Ryan's Junk Drawer

With great junk, comes great responsibility - "Better Off Ted"

Well hello there, you delicious readers of blog! It's the Thursday of a week that is short but has felt long, a week that needs to go away forever as soon as possible, a week that is only permitted to exist in my memory because it is the launch of the NFL season (may Favre be hurt tonight).

But you haven't come here to hear me wallow or for Fantasy Football suggestions (free hint: start the unicorn). No, you've come here to see my junk! You have to wait all week for me to get it up, and then when I do, I'm always distracting you with other things. Well no longer, it's time that you looked upon my junk and enjoyed it!

Obviously, by junk I mean movie tidbits too small to warrant their own posts, despite how randy and inappropriate the term I have chosen sounds. Every edition of this weekly column begins with me looking at the creepy image of a junk drawer above, from Highlights Magazine FOR CHILDREN, picking an item from said drawer, and writing a goofy story about it. Today's item is the green and red item in the lower right corner.

"Cornelius did not like to lose a bet, a problem compounded by his compulsive gambling habit and the fact that he was legally stupid. After a weekend spent losing money on pro football games, a weekend that did not go Cornelius's way despite his sure-to-be-dead-on 'pick the teams based on mascot fights' strategy, he needed a way to get back to even. While at the grocery store, he began trying to entice strangers with bets like "I bet I can get 10 eggs in that basket without breaking one" and "guess how many times the butcher washes his hands in one day despite touching all of your meats." Finally, a stranger proposed to him the oddest game of all. Desperation can make a man do incredible things. Women have lifted cars to save their children, men have punched through walls. That day, because he was that desperate for cash, Cornelius turned a cucumber inside out, a feat that has never been done before or since. Good for you, Cornelius."

Okay, enough tomfoolery, let's get to some movie nuggets!

1.) Captain chubby - This one is for my homey, Matty L. Sorry I've been uber busy, pal. I hope these shots that were actually taken from the set of Captain America make you feel better. Oh, do note that the chubby bunny in the suit is actually a stunt double and not the rock-hard Chris Evans. Also note that there will be better lighting and cinematography than these spy pics.
I actually don't mind it so much the more I look at it. It's pretty much Captain America, right? I mean, aside from the fact he appears to be wearing jeans and has his abs painted on. Let's take a look at his shield.
Okay, now that's Cap on a motorcycle, right? I mean that's pretty awesome, even from the rear ( a phrase I just don't say enough these days. Now let's see it all in motion.
Okay, first the positives: The rifle up front is pretty awesome looking, right? And I like his boots. The wings are...I mean, they need to be there but...hmm. You know what, I'm going to say I like it. At the very least, it's not the eye abortion that is the Green Lantern costume. I think that on screen this will look great. Let's get excited people, I give this a qualified thumbs up.

2.) Joel McHale to scare children with his skinny ties - I love Joel McHale, and you should too. Not only is he hilarious each week on "The Soup," but "Community" is the funniest show on TV. I don't care how many Emmys they give "Modern Family," which is so predictable and unoriginal that I literally say the jokes out loud while watching the show before they get to them, "Community" is better. No lie, "Modern Family" is "Two and a Half Men" with less Sheen and more people duped into believing it's clever. Anyway, McHale is going to bang Jessica Alba. WHAT?!?!? Hold on, turns out it's just in a movie. He's going to star in the next Spy Kids movie as a "spy-hunting reporter married to Alba's character, the stepmother to his kids." This means they'll probably have him playing a douche, which sucks because I think he's someone I like to like. So on the plus side: He gets to star in a movie and touch Jessica Alba. On the negative side: He has to play a douche and listen to Jessica Alba try to make words come out of her face.

Oh, one last salvo in the "Community" rules war:


3.) Forget deporting anchor babies, let's import Anchorman 2! - Adam McKay, who somehow willed The Other Guys to a rather impressive box office total given the spectacular mediocrity of that film, may have enough cred now to get things cooking on the sequel I want most at the moment. He told Collider that Paramount has finally wised up to the potential popularity. The uproar about the death of the film rippled through the Internets, something I like to think we started at this here blog (we didn't, but I like to think that). According to McKay:

"It did, it made a difference. Paramount heard it. Adam Goodman, the President of Paramount, was on the first one so he loves it and when that outcry came, he was kind of excited because he knew it could maybe push it towards happening. That having been said, I’m clearly going into it like another movie so if it does happen it’s still two years away or a ways away. And I haven’t talked to anyone. There’s nothing happening right now but it helped, it helped."

Does this mean we're getting another hilarious installment? Not necessarily. But if we keep up the noise, it sure does become more possibler. Let's do it! Let's all keep squawking enough to make more better the chances of this becoming possibler!

4.) Assholes keep getting bigger - Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride together sounds like a great idea. Nevermind that the idea is a little stale. Basically, the want to star in the sure-to-be-retitled Olympic-Sized Asshole, about an Olympic star who comes back to town and bangs the wives and girlfriends of Ansari and McBride, who declare revenge on him. Bitter, angry humor is what these guys can do best, and any excuse to put two truly funny guys together works for me.

This is also a great excuse for me to post this:


I don't care what you say, this stand-up act was one of my all-time favorites.

5.) Trailers, parked - We're in a lull as far as trailers right now. I don't have any explanation as to why, because I'm not very smart sometimes. I do now that I have two weird projects to show you.

First up is Hobo with a Shotgun, which is kind of like Machete, in that it was inspired by a fake trailer. I'm guessing with the relative meh with which Machete was met, this film will do much, much worse, as it features 100% less Lohan boobies and zero Cheech Marin. Still, it's a hobo with a shotgun, so enjoy.


Amigo is underrated, off-the-radar director John Sayles' take on the turn-of-the-century conflict between American forces and the Philippines. It's something we don't talk about very much, just like the talented director!


That's all the junk for this week! Let's meet back tomorrow and discuss weekend plans and (God willing) Brett Favre's career-ending injury!

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Status report and a movie review of Machete

Hey y'all. I'm going to keep this somewhat brief because it's not quite right to be spilling personal business all over the Internets like the contents of a pop can you left on the dryer, but the gist of it is this: My wife's uncle, to whom she was very close, passed away this weekend at the same time one of the students on our speech team lost her father out-of-the-blue. I was set to be incommunicado over the weekend for a vacation, but it quickly became out-of-touch due to mourning. Both Abbie (my wife) and Steph (the girl who lost her dad) are among the brightest, lightest, most wonderful people you ever could meet. Seeing either of them sad hurts like a steel-toed kick to the face, but watching both forced to suffer is downright torture. If you know them, love them extra hard right now. If you don't, send prayers and positive thoughts there way anyway. Either way, please understand if I'm a bit down and short this week.

I have two reviews I could have run with this preamble. One is a somber, serious character sketch that pontificates on death.
The other is Machete. Here's a review of Machete from Justin Senkbile.

Killer Kitsch
Machete takes a stab at immigration reform
Justin Senkbile

Director Robert Rodriguez’s latest film, Machete, is terrible…but I’m guessing you already knew that. Terrible—the right kind of terrible—is what they’re going for, and fans of this sporadic neo-exploitation genre (think Snakes on a Plane and everything Quentin Tarantino has ever done) will likely find their appetites thoroughly satisfied.

Machete (Danny Trejo) used to be the best Federale in Mexico, until his renegade instincts and incorruptible sense of do-goodery put him on the wrong side of powerful drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). We find him living, undocumented, in Texas, finding odd jobs and the occasional street fight. When he takes up an offer to assassinate the violently anti-immigrant state Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro) and things go awry, Machete finds himself again on the wrong side of those in power.

Also present are Jessica Alba as a steely immigration officer and Michelle Rodriguez as a taco truck owner and sometime freedom fighter. Cheech Marin is the most memorable of the cast, playing Machete’s brother, a priest. Lindsay Lohan’s turn as a drug-addled crazy is just as memorable, but only in that it’s so uncomfortable to watch.

Machete began as one of the fake trailers created to run during Grindhouse, 2007’s Rodriguez/Tarantino double-bill experiment. Grindhouse is interesting in that it was immensely fun but only worked in the context of being an “event.” The films themselves (Planet Terror and Death Proof) don’t hold up too well on their own, and such is Machete. Without the Grindhouse atmosphere (fake trailers and assorted vintage ads) it seems particularly silly watching a high-priority, A-grade movie pretend as a B-level cheapie.

Blood, sex, politics and race relations are such things as Machete is made of, and Rodriguez dumbs all ingredients down to such a giddily mindless level that at times it almost feels like you’re watching some new kind of extremely liberated cinema. It’s easy and surprisingly fun to have immigration presented as a totally cut and dry issue, with white, drawling Texans as the villains and a ragtag bunch of down-and-out immigrants on the side of right.

Of course such simplification is wrong, but this sort of dialed-down intellectual approach is an essential part of exploitation cinema; perhaps the reason for the apparently timeless appeal of the genre lies more in the convenience of easy morality than in the sex and violence or even the “so-bad-it’s-good” factor.

Although movies like Machete seem to be, and insist upon, being too goofy to be taken seriously, their mass appeal is reason enough for thoughtful pause. Is Machete brilliantly subversive or just a careless exercise in style? Why can a movie get away with stereotypes and generalizations we’d never tolerate from a TV sitcom or an advertisement?

One thing is for sure: Machete has some fun moments, but not nearly enough to justify its stupidity.

Grade: C-

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What's in a name? Crap. Crap is in a name.

And a happy humpday to ya! I assume everybody had or once had that creepy dude at work who wished you a happy humpday. Well, seeing as how he's probably been fired and/or those charges finally stuck, I figured I'd take over for him. Speaking of inappropriate, Ain’t It Cool has sources so deeply embedded at 20th Century Fox that they must have been willing to receive full lobotomies. That's a dedication to spying so deep that Karl Rove is looking for a way to leak their names to the press. The big news that the traitors to the 20th Century Fox mission statement ("Making bad movies that make good money") were able to leak: The names of the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot and the next Die Hard movie. They are, respectively, Fantastic Four Reborn and Die Hard 24/7. I think if you tried really, really hard, you couldn't come up with two worse titles. Okay, maybe something with a colon that doesn't need it (cough, Captain America: The First Avenger, cough).

As for the projects themselves, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, we must never forget that 20th Century Fox is almost incapable of not ruining the films they have access to. It's almost pathological with them (boy am I going to have to delete these posts fast when I try to shop my screenplay to 20th Century Fox...I can, and will, sell out). On the other hand, whenever I read the current Hickman run on the "Fantastic Four" comic, all I'm left thinking is "how come THIS can't be an incredible movie?" If they went for a blend of comic book and sci-fi, I think they'd really have something. Plus it has instant family appeal if it's done, you know, not totally shitty. And by totally shitty, I mean this:

All fear Galactus' sort of glowing silhouette and his massive...fart cloud? And even worse:
She's a scientist because she wears glasses because scientists wear glasses even if it means they're not as pretty. Hate.

So, maybe a new FF movie could, I don't know, follow some of the more clever storylines in the comic, not get bogged down by an origin that is in no way complicated (scientist/astronauts get bombarded by cosmic rays. The end.), and cast it more appropriately, I'd be down for it. They certainly had to start over after the Galactus fart.

Now, as for the geriatric John McClane...I kind of liked Live Free or Die Hard. The title was a Galactus fart (I'm using it now), but it was kind of fun. Not as a Die Hard movie, because it was like a Looney Toons version of one where there was no actual blood, but as a generic action movie. I have no clue about the plot of the next one, but seeing as how the series was realistically dead after the second one (you can be a guy who something crazy happens to once or twice, but after that it's totally insane), I just want something fun. See, I'm not overly demanding.

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We're being lied to again

When Sin City came out, it changed things. Say what you will about the movie in hindsight, but it was one of the first really adult comic book movie adaptations and one of the first to totally green-screen things like mad. You don't get 300 without Sin City. You also don't get The Spirit, so it's kind of a win-lose situation. Also, I think it set a new level for decency in that Jessica Alba played the first movie stripper to not take her clothes off.

Why hasn't there been a sequel in the last five years? I don't know. Maybe because Robert Rodriguez was obsessed with making more shitty kids movies? Frank Miller really wanted to ruin Scarlet Johansson as a naughty nurse? Who's to say. The important thing is, there have been relentless rumors about Sin City 2 since Sin City 1 came out. All of them have been filthy, filthy lies. Now comes word from a producer that the shebang is moving forward in early 2010, will be co-directed once more by Rodriguez and Miller, and will be based on an original Miller story and not the comics...so if it is getting made and all of this is true, it's going to suck. Frank Miller is like human Russian roulette. Sometimes when he fires it is a live bullet that explodes through your brain in all the right ways. Sometimes he's got absolutely nothing in the chamber. Wait, I think I just used that Russian roulette metaphor to imply it's good when the bullet comes out...look, the point is sometimes Miller sucks big time and sometimes he rules big time. You just never know what you're going to get. Oh, dammit, see now I realize I should have just gone with the box of chocolates metaphor, that would have been waaaay more original. None of this matters anyway because people have been lying about Sin City 2 for 5 years. The untruths continue.

Weekly Round-up

Here's a handy outline for one of the slowest weeks ever, to catch you up on the bloggeration here.

• You want movie reviews? We got yer movie reviews: Here (Paranormal Activity), Here (The Surrogates), and Here (Zombieland).
  
  
• You want movie trailers? We got yer trailers Here (Nightmare on Elm Street) and Here (2012, The Crazies, and Up in the Air).
  
  
• You want mockery? We got yer mockery Here (mocking Jessica Alba) and Here (My junk drawer)
  

Now get out of here you durn kids.

Jessica Alba joins stupid franchise, I mock her

Variety is reporting that Jessica Alba, she of nonexistent talent, is going to star in the next Meet the Parents sequel, tentatively titled The Little Fokker. So, on the one hand, at least it's something I don't care about she will ruin next. On the other, I'm bored and it's a slow news week, so that means, I now give to you......



25 Jobs Jessica Alba Should Have

1.) Mime on fire
2.) Murderer-suicider who kills Megan Fox in a tragic, double-naked, live broadcast
3.) Spoiled food tester
4.) Living tongue donor
5.) Shark speed assessor
6.) Garbage disposal jam remover
7.) St. Louis Cardinal second baseman
8.) Movie critic assigned only Jessica Alba movies
9.) Experimental mermaid-tail-graft plastic surgery test subject
10.) Speed bump
11.) Person who has to tell Tyler Perry he's overexposed
12.) Scientology nun (Scientolonun?)
13.) Final ingredient in best cannibal soup EVER
14.) High-school sex-ed teacher
15.) Post-graduate sex-ed teacher
16.) Sex-ed teacher who specializes in people who play World of Warcraft
17.) Coat rack
18.) Topless ninja
19.) Chair
20.) Getter of whatever thing it is you forgot in your car on the cold, cold night
21.) Pillow
22.) Replacement for Jay Leno
23.) Tester of injection that may or may not give superhuman abilities
24.) Proofreader of Stephanie Meyer first drafts
25.) Former actress

Heyooooooo. What zingers! God this is a slow week. I'll be back later (maybe) with a Zombieland review (it was good). If not, catch you tomorrow.

Fox to refondle the Fantastic Four

It's been said that I write too much. So let's do this visually.

If you've read this column before, you know that the only thing I hate more than this:

Is this:

So, when I heard news that this:

was going to be "rebooted" (meaning a new cast and likely another stupid origin story) in an obvious attempt to make good on the deal that was put in place before Marvel was mouse-owned, I instantly thought of this:

which made me do this:

Realizing I'd rather see this

So, just in case I wasn't clear: Fox is remaking Fantastic Four very quickly after ruining it the first time. At least this means (hopefully) no Jessica Alba. Sigh, I'll start the "Megan Fox for Invisible Girl" rumor now.