VOD OCD
Video on Demand Report: Starring Madonna and MMA Fighters (Though Sadly Not Together)
By Molly Lambert atThe Headliner
New Year's Eve
EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME!!!!!!!!
New Year's Eve
EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME!!!!!!!!
In a recent interview, Nicholas Stoller — the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five Year Engagement, in theaters today — revealed that Jason Segel takes personal credit for jump-starting the latest golden era for male full frontal: “Jason will say, too, that [Sarah Marshall] was the first movie where a lead of a comedy showed his penis, and since then there have been penises … there’s been a wangolution, culminating in the Fassbender.” You can certainly quibble with the kick-off point (Vulture did happen to declare 2007, the year before Sarah Marshall, the Season of the Wang) but there’s no denying that a recent junk-upheaval has occurred, peaking with Michael Fassbender gloriously hanging dong in Shame last year. Now, with the end of the wangolution at hand with the release of The Five-Year Engagement (don't get too excited, we’ll explain later), we've charted out the course of its growth. (Get it?! Growth?!!) Anyway, here we go.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Names of every Tom Cruise character: Ethan Hunt (four times), Stacee Jaxx, Roy Miller, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, Les Grossman, Senator Jasper Irving, Ray Ferrier, Vincent, Nathan Algren, Chief John Anderson, David Aames, Frank T.J. Mackey, Dr. William "Bill" Harford, Jerry Maguire, Lestat de Lioncourt, Mitch McDeere, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, Joseph Donnelly, Cole Trickle, Ron Kovic, Charlie Babbitt, Jack (named Jack in three different films), Brian Flanagan, Vincent Lauria, Maverick, Stefen Djordjevic, Joel Goodsen, Steve Randle, Cadet Captain David Shawn, Billy, Woody. IMDb currently lists Cruise's next film as Top Gun 2 — so stay tuned on more info about that.
Before we get to the inevitable joke about Michael Fassbender's penis (and yes, that's going to happen; we really have no choice in the matter), let's all marvel at how well-executed and effective Fox's campaign for Prometheus has been so far after we take in this latest viral offering about "David," a robot virtually indistinguishable from a human, right down to the tears rolling down his artificial cheekbones. It's been flawless.
Too lazy to go to a movie theater, but still want some fresh-from-the-Hollywood-meat-grinder entertainment? Good news! We'll plumb the depths of Video on Demand so you don't have to!
A Dangerous Method
Canadian master of venereal horror David Cronenberg takes it to the couch to treat further psychosexual infections. Hoping for outtakes where Freud (Viggo Mortensen), Jung (Michael Fassbender), and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) all spank each other in a triangular formation, forming a human spankipede. If you cut A Dangerous Method together with Shame, you could potentially have a movie where Michael Fassbender treats himself for his own sex addiction, and solve the whole "porn for women" thing at the same time.
Hollywood just can't stop talking about Michael Fassbender's enormous penis! One might have imagined that the dong-sizzle might have cooled on the industry's most raved-about trouser-steak once Li'l Mike (you know, it's one of those ironic nicknames, like when your new, 300-pound cellmate tells you everyone calls him "Tiny," haha) was memorably snubbed for an Oscar nomination, even after George Clooney went out of his way to praise the short game of Fassbender's Titleist-quality manhood at the Golden Globes. But this weekend Prometheus costar Charlize Theron jump-started the junk-buzz at a Human Rights Campaign gala by praising the actor's artfully restrained work in Shame, according to E!'s Marc Malkin:
My weekend was peppered with some NCAA hoops (Go 'Cuse!), some Knicks (three in a row, baby), some 21 Jump Street (a hilarious, meta action-comedy), and of course some green beer and bagels. But my mind, my thoughts, my focus was elsewhere. For the last 72 hours, I’ve been unhealthily fixated on the slew of new Prometheus content slung onto the web.
There’s been such an overabundance of visuals, dialogue, and talking points to sift through. So in an effort to piece them all together in some king of satisfyingly comprehensive way, I figured it’d be best to break them all down into three categories.
Much of the hype around this film is centered on the question of “is Prometheus a prequel to Alien”? As I previously stated, I believe the answer is unequivocally yes, and much of the confusion is due to cleverly crafted talking points delivered from Ridley Scott (the film's director), Damon Lindelof (the writer), and 20th Century Fox (the studio). And why not? It’s hard to make a summer film stand out, much less one possibly (definitely) linked to a once-praised but now irrelevant and mocked movie series. So I have no problem with these folks stoking the fanboy fire with vague and sometimes conflicting messages.
As the Academy continues to discuss an accelerated awards calendar for future Oscars (coming in 2013: Goodbye, paper ballots; hello, electronic voting and endless conspiracy theories about hacking!), there’s one thing I hope the Board of Governors will bear in mind: They need to allow one week for generalized postnomination rage. This wasn’t necessary before the Internet, which tends to reinforce in everyone the need to express, via blog, tweet, or status update, the conviction that anyone who doesn’t share their taste must by definition be dumb or corrupt. This year’s anger seems to have taken two forms:
Hollywood is never so cruelly fickle as it is during awards season, delighting in watching its galloping Oscar horses chomp the air in futility as they yank the golden carrot out of reach just as the race grows most intense. Consider the plight of Shame's Michael Fassbender: Arguably no one had more momentum going into the home stretch, having piled up more precursor awards than even perennial Academy lust-object George Clooney, and yet Fassbender was not awakened by the five a.m. call from his publicist on Nominations Tuesday.
Before we begin, it should be stipulated that awards shows are boring. They have always been boring, and they will continue to be boring until the Earth hurtles into the sun, which will almost certainly occur during the 18th hour of 10,464th Annual Academy Awards Psychocast, finally freeing us of the curious need to complain about why we aren't more entertained by famous people trading gold statues and listing their business obligations.
Julia Roberts will star in as well as produce (through her company Red Om Films) the workplace comedy Second Act, which revolves around a woman who has never had to hold down a job before and is forced to enter the workplace. But what kind of job will fictional Julia Roberts be forced to work? Ice cream truck vendor? Geeky record store clerk? Fiery-hoop-jumping and trampoline-dunking NBA mascot? I’ll be waiting patiently to find out. Grade: B- [HR]
There are many ways of looking at a Best Actor Oscar race. You can ask yourself who gave the year’s strongest performances. You can think about who’s overdue, who’s surprising, who works the circuit effectively, who exceeds expectations, who elevates his movie the most by his presence in it. But ultimately, the question that decides the nominations is always this one: Who do actors want to vote for?
This year, that may be tough to answer, since Best Actor is shaping up to be an extremely unusual race. In Column A, we have three Goliaths: George Clooney for The Descendants, Leonardo DiCaprio for J. Edgar, and Brad Pitt for Moneyball. And in Column B, we have a whole bunch of Davids. The problem for the Davids is that they’re not Goliaths. The problem for the Goliaths is that voting for Davids is usually a lot more fun.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn are in talks for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s The Revenant. DiCaprio would play an 1820s frontiersman who, after being mauled by a bear on an expedition, hires two guys to transport him back from the wilderness; those two guys rob him and leave him for dead, and DiCaprio seeks out some solid revenge. Penn is in talks to play one of the two guys and being the ever-innovative thespian that he is, though, he's also looking into what it would take to play the bear. Grade: A- [Deadline]
Welcome to the last slow stretch of the Oscar season. Over the next few weeks, a couple of movies will open with the hope of landing acting or writing nominations, but mostly they just want your money (For Your Consideration: The Thing?). The year’s remaining big guns won’t start to arrive until mid-November, and here’s a hunch, based partly on what I’ve seen, partly on instinct, and partly on hope: We’re looking at a year without an early frontrunner. By which I mean that the more than two dozen critics’ groups that announce their year-end prizes in a furiously compressed frenzy of semi-futile self-assertion may not become one big hive mind the way they did in 2009 with The Hurt Locker or last year with The Social Network. It’s possible that The Descendants, the black-and-white silent sensation The Artist, or one of the still-unscreened contenders — War Horse? The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? — could turn into The Monolith, but otherwise, December could bring a scattered and chaotic field. Here’s hoping.
So while we wait, perhaps it’s time to turn to the Academy itself. As Oscar-watchers, we all root for excellence to be rewarded. Sometimes that doesn’t happen because of collective bad taste, or sentimentality, or blind spots, or irrational exuberance, but it’s particularly galling when it doesn’t happen because the Academy’s own rules prevent it.
Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace movie has been in the works for years, and now it’s got both a home and big-name lead actors. HBO has picked up Behind the Candelabra and set Michael Douglas to star as Liberace, with Matt Damon playing his live-in lover Scott Thorson; the movie will revolve around their relationship. This is great news and everything, but now we’re going to have to come up with a new title for our candelabra documentary. Grade: A [HR]
