Ryan's Junk Drawer

Well helloooo again. I somehow have survived until Thursday this week, which I wasn't entirely sure was going to happen. Being that I was off my blogging game for about a week there, we've lost a decent chunk of my viewing audience. I can only hope that promises for them to see MY MASSIVE JUNK will bring them back. For those of you who have been here before (and really, who could resist returning once they've tasted the sweet succulent nectar of my junk juice), you obviously know that by "junk" I mean movie news that isn't big enough to warrant its own post. I call it that so that people think they're about to see something tastier than movie tidbits. We also start each edition of my junk drawer by examining the creepy-ass picture above from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN. We pick an object and make up an insane story about it just for funsies. Today's item is the blue cylinder with the lightning bolt on it. Although it pained him to do so, Kevin knew that he must keep the proton capacitor from being reinserted into Kerplong, his best friend and android companion. Although the two had shared wonderful adventures together, stopping the rebellion on the planet Steepnort and helping create a new galaxy, Kerplong's cameras never stopped recording. This meant that not only did Kerplong know what Kevin had done to that creature from the Nerblon galaxy, he had evidence. Kevin loved Kerplong, but he wasn't about to go back to Galactic Jail for nobody.

Okay, enough already, let's get on to the week's movie nuggets:

1.) I heart Aziz Ansari - Aziz Ansari's "Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening" is perhaps the funniest stand-up routine I've heard in a few years. Check this clip out, it has some salty language, but it is HILARIOUS and worth it. Fine, don't watch it at work if you're one of those annoying people who doesn't use headphones but rather giant desk speakers so that everyone else is forced to listen to whatever talk radio nonsense you endorse.

Seriously, hilarious right? Rumor has it that Ansari will star in Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer's 30 Minutes or Less, which features a script that had made the prominent "Black List." It's an R-rated comedy about a pizza delivery dude who gets a bomb strapped to his chest by two criminals who make him rob a bank for them (PS - this kind of actually happened). Ansari will play that dude's friend. Obviously, the lead role is just begging for a Seth Rogen type, but I hope they go weird on it. I hope they pick someone like a Ryan Gosling to play the lead, not the expected scruffy-faced chubby guy. I mean, where's the joy in seeing Jonah Hill do this sort of thing...again? Unless he explodes. Then I'm down. For the record, although I've heard some interesting things about Ansari's personality (people have said he's a douche), I've never met him and his CD is hilarious, so I'm going to see whatever he's in (everything except "Parks and Recreation" that is...still not funny to me). If he'd like to invite me to hang out with him to prove he's not a douche, I'm down with that too.

2.) Marvel comics: Making movies the tight-ass way - I know that movie stars make so much more money than is fathomable by us mere mortals, and I'm not trying to say that we should feel sorry for the Richie McRichRich folks out there...but Marvel is known for straight low-ballin' their cast. They made Samuel L Jackson sign a 9 picture deal. NINE movies. Granted, that's one year of work for Sam, but for a regular actor that's like a decade. Plus, they paid him $25. That number may not be right. Point is, when Marvel first announced the short list for the role of Peggy, Captain America's girlfriend, it included Keira Knightley and Emily Blunt, two well-known actresses. E! Online now says those two are out in favor of someone whose top grossing movie didn't clear $40 million, meaning they likely lowballed the shit out of this role. So instead of people we know, we get Alice Eve.
As you can see, she's a hideous she-beast with a hunchback and leprosy. Okay, fine, she's gorgeous. What bothers me isn't that they've swapped one hottie for another, it's that Marvel seems to be paycheck casting and not actor/actress casting. If you want to pick the better actor/actress and they happen to be cheaper because they aren't famous, I admire that. If you want to go unknown, I admire that too. If you want to run down the sliding scale of fame until you find someone willing to take your money, I have a problem.

3.) Swamp Thing that Old Spice can't cure - Slashfilm has a great write-up on the path of Swamp Thing that now winds its way through Vincenzo Natali, whose film Splice is going to light shit up this summer from what I hear. I know Natali (not personally or anything) from Cube, which remains to this day one of the most surprisingly good movies I've ever seen. The director, who has long toiled off the studio grid, has made some great comments about wanting to "sell his soul" to the studio now. He also seems to be more interested in the Alan Moore version of the character, rather than the original monster-style Bernie Wrightson stuff. Upon hearing this, Alan Moore spewed out some near-pornographic exclamations and summoned the demon that lives inside his murder-beard to haunt Natali in his sleep.

4.) The only lasting element of Hot Tub Time Machine - I wanted Hot Tub Time Machine to be funnier, but it wasn't. Instead, we did get a breakout performance from Rob Corddry, who is now set to take over for Jim Carrey in a major project. Wait, what? The LA Times is reporting that Corddry will star in Butter, another 2008 Black List script that is a satire of the 2008 Iowa caucuses featuring a butter-carving competition. Corddry will play a womanizing butter-carving champ who is forced to give up his title, so his wife runs against a talented young upstart. Obviously this is Bill and Hillary versus Obama, so I'm there. This sounds brilliant. Not to mention the fact that one of my glorious top-5 ladies is in it.
Oh, Jennifer Garner...I even watched part of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past on HBO for you. That's love, people.

5.) Trailers, parked - Okay, we have some fun ones this week.

First up is Dinner for Schmucks. I know that it's not really all that original, but if you put Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, and Zach Galifianakis in a movie together, I'm going to see it and I'm going to laugh. Also, as wrong as it sounds, I find the concept hilarious. Also, the McCartney quote/mousterpiece comment is enough to warrant its inclusion here.


Next up is a creepy one, Splice looks like my favorite types of sci-fi/horror movies. It is making an interesting point about genetic tinkering, and also looks to be a pants-shitter. I know it kind of looks and sounds like Species, but that's okay. I love it anyway.


Finally, I wish I didn't want to see this movie...but I do. The A-Team looks to be as dumb as the dumb show I loved in my youth. I'm there.


Okay, that's it for my epic junk. Go tell your friends about it.

Ryan's Junk Drawer

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to the wacky world of my junk. Once more with feeling, this is the weekly column in which I jam pack a whole bunch of tiny tidbits that don't warrant their own entire blog entry. Think of it like a bucket for leftover pocket change, only I actually do something with the extra dough, it's not mostly GD pennies, and there's nary a button or stick of gum to be found. Also, the creepy image above, which is from Highlights Magazine for Children, is studied every week, as I come up with some disturbing take on the image, because we all know that's John Wayne Gacy's hand. Today's take involves the strangely disappearing hand. Just as entropy was consuming the universe thanks to that proton collider which was guaranteed not to rip open a hole in reality, Gary remembered where he kept his lucky rabbit's foot. Were it not for the end of all that is finally disintegrating the world behind him, he would have grabbed it, too. Sad.

Now on to the weekly news nuggets too scrawny to make the big leagues. Grab a hold of something...here comes my junk.

1.) Just FYI, if Robert Pattinson plays Spider-man, I'm blowing up earth - The only reason I haven't included the rumor that Pattinson is up for the role of Peter Parker in a huge ranting blog post despite hearing it from multiple sources is because I refuse to even entertain it. If that bushy eyebrowed, half-wit, homeless-looking, talentless, pasty, British object of 40-year-old-women-who-love-cats-and-13-year-old-girls-who-don't-understand-statutory-rape is cast as the greatest superhero of all time (yeah, I'll fight you on that one too if you disagree), I will straight up find a way to nuclear proliferate my own home and end this world as we know it. This is not an idle threat, this is the threat of a man with a billion comics, an undying love for the character of Spidey, and the means to create a geek army to do his bidding (right...right, guys?). I don't care that f**king Marc Webb may ride his medicore 500 Days of Summer into the director's role in order to deliver a f**king teeny-pop take on the iconic superhero. I don't care that they'll probably have music from the f**king Jonas Brothers. Okay, I do care about all of that, but I care mostly about not having the disheveled walking corpse, the greasy hack that is Pattinson as my favorite character. You could say it downright bothers me.



2.) So long as the fifth brother is an animal... - I could watch Andy Sandberg's Mark Wahlberg talking to animals for about 2 weeks, maybe more. Each and every "how's it goin' chicken?" sends me into fits of hysteria. So,with THR reporting that Wahlberg has engineered a sequel to the little-seen but somehow still slightly enjoyed Four Brothers (the movie that made Andre 3000 think he should do movies instead of providing more insanely groovy music) is getting a sequel. It will be called Five Brothers but would get a bigger audience if it was Four Brothers and a Goat. I would see the latter movie 10 times in the theater. There's really no word on a plot, but that's not all that surprising given that it's a sequel. No director is set to attach, but John Singleton will probably return because he's not exactly busy at this point. He was set to direct The A-Team for forever, so I can imagine he's in a world of pain right now after seeing the trailer. Oh, his take on it might have sucked more, but there's no denying his BA Baracas wouldn't be the ridiculous biscuits that Rampage Jackson appears to be. Oh, and I wasn't going to leave you hanging. Enjoy.



3.) If Pixar made toilet paper, it would be the best toilet paper ever - Few studios have done no wrong...actually, I think it's just Pixar to be honest. One of the more interesting developments at the studio is the upcoming John Carter of Mars. The reason? It's not an animated film...well, at least not entirely. According to one line over at THR, "The movie will be a hybrid of live action and CGI." Whether or not this is 100% accurate, the prospect of Pixar doing adult fare (with real people in it or not) is about as exciting as you can get, because their kids movies are more fulfilling and satisfying for adults than most adult movies. The movie follows John Carter (to be played by "Friday Night Lights" hubba-hubba hunk Taylor Kitsch), who is a Civil War vet who winds up transported to Mars, where he fights in another war...so dude can't catch a break. The cast now includes Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Polly Walker (rejoice Polly Walker fans...who's Polly Walker again?), and most recently added, Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston from "Breaking Bad" (who is likely thrilled that is now his reference point instead of "Malcom in the Middle"). I can't say for sure that this is going to be the live-action hybrid promised, but I don't care. I'm so ready to see what Pixar does by branching out that I feel the exact opposite as when I think about Robert Pattinson as Peter Parker.

4.) Daniel Craig desires Downey Jr.'s sloppy seconds - Cowboys and Aliens is a project so obviously Hollywood that it's insane that it has taken over 10 years for the film version to get this far. The latest setback is Robert Downey Jr stepping away from the project, presumably to count his Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes money (you could really argue that RDJ is getting into that rarified Will Smith/Hugh Jackman/George Clooney movie-star range again...and good for him). The replacement may be somewhat disappointing, not from an acting standpoint (that's assuming that they're going to be acting in Cowboys and Aliens), but what it means about the other project this replacement cowboy would not be shooting. Confused? It's Daniel Craig. If he becomes a cowboy this summer, as Collider is suggesting, he will not be shooting Bond 23 this summer. I've been salivating for this next Bond film, given how much I've loved the revamp (yes, even Quantum of Solace, asshats). This third film should payoff with a fight against the big bad guys and it's written by the playwright behind Frost/Nixon. God, I want it so bad it hurts me. Still, with MGM (007's studio) suckin' tail right now, chances are Craig will be donning a cowboy hat before a tux.

5.) Trailer's parked - This week has a few interesting trailers, the first two being new takes on movies we've already seen trailers from and the last being a Kevin Costner movie...I know.

A-Team - The preview is pretty much what you'd expect, although I've begun hearing about some discontent on the set, including some Sharlto Copeley concerns...which sucks. I say "pretty much" what you'd expect, because it goes full-retard in the last minute. The tank thing...shudder.



Kick-Ass - Hands down one of my most anticipated films for this next year, the buzz among people I follow who have seen it is absolutely incredible. This trailer shows why. I'm super amped.



Company Men - Finally, the weirdest of the bunch. A downsizing drama (with a weird, weird trailer) featuring Chris Cooper (YAY!), Tommy Lee Jones (YAY!), Maria Bello (YAY!), Ben Affleck (okay), and Kevin Costner (wait a minute...). It looks all poignant and shit, which means it could actually be touching or could be touching in a bad touch way. Not sure.

That's almost too much junk to handle, so try to take it all in and I'll see you tomorrow.