Aquamarine

Pauline Kael once stated, “In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.” That is why it’s so hard for me to write honestly about this soon-to-be classic piece of art without selling the nuts out of it. Trust me, it’s easy to sell, sell, sizz-ell – just watch the trailer. Aquamarine, originally titled, Le Vive de 30-year-old mermaid girl pretending to be 18, a remake of a Godard film indeed. It’s going to change your life. The trailer is no lie; it’s the real deal.

My interests in the film are as follows: #1: The Faustian battle with Claire and Halley for super-hunk lifeguard Raymond, the beach bum with the world’s nicest bum! Yes! #2: An essential question: What does it mean to be a woman? Wo-man. A wo-man of the water? Wa-ter? #3: Another less-essential question: What is humor? “Did you order,” the heroine says to the evil nemesis, “a sand-WITCH!” Groucho Marx would be laughing his hairy ass off. Plus, there are many fish jokes – “What a barnacle!” “Something about that girl is fishy.” Of course, if this were real life, the girls would be calling her a “cunt rag” and a “manifestation of a backward orgasm, a.k.a. murder.” They’d wish her the worst – having to take a three day long shower with Live's "This is why Dolphins cry..." playing at maximum volume. But no, this is wetter phantasmagoria.

The main question one must ask of a piece of art – is it based in reality? (Actually, no, that’s not the question I asked immediately – I asked, “Why oh holy God?”) Anyway, reality? Yes. A mermaid washes up on a Floridian resort town, befriends Eric Robert’s daughter and has a mesmerizing dilemma. She has to fall in love in three days, or else she has to return to the ocean where undoubtedly she’ll be raped by a sea horse in a sick ocean vaudeville act.



But alas, Raymond, the “perfect guy” comes along. Love? Love and brains. I can’t wait to see how he holds up conversation – I see Woody Allen and Vin Diesel talking about “futility.” One issue: how is it that someone who lives in the ocean and has swam around the world hundreds of times, and whose father has created tsunamis, doesn’t know the first thing about boys? Oh well, nobody yelled at God when he created Muslims, right? Right.

As always, I’m being really sarcastic. I will end with another last Pauline Kael quote, “If I eat another terrier, I’m gonna throw up. Seriously, Pauline Kael wants some daschund.”

Goal: Installment 1

Casting Call Newcastle: We're looking for guys who look NOTHING LIKE SOCCER PLAYERS. Interested?

View trailer here.

What’s insane about this movie besides the vapid trailer that totally gives away almost every decent scene in the film is the idea that it will be successful – they’ve already began filming Goal! 2 and Goal! 3. WTF?! If the story follows a realistic tale of a Mexican footballer, Santiago Munez’s will next become a Telemundo sportscaster, and in Goal 3 he will descend into horrific squalor and poverty with gambling debts. Then he’ll open a falafel stand outside of Newcastle United’s stadium. Bratty little kids will walk by and taunt him, saying racist shit and soon he will become a featured guest on “The Mind of Mencia.” What? I’m just being a realist.

It’s hilarious too that he’s so poor that he can only afford cardboard shin guards, but he’s wearing $100 dollar Adidas shoes. Nice move, props guy – I know it’s weird to be working on this bullshit movie, but at least give the guy clogs or uggs. Also, how many great Mexican players “make it” in the Premiership? Hardly any, why? Because they’re huge diving fairies and they can’t take the tough, hard-man type of game the English play. But okay, for Santiago, I’ll suspend my disbelief. The movie has all the stops of a clichéd, come-from-nothing-turn-into-Newcastle-superstar-mexican-kid-who-I-don’t-particularly-like-or-believe-in-have-you-seen-my-socks film. Ya know? Also, the word “own” is missing from the title of this film. Snap! Mert 1, Santiago nil, bitches.


A picture from a real soccer movie, Shaolin Soccer.

Trust The Man

I’m stoked. I understand the way I review things on this site probably gives off an image of me as a racist, animal lover, hater of autistic peeps, a pedophile, etc. I apologize; but I know that I dig the trailer for Trust the Man. And yes, I’m a raging pedophile.

You gotta love movies about upper-middle-class white guys fighting to maintain their lives and dignity with romantic troubles; after all, who has it harder than 30-something wealthy Manhattanites? All joking aside, the trailer is absolutely stellar for what it is – a romantic New York drama/comedy. The instrumental Spoon song “The Way We Get By” in the beginning is wonderful and uplifting. The second half, however, loses me somewhat with the Five For Fighting song, but in a trailer like this, one would probably die from shock if there weren’t a Five For Fighting, Semisonic or Boyzone song. Every time I hear any of their songs, I think of a pimpled college freshman viciously masturbating while watching Wild Things in a dorm room for some reason.

There are two moments that are especially drawing for me in mass-appeal comedy. Sure, there are many funny moments: Crudup dancing like an asshole (or a white guy, either way works); the whole early dinner table awkwardness with Eva Mendes (who I hate); and the bestiality thing in the beginning. Moment one – “Talk dirty to me…” “You have a – uh – husband.” Hilarious. I lost a chunk of hair laughing so hard at this very real issue that most couples run into (happily, but comically) – awkward sexual experimentation. It gets silly, it does, and if you handle it with comedy it makes the whole “Stuffed Animal, Knife, and Cake trick” a lot easier to attempt.

Moment two – Billy Crudup screams in a theater lobby to his writer girlfriend, “Elaine!!!” and then says, “Did you like the play?” as everyone stares at this apparent madman. If this were a true New York moment everyone would just keep on moving, no big deal. But it is deeply sad as you watch one man’s desperation and at the same time hilarious because the guy who played Prefontaine is trying to get back the sexual-games-dominatrix from The Secretary. God, I do enjoy this trailer.

In other news, Susan Sarandon, in a real twist in her career, has decided to play Cindy Sheehan in an upcoming film. When that trailer comes out, you can be sure I will piss all over it on this wonderful site.

Phat Girlz

Trailer can be located here.

SPOILER – WARNING: This movie is going to be fucking dumb.

I’ve been waiting. Eagerly going to imdb.com almost daily to find out when this movie, nay film, will open in the U.S. Just say it out loud, the title alone inspires honey-scented breath: Phat Girlz. Phat Girlz. Well, my loyal Mo’Nique fans the day where we will all surely be seen eagerly waiting around the 42nd Street theaters is April 7th.

What else makes this a perfect movie? Eric Roberts. Yeah, that’s right, the Biloxi-native took time out of his busy schedule of Indie Pop music videos to star in this sure to be epic, timeless, blah, blah, blah film. Okay, honestly, I think it’s funny that the whole argument of this film seems to be that women are special and deserving despite appearance and that size truly doesn’t matter. Yet all the dudes she’s attracted to, and the main love interest of this movie, are steroid-addicted, gym junkies.

Why not be honest about it and play in the plus-size league that your “talent” places you in? Put Orca-woman with a realistic guy like say Dr. Phil or Horatio Sanz’s dad? I don’t even find the jokes in the trailer funny – it’s like a worse Bridget Jones, or a better Pride and Prejudice. I laughed once while watching it, but it was because I was thinking about something that happened last night – hilarious. “You’re so ugly, your mamma got morning sickness after you was born.” Please oh holy God don’t ever use that. If you do, you deserve to have a stapler shoved in your butt.

If you’re fat – try getting your stomach stapled. Or here’s a novel thought, try running or walking, and not to Pretzel Time and Sbarro. Sure, Hollywood is ridiculous – but celebrity stars, to me, are meant to be superhuman and creepily "in shape." I don’t want to watch a lady who eats all the thin mints at her desk and then goes into the women’s restroom for three hours to take a catastrophic dump – I want to watch ridiculously good-looking people do crazy shit.

“Jasmine Biltmore refuses to stuff her super-sized dreams into a minus-sized world.” If there were an honest voiceover for this movie, it would be something like this: “This fat chick wants to change her life, but instead of working out and trying to help herself, she’s gonna do the idiotic thing and think that someone else, this weird jacked African guy, will solve all her problems with his massive-anaconda cock and vague history. We’ll all probably learn something we already knew.”

The only thing that could redeem this trailer for me is if they showed Eric Roberts in his best role ever, Best of the Best, kicking the crap out of an evil Korean. He had a dislocated shoulder and won for the U.S. Team, that’s amazing stuff, people. Amazing stuff.

Illusion

This is a painful trailer. There are many terrible things about the film that I will go into later, but a main one must be addressed. Poor, poor Kirk Douglas. Knowing a stroke victim is difficult, watching them waste away into death is even worse. Someone should have had the balls to tell Mr. Douglas, “You shouldn’t do this. You are one of the elder statesmen of film; You are Spartacus! Let your fans remember you as that.” I am all for the elderly being in the public view, but jesus, listening to him say “I wanted to see my son, before I died”, is just so sad.

But lets move on.

Fuck you Michael Goorjian. When a first time director plays three roles is his film, we call it a “vanity piece”(or Diary of a Mad Black Woman). But when a first time director plays three roles, parades a stricken Kirk Douglas, and makes a bullshit film about life after death and second chances so trite that it makes What Dreams May Come look like high art, they should be ashamed.

Plus, your production company logo looks like it belongs to a beach resort. And no one here likes you.

The Fountain

Get teaser-trailer here.

Darren Aronofsky. Darren Aro-nof-sky. Aronofsky, the writer and director of Pi and Requiem for a Dream (along with Hubert Selby Jr.) seems to be broadening his directorial horizon with his new film, The Fountain. In my opinion, it seems that unlike his previous heroes' tales, we now have a truly captivating love story laden in symbolism. Instead of sticking a drill in the side of his head, he will challenge "the city" and save his love. Instead of stealing his mom’s television for dough, he will ride towards danger to save "that girl" from The Mummy Returns. It is a Hollywood type of film by a creative talent, not one of Adam Sandler’s dorm buddies or John "I use many white doves in dramatic scenes" Woo.



The film will certainly have a somber tone since it is essentially a meditation on coming to terms with death. And it’s interesting that no one has made a movie about the Genesis story of the Tree of Life, one of our oldest myths (as tree people, of course). I wonder why that hasn’t happened. This seems like an epic love story to rival Jumpin' Jack Flash and Ernest Actually Doesn’t Have Chlamydia, He Has Aids and the teaser is pretty enticing – and unlike his other films in the low millions, this was originally budgeted as a $90 million movie starring Brad Pitt. Now it is $30 million range and seems better without Brad.



But what is it about? One certainly can’t glean any impression from the teaser besides “ohhhhh! neat sparks!” so here it goes: The Fountain is an odyssey about one man's thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. His epic journey begins in 16th century Spain, where conquistador Tomas Creo commences his search for the Tree of Life, the legendary entity believed to grant eternal life to those who drink of its sap.

Will there be murder and love making? Erm, heck yes! Lets discuss the trailer.

It’s rife with parallels; you could show a retarded monkey the trailer and he’d chirp that. We see Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz’s characters span ten centuries (16th century, 21st century and 26th century – hence the always-uplifting apocalyptic images in space). What affects me so much about the trailer is the tempo, spurred on by the insane, but simple drumming. It’s also a trailer set in images of 3s. If you’ll notice, every set of clips that is interrupted by the written notes (“1 Man” “1 Love,” etc.) is comprised of 3 “trailer moments” from the film. Three is uber symbolic: trinity, one-ness, three denotes divine perfection, yada, yada, yada. Aronofsky is a brilliant filmmaker and we have to assume this symbolism goes beyond the pure aesthetic. It’s relatively simple, but in the normal, sort of boring images of our modern society, there is intense beauty and that culminates in the last shot of what I presume to be Hugh Jackman floating in the electric liquid – certainly the Fountain of Life. There isn’t a lot there, but it keeps me wanting more. Who knows, maybe Wolverine will get the girl, live forever and save the day. Or maybe he will realize life is fragile and that we should drink up what we have, and enjoy our friends and love our true loves, bitches.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Get teaser-trailer here.

Former SNL writer-director Adam McKay, who also made Anchorman, seems as if he’s got the winning formula for hitting the college and 20-something male audience: picking on the weird side of life, normally accepted by the bulk of American society (not that that's anything new, it is a popular form of comedy, actually). Nascar, this nation’s most popular sport, is perhaps also the most questioned sport – especially considering it’s six-pack toting audience and generally southern-hick stereotype. This trailer looks like Run Ronny, Run meets Days of Thunder meets Eyes Wide Shut (erm, actually, scratch DOT). The most Americans I ever met when living in Europe was the near two hundred who attended a stock car race in Southern Spain which they were quickly kicked out from in strange fashion. Eight of them later were arrested for “throwing chorizo,” which can be quite a dangerous cured meat. This movie will be popular - for different reasons - on both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

This is a welcome teaser trailer and the film looks promising – if anything, it will pander to the millions who want another classic, quotable Will Ferrell film. Also interesting extra: in 2007, a new Ferrell film will be coming out called Blades of Glory, the story of an Olympic skating rivalry – wonder where they got the idea for that? The role of Shani Davis will be played by, erm, Horatio Sanz or Jon Heder.

Notice the trademark touches of a pandering comedy teaser: a catching hick song in the background followed by an AC/DC song (see Harikari trailer), malt liquor ads galore (helmet, dinner table), statutory rape jokes, Chuck Norris joke (awesome), nice family dinner over pizza, Coke, Budweiser and the wife has a martini, line dancing, mongoose reference (obligatory for classic slapstick, see early Buster Keaton short film, Sonata for Yolanda).

Also, Sasha Cohen, of "Ali G" fame, will be playing the French nemesis driver = thank you God.



And John C. Reilly – always amazing – seems to be in the role of a lifetime. The last 30 seconds of the trailer are especially brilliant too – Molly Shannon doing what she does best: acting like a total fucking retard, Will Ferrell referencing Hollywood’s favorite pincushion, Tom Cruise, and the car busting down the street and destroying someone’s house. Perfect material for a fluff comedy. Should be delightful, bring your forties, fried chicken and corn bread.

Apocalypto

Apocalypto, the second "historical" film from Mel Gibson’s production company, Icon Entertainment, has much to live up to – The Passion had people walking out in droves; can this also succeed in such a manner? Well, the dialogue will be Yucatec, for one. You know, that obscure Mayan dialect we all love. It also features a bunch of random Mexican actors from Mexico City. This actually works for the teaser – the odd ambiguity of the faces makes it creepier, like a horror film. Or the Jesus Chain Saw Massacre. Also, the fact that it is so ambiguous will have people like me searching out information about Mayan civilization and the film. Kudos. I also learned that one of the actors in the film is assistant manager at an Olive Garden in Cozumel. We should go.

What I don’t like is the opening quote from historian/philosopher/socialist/libertarian Will Durant. It opens up the idea that this is historically accurate, which, I’m pretty sure, it won’t be. But Gibson, and his insane dad, will both claim accuracy and to their logic – twisted, hateful belief is always accurate. Like how the Holocaust didn't happen, remember? Just fudged numbers and some people moved.

While many people attribute the decline of the Mayans to drought, I think Gibson will probably pin it on a less-attributed source – mass murder, rape, disembowlment, you name it. More truthfully, he will focus on a belief that it was an invading force: the Spanish. Notice the knife-slash sounds at the beginning and the Mayan art only focused on blood. Then the creepy faces….oh, the creepy faces! At what point do people, six guys, decide to stand together and collectively look “creepy” with white chalk on their faces? Oh yeah, when Mel Gibson tells them to.



The idea that a tagline of the film is, “When the end comes, not everyone is ready to go…” I mean, what the fuck? That’s ridiculous. Can’t you come up with something less obvious. Of course not everyone is ready to go. If you told me I was fired, I’d say in protest, “No way man! I love this free hot chocolate!” Oh, but the plot thickens in the teaser: the wooden nose-pin chick is preggers! "No, but we’re about to end as a civilization," they protest. But she’s pregnant: an idea unheard of in pre-condom days, right? Right.

I really have no idea what we’re supposed to take from the teaser trailer. Man on top of high point, people screaming, a cougar. No, I think Stick It holds more promise.