My Dinner with A-Holes

For younger people, people younger than 45, say, I suspect all I’d have to say about Roman Polanski’s new film Carnage is that it takes place entirely within two rooms of an apartment building and the hall, and they’d stay away in droves. You kids with your short attention spans and your facetime and your f*ckable iPads, that’s an immature and close-minded reason not to see a movie. But in this case, luckily, there are also plenty of others.

Based on the play God of Carnage, by French playwright Yasmina Reza, Carnage follows two sets of parents, played by John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster, and Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet, who meet to discuss a fight between their sons in a civilized manner. But as the day wears on, they become increasingly childish themselves! That’s… well, that’s pretty much it, really (feel free to make your own joke here about the guy creating an idealized vision of youthful innocence being Roman f*cking Polanski). It’s the kind of film that a certain sect of the older generation considers “classic drama,” that they’re going to try to sell to the rest of us, because people just don’t appreciate real stories without robots punchin’ each other anymore, gall durn it! Fair enough, but 12 Angry Men this ain’t. It’s important to make a distinction between a “scathing critique of contemporary society!” and characters obnoxiously bickering about contemporary issues in an unrealistic way.

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Found this on a Google Image Search for "floppy boobs"

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter released their list of cinema’s biggest bombs of 2011 so far (based on production budget {not including marketing} minus worldwide gross). Considering one of them was the Jodie Foster-directed Beaver, it’s a miracle I managed to make it through this entire headline without using the phrase “Jodie Foster’s Beaver flop.” Sites kill to own that kind of big-money search term. But that’s why I wear this diamond-encrusted necklace that says “RESTRAINT.”

1. MARS NEEDS MOMS
Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture pic was one of the most expensive bombs in Hollywood history, costing at least $150 million to produce and grossing $21.4 million at the domestic box office. Overseas, it didn’t do much better, grossing $17.6 million for a total $39 million.

2. YOUR HIGHNESS
The raunchy comedy, set in medieval times, didn’t go over well with audiences, even if it starred newly anointed Oscar winner Natalie Portman (along with James Franco and Danny McBride). Costing $50 million to produce, the film earned $21.6 million domestically and a paltry $3 million overseas. [Editor's Note: I liked it, and I'm not ashamed to say it.  It was a throwback to dumb comedy before dumb comedy became Kevin James mugging and falling down. But as they say, this is why we can't have nice things.]

3. ARTHUR
The remake of the classic Dudley Moore comedy failed to rustle up many laughs, topping out at $33 million domestically. Starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren and Jennifer Garner, “Arthur” did even less overseas, earning $12.7 million for a global total of $45.7 million. The production budget was reportedly $40 million.

4. PROM
“Prom,” earning a mere $10.1 million at the domestic box office, was the first movie greenlit by newly installed Disney chairman Rich Ross to hit theaters. It’s the lowest grossing studio film of the year so far, but luckily for Ross, “Prom” cost only $8 million to produce.

Rich Ross is the same guy who killed The Proposal 2, Wild Hogs 2, and a Robin Williams vehicle called “Wedding Banned,” and for that he earns my undying respect.

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Jodie Foster directed a movie coming out called The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson, and any one of those things would supply a near-endless supply of easy jokes to anyone halfway juvenile minded.  All three together are like the Voltron of easy double-entendre fodder.  It would be like if George Lopez woke up one day and discovered that in addition to being Hispanic, he was also a fat, black, gay, Jewish, ventriloquist with a trunk full of props and a novelty sledge hammer.

Anyway, here’s the international poster for The Beaver, which, in Argentina, is called “Walter’s Double Life” (La Panocha o GTFO!).  Can you spot the easiest joke of them all?  It’s like trying to find a needle in a stack full of needles.  Here, I’ll give you a hint:

Mel Gibson's reverse strap-on

Jodie Foster in bed, completely ignoring a dude and focused intensely on a beaver.  Come on, guys, now you’re not even trying.

[via IMPA]

The trailer for The Beaver hit the web late Friday (directed by Jodie Foster from Kyle Killen’s Black List script, starring Mel Gibson as an alcoholic father who turns his life around with the help of a talking beaver puppet).  As Mel Gibson’s first post pack-of-N-words-gate performance, someone making a mash-up of it was as inevitable as me making a childish joke about Jodie Foster probably knowing a little something about stuffing a fist inside a beaver (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  So here’s the recut trailer for The Beaver, with the beaver of course demanding to be blown in a jacuzzi and such.  It probably could’ve been a little better, but it’s passable.  I think the best part was Mel’s beaver yelling at Anton Yelchin to stop being such a little bitch.  Probably anyone who saw Charlie Bartlett can relate to that.  Heck, sometimes I’ll even wake up in the middle of the night, screaming for Anton Yelchin to stop being a bitch.  Scares the hell out of my cats.

"Dance for that money, Sugartits! Quick, before the Jews get it!"

[via FunnyOrDie]

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]