Thighs Wide Shut

The House Bunny
Rumor (Willis) Has It, This Movie Has No Hop
Trailers & Mo

Like the Playboy scented TV show The Girls Next Door, The House Bunny sends an awful message to young females that in order to succeed in this world you gotta be pretty and pretty dumb (even if they do try to say otherwise at the end of the film). If only Bunny were anywhere near as entertaining as Girls is (Holly, Bridget and Kendra + Hef appear in the film, along with some other pointless cameos like Dan Patrick, Shaq and Matt Leinart), let alone, was as short as a single episode of the giggle and jiggle fest. While the set-up about an expelled mansion bunny finding a new home as the house mother to a sorority of misfits certainly sounds like a perfect fit for Anna Faris‘ brand of dopey humor (and her Jennifer Coolidge wax lips), this ‘comedy’ turns out to be about as flat as the flat-chested women who get rejected by Mosquito Bites Magazine. The two screenwriters behind Legally Blonde attempt to strike the same women empowerment magic here (although luckily we’ve always been able to deflect their spells), but this thing is so terribly ‘vapid’ (the word people keep calling Faris’ character that she takes as a compliment) that it makes Elle Woods look like Thelma & Louise

One of the main things that irked us more than Urkel was the gaggle of girls in the sorority. They’re all such oddballs who loathe glamor and glitz that it’s hard to comprehend why they’d ever want to be in a sorority in the first place. There’s a nerdy one (Emma Stone in glasses, yum), a mute one, a dwarf, a pregnant one (Katharine McPhee, who woulda been better off starring in From Justin To Kelly 2), a tomboy hick (Dana Goodman, who eerily resembles Jeremy Renner), one covered in Joan Cusack Sixteen Candles-type protective metal (Rumer Willis, whose face scares us) and a goth with piercings everywhere (Kat Dennings, being annoying, juss like she was in The 40 Year Old Virgin). You juss knows they have inner beauty, in a She’s All That kinda way, and only Faris has they keys to unlock it. When she makes them over, Stone resembles a whored out version of Lohan and Dennings, Hillary Duff. Of course the girls have some lessons in humility to impart upon Faris’ empty mind, as she attempts to woo a normal guy (Colin Hanks… someone please explain why he keeps getting jobs, besides the fact that he’s Rita Wilson’s son). Oh yeah, and all of this shiz is goings on within the pseudo-plot about trying to raise money and find a new class of pledges before the Dean throws the sorority off campus. This could been the female answer to The Revenge of The Nerds, but instead it ended up being about as poopified as the straight-to-TV flick Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation. Lamar, stick a javelin in this one, please!

Pledge Pin-Ups: meat Rachel Specter & Sarah Wright (sometimes credited as Sarah Mason), two ladies in a rival sorority who have no purpose being in this movie other than looking fine!

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Hamlet 2
Something Is Rotten In Arizona
Trailers & Mo

Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) is at his wits’ end. Having failed as an actor, unless you count that Herpes medication ad he appeared in, he’s retreated to suburban hell in Tuscon, Arizona as a high school drama teacher. To make splatters worse, due to budget cuts, and the poor critical receptions of his last few plays based off of modern movies (his Erin Brokovich was nowhere near as good as Max Fisher’s Vietnam opus), the school has decided to shut down his class by the end of the year. Yet nothing will stand in Dana’s way of succeeding, even his giant lack of talent. He decides that Shakespeare’s Hamlet tragedy needs a happy second life and drums up an abortion of a sequel complete with a rocking Jesus and plenty of Grease lightening

A majority of the film centers on putting the play together, with the help, or lack thereof, from his rowdy class mainly consisting of a bunch of yo boys and girls, and is filled with some dreadful lame bits of humor as seen in the trailer (people running into things! gay jokes!). It almost feels as dead as The House Bunny, but as soon as the curtain rises on the actual production, the film comes alive and makes up for any shortcomings that came before it. Coogan’s manic energy (which reminded us a lot of Paul Dinello’s Geoffrey Jellineck character from Strangers With Candy) saves the production, both liguratively and fiterally. The rest of the cast try their best to keep up with him, but their characters are either underdeveloped (esp the students, but we didn’t let that stop us from continuing our rising love for Melonie Diaz, last seen in Be Kind Rewind), purposeless (Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler and David Arquette) or wasted (Elizabeth Shue… playing ELISABETH SHUE!), that this puppy is purty much a one man show. To see or not to see may be the question, but if you do go, juss remember the play’s the thing!

As We Like It: dude, Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, is so bangin

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Henry Poole Is Here
Take A Dip In The Holy Water
Trailers & Mo

Henry Poole Is Luke Wilson, a mopey man looking to drown his sorrows with alcohol in the new sunny neighborhood he juss moved into. One day his nosy next-door neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barraza, returning from Mexico after almost killing Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett’s kids) notices the face of Jesus on the exterior wall of his house and all heaven and hell breaks lose. While she’s convinced that it’s a sign from above (muss be the blood dripping from it), Henry, who simply wants to be left alone, takes it a sign of annoying things to come. Soon the holy rollers start rolling in (including a priest understatedly played by George Lopez), looking for a miracle (including this girl, whose face is 80 zillion times scarier than Rumer Willis’) to cure all their ills. Some of dem ills do get cured, including the muteness of his other neighbor’s (Radha Mitchell) daughter (Morgan Lily, perhaps the mos adorable lil girl ever!), yet Henry remains unconvinced, even as he starts to fall for her (Radha, not the daughter you sick-o-phant). Why is he so against these possible acts of Gawd? It’s as if he doesn’t believe in hope and faith (no, not that TV show that no one ever watched). OK, so the ploting and conclusion is quite obvious and is pieced together a tad too unevenly, and the soundtrack is beyond awkward (Blur’s ‘Song 2’, aka the Wooo-Whoo song, is played as Luke attempts to remove the Jesus face with a hose), but director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road, Mothman Prophecies and Pearl Jam’s ‘Jeremy’ video), who’s using the film as therapeutic way to help get over the loss of his beloved wife, provides enuff spiritual enlightenment to earn our praise

Pareidoliamania!: now you can make your own miracles at home with the Jesus pan!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Bunny and Hamlet 2 join Henry P in theaters mos everywhere today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Paraguayan javeliner Leryn Franco

American javeliner Lamar Latrell

Jemaine chooses his jemaine (wo)man

you are not what you own: Dischord Records goes digital

Gavin Rossdale’s daughter shows us her BUSH [NSFW]

I Left My Death Star in San Francisco

Zodiac letter receiver Melvin Belli as Star Trek‘s Gorgan [Time Werespanko]

the movie poster quiz [Ross At Our Balls]

geeky stained glass windows [b3ta]

and

slides from a les ghetto IBM presentation about crappy computers of the future!

Micky Dolenz made some beautiful music with the Monkees and even more with his former first wife Samantha Juste. The tasty fruit of their labor was daughter Ami (breast known as Tony Danza’s daughter in the ’89 ‘classic’ She’s Out of Control, and probably least known from the straight to video Corey Haim masterpieceofshit that be Demolition University), and by the looks of it, she’s equally as hottttt to trottt nixon as her mumsy

perv-ously on Dolenz’ Pineapple: JOing in the name of Ami and Can’t Buy Me Love, in which she had a teeny tiny role (see bottom of post)

Ziro The Hutt Capote The Slutt = the sound of the Star Wars franchise going completely kaput. The more we think about The Clone Wars ‘movie’ the more wees gets angries (all dough, the more wees thinks about voice actress Cat Taber the mores our lightsaber riseseses). Damns you George Lucas!! We hope Pizza The Hutt comes to life and eats you and yer 17 necks/chins

boo-nus: buy Ziro The Hutt shirt that’s juss as ugly and awful as the real/fake thing!

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
A Latesummer Night’s Sex Dramedy
Trailers & Mo

The two names that proceed Barcelona in the title are two American tourists BFFs who are spending a month long holiday in Spain’s second largest city before heading back to reality. Vicky (Rebecca Hall, with the film’s finest performance, which is saying something considering how great everyone else is), essentially the Woody Allen character here, is the straight-laced one with her future well planned out, including her upcoming marriage to a boring NYC finance guy (Chris Messina). Cristina (Scarlett Johansson, who always exudes sexy, and awkward acting) on the other hand, is the free spirit, ready for whatever adventure comes her way. One night, while the two are dining in a restaurant, a famed local painter named (Don) Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) approaches them with an offer to whisk them away for a whirlwind weekend of fine wine, art and fornication. Cristina is overly charmed and ready to jump in, and while Vicky is hesitant at first, she ultimately agrees to join them. Juan Antonio guns for Cristina, but she gets very sick after a heavy night of drinking, forcing him to spend the next day and night with Vicky. She tries her best to resist his charms, but this is Javier Bardem we’re talking about! The two tryst it up, leaving her shaken and stirred. The threesome return from the weekend, and Cristina and Juan Antonio pursue a steamy relationship, while Vicky starts to second guess her life’s plan and pending nuptials, finding a good ear in an expat who’s been in a similar situation (Patricia Clarkson)

It sounds like there’s enuff drama here to fill up the rest of the film, but things get a lot more interesting when Juan Antonio’s ex-wife and soul mate Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz, whose English keeps gettin better flick by flick, but is at her best when speaking in her native Spanish tongue) reenters his life and lights the screen on fire. She’s down in the dumps and Juan A has no other choice but to let her live with him and Cristina. It’s an fragile grouping from the get go, but by looking at the image above, you juss know things will eventually get a lil bit saucy between them. Yes, there’s a ménage à trois between beautiful peoples Bardem, Cruz and Johansson, but before you pack yer Kleenex and Jergens lotion and head off to the theater with yer pants around yer cankles, please note that this hot action occurs, sadly, off screen, save a lil smooching d-tease. Don’t let this panty bunching prevent you perverts from seeing Woody Allen’s latest European Vacation, which is dripping with plenty o’ luscious lust-er, and gorgeous scenery that isn’t flesh-based

While not as brilliant as Match Point, or as goofy as Scoop, or as gripping as the vastly underrated Cassandra’s Dream, VCB is still an enjoyable romp around the Iberian Peninsula. The more the Woodman stays away from Manhattan, the less his movies feel like… a Woody Allen movie, and after a decade of mediocrity, this is a mos welcome sojourn. Must be something in the Old World’s water that has the ability to tone down his usual New World neurosis and output something that feels fresh, yet still retains a hint of the Allentown we all love to keep visiting year after year. VCB‘s got more charm than a 24 pack of Charmin, so break out the rolls and wipe this baby up!

Voice Male: the film’s narrator, Christopher Evan Welch, is most well known for providing the voice of Tails in the cartoon The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog when he was a kid. these days, you can hear his growns up vox on many an audiobooks

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

A Girl Cut In Two
(La Fille Coupée En Deux)
An Obtuse Astute Love Triangle
Trailers & Mo

Lovely TV weather gal Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier, for once, not in NSFW mode) has gots some men issues. She’s the part-time mistress of a renowned French author (François Berléand, last seen as the police detective in Tell No One), who totally enjoys a good tumble under the sheets, but he can’t really commit to her, being married and taking frequent trips to an high-brow sex club. Then there’s the wealthy brat Paul (Benoît Magimel), who will stop at nothing to win her affection, although he only seems to love himself, and his hamazin hair. As the author starts to pull away, tearing Gabrielle’s heart… IN TWO, she finds uneasy comfort in Paul’s arms. While Paul may have won the prize, he can’t help but feel like sloppy seconds. This leads him to do something quite dastardly that we won’t reveal here. The plot is hactually based on what this man did to Madison Square Garden (version II)’s architect (don’t click one the first link unless you want yer milk spoiled), and it isn’t even the first time these events have been fictionalized. It was the subject, mos famously, of the 1955 film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and the 1975 novel Ragtime. French New Wave director Claude Chabrol blends the love tragedy in Girl with some nice bits of humor, and shows that for a septuagenarian juss like Allen, he isn’t showing any signs of rust. And while we’re still figuring out what exactly happened at the end, we suggest y
ou start at the beginning

E Femme Rule: Paul’s sisters are quite the cutie patooties. pay love and respek to Clémence Bretécher and Charley Fouquet

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Anita O’Day:
The Life of a Jazz Singer
Not All That Jazz
Trailers & Mo

Anita O’Day led a mos colorful life. Nicknamed The Jezebel of Jazz, her unique voice has stood the test of time (peep Ms O’Day at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival kick out the jams ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ and ‘Tea For Two’), even dropping her last album right before she passed on at age of 87. She’s been as highly revered as such other legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughn, sang alongside sum luminary musicians like Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton, and had more than her fair share of professional and personal highs (she loved to drink and smoke marijuana) and lows (and dabble with heroin and multiple husbands as well). This basic documentary, pieced together over 4 years by her adoring manager Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden, shines when the camera’s pointing at Anita, but the rest of the other surrounding pitter-patter will probably only eggcite the diehard fans, which leaves the uninitiated feeling that if it don’t mean a thing, it juss aint got that swing

Hat Tip: although currently not available on DVD, don’t forget to seek out Hats Off, about another classy olde dame by the name of Mimi Weddell

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

all three films open in limited release today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…