"Prepare your anus, it is time for an Assbender."

Shame is overwrought and lacking in real story, but the Fasspenis deserves Best Actor

If you just want the abridged Shame review, here it is: Michael Fassbender is a sex addict. That’s it. That’s the whole movie. Just stop reading right here. Shame is about Michael Fassbender having dirty sex and thinking nasty sex thoughts and looking at filthy sex porn on the internet for 101 minutes, with all the initial awesomeness turning to repetitiveness that would entail. Oh, and he has a humongous penis (yes, this is a shameless teaser for the rest of this review).

Okay, so there’s a liiittle more, but the “more” is the worst part. I suspect there’s a great short film buried inside Shame (mmm, yeah, baby, let me bury my short one inside you). A 25-minute tone portrait of a sex addict, Michael Fassbender’s relentless, rhythmic rutting thumps and gnarled sex face — a loving vignette of a madman in its own way, artful in its specificity. It’d probably win awards. But it’s not enough story for a feature, and it shows in Shame‘s third act, deteriorating into artsy montage and pulling every overwrought trick in the art school handbook in a needy attempt to seem, like, sooo serious and deep, you guys. I mean, really? A suicide attempt set to classical music? What are we, 13? (Oh right, my headline. I guess we are.).  Still, for a movie that’s meant to depict the filthiness of sex, it isn’t quite filthy. It’s movie-dirty.

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Steve McQueen’s latest film, Shame (that’s the black, British, not-dead Steve McQueen) played the Venice film festical to rave reviews last month, and hits theaters December 2nd, smack in the middle of Oscar season. The film, which stars Michael F. Assbender as a sexy sex addict (THE SEXIEST ADDICTION), has a new trailer you can watch below the jump. It features the line (delivered by Fassbender’s boss):

“Your hard drive is filthy. I mean, it is dirrrty.”

That’s right, Michael Fassbender likes to watch. I hope that becomes this year’s “you’re changin’ that boy’s lahfe.” This movie is for you, FilmDrunkards.
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As often happens in Hollywood, two movies about the same subject (in this case, a Steve McQueen biopic) are vying for production (see also: Harvey Milk, Pablo Escobar, Truman Capote).  This time, two of Steve McQueen’s three wives are associated with separate projects.

Marshall Terrill’s biography “Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel” is being developed by producers Michael Cerenzie “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” and Christine Peters “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”. They have enlisted the assistance of McQueen’s widow, Barbara Minty. Their project will trace McQueen’s development from reform-school delinquent to the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and cover the “Bullitt” star’s obsession with motorcycles and racing, his drug abuse, his marriages and affairs and his hard-fought battle with cancer, which felled him in 1980 at age 50.

The other project comes from producer and former McQueen publicist David Foster, who is working from a memoir written by McQueen’s first wife, Neile McQueen Toffel, titled “My Husband, My Friend.” Roderick and Bruce Taylor “The Brave One” are adapting. [THR]

I know people are excited about a Steve McQueen biopic because Steve McQueen was such a hardass and all, but Hollywood making a movie about one of their own scares me.  Have you seen the Oscars?  North Korean propaganda has more honesty and circumspection than Hollywood talking about Hollywood.  I wouldn’t be surprise if this was about how Steve McQueen cured sadness and beheaded Xenu with his dick.

The Times Online reports that Tobey Maguire has signed a deal expected to be worth $50 million to shoot Spider-Man 4 and 5 back to back over six months next year.  Maguire only agreed after he was granted mornings and evenings off as “family time” to spend with his daughter “Ruby Sweetheart” (sorry for the quotes, it’s just a lame name).  Meanwhile, Steve McQueen’s widow basically called Maguire a pussy.

Some critics have mocked the current generation of Hollywood actors as “boy-men”. Steve McQueen’s widow Barbara said she could not imagine him asking for “family time” when making The Great Escape. Like McQueen, Maguire came from a troubled background. He planned to be a chef until his mother, an aspiring scriptwriter, gave him $100 to take acting rather than cooking lessons to make sure he “got to know the world”. It worked.

Hmm, I’m not sure wanting to spend time with your daughter makes you a pussy, but I know a crew full of people half-assing it for the money and a star who only works during the middle of the day will no doubt make for a really good movie.  Spider-Man 5: Because They Begged Us.

UPDATE: Not an update, per se, but I got the hair-flip .gif working again and I didn’t want to deny anyone its creepiness.

[Picture Source]