So we got that short bit of Star Trek footage a few weeks back and it looked great. Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain seems to be close to Kirk and a real threat, bringing some serious “Darkness” to the film. The first full teaser goes further to emphasize that. If you can’t tell from the Man of Steely voiceover and Hans Zimmers “BWAAAAAAAAANG” than you need to get your eyes checked.
Also, textbook lensflare in this:
So I have an original story in the backburner, so I’ll toss this out for now. It’s paced like Forest Gump and The People Vs. Larry Flynt, in that it has some comedic bits, but is really a true story that feels like a tall tale.
I’m doing a biopic of that crazy guy who ran for office, Jimmy McMillan. He will be played by Samuel L. Jackson and the bulk of the story will be told as a flashback in a courtroom. We open on a prosecutor, played by Ed Norton who is trying to convince a jury that Jimmy McMillan deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail after he causes a near riot in NYC during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. Jimmy, defending himself says everything he’s ever done, he’s done for the people and then the flashbacks start.
Vietnam Flashback. Typical music plays and we see Jimmy the hero, saving his entire platoon but falling in love with a vietnamese woman. Jimmy decides to stay there, but his captain kills the vietnamese woman. Jimmy then sees the true evil of war and demands to come home.
Flash to his life in Brooklyn. We see Jimmy struggles to integrate into society and even does a few enforcer type jobs for drug dealers. He knows its wrong, but the world has forgotten about Jimmy. He later becomes a professional wrestler, and reaches the heights of popularity, before a steroid scandal forces him into retirement.
(between each flash we go back to the courtroom and various other witnesses being examined by the prosecutor or Jimmy)
Flash to his life trying to get into politics. Jimmy is never taken seriously, especially when running for Gov, but during Occupy Wall Street, his rally “The Rent is 2 Damn High” finally gains traction and Jimmy becomes the voice of the OWS movement and the voice of the voiceless. The police, one of which is totally Michael Rapaport try and stop Jimmy’s rally, but the people are behind him and they fight the cops and two 20-something’s die in the process.
This is blamed on Jimmy, which brings us back to the courtroom. Jimmy delivers an empowering final speech about how his whole life he’s been kept down, people have been kept down, and even this lawsuit is a way to keep the people down, but THE RENT IS 2 DAMN HIGH! He keeps saying it as the judge slams the gavel. The people of the courtroom are saying it now, even the jury. They rule that he is not guilty, but the judge finds him in contempt and he spends a year in jail. In jail, we see that Jimmy is able to connect with younger criminals and help them turn their lives around. Jimmy is finally the hero we always thought he could be.
I will say nothing. Watch it for yourself and judge.
So I’ll assume the first Polly & Max made way more money than it should, so here is the sequel.
The sequel opens up a few months after the events of the original. Polly & Max are both getting ready to go to college and Virgil tells them to keep their power usage to a minimum. They say ok, looking at each other and it’s obvious that they plan on using their powers. Anyway as they meet their roommates and go to class, we see them using their powers back and forth. Next we cut to a village close to that volcano from the end of the first movie. A badly injured SlechteMal in being cared for by a foreign family, when all of a sudden his eyes light up and he levitates. He starts laughing. Apparently whenever Polly and Max use their powers now, he grows stronger. He kills the family and escapes.
Next week, I’ll be writing the unnecessary sequel to Polly and Max: Time’s Up, but this week I’m writing the pulpy film Kill The Messenger.
Kill The Messenger is a dark crime film about a Mob Messenger named Michael DuPinto. He’s a low level employee of a major crime syndicate. His job is to deliver messages from his higher ups to companies and store fronts that pay protection money. It’s a pretty easy job. He goes to the stores, sets the protection rate, and picks it up in a week or so. If he has a problem, he’ll call in bigger guns to rough people up. He never gets hurt, and he usually gets a small enough piece of the action to make it worth his while.
One day, his boss, Big Goat, tells him to pick up money from a Dry Cleaners he’s been having problems with. They’ve been short on payments a few times. As Michael arrives, he sees his muscle leaving the cleaners. They say, the pick up is all taken care of. Michael says ok, but feeling a little suspicious he goes into the cleaners and the owner, played by a Tony Shaloub type, says that he can’t keep paying the protection money if goes up every week. Michael says the rates been the same, and he realizes the muscle has been skimming off the top. The muscle however stayed behind long enough to find out Michael is onto their scheme. Michael realizes this and runs out the back of the cleaners.
The muscle come back in and then kill the cleaners owner and frame Michael for it. They tell Big Goat before Michael can tell his side of the story and Michael is a marked man. The entire mob is now after him because he’s been stealing and Michael has to find a “safe house” type place. The only place safe for him to go is to the Dry Cleaners wife’s apt. She’s conveniently hot. Michael tells her they killed her husband and the only way to expose the real truth is for her to let him in. She does and he tells her everything. The muscle eventually track him down there, leaving a lot of dead bodies in their wake, but he and Lorna, the cleaners’ wife have left. Big Goat grows increasingly angry with the muscle and says that if Michael isn’t dead within 24 hours, he’ll have everyone wiped out (which makes no sense for a crime syndicate).
As the chase draws on and the chemistry between Michael and Lorna builds, it’s clear that the only way Michael is going to get out of this alive, is if he gets his hands dirty. Michaels going to have to kill the muscle. After getting the evidence he needs to clear his name in the eyes of Big Goat, Michael and Lorna have some victory sex cause why not, and they go to the only guy left Michael can trust, his dirty cop brother, Sam. Sam gets them some weapons and untraceable cell phones and other stuff. Michael uses the phone to tell the muscle where to meet him. He wants to give himself up. Right when they arrive at the warehouse location, Sam and Lorna begin opening fire on the muscle. They kill 4 of them, but they brought backup. Sam, Lorna and Michael all get into a cool but bloody gunfight and Sam sustains serious injury before calling in for backup. He tells Michael and Lorna to get out of there and they run away. The cops get there and kill most of the muscle. Basically Michael lured them into a trap that would get them either arrested or killed. The few that remain alive are taken to prison where they claim they’ll never talk.
As that is happening Michael got to Big Goat, giving him the proof to clear his name and stuff and Goat has his guys on the inside take out the remaining muscle. Goat says he’ll give Michael 1 million dollars and an elevated position within the syndicate for loyalty. Michael says he’ll take the money, but he wants to take Lorna and get out completely. Go legit. Goat says it’s something he wishes he could have done years ago. He grants Michael his freedom.
The next scene is the obligatory beachfront scene where we see everything has worked out and Michael runs a small bar in Hawaii. We see a bunch of street thugs come up to his bar offering protection for a fee. Michael smiles at the camera and says “Lets talk” (it’s assumed he’s super tough now and can kill them if he wants).
Everyone can agree that the first two X-Men films were good and great respectively, and then x3 was trash and killed too many characters and was stupid.
Then X-Men Origins: Wolverine was WORSE
Then X-Men: First Class was a step back in the right direction. Well it looks like Fox is confirming what we all thought and have signed Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan to play older Professor X and Magneto, while confirming James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender will be back playing their younger counterparts for X-Men: Days of Future Past. With all of this time travel mumbo jumbo, it looks like unless this is two movies, it might be a little too much for one film. I hope it’s two films because I can’t imagine being able to wrap up a story like this in one film without being disjointed and having very little character development. But since Bryan Singer is back directing, I’m hopeful, that he’ll take the timeline of the X-Men films and make it all make sense in a Star Trekkian way.
We shall see!
Sorry this is late, but whatever. Trapped in the Closet came on last night.
Snack Friday is about an extremely unhealthy father named Ted who works for a megalomaniacal snack cake company. His daughters hate that he works for them because it’s bad food and he’s really fat (think Jim Carrey in a fatsuit). The night of thanksgiving while the entire family is eating Ted gets a call from his boss and leaves the table. This upsets everyone cause business is more important than family. Anyway his boss tells him that if he doesn’t find a way to sell off all of the remaining snack cake stock before it goes bad, they’ll post a loss and he’ll be fired. His boss tells him like 3 locations, in california, none close that all the snack cakes will have to be delivered. His kids hear this are sad because he promised them he’d go shopping for Black Friday with them, so he decides to do both. The Eye of the Tiger plays as fat suit Ted puts on a sweatsuit, plots out a route and gets in the car with his kids.
Over the next 45 mins or so, we see that not only is Ted bonding with his kids, but he’s also losing weight. The speed by which he’s going to stores and shit with his kids is inexplicably helping him lose weight crazy fast in a day. Before the trip started he promised his kids he’d only eat healthy stuff. The only thing that’s really changed is he isn’t eating GloboCakes snacks anymore. He starts to realize that it’s the snack cakes that have always made him fat and irritable and absent as a father, but he’s still selling them to other stores. His kids tell him it’s wrong, but he tells them sometimes for a job you have to do things you don’t like.
Anyway before the last store, his evil boss, Sterns, (Giamatti type actor) tells him that if he doesn’t get the GloboCakes to San Francisco by 5pm, he might have to fire him. Ted says he can do it, but on the way there with his kids who look like they are disapppointed in him even though hes starting to look better, tell him if he does it he’ll just go back to being their same old dad who’s never there or cares, unlike the dad they’ve had a great roadtrip with or something. Right as they are getting on the goldengate bridge, he decides to turn around and go home. Sterns calls firing him, and Ted says, no I’m firing you and laughs hanging up. Ted’s wife, Laura, played by a Leslie Mann type sees Ted pulling in the driveway and is shocked to see he’s not fat anymore. He looks like he did in their wedding photo.
A few months later Ted is now a salesman for a healthy food company and looks great and his kids love him and this is over.
5 mins! This took me 5 mins to write. HOLLYWOOD COME AT ME!
Last night at Pig Pile, I asked for a suggestion of a movie title, and I got screwed with Murder Butthole, so now you’ll get screwed with my treatment for Murder Butthole.
Murder Butthole stars Alexander Skarsgaard as Sam Godspeed an extreme weather hunter. I don’t know what that means really but go with it. He tracks crazy storms and does whatever he can to help save the civilians of that city or something. He’s a disgraced weatherman who lost his job when his prediction of a category 4 superstorm didn’t happen. He caused mass hysteria and lost his job. Now he’s a scruffy drinker, going from town to town trying to warn cities of impending doom. He lives in a souped up fancy van and still posts news reports from his van to post on YouTube.
Basically right after all the exposition of his past brings us to the present, we see Sam’s weather truck starts picking up some crazy readings that a category 5 superstorm is on it way to coastal Maine. The Governor of Maine, Miranda Taylor, played by Carla Gugino, gets word that Sam is on his way to Maine to try and convince Miranda to schedule a state of emergency. When he gets there she threatens to have him jailed for causing a public disturbance etc and reminds him of what happened in Arizona (the wrong prediction). Right as he’s about to respond, the sky turns super black. Sam has a giant speech right now about taking him seriously. He says something about how Maine isn’t in the eye of the storm. “We’re in the butthole. and When you’re in the butthole of a storm all the shit will come raining down on you somethin fierce” He starts talking about how a Butthole storm doesn’t just claim lives, it changes them. People will start fighting each other, after the storm is long past, and soon all is lost. Miranda still refuses to believe him. She says Mainers are a tough proud people and they’ve lived through worse.
Right as she says that, the Butthole of the storm opens wider and starts raining hail pellets large enough to kill people. Sam was right and this isn’t even the worst of the storm. Miranda realizes he was right and attempts to start declaring a state of emergency, but for some convenient reason all the cell towers and electricity in the entire state goes out. So it’s up to Sam and his solar powered (yea it’s solar now) Van to stop this murderous butthole. Larry Peters, a crazy longshoreman played by John Hawkes decides to help Sam and now Miranda (who is wearing a tank top, just cause). They start trying to rescue women and children first and get them to the safest place in Maine, The Maine Ampitheater? Sure. Miranda used to be Special Forces. She apologizes for not believing Sam and he ignores her cause it’s about saving lives and getting a signal out to the government to come in for help. After 45 mins of special effects destruction including the death of an elderly couple that were in the group Sam’s trying to save, the Butthole passes, but now looting and pillaging have become the norm for people. People have turned on each other and are killing each other for food and water. Maine is basically a war zone. Sam blames Miranda for not listening while there was still time, and they have an impassioned argument. Then we can see this clearly leads to them doing it.
In the morning they wake up and they, along with Larry have been captured by a gang of crazed civilians. They steal the Van from Sam too. He explains to them that he’s trying to save them all, make things go back to normal before the butthole. The leader of crazies, Yosemite, played by Bill Paxton, says they are the butthole now. The butthole that determines their fate. They like things better this way. Miranda, as Sam is trying to reason, gets a small knife passed to her from Larry and cuts Yosemite in the leg. This buys the 3 of them enough time to escape, but right as Sam gets close to his van, a sniper shot almost takes him out. It hits Larry killing him. Miranda tells Sam to keep running. She picks up some automatic weapon from the ground and starts firing at all the crazies. She hits most of them, but not before she gets hit with a semi fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. Sam doesn’t see this, but get to the van in time to send an emergency broadcast to the govt. who almost immediately gets ground and air troops into Maine. In a fashion that makes you wonder why they didn’t just go in in the first place. Sam rushes over to Miranda and sees that she might die. He begins to cry and she says some stuff about how he’s a hero in her book.
We cut to 3 months later and news reports show that Maine is restabilizing and Sam is now a local Maine weatherman etc, and still has weird intuitions better than everyone else. After he’s done at work we see people trying to stop and take pics with him, and he obliges. After a few seconds, a familiar voice asks for his autograph. it’s Miranda. They are obviously dating now and he gets into the limo with her and says “Lets go home”
The End
Out to Lunch is a shitty slacker comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Devine, and Teresa Palmer.
The basic structure is as follows: Two best friends, Nick (Eisenberg) and Seth (Devine), in their mid 20’s work in a mall at Sneaker store in middle america. They are mostly content to dick around at work, piss off their boss, Mr. Franklin, played by Orlando Jones, and eat in the mall food court everyday. They share an apartment that is a wreck and mostly drink beer, smoke drugs, and play xbox all day. Life could not be better. They don’t even care about girls. That is until one day, their best gal play Renee, who works at the Chicken N’ Such in the food court informs them at lunch that she’s recently been dumped by her boyfriend who cheated on her then dumped her. It’s clear both these dudes, have always had a thing for her, but since she was taken they didn’t think about it.