Pictured: They don't know how she does it.

And now for your daily dose of easy Schadenfreude, the top 15 flops of 2011. While it’s easy and fun to tap dance on the grave of most of these ass piles (pour a little rum out for The Rum Diary – *I* liked it), remember: justice won’t truly be served until everyone involved in the making of New Year’s Eve gets shot out of a cannon.

1. Mars Needs Moms
Studio: Disney
Release Date: March 11, 2011
Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Gross: $39 million

2. Sucker Punch
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens
Release Date: March 25, 2011
Budget: $82 million
Worldwide gross: $89.8 million

3. Arthur
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner
Release Date: April 8, 2011
Budget: $40 million-plus
Worldwide Gross: $45.7 million

4. Green Lantern
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively
Release Date: June 17, 2011
Budget: $200 million
Worldwide Gross: $219.9 million

5. Cowboys & Aliens
Studio: DreamWorks/Universal
Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford
Release Date: July 29, 2011
Budget: $163 million
Worldwide Gross: $178.8

6. Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
Studio: Fox
Stars: Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss
Release Date: Aug. 12
Budget: $9 million
Worldwide Gross: $18.7 millon

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COME AT ME, BRO?

Opening in Theaters Everywhere: Puss in Boots, In Time, The Rum Diary, Anonymous, 13

FilmDrunk Suggests: Vince thinks you should all see The Rum Diary because he read a book once, ooh la la! (*does prissy dance*)

Puss in Boots

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78% critics, 84% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“Who needs one traditional fairy tale when a spin-off of a send-up bearing its own genre influences – Puss, Kitty and Humpty as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, reimagined as the Noble, the Suave and the Misguided – will do?” – William Goss, Film.com

“The lively romp is well-acted, cleverly written and vividly rendered, despite an over-the-top finale. Even the 3-D elements dazzle during swooping chases.” – Claudia Puig, USA Today

Armchair Analysis: I’m against anything that glorifies cats. They’re vile, selfish animals with no regard for loyalty or companionship. If I wanted a movie about animals in silly action sequences, I would remake The Last Starfighter with an all-dog cast and call it The Last Starbiter. I’m going to start working on the screenplay right now. See you all at Cannes!

Vince says: Isn’t it amazing that Pete Hammond got to see it before anyone else, AND they quote him three times in the commercial? What a coincidence!

Everyone knows Shakespeare plays are full of florid prose and human drama. But what if the director of Independence Day made a movie about Shakespeare? What this film presupposes is, what if there were sword fights and executions and the characters didn’t talk like fags? That’s more or less the story of Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, which recently released its second trailer (the first had cannon fights!).

“Since when did words ever win a kingdom?”

“…Leave that to me.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It’s like drama class Michael Bay! WE WILL DROP WORDSPLOSIONS ON THE EIFFEL TOWER OF PARCHMENT! Would a ‘Splosion by any other name still be totally sick, bro? Anyway, this looks awesome, but am I wrong for thinking that Roland Emmerich’s swordfights-and-explosions Shakespeare movie suddenly looks pretty tame in comparison to Paul WS Anderson’s 3D, Steampunk Three Musketeers movie with floating pirate ship cannon fights? You can’t fade floating cannon fights, Brobespierre, that’s science.

[ComingSoon]

FLAMING CANNON ARMORED SWORDFIGHT!

As the director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, 10,000 BC, and Godzilla, Roland Emmerich is to large-scale, CGI disasters what Michael Bay is to explosions and sassy black people.  When it was announced a few years ago that he’d be making a film about Shakespeare, we just assumed it’d be the most OOH WHA-AH AH-AHiest take on Shakespeare ever made. TO RUN OR NOT TO RUN??? (*meteor smashes Eiffel Tower*) RUN!

Today, Anonymous has a trailer, and it starts with narration which lifts almost word-for-word the tagline of Eli Cash’s fictional novel in The Royal Tenenbaums: “Everyone knows Shakespeare wrote hundreds of the most respected works in the English language, and they were all boring.  What this movie preSUPPOSES is… maybe they weren’t?”

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Surprisingly, this headline does not refer to a clever mashup video.  Instead, Roland Emmerich, the director behind 2012, Independence Day, 10,000 BC, and The Day After Tomorrow, actually says he’s going to make a film about Shakespeare.  I expect shaking, and spears.

EMMERICH: [Called "Anonymous"] It’s about how it came to be that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays.  It’s not [Christopher] Marlowe, it’s [Edward] de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.  It’s kind of like a political thriller.  It’s about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion, we take on, and we learn how the plays were written by somebody else. [Collider]

So basically, it’s only about Shakespeare insomuch as National Treasure was about Abraham Lincoln.  Which is good.  First, because people only care about Shakespeare when they’re trying to sound smart, and second because I’m not sure I could live in a world where Roland Emmerich directed human dramas.  In fact, while I was writing this post, I accidentally typed “Sharkespeare”.  That sounds way more like a Roland Emmerich movie.  OH MY GOD IT ATE THE GRAND CANYON!