Cowboys and Aliens is an absurdist pastiche of overused action movie tropes (Bourne in the old west! With aliens!), which is occasionally compelling, if only for the sheer audacity of plot choices. That is to say, it’s ridiculous. And I’m a big fan of the ridiculous (see also: Lieutenant, Bad; Werner Herzog version of). I just wish Cowboys and Aliens‘ preposterousness wasn’t so couched in pre-fabricated stories and characters. It’s a lot like Lost, but even black smoke monsters and polar bears seemed more fresh than Cowboys, Indians, aliens, rocket hands, and amnesia. It plays like a producer brainstorming session that never got edited, which makes it all the more shocking that no one turns out to be a vampire or a hot cyborg lesbian (spoiler alert).

It’s hard to believe Lost exec producer Damon Lindelof had five co-writers, because the whole thing reeks of black smoke musk, from the character daddy issues driving every single plot point right down to the fat-faced kid with a dog who seems totally unnecessary to the plot. I imagine the writers meeting went something like this:

Alex Kurtzman: Cowboys!

Robert Orci: Indians! Aliens! James Bond! Indiana Jones–

Steve Oedekirk: (*loud gurgle, extended fart sound followed by terrible stench. the rest of the gang rolls his wheelchair outside before continuing*)

Lindelof: Amnesia! Religious themes! Re-incarnation–

Iron Man writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby: [together] ROCKET HANDS! (*they smash their beer steins together, down the rest, and stomp off like the Bushwhackers*)

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The new extended trailer for Cowboys and Aliens premiered the other night on Spike TV’s Guy’s Choice Awards and I missed it, probably because I’d rather watch my grandma’s cakefarts video than regular Spike programming. But now it’s online, and you can watch it below without interruption of Kevin James promos.  Cowboys opens July 29th, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.  While it certainly sounds like Hollywood’s favorite action movie clichés decided to get together and play limp biscuit onto a script, as far as mash-ups of tropes go, I’ll take Cowboys‘ alien invasion, amnesia, rocket hands, and Indiana Jones over Super 8‘s sad kids with daddy issues in love any day (if I find out Daniel Craig keeps his dead wife’s picture in a locket I swear to God I’m walking out). What can I say, I do enjoy aliens and explosions and rocket hands and Olivia Wilde naked (PG-13 naked, of course).  As long as restraint is no object, some dinosaurs, the predator, and a vampire cyborg might’ve been nice. Come on, it’ll be like if Sucker Punch wasn’t secretly about child rape.

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Next week on the Frotcast, we’ll be discussing Tron and The Fighter, but in the meantime, we decided to check out the Stallone cheese-truth classic, Over the Top, from 1987, and tell stories about waking up in the drunk tank, and the pantsless hobos fighting over a toilet there.  An apt metaphor for the Frotcast if ever there was one.  We also talked Jack Handey (yes, he’s an actual person), and 2010′s Least Fascinating People.

• I read from Jack Handey’s awesome and hilarious “My First Day in Hell” (2:30 – 7:30)
• A DUI story that involves waking up in a drunk tank watching one Hobo taking a dump in the communal toilet, at which point another hobo tries to pee into the same toilet between the pooping hobo’s legs, which makes the pooping hobo angry, at which point a fight between the two pantsless hobos ensues. (15:20 – 18:00)
• Over the Top (24:00)
• THE KID IN OVER THE TOP‘S NAME IS ‘MIKE HAWK’! HIS NAME IS MY C*CK!?  ARE PEOPLE AWARE OF THIS??? (28:30 – 30:00)
• Another awesome Jack Handey story. (41:00 – 44:00)
• Mel Gibson finds out Winona Ryder is Jewish, calls her an “oven dodger”. (52:00)
• Discussing our list of 2010′s Least Fascinating People. (60:00)
• The Columbia professor who got caught having a consensual sexual relationship with his adult daughter leads me into a story about the time I saw a guest lecture at Columbia by an author who’d written a memoir about having a consensual sexual relationship with her father. (1:11:00)
• Johnny Depp’s Golden Globe noms, and when was the last time he was in a good movie? (1:14:30)
• We discuss Jon Favreau, then complain about how evil Disney is, then realize what whiny hipster douches we all are and become sad. (1:19:20)

The Jack Handey stories I read came from here and here.  Check them out, they’re funny. (I’m trying to promote stuff I like here, not steal it).  Drunk on, y’all.  Send your tips, complaints, naked pictures, bits, game ideas, questions, etc. to frotcast@gmail.com.

This is a hydrax riding a tortoise

DOWNLOAD IT HERE. SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES. NOW AVAILABLE ON ZUNE MARKETPLACE.  [Intro/Outtro music is still "For Good or For Awesome" by the seminal female a capella group, "Satan's Buttcheeks"]

Uh oh, Mickey's moistening his thumb. We should leave.

When I reported on Jon Favreau not coming back for Iron Man 3 yesterday, I wasn’t that sad about it.  I was actually happy to see him leave a sequel that’ll probably be a clusterfart, and maybe do something cool for a studio not owned by Disney.  Ah, but this is Hollywood.  Things have a way of working out in the lamest way possible.

Favreau will join Guillermo del Toro and David Fincher as part of a next wave of filmmakers making live-action feature films rooted in the imagery of Disney theme parks and classic characters.

Favreau is set to direct “Magic Kingdom,” which the 44-year-old filmmaker described as a family fantasy adventure that will tap into the vintage Disney creations that “loomed so large in the imagination” of his generation.

Favreau spoke in reverent terms of the legacy of Walt Disney and made it clear that his departure from Marvel is no snap decision or the result of fractured relations. The main impulse was to “find something that lights a fire” inside of him as a filmmaker and gives him a chance to “blow people away, which is easier to do with a project that isn’t loaded with built-in expectations.” [LATimes]

Yes, it must be refreshing to get away from all those built-in expectations by taking on the imagery of classic Disney characters.  That just makes good sense.

If only Disney made “new idea” dolls.  I’d totally see a movie that was trying to sell those.

"So then if she yanks on it while she's tonguing your butt, that's called a 'rusty trombone.'"

According to Vulture, Jon Favreau has just told Marvel that he won’t be directing Iron Man 3.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who read the writing on the wall.  No, not “No Fat Chicks” and your sister’s phone number, I mean the rumors of a Marvel/Favreau beef that have been going around since this summer.  The scuttlebutt was that Marvel pressured Favreau into including that whole Avengers subplot in Iron Man 2, and Favreau resented them for it. True or not, that scene with the Captain America shield was really stupid.

One informed source hears that [Favreau] was frustrated with Marvel’s urge to stuff more of their in-house heroes into the next film in the wake of The Avengers. In a recent interview with MTV News, Favreau explained that based on his conversations with Marvel Studios executives, he had no clarity as to what a third Iron Man film would even be about. “In theory, Iron Man 3 is going to be a sequel or continuation of Thor, Hulk, Captain America and Avengers,” said Favreau at the time, “This whole world … I have no idea what it is. I don’t think they do either, from conversations I’ve had with those guys.”

Still other industry insiders look at Favreau’s growing price tag and speculate that he was getting too expensive for the frugal Marvel and its equally cost-conscious parent company, Disney. In fact, one Hollywood player familiar with Marvel’s playbook theorizes that the company had been pushing a confusing and packed vision of the third film as a tactic to provoke Favreau into leaving the project.

Whoa, settle down there, Captain Conspiracy, it turns out there were a couple Jews in the second tower.

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