The Golden Globes happened last night, and thank God there was a dog in a bow tie there, or else it would’ve been a total loss. To recap briefly, Ricky Gervais was the main reason to watch, and save for a few moderately funny Kardashian jokes, he was thoroughly unmemorable (you can watch his monologue below. It was… okay). The highlight of the night was probably seeing George Clooney talk about Michael Fassbender’s huge penis, because it means George Clooney is as obsessed with the Fasspenis as I am. The other highlight was Seth Rogen taking the stage with Kate Beckinsale and saying, “I’m Seth Rogen, and I’m trying to disguise my enormous erection.”

Basically, it was a great night for boners. The lowlight probably went to Madonna, who won best song (???) and took the stage pretending to be Abe Simpson on Vh-1 Storytellers (“The story of how I wrote this song isn’t so much interesting as it is long…”). Though Michelle Pfeiffer introducing War Horse as an incredible film “about a miraculous horse” was also quite bad. Though it did encapsulate perfectly why I could never like that movie. I don’t trust anyone who could write or say the phrase “miraculous horse” without feeling like an asshole. War Horse and the Iron Lady aren’t films that should win awards, they’re satire that prove how terrible awards shows are.

Full list of winners plus my live-tweet of the event on the next page.

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FILM CATEGORIES

Motion Picture, Drama
The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

The Ides of March

Moneyball

War Horse

Best Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight In Paris

My Week With Marilyn [I saw The Artist. It was decent, but 50/50 was way better.]

Best Director – Motion Picture
Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

George Clooney, The Ides of March

Michel Hazanvicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Best Performance By An Actress In A Motion Picture – Drama
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady [Ugh. Yay, Meryl! You did great in that awful movie no one should ever see!]

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Best Performance By An Actor In A Motion Picture, Drama
George Clooney, The Descendants [Can't argue with that, I suppose.]

Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides Of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Performance By An Actor In A Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Jean Dujardin, The Artist [Brendan Gleeson and JGL were robbed, but it was all worth it to see Mark Wahlberg ask for help pronouncing a French guy's name.]

Brendan Gleeson, The Guard

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50

Ryan Gosling, Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris

Best Performance By An Actress In A Supporting Role In A Motion Picture
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role In A Motion Picture
Christopher Plummer, Beginners [Never saw this one.]

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Albert Brooks, Drive

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method

Best Foreign Language Film
A Separation (Iran) [I didn't see any of these, which makes me terrible. But still, I have to think if Elite Squad 2 were one of the nominees, people would have a completely different idea of what foreign cinema is.]

The Flowers of War (China)

In the Land of Blood and Honey (USA)

The Kid With A Bike (Belgium)

The Skin I Live In (Spain)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, The Ides of March

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash, The Descendants

Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Moneyball

Best Animated Feature Film
The Adventures of Tintin

Arthur Christmas

Cars 2

Puss in Boots

Rango

Best Performance By An Actress in A Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Jodie Foster, Carnage

Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids

Kate Winslet, Carnage

Best Original Song – Motion Picture
“Masterpiece” — W.E. Music & Lyrics by: Madonna, Julie Frost, Jimmy Harry [The annual "foreigners have heard of Madonna" award.]

“Hello Hello” — Gnomeo & Juliet Music by: Elton John Lyrics by: Bernie Taupin “The Keeper” — Machine Gun Preacher

Music & Lyrics by: Chris Cornell “Lay Your Head Down” — Albert Nobbs

Music by: Brian Byrne Lyrics by: Glenn Close “The Living Proof” — The Help

Music by: Mary J. Blige, Thomas Newman, Harvey Mason Jr. Lyrics by: Mary J. Blige, Harvey Mason Jr., Damon Thomas

Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Ludovic Bource, The Artist

Abel Korzeniowski, W.E.

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Howard Shore, Hugo

John Williams, War Horse

TELEVISION CATERGORIES
Best Television Series – Comedy Or Musical

Modern Family, ABC

Enlightened, HBO

Episodes, Showtime

Glee, FOX

New Girl, FOX

Best Performance By An Actor In A Television Series – Comedy Or Musical
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

David Duchovny, Californication

Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory

Thomas Jane, Hung

Best Performance By An Actress In A Television Series – Drama
Claire Danes, Homeland

Mireille Enos, The Killing

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Madeleine Stowe, Revenge

Callie Thorne, Necessary Roughness

Best Performance By An Actress In A Supporting Role In A Series, Mini-Series, Or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story

Kelly Macdonald, Boardwalk Empire

Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey

Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Evan Rachel Wood, Mildred Pierce

Best Performance By An Actor in A Supporting Role in A Series, Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made For Television
Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones

Paul Giamatti, Too Big to Fail

Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce

Tim Robbins, Cinema Verite

Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Performance By An Actor In A Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made For Television
Idris Elba, Luther

Hugh Bonneville, Downton Abbey

William Hurt, To Big to Fail

Bill Nighy, Page Eight

Dominic West, The Hour

Best Television Series – Drama
Homeland, Showtime [Homeland is okay, there's no way in hell it's better than Boardwalk Empire or Game of Thrones. Not even by the wildest stretch of the imagination. It was entertaining, but a show about dragons and magical wolves was more believable than Homeland.]

American Horror Story, FX

Boardwalk Empire, HBO

Boss, STARZ

Game of Thrones, HBO

Best Performance By An Actor In A Television Series – Drama
Kelsey Grammer, Boss

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire

Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad

Jeremy Irons, The Borgias

Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Performance By An Actress In A Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made For Television
Kate Winslet, Mildred Pierce

Romola Garai, The Hour

Diane Lane, Cinema Verite

Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey

Emily Watson, Appropriate Adult

Best Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made For Television
Downton Abbey, PBS

Cinema Verite, HBO

The Hour, BBC America

Mildred Pierce, HBO

Too Big to Fail, HBO

Best Performance By An Actress In A Television Series – Comedy Or Musical
Laura Dern, Enlightened

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl

Tina Fey, 30 Rock

Laura Linney, The Big C

Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

—

[source]

Here’s my live-tweet of the event. I’m posting it here because I don’t feel like wasting any more of my time writing something new about this dumb show. [Follow me on Twitter]

[During the monologue] I love the crowd shots of these dipshits trying to decide whether to laugh. HALP! NEED PUBLICIST! #goldenglobes

A pocket watch, a charm bracelet, two rings, and a rosary? That’s the fewest accessories Johnny Depp has been seen wearing  in four years.

Here’s Rob Lowe and Julianne Moore for the bronzer before-and-after segment of the evening.

[source]

They should re-cast that McDonald’s potato farmer commercial with Danny Trejo. “Mira, ju like my papas, puto?” (*racks shotgun*)

Kelsey Grammer won something? Whose salad did he toss for that? /Frasier jokes #classic

Every time I see Adam Levine [presenting] I wish he’d somehow fall face first in manure like Biff.

Jean Dujardin was great in The Artist, but knowing he’s French means that mustache wasn’t much of a stretch.

[As The Artist wins best score] “I would like to thank Kim Novak, wissout whose rape all of zeess would not be possible.”

Ooh, I hope Madonna talks some more shit on hydrangeas.

RT @mindykaling: What a compelling song-writing journey, Madonna!

I hope Baby Goose goes on stage & talks through a puppy he holds in front of the mic like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Thanks, guys, arf arf!”

What the f*ck is Anjelica Houston doing in a show with Katherine McPhee holding hands with a Jonas brother? [Seriously, they played the promo for this show at least 1200 times]

Baby Goose couldn’t be here because he was busy taking a homeless man to get a shower and feeding him hot soup.

Michelle Williams looks like she’d cry if you farted on her.

So is it cool to call Peter Dinklage “P-Dinkz” or what?

Peter Dinklage should’ve run along the tops of everyone’s heads like Crocodile Dundee.

[Peter Dinklage references not having seen Mildred Pierce] Yeah, you know who else hasn’t seen Mildred Pierce? EVERYONE.

Hahahahaha RT @katerbland: “He doesn’t talk like a midget at all!” -the worst guest at my party.

“Hi, I’m Channing Tatum. Here’s the animated film nominees interpreted as a c-walk.”

[Someone name-drops Andy Serkis] I’m sorry, acting like a chimp is not that hard. Seriously. Throw me that ping pong ball suit, I’ll show you a chimp.

The Midnight in Paris soundtrack sounds like someone hitting a Vietnamese child with a peacock.

[Madonna makes an awkward pass at Ricky Gervais] YEAH, RICKY! BANG THE DUST OFF THAT OLD C*NT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE!

“Hi, I’m Madonna. Here are the names of some important foreign films I’ve watched and enjoyed while traveling abroad.”

“Oh, excuse me, did I say ‘while?’ I meant ‘whilst.’” -Madonna.

Better Matt LeBlanc ape co-star, the orangutan from Ed, or Marcel the monkey?

You know who loves Morgan Freeman and Sidney Poitier? The closed captioning people. [Sidney.... Poitier... talks... so... slowly...]

Robert Downey Jr. is the personification of how you feel right after a huge line of coke.

Martin Scorsese’s mom should’ve won best supporting actress for Goodfellas. She was so awesome.

Does It’s Always Sunny ever get nominated for anything? No awards show knows anything about comedy.

A “miraculous horse?” I hate anyone who doesn’t feel like an asshole saying that phrase out loud.

“‘EH JESSICA, HOW DO I PRONOUNCE THIS FRENCH QUEAH’S NAME?” -Mark Wahlberg

My favorite part of War Horse was when they signed the Armistice Treaty, and the horse was all “DURRRRR, HAY.”

Also, Brendan Gleeson was robbed. The Guard was righteous.

THE IRON LADY MAKES ME WANT TO KICK A BABY IN THE FACE

Everyone knows Margaret Thatcher was a prime minister. What our movie preSUPposes is, maybe she talked about milk with her dead husband?

“REMEMBER WHEN MARGARET THATCHER COURAGEOUSLY BOMBED ALL THOSE ARGENTINES BECAUSE SHE WAS A GIRL?” -The Iron Lady

It’d be fun to see George Lucas and Harvey Weinstein battle it out over the last turkey leg.

YES! GEORGE CLOONEY IS JUST AS OBSESSED WITH MICHAEL FASSBENDER’S HUGE DICK AS I AM!

OBEY THE FASSPENIS

OH MY GOD, HARRISON FORD AND MORGAN FREEMAN ARE EARRING FIGHTING!

You know what would’ve been better than the Golden Globes? A dog show.

I have a problem, you guys. I’m afraid that if I’m completely honest with you about how much I liked 50/50, you won’t respect me anymore. It tickled me right in the sentimental parts I don’t like to talk about at parties, and now those parts are all moist, and I’m afraid if I tell you about them that it would just be gross. But here goes.

We can call it a “cancer comedy” if it makes you feel better, but the dirty little secret of 50/50 is that it’s kind of a rom-com. And my dirty little secret is that I kind of really like rom-coms (the ones that are good, that people don’t normally think of as rom-coms). But that’s what it is. A contemporary story about love, relationships, friends, and family, that also happens to be pretty funny a lot of the time. Oh, and also cancer, but we’ll get to that.

Written by Will Reiser and directed by Jonathan Levine of The Wackness, 50/50 is a personal story based on Reiser’s real-life diagnosis with cancer when he was in his late twenties, and how he and his friends, like Seth Rogen, dealt with it (the “50/50″ of the title refers to what he was told his chances of survival were). Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, the fictionalized Reiser; Rogen plays Kyle, the fictionalized Rogen. (It must suck for Rogen that he lost all that weight and JGL still gets to play the cancer patient, but between this and Funny People, he has “guy whose friend has cancer” on lock.)

Anyway, Adam and Kyle both work at NPR, and their first scene together gets the film off to a rocky start. They’re discussing Adam’s girlfriend, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who he hasn’t slept with for three weeks. Schlubby, slobby Kyle thinks this is a problem, while fussy, dainty Adam convinces himself that it’s okay because “their relationship is based on more than sex.” The scene doesn’t work for the exact reason the rest of the film does work: they’re playing archetypes (also, we’ve seen that scene like a billion times before). Characters that are types instead of people are the reason I never liked Entourage, and why every conversation in Sex in the City is a variation on the same thing.

MIRANDA: Carrie, you should tell that jerk to piss off because feminism!

SAMANTHA: No way, Carrie, you should screw him because sex is empowering.

CHARLOTTE: Ooh, I don’t know you guys, I’m repressed and old fashioned, vagina wax makes me cry.

Bumpa da bumpa da bump. But after the first scene, Rogen and JGL quickly settle into a relationship where they relate to each other in a way that’s recognizable to other late 20-something males, and that alone is incredibly refreshing. I’m sure it helps that Reiser is working through his own ordeal here and not trying to write exposition for a story about vampires, aliens, and the military, but the point is, the characters feel like people. Thus, it’s a lot easier to care about them.

Patton Oswalt once joked that all romantic comedies could be called “…Trying to F*ck.” (This summer, Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler are, Trying to F*ck”). 50/50‘s backdrop is cancer, but it could be called “Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anna Kendrick Are Trying to F*ck.”

Truth be told, I reeeeally wanted them to f*ck. And having this sad, serious ordeal like cancer looming over the whole enterprise really lowers the bar for comedy. People are a lot more eager to laugh when there’s a little sadness and reality mixed in than when you’re just in a contrived situation complaining about airline food or having Sandra Bullock’s Blackberry get stolen by an eagle. 50/50 is essentially an entire film built around that dance between serious and funny.

There’s a compelling strand with Bryce Howard and JGL’s character exploring what happens to a relationship that’s already starting to go south when one party gets cancer, then a love triangle, then a subplot with Adam’s mother (played brilliantly by Anjelica Huston) and his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, mixed in with main story of Adam and Kyle talkin’ about chicks and tryin’ to get laid (during cancer). They all come together just so. (Not to mention a possible topic of post-movie discussion: would you tell your best friend that his girlfriend is cheating on him while he’s in the middle of trying to beat cancer?)

It’s hard to explain what’s so enjoyable about 50/50, other than to say that I saw a lot of myself and my friends in Adam and Kyle, a lot of me and my mom in JGL and Anjelica Huston, and on and on. It’s a personal movie that hit me on a personal level. Hey, Hollywood, can we have a few more of those? It’s a sentimental rom-com that isn’t afraid to let a sympathetic character call a girl the C-word or make Patrick Swayze jokes, and I like that. Also, I imagine it’s an incredibly effective date movie. When it was over I almost screwed the guy next to me, and he was a 250-pound film critic.

My only other criticism, aside from the first scene is, can we stop dressing Joseph Gordon-Levitt in cute little ties and pea coats and fuzzy sweaters and vests for entire films, please? He looks like a goddamned Jonas brother. I promise, stylists, you can de-accessorize and he’ll still be cuddly.

Grade: A-

Other notes: You can hear more of the background of the story in my roundtable interview with Seth Rogen and Will Reiser at the end of this frotcast. Sorry the other roundtable people are so boring.

Yes, Seth Rogen tends to reference pop culture a lot. Damn, this is just like watching that Kevin Smith movie he was in, except not as long or boring. |NYMag|

MORNING LINKS
The 15 Best Nintendo 64 Titles Of All Time |Smoking Section|

Please check this out, it took forever — Movie-Themed Food Trucks: Action Movie Edition |Film Drunk|

Check out Joe King’s stand-up, Laremy talking Moneyball on this week’s Frotcast. |Frotcast|

Twenty-Fourth Century Problems: Life In Star Trek Is HARD |Gamma Squad|

Covering The Faces: The Emotions Of The Greatest Night In Baseball History |With Leather|

Video: Paul Rudd & Anne Hathaway Audition for ‘Jersey Shore’ |Warming Glow|

Twitter Masses Angered That A Fake News Organization Tweeted About A Fake Hostage Crisis |UPROXX|

10 Manliest Men in Entertainment |Buzzfeed|

Seven things you need to know about the Torah. |MentalFloss|

Holly Madison insured her breasts for $1 million, even though they probably only cost 10 grand. |TheSuperficial|

Baseball to the groin! |Videogum|

What your least favorite fighter says about you. |CagePotato|

Alexandra is your bikini lady of the day. |GorillaMask|

Adult Swim’s Time to Waste with Harry Shearer |Adult Swim|

Punk Isn’t Dead PSA with Henry Rollins |The Daily What|

5 Rare Fruits and why you haven’t eaten them. |HolyTaco|

Atlanta Falcons’ Kicker has Golf Clubs Stolen by his Chinese Food Delivery Guy |Brobible|

Now THAT Is A Support Group |NextRound|

NOMINATE for Comments of the Week. FAN US on Facebook. SUBSCRIBE to the Frotcast.

[Download this week's episode here (right-click, "save as.")]

This week, the whole gang is back! We read your reader emails and sex/relationship questions, so that got pretty weird, as you can imagine. That spurred a look back at some of our Koi calls, and more Nair stories (BRET HAS ONE TOO!). Seriously, who knew there’d be this many guys who’d used Nair somewhere near their private parts and immediately regretted it? I think we’ve really struck a nerve here. Oh, and we recorded from my room this time, so most of the first ten minutes is just Brendan making fun of the crap in my room and reading inscrutable notes from my old comedy notebooks. For instance (from around 10 minutes):

• Hobos – Hobo-erotic.
• Pillsbury – credit.
• For dummies
• Darts hyphen raccoon vagina date rape
• Joe AIDs
• Drooling vegetables/incontinent mongoloids

So that’s an out-of-context peek into my subconscious.

At the end, you can hear my roundtable interview with Seth Rogen and Will Reiser who are promoting 50/50 (opening next Friday), a film which I greatly enjoyed (as you’ll see from my upcoming review, if I ever finish it) based on Will Reiser’s diagnosis with cancer when he was in his late twenties. You know, your basic cancer comedy. The interview starts off with me asking a few fun questions and keeping things light and fun, then quickly deteriorates into the usual press tour crap once the other proles get a chance to open their stupid yaps. Sorry about that. But alas I am but a man, and I cannot control the yaps of proles. Nonetheless, it’s still mildly entertaining, and it’s there if you want to listen to it. Here’s the key quote from that:

“Peoples impression of cancer is based on movies they’ve seen, and every movie that’s about cancer, it’s very sad, it’s very melodramatic, and the person always dies at the end. They have some great moment of clarity and then they die. They make amends with their son who they haven’t talked to in 40 years, and then they die. And that’s not what happened with us.” -Will Reiser

FOR NEXT WEEK: We’d love to do more Frotcast mailbag stuff, so send us your relationship questions, sex troubles, poop transplant stories, or other questions. Subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe via RSS.

[Picture via JuliaSegal]

"Knock knock... who's there? Your heart."

Thanks to the success of this year’s foul-mouthed and R-rated comedies like Horrible Bosses, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, Friends with Benefits, and that other one with Ashton Kutcher that came out first but was probably worse, studios seem to be digging pretty hard to find the next blockbuster comedy idea. So it makes perfect sense that they’d take a trip back to the Judd Apatow farm to harvest the latest ideas of Andrew Cohen and Brendan O’Brien.

Their latest project is a rated R comedy starring, not shockingly, Seth Rogen and, actually shockingly, Zac Efron. According to Cinema Blend, Rogen would play your average Joe, living his vanilla life in Anytown, USA, when all of a sudden – record scratch – a bunch of frat boys move in next door to him. Efron plays the lead pledge trainer, hell master, or elephant walker and hijinks ensue.

I can almost see the pitch now…

Universal Exec: “So do you guys have any big ideas that you’re working on?”
Andrew Cohen: *takes big bong rip* “Uh yeah, like, Seth Rogen plays this dude…”
Brendan O’Brien: *takes big bong rip* “And he’s, like, doing something funny…”
Universal Exec: “OK, yeah, this sounds great. Who else is in it?”
Cohen: *exhales* “I don’t know, like, Zac Efron or somebody.”
Universal Exec: “Here’s a blank check, you glorious c*cksuckers!”

That idea netted Cohen and O’Brien an unspecified 7-figure amount (each!), while Rogen will receive $8 million to star and another unspecified 7-figure amount to produce. Meanwhile, the writers for Adam Sandler’s next project were just paid in Fruit Roll-Ups and nap time.

Speaking of Efron, because I know you ladies can’t get enough, this was apparently newsworthy a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d share it now – Zac’s rocking a triple nipple. A board-certified dermatologist named Sandra Lee apparently took considerable time studying images of shirtless Efron (*swoons*) to determine that he has a third nipple. His reps have denied this claim, leaving us with what is undoubtedly the greatest controversy of this young century.

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.

“We worked with Will on Da Ali G Show, and it was shortly after that we learned he was sick.” Rogen recalls. “As shocking, sad, confusing and generally screwed up as it was; we couldn’t ignore that because we were so ill-equipped to deal with the situation, funny things kept happening. Will got better, and when he did, we thought the best way to pull something good out of the situation was to get him to write a screenplay. Ideally we wanted to make a film that would be as funny, sad, and hopefully as honest as the experience we went through.”

On a serious note, I think comedies are about sad stuff are great, and not purely out of some reactionary contrarianism.  Go watch a comedy open mic where people are only talking airline food and the hilarious combination of ethnicity they are and you’ll see why.  Trivial observations are just a lot funnier when you’re not being drowned in trivial observations.  It helps having something deeper there to balance it. Some of the hardest times I’ve laughed have been at sad things, like funerals.  Like the time my cousin Stevie drew a cock on our grandma’s face at her open casket.  I mean the thought of her going up to heaven like that?  Bro, we were dying.  Of laughter, I mean.

[HD available at Apple, Opens September 30th]

Not to excuse indifference to bloggerly responsibilities on my part, but Paul is the kind of movie that isn’t a lot of fun to review.  It’s not terrible, there aren’t any glaring inconsistencies, but it just doesn’t quite work.  It’s just not that funny.  It’s usually cute, but not quite laugh-worthy, and occasionally obnoxious, but not quite grating.  The word that most comes to mind is “thin.” It’s trivial.  It’s the acquaintance you always tell yourself you should call more but don’t, and deep down you know exactly why.

It’s a bit of a blue-ball dry rub considering the people involved.  I loved director Greg Mottola’s last two movies (Superbad and Adventureland), and getting the double-team from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (who also wrote the script) is almost always a good thing.  The plot, two nerds find a wacky alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) and have to help it escape the US government that wants to study its brain and harvest its penises for fuel or whatever, is cribbed from the standard 80s-alien-movie formula (ET, Mac & Me, etc).  But rather than the clever genre homage seen in the Pegg co-written (with Edgar Wright, whose influence might have been needed here) Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, or the glowy, rich nostalgia of Mottola’s last two movies, what we get instead is just a series of throwaway references to every 80s alien movie, like they wrote it by going down a checklist.  Reese’s Pieces reference goes here… okay now what?  Not homage, not parody, just, as my co-viewer Brendan from the Frotcast put it, “one long wink.”

Winking at the audience can be fine, but… you should probably tell a joke first.

For instance, one of the recurring motifs (and there weren’t many, for the most part it was just a barely-connected string of one-off sketches) was people fainting at the sight of Paul.  Now, I realize that was drawn from a rich history of people fainting in 80s movies, but there was no comment on how that cliché worked or why it was so prevalent, no subtext to give it more meaning than as a lazy plot device (Scott Pilgrim was brilliant because of its clear subtext). It’s just a breakdown of the fourth wall for the purpose of saying, “hey, remember this?”

I do.  It was kind of dopey back then.  Still dopey now, turns out.

The story’s only supposed justification for the references is that the main characters are pop-culture-obsessed nerds, and in Paul’s past, when he was a captive of the government, he served as a creative consultant on the biggest films of the 80s.  In one of the lamer sequences, we see a flashback to Paul on the phone, explaining some of the finer points of alien biology to Steven Spielberg as the latter was writing E.T..  Is that just light-hearted and cute?  I guess it could be, depending on your taste.  The other people in the theater sure seemed to like it.  But to me, this would be like writing a character who’s always saying “Yippee-kai yay, motherf*cker!” because that character is a huge fan of Die Hard, and in the story, even served as a consultant ON Die Hard.  Would it make sense?  Sure.  It’s just sort of… banal.  It’s like double explaining a reference in order to prove… that the thing it’s referencing exists?  I don’t get it.

The closest I can see to a point behind all this (and it’s not really a point, only a clue to what point there might have been when they started writing it, before they buried it in all the trivialities), was in Kristen Wiig’s character, a sheltered fundamentalist Christian living in an RV park somewhere in the Southwest.  She gets caught up in the Pegg/Frost/Rogen madness and at first, she refuses to acknowledge Paul’s existence because it would mean that everything she believes — that mankind is the only life in the universe (of which Earth is the center), and that humans were created in God’s image — is wrong.  She’s forced to come to grips with her worldview being wrong, but instead of using that issue to give the movie some… depth? Conflict?  Anything, really… it just becomes a device for her to realize that now she can cuss and grab Simon Pegg’s cock and talk about sex, because there’s no hell to worry about.  Her inept swearing that results (“Tit farts!”) is funny for a few seconds but… like I said, thin.

That’s really neither here nor there though.  Paul didn’t have to be some great allegory for existence, or a clever thinkpiece on mankind’s fascination with aliens, I’m just taking the starting point, the fact that it wasn’t all that funny, and trying to reverse engineer possible reasons why.  Sitting through it was a relatively painless experience and there were a few laughs here and there (HUGE laughs for much of the rest of the theater, so maybe I’m the weird one), but for the most part it was lightweight.  And not in a good way.

GRADE: B-

—

Counterpoint: Edgar Wright obviously disagrees with me, and I see no reason for you not to hear a dissenting opinion.  He certainly knows a lot more about making movies than I do.

Your mom's ready for her pelvic exam

I already want to see Paul, Greg Mottola’s homage to Mac & Me starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and the voice of Seth Rogen as a wacky alien, so I’m not going to watch this new red-band trailer.  But I will give you the opportunity, for I am but a humble public servant with a God-like talent for pelvic thrusts.  Paul opens March 18th in the US, but it’s already out in the UK, where it’s playing to mostly positive reviews, no small feat in a country full of critics who write like this:

“From time to time, clever ideas rear their heads, but they soon return to the film’s default setting of laddish japes.” [TheIndependant]

OH NO, NOT LADDISH JAPES!  Cor bloimey, guv, dey’s ruined da souffles dey ‘as!  Curse you, laddish japes!  (*gestures angrily with parasol*)  But like I said, the pans were in the minority.  And if you can get those splotchy-faced gravy chuckers to agree on anything for more than five seconds, you get hereditary title and an estate in York.

A kids’ movie with F-bombs in it isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a good example of why I like Greg Mottola so much (which similar to why I like Miguel Arteta so much): they put quality over commerce in subtle ways, without turning it into an elaborate exercise in proving what “ballsy filmmakers” they are. “Hey look, I made a movie about a guy trapped in a coffin for 90 minutes!” “Wow, that sounds unbearable. You must be really talented!”

[via IGN]

After many nights of me hoping and praying it would finally happen, it appears the Seth Rogen-Barbra Streisand road trip comedy has gotten a greenlight.  Paramount plans to shoot My Mother’s Curse this spring.  Aw, that’s not a nice thing to say about Judaism.

Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses, The Proposal) will direct the project with a script by Dan Fogelman (Cars, Fred Claus, Bolt, Tangled), which he wrote based on his own experience traveling with his mother.  The story follows an inventor (Rogen) who invites his mother (Streisand) on a cross-country trip as he tries to sell his new product while also reuniting her with a lost love. [THR]

Why, it sounds like Little Miss Sunshine meets Letters to Juliet!  From the director of 27 Dresses and The Proposal!  I’D BUY TICKETS RIGHT NOW IF ONLY AN EAGLE HADN’T STOLEN MY BLACKBERRY!

It’s probably unfair of me to hate Barbra Streisand.  All the bad stuff I’ve heard about her comes from second or third-hand stories, and I’ve never actually heard any of her music, I just know the only people who like it are a million years old.  The way I understand it, she opens her mouth and Kenny G sax music comes out.

"Look at the kitty over there, George, do you see the kitty? If you're a good boy you can go pet the kitty, George."

The ancient Mayans believed the world would end in 2012, as evidenced by the fact that the calendars they made 2000 years ago mysteriously stopped at 2012 (scientist call this “the mystery of holy crap my arm is tired”).  Adding credence to these apocalyptic rumors of late are mysterious bird mass bird deaths and Willow Smith’s burgeoning music career.  Still, only a child-like jackass would believe apocalypse rumors, which brings us to George Lucas.

Said Seth Rogen about a meeting he had with Spielberg and Lucas, according to WENN:

“George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.
“He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry…’”

Weird, that’s exactly how I always imagined their relationship.

“I first thought he (Lucas) was joking… and then I totally realized he was serious and then I started thinking, ’If you’re George Lucas and you actually think the world is gonna end in a year, there’s no way you haven’t built a spaceship for yourself… So I asked him… ’Can I have a seat on it?’
“He claimed he didn’t have a spaceship, but there’s no doubt there’s a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go… It’s gonna be him and Steven Spielberg and I’ll be blown up like the rest of us.”

WENN is the most consistently and egregiously inaccurate news source on the internet second only to ContactMusic, but since this was only a means to make fun of George Lucas anyway, I’ll play along.  I think it says something about George Lucas that people imagine that the only person he’d allow in his apocalypse space pod is not a wife, not a concubine, not his children, but Steven Spielberg.  “I brought only my most important possessions — my best friend, a racecar bed, my erector set, and 27 cats, which, if we breed ‘em right, should feed us until we can reach Alpha Centauri.”