Slow news day (volume three)

This is the last one and I'm giving up. In the interest of fairness, I reported when some no-name actress joined the cast of Moneyball, a movie that Steven Soderbergh was going to direct, so I will now mention the latest actor to join Soderbergh's new project: Contagion. Before we get to the nameless dude who just signed on today, let's recap who is in this tale that sounds like Traffic meets 28 Days Later. Matt Damon and Jude Law are pulling down the dude work (with Damon pulling down more than Law...seriously, Law is so pretty that he wouldn't look flat-out manly eating a raw waterbuffalo, while rebuilding his Mustang and peeing standing up). The ladies...well, the ladies represent one of the finer collection of people I really want to be in a room with. Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet are all in this movie that I need to be watching right now. Cotillard, fresh off of her performance in Inception, which I am going to be reviewing soon, I swear, is just so uniquely beautiful and talented that I can hardly believe we actually let her get famous. Oh, right, this is a post about the new person added to the cast. It's John Hawkes, who played the translator in this season of "Lost" and was in "Deadwood." In other words, those interested in ladies get to look at this:

And those interested in dudes get to look at this:

This completes the slowest news day in weeks.

Dude, just make Unbreakable 2

Back in the halcyon days of 2002, a far simpler and gentler time, the name M. Night Shyamalan was associated with sheer badassery. Having followed up The Sixth Sense with Unbreakable and Signs, Shyamalan could have sold his used Kleenex to a studio that would develop it into a major motion picture (with Tom Cruise starring as the Kleenex). Then came The Village...(hey, anybody can make one bad movie)...which was followed by Lady in the Water (or two)...which was followed by The Happening (kill him...kill him with fire!). Now the name Shyamalan strikes "meh" into the hearts of men (and fear into the heart of a studio desperately needing The Last Airbender to start a franchise...despite opening the film opposite Twilight: Eclipse, which will be an astronomical hit because the only thing those fans are more than totally wrong is totally dedicated). Hoping to strike while his iron is lukewarm, Shyamalan is shopping around a new idea, complete with a cast committed to it that includes the following folks:



That's interesting, right, given that Willis is still somewhat high profile, Paltrow is riding off of the biggest two films of her career (both rhyme with Schmiron Schman), and Cooper is pretty in demand right now (although, quick side note, EW.com has begun describing him as a doucheboat, a hunky guy who seems like a total douche...I love this term). We don't know much about the plot (Shyamalan HAS to be secretive, it's like his OCD), but we do know a little: it's a dude on the hunt for his missing daughter. So it's like Taken. Only the dad has superpowers. Huhbuhwha?!

Sit back, folks, I'm about to get conflicted. Unbreakable may be one of the top superhero movies ever made. Still. It IS without question the best original superhero movie ever made. For the longest time, I held out hope that the trilogy Shyamalan spewed about early on would actually happen, seeing Willis' character move from newly found powers to full-on hero. I wanted it so bad, I really did. Then he started pooping out poopy poop and we're left with Mark Wahlberg running from trees and some mute Asian kid who can redirect his pee with his mind or something. I'm not saying I won't like The Last Airbender. I may indeed. I just wanted Unbreakable 2. There are some out there who are postulating, given Willis' involvement and the word superpowers, that this new project is somehow that very sequel.


I doubt it. I doubt it immensely. That said, if it is somehow the case OOOOOOOOH DOOGGGIIEEE does that make me happy. Also, they shouldn't make it secret. Drum up excitement early on! If you're having a problem getting it made, leak that you're trying to make Unbreakable 2 and see who comes out in support. I know I will. If not, it should happen, dammit. We get four flippin' Shrek movies, 5 Scary Movies, and 6 Saw films but we can't get 2 films in a series built for it? Sometimes I hate this planet.

Here's the conflicted part: I may love it even if it isn't Unbreakable 2. Given Shyamalan's deft handling of the first film, I may find myself totally enjoying another original take on superpowers that isn't the sequel I've wanted. Wait, am I saying that I would be happy either way? This will never work.

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Movie Review: Iron Man 2

As promised, here's my thoughts about everybody's favorite man-in-a-tin-can.

Loud Sounds and Nick Fury
Iron Man 2 is bigger, bolder but not quite better

Deciding whether the Iron Man armor worn by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), with its funky, zappy-laser thingies, is cooler than the War Machine armor worn by Lieutenant Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle), with its “Say hello to my little friends” full-on arsenal, may be easier than deciding whether Scarlett Johansson’s cleavage is more impressive than Mickey Rourke’s heaving bosom. Iron Man 2, a love song to excess, is filled with these kinds of bigger-better-more pairings; it’s all about doubling everything, not just the pleasure and fun.

Screenwriter Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) delivered unto director Jon Favreau a kludge script. It gets the job done, welding giant action set pieces with subplots that sorta-kinda fit together if you squint hard enough. The sequel picks up shortly after Stark’s ego led him to admit to his alter ego. The uber-tattooed Ivan Vanko (Rourke) crawls out of a vodka bottle somewhere in Siberia to discover that his father’s designs for a power generator had been stolen by Stark’s papa. So he does what any good son would do: He creates a cyber exoskeleton with huge whips and goes to Monaco with murder on his mind.

Meanwhile, Stark is busy fending off demands from the U.S. Government to turn over his suit, dodging attacks on his company and legacy from his competitor Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and trying not to die from palladium poisoning—it’s best to leave that particular storyline alone. Thankfully, he has friends in all places: his best bud Rhodey is in the military; his would-be lady love, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), is the new Stark Corporation C.E.O.; his hand-sculpted-by-God new assistant, Natasha (Johansson), is at his beck and call and his cryptic, cyclopic ally Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is there to show up at just the right time with a box full of deus ex machina.

Oh, it’s a mess. Theroux’s subplots don’t tangle so much as they run parallel to one another, screaming at the top of their lungs the whole way. Still, it’s often a very fun mess. Between Rockwell’s foppish, flopping foil and Downey’s nuclear arsenal of charm, it may be physically impossible to not at least have a good time. That in and of itself is somewhat of an accomplishment in this post-Dark Knight era, when glee is often swapped out for “realistic” gruff. The biggest gaffe revealed is the weakness inherent to the mythos of Iron Man himself: his villains mostly suck. Vanko doesn’t so much present himself as a terrifying nemesis so much as a whack-a-mole who needs to get rock-em sock-em robot-ed every once and awhile.

What is most interesting is Marvel Comics’ commitment to their larger motion picture agenda. “Easter eggs,” the nickname given to the cinematic practice of tiny winks-and-nods to the audience, regarding Thor and Captain America are delivered by the double baker’s dozen. Although the claim that Iron Man 2 is nothing more than a set-up to the upcoming Avengers flick is overly dismissive and kind of pissy, there’s no question that the only truly consequential events in the film involve Fury and his soon-to-be-assembled team.

In some ways, Iron Man 2 is one of the most comic book-like of all comic book adaptations, with its superfluous-but-kinda-cool crossovers (as with the sometimes delightfully spandexed but wholly unnecessary Johansson) and dialed-to-11 storytelling. The first film was a surprise, riding the charisma of a redeemed former-cokehead superstar. The second doubles down hard in every department and uses Downey’s rapscallion nature as the glue that holds it together. It’s by no means a well-oiled machine, but this bucket of bolts is still blockbuster-bound.

Grade = B

In non-H1N1 virus news

Steven Soderbergh is an odd turkey burger. On the one hand he makes The Limey, Kafka, Sex Lies and Videotape, Traffic, and Che...and on the other, he makes Erin Brokovich, Oceans 11, 12, and 13, and an upcoming movie starring a former female American Gladiator. I'm not saying those latter films are bad, although my hopes aren't incredibly high for the unfinished one starring this thespian:
But they just seem so schizophrenic. That first group is sheer brilliance, that last group is mostly entertaining. So the real question is, which will Contagion be? It's got a straight-up stupidly awesome cast, including Matt Damon and Jude Law...and the following ridiculously hot trio of ladies.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Marion Cotillard

and (my fave of the bunch)
the lovely Kate Winslet

The film is going to be a sprawling, Traffic-like movie about a pandemic and is going to be a "thriller" with a "message." I'm not sure where in Soderbergh's body of work this is going to fall, but he has an absolutely DY-NO-MITE cast and all the skill necessary to make something that is both crowd-pleasing and wickedly cool. Also, if you put the three ladies above in a 3 hour documentary about salad, I'm there. Just sayin'.

There have been worse ideas...I just haven't heard them

Part of the fun of whoring myself out to get even a minuscule modicum of money (click my ads...CLICK MY ADS) has been to see what desperate pleas for purchase Google Adsense feels like placing with my posts. I know, I know, the ads routinely change...but ever since I clicked on the option that told them to modify their capitalistic begging according to my content, I've been shocked to learn that (A) they think people who would actually buy Twilight stuff read my stuff, (B) somehow, without mentioning it, they know I love and would recommend "Community" (if this makes that ad come up again...click on it, you get to find out the context for this: Jeff - Is this a joke? Troy - No, this is. Don't eat the crab dip. Yeah, yeah), and (C) even though I have twice ordered and canceled a subscription to Netflix, they have forgiven me. Anyway, I'm really, really, really curious to see what it is they pair with this nugget of news: Variety is reporting that Tobey Maguire is producing a new country music-themed movie called Love Don't Let Me Down and it's going to star Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, and Leighton Meester (seriously, I still don't know what the hell a Leighton Meester is? Is it a drink? Do I drink it? Can it light on fire?). Paltrow (shown below in her deluxe "extra-shiny legs" model) has sung on camera before in Duets (which really should have been the end of that).

The plot involves revolves a singer-songwriter who falls for a struggling country singer (Paltrow) and joins her on a tour with her husband (McGraw) and a beauty queen-turned-singer. Damn, I was hoping McGraw would play against type as the beauty queen-turned-singer. I actually don't mind country music that doesn't have to do with phrases like "You don't mess around, with God's America" (apologies to David Cross on that), but this seems like the type of movie that is just begging for a song from young country strumpets desperate for love. So, let's all take a second to say f**k you for doing this to us, Tobey Maguire, because I'll probably have to see it.