The trailer for The Beaver, the Jodie Foster-directed film about Mel Gibson and his talking beaver puppet has finally hit the web, and you’ll be happy to know that for the first time, googling “beaver” and “trailer” doesn’t pull up a picture of your mom.  Anyway, I was really looking forward to this movie, and I was worried a little thing like Mel Gibson insulting all the races of the world might jeopardize us ever seeing it.  Luckily, not everyone’s a sensitive little flower like the cast of The Hangover, and it will reportedly hit theaters in Spring. (Unless the theaters keep running their mouth and end up buried in the rose garden).

So, now that we’ve seen the trailer… uh, what the hell is this?  Call me crazy, but when I heard Mel Gibson would play an alcoholic who starts speaking through a beaver puppet he found in the trash can, I was expecting a comedy, not uplifting piano music and some bizarre version of The Blind Side.

MEL GIBSON, YER CHANGIN’ THAT BEAVER’S LAAHFE!

BLOOOOW ME!

"The way you're dressed, beaver, you're lucky there's only one white fist up your ass."

[Apple via FirstShowing]

Who says these have to be mutually exclusive?

Jodie Foster’s Beaver may not open wide in the U.S. (which is a travesty of sapphic epic proportions), but things are looking up:

Digital Spy noticed that the film has been given a release date in the U.K., and it’s surprisingly soon: it will open on February 11th, against Black Swan, Just Go With It, No Strings Attached, and Yogi Bear. It’s being distributed by Icon, the British/Australian distributor founded and owned by Gibson himself—it obviously helps if the disgraced star of your latest movie also owns the company releasing it. [ThePlaylist]

Releasing the weekend before Valentine’s Day?  Because nothing says romance like Mel Gibson working out his issues with a therapy puppet.  I’m getting all hot just thinking about it.  Oh man, I hope this gets a full release (heh heh) in the US at the same time, so I can buy my Valentine a ticket to this and a box of chocolates (in that order) and put them with a note that says, “You should just smile and blow me.”  I find the earnest sentiments are always the most effective.

I might be the only person alive who didn’t think My Super Ex-Girlfriend was as terrible as everyone said, but the conventional wisdom is that Ivan Reitman hasn’t made a decent movie since the early 90s.  Before he starts work on Ghostbusters 3 (assuming Bill Murray actually agrees to it), he ran a little warm-up lap with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.

From a Liz Meriwether Blacklist script called “F*ckbuddies,” No Strings Attached follows two attractive single caucasians who decide to go from platonic best friends to lovers, all the while trying to lay ground rules that keep it from turning into a real relationship.  I don’t know about you, but I think I liked this better when it was a Seinfeld episode.  And Ashton Kutcher wasn’t in it.  And Jerry and Elaine didn’t fall in love during the 90-second promo.

If only David Carradine had agreed to star in this, he’d probably still be alive today.

[trailer via ThePlaylist]

I used four question marks in that headline to indicate that blogs have been using speculative, Arrested-Development-movie stories to build their traffic for three years now, and today’s non-news is no different.  (Last we heard, the script was half written. It might happen, it might not.)  But as my father always said, why let some other pantless assh*le in his mom’s basement steal money that could be yours?

Hold the football for me, MTV:

Bateman said he plans to rope Aniston into the “Arrested Development” flick.
“Yeah, actually, there’s a real good part for her in the ‘Arrested Development’ movie,” Bateman told MTV News on Saturday (August 7). Aniston and Bateman have been spending a lot of time together as co-stars in both “The Switch,” a rom-com about a sperm donor mix-up, and the upcoming flick, “Horrible Bosses.”
“There’s no offers on this one. She’s gonna have to sing for her supper,” Bateman said. “I don’t know, we’ll see if she’s available. She’s busy. She’s pretty famous; I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. She’s pretty backed up. Hopefully the guy who’s in charge will like her for that part because I’m going to suggest her.”

I feel bad for reporting such non-news (which Bateman already admitted was just him thinking aloud), which is why I included the trailer for Bateman/Aniston’s The Switch, formerly The Baster.  You’d never guess this script was based on a Jeffrey Eugenides short story and once upon a time made The Black List. At this point I can only assume that the development process just means adding lots of clichés.  Will the platonic best friends finally decide they love each other??  Will the precocious child act hilariously adult-like?? Will glib friends offer sage advice??  Only time will tell!  My favorite part is when Jason Bateman looks down at his wiener in order to communicate that he has an idea, and that the idea involves his wiener.  We never would’ve picked up on that otherwise.

[Trailer also available in non-embeddable form over at Apple]

Jim Carrey, whose recent Twitter rants about prescription drugs and “suppressive personalities” have fueled speculation that he’s become a Scientologist (wouldn’t that be a nice, easy explanation for why he stopped being funny), is set to play a French art thief in a film from Borat/Bruno director Larry Charles.  Suckre Bleu, they could call it.  Mercury taint my vaccines, Deadline:

Charles has signed on to direct Pierre Pierre, a comedy that has Carrey playing the role of a Frenchman who transports a stolen painting from Paris to London, behaving more obnoxiously than any waiter you’ve ever encountered at Cannes.
[Added the reporter, "La di da, the south of France is so passé these days, don't you think?" Then cut a robust fart and inhaled deeply. -Ed.]
This project is moving forward again after weathering some serious setbacks. Two years ago, the script by then-unknowns Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Seton [make that "still-unknowns"] made the Black List and sold for $1 million, with Carrey to star and Juno‘s Jason Reitman attached to direct. Fox Atomic’s Debbie Liebling and Peter Rice won the bidding battle over three others. Then: Reitman dropped out; Fox Atomic imploded; Liebling moved to Universal; Rice moved up in the Fox hierarchy. Sans champion, Pierre Pierre fell into turnaround. With Charles aboard, the comedy will be shopped again by its producers, Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch, and Category 5′s Brian Sher. They plan to make the movie for just over $20 million.

I’ve said it before, but what happens to Black List scripts is one of the best examples of how Hollywood ruins good things.  Scripts make the Black List mainly for being funny and/or original.  Producers then buy these funny, original scripts, and usually attach big stars like Jim Carrey (who’ve already burned us three or four or six times in a row) to attract funding. Then the studios hire someone to “polish” that good, original script for the big star, and suddenly it looks a lot like his three previous movies that sucked.   Shampoo, Rinse, Record Scratch, Repeat. They should just combine this with the Knight and Day sequel and call it Knight and Day and Jim Carrey and Farts.