Joseph Gordon-Levitt sat down with MTV to promote his new film 50/50 and of course the conversation turned to The Dark Knight Rises. He could sit down to announce that the cure for AIDS is Jaden Smith’s bone marrow and the next question would still be: “Are you playing Robin?”

And the answer will still be:

“You know I can’t have this conversation, man.”

Adding: “I’m serious, bro. Chris Nolan is a crazy mother*cker, man. You know that old Rutger Hauer movie Deadlock? Nolan put one of those bomb things on me, except it’s wrapped around my balls, man. You gotta help me, bro!”

But seriously, since that’s neither a yes or a no, the speculation train will keep making the rounds and people will keep believing that Christopher Nolan or any actors working on the third and final installment of his Batman trilogy would even so much as fart out a secret at this point. Or maybe they’re just sending us cryptic messages that can only be deciphered by watching hardcore pornography for the next 48 hours. In which case, I already have 12 hours of practice.

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“Hey, kid, you like movie trailers? Good, ’cause, uh… I got a bunch of them.” -A drug dealer who’s bad at wordplay.

So a bunch of trailers hit recently, and if I gave them all their own post, they’d bury all my other content (NO ONE WANTS THIS!). So here they are in one place. We cover Premium Rush, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt bike messenger movie, The Thing remake, The Big Year with Steve Martin and Jack Black, and a kick-ass looking action movie called The Raid.

“I like to ride. Fixed gear. No brakes. Can’t stop. Don’t want to, either.”

Jeez, what are they trying to do, explain why everyone hates fixed-gear riders? “Yeah, so I just took all the necessary safety equipment off my ride so I can look cool when I crash into stuff and blame it on everyone else. My plan is to deflect cars with the force of my coolness. Neat, huh?”

Anyway, it looks like it’s trying to do for urban bicycling what The Fast and the Furious did for street racing. “I LIVE MY LIFE A QUARTER CAN OF PABST AT A TIME!” And by that I mean of course, OOOH WHA-AH AH AH BIKE PARKOUR!

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50/50 comes from writer Will Reiser, director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) and producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.  Once called “I’m With Cancer,” the title refers to the protagonist’s odds of surviving his battle with cancer, based on Reiser’s real-life cancer scare.  So yes, it’s a film about a guy dying of cancer, but it’s also funny because JGL shaves his head with Seth Rogen’s pube clippers. Aw, I bet Seth Rogen’s pube hair is even more pubey than his hair hair.

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I originally wrote this review in January of 2010 after seeing Hesher (directed by Spencer Susser, co-written by Susser and David Michod of the equally kickass Animal Kingdom) at Sundance.  Since then, it’s gotten a new cut, and opens today in these cities*.  I saw the new cut of the film a few weeks ago, and though I couldn’t isolate what exactly was different, I can tell you that I liked it even more, or at least, felt that much more justified in loving it the first time around.  It’s essentially the story of a family who experience a loss and start to lose themselves, wondering if life has no meaning.  Then a mysterious character named Hesher comes along and basically says, “F*CK IT, MAYBE LIFE HAS NO MEANING!” and lights everything on fire.  Seriously, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is so righteous in this movie, you guys.  One of the things I love about Hesher is that it’s finally an indie movie that isn’t so f*cking mannered. You see Paul Giamatti in a movie like Win-Win, and it’s a pretty well-made film, but everything about it is just so… expected.  You know it’s going to warm a smug film critic just like one of his conservative sweaters.  It’s exactly the kind of film you expect to see at Sundance, and has all the heart, middle-class ennui, and character drama that middle-aged progressives demand in a film they discuss over Chardonnay.  It’s not bad, it’s just godd*mn boring.  Hesher is a gleefully nihilistic cinematic middle finger that has Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking about old ladies “getting strangled with their dirty panties” and specifying between “dick f*cking” and “finger f*cking.”  It’s abrasive, it’s not nice, and your parents will probably hate it.  Just like heavy metal.  That’s part of why it feels so good.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a White-Snake Chorus

You know that one White Snake song, where it starts off kind of slow, and there’s all these gay synthesizers, and some guy’s singing about being “a heart in need of rescue?”  And the first time you heard it, you were just about to turn it off, but then all of a sudden, this thumpin’ chorus fades in and you just wanna jump up on the bar and start singin’ — HERE I GO AGAIN ON MY OOOOOWWWN — and you kick an old lady’s drink into her lap, and you’re still shouting, and the veins in your neck are all poppin’ out — GOIN’ DOWN THE ONLY ROOOOAAAD I’VE EVER KNOOOOOOWWWN — and it’s rocking you so hard, you pull your pants down and start waving your wiener around like a helicopter — LIKE A DRIFTER I WAS BOORN, TO WALK ALLOOOOOOWWWOOONE — but then the chorus ends, and it’s back to the gay synthesizers again?  But it’s almost like the gay synthesizer parts don’t even matter, because in the back of your mind you know that awesome chorus is coming up again any second now, so while the gay synthesizers play, you’re just waiting to get naked and light the bar on fire?  And it’s almost unfair to criticize the gay synthesizer parts, because without them the chorus wouldn’t make you want to run up to the overpass and flash your tits at oncoming traffic nearly as much, and the anticipation is half the fun?  Yeah.  So Hesher.  It’s, uh… it’s kind of like that.

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I saw Hesher last year at Sundance, and while it had some stock-indie-movie elements I didn’t love, the good parts still kicked enough ass that I named it to my top 10 of 2010.  Since then, it got a new cut (which hopefully made it even better) and played SXSW.  A few months ago, a trailer hit the web, but it wasn’t very good and had a nut shot in it, and director Spencer Susser said it was an unauthorized version and urged people not to watch it.  Today brings us a new, Susser-approved trailer, cut by Susser himself.  And yeah, remove your metal fingers from your butt because this one’s a lot more awesome.

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