Neeson sunk your Battleship

Looks like Liam Neeson can finally check "working with Rhianna" off of his bucket list, as the enormous thespian has wrapped his octopus-sized hands around an oversized writing implement long enough to sign his name on a contract for Battleship, a film in which he will look and feel stupid...and huge.

(Note, the object shown in his hands is a full-sized beach ball).

I'm going to be honest with you, I cannot see how director Peter Berg is going to make Battleship work, and this is from someone who is as devoted to "Friday Night Lights" as all of the other annoying people who tell you how great "Friday Night Lights" is. It's a movie set in the water about aliens invading (those things going together already makes no sense to me); it's based on a board game; and it's stars are all musicians, models, or Frankenstein monsters. Could it be the most entertaining sci-fi based film ever to take place on water? That bar is set so low they'll achieve it simply by finishing, but it should be noted that many, many water-based movies fail to get that far. Could it somehow be a guilty pleasure? An awesomely over-the-top extravaganza? Sure. Could it be unwatchably terrible, even with the talented colossus that is Neeson anchoring the picture with his oversized boot? You bet.

Follow me on Twitter!

Ryan's Junk Drawer

Hola blog-migos. Congratulations on having lived to see my junk again. Here's hoping it's not all you were holding on for, and now you feel you can pass to the other side. That would be incredibly sad. I'm not feeling 100% at the moment, so let's see if I can't get moving a little faster than usual. Someone start the clock.

I say junk but I mean movie tidbits too small for whole blog posts, but tidbits isn't a well-known euphemism for genitalia (unless you're a Smurf). We start by looking at the creepy image above that's supposedly a junk drawer, from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN, but appears to have been drawn by an artistic ax murderer. We pick an item from above and write a goofy story about it. And by we, I mean me, I use the royal we for no reason sometimes. Today's item is the green and red blob on the right side. Barksy was a mostly a good dog but was sometimes a pain in the ass. Her favorite chew toy, a Christmas elf, was the perfect tool through which to teach the little shit a valuable lesson. One day when Barksy went for the bark/bite/pee trifecta, her master told her an elaborate story about where elves go when they die, while all Barksy heard was "wawawawawawawa." Sadly, the meaning was lost, as the pup lamented her lack of thumbs the only way she knew how: she barked, bit, and peed twice as much. Let this be a lesson to you, you can't fix a creature that only cares for its elf.

Okay, that's enough, let's get to it!

1.) Aw hell, boy - Guillermo del Toro set up Hellboy 3 in the sadly, madly underrated Hellboy 2 (yes, I still love it, it's better than Avatar). Seriously, look at just the poster and tell me the film wasn't beautiful.

Yeah, see how wrong you are in your memory of that film? I thought so. Unfortunately, getting the third film is proving a bit difficult. He told MTV, "I would love to do it. But the heartbreak for me is that I know how it ends and I don't know if I want to see that ending. But I would love to do it.

As the creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola, elaborates: "The problem is, what del Toro's talked about to me is that 'Hellboy III' would be the end of Hellboy. And here's where we have the big conflict. My version of Hellboy in the comics is a finite story, but it's going to take me 15 years to get to the ending. If he makes 'Hellboy III' and it's the death of Hellboy, I'm left doing the comic going, 'But I'm not done yet. My Hellboy is not going to have kids. My Hellboy is going to die, but I want to be the one who does that. And if del Toro does my ending, there won't be a lot of surprise when I get to the end of the comic."

Personally, I don't think it would be all that crazy to end the cinematic series without ending the comic series, as anyone who is interested in either of them is (A) smart enough to know the difference and (B) going to read/see both anyway. What I'm saying is, GIVE ME HELLBOY 3 with total armageddon and the death of Hellboy before Ron Perlman is so old more makeup will be spent keeping his moobs up than his horns on.

2.) This is kind of how the game felt to me - Y'all know how I feel about JJ Abrams, so it's only fitting I'm about to talk about spending 7 minutes in a closet kissing. I don't remember playing that particular game very often, but I was with a particularly chaste group of young people at the time. We liked comics for God's sake, 7 minutes in heaven meant being locked in a vault with some great back issues. JJ Abrams has a different take, as he and buddy Jack Bender have a new thriller based on a simple premise: Two kids go into a closet to neck and when they come out everybody is dead. I know that it's like a slasher-movie premise, and they mean everyone at the party is dead, but I wish the world was dead and it was more like a "Twilight Zone" episode. How funny would that be? At any rate, it sounds interesting, don't it?

3.) More on that Battleship business - Maybe I wasn't clear yesterday but this lady is going to be an actress now.
That's Brooklyn Decker, and her talents are pretty much all on display right there. She's joining Rhianna and Taylor Kitsch from the fantastic "Friday Night Lights" in Battleship, a movie that's going to fail. It's not just plummeting because the best actor announced so far plays a high-school football player on a direct-to-cable show, but because it's (A) based on a board game, (B) going to take place in the water, which notoriously means problems shooting, and (C) now involves aliens. With every bit of casting and news about the movie, I become more convinced that the film is a giant joke, like it's actually a fake movie they're making in "Entourage" or something. If you want to look at it positively, that lady above is going to be shown on as huge screen. I guess it's not all bad.

4.) Eve ruins everything again - Comicbookmovie.com is on the case of "ruining my mood" today. Why? Well because their sources told them that the reason the lovely lass below, miss Alice Eve, left the cast of X-Men First Class wasn't because they booted her or because January Jones is a better corset-stuffer.
NOPE! It's because she read the script and rabbited. That's not a good sign. Marvel still likes her and wants her for something in The Avengers (my guess is the enchantress) but the fact that she bolted from a sure-fire money maker when reading the script both raises my opinion of her and lowers my expectations for the movie. This is not sounding particularly good for mutantville. They will probably address this problem by casting another voluptuous hottie.

5.) Trailers, Parked - Did I mention that the trailer for Black Swan came out yesterday? Because it did. That's the movie with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis making out. I may just run this every day until the movie comes out, who's to say? Either way, you should watch it in all it's brilliance right now. And then watch it again. And again.



I'm Still Here is the documentary/mocumentary/nobody-knows-what about Joaquin Phoenix's attempted rap career. I've now seen the trailer...and still have no idea what's going on, other than that appears to be Nick Nolte giving Phoenix advice of some kind. That's not even a good idea in a fictional way.

Sorry if I wasn't on my game today, but I'll do better next week. Get to workin' and I'll see you tomorrow for a grand Friday send off.

Follow me on Twitter!

This does not help Battleship's cause

Trying to take a movie based on the board game Battleship seriously was always going to be a challenge, what with the whole terrible idea thing. While I longed for a realistic version consisting of two bored kids saying numbers and letters back and forth to one another while thirsting for the sweet release of puberty, death, or both, the writers went with an alien attack. Sure. Why not? Are there going to be Battleship purists who are furious that they're changing the backstory of submarine and tugboat? Are there troves of fan fiction dedicated to the lightly homoerotic relationship between battleship and destroyer? Do I know too much about the ships in this game? I thought they were done trying to insert awesome helium into this crap balloon, but not so fast my friends. They busted out their super-ultra-secret weapon today.
That's right! You loved her singing the hook on songs that rule, you enjoyed her solo work far less, and you may or may not know who she is given that I've chosen an incredibly normal-looking photo: It's Rihanna! I suppose if you're going to make your big-screen debut, you don't want to have a lot of pressure. Nobody is really going to expect all that much out of acting in Battleship, so that's a really good start. I don't think I'll find myself saying, "I didn't really believe she was in the midst of an alien invasion in this boardgame adaptation." I think I'll find myself saying "why didn't I assign someone else to review this" or "at least it's not Miley Cyrus."

Follow me on Twitter!

Ryan's Junk Drawer

Greetings junk junkies! Why, I can hardly believe it's been a full week since last we spoke to discuss my entertaining and expansive junk. In that time frame, I'm imagining that each and every one of us has put on the first layer of our holiday "padding," a fresh blurb of fatty fat fat to keep our insides warm and make us ever more ripe for zombie consumption. Huzzah! Before we dive into a close inspection of my junk, as is tradition, today's item from the creepy image from "Highlights" magazine above is the screw...for you see, it isn't just any screw...it's THE screw that held grumpy old Mrs. Winterbosom's rocking chair together. Oh, the old biddy may have sat on her porch and laughed before, but she won't be laughing now that she's having hip replacement surgery. Mwahahahaha.

Now, onward and upward to this week's tasty tidbits that aren't quite big enough to leave the nest on their own.

1.) Dude. RDJ is straight up pissed, yo. - Although you and I, being the semi-rational people we are (when it comes to matters other than sports teams or the heart), know that yesterday's Iron Man 2 poster was muy caliente, Marvel is not taking any chances. Despite the rest of the world's explicit and obvious boner for robots (I'm looking at you all-of-Asia), the studio felt a poster that displayed the kisser of its most famous star would be the best way to market the film abroad. Thus, with a spelled-out title and a demasked hero, here comes the foreign poster.

Jeez. I don't know who pooped in Robert's hot cocoa, but I would just fess up and run before he kills you with his mustache.

2.) I would watch PT Anderson's Care Bears if he made it - Few directors have absolutely crushed it every single time. Cameron Crowe broke his streak with the turdish Elizabethtown, leaving me only Darren Aronofsky (who really can't go wrong with his next movie in which Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis do it) and Paul Thomas Anderson, who has revealed that he's going back to an old friend and an old theme for his next film.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (shown above with his split personality), who was last seen doing his best to enjoy the crap taco that was Pirate Radio, has worked with Anderson on Magnolia (a supremely underrated film) and is set to play "The Master" in this next effort, which will once more explore themes of faith and power. Set in the 1950s and somewhat reminiscent of There Will Be Blood, the film will follow Hoffman's character and his young protegee as they set up a faith-based organization. Now, supposedly, this will be less angry towards spirituality and a bit more kind towards it. Still, I'm going to go right on ahead and guess that some groups are likely going to have a problem with the guy who wrote a murderous milkshaker doing them some favors.

3.) Robert Duvall still works harder than you - Despite being, let me check, 117 years old, Robert Duvall refuses to slouch into the role of Wal-Mart greeter as society demands. Instead, the charismatic and insanely talented thespian is being sought after by Terry Gilliam (and not just for his sweet disposition). According to Collider, Gilliam wants Duvall to be his Quixote in the once rolling then decimated Man Who Killed Don Quixote (the collapse of Gilliam's original attempt was chronicled in the brilliant Lost in La Mancha...so, you know, every crushed dream and wasted millions has a tiny documentarian silver lining).

Duvall is quick to note that funding isn't locked down yet (I'm guessing investors may have also heard about Lost in La Mancha), but this sounds like sheer genius. I'm waiting for Gilliam to put a bow on his fantastic career, and his determination to get this one finished, FINALLY, is something I admire. Why, this ridiculous quest to film this movie despite all odds and reason is downright....hmm, there's a word for this, a word for when someone is on an idealistic journey to do something....it will come to me....

4.) You sunk my Battleship....expectations even further - Devin Faraci from Chud.com took a crazy-ass trip to meet with Peter Berg the director of Battleship. Oh, he'll likely do other movies, and he's done other movies before, but now and forever he will be the man responsible for Battleship. Anyhoodle, Devin got a whole bunch of inside information regarding the insane flick (which is downright Roland Emmerich-sounding). In case you hadn't heard, the enemy is going to be aliens. Those aliens will be called The Regents. How nice that the aliens pick a name we can say. Anyway, Devin discovered a lot of tidbits like that the ETs are going to be stuck to a traditional 9 ship water-based battle, just like in the board game, and that someone will say "You sunk my battleship," which pretty much confirms that the movie is going to suck all of the balls. Of all of the intriguing little nuggets, the best was that Berg is planning a response to Stephen Colbert's blast on the film (below).

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Guns on Amtrak, Fake Lesbians & Battleship Audition
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

That's the thing I'm most excited for. Sad.

5.) This 44 Inch Chest is one Sexy Beast - I loved, loved, loved, loved Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. He was so good and the film was so deliciously grisly and intense that it still resonates with me. Thus, I am incredibly excited for the next film from the writers of that movie (and one of the stars). The trailer only makes me more pleased, if only because it's a British gangster movie NOT from Guy Ritchie and because the cast looks like they could seriously kick my ass in real life. Oh, and the title is just sheer and total badassery. Lord, the more I think about this, the more I really want it to get here...which it probably won't because it's a British film that doesn't have Jude Law, so it won't get US distribution. It's why God invented DVD.



That's my junk for this week. I hope you like it. See you tomorrow with haiku in full effect.