Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson is only 19.  Sam Taylor-Wood, who directed him in the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, is 42.  But that didn’t stop him from knocking her up.  It’s kinda weird, but kinda impressive, considering the only thing I could’ve knocked up when I was 19 was my roommate’s socks.  She must have really strong kegels.

Young film star Aaron Johnson and divorced director Sam Taylor-Wood yesterday [in January] announced they are expecting their first child. The couple, who met when Sam, 42, cast Aaron, 19, as John Lennon in her feature film Nowhere Boy, have been engaged since October.
A spokesman for the pair said: “We can confirm that Sam is pregnant with her and Aaron’s first child. Both are very, very happy.”
Artist-turned-director Sam has daughters Angelica, 12, and Jessie, three, from her 11-year marriage to Jay Jopling, which ended in 2008.  Art dealer Jay, 46, has been linked with Lily Allen, 24. [MirrorUK - thanks to Zak for the tip]

Jeez, I would’ve thought one of the advantages of banging a 42-year-old was that at least she couldn’t get pregnant.  She must have a very youthful womb.  Which is what I look for in a woman (they complain about the speculum being cold, but it’s worth it).  In any case, I hope the baby doesn’t mind breast feeding from two white flags that say “Bang.”

RELATED ASYLUM POLL: Can this relationship work?

Putting aside my bias because I liked it (though I can see why some people didn’t), the general consensus was that Kick-Ass would win the weekend and make $30 million or so.  Early estimates (final numbers come out tomorrow) have it earning $19.75, trailing How to Train Your Dragon by $250,000, which, though not a flop, would make it a moderate disappointment, like having a son who grows up to be a movie blogger.  I’d be inclined to blame illegal immigrants and the Dutch for this disappointment, but for a true phony explanation of this box-office misforecast, I turn to Brandon Grey of BoxOfficeMojo:

Kick-Ass didn’t bust out of its unpopular superhero comedy confines nor did it match its hype, but it nonetheless delivered one of the highest-grossing starts ever for its sub-genre.

Shackled by its unappealing subject matter, Kick-Ass packed a not-so-walloping estimated $19.8 million on approximately 4,300 screens at 3,065 locations. The Incredibles holds the record for superhero comedies and is the only truly successful one, but, among live-action entries, Kick-Ass boasted the biggest debut. Mystery Men was the previous high with $10 million (or over $15 million adjusted for ticket price inflation), showing how little interest the sub-genre has stirred in the past.

Kick-Ass’s turn-out was closer to the other violent action movie from April 16, 2004: The Punisher. That’s because the Kick-Ass machine rammed outrageousness, colorfully vicious action and self-referential humor down people’s throats but lacked purpose and story. It was true to its sensory-bound but nondescript title. Furthermore, while some spoofs work, people aren’t as eager to see heroes torn down. Watchmen and television series Heroes alienated viewers with such themes, so a movie brazenly dissing heroes like Kick-Ass was only going to go so far.

So there you have it, folks.  Before you release a movie, you should check with Brandon Grey about what “sub-genre” it falls into and he can tell you whether you should change the theme so as not to alienate viewers.  He does it all on his specially-made, box-office calculator watch.  It’s impressive, really.  “Hmm, I don’t know, this title is too sensory-bound,” he’ll say, while thoughtfully spreading cheese on a Handi Snak.

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How Kick-Ass is Like a Dead-Baby Joke and Why Ebert is Wrong

I would not want to be writing a superhero movie right now. 

Kick-Ass does superhero so well and is simultaneously so conspicuously aware of the audience’s expectations at every moment of the film, that an earnest attempt at the old hero-origin story is going to look f*cking stupid by comparison –like trying to watch a guy sliding down an incline on a plank attached to roller skate wheels after you’ve just seen Tony Hawk busting 900s.  It takes the concept further. It doesn’t just manipulate your emotions, it makes a show of how it’s doing it and becomes almost a think piece about why.  It is, as they say, “meta”, like a snake eating its own tail and swallowing its own sh*t, until the sh*t it’s eating is just the sh*tty byproduct of previous sh*ts and the sh*t itself starts becoming, like, this whole freaky, new thing.  Which is not to say the film is sh*tty.  Chill out, dude, it’s just a metaphor.

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The last time I posted a Kick-Ass-related music video, it was for alleged Brit pop star Mika, and the song was about as gay as Freddie Mercury giving a unicorn a handjob (with eye contact).  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  The latest is the quite-a-bit-more-rocking video for The Soft Pack’s “Answer to Yourself”, featuring Kick-Ass castmembers Clark Duke, Chloe Moretz in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit (no comment, as per court order), and my close, personal friend Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who sent this to me.  Okay, I lied, it was actually Burnsy who sent it, but probably only because CM-P was busy, right, guys?  Anyway, pretty cool overall.  I’m just a little upset that this guy stole my outfit.
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According to my exhaustive research (*pantomimes glug glug, wank wank*), British actor Aaron Johnson was a relative unknown before landing the lead in Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass.  But if there’s one thing Hollywood producers love, it’s cocaine. And if there’s another, it’s a teenage boy covered in spandex. Sadly for them, at just 19 years of age, Johnson already seems to have developed something they lack: taste.  And the ability to form an opinion without a focus group.

At today’s press day for Kick-Ass, Johnson admitted that he’s been approached to play other superhero roles, “stupidly,” in his words. He went on to explain, “Obviously they haven’t got that much of a creative brain when someone else has a movie coming out called Kick-Ass, why would they want to be the next superhero that’s already been done before….” He declined to say which role he’d been offered, but saying “superhero that’s already been done before” definitely further fueled my personal speculation that he’d make a perfect Peter Parker in the Spider-Man reboot– even though Johnson apparently isn’t interested in going that direction.

In a later 1:1 interview Johnson explained to me, “I would play another superhero, but not necessarily soon.” As he puts it, he’s not opposed to superhero movies, particularly since he’s the proud star of one right now, but the single-minded Hollywood mentality that because people play a superhero once, they should do it over and over again. “It’s just ridiculous. Producers just aren’t thinking. It’s why sh*t movies get made.” [CinemaBlend]

I love this kid.  Also, I know I made fun of your slang in the last post, Brits, but credit where credit’s due. “Sh*t” works much better as an adjective than it does as a noun.  Or a food.