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Men Who Stare At Goats Trailer is Classic Coen-esque Clooney. Today in Film Bloggery 08/28/09

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 2 months ago
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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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9 Greatest Human-Alien Sex Scenes

9 Greatest Human-Alien Sex Scenes

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 3 months ago
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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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Alice in Wonderland Trailer Leaked Early. Today in Film Bloggery 07/22/09

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 4 months ago
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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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Tron 2.0 Starts Up For Real. Trade Roughage 12/16/08

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 11 months ago
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  • Tron 2.0, described as a “next chapter” kind of sequel, has cast two actresses, Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett, both of whom were in Turistas. The production, which is to start filming in the Spring and to be released in 2011, is still looking for a male lead. Wait, you ask, isn’t the male lead split between young and old versions of Jeff Bridges? Apparently that “trailer” we saw back at Comic-Con was only test footage.
  • Speaking of things that were cool in the early 80s, James L. Brooks is finally making a sixth film, tentatively titled How Do You Know?, and has just cast Reese Witherspoon as one of three leads.
  • If you’ve seen the new trailer for Dragonball: Evolution, you may fear more live-action anime adaptations, so ignore this announcement from Universal about bringing TV and toy sensation Bakugan Battle Brawlers to the big screen.
  • I can’t wait to see the look on parents’ faces when they realize they shouldn’t have brought their kids to see Cheech and Chong’s Smokin’ Animated Movie.
  • If you want to know anything about the life of Frank Lloyd Wright, there are a few good documentaries to check out, but if you want a fictional love story involving the architect, you may look forward to the adaptation of Nancy Horan’s historical novel Loving Frank.
  • Catherine Hardwicke is actually better off not directing Twilight: New Moon, which Summit has set for a November 20, 2009, release. Rush jobs like this are rarely good, yet the two subsequent sequels are also tentatively slated for the same timeframe in 2010 and 2011. I guess if you think the Saw movies kept getting better, you could be hopeful.
Presidential Election Movies To Get You Through Election Day

Presidential Election Movies To Get You Through Election Day

Kevin Kelly
By Kevin Kelly posted 1 year ago
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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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Rudin Exits Reader. Trade Roughage 10/10/08

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago
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  • Scott Rudin is taking his name off Stephen Daldry’s The Reader after losing his heavyweight battle with Harvey Weinstein regarding the film’s release schedule. Now that Rudin has left the project, though, can we expect the producer to push his Revolutionary Road even harder for the Oscar? And will Kate Winslet be treated like a poor child of divorce who’s made to pick one parent over the other?
  • Confirming little more than what the movie blogs have been rumoring all week, Variety reports that super hot right now Josh Brolin is in talks to play the DC Comics gunslinger Jonah Hex. Perhaps with everyone respecting comic book characters so much these days this role will be the one that Brolin finally gets an Oscar nomination for.
  • I guess when your film stars George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, you can get just any old actress to play the lead female part. But picking the most boring Lost character ever (well, the actress who plays her, anyway) to costar in Grant Heslov’s Men Who Stare at Goats seems a bit counterproductive.
  • Continuing the trend of making uncomfortable topics funny, Seth Rogen is producing and will co-star in a comedy about cancer from an autobiographical script by HBO producer Will Reiser.
  • Despite another bunch of box office contenders entering the multiplexes this weekend, including the heavily starred yet topically cursed Body of Lies, the bets are that Beverly Hills Chihuahua will stay on top for a second round.

Comic-Con 2008: Tron 2, Race to Witch Mountain

Kevin Kelly
By Kevin Kelly posted 1 year ago
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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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Dark Knight to Make Money. Trade Roughage 7/17/08

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago
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  • A little film called The Dark Knight opens tomorrow tonight, and it’s so highly anticipated and it has received so much positive buzz that one expert is predicting it could gross anywhere between $100-150 million. I’m going to to do him one better and broaden that gap further to $100-900 million. Good thing this isn’t The Price is Right.
  • Will Ferrell will play a racist who develops a split personality in Two Face (no relation to the character in The Dark Knight), scripted by Vince Gilligan, the guy who gave us that recent drunk, swearing black superhero.
  • And speaking of down-on-their-luck, alcoholics, Jeff Bridges will play one — a country singer, though, not a superhero — in the T Bone Burnett-scored musical Crazy Heart, which will also star Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.
  • John Woo is known for announcing about 20 new directing gigs a year, so don’t get too upset if he doesn’t actually end up helming the comic book adaptation Caliber.
  • That was quick: Screen Gems is already making a Colombian hostage rescue movie.
  • Can we expect a whole new marketing strategy for Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie? United Artists has just hired a new chief of marketing and publicity, Michael Vollman from Paramount, to replace the resigned Dennis Rice.
  • Documentary site SnagFilms has acquired indieWIRE. Congrats and good luck to our SpoutBlog friends at iW, including Eugene Hernandez, who has a new position and will oversee content on both sites.

Michael Moore is a Bigger Self-Promoter Than Kanye West

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago
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gawkgraph.png…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.