Thursday, May 17, 2012

Opening This Weekend: You Sunk My Childhood

Brandon Routh gratuity from sports
comedy Crooked Arrows
Battleship opens this weekend.  Did you ever play the board game as a kid?  Do you still play it?  While you hoped you placed your ships strategically and deceptively enough to fool your opponent, you got to slowly recreate their own layout with red and white pegs and beat them to the punch.  Tell me you didn't get a thrill out of hearing, "You sunk my battleship!"  (How are the screenwriters going to work that line into the new movie?  Stupidly, I'm guessing!)  I suppose computers have been substituted these days for the more tangible game sets.  And, now, you can relive a non-participatory simulation on the big screen!  Except there is very little connection between the game and the movie, from what the trailer shows me other than: 1) the title, 2) battleships, and 3) ocean water supporting the battleships.  I also saw aliens, fame whore domestic abusee Rihanna, two stars from Friday Night Lights, and a huge attempt to leech off the financial success of those awful Michael Bay Transformers movies.  Honestly, who comes up with this shit?  Why, the Hoeber siblings who brought us Red and Whiteout (the colors of the Battleship pegs!) and are making Universal Pictures lotsa money overseas right now.  Thanks guys!  Hope your success bears some actual artistic fruit one of these days.

Hugh Dancy in period costume
Also coming out is What to Expect When You're Expecting, the pregnancy comedy that is taking the Nine Months approach to human gestation, because, ha-ha, men preparing for childbirth is SO funny.  At least, that seems to be the change in marketing strategy as of late.  I guess the wedding genre has been played out.  Anyone else notice that the two names that have been headlining the most recently (Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz) are being sold as tagalongs?

And, finally, on the big-screen count, talented Sacha Baron Cohen is attempting a comeback of sorts after the Borat star's ill-received Austrian hairstylist Bruno (I liked it; it was wrong, but so right) with The Dictator.  Unlike his first two leading roles, instead of playing fake characters in the real world documentary style, he's going to try narrative-fiction.  Larry Charles directed the first two and has extensive experience in TV with writing, directing, and/or producing such shows as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm and has taken the helm for this project.  Cohen's three cowriters are all from the same pot.  Costar Anna Farris lends her chops for a comic assist.  I'm not going to hold my breath, but I am crossing my fingers, slightly.

Samuel L. Jackson plays The Samaritan or the shit-kicking renegade he plays in every movie.  The trailer starts with a philosophical voice-over conjuring up memories of The Shawshank Redemption and then proceeds to spoil every plot element of the movie.  When is Jackson going to do something bold like play gay.  Isn't he bored?

Speaking of gay, Dustin Lance Black won an Oscar for screenwriting Milk and then got to direct his own movie Virginia criticizing his old religion.  Now, it's getting released three years later.  Perhaps, he should have tried to hold off the release of his sex tape until now.  His career might be an interesting case study compared to Diablo Cody's.  Emma Roberts is in the credits, yet conspicuously missing from the trailer.

Former Superman Brandon Routh and his five o'clock shadow mustache coach The Mighty Ducks, except, this time, they're the Native Americans Lacrosse team Crooked Arrows.  Cutie Hugh Dancy discovers the vibrator in Hysteria and shares his findings with Maggie Gyllenhaal and other females.  Love the music in Russian film Elena.  French film Polisse.  Dance documentary Never Stand Still.  The creators of The Blair Witch Project are back with Lovely Molly.  And self-absorbed white and weird American Animal.

[Picture via Lazy Circles]



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