Ryan's Junk Drawer

Huzzah, my fellow denizens of this planet! Let us all celebrate staving off the apocalypse long enough to see another Thursday. And trust me, an apocalypse could have happened: The ocean is bleeding, a Chicago sports team won a world championship...I'm predicting a Cthulu appearance any second now. Blissfully, we haven't been sucked into the ether by tentacled demons, which means I can celebrate life and the good that's in the world for another day.

Speaking of good that's in the world, one of the former competitors on the speech team that my wife and I coach, The University of Nebraska at Omaha Mavericks, is looking to start a local business in a small town. Perhaps the positive mojo created by continuing to infuse youthful, new ideas into a smaller community with strong tradition was enough to prevent the global implosion I fear. The business is Cornerstone Coffee, and you should become a fan of their Facebook page by logging in to your account and then clicking on THIS link.

According to Danielle Steen, the former team member I was talking about, Corner Stone isn't just a coffee shop, "we will be home roasting coffee beans and exporting them all over the U.S. We'll be the only roaster in a 200-mile radius giving the town a nice market niche, which will hopefully help boost their economy. So, we'll be selling gourmet ground coffee to businesses and homeowners." The business is proposed as part of a competition for startup money, so your support really will help push the project over the top. It's time to show the assembled might of the Cutting Room readership, if only to prove that we are not to be trifled (or truffled) with! And do it today, because the big presentation is Friday, so it can't wait!

The second momentary pause to recognize goodness: I'm drinking out of a cup commemorating Warren Ellis (the comic book writer, not the musician) and his brilliant twitter greeting of "Good morning, Sinners." This is because my friends Andrew and Jess gave it to me for my birthday (along with some SUH-WEET graphic novels, including a bad-ass one called "Action Philosophers"). Nothing is better than drinking out of a cup that insults you from friends who love you.

Now that we've all felt the love, I can get on to the regular Thursday shenanigans involving juvenile statements about "my junk." By junk, I mean movie tidbits too small to count as full posts, but I primarily use it as a way to make dirty jokes like crazy. For example, I have the only junk you can stare at while at work without getting charged with sexual harassment. We begin each week's installment by looking at the creepy-ass image up top (from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN) and choosing an item about which to compose a nonsensical story because it amuses me (and this is really all about my amusement). Today's item is the blue cylinder with a lightning bolt on it. Although Loki had tried for eons to appropriately shame Thor, the god of Thunder, through various lies and tricks, it had never previously occurred to him that the answer to Thor's defeat was staring him in the face. By simply stealing the hammer-wielder's
curling iron, Loki would ensure that Thor's hair would be flat and limp, damning him to mockery from supervillain and superhero alike. Thus, he chose a particularly humid day and stashed the Norse god's hair device in his junk drawer. Now, all he had to do was wait.

Okay, enough tomfoolery and japery, let's get to some movie nuggets shall we? Here's the top 5 non-story stories for the week!

1.) The ring runs on willpower, not hubris, right? - To assume that Green Lantern will be a slam dunk is a bit presumptuous, even though I'm pretty excited about it. The cast is solid, but not spectacular (Ryan Reynolds rules, and I like the Saarsgaard kid), and the character isn't as much of a household name as men who are Bat, Super, and Spider.
Thus, THR's news that WB has hired the writers of the film (still a YEAR away from release) to begin working on the second one, and to write The Flash, seems a wee bit like USC planning their trip to the Rose Bowl this year. Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, and Marc Guggenheim will begin working on the guy who runs fast and the return of the guy with fancy jewelry post haste. The only one whose work I'm familiar with is Guggenheim, and not just because I've heard a lot about his museum. He wrote a few issues of "Amazing Spider-man" (my least favorite of the current era) and was the show runner for "Flash Forward" briefly (one of the two shows to ever have its season recording pass on my DVR get zapped like a light-addicted fly). The GL script has been in flux (and was the source of my first and likely only breaking news), so I'm not sure why such confidence is being shown. Oh well, another day, another set of comic book movies proceeding. Like the housing market and dot com bubble, one day superhero flicks will pop. I just hope it's not soon.

2.) I don't lie to you - I don't have a great B.S. detector, as I'm still new to this game, but I promise not to deliver crap when I know it's crap just to get you all excited. I don't mind kicking around a rumor I know is bogus provided it's for funsies, but I will not tell you lies. What do I mean? Well, a day or so ago, the internet started passing a rumor around about the next Indiana Jones movie that just sounded like butt droppings. It was about how Indy's next adventure would shoot next year (yeah, right) and would feature the fedora mannequin's trip to the Bermuda Triangle with his son Dagwood (sorry, Mutt), where they would find Atlantis. It was too much crap packed into one tiny tube, and the poo balloon popped not 12 hours later when producer Frank Marshall said on his twitter that it was all crap. I figured. Still, I'm in the vocal minority who wants one more Indy movie done right (which probably means pushing Lucas down a well, but I'm fine with that). I want redemption in the public eye (even though I kind of liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at times), and I think there's one more great story in this series. I'm not opposed to Atlantis, but I have another way to go with it. What if they really embraced one transition element in the last film and made this movie something more sci-fi for Indy to deal with. I like the idea that he's so out of his element now that he decides on his own to hang it up. He's the adventurer intellect, not the scientist. Just a theme, not a plot...which I guarantee you is more than anyone over at Lucasfilm has right now.

3.) Yesterday's news made current - That Les Grossman movie I told you about is officially happening. Grossman is the fat-suit character that Tom Cruise crawled inside to become self-deprecating enough for us to like again.

It's going to be bad. You can't sustain the funny when the primary thing people remember about the character is him dancing like an ass to the same song over and over again. Yes, he's hairy and fat, but so is Rush Limbaugh and I don't want him to have a whole movie either. He's a bit character who is funny in spurts. I think they'll discover this at the writing phase and we'll never see the movie happen. At least, I hope so. If not, it's going to be 1.5 hours of a bad fat suit dancing. In other words, there goes the plot for Paul Blart 2.

4.) Ghost-san? - Reuters has an interesting story about how Paramount is approaching the box office lull in America by going to Japan and making a remake of Ghost. It's not for us, it's for a localized Japanese audience. Essentially, this may open the door for a new idea: Regional remaking. See, Hollywood doesn't want to come up with new ideas or creative answers, they want money. What better way to make quick cash than by making regional versions of classic films? Think about it: You make a small investment that requires no research or legwork, capitalize on a known product by making it more appealing to a different group, and count your money. It's brilliant in a terrifying way. Actually, it's no different than the Americanized retellings of foreign films, right? I find this to be a story worth watching, if only for how neglected the American box office may one day become. We may be a dry well now.

5.) Trailers, parked - Okay, I have the weirdest trailer of the year so far for you. Gore Verbinski, who did Pirates (all 3 parts) among other, better things, is making an animated film called Rango that apparently makes no damn sense. Johnny Depp stars as an “chameleon with an identity crisis" and co-stars Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant as The Spirit of the West. Oh, and THIS is the trailer for that:

Yep, that's real. Wowza.

The only other thing of note for the week trailer wise is a reminder that we're not done with Harry Potter yet. Almost, but not quite. The two films I'm most anticipating, if only because things will finally happen, are about to hit. Here's the trailer reminding you of that.



Folks, this has been an epic Junk Drawer this week. So enough reading! Get out there and celebrate life!

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Ryan's Junk Drawer

Hello...is it me (junk) you're looking for? I can see it in your eyes. That opening is obviously brought to you by Lionel Ritchie, one of many singers to get famous for a song that sounds like it glorifies stalking. Seriously, if that song went on for another minute, it would end with lines like "I'm wearing your skin as my face." It's creepy. Speaking of creepy, as you likely know by now (if you know me at all), Thursday is the day I sort through all the itty bitty news that didn't grow up into a full blog post and dump into my imaginary "junk drawer." I then go around on twitter and facebook making jokes about my junk. I'm apparently 12. Also, I usually start with a peek into what I believe is shown in the clearly demonic illustration above that I took from "Highlights" magazine. Today's item is Kermit the Frog's detached larynx in the upper right corner! Looks like someone finally had enough John Denver duets. By the way, The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" ever. Discuss. Feel free to incorporate how it's called a carol but nobody sings.

Moving onward and upward, here's the top 5 news stories that wanted to get their own posts but have to learn that life is full of disappointment.

1.) Space lies, part 743 - I've made a whole bunch of comments in the past about the possibility, probability, and potential of a new Star Wars movie. In short, it certainly could happen, but probably not soon and I want one to redeem the series. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if someone other than Lucas gets his/her hands on the material, the ship can be righted. The latest total rumor that is so proposterous I feel like a ninny (yeah, I said ninny) even repeating it comes from Thomas Dolby, who is responsible for this:



On his blog Dolby revealed conversations he's had with Paul Sebastien of Lucasarts. When recapping what the friends had discussed (besides eyesight loss due to technological advancements), Dolby let loose the statement that there may be a new Star Wars movie in the works, in addition to the live-action TV show and more video games. Now, if you can't take the word of a synth-pop 80s rocker repeating second-hand information from a guy who works for Lucas, who can you trust?

2.) Bigger suck - IMAX made The Dark Knight better for me. IMAX may be the reason Avatar is palatable. IMAX is not going to make Twilight better. That isn't stopping them from making Twilight: Eclipse into an IMAX endeavor. Oh, sure, will you be able to see every pore on Kristen Stewart's bored, dispassionate face. You'll be able to count every one of Robert Pattinson's intentionally misplaced hairs. You'll be able to examine each of Tayler Lautner's 17 ab muscles (he had a few transplanted). It won't make any of it better, but it will be bigger. Just pray that they don't go 3D, as I can't stand the thought of Pattinson hair flopping at me. Or smell-o-vision. Don't do that either. Stewart smells like burning hair and Pattinson smells like dead hamster...oddly enough, Lautner smells like cinnamon.

3.) A Wachowski says "what?" - Huge shockwaves were sent (in my pants) when I heard from Slashfilm that the Wachowskis were making a "futuristic war movie" that had gotten all the way to production withouth any scrutiny. Who broke the story? Arianna Huffington. Seriously. The intriguingly accented lady even posted a shot of her "on set" in front of a green screen. Supposedly it had something to do with "Iraq from the prospective of the future," which makes as much sense as anything, I suppose. Then along comes Devin from Chud.com to say "nope, total bullshit." Basically, Devin says that the Wachowskis are in the process of TESTING for their next film. So, really, it sounds like splitting hairs as the difference here seems to be that they aren't ALREADY shooting a futuristic war movie we haven't heard of but they're ABOUT to shoot a futuristic war movie we haven't heard of. Also, apparently this may have something to do with the book "Cloud Atlas," which sounds crazy. Most notably, that sourceless wiki I just linked to suggests Tom Twyker is attached to write....weirdness. So, Arianna Huffington may or may not be starring in a futuristic movie which may or may not be based on a book and Tom Twyker may or may not be adapting it. Sweet.

4.) Where's the evil brooms? I miss the evil brooms. - What do you do with a live-action adaptation of a segment from Fantasia starring Nic Cage in what may be his most ridiculous hair ever (yeah, we're talking beyond Con Air here)? I mean, it looks sort of weirdly fun, but it also looks batshit crazy...and where is the loyalty to the original story? I mean, the main villain should be tyrannical brooms rising up against their master. It was an allegory for the subjugated worker, right? Check out what "the man" has done to the story in the trailer below:



5.) After a decade, I get closure - This is a cut from the Blu-Ray of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so the quality ain't great and there's a bit of "behind-the-scenes" rambling preceding it...but this is the first glimpse at part one of The Deathly Hallows. I've been moderately positive with this series, which has increased in quality almost every time out, but I'm ready for the damn thing to be over. In fact, I'm really quite excited to see the finale play out on the big screen, having spent almost a third of my life with these movies. You think I'm kidding, but go back now and watch that first movie; those actors are like tiny babies. You'll feel REALLY bad about what you said regarding Hermione.


Dh Preview One - Click here for more blooper videos