Thighs Wide Shut

The Informant!
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

There’s a big difference between actors and movie stars. Most movie stars blow. Matt Damon is a movie star, and yet he far from blows (he’s also Fahrvergnügen). Matty D is probably the mos endearing movie star going, and yet we take him for granted and granite. His Ocean buddies, namely Clooney and Pitt with their cocksure perma-smirks, hog all the spotlight, and yet they don’t really deserve it, at least not anymore now that they virtually play themselves from one film to the next (Vince Vaughn also suffers from the same diarrhea, and yet you people keep paying to watch him be dumb him). Well Diggty Damon may play slight variations of himself, but since he’s more of a boy next door type, obtainable to us simple folk, he is therefore someone we can easily get behind me satan. Whether he’s out-Bonding Bond as Jason Bourne, gettin serious with van Sant or having a blast in a disaster like Gilliam’s Brothers Grimm, Damon is always sharp, and as sharp as cheddar or Shannon, or even Sterling. In our humboldt opinion, he is the quintessential modern American movie star (remember, dudes like Sean Penn and Robert Downey are actors, not movie stars), and hasn’t ever been able to top his own magnificent work as the clever, calculating and Talented Mr Ripley. Until now?

Damon plays real-life whistle-blower Mark Whitacre [don’t bother clicking if you plan on seeing the film, which you probably should] in The Informant! So wait, why the exclamation mark (or is it an ‘exclamation point’?) in the title? Well, Whitacre is a slippery Tom Ripley-like character, cept he’s more awe-shucks golly-gosh, and less I’m gonna take an oar and slap you across the face with it, and Damon, playing this kinder, stoopider Ripley-like dude who’s in way over his head with this whistle-blowingness, excels like crizzzzazzy, especially spouting these funny asides about everyday life and things. + Damon’s playing the funnyman role in a movie where all the straightmen are played by funnymen (that dude from The Soup! that annoying fat guy who voiced a rat! Buster from Arrested Development! that baldy dude from 30 Rock! Biff from BTTF!!!! and although Scott Bakula isn’t a comedian, he does ruuuuuuuuule like Mercedes Ruehl!!!!!!!). All of this straight and funny is served up with a perfectly marvelous and hammy Marvin Hamlisch score, and BLAMMMM – you now sorta know, maybe not so much, why and how the film needs and has an exclamation mark/point!

But it’s not that simple, and neither is the movie itself, which does go on a bit too long even when it gets plenty interesting near the end when Damon/Whitacre keeps digging himself into a bigger hole. Credit and discredit in the same breath director Steven Soderbergh, who we deeply admire for always taking the chances that he does in moviedom, but then again, who drives us forkin nuts cause most of his movies never hit the mark (recently we were bored to tears and bored to comas with Che and The Whore Experience). Keep trying Nederbergh!! More Bubble, less burst, and of course, all the Matt Damon we can get (unless it results in Ocean’s 23-D)

Murphy’s Lawlessness: Damon as Whitacre looks egggzactly like Eddie Murphy done up in whiteface for that klisssasic SNL bit. mad creepy, yo!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Informant! tattles at a theaters near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Paul McCartney
Citi Field Shea II
July 17th

Our first trip out to the Mets’ new digs probably should have included Apu’s favorite squadron playing baseball there, but watching Sir Paul McCartney christen the joint, like him and some other 3 mop tops did at the Mets’ former home (now a parking lot), playing 12 barely audible songs to a throng of screaming girls (and men too), was still a rousing and mos rawking introduction. Sure, we’d rather see John Lennon play ‘I Am The Walrus’ live, but we don’t live in a world where dead people play music live. And if John were alive today, he’s probably be making an ass of himself and his legacy, rapping with Snopp Dogg and appearing at MTV music awards with Fall Out Boy (whomever they are). Anywho, Macca’s the living legacy of the Beatles (sorry Ringo), and he’s carried that weight a long time, but he effin and geeing carries it well. The familiar favorites were a treat to finally hear played live (even more so then when we caught his brief gig atop the Ed Sullivan marquee last week). We lost our shit a bunch of times (the drugs, alcohol and Shake Shack burgers certainly helped), reaching it’s shittinglyiest lostness zenith when Charles Manson came out and he belted out ‘Helter Skelter’. Even his solo dizzles, which are classics in their own write (a certain Bond theme song + the one with the jailor man and Sailor Sam), dazzled in the rainy night. The 30+ song setlist (with a few unknown yawns included early on in the 2.5+ houred gig) speaks for itself, and if it doesn’t speak to you then you obviously are more of a Stones fan than a Beatles fan, in which case, you don’t know anything about nuttin

‘Drive My Car’
‘Jet’
‘Only Mama Knows’
‘Flaming Pie’
‘Got To Get You Into My Life’
‘Let Me Roll It’
‘Highway’
‘The Long and Winding Road’
‘My Love’
‘Blackbird’
‘Here Today’
‘Dance Tonight’
‘Calico Skies’
‘Mrs. Vanderbilt’
‘Eleanor Rigby’
‘Sing the Changes ‘
‘Band on the Run’
‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’
‘I’m Down’
‘Something’
‘I’ve Got a Feeling’
‘Paperback Writer’
‘A Day in the Life’/’Give Peace a Chance’
‘Let It Be’
‘Live and Let Die’
‘Hey Jude’

FIRST ENCORE
‘Day Tripper’
‘Lady Madonna’
‘I Saw Her Standing There (with Billy Joel)

SECOND ENCORE
‘Yesterday’
‘Helter Skelter’
‘Get Back’
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)’/’The End’

The love we took from Paul will never equal to the love he makes… whatever that means. be sure to catch him and his band on the run for maximum fun

mad pics over at BVeggie

Klauder Crab Feast XVII
July 18th

no summer would be complete without Klauder’s annual crab fest and this summer was like last summer and thus was no eggception. we had crabs and it had nothing to do with crusty penises and vaginas. we had Iron City Beer and we loved it. we later were so filled with crab juice and crab lungs and crab guts that we played topless beer pong. sadly none of the girls played. CRABS!!! it’s a Maryland thing, you wouldn’t understand, herspecially if yer from Virginia, cause Virigina’s not for lovers, but for losers. seriously it is, check VA’s state constitution for proof

July19th

(500) Days of Summer
Fair Weather Girlfriend
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Finally a hyped up Fox Searchlight film that hactually lives up to its billing!! No quirkyness for the sake of being quirky here! OK, there are quirks to be had in (500) Days of Summer (split screens! b&w French New Wave homages! dancing in the streets with cartoon birds!, all dough the bus filled with Deschanels somehow didn’t make the cut), but they enhance the experience, not take away from it. What also sets Days days apart from all the other crap out there, especially any film involving Sandra Bullock, romance or both, is that the characters are real actual human beings, having real actual life emotions and really trying to deal with them! No sugar coating to be found here in Marc Webb‘s feature length directorial debut, with a clever, but not thaaaaaat clever script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. We know right from the start, cause the narrator tells us at the start that Tom (Joseph Gordo
n-Levitt, who’s starting to look like his 10 Things I Hate About Jews co-star Ledger, and acting up to his level as well) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel, with eyes that every hipster has JOed to)’s relationship is doomed to fail, and yet as we watch the 500 up and down days play out in non-sequential order, we hope and hope and hope that the narrator made a mistake. Every guy’s been in JG-L’s shoes and every girl has at one point raised the roof aloof like the cream dream Zooey does here. The same would be true if the roles were reversed, but who really wants to watch another movie where the girl gets dumped upon? While everything feels so real (fo’reals!), the flick unspools a bit too quickly, and never reaches the profoundness we thought it was going to deliver. It’s telling when the final scene from The Graduate is shown and holds more meaning to the audience than any of the great stuff seen in the movie we’re hactually watching. Tom & Summer aint no Ben & Elaine, but then again, who are? At least they don’t drive a yellow VW van or use hamburger phones for the sake of doing so like fake movie people do

Making Up For Lost Thyme: she’s barely in the movie, and we wished she barely wore clothes, but the real travesty is that TWS is purty much been Minka Kellyless (sorry, we haven’t watched a single ep of FNL). we promise not to make this mistake ever again

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Summer is currently shinning is select cities across America

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

but wait, there’s mo!!

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Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis

we forgot that reading books isn’t as hard as it sounds (that’s what she said), so we made the effort to read our third Ellis novel after the INandUMcredible American Psycho and the passable Informers (both made into lousy films). problem is is is is we saw the even less than zero Less Than Zero movie ages ago (watch the lame trailer here), which starred 2/3rds of the men from Pretty In Pink AND Mannequin + Jami Gertz (who oddly enuff was on last night’s Entourage) and a very very very very wild Robert Downey Jr, so we couldn’t help but picture those actors as the characters the entire time we read the book, which was really confusing since the movie barely resembles the book’s characters and plotting, but it’s probably impossible to make a movie out of that book which is basically 190 pages of coke and cock snorting, indifference, and even more coke and cock snorting, with about 17 pages of creepy weird shiz, like a snuff video and the raping of a 12 year old girl. anywho, it’s a book, it was semi-entertaining, we finished it, and now another 6 months will pass before we read another. that’s not hactually true, as August is our beach month and we plan to read more novels that may or may not include coke and cock snorting, although we’re more into non-fiction, and would love some coke and cock snorting non-fiction recommendations peas!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Logan’s Run-On
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

You’d think with a spin-off of a mighty popular movie franchise, featuring its moist mighty popular character, that the production would actually spend a good deal of money (is there such a thing as a ‘bad deal of’ anything?) on top of the line special effects, right? So what then is the story with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which features dodgy CGI that looks about as complex as the flight simulator the monkeys played with in 1987’s Project X? What? That’s not the finished version of the film that we watched? You mean to also tells us that them on-screen ADR directions weren’t subtitles of what the character was saying in a mutant language? That’s not what the dude in the trench coat in the dimly lit parking garage led us to believe when he handed us a DVD copy of this film with a label written in sharpie, and told us we had to watch it ‘as is’ or else he was going to kill our Queen and our Secretary of State-ments. We take all threats of Thighland’s national security vary seriously, and when that involves making tough choices like the one in which we were presented, sometimes you have to task not what your country can poop for you, but what poop can who flung on your country. Huh? Yeah, whatevaaaaa

Full-on CGI or not, Wolverine is about as good as any of the other X-Men movies, so take that for twatever it’s worth. To us, it doesn’t really mean shiz since we couldn’t really tell the difference between the three blah blah X-Mens, including that Brett Shatner one. They were decent enuff super hero flicks, but this caped crusader franchise is easily the least memorable of them all (plus everyone knows that DC Comics so kicks Marvel’s a$$, and anyone who disagrees can lick Aquaman’s chocolate starfish). Hugh Jackman is totally jacked and hughed and game for this adventure, but if this were a Choose Your Own Adventure, we’d probably choose a different path for him to follow. We did like the shaz in the beginning where Wolfy and his equally facial hair gifted bro are fighting in every American war known to man, eggecept for the Cola Wars, and all the action sequences that follow throughout are kinda tight, like a man’s anus, but the filler in between, endless military talk, medical experiments and running from one locale to the next, isn’t eggzactly our idea of eggcitment. Tis kinda a shame it turned out to be so rudimentary, hispecially since they roped in a prestige director (Gavin Hood of Tsotsi fame… then again, Gavid Hood is also of Rendetion disfame. shame what Hollywood can do to a talented filmmaker), sum thespian best-ians (Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston) + eye candy for the ladies (Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch & that a$$hole from Lost, cause ladies love the a$$holes). Then again, this thing was doomed not to rule as soon it was revealed that Will.i.Am‘s mutant power was being a CNN hologram

Mutton Chop Phooey: where would Wolverine be (or any of us cool kids for that splatter) w/o Ambrose Burnside and his mutton chops? the man’s last name, in reverse, gave rise to one of the illest, moist important words of balls thyme… SIDEBURNS ^{[citation needed]}

Verdictgo: it wouldn’t be fair for us to give one, so if yer a crazy X-fan, see it in a theater, and if you’ve had enuff X-crap, then you can stay away and rela-X at home (at watch the legboot)

The Soloist
Cello Darkness My New Friend
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The Soloist is less about Nathaniel Ayers, a once promising Julliard student turned schizophrenic homeless virtuoso (Jamie Foxx, showing off his incredible ability for mimicry, like he did with Ray) and more about Steve Lopez, the jaded LA Times reporter who discovers and gives cover to him (Robert Downey Jr, so effin hammazin as a journalist once again, juss like in Zodiac… did you ever see that movie? juss had to ask for the 4 zillionth thyme). So much so that The Journalist woulda been a more apt title. As the great Time Werespanko pointed out to us, disability movies aren’t about the disabled, but about the person who has to help them. His main example was Rain Man, sayin it wouldn’t have worked tat all had Tom Cruise not been so balls to the walls in it (yet no Oscar nom for Tom? boo-urns!). Tis true what he says and the same thinking applies here, although The Soloist is Rain Main w/o the thunder and lightening cause it covers the feelings bases well, but not so much in the telling a story department. It does try to send a heavy handed message about the larger issue of homelessness in LA, and while it doesn’t fully succeed in getting it across, it was certainly worth trying to do so. Wees thinking that The Soloist was all over the place due to the fact that Joe Wright is out of his usual element here, directing a film that plays out in the modern era and is not starring Keira Knightley (although he did bring along his creepy friend Mr Collins from P&P). And yet despite its many flaws, we took to this beautiful film, as the performances elicited a few tears here and there, which is a sure sign of a fantabolous movie. So, have no fears for tears, or slapdash presentation, and go and see this flick that briefly stars a guy with one of the bestest IMDb headshots we’ve ever seeeeen

60 Minutes Divided By 5: justin case you missed the real deal, watch Morley Safer’s more rounded story on Mr Lopez and Mr Ayers… which also elicited tears from us. what can we say, we’re suckers for things that don’t suck

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Wolverine opens at a theater near Jews on Friday, where The Soloist is already isting

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Jennifer Ellison is Loaded (with Cleavage)

Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson in costume

Alicia Witt lapdance from Two and a Half Men

Cindy Crawford, HalloWinehoused

Holly Madison, when she looked like someone’s mom

…although nothing like Brian Peppers’ mom

Yearbook Yourself [Poop Scroop]

Headhoods [NOTCOT]

Beauty in Drops of Water

RocknRolla
Guy Just Wants To Have Gun
Trailers & Mo

Guy Ritchie’s personal and professional life of late hasn’t been so rosy. There’s the whole Madonna/A-Rod affair, yet that pales in comparison to the awfulness that was his psychologically inert film, Revolver, which took two years to even get a US release date… and will probably take two years for us to get rid of the headache that it gave us. Since becoming the heir to Tarantino by handing in the fab Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 and even fabber Snatch two years later (has it really been that long?), Ritchie has gotsen swept away at his own British gangsta game by deliciously rich(-ie) films like Layer Cake (directed by his ye olde producer Matthew Vaughn) and this year’s The Bank Job (starring his find Jason Statham). The question has been begged again and again (mostly by us), where have you gone Guy Ritchie? Question answered with RocknRolla (one of the dumbest film titles we’ve heard in awhile), which finds the director happily back in the (un)safe surroundings of London’s underground (poor choice of words, cause we aint talking about the tube), filled with his usual witty and twitty gunmen, double dealing each other until the end credits. Since he’s treading on common ground again, nRolla‘s not as fresh as Lock, Stock or as polished as Snatch, but it is mos certainly as fun as either of them, and we’ll take that kinda repetitiveness over the kind Kevin Smith doles out over and over

This time the MacGuffin aint no shotgun or shiny diamond, but a prized painting from a Russian real estate mogul (Karel Roden) that goes missing after he lends it to a crime boss (Tom Wilkinson, whose cockney performance as Lenny Cole is worthy of being placed on Richie’s Mt Rushmore alongside Brick Top and ‘Hatchet’ Harry) that he’s doing bidness with. This sets off a series of events with everyone and their mother (and we mean everyone, from Gerard Butler, playing the Statham role, although not as well + solid turns from Mark Strong, Toby Kebbell, Jimi Mistry and even Ludacris and Jeremy Piven for the hell of it) looking for the piece of art, and trying to steal some cash from one another in the process. While you’ve seen it all before, Ritchie does throw something new into the mix– a female character who’s more than up to the challenge of hanging with the tough boys, electrifyingly played by the beyond hotness that is Thandie Newton. We think he’s on to something here, and if he’s scrounging for another shoot’em up after his Robert Downey/Jude Law Sherlock Holmes, might we suggest an all lady gangster flick?

Girls Richie: Richie’s all about the eye candy, and tosses us tossers some lovely ladies besides Thandie. There’s Tiffany Mulheron and Quantum Of Solace Bond girl Gemma Arterton, who supposedly was born with six fingers on each hand! Eat that Count Rugen!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
A Teeny Bit Familiar
Trailers & Mo

The world has waited long enuff for the next John Hughes to arrive, and guess we’ll have to keep on waiting, cause ever since Home Alone went into sequel mode no one has been even close to occupying the teen film throne that he once sat on. Sure, there’s been some enjoyable adolescent one-off romps since the mid-90s like Clueless, American Pie, Bring It On and She’s All That (recent pics like Juno and Superbad really aren’t the Burt’s Bees Knees, so shut it), but none of them carry the teen weight and relevance that a Hughes film did. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist aims for Hughes’ territory, but the results are more like John Snooze. Sure, watching the awkward stylings of Michael Cera make cute with the always on-screen sour-puss-edom of Kat Dennings (see, or don’t, more of her perma-frowny faces in 40 Year Old Virgin or House Bunny) will be a viewing pleasure for today’s 8th thru 12th graders, but for the rest of us, the story of their courtship is juss a bunch of recycled teen movie bits you’ve seen a zillion times… the plot has them running around NYC in a Yugo (it was funnier and more ironic/moronic when we saw one in Dragnet 20 years ago) searching for a secret gig by their favorite band (Lohan did the same in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen), while they also try to locate their lost friend (straight outta the Adventures In Babysitting playbook), Ari Graynor, who practically steals the film from N&N. Sprinkle in some shitty cameos (did we really need to see the unfunny Andy Samberg as an unfunny homeless guy?) and a hip soundtrack (although we hear about mix CDs, we never see a single playlist!) and that’s purty much that. If John Hughes isn’t gonna come back to save this genre, we hope someone makes like Clifford Irving and writes a fake autobiography that lures him out of hiding so he can debunk it juss like Howard Hughes did. That may not be the mos original idea nick goings, but it’s a heckula lot more interesting than Nick & Norah, which seems to be stuck on shuffle

Nick at Nite: you can visit all the hotspots that N&N hit up with this handy dandy map here

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

RocknRolla opens today in NYC, LA and Toronto, while Nick & Norah is already playing at a theater new jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…