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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In honor of Kristen Stewart's birthday, I won't totally hate on Twilight

I kid. Of course I'm going to totally hate on Twilight...although maybe not on Stewart. I know she gets a bad rap for her bad attitude...but if I had to deal with the half-wit sycophants she has to deal with, I'd be in a murder-rage so blind I'd be wearing dead tweens for a fashion statement. She smokes dope, hates her fans, and acts like nothing gets to her...I'm going to admit it, I kind of love her. Also, she can look like this when she tries:
Yes, that's really her. I know, she's got serious stems and is classically beautiful when she wants to be. So happy birthday reluctantly famous, angry hot girl!

What's awesome is that me bagging on her franchise won't even bother her. Yeah, I assume that (A) she reads my column and (B) I also consider how she feels towards me as though one day we'll end up together. Mmmm...delusions. Anyhoodle, this week brought news that Dreamgirls' Bill Condon is probably going to direct Breaking Dawn, the end of the national tragedy that is the Twilight franchise, which may or may not be two movies, nobody's officially 100% confirmed it yet (but it will be). If you recall, that's the one movie (or two movies) I may actually be pumped about, if only because of the totally batshit insane whacked-out madness that occurs. I've had people I like and respect try to explain how the events of the final book are reasonable. They fail every time as I fall into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me tease you with this: the final book involves supernatural pedophilia. No lie. I'm not saying that these movies are going to be good, oh Lord no. But they may be totally friggin' hilarious. Condon is well respected in the industry (he even directs the Oscars ceremony often), but all that should change with this decision. Enjoy your paycheck, Bill! I'd put "the loss of my dignity" in the memo line on the check when you cash it.

Well...it was nice while it lasted

For a brief while, when Avatar consumed the attention of the world, I kinda sorta forgot all about Twilight. Yeah, I know, it was pretty awesome.
Sure, it would come up when I was discussing how Sony wants to poop all over Spider-man's face by turning his adventures into a Twilight-esque den of angst and preening, but for the most part, Twi-mania had finally slunk back into the shadows (or, more specifically, high school lockers and creepy cat ladies' freezers) where it belongs. Well, that's all changed, as Nikki Finke has confirmed that Breaking Dawn, which is totally batshit crazy, is going to be split into two movies, bringing the total to five worthless, poorly acted movies. Okay, maybe it will only be five poorly acted movies and 4 worthless ones, because if what happens at the end of the books happens at the end of the movies...we're in for a little slice of heaven in the form of some seriously whacked out shenanigans. I would go on about this, but you get the idea, right? Oh, hey here's a thought. Even if they move as fast as possible and kick out these movies supa-dupa fast, we're going to have Eclipse this year and Breaking Dawn Uno and Dos next year at the earliest. That means 7 years will have passed from the first book came out until the last movie hits. That's impressively quick, sure, but all those girls who were 15 when the mania first hit are going to be 22 when the last movie comes out. I wonder if they'll still feel the passion for Edward when they're of legal drinking age. Oh, and I should mention that many of the non-teenaged women who loved the first book when it hit may be dead by the time it is all said and done. Likely having choked to death living alone in their apartment. Sad.

Breaking Dawn...apart

As you may or may not know, I'm not a Twilight connoisseur. So, why is it that I want to run out and see an adaptation of the final installment in the series, based on the fourth book, "Breaking Dawn?" Because I read a synopsis courtesy of one of my fave online bastards, Devin Faraci from Chud, and it is delicious, squishy insanity. Don't click this link if you want to stay unspoiled on the events of the book, but let me just say that if this is 25% faithful to the events that happen as described in that post, I'm seeing this in the theater and laughing until my face falls off. I really thought that the whole series was goofy, a bit irresponsible, and totally devoid of originality. I don't know that I can say that about the final book, which apparently reveals that this whole thing has been the set up for a joke that is going to make me piss myself. Seriously, if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you think what happens is anything other than total batshit insanity, I will pay you one billion dollars (note, I will not actually pay you one billion dollars). This is all a roundabout way of introducing today's obligatory Twilight update...actually, one more side note first: How many days of coverage are the morning shows going to try to milk out? I mean, sweet Lord in heaven, the books were written in like 10 minutes and were based off of a dream by a weirdo who had written so much as an email before. Can't we give it the two weeks of fanfare it warrants and then let it slide like buffalo-ranch flavored jello? Anyhoodle, the big news is that Variety reports that they may break Breaking Dawn into two movies. That's fine, because I'll really only want to see that last one, and so it will likely save me a few hours. Seriously, people, if you don't know how this ends, you are in for a real surprise...and not a good surprise like "hey it's a party," a bad surprise like "this hair in the bottom of my milk glass is curly."