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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Directed by Larry Charles (Bruno, Borat, Religulous, Curb Your Enthusiasm), The Dictator stars kosher British Jew Sacha Baron Cohen as the leader of a fictional Middle Eastern country who “risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”

It was reportedly based on Zabibah and the King, a romance novel believed to have been written by Saddam Hussein. Now, when a movie stars a guy who acted flamboyantly gay on a hunting trip with real-life, gun-toting rednecks in Alabama, uses as its source material a book written by a delusional dictator who was murdered by his people (with our peoples’ help, of course), and was directed by a guy who’s now spent half his career baiting homophobes and religious types, you expect a certain, ground-breakingly ballsy kind of comedy (YOU BROKE MY GROUND WITH YOUR BALLS!). What you get, according to the trailer is…

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It’s been a while since we heard anything about Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, which will feature performances by Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Jeff Goldblum, and Robert f*cking Loggia, among others, but now we know it has a distributor (Magnolia), a release date (March 20th in theaters, January 27th on VOD), and a teaser, which you can watch below. The bad news is, John C. Reilly won’t be playing Dr. Steve Brule. The good news is, he’ll be playing a character named Taquito who lives in an abandoned mall.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d watch a movie with John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz in it even if the director was a child rapist. In totally unrelated news, here we have the trailer for Carnage, adapted from the play God of Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski, starring John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, Kate Winslet, and Jodie Foster. It appears to have only one location, much like Polanski himself from December 2009 to July 2010, because of the raping.

As for the plot, seems Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz’ kid beat up John C. Reilly and Jody Foster’s  kid at school, and now they’re having a big, philosophical to-do about it. At one point, Waltz is such a workaholic that his wife dunks his cell phone in water to teach him a lesson. How original! But wait, you’ll ruin his important business meeting with the Japanese! Still, I liked it better when an eagle stole Sandra Bullock’s Blackberry. More symbolic or something.

After the jump, two gifs that would’ve made this trailer a lot better.

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Disney’s second D23 Expo took place in Anaheim over the weekend, and I’m sad I missed it because I love self-congratulatory industry circle jerks run by the marketing department (especially when they serve sliders!). Luckily, there’s this thing called the internet where the people who did go can SHARE THE NEWS FOR ALL! What an incredible time it is to be alive. Here’s your rundown:

Hot on the heels of the set pictures that hit over the weekend, The Avengers cast was on hand for a sneak peek. One thing is certain: Chris Hemsworth is still tall and handsome with piercing blue eyes and oh god can’t stop imagining what he smells like. So… do these people actually get to film a movie between attending conventions? |Hitfix|

Up co-director Pete Docter is set to direct “The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside The Mind.” ThePlaylist reports taht Little Miss Sunshine/Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arnt is writing the script. I’m expecting Inception with less (*braaaahm*)s, and more talking dogs. |/Film|

Up‘s OTHER co-director, Bob Peterson (who also voiced Dug the Dog), will direct a film that takes place in a modern world where dinosaurs never went extinct. It’d be cool if the dinosaurs stomped around wrecking sh*t, but knowing Pixar, they’ll probably just be super cute. |USAToday|

John C. Reilly to voice “Wreck-It Ralph”, a CG-animated feature about an 8-bit arcade game villain desperate to change his image who invades other arcade games trying to become a hero. John C. Reilly is pretty much the best, and if you disagree I’m duty bound to fight you. I also have my fingers crossed for a Billy Mitchell cameo. His hot sauce tastes like America. |CinemaBlend|

Details about Brave, Pixar’s next release, which is still almost a year away. It’s definitely about a “tough girl badass”, but hopefully Pixar will do a better job with it than Salt, Hanna, Colombiana, Haywire, and the other six thousand movies with that same plot. |/Film|

Footage screened from Frankenweenie, Tim Burton’s stop-motion, 3D-animated, black-and-white film about a zombie dog. I love dogs, but I think wiener dogs are my least favorite. Is that racist? Discuss. |ComingSoon|