Tom Cruise vs. The World’s Tallest Phallus

All my life I’d wanted to see Officially Not-Gay Parkour Master Tom Cruise swinging from a giant phallus, and now, thanks to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I have! And in glorious IMAX! The plot could’ve used a little more, well… girth, to fully satisfy this lady (*pointing to myself*), but I admit with these wide hips I can be a bit of a size queen. Which is to say, it’s not the kind of story you’re going to remember anything about three seconds after you leave the theater, but as a framework to include every kind of shot you’d see on one of those vivid HD channels that electronic stores use to pimp the latest plasma screens, it’s brilliant. Russian cities! Shiny supercars (all BMW)! Towering skyscrapers! Bollywood parties! …Smooshed together mixed-race titties! If IMAX screens had a demo reel, this would be it. And Tom Cruise is a perfect fit. His blandly competent line readings just scream “movie actor!”

We catch up to Tom Cruise in a Russian prison, where his plucky gang of spy pals, including computer expert Simon Pegg and voluptuous Paula Patton (“Agent Honeypot,” I like to call her) is busting him out. They need his help to catch a terrorist! There’s a former Russian general who’s gone rogue, escaping his pen, goring three of his handlers and stealing the nuclear launch codes. He wants to launch Russian missiles at the United States in order to start World War III, so that, uh… the Earth can, uh… have a fresh start or some shit? You know, it wasn’t super clear on that point. But basically, it’s like War Games or Crimson Tide. If you’ve ever seen that South Park where the characters say stuff like “A secret government program… or maybe it was aliens… Who cares, f*ck you!” to move the plot past the exposition we’re all going to forgive anyway, it’s a lot like that. And rightly so.

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Here’s Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner in Entertainment Weekly‘s first look at Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (whose trailer is set to hit this Thursday). Now, if you take this as a serious movie, say, in the vein of Snow White and the Huntsman, a wholly unsatirical film in which Chris Hemsworth plays an axe-wielding medieval swordsman who teaches Snow White (played by Kristen Stewart) “the art of war” so that she might do battle (complete with swords and armor and sh*t) with her enemy the evil queen, it sounds like the stupidest thing ever (and yet telling that it’s still totally believable). However, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters comes from Tommy Wirkola (the guy who directed Død Snø, that movie about the blood-puking Nazi zombies) and Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company (Gary Sanchez productions); so I’m going to assume that it’s at least a semi-parody. In which case it’s a brilliant idea. Isn’t it amazing how just making something a satire can turn things around like that? Someone should try it with Billy Bush.

Here’s what Gemma Arterton told EW:

Folktales like this have been told over and over again, changing every time. What’s the constant that your movie picks up?
They resonate with your fears, that’s how these fairy tales worked. They scared you into behaving. This one in particular is about abandonment and being lost and parents leaving you. The heart of it is that these kids grow up to be bloodthirsty witch hunters. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. What would Hansel and Gretel be in 15 years time?

Though it’s comedic, deep down it’s about abused kids becoming kind of hyper-responsible?
But it’s also very, very dark, and bloodthirsty and there’s a lot of cursing. It’s kind of got a [Quentin] Tarantino feel, really.

I hope it’s more than a “little” tongue in cheek, but it’s probably good to have the actors taking it seriously anyway. Once those spazzes start hamming it up, it’s just a short, slippery slope to Kenan Thompson-land. I also enjoy that their costumes look like they could’ve just as easily come from Paul WS Anderson’s 3D, steampunk Three Musketeers movie. Is Jeremy Renner wearing… a sundial wrist watch with a big brass cover over it?? Amazing.

“What time is it?”

“DAMN! I don’t know! I can hardly get service with all these trees!”

"Wait, you're what?"

Paramount Pictures U.K. recently invited a group of journalists and people who are easily impressed to a screening of exclusive footage from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol so they could show off all the neat-o cameras that they used. I’m sure many a monocle shattered on the floor that night.

Director Brad Bird boasted that the fourth installment of the watch-Tom-Cruise-sprint-like-a-ninny spy franchise marked the first time that an action film like this had been made for IMAX. Then someone presented him with a shiny new trophy and a whole batch of cookies before crowning him the most amazing man in the world.

Other footage shown included a chase scene amid a desert sandstorm, Cruise’s Hunt character scaling the world’s tallest building in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa building and Cruise and Renner playing opposite Tom Wilkinson as he learns of his mission.

It is set to roll out globally Dec. 26 this year and will be seen in hand-picked large format screens in the U.K. including IMAX, VUE Xtreme, Empire Impact and Cineworld Superscreen from Dec. 21.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

After the jump, you can check out the extended international trailer for MI4, as it features most of these scenes and then you can high five your bro and have a push-up contest.

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"So help me God I will shoot the next person who says 'Valkyrie'"

The theatrical trailer for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was released exclusively to Yahoo! yesterday, and I can say with absolutely no equivocation that this will be an action movie. I can tell because during the trailer’s two and a half minutes, a bunch of things explode and at one point Tom Cruise jumps out a window and runs down the side of a building like he’s in a Mountain Dew commercial. Yup, this is definitely going to be an action movie. What can I say, I have a nose for these kinds of things.

In all honesty, even though there’s not much to the trailer beyond Tom Cruise being EXTREME and Jeremy Renner making that “I am a serious and possibly evil person in this movie” face that he made during The Town, I’m going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt. Mainly because it was directed by Brad Bird, who directed The Incredibles, and holy freak you guys I love that movie. So even though I’m kind of over Tom Cruise as a leading man, and I’m generally not a fan of sequels on sequels on sequels, I will at the very least go into this with an open mind. This is very big of me and should be recognized as such in the comments.

Because I have nothing else to add by way of analysis, I will now make a list of other things “Ghost Protocol” sounds like to me:

- Something Ghostface Killah would shout during the first fifteen seconds of a song before he starts rapping.
- One of those shows on the weird digital cable channels in the low-100s where psychics or whatever try to communicate with and/or hunt spirits.
- Something Shaggy and Scooby would initiate before running off, hiding, and eating really big sandwiches.
- The name of a band Pitchfork would give a stellar review to despite the band forming only 48 hours earlier.
- A list of elaborate rules and regulations you get before you are allowed to go haunt people, like “No hiding in bathrooms and peeking at ladies in the shower” and other total bummers.
- Some sort of weird sex move on Urban Dictionary that is so disturbing it makes you feel as though the noble experiment we call mankind has officially failed.
- A cool cereal with marshmallows and stuff.

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The first trailer for The Avengers is here and you know it’s a big deal because iTunes finally offered an embeddable video player (seriously, we’ve been waiting for this for like four years). Marvel’s great experiment in turning over their biggest project to Joss Whedon, a guy known mainly for cult shows that get cancelled before the mainstream ever sees them, stars Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Mark “Ruffalo Bill” Ruffalo. I’ve never actually seen a Joss Whedon show, so this is particularly exciting for me.

First impressions: It looks like Loki from Thor is the villain, which is… odd. And the lighting looks really bright and even in every scene, like they’re shooting a superhero sitcom.

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