If anyone can explain to me how in the world Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale movie could conceivably not be the best Christmas movie of all time, I’d love to sit through their Powerpoint presentation plumbing the depths of that argument, because I’m just not buying it. I mean, we all know I love me some batshit crazy, and this movie looks like it’s bringing the crazy like an extra-large stocking overstuffed with spades. How can we possibly lose? Oh, that’s right: WE CAN’T. And don’t take my obviously biased and ofttimes hyperbolic word for it. Do yourself a favor and bathe your eyeballs in the glorious insanity of the Rare Exports trailer:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is going to come out August 13th. Today is March 25th. That means Scott Pilgrim vs the World isn’t going to be in theaters for nearly five months. That is unacceptable because this teaser is amazing:
See what I mean? You can’t put a price on something so hilariously sloppy, which makes sense because this poster looks like the vengeful wrath of an unpaid intern.
Now we have a teaser trailer, though, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that nobody gives a damn about this movie. I mean, just look at this lazy mess:
I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t admit that I’ve been eagerly awaiting to board the Sex and the City 2 hate train ever since halfway through Sex and the City: The Movie when I realized that no amount of Kristin Davis’s totally amazing angry-Charlotte face would save it from being a cinematic wet fart of conspicuous consumption pornography topped with a predictable and insipid ending. It’s what feels like eternity two-and-a-half hours of Miranda and Carrie being self-involved harpies incapable of communicating with their significant others like grown adults, Samantha acting like an even hornier drag queen than the horny drag queen she usually acts like, and all sorts of stuff coming out of Charlotte. Like unwavering romantic optimism. And babies. And poop.
Seriously, for as much as I adored the series, the movie was able to inspire an inverse amount of adoration. In other words:
Since then, I’ve had nothing but ire for the sequel, and this teaser poster is not helping:
Now don’t get me wrong, Powder Blueis a howlingly bad movie experience. It isn’t so much a movie as a string of individual cinematic train wrecks that have been confused for scenes, and it’s definitely in the lead as the most campalicious movie of 2009. Well, was.
Dear readers, I give you the new Great Camp Hope of 2009:
First off, I don’t need to get started about the tag line. It pretty much speaks for its ridiculous self. But there’s the pink font that looks like it’s straight-up out of a bad 70s European art house sex farce, and let’s not forget how I feel about Carla Gugino. I don’t recognize anyone else mentioned in this poster save for Simon Baker, but who cares? This poster is basically about pretty girls and boobs, which I’m pretty sure was the high concept for Showgirls, so consider my appetite whetted.
But there’s also the trailer, and…well…it can only be described as some bizarre amalgamation of Showgirls and Magnolia and Almodovar and every women’s dramedy from the past two decades:
ASUUU MADREEE!!! There are mornings when I simply adore the MTA and all that public transit has to offer. Then, of course, there are the days in which a train ahead of you stalls, and you find yourself pondering the injustice of another fare hike while your train idles on the track. Sadly, today was much more like the latter than the former, so you’d better believe that I totally had my bitchface on when I got off the subway. Gene Tierney bitchface, to be precise:
Fortunately enough, a new bit of viral marketing for Jennifer’s Body has cropped up all over the interwebs, and it simply reconfirms my suspicions that this movie is going to be trashy goodness. The clip’s a PSA in which Megan Fox discusses the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. She may not be the obvious (or even reasonable) choice for such a message, but NO MATTER! When Megan Fox wants to talk about peer pressure and teen bullying, you’d better shut up and listen:
It’s rather safe to say that he’s one of cinema’s indisputable masters. He’s made masterworks like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarldo and Grizzly Man. He’s also a man of his word. In short, Werner Herzog’s on the short list of the Bestest, and he’s now made Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s about a cocaine-addicted police officer without any moral scruples and a major case of sailor’s mouth (ruh-roh!), and it stars Nicolas Cage (double, all-caps RUH-ROH!). This is the trailer, which is not safe for work and will probably have my mother asking me why I get a thrill out of such garbage:
Crimminy crap, such garbage! But hilarious garbage, to be sure! There’s no point in even commenting on Nicolas Cage’s performance because we’ve all come to expect him to be consistently, categorically insane. He has a lucky crack pipe, he hallucinates iguanas, and he fires off his gun so onlookers will leave him be while he has public sex with crack whores. Nicolas Cage’s officially our generation’s John Wayne, the grand camp jester of histrionic masculinity; he’s brilliant. I think what’s more important is the rest of this cast. Serioulsly, y’all, it doesn’t make a damn lick of sense.
Yeesh. Certain people, who shall remain nameless but might have names that rhyme with Shmarker and Shmathan (just saying, and also, love you guys!), have been all up in my grill about Glee. It’s nothing but “Why don’t you blog about Glee?” this and “I hate your face ’til you blog about Glee!” that. So fine, here we go:
Seriously, was there ever any question? I think not. If anything, my only complaint is that we’re all forced to wait until this fall for more Glee. That’s ass and a half, y’all; fortunately, despite Fox clearly conducting an experiment in patience amongst the nation’s gays (and their fag hags), Glee is anything but ass and a half.
Maybe it’s hyperbole, but Glee‘s the most inspired television show in quite some time. The underdog-competitor-meets-Busby-Berkeley-musical vibe is infinitely charming blend of camp and heartfelt sincerity, and any show that can bring together both the eternally adorable Jayma Mays and eternally fierce Jessalyn Gilsig clearly knows a thing or two about casting. And let’s not forget that Glee gave us the single greatest rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” ever made EVER:
First and foremost, there’s the extended trailer. Without a question, this show is going to be brilliant:
LOLOLOL! This is the best, right? RIGHT.
Still, if you find yourself needing talking points to explain to your friends why you’ll be busy on May 19th, as well as why they should also be canceling plans and staying in for the Glee preview special, then allow me to give you a few suggestions:
Glee is a genuinely clever spin on the archetypal high-school-set underdog narrative. This is essentially like Bring It On (a movie that nobody, or at least nobody I’d ever care to know, doesn’t love) stretched into a serial television show and made infinitely more camp by being set in the musical-number-laden world of glee clubs. You certainly don’t have to be a ‘mo to love this show, but it probably helps to have one in the family. Or, at the least, your place of work.
Jane Lynch is in it. This woman is an undeniable force of pure hilarity, and if she’s reason enough to see Post Grad, she certainly is reason enough to watch Glee.
Any mention of gold stars immediately triggers thoughts of Notes on a Scandal, which is a completely unrelated movie that is totally incredible and you really should see if you haven’t already. Hell, just watching the trailer makes me certain that May 19th is going to be a gold star day.
Matthew Morrison, the guy who plays the teacher in charge of the glee club, is the Altoid of good looks. He’s curiously handsome.
Ryan Murphy’s the creator. He gave us the short-lived-but-totally-amazing show Popular and Nip/Tuck, a show that’s now completely derailed into batshit insanity but was genuinely great for the first two seasons. Any television series that casts Famke “Fierce Bitch” Janssen as a tranny can’t be bad.
One word: Journey.
So there you have it. Now neither you nor any of your friends have any excuses to not to watch Glee. Seriously, y’all, it’s going to be the greatest. Show. EVER!
I fully recognize that, over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a rather aggressive dive into what some people may call “insanity,” but I prefer to call it “camp appreciation.” Whatever. The point being, while I may get rather excitable when talking about Obsessed and super duper excitable when even alluding to Powder Blue, I can still tell a bad movie when I see one. Ladies and gents, Post Grad is one such movie:
It’s a Hollywood take the quarter-life crisis! Lots of laughs (ruh-roh, you’ve been spotted making out by your whole family, and your little brother’s fascinated by the fact that you’ve got boobs; incest: it’s always a riot!), tons of drama (he’s moving to NYC for law school? mais non!), and many an important life lesson (“What you do with your life is just one half of the equation. More important is, who you’re with when you’re doing it.” PROFOUND!) are all packed into Post Grad! Yikes.
This movie frankly looks about as exciting as a stale rice cake and as original as a stack of photocopies printed on recycled paper; furthermore, it doesn’t help this movie’s cause that it’s staring Alexis Bledel, the actress who has done absolutely nothing for me ever since Gilmore Girls. The plot looks predictable, and it’ll indubitably end up with Alexis Bledel finding a job in New York City and living with the rather dreamy boyfriend because that’s how living in New York City is. All of us find jobs in a snap and have dreamy boyfriends. There, I’ve saved you $12 dollars and made you enviable of the NYC lifestyle all at the same time. You’re welcome.
All that being said, I still plan on seeing this movie. Why? It’s really quite simple:
Every time a commercial for Adventureland comes on during Gossip Girl, I lose all self-control as I turn to my Gossip Girl viewing buddy Brynn and screechily ask, “Who is this movie made for?” We are, of course, fast-forwarding through that nonsense thanks to the miracles of DVR, but I still want to know who precisely wants this movie? Just look at this thing:
Yes, movie trailer, life after college is not exactly what any of us expected. Maybe if you weren’t so focused on such a stupid idea as taking a post-graduation trip through Europe and instead focused on finding a real job like the rest of us do, you wouldn’t be in this conundrum horribly plotted movie.
I really don’t grasp how this is an actual movie that got a greenlight from the studios. Sure, we’ve all worked crappy summer jobs with quirky coworkers, and I myself can even sympathize in working a post-graduation job in retail to fund my summer exploits before moving to New York City for grad school, but I wouldn’t say that’s a sturdy concept for a movie because nobody, myself included, would want to see that. Whoops, I just became my dad!
The problem with Adventureland, like all movies that romanticize a summer of discovery and lessons learned before entering adulthood, is that these summers don’t in fact exist. We wax nostalgic about these moments because they’re the final moments of womb-like security that comes with the adolescent impulse to live for the moment before we’re birthed into the often frustrating world of financial responsibility and bills and 9-to-5 work schedules and all the other joys that come with being a grown-up. It’s a universal experience, for sure, but also one that you eventually realize is completely unrealistic once you gain a little perspective. These movies aren’t based in any truth; they’re just an opportunity for one filmmaker to cinematically masturbate about their own refusal to grow up and immature yearning for times long past. Let me play you a dirge on my tiny violin while you cry me a river. Or not.
Throw in the fact that Kristen Stewart is painfully annoying with her perpetual face of disaffected youth and that this movie is set in 1987 (80s nostalgia in movies is completely a completely lazy technique for adding texture to a story unless its Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion or Grosse Pointe Blanc; those movies are great), and it’s made its way to the top of my do-not-want list. This movie is made for nobody, but I’m sure it’ll make bank in theaters.
Woof.
(Also, as noted in the comments, I had a brain fart while initially writing this and claimed it was Kristen Scott, not Kristen Stewart, who is in Adventureland. The correction has been made, and I obviously need a fact checker.)
Everything else is just gravy. The fact that Imelda Staunton and Eugene Levy are in the cast, or that it’s directed by Ang Lee (he’s always great), or that Demetri Martin plays gay? So much gravy on top of the perfectly crafted mashed potatoes that is Liev Shcreiber doing drag:
It’s quite pleasurable to see Ang Lee loosen up his style so much in this one. I had to watch the trailer a couple of times, but there’s something in the look that reminds me of Brokeback Mountain, but more joyous instead of repressed. This somehow seems fitting, given that Elliot Tibor (Demetri Martin) himself was gay.
I’m really quite pleased to see that Demetri Martin’s character isn’t just another stereotypically fey caricature, and the Wikipedia article on Taking Woodstock makes the movie positively tantalizing. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Demetri’s married, closeted lover? That’s plenty good for me, but the fact that this movie could essentially be kicking off its story with the Stonewall Riots has put my anticipation factor to boiling. I recognize that a trailer premiering after an episode Important Things with Demetri Martin won’t likely really drop any of that into the trailer (the show’s not called Homo Things with Demetri Martin, y’all). I hope Focus Features puts out another trailer that gives a bit more of a hint at all the layers to this movie; the trailer just feels a bit too light-comedy for an Ang Lee film. Still, though: boiling anticipation. BOILING!
Cheers to Vulture posting the trailer and /Film for the more homocentric plot summary.
Lots of people like to get all cranky about Judd Apatow’s movies because the formula is pretty standard. They’re all unrealistic male fantasies in which men always get women way out of their league by emphasizing the importance of personality over looks while simultaneously not adhering to that same standard with its female characters. Fair enough, but I’ve frankly found the Apatow leads to be an attractive crew. Seth Rogen’s good looking, and Jason Segal’s flat out attractive. Throw in their sharp sense of humor, and I’m sold. Added to that, I can’t call shenanigans on the gender politics of a group of movies that still cares to actually respect its women by making them characters as opposed to caricatures.
But I must call shenanigans on Funny People:
This movie is so far from being grounded in reality that it’s entered the far reaches of outer space. In what world would any sane person leave Eric Bana, particularly when it’s Eric Bana that’s also smart enough to be FLUENT IN CHINESE? That the chief issue in an otherwise perfect is his going to a massage parlor, possibly to be finished with a “happy ending,” and that’s enough to drive you into the arms of ADAM SANDLER???
Shenanigans, y’all.
I’ll admit that I’m not a huge Adam Sandler fan, whereas I’d gladly watch Eric Bana make sandwiches for two hours. Preferably shirtless. So perhaps I’m a bit biased. But seriously:
Nobody Puts Baby in a Horner 
