Fox Searchlight just released the first trailer for Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours.  I like Danny Boyle, so it’s exciting to see him move onto something that hopefully doesn’t alternate between massive plot holes and lame clichés, but it does come from the same screenwriter as Slumdog Millionaire, so we’ll see.

Anyway, it stars James Franco as Aron Ralston, the guy who spent five days under a crushed boulder and had to amputate his own arm with a pocket knife.  Reportedly, there’s no dialog for a good hour of the film, but in the trailer, we mostly see Ralston before he gets stuck under the boulder.  They paint him as a real cocky dude whose life is all sex, drugs, and camelbaks, like he thinks he’s the Lebron James of backpacking.  Hmm, I wonder if being stuck under a boulder for five days will take him down a peg and make him realize the things that really matter (probably some chick he met when he was 8). Hey, those Chilean miners who’ll be trapped underground for the next four months called, they said this guy’s a bitch.  No sunlight or chicks for four months?  Might as well start blogging.

[also available in HD at Apple]

My fellow Columbia MFA student James Franco (oh yeah, it’s true, we’ve practically even met) is set to star in 127 Hours for Danny Boyle, the story of climber Aron Ralston, who hacked off his right arm to free it from a boulder.

The film tells the story of mountaineer Aron Ralston, whose right forearm got pinned for nearly five days under a boulder during a climb in Utah in May 2003. He used a dull knife to amputate the limb, then scaled a 65-foot sheer wall and hiked out before running into a family that gave him water and food. [ComingSoon]

Settle down, ladies.  Now, I know Aron Ralston seems like the manliest man ever, and he makes a ton of money traveling the country for speaking appearances and he practically has a dildo for an arm, but keep in mind… he was right handed.  So he probably throws like a girl now.  Hopefully doctors can whip him up some sort of prosthetic attachment for throwing a frisbee.  What?  You know that motherf*cker plays frisbee.

(James Franco and Nic Cage)

(“I know what you’re thinking, ladies, and the answer is yes.”)

Director Danny Boyle is reuniting with Slumdog Millionaire writer (say it looked pretty if you want, but that movie was horribly written) Simon Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson for 127 Hours, a movie about mountain climber Aron Ralston.

Ralston’s right forearm got pinned for nearly five days under a boulder during a climb in Utah in May 2003. He used a dull knife to amputate the limb, then scaled a 65-foot sheer wall and hiked out before running into a family that gave him water and food. He was finally rescued by helicopter. [Variety]

That reminds me of the time I had a big pimple on my back that I was scared to pop, so I made my girlfriend do it and then cried until she made me a martini with a vicodin crushed into it.   I guess what I’m trying to say is that unless this guy turns blue and fights the helicopter with a pterodactyl, who really cares.

(Look at that beauty mark, she’s a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe.)

The actual slumdogs from Slumdog Millionaire, for whom the director and producer bought houses and set up a trust, have been missing so much class lately that they’ve been threatened with getting their trust cut off.  I for one am so sick of trust-fund punks thinking they don’t have to play by the rules.

Azharuddin Ismail, 11 and Rubina Ali, 10 have been told to stop skipping class in Mumbai or forfeit a 120-dollars per month payment.

Noshir Dadrawala, who helps administer the fund, said that Azharuddin was showing up at school only 37 percent of the time and that Rubina had a 27 percent attendance rate. The trust decided that the children must raise their attendance above 70 percent or forfeit their monthly stipends.

When asked about his truancy by NDTV, Ismail, 11, said “My father died and I had to go through the rituals so I couldn’t attend.”  Ismail’s father died in September after a lengthy battle with tuberculosis. Ali, 10, gave a similar excuse, telling the network “I had hurt my foot with a glass shard and got burnt with a cracker. So I was not going to school.”

Ali’s father Rafiq defended her, saying “I know what is best for Rubina. They called us and said they will stop helping us. I told them God will take care of us.” [AP, NYTimes]

Small correction: “I burnt myself on a cracker” is actually NOT a similar excuse to “my father died.”  That sh-t don’t even fly at community college.  Though perhaps by “burnt with a cracker” she was speaking metaphorically, of her encounter with the rich white man who changed her life forever, and not necessarily for the better.  And that maybe things were better before, when they were simpler, before her dance* with the fickle mistress that is fame.  Discuss.

*elaborately choreographed with 50 extras and excessive shoulder gyrating.

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(Yo, dawg, we heard you like walls so we put walls in your house)

India treats their national treasures so well that Slumdog Millionaire actor Azharrudin Ismail recently moved into an apartment foreigners had to buy him just months after the Indian government knocked his house down and kicked him into an open sewer like a piece of garbage.  Director Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson are still in India securing a place for Ismail’s co-star, Rubina Ali.  Meanwhile Ismail and his mom moved into their $50,000, one-room apartment.  Pff, for that kind of money, you can get a mansion in Detroit with a fence made of corpses.

“I was shocked when I saw this house,” Azhar, 11, said, before turning on one of his favorite Hindi songs and dancing around the living room. “I want to thank Danny Boyle for giving us this flat.”

Really?  He actually put on a Hindi song and danced around?  Now what the hell am I supposed to make a joke about?  Wait, could he also call him “Mr. Danny?”

Azhar’s mother Shameem Ismail said she is looking forward to their first night in the new apartment.” God has given me so much,” she said. “We will sleep very well tonight. There is no water leaking, no bad environment, no quarreling.”

She and Azhar will share the main room, while Azhar’s brother Irfan Ismail Sheikh, 22, and his wife will sleep on a mattress in the kitchen, she said.  Meanwhile, back in Garib Nagar, Azhar’s father, Mohammed Ismail, sat disconsolately on the hard wooden bed crawling with flies that the family used to share. He will remain here, and visit his son and wife in the new apartment regularly, he said. He said he’s hoping to get some government land in exchange for the shanty, and prefers to remain near the neighbors, chickens and mucky lanes he has always called home.

Azhar’s mother said she doesn’t want her husband in the new house because he does drugs, but she pledged to return to Garib Nagar for visits.  [HuffPo]

At which point Azhar’s father took a huge bong rip and grumbled, “Yeah?  Well at least the flies put out.”