"Eh, oh, I got ya poison apple right heah!"

Hollywood’s pulling a Dante’s Peak/Volcano with us in early 2012 when it releases two Snow White movies within a few months of each other. Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman stars Charlize Theron as an evil queen who’s deathly jealous of Kristen Stewart’s beauty, which does tend to stretch the bounds of credulity. Meanwhile, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror seems to be much less concerned with sword fighting and magic, and much more concerned with lavish costumes and foppish dandies. Julia Roberts plays the queen, jealous of ingenue Lily Collins, who, in addition to being Phil Collins daughter, has gnarliest eyebrows in all the land (she comes from a magical place called Armenia), and likes to rock out to Bollywood dance numbers. Soft rock royalty or not, mean old Julia isn’t about to be upstaged, so when Armie Hammer, the WASPiest prince in all of New Haven shows up, uh… some other stuff happens. Like with dwarves and junk. Exciting!

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Thanks to Shortlist for discovering this video, about a dog that hates Julia Roberts (and an owner who hates shirts). It’s strange, the dog is a Husky (as is the owner, come to think of it), and thus has been bred to live on the frozen tundra, watching Eskimos reeking of seal fat drink reindeer blood to stay warm. And yet what is it that sends him into abject panic? A highly-Photoshopped picture of America’s sweetheart, Julia Roberts. Poor guy. To be fair to Julia Roberts, he probably just saw Eat Pray Love and was disgusted that someone could make such a triumphant hero’s journey out of an entitled woman’s attempt to cure her own emptiness through poverty tourism, but we both know that’s probably more Liz Gilbert’s fault. Or maybe he was just disgusted at the artificiality of it all. Dogs are kind of fickle, to be honest.

My cousin’s iguana craps the tub every time he hears Nia Vardalos. True story.

Waqas found this for us in Sweden. I loved it because I’m five.

MORNING LINKS
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Last week’s Frotcast was pretty good, because it was full of murder. |Frotcast|

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Louis C.K.’s Tribute to George Carlin |Warming Glow|

Pic via FckYeahDementia

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The 20 Worst Lines in Movie History |Buzzfeed|

SNL’s Top 15 Sketches from the Last 3 Years |FARK|

Three suggestions for the Postal Service. |HolyTaco|

Pornhub is trying to buy Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. Pornhub? Not familiar. |TheSuperficial|

Oliver’s piece for Mental Floss on the stages of Mac fandom. |MentalFloss|

Your weekly Entourage recap. |Videogum|

A wonderful compilation of girls on bikes falling. |GorillaMask|

3 Flowcharts for People with Social Anxieties |College Humor|

Meet the Dog with the Longest Ears in the World |Daily What|

Archer‘s Pam IRL |Unreality|

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Bay Area Peoples: Check out my show @ Kimo's September 12th

Julia Roberts actually shot Dennis Lee’s Fireflies in the Garden back in 2007, around the same time as Charlie Wilson’s War, but after playing a few film festivals and opening in various territories overseas in 2008, it sat on the shelf until earlier this week, when an unnamed distributor decided to give it a US release in October. It’s one of Julia Roberts’ more complicated schemes to appear more youthful.

To an outsider, the Taylors are the very picture of the successful American family: Charles (Willem Dafoe) is a tenured professor on track to become university president, son Michael (Ryan Reynolds) is a prolific and well-known romance novelist, daughter Ryne (Shannon Lucio) is poised to enter a prestigious law school, and on the day we are introduced to them, matriarch Lisa (Julia Roberts) will graduate from college-decades after leaving to raise her children. But when a serious accident interrupts the celebration, the far more nuanced reality of this Midwestern family’s history and relationships come to light.
The film also stars Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hayden Panettiere and Shannon Lucio. |via LiveforFilms|

Julia Roberts smiles, Ryan Reynolds gets beardy, and Emily Watson still looks like a sad bird. Luckily, I could watch Willem Dafoe yell at little kids all day. Hey, it’s too bad the distributor never ‘lost’ Eat Pray Love, am I right? And is it just me, or does Fireflies in the Garden sound like a euphemism for venereal disease? If I wanted Fireflies in the Garden, I’d take a dip in Bob Evans’ jacuzzi. And how come they never name hurricanes after sistas? Thanks, folks, tip your servers. Hey, what’s up with airline food? (*bass run, farts ‘Yankee Doodle’*)

The charisma is palpable!

Yahoo just released the trailer for Larry Crowne, starring Tom Hanks (who also directs) and Julia Roberts in a film written by Hanks and Nia Vardalos, a veritable reunion of America’s sweethearts of the early 2000s.  Hanks plays a middle-aged Navy vet with a bad mortgage who gets laid off from his Wal Mart job because he doesn’t have a college degree (because that always happens). “Sorry, Mr. Crowne, I know you’re a Navy vet with 30 years of experience in our retail store, but we’re going to have to fire you until you prove you can pass pottery class and the local JC. It’s just business.” Anyway, so then he enrolls at the local junior college to turn his life around (sounds like someone’s been watching Community!), and there, he meets a rag-tag group of kooky dillweeds and ends up falling for his speech teacher, Julia Roberts, on account of she’s so sullen and bitchy.

So yeah, basically exactly like Community, but with an older, schlubbier protagonist.  Tom Hanks is great at playing the good-hearted, put-upon Buzz Lightbeer, but wouldn’t his real life story be better than this?  He has a son who’s a rich, white, rhyme-spitting wigger caricature, a wife who’s always hanging out with Nia Vardalos… sounds like the recipe for a mid-life crisis to me.
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