• Lists: 5 Unsexy Movies About Sex, 15 Films That Offended Religious Groups; Ethnic Cinematic Atrocities and the Fake Beards That Enabled Them; 10 Movies That Beat Get Smart To The Punch;
• CineVegas: Britney Spears, Finally Lillian and Dan, Memorial Day; pictures
• SilverDocs: Spike Lee and refugees
• RIP, Cyd Charisse.
• Proof that the I Dream of Jeannie movie could be just like Armageddon.
• On the Podcast, Kevin and Paul talk Spielberg, Hitchcock and Shyamalan.
• More crappy viral marketing for The Dark Knight.
• Impersonating Christopher Walken.
• Laughing at Bangkok Dangerous
• Steven Boone returns to the halfway house to sample Susan Sontag and Terrence Malick.

This week we have two big-time offenders: Mike Myers’ The Love Guru, which has brought concern from Hindus, because the comedy seems to be making fun of the Hindu religion; and Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons, the “sequel” to The Da Vinci Code, adapted from Dan Brown’s bestseller. Earlier this week, the Vatican banned the latter production from all Catholic churches in Rome. The following statement from Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, was a favorite quote from the story: “Usually we read the script but in this case it wasn’t necessary. Just the name Dan Brown was enough.”

Of course, these days, religious organizations taking offense to a movie seems so commonplace that news like this is hardly even considered bad buzz. Neither The Love Guru nor Angels & Demons will be too aversely affected by the protests or boycotts. Both films will merely be added to the following list of major offenders (in alphabetical order so as not to offend anyone who thinks one is more offensive than another), as almost a genre cataloging than an inventory of condemned.

• Brokeback Mountain - Because of its promotion of “the homosexual lifestyle,” many right-wing Christian groups protested Ang Lee’s film. Most famously, it was pulled last-minute from a multiplex owned by Mormon businessman and Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, though his motivation was not necessarily claimed to be religion-based. Despite there being hundreds of gay films throughout the years, because of its popularity, this one was the worst offender.
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I keep forgetting that Mike Myers is not actually playing an Indian in The Love Guru, and yet I’m constantly reminded by the film’s commercials, which show that ridiculous shot of a little kid’s body with Myers’ giant head digitally superimposed onto it. Really, Myers’ character (Pitka) is a white American who is left on the doorstep of an Indian ashram when he’s a child. Then he’s raised as Indian, I guess (or simply Hindu, but then why the accent?).

Apparently the character, Pitka, couldn’t simply look and talk like Myers. He had to have that silly accent and the clothes and the facial hair, despite the fact that Deepak Chopra, who partially inspired the character (and who appears in the movie), is able to wear jeans and be clean-shaven. Because who would believe Myers as an Indian guru with just the voice, the clothes and his baby face?

Of course, Myers is not the first actor to wear or grow a beard and/or mustache in order to take on the guise of another ethnicity. Sure, it’s also the accent and the makeup that transforms the actor, but with the most recognizable faces, it’s the facial hair that really seals the deal for supposed authenticity.

1. Charlton Heston as Mexican in Touch of Evil (pictured above) - Maybe if Heston could maintain the accent he wouldn’t have needed the mustache. But then in photos he still would have just looked like regular old Heston. With the whiskers, however, he looks like regular old Heston with a mustache. If this look defined a man as Mexican, then many characters from the ’30s must have been Mexican. Rhett Butler? Mexican. Nick Charles (and anyone else played by William Powell)? Mexican.
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• Questions: Why are both The Love Guru and Get Smart––broad comedies that should have mainstream appeal, if they actually appeal to anyone––opening on the same day, and how is the competition going to impact each film’s box office? Answers: either because Paramount locked in a bunch of promo deals for The Love Guru before realizing how much wider Get Smart was tracking, or because Mike Myers didn’t want to change the release date; and badly.
• First Run Pictures has picked up film critic Godfrey Cheshire’s personal documentary, Moving Midway. The film, through which Cheshire examines race relations and his own family’s plantation, will open in New York and then make the unusual move of going straight to a platform release in the South.
• What Just Happened?, which just got its U.S. release date via Magnolia, will open the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on July 4.

• Oh, the sad irony: the Universal Studios fire, which destroyed the New York Street section of the backlot, was “caused by sparks from a blowtorch used to repair” that set. The theme park tram tour continued as scheduled yesterday, with visitors able to see the damaged facades (which will be rebuilt) up close.
• Brad Pitt is “part of a team of consultants designing an 800-room, five-star hotel” in Dubai. “You can expect something that is not only stunning to look at but will also be an incredible attraction to visit or stay at,” Pitt promised in a statement. Or, somebody did––I can’t imagine that sentence coming out of Brad Pitt’s mouth.
• Deepak Chopra says Hindus shouldn’t be mad about Mike Myers’ The Love Guru. This is the first I’ve heard about Hindus being mad about The Love Guru. Did this happen while I was in Cannes, or is the noise level on Love Guru news really that low?

If there’s one actress working today who best reinforces the theories of Lauren Mulvey, it’s Jessica Alba. And she encourages the male gaze by maintaining a career centered on playing eye candy, whether she’s having her skirt ripped off to expose her underwear (Good Luck Chuck), spending the majority of a film wearing a bikini (Into the Blue), playing a stripper (Sin City), being used to invoke jealousy (Meet Bill) or invoking erectile gags out of Mike Myers (The Love Guru). Perhaps someone should write a lengthy article on the myriad ways in which Alba relates to feminist film theory. I think her role as Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four movies and her blind character from The Eye (who identifies herself with the dead woman whose eyes she acquires) can each inspire a few interesting theses.

Obviously Alba is aware of the male gaze and may in fact be controlling it. It’s possible even that her participation in the online staring contest at ibeatyou.com is a matter of ironic reflexivity. Watch the clip of her first-place-winning stare and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s like she’s welcoming our lustful eye and then seemingly returning the gaze, hypnotizing us into thinking she desires us, too. Certainly there are a number of men out there becoming simultaneously turned on and disturbed by this video. And hopefully there are some feminist critics taking notes on it as well.

[via The Superficial]

• A bunch of actors (including Natalie Portman, Ethan Hawke, Hayden Christensen, and Olivia Thirlby, aka The Other Broad From Juno) will direct segments of the omnibus feature, New York, I Love You.
• As part of a gambit to make the kids aware of The Love Guru, his first movie in roughly forty years, Mike Myers will host the MTV Movie Awards.
• The Weinsten Company has purchased All Good Things, the debut fiction feature from Capturing the Friedmans director Andrew Jarecki, which begins filming this month.

Jessica Alba may be appearing in a lot of movies these days, but I wouldn’t exactly say she’s been keeping busy. It can’t be too much work to play the role of “Eye Candy” again and again and again. This time she plays a girl who is used in exploited for a vengeful ploy by a husband (Aaron Eckhart) to invoke jealousy in his cheating wife (Elizabeth Banks). The character could have been played by any pretty face (in fact Alba replaced Lindsay Lohan in the role), but Alba seems to be the most appropriately cast, because she’s one of the hottest actresses right now and yet she seems to be easily accessible to any filmmaker who wants to employ her. Last week we looked at another movie starring Alba, The Love Guru. In that she seems to have a more disposable role — she’s not really introduced until halfway through the trailer, and even then it’s unclear what purpose her character serves other than to invoke erectile gags from Mike Myers.

Meet Bill premiered last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was merely titled Bill. Apparently it wasn’t met with much excitement, despite the obvious appeal of watching Eckhart as a sad-sack (unlike Alba, he’s cast against type) in a comedy that looks part classic screwball and part Rushmore (with roles switched all about). The odd thing about this trailer is that with Alba playing the part of “Eye Candy”, she ought to be featured wearing lingerie for marketing purposes (see trailers for Good Luck Chuck) rather than Banks. Sure, Banks is also gorgeous, but Alba is the one that Americans obviously prefer to be objectified.

The first half of this week saw a drought as far as new trailers are concerned. But when it rains it pours, and by the end of day Thursday the internet had received a relative monsoon of debuts, including the now-official release of the Sex and the City trailer, which Karina prematurely peeked at last Friday, and another awesome ad for Iron Man.

But the truly noteworthy trailers had to be those for three eagerly anticipated comedies, two of which we are seeing for the first time. First, there’s The Love Guru, which stars Mike Myers as his first originally created comedic character in more than ten years. Unfortunately, it kind of makes me wish he would just keep making Austin Powers movies. Maybe I just don’t get it, and maybe I should just accept that a Myers comedy is less about it and more about him. But it doesn’t look that funny. And I’m a person who can appreciate the making fun of Extreme and the parodying of Bollywood and the ridiculing of little people.

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