Ryan's Junk Drawer

You know, when you don't get a day off for something like 18 days, they all just kind of blend into one big long day. What I'm trying to say is, I no longer know if this is a NEW Thursday or the same Thursday I just finished. Who's to say? What matters is not the uniqueness of this day, what matters is that it is the day upon which I give the world my junk. Obviously, by junk I mean tiny nuggets of movie news that don't warrant a full blog post, but I will admit that the word was carefully chosen so as to evoke the most titillating responses. I was going to go with Ryan's Juicy Nuggets or Ryan's Tender Tidbits, but those didn't sound nearly as suggestive as me being able to make junk jokes. As is our special tradition, we also begin by looking at an item contained within the creepy-ass junk drawer illustration above (from Highlights Magazine...FOR CHILDREN) and making up a totally whacked-out back story about it. Today's item is the green and red object in the lower right corner. Zacharias was never the most observant guy, but even he would feel foolish later when he realized that alien life had been living in his junk drawer for the past 17 years. He had wondered aloud quite often why the drawer seemed to squeal "Gleepglorp" every time he pulled it open to hunt for a battery but had never taken the time to notice the sole remaining survivor of the planet Spleckton's destruction cowering in the corner. Oh well, intergalactic life isn't as important as finding the Duracel that can power up the remote.

Now, on to this week's juicy nuggets...er, tender tidbits...er, EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY JUNK.

1.) I will diligently cover EVERY Rachel McAdams story...EVERY ONE EVER: Although he experienced a little surge recently (that sounds dirtier than I meant it to), I don't really have a deep abiding love for the recent Woody Allen. Oh, he got Scarlett Johansson to roll around semi-nude, which I appreciate (and, fine, the movie was pretty damn good too), but for the most part he just keeps making movies like a mediocre movie machine. Also, it is increasingly apparent that there's some kind of celebrity game that you can't win without appearing in an Allen film (my theory: Allen is the center square in celebrity career bingo). Case in point, THR is reporting that Rachel McAdams is joining the cast of Woody Allen's latest, which already features Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard. You know, because you've been waiting to see Wilson and Cotillard share the screen since...never. So on the one hand, this news gives me the excuse to do this:
On the other hand, we're talking about Owen Wilson opposite two incredibly talented, lovely ladies. How does this keep happening? Damn you, Wilson. Damn you to hell. The Allen film is untitled at this point so it's being called "Untitled Woody Allen Project" and not "Untitled Ryan Syrek Project" like I asked. It is described as a romantic drama, as opposed to the Woody Allen written and directed torture horror movie or sci-fi action project you expected. Plan on a lot of talking and neuroses. Woody Allen: Making movies that college students think rule for 40 years.

2.) Wolverine 2 is happening. Gird your loins: There's no easy way to say this, but they've finished the X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 script and they're going to start filming in January. Hopefully, they realize that they don't need the "X-Men Origins" part. Actually, what the hell am I saying, if I'm hoping, I'm hoping that they realize they don't need to make this movie at all. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was AWESOME in X-Men 2. As for the other movies, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was AWESOME in X-Men 2. I'm over it. We're all over it. I don't advocate starting over with some kind of reboot, but Wolvie works better with others in my opinion and this current film, which will rape the memory of the Frank Miller-penned "Wolverine as a ninja" storyline, is poised to either shoe-horn in mutants who don't belong (a la the brutal, brutal use of Gambit and Deadpool in the last Wolvie movie) or leave just Wolverine and a bunch of ninjas. Now, that last one sounds cool, but this is a FOX project, which means the writers are likely to get notes like "can these ninjas be less ninja-y? Can they not wear masks or use swords? What if the ninjas were actually all vampires? Sexy teen vampires?!" Nobody is excited for Wolverine 2. You would think that would stop a studio from spending $150 million dollars, but it won't.

3.) Hurt Locker producer put in the...well, that's just too easy: The Oscars are this weekend, and I'm excited as shit. I downloaded not one but TWO apps on my iTouch to make predictions and do other totally nerdy things. I love it unabashedly because I realize that (A) this is not about honoring the actual best film of the year, something that's impossible to do because me and my best friend can't agree on what that movie is so why we blame the Oscars for not getting it right is beyond me and (B) I like guessing who will win and watching people have emotional moments on stage. It's kind of a thing for me. Anyway, one person who will not be watching in person is Nicholas Chartier, because his ass got tossed out of the ceremony like the drunk girl dancin' on tables with her booby out gets tossed out of an Applebees. See, Chartier sent emails begging for votes, which is okay, but specified he wanted people to vote for The Hurt Locker and not "a $500 million" movie, which was obviously targeting Avatar. Now, as Nikki "Douchie Douchie" Finke points out, a TON of people do this. Chartier just got caught. He was turned in, likely by one of the people FROM his film, because apparently he caused some tension on the set. Whatever. I think this sucks. You let people spend millions taking out ads that say VOTE FOR ME but a guy sends an email and he gets kicked out? Maybe if he offered a blowie to people who voted for him, but not for asking for votes. Stupid. Combine this with the sudden and surprising bad press for the film (military people saying it "isn't realistic" and someone threatening to sue because the film was based on them) that just HAPPENED to come out right when votes were due, and you get me staring at Harvey Weinstein. I know popular theory is that James Cameron and his Avatar posse are the likely conspirators trying to bring down the front runners in order to win, but that's not true. I honestly believe that an egomaniac like Cameron both thinks (A) he's above the award and (B) that he's probably going to win already. Hell, he was the one saying "go ahead and give the director trophy to Katherine" like HE gets to decide it. No, the real person behind this is OBVIOUSLY Weinstein, who has waged campaigns like this before. His thought is that if The Hurt Locker is taken down a peg and people think Avatar is behind it that Inglourious Basterds may squeeze through. This sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. See, the Oscars are crazy fun, right?

4.) Tim Burton branches out!: Ha! Wouldn't that be hilarious?! Wouldn't it be great if he actually DID branch out? Like, he adapted a courtroom drama or a sci-fi movie or something? No, he's not going to do anything like that. He and Timur Bekmambetov are going to team up to adapt Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is so boringly appropriate for Burton that I can't stand it. He's going to cast Johnny Depp as Lincoln, you just know it, and despite the book sounding like a bit of wacky fun (it is by the peeps behind "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and follows the idea that Lincoln was...well, seriously, it's right there in the title), the movie is going to be the same old boring retread we've seen again and again and again from Burton. I would go on, but this video says everything I would say far funnier than I would say it.



5.) Trailers, parked: A few new ones this week, but nothing too exciting. First up is the next Disney flick, which combines classic and CGI animation to hit up a princess story I can't believe hasn't already been covered. Rapunzel is going to get her big-screen showcase, finally, and I can't help thinking this is going to pale in comparison to the lively, fun, and inspiring Princess and the Frog, which I fully intend on owning. This first clip is just that, a tiny clip, but it gives a little about the movie's feel and you get to hear some voice acting, which is fine. Enjoy!

Tangled


The second movie looks a little more inspired. Despite starring people that I didn't think were making movies anymore for various reasons, The Jonses looks like it may have a little sass in the tank. Clever concept, interesting trailer, and some low-budget appeal has me thinking that I may actually be somewhat excited to check this out. I'm just as surprised as you are.

The Jonses


Okay, that's it for my junk this week. Stare good and hard at it. We'll be back tomorrow for a rousing end of the week hoopla!

Tuesday tidbits

Don't be fooled, this is not my Junk Drawer. That comes on Thursday, dammit. This is just me taking too much time opining and theorizing about "Lost" to give the following things my full attention. I now give you assorted ridiculousness to catch me up today.

• DeNiro isn't going to let declining talent stop him from making a ton of suck movies. According to Nikki Finke, who a lot of people on the Internet seem to hate, just dropped the knowledge that DeNiro will star in (A) Selma, the new film from Precious director Lee Daniels, about the desegregation campaigns in the South...DeNiro will play George Wallace (not a bad idea, Bobby); (B) Another Night in Suck City, which (besides being appropriately titled for DeNiro's career) sounds promising, as it follows the book "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City," which contained the memoirs of Nick Flynn's time in a homeless shelter, and (C) A Midnight Run sequel. There it is! You just knew that there would be something terrible mixed in there, right? I should have put it in the middle so it was a turd sandwich. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad...until DeNiro makes them and they suck.
  
  
• The Hurt Locker won the Producers Guild Award, officially making the Oscars a 3 horse race (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds). The noms will be released Feb 2, which is "Lost" day. That day is going to flippin' RULE.

• This is concept art from Cars 2. As much as I trust Pixar, I could give a wet sparrow fart about this project. The first one left me colder and deader inside than a GOP senator discussing poor people. Anyway, here's a shot that shows them in Japan. Yay.

• Latino Review is suggesting that Sam Worthington may play Dracula in a movie called Dracula Year Zero, which would only be dumber if it were titled Dracula Origins: Year Zero. I haven't surrendered into fully hating Worthington yet, but I'm working on it. He sucked so firmly in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation, but he also is in Clash of the Titans. If I hate him in that, he can't possibly redeem himself. Also, he's 4 feet tall. I saw him on the Golden Globes and I thought he had been digitally shrunk. Also, he's not dracula. Gary Oldman is. See:

Okay, that's it for today gang. See you Tomorrow!

Jeremy Renner had best practice saying "Sugar Tits"

If it looks like I have a giant thing for Jeremy Renner today...well, don't tell my wife. There was little question after The Hurt Locker that the dude was going to blow up (really, really poor choice of descriptors there). Turns out, he's going to ride his "I'm a crazy" personality from that film into a potential turn as the tit-ular Mad Max (played with relish and zest...making him sound like a pickle...by actor-turned-sugar-tits-caller Mel Gibson). Renner told his hometown newspaper, "The Modesto Bee," that he is screen testing for the role with George Miller. That makes this one half-step above the normal BS rumors of such casting, which are normally based on some chubby dude's marijuana-enhanced "rumor mongering" (as in, "hey, Jessica Alba should totally play that one naked chick in her next movie). I have to say that my interest in a Mel Gibson-free Mad Max movie was at burnt sienna on the color-coded scale of anticipation. Renner's potential involvement cranks it up to fuscia without question. That said...I wonder what justification there is for a new Max movie? I mean, are there really aspects of that character or world we haven't seen yet, or are we just going back there to go back there. If Tina Turner doesn't close out your franchise, I'm not sure who can (anyone who said Cher, shame on you). I will say that Neil Marshall's Doomsday gave me a little big of vigor to see Max back, as his lunatic rip-off of the series fell somewhere between honest homage and Tarantino-ing the source material. Point is, at the end of the day, Jeremy Renner deserves to be crazy famous, so I'm really pulling for him hard on this one. If you just read the first line of this post and the line that proceeds this one, I'm going to need therapy.

Review: The Hurt Locker

I would have gotten this up sooner but, let's face it, I was feeling like cold turd up until this morning (now I just feel like tired turd). This film was really spectacular. The only thing that disappointed me was that some other jerk got to my original idea for a title, "Hurt's so Good," before I did. All joking aside, if Kathryn Bigelow doesn't get an Oscar nomination for this one, the Academy is as sexist as we theorize. By the way, I caught "The Colbert Report" with Bigelow on it last week...I'd like to point out the grand dame of action movies is 58 years old...yeah, you read that right, 58 (according to IMDB, which lists her birthday as 1951) and she looks like this:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Kathryn Bigelow
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Seriously, you have to respect that. And for those who are all "hey, he just mentioned how sexist the academy is and then talked about her appearance" you're right. I suck. But come on, if I look a fraction that good at 58, I want whatever we use instead of the internet at that point to be totally a buzz with my appearance. Period. No more pissing around, here's the review:

Bigelow’s Big High
The Hurt Locker mainlines tension

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is so relentlessly tense that it is as though she synthesized a chemical hybrid of a first date, a car accident and the Cuban Missile Crisis and attempted to inject it directly in her audience’s eyeballs. This politic-free trip alongside a bomb-disposal unit in Baghdad is a brutal buffet of action movie clichés, filtered through that pesky lens of reality. To put it plainly, The Hurt Locker is the best movie of 2009 thus far.

Jeremy Renner is Staff Sergeant William James, bomb-disposal expert and certifiably insane son-of-a-bitch. James, a veteran of conflict in Afghanistan, voluntarily joins a team composed of Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) after their last leader pursued other career opportunities in heaven. By-the-book Sanborn and perpetually frightened Eldridge soon find that bomb disposal is to James what heroin was to Sid Vicious. What follows is sequence after sequence of believably constructed unbelievable moments, punctuated not by the explosion of ordinance but by conflicts of character.

Thanks largely to Mark Boal’s deft and terse script, The Hurt Locker may one day stand as the definitive narrative Iraq War movie. Whereas most features are eager to make social statements, Boal and Bigelow instead effortlessly capture the terror of the innocuous—litter may explode, cell phones can be ignition switches and rubberneckers could be malicious evildoers. Their soldiers are apolitical, equally shown to be noble, heroic saviors and flawed, angry war addicts. The environment is equally as diverse, ranging from sparse, empty desert to choked, overflowing villages. By now, audiences are visually familiar with this space, but never before has it seemed so geographically tangible or has the danger felt so real.

What is even more remarkable is the trio of actors upon whom the film rests. Mackie and Geraghty beautifully color between the boring black-and-white of descriptors such as “straight-laced” and “sheepish.” Each has their moment to shine and supernova appropriately in the space provided.

That said, this is Renner’s announcement of presence, as he refuses to hobble on the crutches of the maverick war-hero stereotype. With wild eyes and undeniable charisma, Renner carves a portrait of the soldier as an excitement junkie, unable to make sense of things that can’t kill him. The film takes its name from the scraps of the more than 800 bombs James has disarmed that he keeps beneath his bed, as though he needs that danger close by just to sleep. In the finest scene, James stands immobilized in a grocery store stateside; a man who makes life or death decisions in the space of eye-blinks proves incapable of choosing between Lucky Charms and Cheerios. For him, war makes more sense than everyday life.

If this nuanced and thrilling film, and Bigelow in particular, go unheralded come award season, it will be an oversight of explosive proportions. If this challenging and tense film goes unseen by audiences, it will be a fate that is even more destructive.

Grade - A