(Viggo shepherds his son through the post-apocalyptic hellscape)

Opening this weekend (Trailers after the jump):

Fantastic Mr. Fox
I thought Darjeeling Limited was decidedly meh, so I’m hoping for a Wes Anderson to return to form here.  It’s already gotten an enthusiastic review from Punchface Thunderdog, and I’ll be finding out for myself in just a few minutes. So, you know, that’s what’s going on with me.

The Road
I loved the book, but it seemed like something that would be hard to adapt, and I wasn’t so hot on The Proposition, director John Hillcoat’s last movie.  I found it sort of slow and depressing.  Like giving your mom a sponge bath.

Ninja Assassin
It looks like a sort of ham-fisted mashup of every over-stylized action movie from the last ten years, like Boondock Saints with ninjas.  Also, the main weapon is CGI.  But I guess it’s great if you want to see a dude named “Rain” flex for two hours.

Old Dogs
I would rather watch an Al-Qaeda video featuring my own beheading, filmed in the future and projected back to me in the present where I could view it in real time.  Though it should be noted that Pete Hammond gave it an enthusiastic two flippers up.

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I’d love to review Old Dogs just to tell you how bad it is, but there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to suffer for you guys, and I already have to read entertainment columns.  Luckily there are plenty of other creepy shut-ins who’ll say mean things about it for me, and I can use their delicious hate to keep my skin moist and clammy.  In general, I’d say the most common dog pun was about how Old Dogs deserved to be “put down.”

If Old Dogs were a person, I would stab it in the face. -Hitfix

Old Dogs does to the screen what old dogs do to the carpet. It’s unfortunate that only the latter can be taken out and shot. -NY Post

As if to compensate, “Old Dogs” continually cuts away from Williams’ antics to “cute” reaction shots from an actual old dog. -Florida Times-Union

Kids who suffer from progeria may be able to relate to Old Dogs, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else fully appreciating it. -St. Paul Pioneer

“Old Dogs” seems to have lingered in post-production while editors struggled desperately to inject laugh cues. It obviously knows no one will find it funny without being ordered to. How else to explain reaction shots of a dog responding to laugh lines? -Roger Ebert

Let’s see… murder, stabbings, poop, progeria, gunshot wounds — I think that about covers it.  Of course, I did find one guy who liked it.  Guess who it is.  C’mon, just guess.

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The headline says it all, folks.  This is an actual publicity still from Old Dogs, and it is simply magical.  I can only assume they’re going the Miracle Whip route and trying to outdo Faces of Old Dogs by making their own marketing so over-the-top ridiculous that parody is obsolete.  But… that’s a lot of credit to give any group of people who thought this clip was an effective advertisement.  You can actually see the boom mic guy’s reflection on the side of the car!  This is either an elaborate piece of performance art or it was directed by the real-life three stooges.

[acesshowbiz via FilmSchoolRejects]

(via FacesofOldDogs)

USA Today recently did a fluff piece on the modern classic Old Dogs, and you just know someone was quoted saying something really stupid because just look at this embarrassment.  I’d rather watch a snuff film about a relative.  Anyway, the winner of the dipsh-t sweepstakes is John Travolta, who says reading the script was “the hardest I ever laughed.”

Travolta says that one lure of the film was the centerpiece scene, where Travolta and Williams mix up their medications. Travolta’s face turns into a Joker-like smile, while Williams’ tongue grows to the size of a dill pickle.

“That scene, I’ve probably laughed harder than I ever have,” Travolta says. “I knew I wanted to do the movie when I read that part. I’d pay $10 to see that scene.”

Would you?  Would you pay $10 to see it when it was in The Game Plan with The Rock, or just the other 30 times it happened in a stupid movie? Don’t answer that, just choke.

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Former Human Giant director Jason Woliner recently created a site called Faces of Old Dogs (facesofolddogs.tumblr.com), consisting solely of screencaps from the upcoming Robin Williams/John Travolta film Old Dogs.  The site purports to be updated daily, and I assume it’s a sort of homage to those old Faces of Death videos.  While it’s usually not my place to plug other websites, after seeing this clip, I realized that Old Dogs is not a movie so much as it’s a conceptual performance art piece, like Borat or Joaquin Phoenix, which intends to derive its humor not from the actual movie (*RECORD SCRATCH*) but from our reactions to it.

(*hits Seth Green in the nuts*)

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