Well, folks, it’s Comments of the Week time again, and the winner gets a shirt.  It’s sad that we have to do it this way on the internet, instead of getting some busty babes from the local junior college to shoot them at your face with a bazooka, but c’est la vie.  Even if you’re not the winner, you can still cover your fleshy torso, so long as you show papa the money.  Buy one for yourself and your shirtless neighbor here. In addition, I’m giving away a VHS copy of Brain Bludgeon to the first person who emails me (thanks, Uncle Evan).  [now closed -- congrats, Mick].

Okay, okay, enough foreplay.  So I’d love to reward a newbie, but I can’t deny salty veteran Donkey Hodey, who gave me the biggest laugh this week in Baby Goose Bangs Dead Cats Against Trees:

Donkey Hodey says: At the heart of things, what Gosling was really doing was playing the world’s simplest violin.

You complete me, Mr. Hodey, now send me your shirt size. And now for the HONORABLE MENTIONS:

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(Birthday Dog thought he smelled cake)

I didn’t see Valentine’s Day, and for that I don’t apologize. I may pay prostitutes to stomp on my testicles in spike heels, sir, but I’m not a masochist.  Luckily for our purposes here, plenty of poor bastards did see it.  Here are their reports from the brink:

How obvious is ‘Valentine’s Day?’ Well, just take the scene in which a teenage boy approaches his girlfriend’s house to have sex for the first time in either of their lives. The song on the soundtrack at that time: Foreigner’s ‘Feels Like the First Time.’ -Florida Times-Union

Ashton Kutcher is a love-struck Los Angeles florist who’s just proposed to his sleep-over girlfriend, Jessica Alba. “I can be a sappy moron all day,” he crows, with unwarranted presumption. -Kurt Loder

Less funny or romantic than your average colonoscopy, this cringe-inducing bore provides dubious employment for four Oscar winners, two nominees and a raft of TV performers such as George Lopez, all of whom have been seen to better advantage elsewhere. -NY Post

There are a lot of Indians in the movie, for instance at the next table in an Indian restaurant, revealing that when Indians are out to dinner, they act just like Indians in a movie comedy. -Roger Ebert

Marshall, working from a script by Katherine Fugate, probably would have done better to pare some of the elements to concentrate more fully on… something. His golf game, maybe. -AZ Central

This feels less like a movie and more like a strategically programmed effort to turn as many demographic groups as possible into mooshy, gooshy, candy-heart-munching morons. -Washington Post

Now, even I have to admit, it is a little unfair to post a bunch of bad reviews for a movie Pete Hammond didn’t get to see (he was probably busy going through Sandra Bullock’s trash).  So for counter point, we go to the LA Times:
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It turns out there’s a FilmDrunkard doing PR for the upcoming release of the book The 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, written by Leonard Maltin — a man Abraham Lincoln once called “The biggest swinging dick in the history of the world.”  Upon completing the book, he reportedly chugged an entire bottle of 151 to celebrate.  Anyway, reading said book might help you discover:

What 151 movies have you never seen—but should?

What French film could teach Hollywood how to make a smart, sexy romantic comedy? (page 233)

Where will you find a female-centric Western with a gender-bending protagonist? (page 10)

What film won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and then fell off the radar? (page 261)

How do Megan Fox’s panties smell after a long jog?

Okay, I might have made that last one up.  But they spell out the title in popcorn on the cover!  I thought that was clever.  Long story short, the author of last week’s best comment is getting a copy, and that commenter is…

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What with the critical success of Lars and the Real Girl and the continuing popularity of Japanese f*ck pillow picnics (also the name of my indie band), the time was right for a remake of Mannequin — the 1987 Andrew McCarthy/Kim Cattrall classic in which one man’s sex toy comes to life (don’t get any ideas, microwaved cantaloupe). Says Moviehole:

The newly relaunched Gladden Entertainment are said to be in early development on the redo of the ‘window dresser goes gaga for loose doll’ comedy.
Naturally, the company – who, back in the day, also produced “The Fabulous Baker Boys”, “Weekend at Bernie’s”, and Christian Slater/Skateboarding pic “Gleaming the Cube” – want to contemporize the plot (Maybe it won’t be a store Mannequin but a laser display hologram he falls for? ) and will likely cast a couple of hot Twilight-esque youngsters in the lead roles.
The shingle are said to be in early talks with studios, and are on the hunt for a writer.

If recent trends like the Twilight phenomenon are a guide, maybe the best way to contemporize it is to flip it so that this time around, the mannequin is the dude.  I heard they wanted Paul Walker for the part until they realized the mannequin had to come to life.  *licks finger, holds it up to breeze* Yep, that’s a burn.

Well this is a fun story.  Joe Penhall adapted Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for the film. He recently published an essay in the Guardian about what it was like attending a private screening in Albuquerque, for which McCarthy himself had driven his silver Cadillac up from Santa Fe (sounds like a Bugs Bunny premise, doesn’t it?).

Finally the three of us sank into the leather armchairs, a discreet distance from one another, and the film began. Immediately, McCarthy began scribbling notes on a reporter’s notepad. [Director John] Hillcoat and I eyed each other nervously. By the end, he had pages of the damned things. He stood up and stretched, yawned and said absolutely nothing as the credits rolled. Finally Hillcoat asked: “Well?” “I have to go to the restroom,” was the impassive response, and he was gone.

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