Here is actor Jesse Plemons, talking to Zap2It in 2007 about the first time he suited up to shoot a football scene on Friday Night Lights: "There's this play where Taylor is supposed to knock the crap out of me. So he does, and I get up and I'm jumping around — and everyone's like, "Holy crap!" My chin had split open [laughs], I had to get like 11 stitches."
If you're reading this website, these people probably need no introduction, but just in case: On Friday Night Lights, Plemons played Landry Clarke, whose non-gridiron activities included wearing women down with persistence, fronting the best-ever Christian death-metal band in Dillon, Texas, and the occasional act of justifiable manslaughter. In the first season, Landry was an appealing comic foil to Zach Gilford's long-suffering Matt Saracen; when he joined Saracen on Dillon High's football team in Season 2, it was implausible but forgivable, provided you liked Landry and wanted him in the mix as much as possible, which people generally did.
"The reviews say that Battleship is stupid fun!" I said, as we walked out of Hysteria (the vibrator movie) earlier this summer. "Well, let's go see it," he said. So we did. Mistake!
I love a stupid action movie — the stupider the better, in fact — but the combination of the obvious invading force (surprise! It's aliens) and PG-13 rating (consider my bloodlust unquenched!) make Battleship eminently missable. Oh yeah, there's also the movie's position as the meat in Taylor Kitsch's 2012 failure sandwich, right there between John Carter and Savages. So maybe it's worth seeing so that you can tell your descendants you were there the moment everything fell apart for him? But it's really boring. And no one even says "You sunk [sic] my battleship!" once, which is B.S.
The big news from this weekend's box office breakdown is that, as expected, The Amazing Spider-Man crushed it. Opening on July 4, Eduardo Saverin's Spidey rolled into $65 million in its first weekend and $140 million in its first six days. As EW explains, those numbers are actually lower than the pace set by all three of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man movies, none of which had the benefit of boosted 3-D and IMAX ticket prices. But considering both the possibility of the quickie reboot flopping altogether, and the fact that this is just the first installment of a whole new franchise, the numbers (and an A- Cinemascore) are wholly promising.
The once and future Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) dons extraplanetary swords and sandals to strap up for this seemingly humorless sci-fi gladiator epic about imperialism. "You are ugly, but you are beautiful." You are silly, movies about squinty stoic heroes saving princesses from things.
Chris Ryan and I were both traveling over the weekend, which means our “Where Were You When You Heard the News About Dan Harmon Being Fired” stories will be extra vivid. Luckily, we have a podcast on which we can share our feelings about the after-hours whacking of the Community showrunner (1:00). That surprise dismissal led to another: America’s termination of Taylor Kitsch’s contract as Movie Star (13:00). We talked about the Battleship disappointment and tempered it with more than a little excitement for the Anchorman sequel (18:45). From there, we did our usual rundown of Sunday night shows, touching on the lack of main character on Game of Thrones (22:40) and the strange behavior of Mad Men’s protagonist, Don “Plate of Cold Spaghetti” Draper (32:50). We finished up with our take on the announced line-up for Jay-Z’s “Made In America” (42:30) festival before devolving into an out of nowhere argument about parking in West Philadelphia and the merits of Pearl Jam. (Which is to say, Chris thinks they have some. I disagree.) There was just enough time for the latest entry into the Double Down Summer Book Club (48:40), Charles McCarry, and his two masterpieces of CIA intrigue and sadness, Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper. Then Chris had to go spin the black circle and I had to figure out the difference between a barbershop and a salon, then wonder exactly who was washing my hair in 1993. Here’s hoping Siri can help.
For a while there, every time a movie adaptation of a beloved TV show was discussed, it was our cue to roll our eyes and scoff and flick the back of one hand dismissively, or maybe even wipe a bunch of crap off someone’s table (whose? anyone’s) in protest of impossible expectations. Now, though, the momentum of expectations has totally shifted, thanks to the unlikely IRL existence of both the Arrested Development movie and the Party Down movie. In other words: This Friday Night Lights movie might actually happen?
Earlier this week I had a conversation with a Jets fan. He told me he hoped the planes carrying both the Giants and the Patriots would crash before the game. It wasn’t clear if he meant that he wanted to see both teams be arduously delayed, but ultimately safe, on their journey to Indianapolis, or if he really wanted Vince Wilfork to die in a fiery explosion. Anyway, that guy might not have been watching the Super Bowl last night — which means he missed all the huge movie trailers that ran during the commercial breaks! For him, and for others full of hate in their hearts, below are the two best ones.
This young century has brought us many wonders, ranging from the iPhone to replacing bread with meat, but chief among them has been the explosion of parody films. What was once a trickle of Scary Movies and Loaded Weapons has blossomed in the 2000s into a gushing river of spoofs, the most recent of which include Superhero Movie (superhero movies), Vampires Suck (Twilight movies) and Up In the Air (critically acclaimed movies). Now the stakes have been raised yet again by the brilliant Peter Berg and his 2012 blockbuster Battleship. The trailer for the $200 million film, released today, reveals it to be nothing less than an elaborate, note-perfect parody of Michael Bay and his Transformers trilogy.
