I’m sure I’ll have lots of thoughtful analysis and exciting updates about Charlie Kaufman and the Dogme 95 filmmakers coming up later today, but in the meantime, here’s a story about the dude from American Pie‘s wife buying him a hooker (I know you’d be reading it anyway). So Mrs. Jason Biggs, aka Jenny Mollen, had a plan to buy her husband of a year a BJ from a hooker for his birthday, which should prove everything you already knew about what happens to women when they get married. But hey, at least the rich ones outsource. Anyway, Mollen detailed the incident herself in a piece for TheSmokingJacket, and like many of my scripts, it all started with a bit of mistaken identity with a massage therapist.

The adventure started when I called up my assh*le friend, Chelsea and asked if she knew any “massage therapists”. Chelsea insisted that this chick would come over and with the proper amount of alcohol, do whatever we wanted. [oh sure, but when I say the same thing it sounds creepy. -Ed]
That night, I made the arrangements. I set the mood, turned on some Enigma, and poured champagne. My husband, however, paced around the house like a lunatic, wondering if he was going to get arrested for having a hooker visit our home. The girl arrived at the proper whoring hour of 9pm. I answered the door in a see-through bra and undies. I led her upstairs to my bedroom where she set up her massage table. About thirty minutes in, I started to realize something was wrong. This girl wasn’t a prostitute!! This girl was a legit massage therapist! F*cking Chelsea set me up.

Was it Chelsea Handler? I bet it was Chelsea Handler. She’s always pulling sh*t like this. Anyway, fast forward about 12 more paragraphs, and they’ve hired a tiny Filipino lady who they pay $300 just to talk. She asks for $300 more for the BJ, but they’ve gone over their ATM quota for the day and she leaves. So a few days later, they hire another hooker, this time a tall blonde with giant fake boobs, which is where this next block quote picks up:

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When I first saw this week’s TV spots for Fast Five touting meaningless critic recommendations like “an adrenaline-pumping blast that leaves everything else in its dust!”, I thought I detected the distinct stench of our favorite professional shill Pete Hammond — that tinny aroma of mediocre generica. It turns out I was right, but I’m not here to pat myself on the back.  I’m here to share with you one of the most incredible pieces of bad PR writing masquerading as a film review you could ever read.  Quote whoring?  You betcha.  In fact, I’ll designate in bold those parts the studio has or may want to excerpt in their own marketing material.  It’s great because it adheres to the same theme, you see.

Summer roars to a start with Fast Five, which features some of the most exhilarating action sequences the screen has seen in years. It’s the best one yet in Universal’s testosterone-driven franchise, a series that ignited ten years ago with The Fast and the Furious and has sped on to four sequels. Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and new addition Dwayne Johnson are all rockin’ and relocated to Rio to fight drug lords and elude the FBI, a change of direction that gives the series more energy and greater ambition.

They’re “all rockin’”?  What the hell does the even mean? Are they “rockin’” like they’ve got rockin’ bods, or did they actually form some sort of band like the Partridge Family?  Or are they literally rockin’ back and forth like an autistic kid when you switch up his routine, or me when I read a Pete Hammond review?

With its Australian opening this week already reaping smash numbers, expect Fast Five to run up a blockbuster worldwide box office and fuel several more sequels.

What does this industry reportage have to do with a movie review, you ask?  Why nothing, except that it’s a window into Pete’s methodology.  Being uniformly positive about movies he knows will do well at the box office lends credence to his bio as a “film expert.” “See? I told you it was good!  The people have spoken! And I am their idiot-king!”

In service of one of the most exciting stunts in the series’ history, third time Fast director Justin Lin stages a remarkable set piece around a superfast train shuttling souped-up stolen cars under the watch of the DEA. And the owner of the cars, Brazilian drug lord Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), is also in peril of losing a key computer chip that opens a window on Rio’s entire underground drug trafficking world. When it falls into the wrong (or right) hands, the crew, the gang, FBI agent Hobbs (Johnson) and local cop Elena (Elsa Pataky) are in a race to find a bank vault containing over $100 million. Putting together a team in pure Mission Impossible fashion, the movie rises to its most complex set piece—the heist. As the plot thickens with gunfire, chases and fights…

“The film begins with gunfire, chases, and fights, and later, in an ingenious twist, the plot thickens with gunfire, chases, and fights.  It’s like a gunfire chase fight stew, made with gunfire chase fight roux.  Pew pew pew.”

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(Pete and Rachel Zoe, sittin’ in a tree, L-I-T-E-RA-LL-ee…)

That Boxoffice Magazine’s Pete Hammond (who also writes a blog for the LA Times and used to work for Maxim) is a giant whore is nothing new — I first covered his Whore of the Year award from eFilmcritic back in 2008 — but with all the negative attention he gets, you’d think he might at least try to conceal his true purpose (providing marketing soundbites disguised as movie reviews).  Instead, as this guy pointed out, he’s become such a parody of himself that it’s like his reviews are being written by a spambot.  Let’s examine his latest review, of The Expendables.  His most blatant attempts to get himself quoted are in bold text:

A who’s who of classic action stars light up the screen for pure combustible entertainment in Sly Stallone’s The Expendables, a sort of Dirty Dozen meets Inglourious Basterds–and then some. Though this film has a less-than-plausible storyline that’s already been trotted out in various forms earlier this year (The A Team, The Losers), it’s filled with literally explosive excitement.

If I don’t see at least one of those quotes in a trailer, TV spot, or poster, I will literally eat my own sh*t.  But back to the figurative sh*t eating, the rest of this review:

This summer flick finds a group of seasoned mercenaries on an unexpected suicide mission to overthrow a corrupt South American dictator. Released nearly a year after Quentin Tarantino’s Basterds, Expendables hopes to make lightning strike twice in an end-of-season mission to storm the box office and makes off with a lot of loot.

[Sic] metaphor(s), bro!

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It hasn’t ended up online yet, but if you’ve been watching the NBA finals or the World Cup at all in the last few days, you’ve probably seen the new commercial for Knight and Day that prominently features quotes calling it “FRESH” and “ORIGINAL,” and painting it as the island of creativity in a sea of remakes and sequels.  And I guaran-g*ddamn-tee you it was a direct response to trend pieces in the Hollywood Reporter and New York Times about how moviegoers are burnt out on sequels and remakes.

The ads are so hastily cut together that they don’t even attribute the quotes.  It’s just “FRESH” covering the entire screen, with no indication of whether the person who said it was Ben Lyons or DJ Jazzy Jeff (who’ve both been known to describe things as ‘fresh’), or whether the full sentence it came from was actually “Knight and Day is a pile of monkey sh*t that smells especially fresh.”  Are you f*cking kidding me, Knight and Day?  In the era of Pete Hammondses, you couldn’t find one empty suit with whom to identify a positive statement about your movie?

"Knight and Day is a masterpiece. I loved it even more than I love cleaning turds off my own assh*le with my tongue." -Pete Hammond

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Ever since Joe Pesci pulled the ultimate pimp move in Casino, where Sharon Stone was mid-sentence and he just pointed to his junk and guided her head there, I’ve wanted to see more of Joe Pesci being a pimp. The sight of it just warms my greasy dago heart.  It appears Pesci will doing more of just that in Love Ranch (for which you can watch the trailer below), the new movie from Ray director Taylor Hackford.

Pesci and Dame Helen Mirren (a DILF if I’ve ever seen one) play Charlie and Grace Bontempo, the husband and wife owner of the first legalized brothel in America outside Reno.  Charlie brings a heavyweight boxer in from South America (Spanish actor Sergio Peris–Mencheta) to train at the ranch, and he’s soon putting his hot Latin love inside Grace’s mature, but still- steamy empanada (oh God, remind me never to use this euphemism again).  Meanwhile, Bai Ling shows up in the role she was born to play, Mute Background Asian Whore Number 5.   Anyway, it looks pretty good. I’m so excited I can’t stop grabbing my crotch and talking too loudly.

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