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   Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Layabout musician Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) falls for the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), but in order to win her heart, he must defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. With Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman. Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz.)

CF: What are the chances that there would be two characters named Ramona prominently featured in this summer's biggest, hugest movies (not just Ramona and Beezus but also Scott Pilgrim vs the World?) Based on comic book you say? Well, thanks for letting me know it will fucking suck! An independent comic? Even worse! But is Michael Cera involved? Of course he is and now I can safely say that enjoying Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz in no way makes me curious to see this! Wait...wait, one second...is it Kieran Culkin in You Can Count on Me? Can we get an inventory of all the Culkins in existence? It's Mac in Nowhere to Run, right? And Kieran in Igby Goes Down? Wait...wait one second...Anna Kendrick? Strike three in the bottom on the 9th! Dammit, let's get away from baseball here. Wait...wait one second...Anna Kendrick? Strip sack returned for a touchdown and Anna Kendrick's team in on offense! Or...safety? Pick six? Donovan McNabb-style groundball at the feet of a wide open receiver on 3rd and 4 and even though it's only midway through the 3rd quarter he's so ice-cold that you know the game is all but over? Wait...wait one second...Mary Elizabeth Winstead? We'll go with: 17 yard gain on 3rd and 19 early in the 2nd quarter, a failure to gain first down but an impressive enough play that you can have a little confidence about your ability to move the ball. That means I like her ok, but her presence isn't going to get me into a movie starring Michael "turtle, turtle" Cera.

The verdict: Sometimes Chris "2 Pt. Conversion" Evans is not enough.

JC: Shouldn't this have been called The Wright Movie? Since it's directed by Edgar Wright, and - ok enough of that. Seriously, there seems to have been a mix-up here. Why is Edgar Wright directing a movie with Michael Cera and Anna Kendrick while the upcoming film written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost co-stars Seth Rogen and is directed by the Superbad/Adventureland guy? Is it too late to switch things out and correct this obvious mistake - put Pegg & Frost back with Wright and have those unlikable assholes in the Superbad dude's flick? Is this like Acts of Vengeance, where Marvel supervillians swapped heroes? Whatever happened to World's End, the final part of the trio's Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy?

As I mentioned to the makers of Jonah Hex, just any old comic book movie in the multiplex is not going to work. We already had to suffer through Kick-Ass and The Losers, now this new hip-Indie Comic adaptation that thinks it's better than Spiderman or Iron Man or Ant Man (hey yeah - whatever happened to Ant Man, Edgar?) is being released in place of something that could be potentially awesome. And at the end of the day it doesn't even matter if Edgar does have the Wright Stuff. You could put Michael Cera in a lesbian bank robber movie starring Penelope Cruz and Asia Argento from a Shane Black script directed by Lucrecia Martel and I'd still avoid it on principle. But by all means, Hollywood...prove me wrong.

PC: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you filthy sons of bitches. Well I can't argue with that fey A-clown Cera's success...I mean sure his last half dozen or so movies have bombed, inexplicably since what is not to love about a doe-eyed whisper-voiced understated sloppy sweatshirt wearing no talent dick?

But then some cocksucker casts a Culkin opposite? A different Culkin than Rory no less....I guess the Culkin stank makes Cera's record of failure look rosy by comparison. Amazing that Rory and Kieran Culkin are still getting jobs based on something their no talent irritant of a brother did 20 years ago!

"Who should we cast in this role?"

"Remember Home Alone? Huge hit from way back....that little blonde kid smacked his own face....went on to be a royal dick and did drugs or something."

"And?"

"Well he has a couple of brothers...makes sense if we give them work right?"

The very idea that any broad whose vagina works would choose a boring fairy like Cera over Chris Evans is too ridiculous to even contemplate.

EP: If I saw this trailer without knowing it was Edgar Wright's new movie, I imagine I'd find it irritating. But seeing as how it's Edgar Wright's new movie, I'm pretty fucking excited. From what I gather, it's based on a comic book that I know nothing about, but I'm sure that's got all the geeks triply excited about it. I do wish he was doing another movie with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but until that happens, I'll settle for this.

Tally: 1-3

   The Expendables

A team of mercenaries head to South America on a mission to overthrow a dictator. Written & directed by Sylvester Stallone. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Danny Trejo was reported to appear in the film but apparently got fired before production began.)

JC: Is this going to be the Ultimate Badass movie, the modern Dirty Dozen, that so many of us are hoping for? Absolutely not. Will it be a passable, dumb action movie released in a market that has largely forsaken such a tentpole that once upon a time was ubiquitious with new summer movies? Will it be the rose atop the twenty-foot rubbish heap the Michael Ceras and Jay Baruchels have laid on top of would-be summer blockbusters? I certainly hope so. Sure the preview is full of phony toughness and is scored by that remarkably terrible Nickelback-esque song, but it seems to understand the basic elements of the genre: Statham bagging the ladies, Jet Li kicking people, Terry Crews going "ah hell no!" (actually he didn't but he probably does at least once in the movie.) I wish the Schwarzenegger/Willis cameo had been kept under wraps, but the fact that they're in the movie is pretty goddamn amazing. Stallone's got the right idea, no doubt about that, and after the latest Rambo we know he's willing to pitchfork children through the abdomen and toss their still-squirming bodies into the fire to get a good audience reaction. That's just the kind of bravura we need to make this thing work! Too bad Sly found Danny Trejo so expendable...he would have been better than Randy Couture, a nondescript ringer of a musclehead. Whatever happens, seeing Dolph Lundgren in a theatrically-released movie for the first time since 1988 will be sweet.

EP: This looks fun, but when you set out to make the ultimate action movie, and cast the biggest collection of bad-asses since The Dirty Dozen, you're setting the bar pretty high for yourself. Hope they clear it.

PC: It's obviously going to suck, but I'll see it out of respect to Dolph and La Statham.

CF: Stallone made all the right moves so far, that's for sure. He covered all the bases and it's hard to believe there's anyone in existence who doesn't love at least two of the actors headlining this. For me, there's three fellows here for which I have unalloyed love: Jet Li, Statham and Dolph. There's two that I deeply enjoy in certain limited capacities: Steve Austin and Stallone. And there's no one I really hate although I'm glad to see they cast some dude I never heard of from a sport I hate to play Charles Bronson. I like Brittany Murphy, but if she weren't dead that would go a long way towards making me happy to see her in this. Right after she died, my wife borrowed a bunch of dvd's from a friend and the pile included a slew of dtv horror movies. One happened to star Murphy and it made me surprisingly uncomfortable to see her up on screen, skinny like a Holocaust survivor, just a bobble-head on a pale, sinewy body, she looked like a newborn, her oversized cranium anchoring her weight on rubbery, thin limbs. It was kind of awful and let me oversell the awfulness to make my point: not even the sunken eye-sockets of a painfully gaunt Brittany Murphy can make me any less gleeful about the prospect of this one. It's a referendum on the state of cinema bad-ass-ery. Take note, Mr. Obama.

The verdict: You're objectively wrong to not be excited for this.

Tally: 4-0

   August 20
   Takers

A hard-boiled detective (Matt Dillon) gets in between a group of bank robbers and their plan to make away with a $20 million bounty. With Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Hayden Christensen, Paul Walker, Johnathon Schaech, Jay Hernandez, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Chris Brown.

PC: Yes! Matty "too hotty not from Southie" Dillon and Paul Walker finally get together to wet the panties of the world. I like the sound of this bad boy...Dillon was great as a private dick in Something About Mary, and no doubt he'll be awesome here as well.

Good to see Zoe Saldana finally getting some work. Happily for her, she's so skinny that if co-star and abuser Chris Brown tries to hit her, he will most likely miss since she provides such a slim target.

Of course that asshole wouldn't dare touch her or the attractive girl they cast in the movie (...they did cast one right?) cuz he knows that with supermen like Dillon and Walker around that shit won't be tolerated.

Hollywood exec last year..."Hey we need to cast this supporting role in this movie..."

Other exec..."The chick?  Zoe Saldana...let's put her in every fucking movie we can...I love mildly attractive skinny broads with no tits."

"No not the chick...we already cast Saldana don't worry...we need another dude."

"Hey why not Chris Brown?"

"The no-talent singer who beat the shit out of that girl?"

"Yeah...he has no acting experience but I bet he'll be good. We know he can fight anyway...did you see her face? Jesus what an asshole that guy is...cast him."

JC: You can't taint a Paul Walker movie for me no matter how hard you try, so the presence of untalented woman-beater Chris Brown isn't a dealbreaker. The really questionable casting is Hayden "I wish I could wish away my feelings" Christensen, who you would have expected to crawl away and disappear in the aftermath of those terrible prequels, just like the new Superman did after Bryan Singer's underwhelming reboot of that franchise. Again I demand a movie star exchange with Scott Pilgrim - we'll give you Christensen for Chris Evans - deal? Ok, we'll throw in all those stupid trilbies everybody seems to be wearing in the preview. Don't make us send Chris Brown down there to negoitate (of course that threat is based on the assumption that your movie is represented by a single, easily-manipulated pop singer who will quickly take him back.)

I like Dillon's style, going straight from a movie where he masterminded a heist to a movie where he prevents one. He should stay away from junk like Crash and just go back and forth between the two sides of law, culminating in a movie where he plays twin brothers - one cop, one crook. Probably be awkward for Kevin Dillon when they don't ask him to play one of the two brothers.

CF: Another woman-beating piece of human debris who should have had his teeth crushed one by one with pliers while they're still in his mouth. Honestly, is there anything you can do to kill your career at this point? This summer proves that viciously pummeling a woman won't do it. Chloe Sevingy proves that doing graphic, hardcore sex scenes won't do it. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton prove doing straight-up pornography will actually legitimize you. Charlie Sheen frequenting prostitutes and cutting his wife's face hasn't even slightly hurt his status as the star of a family tv show. Tiger Woods has been cheered this week in front of un-screened crowds. Michael Vick beat injured dogs to death by slamming them up against a concrete floor and electrocuted other dogs as they hung by their necks and his presence on my beloved Eagles is a non-issue. R. Kelly raped and pissed all over an underage girl in front of a giant Space Jam mural, got off the legal hook when he paid off witnesses; his black fans play an O.J. and bristle at the accusation like a black man is being unfairly persecuted while his white fans mostly just think the whole story is funny. Seriously, who's the last person who had their career killed by an indiscretion or, you know, a fucking crime? 50 Cent likes to insuate he murdered people! It's his main tactic for success (his main tactic certainly isn't his song-writing.) Robert Blake and Phil Spector didn't have careers to be killed. Seriously, let me know what someone has to do to be rejected by the public. At any rate, the rest of this cast is a litany of folks I personally enjoy very much: Johnathon "I wrote Tim McCann's The Poker Club and Road House 2" Schaech, Idris "Please forgive me Beyonce, baby" Elba, Marianne "I wrote the shitty score for Career Girls that ruined the movie" Jean-Baptiste, Jay "how the Hell am I possibility only the second most attractive man in this movie?!? what kind of cavalcade of studs is this?!?" Hernandez and Matt "what the hell is a transom, Bob?" Dillon. Avatar was not a big enough hit to justify Zoe Saldana's career, though.

The verdict: Paul Walker is guilty of one thing and one thing only: gorgeousness.

EP: Stringer Bell! Heists! Guns! Several different elements of the trailer feel like poor man's Michael Mann [a poor man's Mann? -- ed.], but whatever. It's got Paul Walker in it, so I don't think I'm supposed to be taking it too seriously.

Tally: 4-0

   Nanny McPhee Returns

Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) arrives to help a harried young mother, Mrs. Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is trying to run the family farm while her husband is away at war. With Mrs. Green's children waging a personal war with their two spoiled cousins, Nanny McPhee uses her magic to teach the kids five important new lessons.

JC: Where did she go? Was she hanging out with Batman, The Mummy and Max Dugan? It sounds like there are at least two wars taking place in this movie, so it should be pretty exciting. And the phrase "uses her magic to teach kids a lesson" sounds ambiguously ominous. Also Emma Thompson is, like, disfigured or something right? This might actually be a fairly tense flick, unless I'm reading too far between the lines. I don't think I am though.

CF: It's like she never went away, really. Aw, I'm just joshing: Emma Thompson is great and I thought the original Nanny McPhee was exactly the kind of above average kids' film that Hollywood should be churning out on a weekly basis. Oh shit, did I read that right? This one brings on the ugliest Gyllenhaal. I'm out, magic powers and child soldiers or not. Although, I hate spoiled cousins. Can we get a version of that company Clean Flix that would edit out all the swearing and nudity from films so the movies can be enjoyed by creepy Mormon teenagers and insane middle-aged Baptist ladies, but this other version of the company edits out actors that I find distasteful, repellent or otherwise offensive? Who wouldn't love to have to never worry about Radha Mitchell or Monica Potter turning up on your screen unexpectedly, upsetting everyone and making me want to vomit? I don't care if it damages the artistic integrity of the film or makes it dramatically confusing, I just have a right as a consumer to avoid unsavory/repulsive elements like Maggie Gyllenhaal. [John would like to point out that Chris' disparagement of Radha Mitchell is not endorsed by everybody here at the Pink Smoke - he for one appreciates Ms. Mitchell's work and just enjoyed a splendid wank to a little film called Feast of Love. As for Maggie Gyllenhaal, she can burn with Juliette Lewis in the deepest bowels of Ugly Hell. --ed.]

The verdict: I have a little rule that has come in handy time and time again: if it's not Jake and it's a Gyllenhaal, I'm out.

EP: If Toy Story 3 is sold out, you should take your kids to see this.

PC: I hope Nanny came back with her attorney cause Mary Fuckin Poppins has a plagiarism suit ready for that bitch. Max Dugan is rolling over in his grave.

Tally: 0-4

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