No one was really sure what to think about Gangster Squad after the release date got bumped twice (it’s still not set, though we can assume some time this year), not to mention that it comes from director Ruben Fleischer, whose 30 Minutes or Less didn’t do too well critically or financially (I thought it was misconceived from start to finish, and I wasn’t sold on Zombieland either). But now the trailer is here, and holy balls does it look frickin’ awesome. It stars a murderer’s row of talent – Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie, and Ryan Gosling – and it looks like it has the potential to be the Ellroy-esque, period shoot-em-up we all wanted Public Enemies to be. Plus, it’s got a new character, whom I like to call Old-Timey Gangster Baby Goose!

“Mmm’yeah, dame, you look like you could use a hug, see?”

“Hand ovah the wallet* on the double, or else I’ll fill ya fulla tickles! *I wanna monogram it for you.”

“You’ll never take me alive, coppah! In fact, I’ll drive us instead, that way you can have a drink. Go ahead, live it up, you deserve it for working so hard.”

“Oh, a wiseguy, eh? You must’ve studied pretty hard to be so smart. Here, have a bran muffin.”

“Your hands ain’t so clean! Here, try some lavender soap, girl.”

“I didn’t ask ya for any lip! Not on the first date. I respect your boundaries, girl. Care for some Grapefruit?”

“It was you, Fredo. You stole my heart. You’re the best goldfish ever.”

Jeez, this is fun. How about we make it a trending topic? #GangsterBabyGoose. Go.

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I clicked play on the trailer for Seeking a Friend at the End of the World (the directorial debut of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist screenwriter Lorene Scafaria), prepared to see Steve Carell slumming it in yet another mediocre broad comedy, but instead it opened with a catchy plot – the mission to save Earth has failed, there’s an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and everyone has three weeks to live – then our buddy Rob Huebel showed up, and by the time Patton Oswalt arrived as a boozy dude drinking wine straight from a carafe at an end-of-the-world booze orgy, I had already glee-fainted and was leaking saliva on the linoleum. Excuse me for saying, but this looks really good! Oops, I don’t often use exclamation points, as I consider them campy and effeminate. GRRR, FOOTBALL.

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Photo: Chuck Zlotnick

I’ve had a boner for Seven Psychopaths ever since it was announced, and now we’ve got the first pictures (courtesy of EntertainmentWeekly, obvi). Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to In Bruges, it stars Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson, stepping in for Mickey Rourke, who apparently wanted too much money and now says of McDonagh “he can go play with himself.”  But Harrelson or Rourke, I would definitely go pick up high school chicks with these guys. Oh, and the movie sounds pretty good too.

A savage gangster (Woody Harrelson) goes on a rampage after his beloved shih tzu Bonny goes missing, snatched by an out-of-work actor (Sam Rockwell) who pays the bills by helping a professional dognapper (Christopher Walken) pick up pooches and return them for the reward money.
Colin Farrell plays a screenwriter who struggles to find the handle on his script, called Seven Psychopaths. He gets drawn into the dognapping escapades of his friends (played by Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken).
“The comedy elements in this one are probably stronger or more to the forefront than In Bruges,” says McDonagh, who got an Academy Award nomination for that script. (He won an Oscar for the 2005 short Six Shooter.)
Harrelson’s character, Charlie, “adores his shih tzu,” McDonagh says. “Really, we all adore Bonny!” (That’s the real name of the dog, which was adopted from a shelter in real life, and now lives with its trainer.) “He loves that dog more than anything in the world and would do anything to protect it.”

Wait, it gets better!

Tom Waits turns up as Zachariah, a rabbit-petting weirdo who offers up strange stories from his past for the Seven Psychopaths screenplay. [EW, Deadline]

A lovable rogue’s gallery fighting over cute, fuzzy animals, as written with brutal violence by a vulgar Irishman? My God, this is so in my wheelhouse it’s stupid.

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Wagner Moura with the FilmDrunk Seal of Approval

UPDATE, 11-11-11. Elite Squad 2, now called Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, opens today in New York (gradually spreading to more cities through December). As a reminder, I’m reposting my original review from Sundance. Yes, it’s true, I was probably desperate for a good film at that point in the festival, but I think the hyperbole was warranted. I dare you to see it and dispute me.

Oh my God.  You guys, excuse me if I gush.  It’s just that, when you come to the Sundance Film Festival, you go in expecting a certain type of film.  You expect to see, as David Sedaris once wrote of student films, “grainy black-and-white movies in which ponderous, turtlenecked men slogged the stony beaches, cursing the gulls for their ability to fly.”

What you do not expect to see is a two-hour, Brazilian The Wire on steroids.  Again, excuse me if I gush.  I should really wait until I have some emotional distance from this experience before I try to write about it, to reflect a little first, but I don’t care. I’ve been standing in lines behind farting, greasy-haired weirdos and riding muddy, stinking buses all day long, and it was all worth it, because an hour ago I watched Brazilian director José Padilha choke out Michael Mann with his own nine-foot dick  (Padilha’s dick, that is). Without resorting to cheap hyperbole, I can report that it kicked my balls up my ass and shat them back onto my chest while two-hand tapping an Eddie Van Halen solo.  If that doesn’t make sense to you, you haven’t seen this movie. 

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Here’s the new video for They Might Be Giants’ new song, “Can’t Keep Johnny Down,” which features 80-year-old Rip Torn bare-knuckle boxing some young shirtless punk. Hold on, let me get this straight, They Might Be Giants… Rip Torn… shirtless guys boxing… My God, this is relevant to ALL of my interests.
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