Thighs Wide Shut

Ordos, China: A Modern Ghost Town

is this the set of 2046?

or perhaps Code 46?

or juss a cleaner, less in a hurry (read: Russian) Chernobyl?

The Book of Eli
Better Deso-Late Than Never?
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The sky has fallen, and so has civilization. A man takes to the road, heading anywhere but here, in search of kind man mankind, while also being one of the sole preservers of it. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Hactually don’t, cause you have, moist recently with the munch better Viggo Mortensen traveled Road, but that didn’t stop The Hughes Bros from heading down the same beaten path with their Book of Eli, a flick more concerned with knife-wielding gunplay, than exploring humanity in inhumane circumstances. The smarter ones of this genre usually try to go there, but that doesn’t mean for a second that the Hughes’ Sergio Leone tinged Children of Men knock-off (the rowboat scene made us cringe with déjà vu) aint entertaining & purty to look it, cause tis is, it’s juss not as deep as it’s necessarily trying to dig. Can you dig?

The man on the westward walk be Denzel Washington (nice to see him at work with the Bros), and nothing will stand in his way, not even an overly hammy Gary Oldman, channeling his Léon: The Professional jerkassedness persona or a slightly out of place Mila Kunis, to wherever he’s going and why he’s headed there. The motives (and result) we aint allowed to divulge, but you can probably guess that it has something to do with a book (and not juss any book!), Eli, and the the. When Eli reveals its reveal, it turns out to be about as shocking as Heidi Montag’s daily plastic surgery itinerary. A repeated viewing with the prior knowledge of said reveal won’t likely produce any dividends (like it did with The Village, which went from Village idiocy to a Village Pantry, overstocked with deliciousness), and that’s a true testament of how half-baked this Book of revelations reads

A Ray of Hope: we’re huge fans of the huge Ray Stevenson (he plays one of Oldman’s right-hand men), and yous probably are too if you ever saw HBO’s brilliant, but canceled Rome. well there’s good news out there that apparently even we somehow missed… a Rome MOVIE is in the werks!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Eli opens today at a theater near jews, where the not so gr8, but not as awful as everyone’s making it out to be Lovely Bones finally rolls out

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Road
Bleak of An Eye
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The Road is about a nameless man (Viggo Mortensen at his rugged ruggedness bestness) who travels by foot with his nameless son (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who’s no Max Records!) to nowhere. Wells, they do have a vague destination in mind (the ocean!), but really are juss trying to survive by simply living. While society and the earth itself has crumbled to pieces (we don’t get to witness tit tat all, which is completely fine, cause moist of the time shiz is scarier when you don’t know the why or how), the man doesn’t want to give up on humanity or his son, even though everyone else has, including his wife (Charlize Theron, seen in flashbacks, which we believe wasn’t a part of the book). The two meet all kinds of other desperate and unsavory souls on their path to anywhere but here, from cannibals, to thieves and the hopeless (including a barely recognizable Robert Duvall), and one can see that even when all is lost, love can still mean something. Oh boy, man, did that man love his boy! Not in that way you sick forks!!

Yeah kiddies, this a total debbie downer to the creme de^menthe degree! Even when there’s a slight ray of hope, it’s usually preceded or followed by very bad stuffs. Tis like the dirty emptiness of Children of Men with less people, future gadgetry or blow up pig balloons, with an added bit of The Mist‘s twists and burns. To be honest, we have not read Cormac McCarthy’s book, cause we’re ill-litter-rate. And where director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) and writer Joe Penhall‘s take on the material treads, we may never want to learn how to read, let alone go down that ROAD again. We don’t mean that in a bad way twatsoever, but why would we want to endure the there will be blood, sweat and tears in a word form after digesting the horrific beauty that was painted in the cinematic version? Kinda a hard film to recommend, but how could we not when it’s the mos visually spectacular one of the 2009, although it would have been of the 2008 had they released it when theys was originally planning to. Maybe they wanted to show Roland Emmerich how it’s really done. Too bad more will flock to his 2012 than see The Road. Now you tells we, who needs an effin apocalypse to tell us that humanity barely eggists anymo?

Where They’re Going We Need Roads!!!: The Road chomps its own scenery, filming at actual ravaged or worn places like Mount St. Helens, hard hit Hurricane Katrina spots of Louisiana, and, as thighposted before, the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike (we are so going there ones day!)

Verdictgo: Breast In Show. duh, cause dystopia is dope!

The Road knows no bounds today in limited release. seek it out or be eaten by cannibals!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

ps – was kinda odd to see Viggo married to Theron onscreen cause Theron’s real life beau is Stuart Townsend, aka the man picked to play Aragorn in LOTR, but who was replaced 4 days into shooting by… VIGGO!!!

Rachel Getting Married
Squirms of Endearment
Trailers & Mo

It’s been quite a long time since Jonathan Demme made a narrative film worthy of praise. 15 years to be exact, as Philadelphia was his last fictional work of note, which was quite an hamazin’ follow-up to the bestness that came a year before, Silence of The Lambs. While he’s excelled recently with a pair of documentaries (Jimmy Carter Man From Plains and The Agronomist), big budget Hollywood fluff like The Manchurian Candidate and The Truth About Charlie have been questionable choices for a man of such great talent, even the latter being repoopulously ridiculed by Marky Mark and Ari Gold on Entourage. We can now table such discussions as Demme surges back big time with the little ensemble family drama Rachel Getting Married, which has now sirpassed the funtastic Married To The Mob as his finest ‘married’ movie of balls thyme

From a character rich script by Sidney Lumet‘s daughter Jenny (not to be confused with his other daughter Amy, most famous for putting her giant rack on display at the 2005 Academy Awards), Demme throws an intimate wedding party (including such guests as Fab 5 Freddy, Roger Corman and Robyn Hitchcock… guess Jimmy Carter wasn’t unavailable) that’s almos as catastrophic and more unnerving than what transgressed in Meet the Parents. Anne Hathaway achingly plays Kym, the Gaylord ‘Greg’ Focker role here that’s eons away from the kiddie stuff she’s done before, and while you’ll feel just as sorry for her as you did for Ben Stiller, there aren’t many laffs to ease her or our pain. Kym’s been in and out of rehab for ages, ever since a tragic event in her adolescence, and she’s coming back home to celebrate, although ruin might be a better word, her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt, aka Mad Men‘s Midge Daniels)’s nuptials (to TV On The Radio‘s lead singer Tunde Adebimpe). While her family’s happy to see her at first, including her overly cautious pop (stage actor and Elmo pal Bill Irwin, who shines bright) and his cold and distant ex-wife (Debra Winger, who’s been sorely missed in the world of cinema), Kym quickly shifts the attention from her sis’ happiness to her unhappiness, and all hell breaks lose. There is light at the end of this dark tunnel, and the actual wedding is soulful and so gorgeous that you’ll wish you were invited. Rachel is dynamite stuff and is right up there with The Visitor, Mister Lonely, Towelhead and Frozen River as some of the mos touching and affecting films we’ve seen this year

Corny Stalk: Anne, beware of ESPN’s (un) The Talented Mr. Roto, who may need a restraining order cause he’s obsessed with you

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Blindness
See No Evil No See
Trailers & Mo

After City of Gawd and The Constant Gardner we’ve come to eggspect nothing but the best from director Fernando Meirelles. Blindness, adapted from the celebrated book by José Saramago, may not be on par with either of those last two brilliant films, but it comes awfully darn close. Blindness is about an unnamed city dealing with the outbreak of an unexplained… BLINDNESS epidemic. The blindness keeps getting passed from one poor soul to another, and eventually becomes such a major problem that the government quarantines the inflicted in an abandoned hospital. They’re basically left on their own, and if you can imagine the blind leading the blind, then you’ll have a purty good idea of how bad shiz will get. Luckily the wife (Juliane Moore) of a blind optometrist (Mark Ruffalo) can see, although not everyone is aware of this, and she does her best to make order out of the chaos, while trying to hold onto her sanity in the process. This cast is rounded out with remarkable performances by Gael García Bernal,
ef=”http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001999/” target=”_blank”>Maury Chaykin, Danny Glover, Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya and Don McKellar, who also wrote the screenplay

While this supposedly unfilmable film may be a bit muddled in the story and message delivery department, probably due to the fact that the novel was written in a stream-of-consciousness prose, we dare you to name another film this year that equals its beauty, or is as mesmerizing or stomach turning and churning as Blindness is. Actually Rachel Getting Married fits that bill, but it’s not about a dystopian society and we’re major suckers for that genre so take that! This is kinda like a junior Children of Men, which in our opinion, could be one of the bestest movies of the decade. This isn’t even close to being one of the best of the decade, but it’s close to breaking our top ten of 2008. Others don’t seem to agree and we hope they go blind

Blinded By The Light: while we haven’t seen The Miracle Worker or City Lights, here are six pics about blindness we recommend you viddy well… Tommy, Dancer In The Dark, Ray, The Village, Manhunter and Blind Date. OK, so Blind Date isn’t about blind people, but it IS about dates that are blind!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Humboldt County
Puff, Puff, Pass
Trailers & Mo

Peter(Jeremy Strong)’s a recently failed and disillusioned med student who needs to lighten up, and does so by lighting up. After a one night stand with a singer named Bogart (Fairuza Balk), he follows her to the Nor-Cal county in the film’s title, which if you weren’t aware is HIGHly known for it’s cannabis growing. The next day she ups and leaves, and leaves him with her wacky tobaccy family (Grima Wormtongue, Ruth Fisher, Doug from VCB). The fish out of water eventually learns how to walk on high land and is soon chillaxing and waxing about life with these granola barflys. While it may be a bit more realistic of a pot movie than Pineapple Excess was, Humboldt is like taking a hit from a cashed bowl. If you don’t know what that means, you probably won’t be interested in Humboldt, but if you do know what that means, you should juss stay home and pack a freshie

Building Bridges: Lawrence Bridges makes his acting debut with Humboldt, but the dude has a lot of other talents, including casting Brad Pitt in his first commercial, a Pringles spot

Verdictgo: Very Little Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Rachel joins Humboldt in very limited release, while Blindness opens thighs wide

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Children of Men
Kids Я dUst
Trailer

If ‘anything about a future dystopian society‘ tops my mos flavorite genres for book readin than the same muss be true for cinema. I means, how else could one rationally explain my placing of The Island in my top twelve list of last year?!!???!? Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty o future duds, remember V For Vendetta… didn’t think so, but when a director gets it right, boy (and/or girl) does he (and/or she) get it right. And I am gleefully happy to report that Children of Men is the bestestestest of said genre since 12 Monkeys caputered a captive audience back in the ’95. Would you expect anything less from Alfonso Cuarón, the director who made the only thumbcredible Harry Potter flick and made me want to have a foursome with the cast of Y Tu Mamá También?

Dat’s right folks, this flick, about our world 20 years from now where women can no longer pop out babies, isn’t only a blue ribbon winner of its genre, but of filmdom in general. There’s so much goodness goings on that there’ll be something for everyone to enjoy, I gar-on-tee. It’s purty hard not to come out with anything less than specialtacular when your cast consists of some of today’s breast of the breast like Clive Owen, Julianne Moore (try not to get too attached to her character), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Mullan, Danny Huston, newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey, and Michael Caine, who hands in probably the 2nd finest stoner performance in modern movies (can you guess who’s #1? well, I can tell you that Tom Cruise’s toking in Eyes Wide Shut is the opposite of #1). Fab cast aside, what truly stands out in this franztastic feature is Cuarón’s use of eggsisting locations. It’s so much easier to buy into a future when real places are used than when it’s all shot on set and all CGI-rendered out on an Apple (it’s one of the main reasons why 28 Days Later be da illest horror joint in the past decade). From frame one, I knew Children of Men was going to be something very special, and I hope you feel the same way

Unsatisfied with this?: Netflix Michael Winterbottom’s ghastly underseen near-future tale Code 46 [trailer] which also was shot a ton at eggsisting locations

Possible Porno Name: Children On Men

Apt MPupil3: Franco Battiato‘s cover of the Rolling Stone’s ‘Ruby Tuesday‘ [d] which sounds like it belongs in a Wes Anderson flick, but probably wouldn’t work as well as it did in CoM. The rest of the sdtrk is purty killah, so czech that shaz out!

A Saucerful of Secrets: yes, that floating pig in the sky is a direct ref to Pink Floyd’s album cover for Animals. By the gay, that flamous Battersea Power Station is in the process of being redeveloped

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Breast In Show

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…