Vince Vaughn is my Hero of the Week for pissing off Reese Witherspoon on the set of Four Christmases. Apparently the man who has made a career out of playing a lazy bum has taken his method acting a little too seriously, and Princess Legally Blonde has taken offense to his lack of any sort of work ethic. An insider source claims “Vince rolls onto set in the morning looking like he just came in from a night out, while Reese will arrive early looking camera-ready.” Furthermore, Gamma Phi Beta sorority member Witherspoon - who has a really annoying mouth and whose acting debut was in a Nashville florist’s local commercial - has her self-professed “super-efficient acting methods”, and is irked that Vaughn won’t adhere to them. I want to know where her acting methods were two years ago (Just Like Heaven anybody?). “Then Reese tries to force Vince into blocking out each scene and running through their lines as Vince tries to convince her that he's an ad-libber and wants to play around and see where the scene goes. She's a one-take perfectionist and Vince likes to try it a few different ways. Sometimes Vince will be standing behind her and he has this look on his face that he just wants to kill her!" Unfortunate rumours have emerged from that he has yet to actually do this however.

Vatican Officials (presumably Catholic) have ordered a boycott of the anti-Christian Golden CompASS, as it “promotes a cold and hopeless world without God”. Sounds like London. Maybe filmmakers can blame the official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano for the film’s disastrous box office takes, which have put in jeopardy the sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The editorial claimed the film as “the most anti-Christian film possible”. I would beg to differ. Had the director Chris Weitz, who also made American Pie, rewritten the script to include a scene in which Jesus fucks Lucifer in the ass (Lucifer being a metaphor for Apple Pie), it would be more thoroughly un-Christian. And probably a better film. Though no longer for kids so much.

Kevin Kline sold his nose for $3000. But the money was for charity. Apparently Kline, playing the titular Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, sells his prosthetic proboscis in an auction each night, and last week saw a record figure. I think it’s kind of weird.

According to Video Watchdog magazine, seven different cuts of Blade Runner have been shown to the public, culminating in this month’s 25th anniversary DVD release of The Final Cut, which strangely enough includes reshot footage. Replicant Sean Young (who should have really remained in the 80s), seems to be oblivious to the cult following and various readings of the film. When asked what her favourite version was, she naively replied “The first one. To be honest I don’t really notice a difference”. Really? Like whether or not Harrison Ford’s a Replicant? I guess one has to acknowledge that this is a woman, who after being replaced by Kim Basinger in Batman due to a horse-riding injury, dressed up as Catwoman and confronted Tim Burton on the WB set to try to get him to reconsider her as the vampy villainess in the sequel. Nothing but class.

A movie I can’t wait to miss is Zombie Strippers (Tagline: Live Dead Nudes). A government re-animation chemo-virus gets released into an underground strip club, turning the dancers into “Super Zombie Strippers”. It stars Robert “Freddie” Englund and Jenna “Porn” Jameson. Best Bit: the First Assistant Director is someone I had the displeasure to work for, who boasts a name straight out of the worst kind of Manga rag … Mimi Mui.

Nu Image and Millennium Films saved Jessica Simpson’s latest, Blonde Ambition, from a straight-to-DVD release, by funding a limited Christmas run. Their marketing strategy – 8 Texan theatres, native to Simpson (whose mother claims she has a 160 IQ) and her co-star Luke Wilson (whose mother won't even bother lying) – reaped dividends this past weekend: the movie grossed $1,322, which translated to under 2 tickets per screening. In other news, Simpson recently discovered that she is allergic to cheese, wheat, coffee, chocolate, tomatoes, corn and hot peppers. And worthwhile movies. Meanwhile the film has yet to receive a single review on RottenTomatoes due to producers keeping it away from critics by hiding it in Texas.

UPDATE: For anyone familiar with my friends, I just noticed the part of "Cute Blonde Girl", played by Molly Sullivan, and thought 'I know her'. Alas - though the description fits, it is another. The Real Molly Sullivan is found here.

Movie #3572
Havoc
Barbara Kopple, 2005, USA
Kopple’s career has come a long way from Harlan County, USA. Here she tackles the overlooked plight of the bored high-schoolers who live in the Pacific Palisades, but act like Wiggas. Best of all is seeing Anne “Princess Diaries” Hathaway act all gangsta, singing hip-hop, bonding with Mexicans and in general trying very hard to act. The scenes where her and Bijou Philips rap and then roll around on the floor are particularly strong, as are three offensively gratuitous displays of Hathaway’s breasts.

Movie #3574
Veronica Guerin
Joel Schumacher, 2003, USA
Cate Blanchett’s passable Irish brogue is offset by some truly cheesy direction from Shades of Grey fave Joel Schumacher (who used to be a Costume Designer, an obvious precursor to directing features). Colin Farrell makes an unnecessary cameo as a football hooligan in this limp drama. Best Bit: Schumacher, unable to handle the complex multi-layered narrative intrinsic to a real-life account of political unrest, instead opts for the end credit “Chris Mulligan is a fictional composite character based in part on several different people, and certain events in which the character is depicted have been fictionalised for dramatic effect.” Laziness, or just an inherent lack of talent and intellect? Schumacher also made Dying Young, so you decide.

So I recently put seminal Bollywood musical Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge as my Pick of the Week over at That's Rentertainment, and Paul Young - a writer for Smile Politely - picked it up. He's written a piece about it and asked me for a quote. You can read his article here. If you're interested in my full write-up about the movie, let me know.

Movie #3490
Factory Girl
George Hickenlooper, 2006, USA
True-Movie about Andy Warhol's mate Edie Sedgwick, who died typically tragically young of an overdose. Despite having a bunch of characters that should be interesting, they're just annoying and the film is just boring. Best Bit: Hayden Christensen plays a famous musician with whom Edie has an affair. I had my suspicions so looked it up ... Bob Dylan. And you thought I'm Not There had imaginative casting.

To my immense gratification, Russell Crowe has been named as Hollywood’s most overpaid star. Forbes calculated that he earns studios $5 for every $1 of his salary, which hardly seems like the happy returns most execs would hope for. Except for A Good Year, which despite it's big budget director-star credentials made a paltry $7,458,269 in the market-leading US. Coupled with his reputation as an arrogant piece-of-shit in real life, Crowe can now boast the appeal of an Acrington Stanley reserve side practise.

Sadly Nicole Kidman was deemed the most overpaid actress in Hollywood. Raking in sometimes as much as $15M per role seems bloated when you consider that since her Oscar in 2002, she has appeared in 11 movies, only one of which has turned profit. Offsetting challenging indie darlings (Birth, Dogville, Margot at the Wedding), with mainstream misses that parallel the quality of decisions in her personal life (Bewitched, Stepford Wives compared to marrying Keith Urban), consistency has only been found in Box Office failure:

Dogville ($10M, $2M worldwide)
The Human Stain ($30M, $6M worldwide)
Birth ($20M, $7M worldwide)
Fur ($16.8M, $220,914 US gross)
The Invasion ($80M, $15M US gross)
Margot at the Wedding ($10M, $1.41M after 5 weeks)
Golden Compass ($180M, opened to $25.8M in the US)

Which bodes very well for Baz Luhrmann’s long awaited follow-up to Moulin Rouge, the Australian war epic cleverly titled Australia, which is costing $120M. The only time Kidman has appeared in a movie to cross the $100M mark, was her bit part in 1995’s Batman Forever as the ludicrously titled Dr. Chase Meridian.

Have never been a huge fan of Scotland’s choice for Bond Gerard Butler, but hearing that he hit Hilary 'sWank in the head with suspenders, shutting down filming for five days as she recovered from the four-stitch wound, allows me to forgive him for Joel “Hack” Schumacher’s rendition of Phantom of the Opera. During the shoot for P.S. I Love You the Dracula 2000 star had “been doing this scene for a day and a half, stripping and dancing and then pretending that the suspender hits me in the eye. It got stuck behind me and flew over my head and hit her in the head.” Former Next Karate Kid Swank most incurred my wrath by winning an Oscar for M$B, allowing her the prefix “Two-Time Academy Award Winner” (which is marginally more ludicrous than “Academy Award Winner Ben Affleck”). Knowledge that the tom-boyish vegetarian ex-sister-in-law of Rob Lowe is trying to establish her as a romantic-comic lead can only augment the ill will I feel towards her. Which is plenty.

Ashley “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” Judd, chose to conveniently have her potentially lethal attack of appendicitis in a hospital. Shooting forthcoming film Helen (directed by Sandra Nettleback, who was dialogue coach on 1985’s Seduction: The Cruel Woman), she fell ill at the Ridge Meadows Hospital. Upon collapsing, she was put on a stretcher and taken to a nearby operating room. The actress claiming the incident as “a big stroke of luck” seems to be the equivalent in ‘lucky’ to getting run over by an ambulance. Gratuitous Snipe: the wise 39-year old once turned down a role in Kuffs due to the nude scenes, claiming that “"My mother worked too hard for me to take my clothes off in my first movie.” She would subsequently bare herself in Bug, Normal Life, Eye of the Beholder and Norma Jean and Marilyn.

Movie #3464
Southland Tales
Richard Kelly, 2006-7, USA

I know Mitch made fun of this prior to its release, but I chose – to my eternal regret – to ignore his warnings. Southland Tales is bad. And long. And really bad. The unintelligibly written and inexplicably long (2 hrs 25 mins) post-apocalyptic exercise in patting-your-penis-on-the-back showcases the worst ensemble cast ever assembled. And then it proceeds to cast them as inappropriately as possible. I salute Richard Kelly…

Justin Timberlake as a scarred war veteran who lip-synchs to The Killers
Kevin Smith as a big fat ball of prosthetics posing as a computer geek
Wallace Shawn in drag
Mad TV’s Will Sasso as a bloke named Fortunio Balducci
Mandy Moore as a spoilt rich girl
Jon Lovitz as a hard-as-nails killer cop
Christopher Lambert, in a movie. Again.
2 x Sean William Scott, as identical twins
Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star
SNL’s Amy Poehler and Cheri Oteri as neo-Marxists
And The Rock as the leading man. Who helps save the world.

Movie #3455
Bratz
Sean McNamara, 2007, USA

I thank AirIndia for showing this on the plane.

If I could soak my written sentences with as much sarcasm as I would like to, I would say something akin to "the food fight sequence was so inspired that it briefly made me wish Kubrick had opted for the original ending to Dr. Strangelove". What I really want to say is "Bratz is to high art cinema as Dr. Harold Shipman is to mixologists".

I also want to utilise some choice quotations from Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) reviewers that perfectly articulate my own thoughts…

"One of the most blatantly offensive movies ever to be aimed at young audiences” (David Cornelius)

“A flat-out awful abortive trainwreck of a disastrous pile of worthless stupid garbage of an utter mess of a movie, even by the low, low standards of Movies Based on Toys” (Eric D Snider)

“Apparently Jon Voight can do worse than Baby Geniuses 2" (Peter Sobczynski)

Shame on Neil Minow, who was the only OFCS bloke to give it a positive review.

Movie #3459
The Fog
John Carpenter, 1980, USA
How is this a classic? This seminal snooze-fest is about a mysterious volitional precipitation which harbours killer pirates with a vendetta. Yet it’s worse than it sounds. Nothing happens for a really long time. Jamie Lee Curtis has casual sex with a stranger, and lives. My only kick came from the mother-daughter pairing of two iconic horror heroines: Psycho’s Janet Leigh and Halloween’s Jamie Lee Curtis. Only less time is devoted to them than to faux-scares courtesy of radios turning on really loudly. Which is hardly inspired stuff. And this was when Carpenter was supposed to still be good.

Director Clutching At Straws Of The Week
Steven Spielberg is to have the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind appear in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Lost Skull. The aliens will likely accept SAG minimum since their evident typecasting has seen them offered few roles of late.

Loser of the Week
Suffering even more than coffee shops due to the writer’s strike is one Kiefer Sutherland. His sentence for trying to pull a Jack Bauer whilst driving drunk was to be suspended until 24’s current season wrapped. Except it never started shooting, so Kiefer gets to be subjected to “laundry and kitchen duties” early. The new dates see him miss Christmas, New Year’s AND his birthday.

D’Oh of the Week
Keira “Domino” Knightley recently appeared topless for Interview magazine. “We ended by taking my clothes off. Why does that always happen? Because I say yes, I suppose!”. That would certainly be one factor.

Just in case anyone forgot what a dick-head Michael Bay looks like, here's a picture.

I always thought that Bad Boys 2 would be as political as the auteur behind the video for Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love" could get. But "Frat Boy" from Mystery Men has been ranting about a Microsoft conspiracy that is responsible for the war between Blu-Ray and HD:

"What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100m checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu-ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth."

In case you forgot again, here he demonstrates his striking resemblance to his latest franchise's logo:

Bay famously threatened to withhold Transformers 2 from Paramount as retribution for their exclusive alignment with HD DVD; a stronger deterrent would be the threat of Transformers 3 and 4, but hey.

Here he is again in Pensive Pink...

And a final gratuitous snipe: remember that movie The Island, which cost $126M and opened to $12.4M in the States? With Ewan McGregor as an American action hero? Good stuff.

Movie #3446
I Know Who Killed Me
Chris Sivertson, 2007, USA
Dumbest plot ever.
SPOILERS - highlight to read.
So Lindsay Lohan is abducted by a killer and tortured, and turns up missing her arm, leg and memory. The twist? She is the long-forgotten twin sister of the abducted girl, and is experiencing non-religious stigmata, i.e. she wakes up in the middle of the night and her leg has fallen off. The funniest bits involved supposed tension revolving around the batteries in her fake leg and arm dying. Kinda like a metaphor. For stupidity.

I, Legend by Angel

As long as nerds read books and steves make movies, someone is going to be unhappy with the faithfulness of movie adaptations to their source material. Fortunately for the movie-makers, those people typically shun confrontation and prefer Angel reruns to power-lifting. Still, there isn’t an actor who conjures more fear in a purist’s heart than Will Smith. If you were confused how Isaac Asimov’s hard sci-fi collection of placid short stories became the action romp I, Robot, you know what I mean. If, on the other hand, you are wondering who Isaac Asimov is, then you’re probably excited to see that Akiva Goldsman co-wrote Smith’s next big movie, I Am Legend.

“Gold”sman’s words have powered films such as Batman Forever and Batman & Robin (aka the Batman so good that Warner Brothers decided nothing could ever top it and that they should just start a reset the franchise), The Da Vinci Code, and of course I, Robot. Feeling he hadn’t enriched us enough with his writing, Akiva teamed up with Mike Protosevich to adapt I Am Legend not from the eponymous novel by Richard Matheson, but rather from a 1971 movie based on Matheson’s book, The Omega Man. Yes, it’s a screenplay based on a screenplay based on a book. They claim that it’s based on the script of The Omega Man and not the movie, so they’re not calling it what it is, a remake. Now I am explaining this, because it would be unethical to let Matheson fans enter the theater not knowing I Am Legend’s adaptation was about as faithful as Kobe Bryant in a seedy massage parlor.

However the source material has changed in its translation, the ad campaign for I Am Legend does do an excellent job of building mystery, while highlighting how visually stunning the movie is going to be; it could be 90 minutes of Big Willy alternating ass to mouth with Richard “the Octogenarian” Matheson, and I would probably still pay admission. Smith must also be given credit for trying to secure Guillermo Del Toro as the director (he declined). Movie-goers have otherwise been fortunate in I Am Legend’s lengthy production process, the project having slipped through the fingers of many inept hands. Imagine a universe where our fates diverged in the 90s: while Shadie enjoyed Ridley Scott’s mysterious directorial absence, some poor saps were sitting through his awful I Am Legend starring the miscast Arnold Swartzenegger. Again in 2003, the public almost receives Michael Bay’s I Am Legend starring Will Smith, but instead gets Bad Boys 2. Well, actually I am not sure we came out any richer on that bargain, but the bottom line is that I Am Legend has had so many opportunities to suck that it is virtually improbable that it will be a bad film.

SHADES OF GRAY - Natalie Portman is dumb and What Would Jesus' Evil Twin Brother Do?

Natalie Portman is not as bright as her Harvard education would suggest. First off she seems surprised her nude scene from Hotel Chevalier had been “misappropriated” (read “Now found on porn sites”). “My issue is that I feel it takes something away from what you’re doing”. Like clothes? Furthermore Nat, who was a member of the environmental song and dance troupe The World Patrol Kids under her real name Natalie Hershlag, has decided that she will partake in no more sequels. “When something works you don’t touch it” … does that mean she’d consider a sequel to Mars Attacks? It does rule out a long-rumoured The Professional / Leon bid for franchise cash-in, but she was more insistent on not revisiting her role as Padme in Star Wars. “I spent ten years working on these films. It’s time to let it continue on its own”. Someone should remind her that her character is already dead. She will however work on a rip-off, ahem, remake, of Danish film Brothers with soon-to-be serial plagiarist Jim Sheridan (who also plans on remaking Kurosawa’s Ikiru with Tom Hanks, of all blashpemous choices).

Robert Sigl’s The 13th Disciple is set to come to the silver screen amidst considerable controversy. A fictional narrative about Jesus’ evil twin brother and the pair’s reincarnation in modern times, the film is getting co-produced by Kraut sounding fieber.film and Indian investors. "The film is about two archeologists touring India to research about Jesus' lifespan in India”, explains producer Mario Stefan, who may have a little too much wine in his water. “The story reveals Jesus' evil twin brother who used to practice some different sect … the film is a piece of fiction and not based on true events”. No shit. Stefan expects his meagre budget of $5 and two fish to stretch around 5000 times further than would be expected.

Chyler Leigh, until now known for her role as Lexie Grey in Grey’s Anatomy, should achieve augmented and unwelcome notoriety thanks to her role in 1997’s Kickboxing Academy. A thoroughly bad B-movie certainly, it’s more awkward that she had a love scene with co-star Christopher Khayman Lee (the Red one from Power Rangers in Space), whilst only 15. Oh, and Lee is Leigh’s brother. The scene apparently involved the two locking tongues. I can't imagine a situation in which their actions are acceptable.

Barry Bonds’ [alleged] steroid abuse, and the whole accompanying legal shenanigans, will be the topic of a forthcoming HBO Films production. Once the writers strikes is settled, Ron Bull Durham Shelton will write and direct the adaptation of “Game Of Shadows”. For those unaware, the book is based on “secret grand jury testimony of Bonds and other athletes leaked by Troy Ellerman, a disbarred attorney sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for denying under oath he was the reporters’ source”. The book claims Bonds was jealous of Mark McGwire setting the home run record, and so wrestled with himself, then started using steroids. There are at least two stellar montages in that sentence. Though casting is premature, Shades would like to see Michael Clarke Duncan as the protagonist. And by now we should know the mantra “If you build a baseball movie, Kevin Costner will no doubt come” … maybe as a wise batting coach who disperses advice and wisdoms as if they were letters of hope.

Stephen King to direct instead of write, Thomas Jane to direct instead of act, Bryan Singer to be a Diva instead of direct. And The Coen Brothers are wonderful, as always.

Stephen King has not ruled out directing another movie. “I think it would be great, sometime when I wasn’t coked and drunk out of my mind, and see what came out”. He refers to 1986 horror/sci-fi/thriller/crapfest masala Maximum Overdrive, in which Emilio Estevez leads a group of humans trying to survive when “machines start to come alive and become homicidal”. To an AC/DC score composed under King’s supervision. At the time the Autopsy Room Four writer was sick of poor adaptations of his work … “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself”. The film scores a 4.4 on IMDB.

Thomas Jane’s is shooting his directorial debut, The Dark Country, about “a couple who are forced to deal with a body in the desert making their honeymoon a hellish ride”. Furthermore, the Deep Blue Sea’s Jane has chosen to shoot the movie in 3D. His “great cast” includes Lauren German, for whom the New Mexico desert night shoots aren’t always comfortable: “[She’s] out there wearing next to nothing. She’s freezing for her art”. Art! To direct the epic, Jane (who once wrote a comic book entitled ‘Bad Planet’) turned down reprising his role in The Punisher: War Zone, being replaced by even-less-known Ray Stevenson, with Dominic West as a villain imaginatively named Jigsaw. Incidentally, the best moment in The Punisher never made it to screen; it was when Jane ‘accidentally’ stabbed Kevin Nash during a fight scene.

Bryan Singer violated Arnold Schwarzenegger’s no-fly-zone order by demanding to arrive by helicopter for Brandon Routh’s wedding. Quelle Diva. His Superman’s marriage to actress Courtney Ford took place at the El Capitan Ranch in Santa Barbara. The couple’s fortunes have changed somewhat: when they met four years ago, Routh was working at a Hollywood bowling alley, but has since headlined what was, at the time of release, the most expensive movie ever. He proposed at the 2006 Glastonbury Festival, which is known by attendees for having the dirtiest loos this side of Trainspotting.

I just wanted to report this cos it’s interesting. To make low-budget neo-noir masterpiece No Country For Old Men, the Coen Brothers (who have a 0.917 batting average), spent $800 a gallon on fake blood shipped from England. Joel explains “we had a lot of extras that had to lie around in the baking sun covered with blood on the desert floor for hours at a time … I wanted to know why they were [buying expensive blood] instead of just mixing food colouring with Karo syrup, which they usually do, and I was told this blood had no sugar in it … so [they extas] wouldn’t be attacked by creepy bugs and animals that might otherwise be attracted to sugar”.

Penelope Cruz in porno with sis for bro, Uma Thurman stalked, and Brian De Palma still can't make movies

Penelope Cruz’s next screen role makes me decidedly uncomfortable. It’s a third remake of Abre Los Ojos / Vanilla Sky. Just kidding. Penelope and her sister Monica will play porn stars in a video for their musician brother’s new album. Nepotistic incest m’thinks. I feel no need to continue.

Uma Thurman’s stalker has been arrested after parking his car and living outside her Manhattan home. The 37-year old Jackson Jordan fell in love when he watchedone of her movies and “their eyes connected”. Jordan, obviously not familiar with the fourth wall, claims that they are “meant to be together … she is a wonderful person”. Uma, who is the granddaughter of Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge, a Prussian nobleman, and his Sweedish wife Brigit Holmquist, seemed surprisingly nonplussed by the whole ordeal.

Point and laugh at Brian De Palma, whose latest film grossed $25,628 this past week-end. Redacted is yet another poorly received anti-war flick whose sole political success would be in calling for stricter quality-control guidelines on films. Critic Michael Medved claimed “this could be the worst movie I’ve ever seen”.

Dealing with a group of US soldiers who rape and murder a 14-year old Iraqi girl, the film is most likely an uncanny remake of a forgotten Hitchcock thriller. Producer Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is likely to lose almost his entire investment, considering a Joe Strummer documentary made more money on fewer theatres.

Star Trek: Cloverfield by Angel

If you don’t live in your parents’ basement, then you’ll probably need to clear some time out of your calendar for the newest Star Trek movie slated for release Stardate [12]25.2008 (that’s Christmas to the sexual cavaliers who’ve gone where no Trekkie has gone before). If you’ve seen the Star Trek movies, you know there hasn’t been a decent Star Trek movie since the Borg’s plot to destroy earth was foiled by a time traveling Patrick Stewart; finally there is silver lining on that warp necell. JJ “Lost” Abrahams helms the project, and I would let him fly my Starship Cineplex anywhere. The cast is warp 9 too. The inestimable Simon Pegg plays Scotty. Karl Urban, aka Eomer from Lord of the Rings, is grumpy Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. This part is just what the “doctor” ordered for Urban, whose last starred as a Viking expat in the Norse vs. Comanche action miscarriage Pathfinder. Eric Bana, the villain, no doubt is drawing fuel from the fact that Ed Norton will be ten times the Hulk he ever was. The best part of the whole thing: the open casting calls for Starfleet Academy. They’re looking for:

“Talent with interesting and unique facial features such as: long necks, small heads, extremely large heads, wide-set eyes, bug eyes, close-set eyes, large forehead, short upper lip, pronounced cheekbones, over- or undersized ears and/or nose, facial deformities, ultra plain-looking people, ultra perfect-looking people, pure wholesome looks, twins, triplets, emaciated talent, regally poised and postured talent, or other visually unique characteristics. Everyone must be thin, athletic, fit; wardrobe will be form-fitting.”

Do you hear that shrieking in the background as another Trekkie hits that final sentence? Nerd-boners haven’t died that quickly since Jar Jar Binks. They might as well said, “Have you had gastric bypass surgery? Do you like Star Trek?”

TURKISH STAR WARS from Chris

Sometimes you can make a "classic" film even better. In 1982, a Turkish filmmaker did just that with Star Wars. Behold the final battle from his masterpiece:



My favorite parts:

0:13 -- Trampolines!
0:45 -- If only Luke's clothes drew more attention to his nipples...
2:29, 2:39, and 3:10 -- Story of Ricky should have had more furries.
4:16 -- Best. Lasers. Ever.
8:33 -- IN HALF!!!
8:35 -- Oh...or maybe 2/3 and 2/3...which is a pretty amazing way to kill a guy.

In summation: who would ever want to watch a boring movie like Star Wars when this exists?

U2 to help write Spider-Man: The Musical, Richard Gere is gay, I wish Adrien Brody were dead, Lance Armstrong and Olsen Twin sitting in a tree, and the Coen Brothers back to what they do best.

I am a huge fan of Julie Taymor. She gave us Titus. And my subjective fave of the year Across The Universe. But news that she is directing a Spider-Man musical makes me cringe. That she is casting Universe leads Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood in the leads raises an eyebrow. And when I hear that U2 are co-writing the songs, my heart sings with sadness. Most perturbingly, Raimi, Maguire and Dunst are all set to bow out of Spidey 4, which suggests this could set in motion a disappointing and strange change of direction for the flailing franchise. But at the least both members of the under-nourished musical-loving-comic-book-reading crowd will get their long overdue dream project.

Insightful quotation from Alan Coren: when asked whether neighbour Richard Gere was gay he said that “I don’t know if he is actually gay, but he would probably help out if they were short-handed.” News.

Adrien Brody tragically escaped death twice whilst shooting The Darjeeling Limited. Brody, whose love for hip-hop has seen him mentored by RZA to become a producer and name his chihuahua Ceelo, had an encounter with a low-hanging power line whilst riding his motorcycle. The second time he was riding “behind a tuk-tuk … when the driver suddenly pulled to the side and revealed a cow … I jammed on the brakes, skidded and nearly slammed straight into it … I was thinking: 'This is going to be the way I'll be remembered: rear-ending a cow’”.
Gratuitous Snipe: the method actor once spent months performing prison exercises, sitting in isolation tanks and going on protein diets to prepare for his role in The Jacket, which exactly eleven people saw.

Lance Armstrong is rumoured to be dating one half of the Olsen Twins. He was snapped having an “intimate dinner” with 15 years younger Ashley, but denied the romantic entanglement. However, he also claimed “she strikes me as a nice, smart lady”, so we know he’s full of shite.

Serious note: go see No Country For Old Men. It’s as good a movie as has come out all year (myself, Mitch and JDitty agree on this). The Coen Brothers have crafted a deft, unique and stunning neo-noir that harks back to the tone of their sublime debut Blood Simple and echoes the narrative, pacing and quality of Fargo. Javier Bardem is the revelatory stand-out in an ensemble of stellar performances. These guys keep getting better. Go see. Today. And twice.

Terminator 4 a la McFuck, Mini Madonna in Harry Potter, Clooney vs. Fabio continued and Tom Cruies special (with funny pic)

The ludicrously titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins has a director. By day he’s just Joseph McGinty Nichol, shit-head frat-boy with bad taste. By night he becomes McG, which is short-hand for Must Create Garbage. The former Korn music vid director made $4M (which calculates as $25 per frame) to deliver us Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. And you thought T3 would be the low-point.

UPDATE: Batman is John Connor. Christian Bale has been cast in the lead role ... head over to Aint It Cool News for a characteristically inarticulate explanation.

Madonna’s 11-year old sprog has been approached for a part in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The Brit-raised Lourdes, nicknamed Lola, is pictured right; she has obviously inherited her mother’s looks and her father’s (fitness trainer Carlos Leon) unibrow. Madonna is said to be considering the offer, only if a remix of Holiday is played during Hogwarts’ Christmas Holiday montage.

Readers may remember the report on an altercation between Fabio and George Clooney. Since then Fabs has called Clooney “a low-class scumbag” and though no-one in the restaurant heard it, says Clooney called his female companion “a fat cow”. Not only that, but “he called the women names. At that point I lost my temper. I went after him and he ran out of the restaurant. … These women were with me and as a man I defend them. He was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He's not even half a man". What a hero.

For your amusement there follows a video that Mitch fished out, of that time that Fabio was hit in the face by a swan whilst on a roller-coaster.

Diminutive shit-head Tom Cruise (pictured right) is most likely to play the surprisingly tall Hugh Hefner in a forthcoming biopic about the Playboy founder's "colorful life". The almost forty year age gap doesn't phase the All The Right Moves star, who thinks he is "the perfect person to bring [the story] to the big screen" that could remind people of his "versatility as an actor". Brett Rush Hour Ratner is to direct, a man who claims oxymornically to be Michael Jackson's pal and single-handedly ruined the X-Men franchise.

When Bender Beckham was asked whether he’s being coerced into Scientology, he replied “There’s been nothing shoved down our throats because friends don’t do things like that”. Well rehearsed.

Meanwhile Princess Di biographer Andrew Morton has had to go into security exile to hide from angry scientologists on account of a forthcoming book about Tom Cruise in which he reveals “deep, dark secrets about Tom Cruise's sex life and religious beliefs”. More of this soon I am sure.

Stephen King's a cheap hack whore, Lohan's a manipulative whore, Jane Seymour's a party whore.

Stephen King has, to my utter astonishment, revealed that he doesn't "care that much at all" about the quality of film adaptations of his work. He of The Boogeyman, Thinner and The Mangler 2 fame. Regardless, whilst more talented writers are optioning their output for millions, King sold rights to his “Dark Tower” series to equally hacky J. J. Abrams for $19. Which is more than I would have paid. "I really want to see this," King said at a recent convention. "It's this story where all these guys are screaming and attacking, like in 300, and they're the last bunch of guys holding out, and the guys against them all [have] blue faces, like Mel Gibson in Braveheart”. Sounds fantastic.

Lindsay Lohan served a mere 83 minutes in jail, coincidentally the exact length of her 2002 opus Get A Clue. She did not, however, have time to watch Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, which is what she really wanted to do. Out in time for lunch, Lohan negotiated community service instead of more jail time. The Mean Girl has also been indulging in some light reading; photographers have snapped her carrying a book entitled ‘Blood’.

Bond Girl Jane Seymour has received complaints from neighbours about the late-night parties at her mansion. Dr. Quinn has a 24-hour entertainment license for her country abode, and rents it out to celebs like Robbie Williams for $28k/wk. Now at 56 years young, she will be brought to Magistrates’ Court on “raucous behaviour” charges. Considering that Radiohead used it to record OK Computer, I hope it is protected under some Historical Edifice Act.

Movie #3410
Scenes Of A Sexual Nature
Ed Blum, 2006, UK
Upon release, Cosmopolitan claimed it as “the best British romantic comedy about sexual politics this year”. Note it takes six qualifiers in order to attach the word Best. And not one less. So boring and misjudged.

Shadie's World as Hosted by That's Rentertainment!

My friend Geoff, who owns the coolest video store I've ever frequented - That's Rentertainment - has posted comprehensive lists of what I believe to be the best and worst films I've seen, as well as categorised favourites lists.

He's lovingly entitled it Shadie's World, in reference to a music column I used to write for his record label Parasol ... Parasol also serves as a mail order company, and you should go here to order Heima, Sigur Rós' concert movie / documentary that comes out November 20th in the States.

This scene, from Star Trek, has to be about the funniest fight sequence I have ever seen. Enjoy.

Spartacus and Terl snog, Salma prayed for big boobs, Michelle Gellar becomes Michelle Prinze and Bon Jovi for Governor of New Jersey

This kiss has a combined age of 144 years. Kirk Douglas presented Ladder 49's Travolta with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and due to an immobility inherited from his stroke was unable to retreat as quickly as Travolta's tongue approached. Douglas Sr. would later claim the scientologist tasted of cheese.

Salma Hayek used to be flat-chested, but prayed to God for larger breasts and now has an ample bosom. Dyslexic Hayek, who starred opposite Chandler in Fools Rush In, was teased for having small breasts as a kid: "I put my hands in holy water and said 'Please God, give me some breasts' ... Within a few months I developed a growing spurt". And as God probably intended, she has displayed those breasts in Ask The Dust, Frida, Velocity of Gary, Breaking Up and Desperado.

Sarah Michelle Gellar may not be known for her acting chops, but at least she can give pragmatic gifts. To celebrate five years of marriage to hubbie Freddie Prinze Jr., Gellar became Sarah Michelle Prinze. The clean start may allow Buffy to forget duds like Simply Irresistible, The Grudge 2 and Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. "On our anniversary I showed [Freddie] my new driver's license". The couple met on 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer and presumed it could only get better from there.

Jon Bon Jovi apparently only keeps his New Jersey abode because he "could be planning one day to run for governor". Jon Francis Bongiovi Jr., who in unrelated news is suing energy drink Mijovi over name similarities, figures when he gives up his country music aspirations he can get a stress-free part-time job running the state of New Jersey. But until then his "day job is going too well".

Strike Special, Wesley Snipes victim of racist injustice and Britney and Christian stupid it out.

If the writers on strike can only muster slogans such as “Give Us Our Word’s Worth” or “We’re not getting a Whit, man”, it’s probably a decent thing they’re on hiatus. Seriously, one sign read: “The Winter of our Dissed Content” And as news trickles in that Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and dozens of other must-see tube-distractions are "pausing", it becomes harder to convince me it’s a bad thing. Though spare a thought for the innocent victims: LA’s coffee shops, which have been complaining of fewer laptop-wielding type-smiths frequenting their establishments, causing a decline in sales! Most in danger are exclusives Joe servers like The Office, where for $500/month you can get 24 hour access to their muse-like hot beverages. As ludicrous as it sounds.

Wesley Snipes has claimed that Florida is too racist for him to get a fair trial. Up on tax evasion charges, the Blade: Trinity actor believes that prosecutors “deliberately chose the most racially discriminatory venue available to the government with the best possibility of an all-white Southern jury”. Remember that Passenger 57 line “Always bet on black”? Ha. The motion to move the trial to New York describes the area as a hotbed of Klan activity where the Klan adopted highways to commemorate the Klan and the Confederate flag flies over government property", where no fair trial could take place. This Snipes-focused negativity explained by racism was once unfairly attributed to his role in Money Train. The Chief Assistant State Attorney dismissed the argument, saying “I’ve never seen any evidence that there was racism here any more than anywhere else in the country”. How reassuring. “I think a person can get as fair a trial here as anywhere”. Need I say more?

As previously stated, Britney is too easy a target for me to do anything but report her actions. So the other day, she’s driving with her kids in the car and she ran a red light at “a particularly dangerous intersection”. Best part: her court-assigned parenting coach was also in the car. Perhaps better: she was also texting on her cell.

New member of the Stupidity Immunity Club is Christina Aguilera, who has claimed she would wear her crotchless chaps from the ‘Dirrty’ video again when she was 60.

Bad Movies That Are Soon To Be Franchises
i) The sequel to a TV remake of a toy adaptation that is Transformers 2: auteur Michael Bay talks about those infamous script leakers ... “We're going to leak a lot of false information all over the place. I now know their game. They're going to get a lot of script treatments that they think are going to be the script. They will never see the script. We've got scripts and treatments written up that we're going to leak. No one's going to know." The new being that this will mark the first time Michael Bay has directed from an actual script.
ii) a Paul Verhoeven (Showgirls, Hollow Man) helmed sequel to the Thomas Crown Affair, which is itself a remake of crime caper Topkapi. Where has all the originality gone? Clint Howard replaces Pierce Brosnan. I wish. But Angelina Jolie does replace Rene Russo.
iii) a prequel to Tim Burton’s The Planet of the Apes remake. Currently shopping for a director, so feel free to submit your bid. A sequel was out of the question, since everyone's spent six years trying to forget Burton's turkey, and the ending chosen out of a hat after five others were shot.

In the Future the Book Is still Better

by Angel

After completing a midnight séance and smoking three pounds of salvia, the deified soul of John Lennon (to whom time is no barrier and all truths are magnified) wrote me an epistle through my digital Ouija board. I have learned this: Milton’s classic poem "Paradise Lost" is finally leaping off the dusty page and onto the shimmering silver screen. The movie version of the best rendition of hell since Dante’s "The Inferno" hits theaters in 2009, only to compete with none other than Paradise Lost, which Shadie tells me is about, “’A brother [looking] for his lost sister who's been turned into a z,’ Z meaning zombie." At least Milton can be proud to win the award for best movie named Paradise Lost after it is overlooked at the Oscars.

Paradise Lost is channeled through the stunning vision of director Scott Derrickson. Don’t worry Milton purists—this isn’t Scotty’s first foray into Hell; he wrote and directed Hellraiser: Inferno. Now if I were the person in charge of Legendary Pictures, that would have been all I needed to green light this fiasco, but Derrickson does us one better by enlisting serious writing talent. Contributors Phil DiBlasi and Brian Willinger popped their movie cherries on this film with help from Stuart Hazeldine, whose last script was Battle Chasers (a not yet released film based on the eponymous over-the-top fantasy comic book featuring a strong, generic warrior with a big sword chasing giant red herrings and, of course, battles) and is no stranger to adapting fine literature to the big screen (he was an extra in DeNiro’s Frankenstein). When I felt my connection to Lennon’s ghost waning, I asked him to sum the movie in five words. He said, “Milton’s lucky—he was blind.”

Shadie: I also want to draw everyone's attention to the superb movie Turistas, which was known internationally as, you guessed it, Paradise Lost and featured tourists in Brazil getting kidnapped and harvested for spare organs. It starred Melissa George, of Home and Away fame ... the same Aussie soap that once featured thesps like Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Isla Fisher.

Coppola doesn't like The Godfather, a priest stalks Conan O'Brien and Meryl Streep doesn't like ABBA

Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary director behind The Rainmaker, has made a list of the five best films he has made: The Rain People, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish and the about-to-be-released Youth Without Youth. Did anyone notice what he did there? It’s very clever. After a self-imposed post-uncredited-work-on-Supernova hiatus, Coppola is publicising his comeback movie by indirectly claiming it’s better than Godfather Part III. And also Parts II and I. Most interestingly Coppola forgot Jack, which was the movie he dedicated to his son. Remember that movie? Robin Williams as a man-child (only this time literally). There’s that scene where Williams farts into a Tupperware container and Bill Cosby smells it and falls out of a tree-house. Intelligent stuff. Before we move off Coppola, I want to make sure everyone’s aware of his reaction to his script and back-ups for Tetro being stolen from his studio in Buenos Aires: “The script made Hamlet look like garbage, but it’s gone”. What a modest chap.

The priest accused of stalking Conan O’Brien has been found fit to stand trial. The Archdiocese of Boston has been embarrassed by the actions of 46-year old Reverend David Ajemian, and have “placed him on leave”. Apparently Ajemian would sent “multiple [threatening] communications to O’Brien over 14 months” that he “liked to sign ‘Padre’ … [and] write on parish letterheads”, and excerpt of one printed below:
I’m told by some of those officious little usher people that you’re overbooked. Is this the way you treat your most dangerous fans? You owe me big-time pal. I want a public confession before I ever consider giving you absolution—or [I want] a spot on your couch.
He also contacted O’Briens parents, and tried to break into a taping of NBC’s ‘Late Night With Conan O’Brien’, which is what finally got him arrested. Ajemian had entered priesthood aged 30, after graduating from Milton and Harvard and failing to find a regular job.

Perennial Oscar stalwart Meryl Streep angered ABBA’s Benny Andersson (what a Swedish name) while shooting the adaptation of Mamma Mia! Despite successfully memorising lines for snoozefests Evening and River Wild, was unable to remember lyrics to Andersson’s songs. The one-time screen legend, who has a deviated septum and a fear of helicopters, explained: “I realized all of their music was stuck in my head without my knowing it, that I knew every word to every song. Except that I got most of them wrong”. Oh. Except that. Apparently Streep prefers the soothing sounds of Peter Gabiel.
In other news about highly-anticipated musicals, Michelle Pfeiffer has been offered a role in the Grease remake. Whether it was her work on the remake of Hairspray, or her lead performance in Grease 2 that secured her a part, is not clear. Jessica Simpson may play the part of Sandy. John Travolta not been approached.

Movie #3391
Catwoman
Pitof, 2004, USA
Halle Berry as a Dominatrix in a PG-13 movie? Sharon Stone as a Beautician/Villain with a Marble Face? Benjamin Bratt as an Actor? The Online Film Critics Society gave this a generous 5%. Directed by Pitof? More like Pissoff.

LIONS AND AWARDS AND CRUISE OH MY!
by JDitty

Tom Cruise was recently "saluted" by the Museum of the Moving Image with a special dinner at Cipriani restaurant in New York. Apparently, his shortliness, lacked the moral support of Lions for Lambs costars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, but you bet that the 45-year-old outspoken non-pill inducing pietistic Scientolgist had his 27-year-old fixated wife, Katie Holmes, in tow.

Fellow science FICTION fan and L. Ron loyalist Sky Dayton joined the Cruise's at their table, as did Washington Redskin's owner Dan Snyder. Both are high on Redford's list of "people who I would like to spend Thanksgiving with" list.

According to reports, the relationship between Redford, Cruise and Streep is strained following weeks of promotion and pretending to like one another. Said one insider: "Meryl and Bob can't stand Tom. In London, Tom kept trying to push himself into interviews. Bob said 'No.' Tom wouldn't listen. Meryl has done almost nothing for the movie. She wants nothing to do with him."

The highly trustworthy Fox News reported that the trio's recent appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" revealed evident tension and lack of camaraderie as the show's producers edited the piece down to a manageable effort at promotion.

Cruise, of Far and Away fame, plays a manipulative Republican senator with plans for the presidency in Lambs. Perhaps Hollywood liberals Streep and Redford found his portrayal too convincing or maybe Cruise's ego butted heads with the Death Becomes Her and Havana stars.

Lions for Lambs, which manages to reveal none of its plot details in the trailers, after having been promoted to the level of the triumvirate of Spiderman, opened to an astonishing $6.71 million box office receipts. This places Lions in the realm of Redford-helmed cash cows like The Legend of Bagger Vance and Quiz Show. The Cruise/Streep/Redford war epic is the latest from Hollywood in a sad attempt to make American's think about the "war on terror." Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, and The Kingdom all scored big in the U.S. box office ($56 million in total, $47mil of which is thanks to Jamie Foxx), meaning they produced an educated public dedicated to ending the U.S.'s latest Vietnam.

Lambs is Cruise's first film produced under his newly acquired United Artists film company (co-owned by non-acting life partner Paula Wagner). Although the opening weekend may spell flop, it is reassuring to note that Cruise's association with United Artists places him owning the company founded by film greats D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, all noted solipsistic Scientologists.

The next United Artist project for Cruise is the much talked about Valkyrie, which fictionalizes Ethan Hunt traveling in time with Luther (Ving Rhames) to 1940s Rhineland in order to knock off Hitler (with explosions and a "hot" director behind it!). As Cruise attempts to reshape his image following much talked about antics and bull-headedness, he figured buying his own studio and changing history so he's the guy who killed Hitler would win fans back. Tom, you had us at "Hitler."

What does Marty see in Leo?

“A lie told often enough becomes truth”

-Vladimir Lenin

"I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand. "

-Leonardo DiCaprio

Damned if I know.
What I do know is this:
-there were multiple assassination attempts on Lenin's life
-history has proven itself to be cyclical

Take from that what you will.

MOVIES MITCH CAN'T WAIT TO MISS

The Mist
Director: Frank Darabont
Starring: Thomas Jane
Release date: November 21st, 2007

"We have a joke now - because the first two films I directed were period prison movies - that my directing career will stall unless he [Stephen King] writes another period prison story" -- Frank Darabont

It’s a good joke.

Substitute:
- the prison with a convenience store whose metal bars are dense humidity (not fog)
- sadistic prison guards with CGI monsters
- talented actors with Thomas Jane.

A very good joke.

Darabont, after the highly successful Majestic (did you see it? No? Huh.) is returning to his roots. He’s written horror; horror that goes into the history books. Horror like The Fly II (a sequel to a remake) and the terrifying 1988 version of The Blob (a remake). In case you mix up your movies within the blob franchise, this is the one where the teenager is pulled into and through a sink drain by the title character.

Oh, the horror.

So, the fellow who spent a year writing a to-be-rejected screenplay for Indiana Jones 4 is adapting and directing another Stephen King novella, this one from 1980. With the number of King adaptations that have been brought the screen (into three figures and climbing), why has this one taken damn near 3 decades to get made? Probably because we’ve been waiting for the cinematic technology to do such a work of terror the justice it deserves. Definitely not because the screenwriter/director has no good ideas of his own, and this is one in the quickly diminishing pool of King’s pop-schlock-passing-for-literature that up until now has actually been deemed ‘too shitty, even for him’.

Possible spoiler:

A mist that serves as a portal to another dimension through which monsters can enter.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Can’t wait for the remake.

Question: If a Reality TV star talks, and there are no cameras around, did they make a noise?
Answer: Yes, unfortunately.
by Angel

I had a brush with minor celebrity last Friday at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) premier of the acerbically funny and endearing Juno. Following the film, Allison Maclean (Jesus’ Son) moderated a Q&A with director Jason Reitman and midway through hardball questions like, “Where did you find Ellen Page,” and, “Who is Diablo Cody?” entered Soviet firecracker Andre from VH1’s new reality TV contest America’s Most Smartest Model. I bet you can guess who managed to ask the longest, rambling, most pointless, and of course last question of the night. Apparently when he’s not sexually assaulting women or vacationing at Rieker’s, Andre spends his spare time ruining Q&As and forming fragment nonsequiturs. Now, Andre may be on a reality show about anthropomorphic hubris failing to show that pretty people can be smart too, but I assumed that there was some scripting involved. Worry not AMSM fans: this show won’t feel a thing from the recent Writers Guild strike. Prefacing his comment with, “I may have missed the movie but,” he yakked for five minutes on Juno’s lack of cell phones without completing a single whole sentence. Andrei may not be the sharpest sickle in the shed, but someone who take thats long to say, “I didn’t see your movie, but I am happy to hear there were no cell phones in it; kids use them to feel popular these days” at the Guild Premier Q&A to the second youngest Director in the DGA* has married stupid and self-absorbed in a new and interesting way. The icing: he blamed Day Light Savings for missing the 90 minute film.

*The youngest DGA member is Jason Bateman, who is great in Juno, which you should see.

Russell Crowe spits on Denzel, Ridley Scott makes Monopoly: The Movie, and Leonardo was once a virgin.

(This is going to be an atypically long rant about things I don’t like, most of which seem to involve Russell Crowe directly or indirectly. Some say coincidence; some say the Aussie sucks)

During his recent advertising for over-hyped Ridley Scott venture American Gangster, Crowe reminisced about the last time he acted with Denzel, in 1995’s Virtuosity, in which Crowe plays SID 6.7, a virtual-reality serial killer who escapes into the real world and is hunted by Denzel’s typecast cop. A virtual (geddit?) uknown at the time, Crowe accidentally spit at Washington. “We had a cyclone wire fence between us and the scene was pretty intense,” explains the Proof of Life star. “They said ‘Action!’, and I started going into it … this little bit of spit comes out of my mouth. It was really athletic and graceful … [it wound] its way through the wire and straight onto Denzel’s lip.” Denzel retorted not with other body fluids, but with his quick witted “I love the taste of saliva in the morning!”. Clever.

And what's with Denzel Washington's tired hard-nut badass routine. Ever since Training Day, he's claimed to be so hardcore that even his subtitles have to be dynamic (see: Man On Fire. Seriously, the man has obnoxious subtitles).

My friend Don and I saw the trailer for American Gangstaaa quite a few times. We even perfected the “THEY TRIED TO KILL MY [chest beat] WIFE!” routine. He suggested that someone should sit Scott down and show him Blade Runner and Alien, just to remind him that he has made at least two good movies, and perhaps how to do so again. I recently caught A Good Year and would have to agree. And though I probably wouldn’t refuse the opportunity to work with Scott, chances are it’d be crap. Does anyone remember the Dead Poet’s Society plagiarism at the end of White Squall, or when G. I. Jane says “Suck my dick!”? How about Kingdom of Heaven (aka Gladiator with Arabs) or Hannibal (aka Silence of the Lambs: The Unnecessary Cash-In?

And talking of the unnecessary, I am utterly serious when I announce that the 69-year old Scott is soon to make a feature-length version of the board game Monopoly. The British version. The oldest agency in Hollywood, William Morris, has apparently offered “the cream of its stable of 2,000 actors to help create the blockbuster movie”, which will apparently be a racy (no pun intended) comedy thriller. A spokesperson for Hasbro says “[we have] cool games like Ouija, which could be a supernatural thriller, but we think Monopoly with Ridley Scott … as a massive global hit”. An estimated 750M people have played Monopoly since its inception in the 1930s, and the company hopes “everyone will be curious about how it translates to the screen”. Kirsten Dunst and Scarlett Johansson have been approached for parts as “sexy young people” in an attempt to “win over teenagers who regard board games as a last resort on a wet afternoon”. Meanwhile, a mature actor is likely to play Rich Uncle Pennybags, the cavorting capitalist in a top hat. I am not exaggerating one word of this paragraph.

Until then, Ridley Scott is finishing up Body of Lies, starring (wait for it) Russell Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Some may remember their last collaboration: Western spoof The Quick and the Dead*, with a usually naked Sharon Stone. Phone-thrower Crowe recalls DiCaprio was only 17 and “was embarrassed about not losing his virginity … he talked about that constantly … I’m hoping we have some time so he can fill in what’s happened in between, maybe show some photos, because I’m sure life’s different now”. Perv.
* = not to be confused with 2006 Screamfest Winner The Quick and the Undead.

Now here’s a Happy Families problem. If Ridley Scott is directing DiCaprio, maybe he’ll take a shine to him, which frees up Crowe exclusively to Ron Howard. Meanwhile, that leaves Scorsese free of Leo The Brat, so Marty can make a good movie again?


UPDATE: After the below news about Hayden Pant-Ear-Hairy, the latest celebrity mammal outcry comes from Paris Hilton's concern for elephants and how we should never forget that they are drinking themselves to death. “We need to stop making alcohol available to them … It is becoming really dangerous … the elephants get drunk all the time”. I suggest carding them at the door. Apparently forty elephants electrocuted themselves in north-east India, after getting drunk on rice beer. Sounds like a helluva party. The socialite is now urging Indian residents to lock up their booze.

The Book Was Better by Angel

I am having a serious crisis of faith over the new movie Beowulf. Written by fantasy golden boy Neil Gaiman and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf stars, to name a fraction of the cast, the likes of Hannibal Lector, Marty McFly's dad, and glistening, naked Lara Croft with tentacles and shit all over. As an English-majoring, Han-shot-first-style fantasy geek, I feel like I should have at least a category five nerd boner, but I can't muster more than a stale, lingering fart of excitement. So the premise is that they filmed the actors performing the movie and then went back through, completely replacing everyone with uncanny-valley CGI models. While I may be flaccid and limp, I get the feeling that Zemeckis has a serious hard on for computer animation (read: fetish). I have to question his choice here. Was pasting Ray Winstone's fat head on top of a muscle-bound meathead a la Ichi the Killer too unconvincing? Maybe little Shiloh made Angelina's disrobed body resemble a crumpled paper bag on top of a droopy oyster. Whatever inspired this dubious choice, about the only joy I get watching the trailer comes from imagining the bizarre set of matrices and formulae use to select which animators would get to construct a CGI nude Angelina Jolie completely from scratch (and whether they had to work from memory or a real live naked Angelina Jolie).

Interestingly enough, Beowulf was developed at the same time as the video game of the same name, which according to previews has only marginally worse effects. The only thing the film appears to have going for it is naked CGI Angelina Jolie. This is unfortunate, because computer-generated sex scenes top my List of Masturbatory Aides that Make Me Feel Pathetic and without Dignity (joining its brothers: Japanese animation, furry porn, pictures of dragons fucking cars, and interactive computer-generated sex scenes in video games based on movies).

Fabio and Batman have gotten into a fight in front of the Queen of England and the psycho from Goodfellas. Apparently Fabio was dining with mates at LA’s Madeo, when they started an impromptu photo session. George Clooney was at a nearby table, and thought they were taking shots of him with girlfriend Sarah Larson. Fabio went over to try to explain, and ended up yelling “I thought you were a nice guy. Stop being a Diva”. For real. Fabio called someone a Diva. The world’s worst living Batman apparently stormed out, as fellow diners Dame Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci looked on. “George is lucky he didn’t end up in the ER”, said the ridiculously haired Italian, the irony of Clooney’s TV origins probably lost on him. I have included a picture of Fabio for your amusement, and want to remind readers of 1998 commercial for ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’.

UPDATE: Fabio's manager, several hours later, has added the quip "Clooney started on ER and Fabio was going to send him back there". That's really one you either say at the time, or keep to yourself.

Meanwhile in other Clooney related news, London’s Madame Tussauds Wax Museum has had to replace the Brad Pitt and George Clooney models. “Brad’s bum was in a bad way” said a spokesperson, because “visitors kept pinching Brad's bottom” and “George’s cheeks were covered with lipstick”. And this after only one day!

This just amuses me. Apparently the first day Morgan Freeman filmed alongside Casey Affleck on Gone Baby Gone, the Edison Force star had to lecture the younger Affleck for fifteen minutes about being late and being professional! Affleck, whose casting in big bro Ben’s directorial debut in no way resembles nepotism, made Morgan wait for over half an hour. And with the size of those personal trailers they get these days, it must have been torture.

You know those sequels where they can’t afford to bring back the original cast? Like Jonathan Schaech replacing Nic Cage in the imaginatively titled 8MM 2 (btw, he also starred in Road House 2: Last Call, made 17 years after the original Patrick Swayze flick)? Or Jason Bateman playing Michael J. Fox’s cousin in the Teen Wolf sequel? Anyway, few may remember 1992’s The Cutting Edge in which former hockey hero D. B. Sweeney pairs up with Moira Kelly to win the Winter Olympics. I just found Cutting Edge: Going For The Gold, which sees the two who-body's daughter, played by Christy Carlson Romano, competing in the Olympics. The movie also features a no-doubt slimmer Erik Aude’s first film performance since his two year incarceration in Pakistan on opium possession charges. Oh how we barely noticed he was gone.

Charlie’s Angel Farrah Fawcett may have anal cancer (ouch!), but she’s still fulfilling her role as the blondest bimbo in a box of blunt tools. She’s been spending a lot of her time in Germany, due to stem cell research being legal in the Land of Tight Leather Shorts. When asked by reporters what Germany was like, she articulated her thoughts in one profound sentence … “it’s full of Germans”.

Britney is too easy of a target right now, so I’ll just give you this one-liner: she locked her two sons in the car to go shopping for chandeliers.

Meanwhile, Shia LaBeouf deserves Tool of the Week, for being arrested at a Chicago Walgreen’s. Fresh from pissing me off for existing, let alone getting cast in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (sidenote: bafflingly silly title), he refused to leave the store at 2am so security had to call in the police. Shia, whose last name almost means ‘The Beef’, cites Saving Silverman(known overseas as Evil Woman) as one of his favourite movies, which may explain some of his strange career choices.

Milla Jovovich's command of English explains baby name, Shyamalan is afraid of deer, Garth Brooks is successful (and Christianity is dead).

In their professional lives “actress” Milla Jovovich* and “director” Paul W. S. Anderson** conspired to provide us with Resident Evil. But congratulations are now due the engaged couple in their personal lives, for they have forged a baby daughter. Though gender is certainly not apparent given the Ever Gabo Anderson moniker bestowed upon it. You're probably thinking "with a name like Shadie, who is he to...", but at least my parents didn't fuck with my name for media attention.
*=if anyone cares, it’s pronounced Yo-Vo-Vitch;
**=if anyone cares it’s pronounced ‘Talentless Filmmaker behind AvP’.

M. Night Shyamalan, famous for writing Stuart Little has won a court case to keep an 8-foot fence erected around his property in Philadelphia. Neighbours’ complaints about “ugliness, ruined views and adverse effects on property values” referred not the director himself, but to the “monstrous fence” which protects Mr. M from deer. Gratuitous Twist Ending: the deer are really ghosts of dead horses.

Garth Brooks becoming the best-selling solo artist in history. He has sold 123 million units in his career, beating out Elvis Presley. This must end right now. Regardless, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, to which he responded: “This award reflects the magnitude of the country audience and what they can accomplish when they act together." Yeah. Like lynch mobs.

A recent British study has shown that more people re-read the Harry Potter books than the Bible. This reminds me of the time that thousands of people, including myself, put Jedi on a UK census, getting it recognised as an official religion, when some legitimate creeds were not. OK, it doesn't really remind me of that, but I wanted to tell that story.

Jenny-Lo Jennifer from da “Gigli” J-Block Lopez ‘s Belly
When discussing the difficulties of pregnancy, few people spare a sympathetic thought for the frustrations of the fashion designer. Clother-to-the-celebs Roberto Cavalli complains that Jennifer Lopez’s “expanding stomach is causing some wardrobe problems”. In fact it was Roberto himself that first noticed. His insightfulness extended to observations about the Money Train’s Latina, including the cookie fortune wisdom “every week she is getting better”.

Movie #3358
Elvira’s Haunted Hills
Sam Irvin, 2001, USA
So a friend tried to convince me that this movie was really funny. We no longer talk. What’s really clever about this alleged film is that Elvira plays two roles. Oh, and also really clever … it is set in Romania. I’ve enjoyed poops more than this.

My mate Jacob Angel recently used the question "do you believe in reincarnation?" to point out the striking similarity between adopted Brangelina spawn Pax Thein Jolie-Pitt (PTJP) and Ke Huy Quan (KHQ), aka Indiana Jones' sidekick Short Round.
Quan has since appeared in films like The Goonies as "Data" and the mouthful Passenger Sugisarishi Hibi, whereas double-barreled PTJP has a career as rich as Willis-Moore sprog Rumer's to look forward to. She has starred in Striptease and Hostage.

First off I want to post a link to a 3-minute extract from Sigur Rós’ concert film Heima which is out to buy in Europe, and comes out November 20th in the US. It looks so incredibly good. Anyways … here it is.

Save The Dolphins, Save The World
Hayden Panettiere, of Heroes and Bring It On: All Or Nothing fame, has gotten political by clashing with Japanese fishermen as she tried to save dolphins from being slaughtered. The screen cheerleader, along with five other surfers, paddled out to sea to disrupt the annual dolphin hunt. “It was really frightening. Some of us were hit by the boat hook. But in the end all we really worried about was the dolphins”, concludes the "Girl On Sinking Boat" from Message In A Bottle “It was so incredibly sad … One little baby dolphin stuck his head out and kinda looked at me and the thought that it's no longer with us is really hard to take." Apparently she has held these strong beliefs in aquatic well-being since her first role as “Mermaid” in The Object of My Affection.

Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen are stupid, Lindsay Lohan is stupid, Lance Bass is stupid.

Hollywood’s most talented former couple, Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen, have resolved their public feud by agreeing to put their daughters into therapy. Method actor Richards – who spent three minutes preparing for her role as a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough – insists on providing a nanny for confessed sexaholic Sheen’s visits. The fate of the girls (incidentally aged two and three) was decided during a six-hour mediation. Or as Sheen would put it, twelve lines.

Lindsay Lohan, fresh from her Summer [Rehab] Camp, has been refused a drink at LA’s Viceroy Hotel. The Parent Trap kid actor – who once had to have her cleavage digitally reduced because Herbie Fully Loaded was a family movie – asked for a vodka and was told by “the waitress that she was sorry but she wasn’t allowed to serve her”, according to the actress’ aides instructions. In related news, apparently Paris Hilton’s reps have issued a statement to the post-pubescent world that they should not indulge in sexual intercourse with the Pledge This star.

Lance Bass, former N ‘Sync crooner and 12-time Celebrity Squares veteran, has admitted getting married to try to score free booze. The one-time Kim Possible star related the story, but stressed that she was “just a friend”. Considering that he is openly gay this isn’t much news. “We wanted to get free drinks all night … we’re like ‘We just got married’ and they’re like ‘Ah, whatever’ … we didn’t get one drink all night”. It seems that lying would have been less hassle.

Movie #3348:
Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh
Bill Condon, 1995, USA
Condon’s subsequent films – Gods and Monsters, Kinsey and Dreamgirls – all garnered at least Oscar nominations for their performances. Curious, since these are all laughably unwatchable. Or unwatchably laughable. Also boasts Philip Glass’ most repetitive score to date. For real.

I have added as many of the original Shades of Grey articles from the Buzz column that I could find. They are now listed at the bottom as the first blog entry.

MOVIES MITCH CAN'T WAIT TO MISS
Southland Tales
Director: Richard Kelly
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar
November 16th

Oh, Richard Kelly. Thank you so much for Donnie Darko. If you hadn't done that, Jake Gyllenhaal may have very well faded into forgotten ineptitude like you should. Then, Domino, Keira Knightley's breakout role. Notch two in the screenplay belt that you will soon recognize will never be tight enough to hold up the pants into which you're trying so hard to fit. When we thought you were all out of good ideas, you make a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles based multi-narrative with the perfect ensemble cast: The Rock, that American Pie guy, Buffy, and Mandy Moore.

All signs point to this film being Kelly's return to the quality we expect from the man who brought us Donnie Darko. Seriously. Tales was completed nearly 2 years ago and was shelved by the studio. It is also rumoured to have taken the most sought after admonishment at Cannes in 2006, the worst received film. To compensate, he shaved some thirty minutes off the nearly three hour running time, but kept the Justin Timerlake musical interlude.

Expect:
- Indy-pop culture references
- Characters that are strange (misunderstood) for the sake of being strange
- Actors who act by not acting (aka misunderstood)
- Unresolved plot elements meant to make us 'think'
- A fervent following of pompous pretention proclaiming 'You just don't get it'
- Shit.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Shame on you, Dick.

by Mitch

SHADES OF GREY: Dogs have own acting awards, Scarlet Johansson is creepy, and Oprah is weird and boring.

Dame Helen Mirren’s corgis from The Queen have won the first ever Fido Award for Best Historical Hound Performance. The British award ceremony to honour canine acting, is part of the London Film Festival, and the corgis beat out the collie-mix owned by Samantha Morton in Control, and the brown hunting dog from French flick Moliere. This news suitably complements the Academy’s addition of a new Oscar for Best Mouse Performance in an Animated Biopic of a Dead Rock Star starring Meryl Streep that is Adapted from a Japanese Horror Movie.

Here’s something to make Scarlett Johansson seem less desirable: though the considerate girlfriend threw Blade: Trinity star Ryan Reynolds a birthday bash at hot-spot Chateau Marmont, her present was a little lacking … The Island star had recently removed her wisdom teeth, so had one dipped in gold and strung on a necklace. Mmm.

Inane Quote: Oprah Winfrey, co-star of the forthcoming animation Bee Movie … "Two bees came around and they were buzzing around my plate. I think they were after the basil... and instead of swatting them away I just allowed myself to be there with the bees. I am not gonna swat the bees because they have families; I'm now thinking, 'They have families...' I'm so affected by this movie." And Seinfeld is taking full credit for America's new love for bees: "I look at them and I think, 'You have no idea what I did for you!'"



Movie #3347:
Churchill: Hollywood Years
Peter Richardson, 2004, UK
Premise claims Winston Churchill was a Yank, and looked like Christian Slater. Decent cast of British comedians, but otherwise crap.

MOVIES MITCH CAN'T WAIT TO MISS
P2
Director: Franck Khalfoun
Starring: Wes Bentley, Rachel Nichols
November 9th

A thriller named after the parking garage button in an elevator, released by a studio of the same name. Thrilling. We didn't think it could get any better than the critically applauded Ghost Rider or the brilliantly conceived stoner comedy Weirdsville, but the professionals have proven us wrong by topping off Wes Bentley's (emo-archetype Ricky Fitts) most successful year to date with this guaranteed sleeper—scratch that—knocked unconscious hit. It's a brilliantly original concept, all the same: a girl is trapped in a building with a psychopath. Also note, two of the supporting characters' names are "Elevator Gal" and "Man in Elevator."

In support, we need to acknowledge modern horror maestro, Alexandre Aja, is putting his virgin production credit on this film. Since his discovery, he hasn't misled us, but it seems he's decided that this reign has lasted long enough.

by Mitch

SHADES OF GREY: Ryan Gosling quits Peter Jackson movie, Garrison Keillor has stalker and stupid kid tries to be a wizard.

Career Move of the Week: Ryan Gosling has quit Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones over creative differences. I would like to remind readers of a time when Stuart “Who is He?” Townsend quit Jackson’s Lord of the Rings for the same reason, to take a role in Queen of the Damned and subsequently League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Gosling had already grown a beard and lost 20 pounds for the role, no doubt borrowed from his ex-director’s sidelined stash. Meanwhile “Marky” Mark Wahlberg has taken over acting duties, and hopes to also undertake boyfriend duties with the recently exed Rachel McAdams.



Movie #3345:
Flight of the Living Dead
Scott Thomas, 2007, USA
May as well be monikered Zombies on a Plane, this is not very good. In case anyone was wondering. In an unrelated recap, neither is Joel Schumacher. In case anyone had forgotten.

Cutest Story of the week: God’s gift to women Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion fame has had to get a restraining order against a fan whose idea of romance involved sending him petrified alligator feet and dead beetles. The 65 year-old no doubt got his biggest kick since the Kennedy administration when Andrea Campbell sent a letter “graphically describing making love to [him]”. Meanwhile Campbell claims “[he] is just paranoid”.

David Beckham has been voted Most Masculine Man Alive. Has anyone heard him speak? Just wondering.



Dumbledore was gay. Not really that interesting. Much more fascinating … Charlie Thomas’ attempts to audition for the next Harry Potter movie had him put a cone on his head. Good job.

Not so funny - a team of firefighters having to free the little knob from his get-up.