Ryan's Junk Drawer

Happy Thursday you denizens of my blogulous underworld, you participants in my despicable bloggery, you lovers of my junk! I know that you wake up Friday through Wednesday sobbing your eyes out, crying "Why! Why, God, why does he only show off his junk on Thursday?! And, given those parameters, WHY CAN'T TODAY BE THURSDAY?!?!" This is the one day your life has purpose, so I should move forward quickly, right?

As you know, by "my junk," I do not mean something untoward. I quite obviously am referring to tiny tidbits of movie news that do not quite warrant a full blog post. I call it my junk because to do so amuses me. Also amusing to me, the creepy-ass picture above from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. Each week I pick an item from above and make a funny story about it, for no reason at all. This week's item is the braid in the upper left corner. Not everybody liked the Star Wars prequels, but Jimmy did. Oh, did he ever. After covering his body head-to-toe in tattoos based on all of the characters (Yoda on one nipple, Jar-Jar on the other), he set about decorating his room with merchandise. Once every nook, cranny, and opening was crammed with a poster, action figure, or napkin used during the catering of Attack of the Clones was hung, Jimmy realized he needed a bigger place. So, fulfilling his parents wishes, therapy sessions, and calls to clergy, Jimmy moved out. Realizing he would die alone, he filled every room in his house with memorabilia, dropping $4,000 to acquire an undergarment that may or may not have touched Natalie Portman's nether regions. Then, one day, Jimmy realized he needed more. He crept into Hayden Christensen's mobile home, cut off a lock of his hair, and braided it. He wore it for two weeks yelling "I'm the Padawan!" before he realized he didn't want to damage it. So, in the drawer of safety it went.

Okay, that's it with the funny talk, here's the movie tidbits that are worthy of being slightly more than tids.

1.) I want my zombie scalps - If you've read Max Brooks' "World War Z," you know that something must be done to ensure it hits the big screen, as it may be the first zombie movie to ever be considered for an Oscar. If you haven't read it, I hope the undead feast on your spleen, just to teach you a lesson. And they probably will, if you haven't also read "The Zombie Survival Guide," you basement-hiding nitwit. Sorry, that was harsh, daddy loves you. Anyway, MTV has just reported that Brad Pitt, who had his Plan B production company gobble up the rights to the project like so much spilled brains, is finally moving ahead and will star in World War Z, which is slated for a summer 2012 release. Can I get a "mmmmmmm brains" up in here?!?! That's awesome news, and I was in no way kidding about the Oscar part. Not only is there the ever-present social allegory that most zombie flicks sport, there's also the format and context, which is probably more comparable to a documentary or District 9 (which was a best picture nominee, I don't care if it was a bullshit 10-films-nominated year). Done right, this can be mind-blowing. Done wrong, we still get zombies and Pitt yelling at them.

2.) I (don't) hate to say I told you so - I was interviewed by a perfectly charming student yesterday at UNO. He had a slew of questions for me about journalism (uh, I have a column where I make junk jokes, so I'm not exactly Walter Cronkhite), film criticism (don't trust Armond White), and the state of movies in general (if movies had a state, it would be Delaware...discuss). He also asked about my thoughts on 3D. Relax, I didn't go nutso, I gave him my quick take: It will be around as long as it makes money, and it only exists for that purpose. It was a studio conceit more than an artistic move so once the novelty wears off, it will disappear. Turns out, as you suspected, I'm a friggin' genius, as the Wrap has published a long article on 3D’s future in Hollywood and it has this chart in it.


Now, to be clear, this doesn't include every 3D release (like Clash of the Titans or Final Destination 3D or whatever the crap that crap was called). It also doesn't really give context for things like which films really pushed the 3D aspect, what the theater counts were, and so on. Still, that's a real stat folks. All of those movies were moneymakers (including Airbender, believe it or not), and Despicable Me looks to actually be declining that number even further, as it may end up in the 30s for percentage. Is this iron-clad proof it's dead? Hell no. There are no less than 30 major projects coming in 3D in the next year. Some of those will hit big, but if people are looking closely and realize that it is no longer valuable to them, they'll stop. It will take a move by studios and not theaters though, as theaters laid out the money for the 3D projectors and can charge more per ticket. Studios, realizing a dwindling return and a higher cost to make things 3D, may just leave it. My final thought (Jerry Springer style): I give the fad 2 years.

3.) Hot girl who hasn't acted replaced hot girl who can't act - Megan Fox, who I predict will be doing naughty-girl things before the 3D fad is over, was shown the door by Michael Bay in regards to Transformers 3. The rumors for her release range from (1) she called him a douchebag publicly, you know, because he is; (2) she showed up for early table reads so skinny that everyone could see the outline of the single grape she ate for lunch; (3) America had tired of Fox entirely, as evidenced by every movie she's ever done besides Transformers; and (4) if he cut Fox, Bay got to go through the "hiring process" with another hot girl. I think (1) is likely, (2) is true even if it wasn't the cause, (3) is my favorite, and (4) is the answer. Why? Because Bay chose a Victoria Secret model who I'm not even sure has a voice box. Well, we now know a little more about who Rosie Huntington-Whitely will play in the upcoming "please God let them be telling the truth that this will end the trilogy and stop more from coming" Transformers 3. She'll play a character who, in the animated series, marries Sam Witwicky. Here she is trying to remember that the bra goes on the inside of the shirt.

Hey, she's trying folks, you should have seen her in the first shot wearing panties as shoulder pads. Whether or not this will end with the two getting hitched is unclear, but what is known is that if Shia LeBeouf falls down a lot in this one too, he can always aim to land on her ridiculous inflatable lips.

4.) News to Dredd - For some, there is only one Judge Dredd, and that's Sylvester Stallone. Of course, when I say some, I mean the only person who thinks that is Sylvester Stallone. Thankfully, the upcoming reboot (Do we have to call it that if the last movie starred Rob Schneider? Can we just call it a do-over?) will be written by Alex Garland, who wrote Sunshine (one of my favorite underrated sci-fi movies), and Bleeding Cool says that Karl Urban may get the lead. I like Urban. I liked him in his brief time in Lord of the Rings, and loved him as Bones in Star Trek. Look, if I'm being honest, I'm more pleased that this is not going to Sam Worthington than anything else. I just figured when they need an actor who looks mad a lot, they call that Australian grimacer. Am I excited for this? Not really, but I can be swayed by some bad-ass production photos and a script review. Also, if you want to throw a McAdams in there, I'm good with that.

5.) Trailers, parked - Okay, today's trailers are a mixed bag, ranging from super indie tiny to weird comic booky.

First up is Buried, which marks the first of two times my friend is going to drool over this post. Why? Because this is the movie about Ryan Reynolds getting buried alive, so he's on screen like the entire time. Now, for me, this movie is the sixth concentric circle of hell, as my phobia about being trapped without being able to move is hellacious and probably owes itself to the time that Fat Jerry smothered me in the fourth grade. Anyway, here's the trailer.

The Debt reminds me in some ways of Munich, but maybe that's just the Jewish people and guns involved. It's also got Helen Mirren, who is seemingly everywhere these days. Damn you, Mirren, let some other silver foxes work!

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is a Woody Allen movie, so I'm either going to love it or forget it existed almost instantly. This is the second time in the post my friend will freak out, as it features a heaping helping of Freida Pinto. Enjoy!

Finally, we have The Goon, the long-gestating David Fincher-produced comic adaptation. It's not really a trailer...hell, I don't know what it is. I like it though, that much I know.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Okay, folks, that's it for my junk. I hope you enjoyed it and speak of it well to others!

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Look upon Tyrese and weep

Folks, we can now resume our daily lives: We now have photographic evidence that Tyrese is, for sure, in Transformers 3: Michael Bay Hates All of Us.
5 things we can tell from this first leaked image from Transformers 3: Poop Strikes Back:

1.) We can finally get some answers to the complex character Tyrese has portrayed in two previous films. Like, how does he feel about skull caps? Is he willing to duck lower than Shia LaBeouf? Does he like military-esque fanny packs? How about elbow tattoos? These questions and more will be answered in Transformers 3: Look at What You've Done, America.

2.) Shia LaBeouf will win any stupid reaction contest you can hold.

3.) The characters in the third movie still think they can shoot giant alien robots with bullets and be effective.

4.) LaBeouf is holding firm to his "only leather jackets" wardrobe clause in his contract.

5.) God still isn't swayed by the evil of Bay enough to have the earth swallow the production of Transformers 3: Nazibots, Teaparticons, and Bigotmachines.

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Fine, let's talk about the Megan Fox thing again

I don't like talking about Megan Fox. Why? Well it's like David Cross once said in relation to Evanescence: "I don't like things that suck." Yet because her vacuous insides are covered by fleshy parts that make men "feel like their bodies are smiling" (a line from the brilliant Mystery Team, which you should really go buy right now dammit), everyone is talking about little miss bought-some-jugs. As we already know, she is not starring in Transformers 3. This much is fact. Whether she quit or was fired is the subject of much internet speculation. Ah, the internet, so much potential, so much discussion about Megan Fox. Anyhoodle, the thing got interesting for me when I read a particularly angry story that suggested Fox had simply had it with the abuse heaped on her by Michael Bay. I know, hard to believe that a guy who practically used a camera to goose an actress in Transformers 2 may not know how to treat women. Combine this with a boatload of stories of pretty-young-things who were abused and damaged by the explosion-meister, and you've got me going all Keith Olbermann with my suggestion that Michael Bay is the Worst Person in the World. Now he's about to cast the following hot body as the new generic love interest in Transformers third attempt at ruining modern civilization.
That's Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. She's purty. She's also never acted before a day in her life. Bay cast her apparently based on the commercial he directed that featured her alongside a bunch of other bra-busting beauties. Now, replacing Megan Fox with a model who has never acted does seem relatively fair. What isn't fair is that Bay gets to be a giant robo-douche unchecked just because he can incoherently lens shitty action movies. He participated in creating racist robots in his last film, bullied a bunch of young women around, and is casting based on breast size and that's it. Michael Bay, I hope you get eye herpes.

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

I mostly keep track of time by how often I find myself writing this junk column. Again?! We've made it through another week AGAIN?! Why that's as shocking as it is spectacular! Before we get started, a quick note to whoever has been blowing up this blog lately (especially clicking the crap out of the ads). I love you to the utmost allowance of the law given that you technically are sending me money (I ain't going back to the pokey on no prostitution charge again).

As you know, I named this column my junk drawer in part because the metaphor worked and in part because it allowed me to make a juvenile reference to "showing people my junk." Yes, I do get paid (minimally) for such cleverness. In reality, this is the place where I show off all the movie news that's too small to warrant its own blog post. We begin by looking at the above image from Highlights Magazine (FOR CHILDREN), which is terrifying to me for some reason. We (and by we, I mean I) then select an item from that illustration and make up a story about it for funsies. Today's item is the fuzzy cord in the middle. Tito had spent his whole life terrified of spiders. He dedicated his life to inventing new and better ways to kill them, ranging from "Whack-a-Spider," a spider-shaped mallet, to "Spider-b-Gone," a spray that released a cloud that would follow the spider, raining acid down upon it. Tito thought of little else in his life. Sadly, the last thoughts he ever had were the following: "OHMYGOD IS THAT A GIANT SPIDER IN MY JUNK DRAWER WITH LEGS LIKE A MINI OCTOPUS" and "Is this technically an ironic death?"

Okay, that's enough nonsense. Let's get right to the good stuff! Here's the news that's mostly fit to print.

1.) Like I've always said, don't worry...Costner's on it - What I'm about to tell you is going to sound impossible or at the very least ridiculous. BP has called Kevin Costner to ask for his help cleaning up the oil spill in Louisiana because of an invention he paid for while making Waterworld. No, you haven't switched to the new Hallucinogenic Mint flavor of Crest Toothpaste nor did your spouse finally cause blunt force trauma to your cabeza while you slept. I'm not making this up, the New York Daily News says that Costner paid scientists millions of dollars to make a device that could purify ocean water. They succeeded in creating something that used centrifuge technology to render oil-laden water 97% pure (the other 3% contains Costner body hair). They have devices in various sizes, the largest can purify 200 gallons per minute. I'm serious, stop looking at me like this. I'm not that clever. I couldn't come up with something this ridiculous on my own. Look, here's a newscast talking about it.



See! So, on the one hand, thank God for Waterworld, right? On the other...I don't want Kevin Costner to be responsible for anything good. I don't want to even accidentally respect him. So, let's pause a minute and talk about his press conference attire. Kevin, when you're part of a team that CALLS the press conference, feel free to wear something slightly more upscale than your beer-stained drinkin' polo. This wasn't ambush journalism...you called this conference. Also, it appears to be quite cloudy, so feel free to take your sunglasses of when you address the people who, for once, actually care about what you're saying. For the next few minutes, you are the donor who helped create valuable technology, not the guy who did Swing Vote. I know you're convinced that your unprotected stare may cause ladies to instantly drop their panties, but those days disappeared with your hairline. If your machine, which appears in the video above to make wine not clear oil, actually works, I'll say something nice about you. Promise.

2.) How bad do you have to be to NOT star in Transformers 3 - So far, the only people who appeared in the last Transformers who aren't appearing in this next installment are two racist robots and Megan Fox (and people have supposedly seen the racist robots on set). Claiming it was "her choice" to exit the series, Fox will be replaced, although Michael Bay promises that the quest to find an incredibly hot actress with little talent will be a challenge he may spend years on. Fox, who has committed what I believe to be career seppuku, is set to debut her terrible southern accent in the sure-to-be-a-bomb Jonah Hex before moving on to finding a cure for her toe thumbs.
Most kidding aside, I don't think Fox realizes that she's a flash in the pan. There are zillions of pretty boys and girls in the world. Unless she is able to find something that fully plays to her strengths (presumably a 3D silent film), she's going to disappear faster than Costner's hairline.

3.) Tim Burton to cast Johnny Depp as a psychic, teenage Japanese girl? - Okay, that's a little presumptuous on my part. It's entirely possible that Burton could cast his wife, Helena Bonham "OHMYGODDOSOMETHINGWITHYOURHAIR" Carter as the teenage Japanese girl with psychic powers in Mai, The Psychic Girl. The director is adapting the 1980s era manga comic about a....okay, you get the idea. He was supposed to do this awhile back, but it would likely have not fit his "must repeat myself exactly for the next decade" life plan. Now, he's revisiting the project and it is said to be next on his list. Latino Review has some interesting thoughts on the matter, and if I may crawl out of my angry shell for a moment, so do I. This has the potential, and that is just potential, to urge Burton to at least try something different. I see no fairy tale aspects (it's more sci-fi), I see no immediate place to put the two actors I mentioned above (other than maybe some kind of father and mother cameo), and I see no way in which the gothic style he's repeated ad naseum would instantly transfer here. Let's call me cautiously optimistic that even Burton has gotten sick of Burton.

4.) I'm less horrified that this is going to be a movie and more horrified that it's a book - Someone spent presumably hours of their life writing "Blood Oath," a novel with the tagline "The ultimate secret. The ultimate agent. The President's vampire." Someone else then presumably read that novel (or at least the back jacket of it) and said, "let's make that a movie." Now, Heatvision is reporting that we are going to see a movie about a vampire spy. Let that wash over you for a minute. A vampire spy. When I claimed that Twilight was going to ruin the world, I apparently was understating things. We now live in a reality with vampire secret agent movies where Spider-man will be rebooted to capture more of the Twilight-esque teenage romance. I'm not nearly drunk enough to be recounting these events. Also, to the guy who wrote "Blood Oath": Stop it. Just...stop it. If you have the self-control and patience to actually finish a novel, you have the potential to correct your life before it's too late. If you write a sequel where there's a werewolf working for the KGB, I will stab you with a spork. Also, you can't write that now because I came up with the idea first. Someone get my agent on the phone.

5.) Trailers, parked - I'm not going to make you wait another minute for my favorite discovery of the day. The film is called Iron Sky. You're going to want to see it. Why? Well it's a Finnish-German production filmed mostly in English. It's supposedly got humor to it, although I didn't see much in the trailer. Oh, and it's based on the premise that in 1945, Nazis fled to the dark side of the moon and have now returned to take over earth. Here you go!



There really aren't that many other interesting trailers out at the moment, so I'll just leave you this time to rewatch that one again. Seriously. Nazis in space.

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If I had to pick one...

Thank God tomorrow is Thursday. Oh, God...tomorrow is still Thursday, right? This week has been so flinging-farging awful that I'm half sure they decided to put a second Monday in there. Provided that they haven't rearranged space and time just to mess with me, I'll be able to cover tons of news nuggets in tomorrow's Junk Drawer. This is a berry berry good thing because so many tiny items dropped yesterday that you'd have thought a fumble-fingered Smurf was emptying his pockets (get it...tiny items dropped). That means today I'm only going to pick the one I can't wait to tell you about (and, mind you, this is a day on which Evangeline Lilly agreed to appear onscreen again, so the fact I chose this one should tell you a lot about how important I find it). Here goes: Michael Bay has mentioned that the next Transformers movie...will not feature Mudflap and Skids.

And there was a great rejoicing. In my humble opinion, as far as blows to racial inequality goes, this isn't quite "I have a dream" but it isn't all that far behind. Had they been given another chance, these shucking-and-jiving, illiterate, "ghetto-talking" monstrosities may have seized any racial progress we've made in the last few hundred years and robo-raped it. You think I'm exaggerating, but KIDS like these Transformers movies. More specifically, kids of the right age. What I mean is, the messages that pop culture presents regarding homosexuality and race may have greater impact on whether or not young adults grow to be understanding in the long run. Don't laugh. If kids grow up thinking these things are okay to joke about or look down upon, because that's how it's always been presented in the pop culture they view, the next generation is boned. And that's a clinical term.

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Start your suicide-planning parties now!

Well, humanity had a good run, didn't we? I mean, sure there was a few acts of genocide, an occasional hate crime, and the entirety of AM radio to apologize for, but we also produced some great moments, like the opening frames of Lost in Translation. So sad it had to end like this. You see, Michael Bay has said he's meeting later this week with Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Ehren Kruger to discuss "ideas" for Transformers 3 (I should hurry up and copyright a robot with a turban called "Sandy Pete" who only yells "CYBER-JIHAD"). They're discussing whether the end-date for humanity...I MEAN the release date for T3: Robo-nut-kick will hit in 2011 or 2012 (FYI: The Mayans predict 2012). Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are "busy," which is good because they can occasionally make me happy (like with "Alias" and Star Trek) and can occasionally make me want to punch them in their stupid, rich faces. Before Bay sodomizes our eye sockets with T3, he's likely to do Pain and Gain, a film about a couple of steroid-abusing bodybuilders who fall in with organized crime. However, there's also a chance that Bad Boys 3 may sneak in before T3. So, the order may be Pain & Gain, T3, Bad Boys 3 or Bad Boys 3, T3, Pain & Gain. Actually, the order is really (fill in the blank), T3, end-of-humanity. There is a silver lining though, given the fighting in the press, there's a chance Megan Fox won't be asked back!



Oh, stop being such a drama queen, Megan. It's not that bad.



Seriously, you have that really crappy looking Diablo Cody horror movie coming out, isn't that something?



Okay, fine. But you know what, I like you best when you're covering your mouth as tight as possible. Also, I totally see your toe thumbs.

One last note, if the production looks like this:



I'm totally there.