The ever-lovable Josh Brolin recently sat down for an interview with our buddy awkward Josh Horowitz over at MTV (video below the cut).  Horowitz asked Brolin about Jonah Hex, and whether he was proud of the film.  Candid as always, Brolin says no, which is one of the reasons he’s so damn cool.  But he did have a few caveats:

Awkward Josh: “Reassess the Jonah Hex situation for us, are you proud of the film?”

Keep Brolin Brolin Brolin: “You mean now that I don’t have to promote it? No.”

“We had an original intention and that got away from us a little bit. Everybody did do their best to try and create the best movie with what we had, but I think it got so derailed at a certain point that the assemblage of what we could use was so disconnected to what our original intention was that it just got mixed up.”

“I still think it’s a lot of fun if you go in and see that movie.  That’s what I told the marketing people at Warner Bros. I said, ‘I can’t lie about this, so I have to look for a truism that I can go with. So I do think that if you go in there, kind of like with ‘Piranha 3-D’ — when you go to see that movie you go, ‘This is ridiculous and this is fun’ — so if you went into ‘Jonah Hex’ with that, I think you had a good time.”

You’re wrong, Josh Brolin, I had a GREAT time.  Piranha 3D was okay, but I had a way better time at Jonah Hex.  The wink-wink, tongue-in-cheek stuff like Machete and Piranha 3D can be great if it’s done well, but it will never be as good as when you can sense that there was an  earnest attempt to create a serious movie.  It’s the difference between a clown wearing wacky clothes for attention, and John Malkovich showing up to the bar dressed like this, going “What? What are you guys looking at?  I thought we were partyin.”

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It seems Fox’s brilliant viral campaign featuring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise doing candid things was a failure, as Knight and Day landed a distant third at the box office.  I was about to take Schadenfreude Sloth out for a walk, but Kevin James farted on his head and hit him in the groin with a football.  Grown Ups earned $41 million, doubling Knight and Day‘s $20.5 million take and landing it in second behind Toy Story 3 ($59 million), thereby proving that audiences will literally pay for Adam Sandler to take a sh*t on their face.  The only thing he’s not allowed to do is make fun of himself or anything thoughtful (sorry, Funny People). Sorry, Adam Sandler, you must play the lovable every man from now until the end of time.  You are the Will Smith of comedy.  Speaking of which…

Karate Kid landed in fourth.  Not a bad showing, but probably not the smash hit people predicted after the big opening weekend.  So don’t start wearing sneakers with pictures of yourself on them just yet, Jaden Smith.  What’s that?  Aw, crap.

The two biggest losers of the weekend were Jonah Hex, which fell 70% from last weekend, earning $1.6 million this weekend and still short of the $10 million mark, cumulatively; and Killers, which earned $2 million and fell 60% from last weekend.  I still maintain that Jonah Hex was a glorious, glorious trainwreck.  Meanwhile, if life was fair, the people who financed Killers would be less popular than the CEO of BP right now.  Sure, one indirectly contributed to an ecological catastrophe, but at least that was an accident.  The Killers people not only put Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl into a movie together… they did it on purpose.

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(*plays vuvuzela with butt*)

Queer ye, queer ye, Episode 2 of the great experiment known as the FilmDrunk Frotcast is now online.  You can stream or download below after the jump (I put it there to make it easier to track the number of listens, but I guess you don’t really need to know that).

Brendan and Ben return, along with new guest Bret.  Topics include the awesome trainwreck that is Jonah Hex, Armond White’s bad review of Toy Story 3, Iron Maiden concerts, the benefits of living alone, Green Hornet,  general jackassery, and assorted poop jokes.  Enjoy.   UPDATE: Sorry for the initial difficulties, everything should be working now.

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Do yourself a favor and see Jonah Hex while you still can.  Yes, I’m serious.

A few years ago, when I finally got around to seeing the Nicolas Cage version of Wicker Man, I was equal parts delighted and pissed.  Delighted I was witnessing such a beautifully ridiculous spectacle, and pissed that no one had told me about it sooner.  All I heard about it when it came out was that “it sucked”, and it was quickly shuffled out of theaters and forgotten.  What those same people had apparently neglected to mention was that NIC CAGE PUNCHES A WOMAN WHILE DRESSED AS A GOD D*MNED BEAR. What the hell, people?  Help a brother out.

Everyone seemed hung up on the filmmaker’s intention.  Look, the filmmaker’s intention is not my concern. I just know I would trade 100 “eh it was okay I guess” films for one Wicker Man.

Today, I find it within my power to prevent at least one similar oversight.  I’m here to tell you that, short of Josh Brolin dressing like a gorilla and pushing Megan Fox down stairs,  Jonah Hex is this year’s Wicker Man.  I was disappointed when the Frotcast listeners voted that we see it.  I expected to hate it and be bored.  Instead, I laughed almost continuously from the opening credits to the closing ones (not a huge commitment considering it’s only 72 minutes long).  More incredibly, I was not stoned.

This movie has everything.  EVERYTHING CATCHES FIRE!  EVERY BAD GUY GETS KILLED TWICE! SILLY WIGS FOR EVERYONE!

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Only a few weeks ago, we were talking about a box-office slump and Hollywood’s worst Memorial Day Weekend in 17 years.  Turns out all it takes is a 3D Pixar movie to reverse that trend, as Toy Story 3 carried the cumulative box office to its highest third weekend in June ever, up 29% over the same weekend last year. (Full top 10 after the jump).

Toy Story 3 grossed an estimated $109, the highest-grossing weekend of a Pixar picture yet (aided by premium 3D pricing, of course), followed by Karate Kid, A-Team, and Get Him to the Greek, all of which fell less than 50% from the previous weekend.  Pretty much every film did well this weekend.  Oh, except for Jonah Hex, which managed to earn less in its opening weekend than Killers did in its third.  Yep, that’s the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl joint that didn’t screen for critics.  Turns out, movie fans may be stupid, but not so stupid that you can stick a hastily-cobbled together, 72-minute comic-book hack job up against Pixar and expect it to make money.  Hey, where are all those semi-annual “Critics Don’t Matter” articles now?  People heard it sucked and they stayed away.  THAT’S RIGHT, PRETTY BOY, CRITICS ARE IMPORTANT TOO! WOOHOO!

(*high fives cat, puts Ace bandage on wrist, puffs inhaler*)

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