The only major release this week is This is It, the Michael Jackson movie.  I have no interest in seeing it (not because of a knee-jerk about him being a pedophile or anything like that, I’m just really, really sick of hearing about him) and I can’t imagine why anyone would, but it already made $2.2 million.  And it’ll probably make a lot more because, hey, no competition.  The only good thing I can imagine about it is seeing the dedication “For Blanket.”

The big limited releases are Gentleman Broncos, which is looking like a stinker, and Boondock Saints II, which, as I’ve already noted, is like watching a gorilla finger paint.  Black Dynamite is still playing in New York, L.A., Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Seattle.  Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s Friday and I’m going to go get drunk.  Oh, and here’s a picture a dog dressed like Jackie O.  Happy Halloween.

[via NYMag]

I feel bad that I always piss off half the people that read this when I rip on Boondock Saints, but the sad truth of the matter is that movie chugs cornhole lint.  The sequel is out this weekend (you can see the first five minutes of it here), and that means the first reviews are starting to hit the web.  Yay, time to pile on!

This comes across less like “Taxi Driver,” and more like what Travis Bickle might have made if someone gave him a camera. It can be ugly. There’s a vaguely racist subtext to the films, with derogatory phrases used for blacks in the first installment and for Hispanics in the second. Cloaking vigilante justice (not to mention casual racism and homophobia) in religion eventually turns “Boondock Saints” from merely a bad movie to a distasteful one. -Jake Coyle for the AP

Connor, Murphy and their affectionately dubbed “greasy spic” kill wops with the help of Special Agent Bloom (Julie Benz). Together, they aim to settle a score that goes back to the “Saints”’ father (Billy Connolly), who made the mistake of trusting an Eye-talian (Peter Fonda, no less). But seriously, in case you missed the part where Murphy says—in Spanish no less—that Romeo is “with us,” never fear: beaners are all right in the boys’ book. -NY Press

The Boston Phoenix‘s review begins and ends with the same line: This is bullsh-t.

John Woo outgrew stylizing movies like this in the ’90s, but Duffy is still chasing his perfect slide-and-shoot, except now with more self-satisfied posturing, awkward pop-culture referencing, casual homophobia and racism, and the most vulgar co-opting of religious iconography this side of Dan Brown. -Village Voice

This installment is mostly a chance for Duffy to pander to his base via regurgitated plot elements (ropes, prayers, gun fetishism, religious chanting and singing) and dully choreographed firefights that aim to exhaust the planet’s supply of slow motion. -Slant Magazine

Duffy orchestrates the resulting carnage like an inebriate spinning fourth-rate Peckinpah tales. Fan-service cameos and a sequel-ready ending (trilogy, people!) feel like groveling acts of desperation. -Time Out NY

Haha, a fourth-rate Peckinpah, take that, Troy Duffy!  All the non-film-majors totally understood that burn about a guy whose last movie came out 26 years ago! Reached for comment, Troy Duffy said “Slant Magazine, is that fah Orientals a somethin?”

[with help from RottenTomatoes, of course]

This is the first five minutes of Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, opening in limited release October 30th. Here’s where you can see it (mostly on the coasts).

Oh Troy Duffy.  He never met a stupid movie cliché he didn’t try to sloppily date rape.  The movie begins with the two Irish brothers in hiding, where they’ve grown bushy beards and long hair — because that’s what people in hiding do.  Soon, they cut it all off to symbolize them coming out of hiding — because that’s what people coming out of hiding do.  And they do it all… SET TO A HOMO-EROTIC ROCK MONTAGE!  Hey, Tawmy, did you see da soap and fackin watah running down da crack of dat guys’ ass?  And he was all covahed in tattoos a somethin.  It’s gawt me so fackin’ hawt!  But not cuz I’m queah a nuthin.  Dis fackin movie rawks so hahd. Go Sawx!

The plot is basically that some bad guys killed the brother’s favorite priest.  So then the brothers are all:

“Didja hear dey shot da priest?”
“While ‘e was prayin’.”
“Mahther of marcy.”
“Well you know what we ‘ave to do now, dan’t ya?”
“Prayin’?”
“And shootin’.”

Then there’s a gratuitous flashback to the first movie crowbarred in there, because Troy Duffy was all “Hey, queahs, remembah how fackin’ great I was?  Let’s do shawts.”  Anyway, I can’t wait for this movie.  It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching a gorilla finger paint.

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day has a poster, and surprise, it depicts praying and shooting.  Critics are already calling it the prayingest, most shooty movie of 2009.  All your favorite characters are back — chinstrap, Tawmy, Squeezebox, Harelip Steve — for the most eagerly anticipated sequel of Kappa Sig pledge week.

The sequel finds the brothers MacManus hiding out in Ireland from their bloody past. Boston isn’t quite finished with them however; the duo returns to right a wrong after they receive word of a murdered priest. [MTV]

Someone shot him??  While he was praying??  The dastard!  Anyway, you gotta love Troy Duffy.  He proves dumb people can be pretentious too.

[picture source = MTV]

Boondock Saints was a movie that came out in 1999 and featured a lot of praying and killing people, as praying and killing people were all the rage back then.  The plot dealt with two Irish brothers who did a lot of the aforementioned things, acts which, when combined with gratuitous slo-mo and Willem Dafoe overacting, seemed full of significance if you were really high.  Ten years later we have the sequel, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, and as you can see from the red-band trailer below, it has all of the praying and killing of the original, and this time, Willem Dafoe is a chick.  Oh, and it has awesome dialog. “Let’s do some gratuitous violence.”  Seriously, that’s one of the lines.

GRRR, SUNGLASSES AND TRENCHCOATS AND TWO-HANDED GUNFIGHTS!  Hey, Troy Duffy, 1997 called.  It said you can keep the lame clichés, it doesn’t want them anymore.  Put them under your No Fear shirts and goatee trimmer, that way they don’t get scratched.

Opening November 1, be there or whatever.

[via IGN]

I could tell you why Boondock Saints sucks till I’m blue in the face, but you can’t deny that even 10 years later the film has one of the most rabid cult followings in all of film fandom (Oh my God, bro, Irish dudes kill bad guys and then pray?  It’s like the War and Peace of comically self-important Punisher ripoffs!).  The long-gestating sequel, Boondocks Saints II: All Saints Day, will supposedly have a theatrical release November 1st (I’ll believe it when I see it), and writer/director Troy Duffy premiered the trailer at Comic-Con over the weekend.  Shortly afterwards, /Film was able to capture some reaction footage of the rare species known as the Boondock Saint fanatic in their natural habitat (the state of irrational excitement).  I could ridicule them for their crunchy hair and abundance of man-jewelry, but I sort of respect their willingness to let their freak flags fly.  They’re like the film version of Juggalos.  Duffalos, say.

PS – Anyone else find it weird that the white-looking dude is named Javier and the Latin-looking one is named Brian Sawyer? [more on the film over at /Film]

via QuietEarth:

“The boys and their father Il Duce have been living in seclusion, deep in Ireland on a sheep farm, away from everything, when Il Duce’s brother comes to tell them that a priest was murdered in Boston and it was set up to look like it was done by the Saints.

The boys rush back to deal with it while their supposedly ailing father stays on the farm. As soon as the brothers land, they start picking off anyone who may be tied to this framing.

Why does their Irish father have an Italian name, you ask?  Well, there’s an interesting story there, but the gist is that Troy Duffy’s a dipshit.  Anyway, this sounds like Godfather II but with more pointlessly killing people in slow motion.  (more on why Boondock Saints sucks after the jump)

The courtroom speech from Boondock Saints:

Now you will receive us. We do not ask for your poor or your hungry. We do not want your tired and sick. It is your corrupt we claim.It is your evil that will be sought by us.With every breath, we shall hunt them down.Each day we will spill their blood til it rains down from the skies.Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal, these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace.These are not polite suggestions. These are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.There are varying degrees of evil, we urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over into true corruption, into our domain. But if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three and on that day you will reap it. And we will send you to which ever god you wish.And shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord for thee, power hath descended forth from thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out thy command. We shall flow a river forth to thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Wow, I’ve never heard someone say “We kill bad guys” in so many words before.  Congratulations on being every action movie ever, now stop smelling your own farts.

[Thanks to RoboPanda for the tip]

If you’re not a stoned frat guy from Santa Barbara, you may not have realized that Boondock Saints is the best movie ever.  But don’t worry if you missed the boat the first time, because the sequel is on its way.  Not only that, self-appointed super genius Troy Duffy is video blogging the entire process (the T-Dog V-Log?).  He’s a little hard to understand, because he seems to communicate in some sort of dickweedian shorthand.

“Day f-ckin 4.  It’s Fight Night.  Today we’re at full f-ckin Boondock.  Yesterday was a dream come true, alright, fine, I been waitin for that.  3 shot.  Romeo, and the brothers, our new f-ckin Saints lineup, right, for 10 years. Had a little bit of a sniffly moment there, in between the middle of the take.”

Yeah, I didn’t really understand that.  Maybe re-shoot it in super slow-mo with some Catholic imagery?  Anyway, Troy’s got a whole series of these.  Here’s one where he says they’ve got a Boondock Saints video game and a graphic novel series coming out.  Boy, I can’t wait.  Irish guys, guns and pennies, okay good.  Ezekial, 52 pick-up, got a bit of a hard on, cut.  Storyboard, I’m important, let’s print it.  Squibs, light meter f-ckin pissed my pants last night. Willem Dafoe balcony seizures, Massachusetts.  Party time.  Best boy, gaffer, gay crush.  Feelin f-ckin misty.

[via /Film]

To me the best thing that came out of Boondock Saints was the documentary about what a blowhard writer/director Troy Duffy is.  Four months ago Duffy announced that a sequel had been “officially greenlit”, which, coming from Troy Duffy, could just mean he did a couple lines with a guy who said he was a producer.  In any case, Duffy was recently a guest on WJFK 106.7 in DC, and he revealed some plot details.  And by details I mean a play-by-play of the entire thing. Sorry for all the words, but this is Troy Duffy speaking after all.

“You kind of wonder what has happened to the brothers [Editor’s Note: No I don’t] … They have been living way back in the valleys of Ireland with their father on a family run sheep farm, way beyond the reach of technology or men. Way out there. It’s been sort of a bucolic existence, hard working pioneer-esque type stuff. They have long hair and beards, and stuff like that. You get the sense that they’ve been hibernating to come back. And there is an event that transpires in Boston. A priest murdered in a church and the body is rigged to make it look like the Saints did it. The one guy that the brothers and father have contact with is Il Duce’s brother. So he gets the first notion of this, puts his jeep in gear and tells the brothers what happened. And without even thinking of it the boys are up and out of there … they cut their hair, dig up their rosaries, strap on their guns, and they’re gone! [Cue annoyingly self-important slow motion montage sequence] And Dad has to stay back because something is wrong with him, and you can tell he doesn’t have much time left. So when the brothers smuggle themselves back to the US, back to Boston, in a very understandable way. And one of the guys they meet along the way is a Hispanic American named Romeo. And Romeo ends up becoming like the third brother or saint, fourth I guess if you’re gonna consider Billy. He’s a lot more of a bad ass than Rocco was. But his comedy is that he wants to be a lot more a part of this. So there is a lot of humor that comes from that. He’s hopefully going to be played by a friend of mine named Clifton Collins, who was in Capote and Frankie Flowers in Traffic.”

Anyway, blah blah blah.  You can read the rest over on /Film, but considering what an overrated hunk of shit Boondock Saints was, I’m guessing that if this ever gets made it’ll just be a bunch of slow-motion, over dramatized action sequences that you never had reason to give a shit about in the first place.  OMG, time to put your Boondock Saints poster back up!  You’ll be the coolest guy at the post-rave afterparty!  No way, the shooting and the praying was my favorite part, let’s be fake friends!

[Thanks to Robo for the tip]