Will Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats be the greatest George Clooney movie of all time? If you’re a fan of the actor/director’s work in Three Kings, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Burn After Reading and Syriana, then it’s possible you’ll see this as the military/CIA satire he’s been working towards his whole career. The fact that it seems like it should or could have been directed by the Coen Bros. — costars Jeff Bridges, Stephen Root and J.K. Simmons have all worked with the filmmaking duo in addition to Clooney — provides further evidence that this might well be the epitome of Clooney’s career.
Based on the non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, Goats is about a reporter (Ewan McGregor) working on a story about a U.S. Army unit employing psychic soldiers. Clooney is one of these “Jedi warriors,” as you can see in the trailer when he bursts clouds and knocks over goats with his mind. One particular bit of slapstick stolen from the underseen Special has me a little worried about the humor here. But how can I not want to see a movie that basically seems to insert “The Dude” into a modern day cross between DePalma’s The Fury and Spies Like Us?
Check out other film blog reactions to the trailer after the jump:
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Before even seeing District 9, we had a feeling there’d be at least a hint of human-alien sex, because science fiction, smart or dumb, has always had a fascination with the idea of inter-species love. And while bestiality may still be a taboo subject for Hollywood, the movies are always okay with the interplanetary variety, probably because it’s (usually) more consensual.
The aliens in District 9 are not sexy, though (not to us, anyway). They look like, and are derogatorily called, Prawns. So there are no apparent romances between these creatures and humans. But there is a reference to Nigerian prostitutes selling sex to the prawns, and there’s also sort of a depiction of a man and a prawn going at it “doggy style.”
While human-alien sex is commonly found in outer-space tales, such as Star Trek, we decided to look primarily at examples of visitors to Earth getting it on with the locals, similar to international sexcations that occur in the real world. Of course, because we’re not too familiar with sci-fi porn, there are likely a few good sex scenes we’ve left out. Feel free to tell us about them (if you’re not embarrassed) in the comments section.
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With Comic-Con beginning tomorrow, there’s so much movie stuff being talked about today that I almost didn’t know what the biggest topic was/is. And really, the most discussed film-related news of the day was the Sam Raimi/World of Warcraft movie announcement. But WOW fans have apparently gone back to playing the game and aren’t hanging out on the web so much anymore, so it appears the teaser trailer for Alice in Wonderland has taken over as the most exciting thing for movie geeks to drool over right now. Even more than the hot photos of Freddy Krueger, Jeff Bridges on the set of Tron 2.0 and the Megan Fox Fangoria cover.
All I can say is that if you told me 15 years ago that I’d ever be this disinterested in something involving either Tim Burton or Lewis Carroll, let alone both, I would have called you a liar and then beat you with my Edward Scissorhands DVD (see, the joke is that I was such a big fan back then that I had the DVD before it ever existed). It doesn’t look as bad as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I guess, but it looks a whole lot duller than I expected. Maybe this is just too perfect and obvious a pairing that there’s no need for it, in the same way we don’t really need a Terry Gilliam-directed Good Omens or a Chris Columbus-directed Percy Jackson (doh!). I guess that’s the main reason I have no desire to see this movie, but the fact that it somehow looks both murky and meretricious has me turned off completely.
Let’s see what the rest of the film blogosphere thinks of the teaser, after the jump:
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Are you walking around with your “I Voted!” sticker proudly adhered to your chest? If not, get out there and do some lever pulling, chad punching, and ballot dropping. Then take the rest ofthe day off and watch one of these movies that’ll get you through the rest of election day and away from the nail-biting edge of election return coverage. There are a few minor spoilers inside, but don’t view that as me messing with the ballot box. You’ll still love the movies more than CNN’s infographics.
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Director Andy Fickman and stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Carla Gugino discuss the “reimagining” of the Witch Mountain movies — this one is called Race to Witch Mountain. But really, all I remember is the new footage from Tron 2, which actually stars Jeff Bridges.
Highlights:
- Umm, Tron 2!!!
- Jeff Bridges in Tron 2!!!
- New footage of light cycles in Tron 2!!!
- Race to Witch Mountain is like 48 Hours meets the Bourne movies, but is also a lot like the originals.
- Also Whitley Strieber was involved with its production.
Read the liveblogging after the jump.
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…that, and other revelations about what celebrities blog about, courtesy of this feature on Gawker. Surprising: 36% of all celebrity blogging is devoted to “shameless self-promotion”; I would have pegged it at 70 or 80 percent. Not so surprising: statistically, blogging celebrities devote exactly as much virtual ink to “indecipherable rants” as “Republicans.” Nice graph, but I have to say, I’m SHOCKED that the Gawk squad let Jeff Bridges’ use of the word “netiquette” slip by un snarked-upon.