Two Cult Oddities, Out Now To Spook & Unsettle

I made unexpected friends with two surprising new horror flicks this weekend, which turned out to be far more than their front-facing parts -- below are some quick thoughts, but if you wanna avoid spoilers (not that I go that deep) just know I recommend both of these! Check 'em out!

The Empty Man -- I honestly thought this was just another piece of anonymous studio-junk a la The Bye-Bye Dude or The Slender Fella so I ignored its existence for awhile, even with the always-welcome James Badge Dale getting a rare leading man role, and that's egg on my stupid face -- this flick's actually much much more interesting than that. I should've know when it got a lousy Cinemascore grade that it's interesting! Cinemascore always gets horror movies wrong. 

At two-hours-and-twenty-minutes s it too long? It is maybe too long. But do I have a clue what I'd cut? I do not! Certainly not the ace opening sequence set in the Himalayas that seems totally disconnected from the rest of the movie for awhile (it is not), since that mini-movie on its own is worth the price of admission. And the middle might meander a little but by the arrival at the film's final destination that meandering feels of purpose, of worth. Not to mention the million little scares that are plunked down here and there askance it. (Oh and James Badge Dale is in long-underwear a lot! Good proper movie stuff!)

The film openly toys with the expectations I placed on its going in, flirting with being one of those generic movies -- blandly stereotyped teenagers speak a Candyman-like riddle on a bridge, summoning up something unspeakable! But talk about some wild swings and wilder swerves -- The Empty Man is seriously richer, smarter, and so much fucking stranger than all that. Just take the ride. Stick with it. It'll stick with you back, I promise.

Son -- This movie made me jump, jump, and jump some more. Another Cult Oddity -- and no big jump required from me telling you the horror sub-genre of the Q-moment would be all about cult-thinking -- Son has a great shock set for its first jump-scare, a terrific jab that just got me totally and completely, and then just kept 'em coming. 

Like The Lodge last year Son tells the story of a young woman who escapes her abusive cult-leader father and deprograms herself in order to try and lead a normal life, only to have that past come roaring back to life, peeking through her windows. She keeps telling the cops (led by a sensitive-eyed Emile Hirsch) that she's not crazy, that what she's seeing is really happening, and the film believes her so much that we become skeptical of the film itself -- it's a weird little mental infection of discombobulation, which made sense one I realized this was from Ivan Kavanaugh, the director of the fantastic 2014 flick The Canal; Kavanaugh wants to make us feel crazy, and he half succeeds. 

Son's maybe not quite as unassailable as The Canal, a film which still makes me shudder whenever I remember certain visions from it, but this film is better-shot, with its neon-blanched Americana, emptied of soul but rife with ugly poisonous color and rot. There too are visions here I'll find myself squirming at the memory of, and repressing them for the sake of my longterm self.

Kung Fu Charlie Manson

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The first "teaser" for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has arrived -- I am never going to understand what designates this as a "teaser" when it seems like a full-ass trailer to my eyes -- and you've probably watched it by now; hell you've probably watched it a couple of times by now. It is a "teaser" after all, I guess! I feel teased! It mainly highlights Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt's characters, who play an actor and his stuntman respectively, as well as Margot Robbie getting out of a pool naturally. But there is a lot of stuntman-slash-actor Mike Moh (who's playing Bruce Lee) featured too, and I am fine...

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View this post on Instagram

When you haven't eaten 🍕 for 2 months 😫

A post shared by Mike Moh (@mikemoh) on Oct 5, 2017 at 12:28pm PDT

... with that! In that gif at the start of this post that's Moh duking it out with Emile Hirsch playing Jay Sebring, who was Sharon Tate's ex-boyfriend slash hairdresser slash close friend -- he was one of the people who got murdered by the Manson Family that fateful night.

Sharon definitely had a type, didn't she? Anyway the trailer is a heckuva lotta fun if you ask me, and reminds me, after some reticence with regards to this specific subject, why a Tarantino Film is a goddamned event. Perhaps I'm swayed by the fact that the whole Manson thing isn't mentioned once in this teaser? I doubt we'll be so lucky when the "full trailer" comes along so let's enjoy the madcap while we can.
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Hollywood hits on July 26th.

So how are we all feeling now...?

Absolutely Slab-ulous

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If you're looking to be genuinely disturbed by a horror movie for the holidays - as opposed to being genuinely disturbed by reality, which we've all got in spades this holiday season - then you should give The Autopsy of Jane Doe a shot. It gets horror. Here's my review of it from a couple of weeks back - I bring it up again now because the movie's got a new poster, seen above, and also it's actually out in theaters and I believe on VOD as of today. I still think the movie it loses its bearings in its last act, but it's a lot of horrible fun getting there... as it goes with so much of life. God I'm depressed.

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In the Body Cavity of Madness

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The violation of our bodies, of our human flesh, is the major defining element of Horror. Make all the arguments you want for the importance of mental or spiritual anguish, genre-wise - when it comes right down to it the most primal something-something beating deepest inside of our brains is "Please Monster, Don't Bite Me." David Cronenberg knew this and made a dozen terrific movies about it, folding the term "Body Horror" around himself like a warm blanket of recently removed skin.

And the Norwegian director André Øvredal (the man behind the surprisingly rollicking good time that was Trollhunter) was paying attention - his latest movie is called The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and when it focuses in for long, long stretches on the titular task at hand it redefines gooseflesh. Hell your  scalp will crawl right off of you and into the seat beside you and then demand some of your popcorn, if you let it.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe stars Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch as an exceedingly well-cast father and son who run a particular sort of family business, handed down through the generations - they're coroners, holed up in their basement slash professional space, bridging the antiseptic gap between hospital and, well, basement. Nothing's as sterile as it ought to be and nobody's as rigorous about the details as they ought to be - movie coroners are always sloppily eating sandwiches over flayed torsos and these two fit right in.

Then one dark and stormy night a most particular corpse shows up at their door, and things, already quite weird, only grow weirder from there. That's all I'll say about that because a lot of the fun of The Autopsy of Jane Doe is sorting out where the hell the movie's going with itself - be forewarned the answers get pretty goofy, but the movie's self-aware enough about that to squeeze itself through its rougher spells.

It probably actually gets a little too worked up, unraveling the riddles of its own weaving - Øvredal is a man who loves world-building; a lot of the fun of Trollhunter was learning the rules of its supernatural namesakes. But that instinct doesn't do Jane Doe as much good as it did in that previous effort - Jane Doe presents us with a lot of weirdness in its superior first two acts, only to work overtime in its last third to rob these mysteries of their strangeness and explain them off too just a little too thoroughly.

But its build-up is killer, and the methodical madness of the Autopsy beating (or not beating as it were) at its black heart is horror movie magic. Cox and Hirsch have a fine rapport with one another and they guide us into this just-left-of-scientific maelstrom with ease - before you even realize it you're giggling at the sight of ribs being cracked like walnuts, and that my friends is a weird, a wonderfully weird, place to be.
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The Autopsy of Jane Doe is out in theaters on December 21st -- I think it hits demand thereabouts too? Oh and in case you missed my pics & video of Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch, and André Øvredal doing a Q&A for the film earlier this week click right here for that.
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I Am Emile's British Accent

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Here's Emile Hirsch telling a story about the professional morgue worker who helped them out on the set of The Autopsy of Jane Doe #theautopsyofjanedoe #film #horror #emilehirsch @filmlinc

A video posted by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Dec 6, 2016 at 6:51pm PST

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I dragged my sick ass out of bed last night because I had paid for tickets to see the horror film The Autopsy of Jane Doe at FSLC and I wasn't about to toss my hard-earned dollar bills in the trash alongside all my snot-rags (I'm feeling colorful today, don't mind me) and also I wanted to stare at Emile Hirsch in person (he was there for a Q&A following the movie along with actor Brian Cox - see a picture of Cox right here - and director André Øvredal, who also made Trollhunter) and as you can see by the above video I did just that. He's a charmer. Anyway I'm still feeling pretty dumpy this morning though so I'm holding off on writing a review of the movie just yet - maybe this afternoon if I'm feeling up to it. The movie's pretty good though!

Casting In Cold Blood's Killers

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Was 2006 really so long ago that the internet doesn't have any pictures of Lee Pace and Daniel Craig doing press together for Infamous, the "other" Truman Capote biopic? No pictures of them tickling each others ribs, tweaking each other's cheeks... nothing? What a waste. Why even make a movie if you're not gonna give us that stuff? 

Aaaanyway perhaps you heard the news that an In Cold Blood miniseries is about to be made? This got me thinking about how gosh-darn hot they made Perry Smith and Dick Hickock in this movie, and then I got to thinking about...

... how Clifton Collins Jr and Mark Pellegrino (mmm Mark Pellegrino) weren't too shabby a jail-bait fantasy in Capote either. And clearly from there my thoughts spun back in time to...

... the originals, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson in 1967's In Cold Blood. Yes, the movies have been romanticizing these fellas for decades. It's only right at this point we should take a look at the actual real-world murderers these actors were all hired to portray...

In general they've all been pretty good casting, haven't they? Bringing me to my ultimate question: if you were casting the new In Cold Blood miniseries, who would you hire? Both Hickock and Smith were in their early to mid 30s when all the events Capote documented took place, so they can both be played by somewhat established actors. My picks are Jonathan Tucker for Hockock and Emile Hirsch for Perry.

Who would you cast?

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Happy New Years Baby

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Short of posting pictures of actors wearing diapers, which is a google search I just don't have any desire to make, seems to me a fine way to ring in the New Years a la the iconic Baby New Year is to steal our own Father's Day tradition and post some pictures of Hollywood's biggest DILFs with their adorable little ones standing in for Baby 2015-to-be.

Have a great one, everybody! 

And hit the jump for a little gallery...

Call The Fur Police! There's Been A Fur Crime!

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Known Otter Emile Hirsch supposedly tweeted out this shirtless selfie last night according to JJ, adding "Getting Lean! #goldsgym" (ahh the poetry of modern conversation). He's since deleted the tweet (he's deleted all his tweets actually - has he ever even tweeted before? I assume he had since I follow him but I don't recall) and clearly it's shame that drove him to deletion. Deep soul-scarring shame over having waxed and sheared and plucked his preternaturally glorious pelt from existence. SHAME, EMILE. Here's a behind-the-scenes picture from Into the Wild of happier, hairier times:

Good Morning, World

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A happy 29th birthday to Emile Hirsch today - we just gratuitized a very fine (f is for fine and it is also for frontal) moment of his in the movies the other week, click over here for that. The above shot is from Into the Wild of course, which no I still haven't seen Into the Wild and no you can't make me. No desire. Anyway I was curious about Emile's upcoming project where he's playing John Belushi bu looking at now I see the film's writer-director also wrote the execrable The Secret Life of Walter Mitty remake and wow my curiosity just withered away like that. Hmmm looking through everything I just wrote this is not a very nice birthday post for Emile. Oh well. It's early. We'll cap it off with him looking good in the bath in that Bonnie & Clyde remake. Have a fine and furry day, sir.

I Am Link

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--- Get Hooked - I mixed things up yesterday when I reported the news that Garett Hedlund was going to star in Joe Wright's Peter Pan movie - Garrett is not playing Peter Pan, he is playing Captain Hook. When I read "lead role" I guess I just figured, and got my figures mixed up. Oh well this lets me post another sexy picture of Garrett, so I shouldf mess these things up more often. Also we now have full confirmation that Hugh Jackman is playing Blackbeard, so I guess this movie is going to be positively overflowing with sexy pirate action.

--- Kneel Down - Olivia Williams is making a horror movie! Two of my favorite things. She will co-star with Matthew Modine (raise your hand if you've thought of Matthew Modine in ten years) in Altar, the tale of a couple who move into a house previously owned by a murderer and his wife's ghost. Something tells me that no good can come of such a thing. Is there any occupation more demonized in the movies than the ones in real estate though? They are always up to no good.

--- Emile Takes NY - The pair who made American Splendor are next making Ten Thousand Saints, which just gained a lead in Emile Hirsch. I've got Emile on the brain after that furry naked start to this week so the news that this is filming here in New York makes me happy. Maybe his furry nakedness will cross my path. He's got a habit of whipping it out in public, after all.

--- Plant Violence - Mike Newell, director of the second best Harry Potter movie and that really brown movie that starred Jake Gyllenhaal's abs, is next going to turn John Wyndham's classic sci-fi book The Day of the Triffids into a movie. Sam Raimi is producing it - when we'd last heard about this project we thought that Raimi was directing, but guess not. Sadness. I generally like Newell though, even if The Prince of Persia was a poo-stain. And this book is dying for a great movie.

--- Criss Cross - Robert Zemeckis' next movie will be a fictionalization of the true story told in the documentary Man On Wire about that dude who walked on a you guessed it wire from one World Trade Center tower to the other back in the 70s, and Joseph Gordon Levitt is going to star as said dude. Wasn't he French? Is Joe doing an accent? Will they Americanize him?

--- Her Name Is Veronica - Yesterday I linked over to the introduction to 2014's "We Can't Wait!" series at The Film Experience while simultaneously admitting that I missed out on voting, and here we are with the first entry that everybody but me voted on about looking forward to, sigh. I totally agree with this selection though!

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Good Morning, World

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I tweeted a picture of Emile Hirsch looking like rough military trade in Lone Survivor the other day only to then be reminded in turn that hey, Emile's naturally a little fur-ball - so why do you suppose he shaved himself for LS then? Do the Navy Seals frown upon furriness? I refuse to believe it... but only because of Jason Beghe in GI Jane. Obviously everything I learned about military grooming comes from my movie fantasy men. 

Anyway back the the subject - this is Emile back in his natural hair habitat in the 2012 movie Twice Born, which seems to be about him and Penelope Cruz doing it a bunch, slash Bosnia. Most importantly, as you'll see after the jump, Emile goes full starkers. Bosnia who?

Make Love Not War Movies

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There was a moment in Peter Berg's Lone Survivor that made me angry - angry enough that I considered leaving the screening. For all of Berg's talk during the Q&A that followed about him actively attempting to side-step any video-game-esque sense to the violence out of respect for the very real fallen soldiers the film's telling the story of, at the start of the shoot-out that serves as the film's entire middle section he chose to film a bunch of it like something straight out of a racist version of Duck Hunt - a brown person in a head-scarf pops up and we watch them pop with blood through the scope of whichever heroic character's getting the points for that one. 

Up until then we've spent the first third of the film getting to know the American soldiers, played by a fine group of recognizable faces - Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, and Taylor Kitsch are our central quartet... and, well, there's not a single face of color around. So at that point, it just felt gross. The faceless scourge of Others getting picked off while the Texas boys express their indifference between "Arabian" and "Arabic" horses. There's just dropping us into the there and then of the characters, that's well and good, but the film is sloppy with its attitude towards killing.

That said, without getting too spoilery (I didn't know the true story going in) the film's last act rights some of the problematic wrongs, and brings into focus why this story, out of all the stories of our fallen soldiers, was worth being told. What briefly felt like propaganda did have a couple of aces up its sleeve. The art of it is a little awkward though - while the film's well acted (Emile Hirsch is especially terrific) and well shot (the action is bone-breakingly palpable at times), the murkiness of its intentions aside there's a slickness to it that's incongruous and I'm not sure serves it. Save that early anger, which I don't think Berg intended to spur, I never really felt all that challenged by the film. It took me backwards ten steps just to catch me back up by the end.

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I Am Link

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--- In The Navy - Did I know that there was an Navy SEAL movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Eric Bana, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch coming out? I I feel like I would remember that. Here's the trailer and some pics for Lone Survivor, a title which makes me worry for everyone not named Mark Wahlberg.

--- Rim Again - While it's best to remain cautious, Deadline's saying that the good box office showing for Pacific Rim in China - it's WB's best opening there ever - could mean good things for a sequel. The movie still has a long ways to go to get into the black though, so let's not go nuts. Still I loved the movie and would love a sequel, so my insides are begging for this. And hey, maybe they'll get Charlie Hunnam (or Idris, dare I dream) pants-less next time.

--- Bad BO - Speaking of flops heard round the world, over at The Film Experience Michael C is taking a look at this Summer's hot topic - is the Summer Blockbuster dying? Massively budgeted crap like RIPD is crashing and burning while smaller-priced fare like The Conjuring soars... what does it mean? And will someone explain to me why I didn't like The Conjuring? I'm still kind of perplexed about it, given everybody else's positive reaction.

--- Gangster Swap - As I mentioned yesterday I just watched some of Brian DePalma's Scarface the day before, so this strikes me as some strange coincidence, the word that Harry Potter director David Yates is thinking about remaking it. Yates was (or is) supposed to make a movie with Tom Hardy about Al Capone, but that's been in limbo for a bit, so maybe he'll do this instead? I was gonna say Tom could play the lead but Pacino was egregious enough of a race-wrong face for the role.

--- Hump Tales - This is the sort of news that gets a raised eyebrow - Chinese director Zhang Yimou, he of Raise the Red Lantern and Hero and so on - is maybe going to replace Tim Burton as the director of an English-language Hunchback of Notre Dame movie (possibly titled Quasimodo) starring Josh Brolin. I don't know what to even say about that.

--- Mortal Siggy - Even though the first one hasn't come out yet (and to these eyes, save some possible Kevin Zegers on multiple-gratuity-recipient Godfrey Gao - see here and here - action, looks terrible) the studio's thinking aloud that they're considering Sigourney Weaver for a big part in the second Mortal Instruments movie. Apparently she'd be the big bad leader of the big bads, or whatever. I'm always willing to watch Siggy slum, although I wish she'd make something great again.

--- Woman From UNCLE - Elizabeth Debicki, who certainly was fine in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby as golf-pro slash vapid gossip Jordan Baker, is taking the female lead in The Man From UNCLE movie opposite Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. I like her but I was really hoping there was no "female lead" and this movie would be nothing but sex-eyes between those two. Sigh.

--- Buffy Lives - Raise the banner, Sarah Michelle Gellar has spoken and said she would make a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie if "the story was right." Yeah yeah this will never happen. But hey, I thought that about a Veronica Mars movie once upon a time, too.

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... getting picked up by Emile Hirsch. (via)

I Climbed A Mountain And I Turned Around

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David Gordon Green's Prince Avalanche is the movie I am most looking forward to seeing at the Tribeca Film Festival, which is currently on-going and where I've been seeing the shit I've been reviewing this week - so far Frankenstein's Army, Fresh Meat, V/H/S/2, and Greetings From Tim Buckley, which I saw last night and will presumably ramble about later today. I am seeing Prince Avalanche on Sunday. Word's been great on it, but I'd have been excited anyway - y'all know I love me some David Gordon Green, and it was about time for him to make a nice little movie again.

Also, I would be really happy if Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch could get on my good side anew after I absolutely loathed their performances in the last things I saw them in (This is 40 and Killer Joe, respectively). So on that note - the trailer is here! Watch it below. Prince Avalanche is out in August.

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Say Hi Seals

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Say hello to your next batch of fantasy Navy SEALS - Eric Bana, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch and Mark Wahlberg are all in talks to join Peter Berg's upcoming flick Lone Survivor, which is based on a book by a former SEAL about (what else) a real-life operation that went awry. Since this is manly-man movie-maker Peter Berg directing I doubt he'll exploit this cast to its full possible gratuity though. (I haven't seen Battleship yet but I think I'd have heard if Kitsch and Skarsgard had been properly exploited therein.) But hey, all they need to give me is Eric Bana with a mustache like Viggo's in GI Jane and I'll be all set. That 'stache is the facial hair equivalent of snorting Viagra.

The Texas Chicken Massacre

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For me the ladies walk away with William Friedkin's Killer Joe. The ladies being Gena Gershon and Juno Temple, who are both absolutely terrific. Much has been made of Matthew McConaughey's "brave" performance and I suppose it does mean something for him to do the things he's doing in this film at this point in his career as opposed to him doing very similar only slightly more deranged things in 1994's awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. But I kept getting the Chainsaw vibe from him, especially as the movie thuds along and he becomes more unhinged in... an unwholesome manner... so it never felt like quite the revelation I'd heard it described as.

Gershon, on the other hand - you know how it's said that everything Fred Astaire was doing Ginger Rogers was doing backwards and in heels? In Killer Joe we meet Gena bush first and it only plunges deeper from there. This is some straight up "Kathleen Turner in Crimes of Passion" level fuckery here - the type of role you can't fathom what drove an actress to say yes to this, but thank goodness they did. Whether she's giggling about dick pics or picking at a stranger's mushroom pizza or getting funky with some K Fried C, she is dancing. Backwards, in heels, and bush first.

And this feels like a summation of "Juno Temple-ess (so far)" - a culmination and focus of what Temple can do, and she's laser accurate. Weird and sexy and inappropriate and funny - she keeps you totally off balance, and I found myself hanging on her every whim. The movie never feels more alive then when she's living up there.

Unfortunately it must be known that Emile Hirsch is straight up terrible - so bad he drags down everybody around him whenever he's there. Thomas Haden Church gets the worst of it because he's sharing the most screen-time with Emile; otherwise THC is very funny, but as soon as Emile shows up inside his frame they both suddenly seem to be reading off cue cards they can only half see. Generally I like Hirsch but he comes off as a professional amateur here. Screaming everything doesn't equal character, Emile! And the movie hinges so much on him, it's fairly fatal.

So besides loving the ladies and the delightfully gratuitous moment of McConaughey nudity and then of course there's The Scene Everyone Will Be Talking About, I finally found the film on the half-baked side. It has moments of real sparkling monstrous brilliance, but they're little islands of scenes surrounded by a sea of real clunkers. I kept wanting it to pluck on my nerves like a finely oiled Coens Brothers machine, wringing me out, but it kept me at arm's length, ultimately undevoted to these folk's guttersnipe woes.

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The Green Prince

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If you'e spent the past several years staring forlornly at your DVD of George Washington and silently weeping then this news might pop you outta that cineaste funk - director David Gordon Green has taken a break from making Jonah Hill vehicles to return to his indie roots (sorta) and shot a secret quickie last month in Austin. I say "(sorta)" because the cast isn't so small - Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. But it's a remake of an Icelandic film so that's like fifty indie points back in the plus column, right? Says The Playlist:

"Details are still being firmed up, but here's what is known thus far. The folks over at Twitch reveal that Green rounded up Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch for the film that shot last month in Austin, and is a remake of Icelandic filmmaker Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson's "Either Way" ("Á annan veg"). In that film, the story is set in the '80s and follows two highway maintenance men who work together in the barren wilderness and chronicles their evolving friendship. And we presume with the slender cast and Texas location, Green hasn't strayed too much from the source. Variety adds that Green's film is titled "Prince Avalanche" and that's about all for details."

You should recall that Green is set to shoot his Suspiria remake with Isabelle Fuhrmann and Isabelle Huppert in the Fall, too. Suspiria remake with Isabelle Fuhrmann and Isabelle Huppert. It just sounds goddamned good, those words put together.
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I Am Link

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--- Alfred's Fever Dream - Alfred Hitchcock's gloriously romantic ode to emotional abuse Vertigo came out on this day in 1958 and The Playlist is recognizing its anniversary by sharing a list of five things you might not know about the film. I knew them all but then I am a Hitch spazz and there's not a whole lot left for me to know anymore, sigh.

--- Boys - Do you guys remember that web-series called The Outs that I told you to watch a few weeks back? Well the second episode is here, go watch it. Like, now. Or finish reading this post I guess and then go watch it. There are many cute Brooklyn boys in it, being cute, it's worth it, believe me.

--- Killer Thriller - The trailer for William Friedkin's super-black NC-17 rated Killer Joe is online, watch it at Slash. Or in even better quality at Apple. Apparently it's the main stop on Matthew McConaughey's "reconsider me as an actor, son" tour of 2012, and his role's insane in it. It co-stars Emile Hirsch and Emile Hirsch's furry nipples, and yay Gina Gershon! (Doggie Chow.)

--- Cam Slam - Angelina Jolie is not taking the lady role in Ridley Scott's The Counselor as had been theorized; it's going to Cameron Diaz, who I guess wants to try and be a serious actress again just like McConaughey. (Also she has new enormous breasts, so there's that.) The Counselor you should recall is Scott's next movie with Michael Fassbender as a lawyer who tries to do a little drug dealing on the side and it goes horribly wrong; the script was written by No Country For Old Men scribe Cormac McCarthy and the film co-stars Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem.

--- High & Tight - I wasn't really a fan of the first Kick Ass movie - it gave us the little girl who won't go away, after all, and features one of the most insufferable of her many insufferable performances - but I admire it for introducing us to Aaron Johnson for one, and for introducing us to him in a pretty well-fitted in the central area of his body jumpsuit at that. So now that there's real talk of the sequel happening, would I watch another hour and a half of him running around in that costume now? Even with Insufferable Girl there? I probably would. I'm so damned easy. But come on! Look at that thing.

--- Smashed - I only saw the Edward Norton version of The Incredible Hulk a couple of weeks ago and man alive it was terrible. Stupid, boring, clunky garbage. I need to revisit Ang Lee's film, which against all odds I was a fan of - it has been a few years since I've watched it though. This terrific picee by Tim at Antagony & Ecstasy does a great job plunking down Lee's film in the context of the still-going onslaught of superhero movies, and critiquing its failures (although I think he's too hard on Eric Bana).

--- Vision Queer - Glenn watched Vision Quest and got caught up in all of its glorious gayness, just like I did back a couple of years ago. It really is one of the gayest movies ever made. And with Michael Schoeffling shuffling around in wrestling gear, I ain't complaining. Oh ho ho no, no complaining here.

--- Hidey Hole - BD has a few pictures from the new Aussie thriller Crawlspace, which is not a remake of "The Single Greatest Movie Ever Made, Crawlspace starring Klaus Kinski" but something else entirely. For a hot minute we thought it was directed by Wolf Creek's Greg McLean, but it's only produced by him. Still, produced by him is enough to make me watch it.

--- And finally, this is to remind myself to watch this, but you can come along for the ride the more the merrier I always say - via Gawker he's the Disney-fied version of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver:

The Darkest Hour in 150 Words or Less

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Hey, what if we made like an extra-special episode of One Tree Hill set in Moscow - we could hire not-bad actors in by luring them with a free trip to Russia, and then have them make up all their dialogue as they go along! Surely we could get Emile Hirsch, at least! And then we could have aliens attack them in a nearly shot-for-shot rip-off excuse me homage of War of the Worlds! We could make it different though, by making the aliens look like Satan's farts! And then we could shoot everything really brightly like it's daytime in the Sahara even when the characters are supposed to be shut up inside back-rooms during a black-out! And then we could infuriatingly name the movie The Darkest Hour even though everything's so over-lit it makes the audience want to scoop out their own eyeballs! That would be totally awesome.

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