Baby don't hurt us.

While I sit here waiting for someone to finally give me the ultimate mashup of movie characters making fart noises, I suppose I can settle for today’s best effort of some of Hollywood’s hunkiest A-list male actors saying, “I love you.” There are also some people in this that have no business having ever been cast as a romantic lead *pauses screen, gives middle finger to Josh Radnor* but this post is all about what you ladies want today (or until the next post).

So why don’t you draw yourself a nice, hot bubble bath, pop a bottle of bubbly, strap on a blindfold, lay back and pretend like Matt Damon, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Shia LeBeouf, Brad Pitt, Zac Efron, Leo DiCaprio, Robert Pattinson, that guy from Scrubs and Paul Rudd are saying those awesome three little words to you. Also, while you’re blondfolded, I’m going to steal your TV.

(Via Pop Sugar)

I made this picture. There’s just something timeless about juxtaposing embarrassing paparazzi candids with the ridiculously-stylized wallpapers foreigners make (is the idea here that Tom Cruise creates electricity, just like a wind farm? That is an amazing train of logic.).

Anyway, we’re here because Time Magazine created a supercut of Tom Cruise running. Yes, Time Magazine. They’re making supercuts now, apparently. This was sort of the obvious supercut that needed to be made, and I wondered why it hadn’t been, and then I remembered that it actually had. Gosh, this was a fun story, wasn’t it. In any case, it’s nice to see “Tom Cruise running a lot” updated for the 2011-almost-2012 crowd.

Here’s Time’s version.

And here’s one from a few years ago.

And here’s Tom Cruise Gets a Letter From His Australian Cousin, because this video never ceases to amuse me.

Tom Cruise vs. The World’s Tallest Phallus

All my life I’d wanted to see Officially Not-Gay Parkour Master Tom Cruise swinging from a giant phallus, and now, thanks to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I have! And in glorious IMAX! The plot could’ve used a little more, well… girth, to fully satisfy this lady (*pointing to myself*), but I admit with these wide hips I can be a bit of a size queen. Which is to say, it’s not the kind of story you’re going to remember anything about three seconds after you leave the theater, but as a framework to include every kind of shot you’d see on one of those vivid HD channels that electronic stores use to pimp the latest plasma screens, it’s brilliant. Russian cities! Shiny supercars (all BMW)! Towering skyscrapers! Bollywood parties! …Smooshed together mixed-race titties! If IMAX screens had a demo reel, this would be it. And Tom Cruise is a perfect fit. His blandly competent line readings just scream “movie actor!”

We catch up to Tom Cruise in a Russian prison, where his plucky gang of spy pals, including computer expert Simon Pegg and voluptuous Paula Patton (“Agent Honeypot,” I like to call her) is busting him out. They need his help to catch a terrorist! There’s a former Russian general who’s gone rogue, escaping his pen, goring three of his handlers and stealing the nuclear launch codes. He wants to launch Russian missiles at the United States in order to start World War III, so that, uh… the Earth can, uh… have a fresh start or some shit? You know, it wasn’t super clear on that point. But basically, it’s like War Games or Crimson Tide. If you’ve ever seen that South Park where the characters say stuff like “A secret government program… or maybe it was aliens… Who cares, f*ck you!” to move the plot past the exposition we’re all going to forgive anyway, it’s a lot like that. And rightly so.

Tracking a hitman (or to be more specific, a hot hitlady played by some kind of runway model), Cruise and Pegg, in full disguise, and speaking perfect Russian, infiltrate the Kremlin to steal back the launch codes. Only the bad guys get there first, and blow up the whole Kremlin! The international incident triggers “ghost protocol,” in which the secretary of IMF (“Impossible Missions Force,” not “International Monetary Fund”), played by Tom Wilkinson, as he explains it to Cruise, officially disbands the IMF, and all remaining members are disavowed by the US government and considered terrorists. Now Cruise and his team, which now includes Jeremy Renner, are on the run from the CIA, FBI, KGB, IRA, TTYL and countless Thetans, making it that much harder for them to track down the rogue Russians and stop them from starting a nuclear war.

Director Brad Bird, making his live-action debut here, previously directed Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and Iron Giant, all films with a lot of heart and humor. MI4 has almost no heart, and the four or five minutes of total screen time when it actually attempts emotion (mostly near the end) is close to unintentional parody. It doesn’t quite have “humor” either, but what it does have is a non-chalant breeziness that gives some of the sillier plot points a certain charm. When Tom Cruise jumps into Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner’s limo, the first thing he does is ask to borrow a pen. Then he draws a sketch of the bad guy onto his palm, holds it up to Renner, and says, “Do you know who this man is!?”

TOM CRUISE DRAWS A SKETCH OF THE BAD GUY ON HIS HAND! IN LIKE THREE SECONDS! Even better, Jeremy Renner sees it and he’s like, “Well of course I know who that is! That’s Sergei Prokrajac, former Lithuanian fly-fishing champ, summers in the Volga, left-handed, smart, but a total paprika fiend.”

It’s not quite tongue-in-cheek, but you get the sense Bird knows exactly what kind of movie he’s making, and there’s an unapologetic beauty in that. What he does do brilliantly is stage spectacular set pieces. The climbing sequence on the Burj Dubai had my palms sweating like Tom Cruise at an all-male ballet, and in the same scene, Bird even managed to incorporate a massive Arabian sandstorm. Talk about utilizing your setting. If Bird had directed the wingsuit scenes in Transformers 3 instead of camera-shaker/noisemaker Michael Bay, that movie probably would’ve been much less of a sucky shitpile.

Another aside here — when the team discovers that Tom Cruise is going to have to climb up the side of the building, at first he’s all reluctant, like, “Welp, if it’s got to be done…” And Jeremy Renner’s like, “Quick! We only have 30 minutes!” And so they run over to the window, and the next thing you know, it cuts to Cruise, and he’s wearing perfect, knee-high mountain climber pants! Where’d he even get those, let alone change!? He draws, he shoots, he climbs, he speaks every language, and he’s smuggling an entire Lululemon in his ass just in case he needs an activity-appropriate attire? He can’t show up to Yoga class in a Pilates blouse, he’s Ethan Hunt for Christ sakes! The man is a one-man village people.

Anyway, the laziest review happens to be the most accurate here: If you’re looking for more of what you saw in the trailer, you won’t go wrong. And if you’re seeing it anyway, it’s definitely worth the extra couple bucks for IMAX. Just beware of gays in there.

GRADE: B

From the director of Hairspray…

Aw, crap. I don’t know if I–

Based on the hit Broadway musical…

Um, yeeeah, you know, this doesn’t exactly sound like my cup of t–

Starring Tom Cruise…

Waiter! Check please!

THOSE FUN-HATING SHRIVS ARE TRYING TO STOP ROCK N ROLL! … AGAIN!

Mother of God, was that a “We’re Not Gonna Take It”/”We Built This City” hybrid medley? YAAAAAGHHHHH, MAKE IT STOP! IT’S LIKE I’VE BEEN SKULLF*CKED BY NIGHTMARE DICKS!

Game over, man, game over. Adam Shankman must be stopped. I’ve been trying to get you people to listen for years. WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE?

[Rock of Ages, opens June 1st, 2012. If the apocalypse happens in 2012, it will be because of this.]

“Rock’s loneliest cowboy.” Well I don’t know about that, but I bet he’s got the “saddle sore” part down.

“With arms, wide ooopeeennn… YASSEAH! Gonna take off mah glooove…”

Hold on to your tin foil hats and put some microscopic seatbelts on your thetans, because a new whistleblower is telling some tall tales about Tom Cruise and the church of Scientology. Valeska Paris claims that she was kept both as a prisoner and slave for 12 years by the church on its cruise ship, Freewinds, as part of the organization’s “Sea Org.” According to the Village Voice…

… she joined Scientology’s hardcore Sea Organization — signing its standard billion-year contract — at only 14 years of age. Three years later, after her stepfather committed suicide and her mother denounced Scientology on French television, Paris was ordered to “disconnect” from her family. She says that church leader David Miscavige then enforced that disconnection by having her put on the cruise ship, the Freewinds, that sails the Caribbean and caters to high-level church members.

Paris finally left in 2007 and first told her story to another Scientology defector last year, but this is the first time that she’s really speaking out publicly and sticking it to the controversial church. The Village Voice got a hold of her the other day for an interview, and not only does she spill the celestial beans on the crazy behind-the-scenes workings of Scientology, but she also points a crooked, glowing finger at Cruise.

As for her duties on the cruise ship:

“Well, the schedule in the Sea Org is very different than in the real world. You’d get up at 6 and go to work, and you’d work until midnight. In 1997 and 1998, after our regular jobs we were up every night until 4 am cleaning up asbestos,” she says. “There was rubble on the deck. We’d have to go behind the guys doing renovations, vacuuming up dirt until 4 in the morning.”

She’ll eventually laugh about that anecdote when doctors are pulling away the lining from her chest’s cavity and explaining that mesothelioma is untreatable.

As for Cruise and his very special birthday voyages, the story is super fun:

“We were all told we can’t ask for his autograph, or we’d get a comm ev.” (A “committee of evidence” is a sort of Scientology disciplinary trial.) “We can’t tell anyone that he’s coming to the ship or that he’d been to the ship, or again, a comm ev. And we had to call him ‘sir.’ It was like he was David Miscavige’s deputy or something.”

“David Miscavige saw that I had a cold sore, and I was assigned to lower conditions and I was put in isolation for 4 days,” she says. She explains that she was assigned the “condition” of “Treason,” which is below “Enemy” but above “Confusion.”

“I was in Treason. So I wasn’t allowed to go to Tom Cruise’s birthday.”

That’s a shame, I’ll bet she missed a chance to woo him and steal his heart.

“He said, ‘Tom Cruise is coming and I need really good service, so who’s going to serve him?’ A woman spoke up. ‘No, no, it can’t be a woman, because he’s so good looking, any woman would fall for him.’ So a guy had to take the job,” she says.

Ah ok, only guys could do interact with Cruise. It was for the well-being of those girls and their quaky loins.

And don’t any of you mention that wicked harpy Nicole Kidman. She never existed, and he certainly never did any movies with her.

“There were posters for every single movie he’d been in except for the one he made with Nicole Kidman [1999's Eyes Wide Shut, directed by Stanley Kubrick], because she’s a big old SP.”

Stupid person? Semen piggy? Sweat poodle? Sex panther? Surgical puppet?

“The band did all the songs from his movies, except the one he did with Nicole.” And she says three young women from the IASA — the administration of the International Association of Scientologists — were disciplined after the party. “They were trying to get Tom’s attention. So they were put in the engine room.”

And there are plenty more details that paint Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige, as a complete freak show, which is just shocking and completely unexpected.

(Hat tip to the Superficial.)

"Wait, you're what?"

Paramount Pictures U.K. recently invited a group of journalists and people who are easily impressed to a screening of exclusive footage from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol so they could show off all the neat-o cameras that they used. I’m sure many a monocle shattered on the floor that night.

Director Brad Bird boasted that the fourth installment of the watch-Tom-Cruise-sprint-like-a-ninny spy franchise marked the first time that an action film like this had been made for IMAX. Then someone presented him with a shiny new trophy and a whole batch of cookies before crowning him the most amazing man in the world.

Other footage shown included a chase scene amid a desert sandstorm, Cruise’s Hunt character scaling the world’s tallest building in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa building and Cruise and Renner playing opposite Tom Wilkinson as he learns of his mission.

It is set to roll out globally Dec. 26 this year and will be seen in hand-picked large format screens in the U.K. including IMAX, VUE Xtreme, Empire Impact and Cineworld Superscreen from Dec. 21.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

After the jump, you can check out the extended international trailer for MI4, as it features most of these scenes and then you can high five your bro and have a push-up contest.

(click to enlarge)

Besides Ethan Hunt being the only international superspy who always looks like he just walked out of a snazzy Banana Republic catalogue, the main thing I notice about this poster is how good Paula Patton’s boobs look. I think it’d be more effective if it had “NO BACKUP, NO PLAN, NO CHOICE, NO PANTIES,” with the NO PANTIES over Paula Patton and her awesome jugs. Then again, “NO CONTACT” is the same sign they have in strip clubs, so perhaps that’s a fitting thing to write on her boobs. Playing it safe, really.

Ooh, there’s the Burj Dubai in the background, the world’s tallest building that Tom Cruise impressively did his own stunts on. Although this brings up another important point… Why are you wearing a leather hoodie IN F*CKING DUBAI? A heavy black hoodie in a sea of white robes seems like a pretty poor disguise, especially when you’re covered in sweat and dying of heat stroke.

Tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays tittays….

QUICK! PAULA! LET’S SEE IF WE CAN OUTRUN THESE BAD GUYS BY MOTORBOAT!

Simon Pegg, master of disguise, infiltrates a highly-secure server room using only his finger mustache. “Don’t mind me, just a harmless Charlie Chaplin impersonator…”

Is that background supposed to be a shard of broken glass jutting out into the frame? I don’t get it. Poor Jeremy Renner. First he gets denied a chair on the Avengers set, now he gets half a background. When’s he gonna get some respect? The man’s a goddamned Oscar nominee for chrissakes.

I love this plunging neckline theme. I believe that’s Lea Seydoux, as in “Lea, Sey, doux you think you’ll ever put down that gun and let me motorboat you?”

Oh cool, Howdy Doody’s in this. I missed him.

Yes, that A-hole Burnsy already covered these new Muppet posters, but I’ll be damned if I do a non-inclusive This Week in Posters, so here they are again. I think they captured the Twilight over-accesorizing trend well here.

Is it weird to want to name your kid “Rowlf?” Way cooler than Ralph.

There’s more emotion in that expression than I’ve ever seen out of Kristen Stewart in Twilight.

I posted the first trailer for this earlier today, and now here’s the poster. Hey, camera guy, what is this, a Monet painting? Try hitting the backlight button, I can’t see shit. If this picture showed up in my digital camera, I’d delete it.

John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz might be my two favorite actors, but I can’t get past the fact that trailer for this had the old workaholic-gets-his-cell-phone-dunked-in-the-water scene, a rom-com cliché so old even The Proposal thought to reinvent it by making the water an eagle.

But hey, if Saïd Ben Saïd vouches for it, what do I know.

The pedo ‘stache gets all the press, but what about the soul patch in a perfect line? I would argue that’s twice as creepy. Meanwhile, Forest Whitaker seems to be doing his “Black Boss Hog” face.

Here’s the trailer:

Hey, Tawmmy, did you heah dat fackin’ helicawptah flyin ovah da hahbah?

Nah, I din’t hear no helicawptah. I jus been sittin in this heah Wahlburgahs restrint enjoyin a fine Belgian lagah an’ listenin to my fackin’ stubble grow. …A COAHRSE I HEARD DA FACKIN HELICAWPTAH, YA CAWKSUCKA, NOW WHEYAH WE GONNA HIDE ALL THIS CAWNTRABAND??!

Oh joy, I so love it when actors do Shakespearian tragedy. I’m going to continue pronouncing this “Corry Ol’ Anus,” in three distinct words.

A Zhang Yimou film, starring Christian Bale, set during the rape of Nanking. I don’t know why this film hasn’t been getting more press. Though I have to admit, this poster makes it look like a war movie as told through the eye of a butthole.

I want to like this movie, I really do, but it just looks like all the broadest, schmuckiest aspects of hockey smooshed into a film. “Haha, get it? They drink beer and punch each other.”

Not that I have anything against drinking beer and punching each other, mind you.

I’m having a weird reaction to this film. I love Meryl Streep, but the idea that someone actually thought we needed another boring biopic about a political leader makes me want to huck a rock at this. I’m bored to the point of anger! MY STARS, I CAN’T WAIT FOR HER REPRESSED EMOTIONS TO BE EXPRESSED SUBTLY!

I’d rather watch Benedict Cumberbatch make tea for Imogen Poots while she irons his cravats. I know what you’re probably thinking. “But… you can’t iron cravats!” You might be right, but more importantly, TRICK QUESTION, DORK, IT’S WEDGIE TIME!

I like the giant lizard angle, but I feel like this could use more Booboo Stewart.

LOOK OUT, NAZI PLANE, THERE’S BLACK GUYS ON THE RUNWAY!

This is probably the most horribly racist thought I’ve ever had, but this kind of reminds me of when you’re sitting in your car while some black dudes are crossing the cross walk in front of you and they’re doing that thing where they walk extra slow out of spite.

This might turn out to be the brilliantly idiotic film in history. Did you see the trailer? I can’t wait till Liam Hemsworth teaches Kristen Stewart how to use an axe that weighs more than her and she kills everyone with it.

This legitimately looks like a black-light poster you’d buy in a head shop.

I’m disturbed that someone thought “FROM THE PRODUCER OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND” would be a selling point.

Snow White? More like Snow KNIGHT! Seriously though, Snow White is now a knight. Who does battle alongside her phalanx of battle dwarves. God, I hope they constantly shout, “HEAVE HO! HEAVE HO! HEAVE HO!”

GIVE MORE GUNS! KILL THAT FIELD! MAKE IT DEAD!

Have you ever noticed that any time there’s a movie or an awards show or something with a bunch of black people and one token white dude, the white dude in question is always the schlubbiest douche imaginable, the Turtle or E or Brett Ratner? I don’t know if that’s a defense mechanism or what, but it’s totally unnecessary. You’re going to look way cooler than us regardless.

Whoever thought Sean Penn in lipstick making his creepy f*cking baby deer face was a selling point should be fired like yesterday.

The only thing lazier than “vengeance returns” is the crappy diagonal horizon line filled with sparks. This could so be a direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal movie. But here’s some constructive criticism, I can make this poster ten times better. Instead of “vengeance returns,” how about “vengeance is back… FOR REVENGE!’

If you bought the zoo, why does the zebra have a bow on it? Sounds more like a gift to me, bro, don’t act like you earned it.

[all posters via IMPA]

"So help me God I will shoot the next person who says 'Valkyrie'"

The theatrical trailer for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was released exclusively to Yahoo! yesterday, and I can say with absolutely no equivocation that this will be an action movie. I can tell because during the trailer’s two and a half minutes, a bunch of things explode and at one point Tom Cruise jumps out a window and runs down the side of a building like he’s in a Mountain Dew commercial. Yup, this is definitely going to be an action movie. What can I say, I have a nose for these kinds of things.

In all honesty, even though there’s not much to the trailer beyond Tom Cruise being EXTREME and Jeremy Renner making that “I am a serious and possibly evil person in this movie” face that he made during The Town, I’m going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt. Mainly because it was directed by Brad Bird, who directed The Incredibles, and holy freak you guys I love that movie. So even though I’m kind of over Tom Cruise as a leading man, and I’m generally not a fan of sequels on sequels on sequels, I will at the very least go into this with an open mind. This is very big of me and should be recognized as such in the comments.

Because I have nothing else to add by way of analysis, I will now make a list of other things “Ghost Protocol” sounds like to me:

- Something Ghostface Killah would shout during the first fifteen seconds of a song before he starts rapping.
- One of those shows on the weird digital cable channels in the low-100s where psychics or whatever try to communicate with and/or hunt spirits.
- Something Shaggy and Scooby would initiate before running off, hiding, and eating really big sandwiches.
- The name of a band Pitchfork would give a stellar review to despite the band forming only 48 hours earlier.
- A list of elaborate rules and regulations you get before you are allowed to go haunt people, like “No hiding in bathrooms and peeking at ladies in the shower” and other total bummers.
- Some sort of weird sex move on Urban Dictionary that is so disturbing it makes you feel as though the noble experiment we call mankind has officially failed.
- A cool cereal with marshmallows and stuff.

Werner Herzog is one our favorite characters around these parts, so it only follows that someone would want to put that character in a movie. Paramount has announced that Herzog will play the villain in One Shot, written and directed by Chris McQuarrie (Usual Suspects, Valkyrie), based on the book series by Lee Child. I hope he’s only doing this to finance a documentary about blind pygmies of the Serengeti, who create beautiful poetry and then fight to the death with yak bones.

The book series by Lee Child follows Jack Reacher, a former military policeman turned drifter. In “One Shot,” Reacher investigates the case of a sniper accused of murdering five people before being captured.
Herzog will play The Zec, an ex-prisoner of war who arranges and stages the killing and is the head of the conspiracy. “One Shot” is the first major acting role for the German auteur, aside from cameos and an occasional voice-over work on “The Simpsons.”

Said Herzog on why he was interested in working with Tom Cruise, “I haff been eenterested een za giggling dwarf ever seence I shoot ‘Even Dwarf Started Schmall’ een 1970, about za laughing dwarf oo takeower za zoo oont crucify za monkey. I see za parallel seetoation viss Tom Cruise, ollyvood, oont Scientologist. Oont ven I look eento za eyes uff za scientologeest, I see nuzzink. Zee abyss. Za cold eendifference uff nature. Vair some people see za human soul, I see styleests, publiceests, oont Schtarbucks fockeeng coffeez. Behind za eyes ist nuzzinkness, oont it is poetry. Eez beautiful.”

Here’s some early footage:

When your movie includes Tom Cruise dangling from world’s tallest building (Tom Cruise is that spec next to the helicopter), it seems like a no-brainer to include that in the marketing material. But so far, Paramount seemed content to play up other aspects of Mission Impossible IV (“GHOST PROTOCOL!”), such as Tom Cruise wearing a hoodie, or Tom Cruise wearing white pants. (“This summer… Justice shops at Banana Express!”). Finally they’ve hit us with the money shot in the newest poster, which shows Tom Cruise climbing the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa building in Dubai. So big ups to Tom for having the massive balls it took to do this, even if he is wearing capri pants. Or are those pedal pushers? I confess I’m a little rusty in my three-quarter length pants vocabulary. In any case, it opens December 21st.

“Must… keep… climbing. Too many… gays down there…”