This Playbook Needs A Rewrite

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With Silver Linings Playbook, director David O. Russell's is attempting to do to the romantic comedy what he did to the sports movie with The Fighter. And he is not succeeding. Think of the movie as a pumpkin. (Really, I just said that. It's been a long week. Just go with me here.) The Fighter hollowed out the cliches (they'd be the seeds, yo!) and filled up the movie pumpkin (or I guess you could also use Christian Bale's skeleton in this analogy, take your pick) with sparklers and sound effects - lively little story side-steps and character beats that made a stinky slowly rotting pumpkin feel like a world class one-of-a-kind jack-o-lantern. It still was a pumpkin on the outside, of course. But what a pumpkin, ya know? 

Silver Linings turns the romantic comedy into more of a pumpkin pie - or, in the vernacular of Jackie Weaver's worry-wort momma character, crabby snacks and homemades! - and, honestly, I just don't like pie. So maybe it's my problem. But it's all mushy, and it doesn't even look like a damned pumpkin anymore. You said pumpkin - I want a pumpkin!

Alright, I'm losing track of my point here. (Seriously though, fuck pies.) Russell just never really cracks the nut of the rom-com open for me, to make anything all that invigorating. Don't even get me started on the last few minutes with the happy "hey we're all great and sitting one each other's laps" montage, which is straight out of the dire hellmouth of Sarah Jessica Parker movies. I hate to load too much of it on Bradley Cooper, because I'm generally defensive of him as an on-screen presence - I tend to find him pretty charming and funny and oft sexy as hell (even if the Hangover movies that he's making so so much money off of have managed to kill that momentum, somewhat) - but I thought he was an alarmingly flaccid presence here, dragging it all down around him. I'd say he was trying to get across the dulling effect of his medication, but the moments when he was off his meds were scarcely more alive.

And I know that because he had Jennifer Lawrence standing across him, absolutely thrumming with presence and life and sexy crazy baby eyes, and knocking it outta the park. God every time the camera swerved over her big ol' baby-doll head smeared with mascara I felt my body lift off the seat and float towards the screen, and how I kept wishing she were the center of attention. Think of her as the delicious pile of fresh whipped cream on top of the pie, and I just wanted a big ol' spoonful of all her. (Eww not that way, you pervert.) But then I'd get another three minutes of Robert DeNiro yelping and my buzz would wash off again. The movie's schizophrenia, unlike The Fighter's, works against it - romance needs a deftness that it's got nowhere in its bones, even as it aches and yearns and thuds and hollers to find it.

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Life of Pi in 300 Words or Less

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It doesn't happen very often but once in awhile a movie will come along that manages to talk about faith and spirituality (the latter a word that I gag on now, so steeped in malarkey has it become) in a way that doesn't raise my heckles, and Life of Pi did a pretty decent job of it. It's more content to ask questions that really try to give answers - unlike Terrence Malick, Ang Lee isn't convinced he has captured and pinned down the face of god in his viewfinder.

Oh Ang gives us plenty of pretty to gawk at, and he suffuses every ounce of it with deeply religious parable, but he's also content to just get down to the brass tax of it and rip us a yarn. And one that doesn't feel the need to tear right up his own ass, imagine that! (Yes I'm still angry at The Tree of Life - sue me.) Life of Pi works best when it's about the pragmatic details - the hows of Pi's survival. I suppose that's just the atheist in me, subscribing to the realism parts while waving away the shots of galaxies floating inside tiger eyeballs... well so be it.

All this said, the film only half worked for me - it feels long, and while I get the importance of the framing device in spelling out the theme, especially at the end, it always felt intrusive and superfluous to me, as these things always do - in a story about the life or death struggle a single human character, robbing me of the whole "death" half of the equation by showing me him as an old dude, happy and healthy and fine, just deflates too much possible tension. 

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Pic of the Day

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I know I was literally just bitching about how big and bushy Jake Gyllenhaal's beard has gotten, but Huge Weaving is stealing Jake's look and turning it into sex! That's the venerable elven Elrond and his dreamy hobbit patch of chest hair, standing alongside Frodo T. Baggins and director Bryan Singer at the Hobbit premiere. Via Singer's twitter, where he also highly praised the 48fps that Jackson shot the film in; I bought my ticket to see the movie that way, but I am so nervous about hating it. We'll see.

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Jake Gyllenhaal One Time

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(via) Never seen this old shot before; I assume it's old since he looks like this right now. Jinkies, Jake! I didn't think I'd grow to not like the beard, but that is way too much beard, dude.

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Tumblr Is A Hell Of A Drug

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Now that the fine folks of the world have got their Amazing Spider-Man Blu-rays in their hot little hands and are busy turning Andrew Garfield and his amazing spider-bum into a voluptuous cascade of lycra-spanxed gif-ified goodness, I can just sit back and watch the magic happen. And happen. And happen again. Oh my.

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The Time Has Come To Scoot Yourself

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I wonder if anybody ever told Scoot McNairy that "Scoot is something a dog does with its ass on a carpet, not a human person's name," or not. If so, man that person was a dick! Anyway Mr. McNairy already turned in some fine little work in Argo earlier this year, and now he's apparently turned in some more, if people are to be believed, with Killing Them Softly, the new movie from Brad Pitt and his Assassination of Jesse James director Andrew Dominik, who are totally going to the same hairdresser.

So many luscious locks, so little time! Anyway that's one of just three movies I'm mentioning in this weekend's Movie Buzz over at Celebrity Beehive; the other two are the new Universal Soldier, which I was just talking about here, and the horror flick The Collection, about which I know next to nothing save this absolutely ridiculous sentence from IMDb's description of the previous entry in the series (yes apparently this is a series of films) which makes me never want to go anywhere near it:

"The Collector resonated with its audience because in some ways it's a stripped down version of the Saw serial with fewer moral imperatives. "

Yeah my problem with the Saw movies was definitely they had too much morality. Yeesh. Alright alright I'm parsing words here - I get on the surface what is being said, and part of my problem with the Saw movies was their hypocrisy regarding their own morality. That is, they pretended to have some, any, while indulging in its squalid antithesis. So I suppose just tossing out that aspect and saying "To heck with pretending!" ought to make me step off my high horse... instead today I'm just finding it all kind of depressing.

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Which Is Hotter?

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poll by twiigs.com

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In honor of the new Universal Soldier movie, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which is apparently out in theaters today. I hope that JCVD needs to take another sweaty-assed ice bath this time! The original film is 20 years old this year, can you believe it? I watched so many of these shitty action movies when I was in my teens hoping for a glimpse of beefcake. (Glad to see nothing has changed!)

3 Reasons Lena Dunham's Smart, In Pictures

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In the trailer for the 2nd season of HBO's zeitgeist-gobbling 

Girls we see Lena Dunham macking on Patrick Wilson...

... Donald Glover ...

... and of course the always near-to-full naked Adam Driver.

If I wrote my own TV show,
these are the things I would also write.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

GI Jane (1997)

Master Chief John Urgayle: I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead

from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

I came across GI Jane on TV a few weeks back and so I tried to rewatch for the first time in many a moon - I'd been fixating on Viggo Mortensen's sexy-man military mustache not long before this, serendipity - and oh my god it's just horrible nearly unwatchable nonsense. I say nearly because... well it has Viggo Mortensen's sexy-man military mustache. And Jason Beghe in a bathtub!

Oh I guess I should say happy 75 to Ridley Scott, 

since that was the point of all of this rambling.

More Prometheuses and fewer GI Janes, okay dude?
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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A Pecs of Peeta

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(via) Oh sure the pictures were all perfectly crystal clear when all we had to look at were their Running Man bodysuits and Not Penny Marshall the other day, but suddenly all of the paparazzi cameras come down with a case of the blurries when Josh Hutcherson's nipples popped out. I smell a conspiracy!
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I Am Link

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--- Gay Bond Gay - There's an interview with Daniel Craig over here where the subject of "that scene" with Javier Bardem in Skyfall comes up and he says this:

"The scene you're talking about... I think you'll find that they're just playing. They're fucking with each other. And to call Javier Bardem's character gay or anything would be shortsighted because I think he's a megalomaniac and all that goes along with that."

Well sure, Daniel, we all know that. But that's not as much fun, now is it? God, go watch Life of Pi, and then come back and tell me the FUN story, dude.

--- Ha Ha Huh? - There are rumors that Greta Gerwig and Noam Baumbach are filming something at Barnard right now. This filled me with dread that they are reshooting some of Frances Ha, which has scenes at Barnard in it, and which I found to be pretty much prefect in every way. Since it's not out until Spring, who knows? Hopefully they are just making another movie, and we all win. Frances Ha - Part II: Ha Harder!

--- Man Boy Love - I'm only pointing you to this negative review of the broad German rom-com What A Man so I can say I didn't know it was being released here in the US and it's star Matthais Schweighofer is totally adorable and we already gratuitized his bum from this flick way back. It's also got Thomas Kretchmann in it, and they touch.

--- Dome Tube - Stephen King's giant book Under the Dome, which I liked quite a bit of (the ending... uh, notsomuch), was supposed to be made into a TV show by Showtime, but now it's being said that it will actually be made for CBS instead. They've ordered 13 episodes - I can't really figure out if that's a self-contained (har) storyline - like, a miniseries? Will the story end after 13? - or if they mean to go into multiple seasons, or what. I mean the book is long, but even King only found so much you can do under a dome, you know? Plus if it's on CBS all the horrific violence will be somewhat censored, and who wants that? But it is from Brian K. Vaughn, the writer of Y: The Last Man, so really... I want it no matter what.

--- Porn Again - What will forever be referred to as James Franco's Gay Sex Movie is playing at Sundance; we spoke about it before, right here. It's where he imagines the explicit footage that got cut out of William Friedkin's S&M romp Cruising. I am happy to see the really cute guy from co-director Travis Mathew's short explicit film I Want Your Love (that link is very much NSFW) named Brenden Gregory listed in the cast, because he's, uh, really cute. V/H/S sequel S-VHS will also be playing at Sundance, by the way.

--- Lasso Lady - Apparently they're going to try to make a Wonder Woman TV show again? I know this is revolutionary thinking, but how about you give this show to a... woman to run? Gasp! Men keep bungling it all up though, and seem totally incapable of wrapping their head around the character. This new thing's description isn't filling me with high expectations.

--- Nothing In June - Or they could just let Joss Whedon try his hand at Diana again? Yeah, probably not, since he's Mr. Marvel now. But speaking of Joss, his eensy-weensie little Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing with all his usual troupe is going to be released into theaters on June 7th. You know how I was bitching about EW naming Ben Affleck "Entertainer of the Year"? It struck me later that same day that Joss owned that cover. Damn them. I guess handsome brown-eyed muscle-men probably sell more copies, or something. They underestimate the geek contingent.

---  FX Follies - Over at The Film Experience Nat takes a look at the slowly whittling down field of Oscar possibles for Special Effects this year, and I may or may not be linking just to use that shot of Andrew Garfield in his Spidey tights, that's up to you to judge.

--- Villains United - Hey look here's Ian McKellen talking about playing Magneto again! I love that he manages to say the phrase "Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy's parts," while doing it, too.

--- Blue Man Group - James Cameron is going to shoot the Avatar movies, that is a part two and a part three, next year. He says he'll shoot them in 48FPS is people like it when they see it with The Hobbit. He also says hey, he might shoot it in 60 FPS! Or maybe a million frames per second, Jim! How about a billion???
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Good Morning, Dillane

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A happy 56th birthday to Stephen Dillane, born on this day in the year of somebody's lord nineteen-hundred and fifty-six. These days he can be seen tossing that saucy red sorceress Melisandre on top of a war map and boinking her full of blackest magicks on A Game of Thrones, as wannabe-king Stannis.

My favorite Stephen Dillane performance is in The Hours - I thought he should've torn that nose right off of Nic and handed it in for his own Oscar. Anyway these pictures are from Savage Grace, where he played the jerky husband and father cuckolded by his own creepy ass son and wife. Gosh that movie was filled with nice folks. Hit the jump for some NSFW-ness.

Quote of the Day

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“In a weird way, it’s kind of a relief to think, ‘Oh, I know I’m not that young sort of pretty thing anymore. It’s quite nice talking about what it was like to be the young pretty thing, rather than being it.”

-- That's Jude Law passing the eye-candy torch to the astonishingly well-bootied Aaron Johnson, his Anna Karenina co-star. I'm like Anna - give me both of them, or I'll throw myself in front of a goddamned train! Uh, spoiler alert.

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... using Stephen Dorff as a flotation device.

(via) I don't even really know what that's a euphemism for, but I totally mean it. These are from his movie Rites of Passage, which also has skin from Travis Van Winkle and Wes Bentley; see several more shots o' Dorff after the jump.

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 

I couldn't figure out why this scene was stuck in my head the other day, and then I realized it's my excitement about seeing Zero Dark Thirty that did it - Zero Dark Thirty makes me think of Kathryn Bigelow, Kathryn Bigelow makes me think of Near Dark, Near Dark makes me think of Jenette Goldstein, and here we are. 

And yes, for the record, the next step 

in my brain's progression is totally Vasquez.

Giving love to Jenette is a part-time job for me though, so instead of once again going on and on about my love for her, how about some good vibes for long-time reliable character actor Xander Berkeley, aka the step-dad on the business end of that arm-blade, who I never would have thought of as cute when I was 14 when this movie came out but looking at him then now... well whaddya know.

He and Robert Patrick make a cute couple. Do you think that Xander's character had sex with Jenette's character while she was really Robert Patrick in disguise? This is a ship I am totally inventing right now. Anyway the only shirtless picture I could find of him was from the seventh episode of The X-Files, with him and Mulder and some other dude about to do it or something so here's that...

Also, he played Christopher in Mommie Dearest. He wins.

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Previous Ways Not To Die: An Inability To Stop Drop and Roll -- Bug Sprayed -- Extreme Makeover: Leatherface Edition -- Window Seat Suck -- Razor Bunting -- Stabbed Thru The Heart And Witches Are To Blame -- Shark Kibble -- Is That a Straight Razor In Your Trunks Or Are You Just Happy To See Me -- Bad Dates -- Fry Guy'd -- Super Battle Bystander Shrapnel Shred -- Staring Contest of the Dead -- Satanic Self Sacrifice -- Fist and Fortune -- Psychedelic Penis Slice To Window Toss -- For Crimes Against Accent -- Sacked -- Speed Bumped For Traffic Spikes -- Shark Versus Jet-Ski -- Hot Oil Treatment -- Tucked In By Jason -- Just A Pair of Snowbodies -- Poison Pellet Kibble Swap -- Dolly Disassembled -- Fire Escape Fall Out -- Unbuggered -- Tell 'Em Large Marge Sent'cha -- Blue Man Gooped -- Tongue Stung -- Now Wouldn't Cha, Barracuda? -- Leaving on a Rat Plane -- Panthers! -- Fashion Faux-Pwned -- "It's Just A Box." -- Blasted Pigeons -- Taunting Ahnuld -- The Too Hot Tub -- Beyond the Veil -- Sunken Prayers-- Super Crack -- Brains Blown -- Fur For The Boogens -- White Hot Bunny Rabbit Rage --Dragged To Hell -- The TV Van That Dripped Blood -- Don't Mess With Mama -- Heads Ahoy --Martyred For Sheep -- Heads Nor Tails -- He Loves Me Knot -- The Great Bouncing Brad --Miss Kitty's 8 Mishaps -- Boat Smoosh -- Meeting the French-Tipped Menace -- A Magic Trick -- Slick Suck -- We Who Walk Here Walk Alone -- Raptor Bait -- Kneegasm'd -- Dare to Dream in Fincher -- Reach Out and Throttle Someone -- De-Faced -- Voluntary Drowning -- Cross Borne -- Pulled Up Hell's Sphincter -- An Arrow Up The Ass - The Numerous Violent Unbecomings of Olive Oyl -- Ack! Ack! Zap! -- Baby's First Acid Splash -- Chop, Drop and Sashimi Roll -- Forever Rafter -- Can't You Hear Me Now? -- Daisies Ways #5 - Harpoony Side Up -- Acid Dip -- On a Wing and a Prey -- For Standing in the Way of Sappho -- Busting Rule Number Three (For The Purpose of Number Two) -- Daisies #4 - Window Dressed To Killed --Hands Off the Haas Orb -- Bullet Ballet -- A Single Vacancy at the Roach Motel -- A School Bus Slipped Thru The Ice -- Trache-AAHHHH!!!-tomy'd - For Mel Gibson's Sins -- A Wide Stanced Slashing --- Daisies Ways #3 - Scratch n' Snuffed -- The Victim of a Viscous Hit & Run-- Curled -- Kabobbed -- Daisies Ways #2 - Aggravated Cementia -- Boo! Nun! -- 2009's Ways Not To Die -- Bug Scratch Fever -- Daisies Ways #1 - Deep Fat Fried in My Own Unique Blend of 500 Herbs & Spices -- By the Yard End of the Stick -- Screwed From A Very Great Distance-- A Righteous Bear-Jew Beatdown -- Fisted By Hugo Sitglitz -- Xeno Morphed -- Fuck-Stuck -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 4 -- Lava Bombed -- The Cradle Will Rock... Your Face Off!!! -- The Food of the Nilbog Goblins -- The Slugs Is Gonna Gitcha -- Phone Shark -- Hide The Carrot -- Sarlacc Snacked -- Avada Kedavra!!! -- Hooked, Lined and Sinkered -- "The Libyans!" -- Axe Me No Questions -- Pin the Chainsaw on the Prostitute -- The Wrath of the Crystal Unicorn -- The Ultimate Extreme Make-Over -- Drown In A Sink Before The Opening Credits Even Roll -- The Dog Who Knew Too Much -- Don't Die Over Spilled Milk -- Inviting the Wrath of Aguirre -- An Inconceivable Outwitting -- The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique -- Nipple Injected Blue Junk -- Your Pick Of The Deadly Six -- Thing Hungry --Don't Fuck With The Serial Killer's Daughter -- DO Forget To Add The Fabric Softener -- Any Of The Ways Depicted In This Masterpiece Of Lost Cinema -- Rode Down In The Friscalating Dusklight -- Good Morning, Sunshine! -- Mornin' Cuppa Drano -- The Cylon-Engineered Apocalypse -- Tender-Eye-zed -- Martian Atmospheric Asphyxiation -- Maimed By A Mystical Person-Cat -- The Sheets Are Not To Be Trusted -- Handicapable Face-Hacked -- I Did It For You, Faramir -- Summertime In The Park... Of A Pedophile's Mind -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 3 -- Strung Up With Festive Holiday Bulbs By Santa Claus Himself -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 2 -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 1 -- Decapitated Plucked Broiled & Sliced -- Head On A Stick! -- A Trip To The Ol' Wood-Chipper -- Pointed By The T-1000 --Sucking Face With Freddy Krueger -- A Pen-Full Of Home-Brewed Speed to The Eye --Motivational Speech, Interrupted -- A Freak Ephemera Storm -- When Ya Gotta Go... Ya Gotta Go -- Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away --Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door-- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue-- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!!-- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded --Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare --Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head
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