I’ve never read William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, but I have to think James Franco adapting this (he wrote and directed) is a lot more worthwhile than worshiping Marina Abramovic or whatever other fake art crap the New York crowd is into this week. Here he directs and stars opposite Logan Marshall-Green, Tim Blake Nelson – who excels at dirty-faced Southern poverty – and, strangely, Danny McBride.

The Bundren family of the rural South tries to honor their late mother Addie’s wish to be buried in her birthplace. They spend nine days hauling her coffin in a mule-drawn wagon, battling numerous obstacles and personal demons along the way.

Well everyone is serious and dirt-covered and poor, and seems to be either yelling or whispering the whole time, and there’s a prophetic, marble-mouthed little kid in the middle of it, so I have to think the Oscar chances are good. What this needs is a mega-handsome guy like George Clooney or Bradley Cooper or Ryan Gosling. As we’ve established, handsome + dirt covered = Oscars. See: Bradley Cooper wearing a garbage bag.

Seriously though, what the hell is that little kid saying? I’ve rewound it four times and I still can’t understand anything he says before “told me not to tell…”

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The bloom might be off the rose a bit for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as screenwriters (Superbad, Pineapple Express) ever since Green Hornet and The Watch, but they seem like they’re back in their comfort zone in this red-band trailer for This is the End – formerly Jay and Seth Vs. The Apocalypse. They’re directing it themselves, with Brandon Trost of The FP fame on cinematography, and perhaps the best joke of all is that everyone’s playing themselves, from James Franco to Craig Robinson to Danny McBride to Jonah Hill, and ripping on each other’s careers the whole time (including the afartmentioned Green Hornet). Though they’re not in the trailer, we have to assume the same for Emma Watson, Kevin Hart, Rihanna, Aziz Ansari, Martin Starr, Mindy Kaling, J-Tro… Jesus Christ, who isn’t in this movie? You guessed it, Frank Stallone.

MCBRIDE: “Yeah, right, James Franco didn’t suck any dick last night – now I know y’all are tripping.”

With all the title changes, I can’t believe they never came up with “Seeking a Celebrity for the End of the World.” “aBROcalypse now,” perhaps? …Okay, I’ll leave.

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Do these look like two guys about to rob a bank and possibly explode?

“Why did someone make this?” Sadly, that was the question on my mind almost from the first minute to the last during 30 Minutes or Less. I don’t understand why you’d take a lurid, darkly absurd tale of kidnappings, hitmen, and bomb vests and try to turn it into the most broad, bland, Borscht-belt schmucky chuckle fest possible. This movie is like watching Jay Leno tell pedophilia jokes, but less interesting. It’s not the LEAST funny movie I’ve ever seen (hello, Dinner for Schmucks), probably because you couldn’t make a totally unfunny movie with this cast if you tried, but you could tell this story was fundamentally flawed from the first five minutes.

Why did Ruben Fleischer want to tell this story, exactly? Because it seems like his interest wasn’t so much what people might do in these situations, but what jokes actors might make while wearing their costumes. Danny McBride and Nick Swardson come the closest (they’re supposed to be crazy, at least), but no one seems quite committed to the concept. Fleischer said in an interview that he wanted Fargo to be his point of reference, but “without any of the darkness” — which is actually 30 Minutes or Less‘s fatal flaw. It plays more like Family Guy, where the premise is just a planter box for interchangeable jokes about queefs and Emmanuel Lewis. Actually there weren’t any queef jokes. That would’ve been an improvement.

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30 Minutes or Less is a comedy from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson, based on the real-life collar bomb case from 2003. In the real-life version, the bomber was actually part of the robbery plot, though he thought the bomb was going to be fake.  He tried to back out when he found out the explosives were real, but his accomplices forced him to wear it at gun point, and, in yet another strange turn, gave him a shotgun made out of a cane to use in the robbery. He was eventually caught by the cops and killed when his friends, afraid that he’d turn state’s witness against them, detonated the bomb while news cameras were rolling.

In theory, I like the idea of turning the story into a dark comedy, but based on the trailer, I’m not sure how seriously I can take the danger when the characters are making cheesy jokes about it the whole time.  It looks like they forgot the “dark” part.  Like, if me and my fat buddy were running from Nazis through the ghettos of Warsaw like Schindler’s List and dogs were nipping at my heels as he was taking too long to get over a fence, I doubt I’d be like, “Dammit, Herschel! I told you not to have that second knish!”

Opens August 12th.

Ruben Fleischer made his directorial debut with the 2009 zombie comedy Zombieland and his second effort, 30 Minutes or Less has a new red band trailer, and I think it may be safe to say that Ruben and I are going to be great friends.

Zombieland was a hit-or-miss film for most people that I know, but I loved it, and after watching this trailer I think it might be impossible to dislike 30 Minutes or Less, which is about a pizza delivery boy (Jesse Eisenberg) who is abducted by two men in monkey suits (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) who strap a bomb vest to his chest and force him to rob a bank. His only recourse is to beg his friend (Aziz Ansari) for help…

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