You can't resist Gravity forever

The saga of Gravity has slowly ebbed from intriguing to bizarre to DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP. Aided by the fact that it's a slow time for movie news, the daily update of who is or is not interested in the Alfonso Cuaron project about a female astronaut stranded in space has become a staple of every blog and movie-rumor-mill. And, as always, it feels good to be a part of the problem and not the solution. The latest rumor is that should the delightful Natalie Portman pass on the $80 million sci-fi project anchored by a lady, the next choice is....
Fresh off of endearing herself to the world by winning an Oscar for a mediocre performance and by getting cheated on, the sassy lady has enough popularity to make the film less of a risk. I'm not sure if she has the talent to pull off the demanding role, but Cuaron is one of the few who may be capable of stripping Miss Next Door down to her bare emotions. Also, I know that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in seeing Sandra stripped down bare. I personally hope it's still Portman, because I am both selfish in that more of Natalie in everything should be a congressional mandate and because I think, you know, she's a way better actress. But I do think that for Sandra's career and the sake of this movie actually existing, this could be the team-up we see. I know this much: They are going to offer it to any living being in Hollywood who doesn't have a wee wee until someone takes it.

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For the love of God, SOMEONE star in Gravity!!!!

The saga behind who will star in (and thus save) Gravity is quickly approaching soap opera status.

Director Alfonso Cuaron: Angelina, you are the only woman for me, without you, I'm lost.
Angelina Jolie: Alfonso, you know that I love and respect you, but my heart is with Brad. Between my love for him, raising my litter, and perpetually trying to convince the world that I was never batshit insane, I have no time for you.
Alfonso: Woe is me! My one true love has left me! I shall never be able to move forward ever again. My life's work is dead, dead, dead. Wait, who is that over there?
Scarlett Johansson: I'm sorry, Alfonso, but my perfect heaving bosom does not have within it burning desire to be locked into an antigravity simulator and barf all over my perfect figure for months on end. Besides, nobody thinks I have the talent for what you want me to do.
Alfonso: We can make it work, Scarlett! WE CAN MAKE AN ASTRONAUT SUIT SEXY, I SWEAR IT! ALAS!!! Angelina does not love me, Scarlett does not love me. What am I to do? Wait, who's that over there?
Blake Lively: Dude, I'm like 12. You shouldn't even be looking at me like that.
Alfonso: ALAS AND ALACK! I have been spurned by Angelina, rejected by Scarlett, threatened with legal action by Blake. What would my friends do? Well, Darren Aronofsky would just cast his wife.
Rachel Weisz: Don't even think about it.
Alfonso: But I know that if we...
Rachel Weisz: You think I do weird artistic science fiction projects for just anybody? My HUSBAND asked me to do that last one, and I got to rub all over Hugh Jackman. Who would I be rubbing against in your film?
Alfonso: If you were wanting to rub, you would have to rub against yourself.
Rachel Weisz: Aaaaand I'm out.
Alfonso: That's it, my life is over. The ladies, they do not love me. My art will wither and die like a stubborn grape on a vine. Wait, who is that over there?

Alfonso: She is an angel! A divine being possessed of more beauty and talent than any of these women before mentioned! I shall send her a love letter in the form of my revised script! Surely she cannot resist the charms of my new draft! I will win her heart!

And that folks, is where we stand, although I left out Marion Cotillard, Naomi Watts, and Olivia Wilde because I got tired of this joke. The offer is out to Natalie if she wants it after reading the script. I have said before and I'll say again, I hope SOMEONE takes it so we see this thing, but I wouldn't hold my breath at this point.

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Weighty decision

Let's get something straight, Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity is going to be incredible. Robert Downey Jr has already agreed to star in a film about an astronaut stranded in space who tries to fight HER way home to earth. Wait, did I just use a FEMALE descriptor in that last sentence? Why yes, yes I did. Both Marion Cotillard and Angelina Jolie considered the role, and when RDJ's involvement was announced, it was assumed the script had been flipped gender-wise, but not so fast. It looks like THR is reporting that the female role will still be the lead, leading me to surmise that RDJ will be the Ed Harris to the female version of Tom Hanks in Apollo 13. So who's the lady going to be? They've narrowed things down to two:

Blake Lively, star of the upcoming and sure to be awesome The Town and the upcoming and not so sure to be awesome Green Lantern, enthusiast of dressing like a schoolgirl.

And Miss Scarlett J, the Black Widow herself, possessor of what artists and horndogs will agree may be God's finest female anatomy.

Supposedly, the two women have both been tested (not like that) and are awaiting word from Cuaron. The studio likes Lively because she's done work for them, but Cuaron has been sold on Johansson from the get go. Personally, you know I'm pulling for Scarlett, if only to finally settle the matter of whether or not she's actually talented. Landing a role once circled by Jolie and Cotillard and then actually pulling it off would go a long way in establishing her as an actual actress. If they go with Lively, I'm still there, as Children of Men earned Cuaron's future films a lifetime pass, but I'm hoping this is my chance to ogle Johansson in space.

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Seriously? Thursday? How the hell did that happen? This time warp has been brought to you by exhaustion, long summer nights, and work projects you wish would never were but looks like they will be for a very long time. Today's music has been carefully selected by The Reader's own Jesse Stanek, who enlightened me as to "Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows," the John Prine tribute CD. My morning has begun with the explicit instructions to move to the country and eat a lot of peaches. Although I'm disobeying, I think Prine really meant sit in front of a computer and create a blog that has a title intended to sound dirty.

That's right, you haven't come here to hear tell of how brilliant I find the cover of Bruised Orange by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, you've come here to see my junk. You only get to peek at my junk once a week, so this is a special time for you. I don't want to stall any longer. So, I'll begin the normal disclaimer (which is to say that by junk I mean movie tidbits that aren't big enough to warrant their own post) and the normal shenanigans (we take an item from the creepy illustration of a junk drawer above from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN and make up a fictional backstory on it). Cue shenanigans: Today's item is the fuzzy string thing in the middle of the drawer. Carl was a proud man. Carl was also a reasonable man. Carl was a man in love. Knowing full well that his beloved Lucille would never consent to marriage so long as he was the proud owner of the second longest eyebrows in Guiness Records history, Carl threw away more than a decade with two snips. In his junk drawer lay his secret shame, his one ticket to instant marginal celebrity. Then again, because of his newfound hygiene, in his bedroom lay Lucille.

Okay, enough goofing around, let's get to showing the faceless public my junk!

1.) Whoa, Gravity sounds heavy! - Children of Men might be (I stress might be) the best sci-fi film of the last decade. I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but for realz yo, it's all kinds of really good. So, consider me pant-shitting excited for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, a sci-fi movie starring Robert Downey Jr. Why am I pooping pants for this? Well, The Playlist explained that the 3D film will be 60% CGI, the opening will be a 20 minute continuous shot, and the plot will follow the survivor of a space accident desperately trying to return to Earth. I'm like the elevator in a high-rise skyscraper after a kid with ADD climbed in: All my buttons are getting pushed. Seriously, how does this not sound beautiful and brilliant. In the hands of real artists, sci-fi is the single most promising and vital genre. Why? Because the rules are gone. You can do whatever you want, however you want. Ursula LeGuin once said that sci-fi is just the artist asking "what if?" Let me tell you a "for sure" as opposed to a "what if." I cannot wait for this movie.

2.) News for Twi-hards and those who hate them - The only thing more shocking that Twilight existing is the people who like the series. I know some seriously smart, good people who love the O-negative out of the series. This doesn't change my opinion of them at all, nor does it change my opinion of the series. I'm a Cubs fan, so I get loving things that are just no good. Anyway, you fall into one of two camps: You either read all the books and love the movies and thus won't be spoiled by what I'm about to talk about or you didn't read the books and don't care at all about the movies so you won't care that I'm about to spoil what happens in the final book/movies. Just in case, I'll give you an image buffer before I really get started.
Okay, ready? The screenwriter of the final two movies that spawn out of the single book "Breaking Dawn" told the LA Times that they may not even show the childbirth scene, also known as the only reason I want to see these movies at all. If you haven't, please read Devin from Chud's rundown of the book’s insanity, because it's brilliant. Point is, some seriously, monumentally whacked out bullshit happens in these books and I am dying to know how they're going to handle it. Here's the thing, I can't believe there weren't riots by the Twi-hards when they read the concluding book. I mean, if I were reading "Lord of the Rings," and in the last book Legolas fell in love with Aragorn's daughter AS A BABY, I would have dug up the corpse of JRR Tolkein so I'd have a place to put my pee. And for the last time, there is no way to handle this appropriately. It's not plutonium that can be handled while wearing a containment suit, it's more like trying to scoop up the pieces of an atomic bomb and put them back together again.

3.) I have a fable for you about "Fables"- Okay, Pajiba lies a lot. I shouldn't say lie, that's not nice. They run stories that have less fact and truth to them than Fox News, howsabout that? I just wanted to put that disclaimer on there because the following story, while appealing, makes no sense. The scoop is that David Yates (director of the last 4 Harry Potter movies) is possibly going to direct the adaptation of "Fables" for the big screen. Exciting? No. Wait, why? Why isn't it exciting that the really intelligent comic book series about fairy tale characters living in a secret land in the modern world is going to be made into a movie? Because it deserves to be an ongoing television series (where it would TOTALLY be immensely popular, I promise), which last we heard it was going to be. This source from YEARS ago had it in TV development. Is it possible something changed? Is it possible Yates is directing the pilot? How is Yates that popular when he really hasn't done anything all that insanely noteworthy and yet in one week he's been rumored for both The Hobbit AND Fables? I don't have all the answers. I'm just a guy telling jokes in a column named after his junk. Don't pressure me. Point is, I want a TV series for "Fables," but I will take whatever I can get.

4.) I am ready to run - I enjoy running. I mean for exercise and not when something is chasing me. Of course, what I'm talking about here is the news that Alex Garland, writer of 28 Days Later, The Beach (he wrote the novel), and Sunshine, is writing Logan's Run. So, I'm on board now. I loved each of those movies, YES including The Beach. I looked on YouTube to find the clip of him in the infamous video game scene from that movie, but the only results I found were for the video "Leonardo DiCaprio - Touch Me There." Now, I like the guy, but I don't need him touching me. He's got greasy hair and starred in The Man in the Iron Mask, he doesn't get to touch me. Anyway, Garland has some really great ideas and has shown with the movies listed above that he knows how to make sci-fi and horror into something more than just popular fluff. As most of you know, Logan's Run is about a society where people are euthanized at a certain age, instead of just being shuffled to Florida to skew our electoral college. There is some obvious ground for social commentary and I am pumped that Garland is involved. There's not a lot of funny in this blurb, but I'm not your singing, dancing fun monkey, okay? Sometimes I just have some good insight. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat a banana while doing a karaoke version of Ke$ha and grinding this pole.

5.) Trailers, parked - We have a buffet of WTF for you today, so grab a plate.

First up is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which (A) yes they made already even though you didn't know it, (B) had its trailer debut on a Brazillian fan site for the Narnia series, and (C) is already coming out this Christmas (a much better time to debut religiously based materials). I don't hold out much hope for it, even though I didn't HATE either of the first two installments. That said, if I can get another poor CGI river Jesus, I'm in. See for yourself.


Okay, next up is...well, nobody knows. The Polish Brothers (finally, some respect for my people) have directed...this? It's some teaser for something that...well, look just watch it and know that the project is set to come out in 2011 even though nobody knows quite what it is or that it existed in the first place.


Next up is Never Let Me Go by...wait for it...ALEX GARLAND! Okay, so it's directed by Mark Romanek, but Garland adapted the famous novel, making this column staggeringly cohesive today. The film is weirdly creepy looking and yet really appealing. You know I'm in. Who's coming with me?


Okay, that's it y'all. Happy Thursday to you. Start getting your weekend preparations straight and I'll see you tomorrow to kick things off, proper.

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Jolie replaced with Downey Jr...wait, what?

Awhile back (like a week or so), we told you that Angelina Jolie was ixnaying Wanted 2 and was hopping aboard a spaceship for Alfonso Cuaron in Gravity, a movie that sort of sounds like Moon (insofar as it's about a solo space mission). Well, Jolie decided that movie didn't sound like it sucked enough, so she's out and Robert Downey Jr, who is on a hot streak hotter than skid-marks in the underpants of a lava pooper, is in. Obviously, the gender of the character isn't a pivotal issue, but it is weird to see Mike Fleming note that Downey Jr is getting a role Jolie almost had. For what it's worth, I'd rather watch Downey Jr in a one-man-acting show than Jolie flop her Oscar Meyer lips all over the screen for two hours, even though Cuaron probably would have gotten the best performance of her career out of her. In case you couldn't tell, I'm officially off "Team Jolie" no matter how many wonderful humanitarian causes she supports. She seems crazy and can't act all that well. Also, I never found her that hot. She looks like a cartoon of a woman someone would be attracted to. Thanks for visiting Ryan's grumpy Monday, try some coffee and have a bagel.

But...but...what about Robocop?

Darren Aronofsky can do whatever the bleep he bleeping wants...especially because what he currently wants to do involves making Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman do it (if you haven't heard about his Black Swan right now, I'm too tired to do it justice so just re-read the last sentence and know that I'm not exaggerating...Kunis and Portman porkin'). The sad thing is, I want him to do Robocop, which is a brilliant movie that doesn't get the respect it deserves. If anyone else does it, we're going to get shitty shit that has shit shaped pieces of shit in it. So, in layman's terms, it will be bad. The problem is, Aronofsky and the studio (MGM) can't get their crap together for Robocop, so he just keeps booking other projects. This is good because (A) sometimes those projects involve Kunis and Portman freakin' each other and (B) Aronofsky is one of very few directors who has gone 4-for-4 to start their career. I tell you all of this rambling nonsense because it turns out I lied to you. Angelina Jolie is NOT signed for Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi tale Gravity (although she is in talks). According to The Hollywood Reporter, she's also in talks with Aronofsky to star in his adaptation of the novel "Serena," which is about a husband and wife in the depression era who start a timber empire and do other dramatic stuff. If you take Aronofsky out of this equation, it sounds as appealing to me as a rousing game of "eat some lint." But WITH him in, you get a weird There Will Be Blood meets, um, Angelina Jolie? All I can think right now is her yelling "I drink your milkshake" and a bunch of dudes who still find Jolie's overinflated tube lips and increasingly batshit crazy eyes attractive. I will say that she's circling two VERY interesting projects, and whether she ends up in either Cuaron's or Aronofsky's film, whichever one she picks will be the best film she's made in a decade. Although, my money is on neither. My money is on her suddenly dropping both and starring in Mr. and Mrs. Smith 2: Baby on Board. Shudder.

Angelina Jolie: Unwanted

I feel weird issuing a spoiler alert for a movie that came out like 2 years ago, but look away if (A) you haven't seen Wanted, a nonsensical action movie, and (B) you don't want to know the ending. Hi, welcome to those of you who have seen Wanted or don't give a shit about Wanted. I love all of you equally. News broke yesterday that the sequel to Wanted, presumably titled The Want is Real, is not going to happen. See, Angelina Jolie has opted out, which makes sense because her character FREAKING DIED in the last movie. Nobody knew what weird storytelling, magical reincarnation bullshit they were going to use to get her back for the sequel, but being as she was the only truly famous person in it (sorry, Morgan Freeman, you lost your famous person status when you did your stepdaughter), the sequel is now kaputsky. At least, that's the thinking. I GUARANTEE you that Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic, is going to come out and state that the sequel is ON, he wrote the shit out of it, it's going to star some super-secret-mega-star, and be directed by Jesus. Millar is a liar. So what is Jolie doing with her non-Wanted time (besides, you know, reconnecting with her douchey douchey father, Jon Voight)? According to Vulture, Jolie will star in Gravity for bad-ass mofo Alfonso Cuaron. Wait? WHAT! Apparently, Gravity follows the only survivor of some kind of space accident trying to get home and was written by Cuaron's 28-year-old son (wonder how he got that deal). Seeing as how Children of Men was an incredible, incredible science fiction masterpiece, I am so very in. Although, for the record, the only thing more overrated than Angelina Jolie is Dippin' Dots. Ice cream of the future my ass.