Are you ladies ready for the news of the week? Naw, HELL NAW, the news of the month? I said, are you ladies ready? I can’t hear you…

Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh says that Channing Tatum’s dream of making a sequel to last year’s smash hit, Magic Mike, is now a reality and it is “pretty far along”. Unfortunately, Soderbergh will not direct Magic Mike 2, but he told PrideSource (via ThePlaylist) that he’s going to help out to make sure that the film is done correctly, because he thinks that they have a great and “hilarious” idea ready.

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Mother of God, is that a Hawaiian shirt made out of peacock feathers? WANT.

It may seem like we’ve seen a lot of trailers for Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace movie lately, but one of those was actually The Great Gatsby trailer. In any case, today brings the longest trailer yet for Behind the Candelabra, which premieres May 26th, starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lovaah Scott Thorsen (please, no lisp jokes). Soderbergh has been on a roll after Magic Mike and Side Effects, so I’d love to see him prove all the studios who thought it was “too gay” – this in a world where Glee enjoys wild popularity and the Disney Channel styles all of its stars like fastidious homosexuals – wrong.

But I dunno, man. First Jeremy Irons says I have to gay marry my dad, and now the guy from Basic Instinct has to play the gayest man in the world? Thanks a lot, Obama.

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I meant to get this review up Friday to coincide with the release, but I did not. Mea culpa.

Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay Side Effects is that immediately after it was over I wanted to see it again. I barely feel comfortable reviewing it having only seen it once, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had that feeling. In movies, as in life, it’s rare to actually be treated like an adult these days (…he said as he wrote on his blog wearing nothing but Cheetos crumbs and underpants in the middle of the day). We’re so used to every plot point and expository story nugget being slammed into our numbed brains with a fungo bat, that when a movie actually requires careful attention to detail and deductive reasoning, suddenly we feel ill-equipped. We find ourselves spitting out mouthfuls of slobbery milk duds to ask our seat mates what the hell just happened. (That’s right, “we,” just go with me here). I’m saying, Side Effects is like that, the rare movie that treats us Milk Dud eaters like we’re smarter than we are.

I don’t mean Side Effects is confusing in the way that Chris Nolan movies are confusing, where relentless, deliberate subterfuge is the dominant narrative device. Side Effects can be hard to follow, but it doesn’t feel like Soderbergh trying to confuse you. It feels more like he’s just a step ahead of us and he’s a little too excited to tell what comes next to play catch up. It’s an honest thriller. You follow along, and then surprising things happen, in such a way that at the time it seems so out of left field that it might take half a scene to catch up. There’s a way to confuse the audience in a way that feels sloppy, and a way to confuse us in a way that’s intriguing. Side Effects does the latter, like some of Eminem’s old singles, where he’d say something that almost sounded like complete gibberish, but you’d rewind or hear it a couple times and go, holy shit, all of that actually made sense. It wasn’t just a cheap trick. Sadly, I don’t get to rewind at movie screenings, a fact that security has been over with me in great detail, but it seems important that I’d want to.

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Is that Steven Soderbergh or did Spike Jonze get alopecia?

Okay, so this headline was blatantly trollish link-baiting. I’m not proud to admit it, but it was for a good cause. Steven Soderbergh recently sat down for a lengthy interview with Vulture. It’s a great talk and I’d encourage you to read all of it. He talks about his impending retirement (“The tyranny of narrative is beginning to frustrate me”), his upcoming Liberace movie (“it’s pretty gay”), and his tips for young filmmakers (don’t be a dick; being easy to work with is as important as being good), among other things. In contrast to someone like Tarantino, whose movies I love but who seems like a sweaty lunatic who might be hard to be around, Soderbergh seems like a genuine guy who’s interesting to talk to and easy to be around. In fact, we’re probably going to go tug each other off in the shower after this.

I trolled you with the quote in the headline because CINEMA IS DEAD!!! polemics always get a lot of clicks, but here it is in context:

Your 1999 book, Getting Away With It, is a combination of your own diaries from that time and interviews with director Richard Lester, whose films—like A Hard Day’s Night and The Knack … And How to Get It—were major influences on you. At one point you complained to him: “I feel like a codger saying ‘It’s never been this bad,’ but I really think it’s never been this bad … People who make dumb movies that make a lot of money are now treated with the kind of respect that used to be reserved for people who made good movies.” You must be apoplectic now.
It’s true that when I was growing up, there was a sort of division: Respect was accorded to people who made great movies and to people who made movies that made a lot of money. And that division just doesn’t exist anymore: Now it’s just the people who make a lot of money. I think there are many reasons for that. Some of them are cultural. I’ve said before, I think that the audience for the kinds of movies I grew up liking has migrated to television. The format really allows for the narrow and deep approach that I like, and a lot of people … Well, the point is, three and a half million people watching a show on cable is a success. That many people seeing a movie is not a success. I just don’t think movies matter as much anymore, culturally.

I’d tend to agree. TV is on the rise and movies, novels, and theater are on the wane. Mediums start to lose relevance when they stop being able to reinvent themselves or expand on what that medium can do. That said, I’ll read movie reviews, but not TV reviews. Reviews of individual TV shows seems beyond asinine.

On long movies:

Around the same time you also said, “If you go much over two hours, I think you really better have a very good reason.” I was thinking about that as I sat through the big December releases, which seemed to average two hours and 40 minutes.

The thing I also see a lot of is multiple endings—I feel like movies end like five times now! I remember being very conscious of the Lord of the Rings movies having a lot of endings. But I wonder if the audience has come to expect them.

On everything being “loud.”

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Steven Soderbergh’s film, Behind the Candelabra, starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, is set to hit HBO this Spring, and according to Soderbergh, speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour over the weekend, the only reason it’s not getting a theatrical release is that every studio in town told him it was “too gay.” This despite it costing only $5 million to make, having a name director, and starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas. (*spits out coffee*) Hold on, Liberace is GAY?!

“Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town,” the “Traffic” and “Ocean’s 11″ director told TheWrap on Friday, at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “We needed $5 million. Nobody would do it.”

“They said it was too gay. Everybody. This was after ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ by the way. Which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us.”

“They’re great and they’re really good at what they do, and ultimately I think more people will see it, and that’s all you care about,” Soderbergh said. “Studios were going, ‘We don’t know how to sell it. They were scared.’” [Yahoo/TheWrap]

Considering all the gay stuff studios release – Milk, Brokeback, Pitch Perfect, Fast and Furious – and how hot gay-themed projects are generally considered to be these days, you wonder if “they said it was too gay!” is just a convenient excuse for a movie that had bigger problems, not to mention a great way to curry sympathy. But Steven Soderbergh seems like a pretty straight shooter, so if he says it, I believe him. Plus it’s hard to be surprised by stories of business execs doing something shortsighted anymore. It’s just weird that the American public could be almost universally obsessed with super gay stuff – find me a network show that isn’t about singing and/or dancing, for instance – but only if the gayness isn’t spoken outright, like this, or I Love You Philip Morris (which had similar problems). You can crowbar some gay stereotypes into every sitcom after Modern Family, but God forbid you try to depict an actual gay relationship.

Incidentally, “too gay for theater” was the meanest thing my guidance counselor ever told me.

Gay? These guys?