Thighs Wide Shut

Burn After Reading
Fire Safety In Numbers
Trailers & Mo

If the Coen Bros never made No Country For Old Men, and Burn After Reading was the movie that followed up their uninspired, rudimentary Intolerable Cruelty and spirited, yet underwhelming Ladykillers, then it would be without question that their filmmaking skills were in serious decline. Yet, we can’t think like that cause No Country did happen, and in a huge way (4 frickin Oscars, a David, a Sierra and even a Saturn!), re-establishing them as geniuses for the longtime fans and putting them on the map for the other people with woolite over their eyes for the past two decades. BAR may be a minor work in the Coens’ canon, but coming off No Country, it’s nice to be treated to one of their fun and frivolous little diversions littered with their usual quirky characters and crazy capers, regardless if it all adds up to something meaningful or not. Sure, BAR aint in the same league as Raising Arizona and Lebowski (happy 10th anniversary!), but we’ll take the Coens’ Ocean 8 (with Malkovich and his endless use of the word ‘f&ck’ edging out Brad Pitt and his hair as the film’s main draw) over any of Steven Soderbergh’s three lifeless and narcissistic all-star fests. Still, the Coens’ do share one thing in common with Nerderbergh: an inability to make us love George Clooney, even if he can grow a beard that looks similar to ours and Jack’s

Pushing Daisy: Satan’s Alley has got some competition for bestest faux film of the year with the Dermot Mulroney-Claire Danes rom-com Pushing Up Daisy, which makes several apperances in BAR. The Coens’ even filled out all the credits on the poster, tapping Sam Raimi as the director and basing it off of a Cormac McCarthy novel [USA TooGay]

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Righteous Kill
The GodAWFULFather
Trailers & Mo

Imagine watching Dexter (for those of you missing out on one of the breastest shows on intellivision, Dex is a forensics expert who moonlights as a serial killer of really bad peoples who escape justice), minus the style and substance, and you don’t know which character is Dexter (we’re led to believe that Robert DeNiro’s the killer….), and by the time it’s revealed (…but there has to be a twist at the end, so guess who ends up being the killer????), you’re either too bored to death or too deathed to bored to even care. That purty much sums up Righteous Kill, the Italian-American equivalent of The Forbidden Kingdom, another 2008 flick that paired two former box office titans on the same screen, about 10+, or in this case 20+ years too late (we won’t count their 9 seconds together in Heat). The only good to come out of this mano e causing mono is the revelation that in this day and age, Robert DeNiro is by far the more annoyingierer actor of the two. We know that sounds more ludicrous than Ludacris eating only Luden’s cough drops, but it’s truly true. Juss compare and contrast their recent resumes (see Pacino in The Insider and The Merchant of Venice if you haven’t already). This movie blows more than all the blow-up dolls found in the Blow-Pop factory in Blowlivia. They shoulda burned this film after making it, cause if you end up seeing this hunk o skunk you’ll want to burn yer eyes after viewing. No real big sirpize here, coming from director Jon Avnet, who last wasted our and Al Pacino’s time earlier this year with the inept sloppy thriller 88 Minutes. We wished that giant mess was only 8 minutes long, but compared to Righteous Borefest, it’s Citizen Kane II!!

Fists Like A Glover: Avnet can eat our choda, but we’re glad he keeps casting hottie Trilby Glover (she was in both 88 and Righetous). if she and Juno’s BFF Olivia Thirlby merged into one person they’d be Trilby Thirlby (or Olivia Glover for you lame-wads). here be some niiice snaps of Alicia Silverstone 2.0 in Maxim. and here’s one of her with Chevy Chase

Verdictgo: Slit Yer Eyes Out Repoopulous

both films are currently playing at a theater near jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Redskins Tight End Chris Cooley rules. So does his hottt wife, his fantasy draft, and his blog. As for his penis [NSFW] appearing below the Redskins playbook on that blog, which has since been removed (the posting, not his penis), not so much. Coach Zorn aint a fan of his johnson either, but maybe he’s as much of a fan as we are of Playing The Field‘s playful pictorial euphemisms

Towelhead
American Ugly
Trailers & Mo

Remember how uncomfortable, yet completely mesmerized you were when watching Kevin Spacey seduce Mena ‘Surfin’ Suvari in American Beauty (no NSFW link here, cause she and her 9-head kinda gross us out)? OK, maybe you non-perverts weren’t as transfixed as we were, but no one cares what you think. Well imagine experiencing that same conflicting feeling, stretched out over 2 hours and that’s purty much how we’d sum up the icky-goodness of Towelhead, Alan Ball‘s follow-up screenplay to Beauty (based off the Alicia Erian novel) and also his directorial debut. This is easily the worstest date movie of the 2008 (surpassing the porn waiting to be made that was The Babysitters and the abortion fun of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and is easily one of the more memorable films of the year as well. Don’t be too scared though, cause there’s plenty of laffs to be found in and around all the squeamish bits

The title is misleading (and so is the trailer, which tries to paint this black dramedy as more of a white comedy, so please don’t bother watching it). Sure, the racial slur ‘towelhead’ is verbally thrown a few times at our babe in the woods heroine Jasira (Summer Bishil, making a remarkable screen debut), who’s been sent by her mother (Maria Bello) to live with her strict old-world Lebanese daddy (Six Feet Under‘s waaaaaaaay over the top art teacher Peter Macdissi, chipping in a revelatory performance of his own) in a very vanilla Houston suburb during the first Gulf War era, but the film isn’t as focused on racism as it is on Jasira’s spring awakening. Her path of blossoming into womanhood is about as rocky and confusing as Carrie‘s was, although luckily she didn’t have her first period in the gym shower. Come to think of it, her father’s a lot like Carrie’s mom (they’re all gonna laugh at you!), cept he actually has interest in banging the opposite sex, unless of course when it comes to his daughter who starts dating a black kid (Eugene Jones III). Jasira’s maturation catches the eye of her Army reservist neighbor Travis (Aaron Eckhart, the king of playing scum bags) and the plot slowly turns into Spacey hunting Suvari round II, where yer juss waiting for something horrible to happen scene after scene and feel really really dirty in the process. Jasira finds solace from all her sexual uncertainty and anxiety in the form of her earthy next door neighbor (Toni Collette), who also acts as a mother figure that she’s badly in need of, but once her safe house is compromised, there goes the neighborhood!

Ball obviously revels in the innocence of the young surrounded by the dark side of suburbia, and even if he is repeating himself a bit in Towelhead he’s still the master of this domain. It’s quite curious that this film is being released at the same time as True Blood, his new HBO show that’s far from the burbs, cause the two couldn’t be any more different. Towelhead is teeming with life, while Blood is (un)dead on arrival. Suck on that Sookie Stackhouse!

Dirty Jobs: Jarisa gets turned on by nudie magazines, and in turn, we getz to get turned on (screen) with a lil NSFWness from the likes of Nathalie Walker (Twaddle), LoriDawn Messuri and former playmate Irina Voronina, last seen topless in the Reno 911 movie

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

The Women
She’s Got Female
Trailers & Mo

We passed on the Sex And The City movie this summer, so this long gestating remake of the 1939 George Cukor film (haven’t seen it), which is obviously gunning for all the leftover change in the SATC fans’ wallets, will have to make do as our affluent aging ladies be having man, work and life troubles flick. And despite an overly ovarian trailer that made us want to run for the windmills, this new Women pic helmed by Murphy Brown creator and first time director (and it shows) Diane English is not entirely awful. On the other thigh, it’s nuttin special tat all, but partnering up Meg Ryan (and her Grinched face) with BFFs Annette Bening (second hottiest old lady ever behind Susan Sarandon), Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith, throwing in Candice Bergen, Bette Midler, Cloris Leachman and Debi Mazar for comic relief, while givin the men Eva Mendes (and Ana Gast
eyer :) as a bit o’ eye candy adds up to something completely watchable. As was the case with the original Women, not a single man appears in the film and it’s a gimmick that’s absolutely refreshing. We’re slowly turning gayer and gayer as this review progresses, so we’ll end it here by saying: men, take yer bizatches to see Towelhead, and then let them get even by forcing you to watch this. It could be a lot worse, like seeing any movie where Jennifer Garner opens her mouth more wide than our thighs are shut

No Man’s Land: In addition to its all-female cast, every animal that was used in the film (the many dogs and horses) was female as well. In addition, none of the works of art seen in the backgrounds were representative of the male form. [IMDb trivia for the 1939 version of The Women ]

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

A Secret (Un Secret)
A Titillating Tattle Tale
Trailers & Mo

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, it’s a/un secret. What is? We dunno, cause we aint saying shiz, cept you should habsolutely czech out this never dull, always colorful semi-true account (based on the novel by Philippe Grimbert) about a bunch of French Jews, and their not so simple family relations, who are riding out the tide of Nazi occupation. Moist importantly, this is the second movie outside of Munich we’ve seen in the past few years that features totally wicked hot actors (that skinny wide-eyed blond mademoiselle from that awful movie Haute Tension, Ludivine Sagnier, once again not in NSFW mode and Diving Beller and the next Bond baddie Mathieu Amalric) playing Jews even dough they’re about as Jewish as Jesus covered in bacon. Goy dog goy!

Ill Gérard: some of the cast hactually do look kinda druish, including Gérard Depardieu’s sirprizngly kinda/sorta cute daughter Julie. here’s sum random pics we found of her in Jeremy Piven’s lap

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Towelhead joins Secret in very limited release today, while Del Women opens everywhere where women live. and although we didn’t get to screen Burn Before Reading, of course wees gonna see it and report back. as for Righteous Kill, we didn’t get to screen that either, but if we don’t run out and see it this weekend, we fear that the word of mouth may dissuade us from ever seeing it. anywho, why are you listening to us when you could be listening to the lady from Eagle Eye telling you to do things, like THINGS!

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

she’s not as boneriffic and moaneriffic as Joan, but Don’s new sexyretary Jane Siegel (Peyton List, who should not to be confused with this Peyton List) has made our list de hotties, and we’re czeching her twice, whether she’s naughty or nice. we hope the two continue their bitchfest/catfighting under Roger Sterling’s desk sometime later on in this second stellar (SkarsgÃ¥rd) season of Mad Men

mo photos hear & hear

Mister Foe
Oedipus Wrecks
Trailers & Mo

Hallam Foe (Billy Elliot‘s Jamie Bell) is unwilling to let the memory of his mother’s suicide by drowning go (no more rhymes, we mean it, anybody wanna play Scene It?). The tragic event has stunted his growth, as he’s filled his adolescence of solitude with a lotta tom foolery and peeping tomage. To make splatters worse, he suspects his father (Ciarán Hinds, secretly the world’s greatestist actor) of having something to do with her untimely death, so he could take a new wife (welcome back Claire Forlani). Father, stepmother and son can’t live in harmony together, so Hallam has no choice but to escape this life and start a new one in Edinburgh. There he spots a cutie patootie bidness lady (hottie Sophia Myles, one of the only redeeming bits and NSFW pieces of Art School Confidential), who eerily resembles his mother, and it sparks a disturbing chain of events that will draw the two of them closer together. Presenting a perverse love story with flawed characters is nothing new for director David Mackenzie, especially if you’ve seen his Young Adam (where Ewan McGregor flung a lotta food on a nekkid Emily Mortimer [NSFW]), and once again, while it all may be a bit uneasy to watch, with no characters to really root for, you can’t help but be sucked into the film that’s filled with fantastic performances (including Jamie Sives, Maurice Roëves and the always incomprehensible Ewen Bremner) and one killer soundtrack (Franz, Clinic, Sons and Daughters, etc). Hallam Foe reminded us a lot of Max Fisher from Rushmore. They are both motherless misfits, who get way too emotionally in over their heads with an older woman, get burned, but in the process grow up. These aren’t average tales of teen rebellion, but then again, those teen characters aren’t very average to begin with, and that’s what makes both of these flicks stunningly complex and compelling

We Wanna Befriend This Foe: although she’s barely in the movie, playing Hallam’s sister, model turned actress Lucy Holt has juss replaced Torry as our #1 fantasy option

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peeping Tomers

Ping Pong Playa
& Everybody Wants To Be Italian
Ethnic Slurries
Ping Pong Trailers & Mo | Italian Trailers & Mo

If you see two comedies this year, whatever you do, DO NOT LET THEM BE Ping Pong Playa and Everybody Wants To Be Italian. If you took a dump and threw it on screen, it would be fleventeen times funnier than both of these movie combined. Italian-Playa are so downright humorless that they make Christopher Guest’s overhyped-underipe misfire For Your Consideration look about as Oscar worthy as Idiocracy’s Ass, which took home 8 Oscars in the year 2505, including best screenplay. You know how a lotta DVDs include deleted scenes? Well Italian-Playa are two movies filled with nuttin but deleted scenes. They’re so rotten and lame-stream that they feel like failed TV pilots that no one would ever bother to make cause they’re about as original as Kennedy Fried Chicken. Italian is by far the wurser of the two evils, and that’s purely based on the runtime (don’t think we needed 4 scenes of nuttin but early morning jogs). It’s a romantic-‘comedy’ that’s aiming to be the Tuscan-American version of My Big Fat Greek Snooze Fest, but it’s more like going to the Olive Garden for authentic Italian food. The biggest names in the cast are supporting players Laverne, Dan Cortese of MTV Sports fame, Fletch’s editor and Carl the Janitor from The Breakfast Club. Did we lose you already? If we didn’t, then czech out the previous [NSFW] work of its star Cerina Vincent, who played the Shannon Elizabethish naked foreign exchange student in Not Another Teen Movie. As for Playa, it was a huge personal disappointment for us since we’re such big fans of doc director Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal and Protagonist). Yu is so out of her league here, handing in a poorly acted and constructed full-length narrative debut that leaves little left to be desired for whatever her next fictional project may be. She woulda been better off making a documentary about Ping Pong instead. Many of you loathed last year’s Balls of Fury (we didn’t), and if that’s the case, you might as well swear off ping-pong flicks for the rest of yer life

The Story Is Utah: although this space coulda been reserved for Cerina Vincent’s NSFW work, we dug up this gem while putzin around the nets for Fletch’s editor, Theatrically Released Feature Films with Major Characters who are Latter-day Saints/Mormons

Verdictgo: both are Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous to the Crème de ^Menthe degree

Transsiberian
Strangers On A Train
Trailers & Mo

Emily Mortimer is adorable and easily startled (and also a Non-Us Hottie), Woody Harrelson is nutty, Kate Mara looks like a raccoon, Eduardo Noriega is smokin hot (love this pic), and Ben Kingsley is appearing in his 2184938219th film this year with his 1283982929th different accent. Put em all together with some heroin and matryoshka dolls on the world’s longest train that goes from China to the Hoth Systemeish parts of Russia and whats yous gets is a slow simmering, nice little thriller that’s sure to satisfy all the Ping Pong Playa haters out there

More Time With Mortimer: we LOVE Emily Mortimer!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

all three films join Transsiberian in limited release today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…