fella, here's a picture of Johnny Depp (albeit one in which he looks like the guy working at Starbucks who will give you your goddamn latte but resent you whilst doing it).

3.) Direct-to-TV sequel? - I kind of want to see 2012. I know it's going to be total crap story-wise, but you're talking to one half of a husband and wife team who have viewed The Day After Tomorrow about 3 times on FX after seeing it in the theater and not liking it. I haven't truly enjoyed the movie during any of my 4-5 times watching it...so that must say something about crapmaster Roland Emmerich's ability to make watchable bullshit (and about my wife's and my obsession about apocalyptic disasters). Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Emmerich is pimping "2013," a TV series that would be set after the events of 2012. I know, you were hoping for a series that explored what happened if you added 113 to 1900, but you'll have to wait. Sure, this kind of reveals that the Earth doesn't implode in 2012, but so long as it doesn't end with John Cusack facing down some of the worst computer-generated wolves of all time like Day After Tomorrow, I'm okay knowing that humanity survives. Again, I'm torn. I know that Emmerich makes crap, but I watched every episode of the poorly acted "Jericho" because I was so obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios. Damn you, Emmerich for putting me in this position. And now, to make myself feel better (and because I mentioned John Cusack above), here's a squirrel holding an invisible boombox above his head.

4.) Angelina Jolie tastes like familiar Salt - I like that we have a female action star, I just kind of wish it wasn't Angelina Jolie. First off, I don't buy that she's able to fling her 87-pound body around with any force. "Oh no, she hit me with all the inertia of a wet noodle." I mean, when Jennifer Garner was throwin' 'bows in "Alias," I bought it. Jolie, not so much. Plus, all of her stuff is starting to look the same. Watch the trailer for Salt, which was rewritten by Kurt Wimmer (the guy who rocked Equilibrium and then farted out Ultraviolet), and tell me it doesn't look exactly like Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie's a good actress...so maybe more of the acting should happen now.



5.) Dick Cheney's dream of a white Middle East is realized! - I don't know why no one is able to find a single Middle Eastern actor or actress to appear in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I also don't know why the first movie in a potential series can't just be titled Prince of Persia. Why we're at it, I don't know why Jake Gyllenhaal has a British accent for his role as a Persian prince...or why Gemma Arterton (who is totally hotsies, don't get me wrong) is the female lead when there are plenty of beautiful Middle Eastern ladies available...or why Ben Kingsley is the bad Persian guy...or why this trailer confuses me so much when I played the entire game it's based on...or why they decided to give Arterton, who nobody knows, the entire voiceover for the trailer...and why SHE speaks in a British accent. So, this appears to be a movie in which white people pretend to be Persian and a lot of computer effects happen. I want this to be fun but boy does it look like a hot white-Persian mess right now.