Photo: Chuck Zlotnick

I’ve had a boner for Seven Psychopaths ever since it was announced, and now we’ve got the first pictures (courtesy of EntertainmentWeekly, obvi). Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to In Bruges, it stars Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson, stepping in for Mickey Rourke, who apparently wanted too much money and now says of McDonagh “he can go play with himself.”  But Harrelson or Rourke, I would definitely go pick up high school chicks with these guys. Oh, and the movie sounds pretty good too.

A savage gangster (Woody Harrelson) goes on a rampage after his beloved shih tzu Bonny goes missing, snatched by an out-of-work actor (Sam Rockwell) who pays the bills by helping a professional dognapper (Christopher Walken) pick up pooches and return them for the reward money.
Colin Farrell plays a screenwriter who struggles to find the handle on his script, called Seven Psychopaths. He gets drawn into the dognapping escapades of his friends (played by Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken).
“The comedy elements in this one are probably stronger or more to the forefront than In Bruges,” says McDonagh, who got an Academy Award nomination for that script. (He won an Oscar for the 2005 short Six Shooter.)
Harrelson’s character, Charlie, “adores his shih tzu,” McDonagh says. “Really, we all adore Bonny!” (That’s the real name of the dog, which was adopted from a shelter in real life, and now lives with its trainer.) “He loves that dog more than anything in the world and would do anything to protect it.”

Wait, it gets better!

Tom Waits turns up as Zachariah, a rabbit-petting weirdo who offers up strange stories from his past for the Seven Psychopaths screenplay. [EW, Deadline]

A lovable rogue’s gallery fighting over cute, fuzzy animals, as written with brutal violence by a vulgar Irishman? My God, this is so in my wheelhouse it’s stupid.

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After suffering the dishonor of being called one of the worst movies of the year by Quentin Tarantino, the folks behind Rampart thought they had the perfect promotional strategy to turn things around, a Reddit AMA (“ask me anything”) with Rampart star Woody Harrelson. What resulted was somewhere between “fracas” and “debacle” on the Kerfufflometer™. For one thing, Woody apparently interpreted “Ask Me Anything” as a kind of improv challenge where you can only answer in the form of a plug for your movie. Leading to exchanges like this:

SCVanguard: Out of all the roles you played, which has been the most rewarding, most difficult, and most fun? And if you are willing to answer… what’s the one role you wish you didn’t take?

iamwoodyharrelson: Can I say rampart? It really took over my life for a while. I wouldn’t say fun is the operative word.
well there was a lot of …the great thing about working with Oren is …he gives you an incredible playground. And all the tools… great direction, wonderful words to say… and inside of that he says “go play.”
Working with oren… he’s adaptable… if he finds this is working, he commands you, tells you to keep going, he’s always pushing the outer limits.
As for the other roles, well if they don’t specifically come up in conversation, I don’t give them much thought!

Holy Ambien, Batman, I didn’t know this was an interview for snoozeparty.com. Reddit commenters responded accordingly, spewing vitriol like only anonymous internet commenters can. Luckily, the event wasn’t a total loss, as another Redditor told the following awesome story:

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"Read between the lines, bro."

I didn’t read the books, so I don’t know that much about The Hunger Games, directed by Pleasantville/Seabiscuit‘s Gary Ross, other than that Lionsgate wants it to become the next Twilight. Judging by the just-released trailer, it seems to be severely lacking in vampires, abstinence, heartburn faces, or even the most vaguely ethnic temptation wolves. But it does have some neato made-up names you could imagine on a Duggar or Palin, like “Prim,” and “Katniss.” Still, it’s no “Renesmee.” That’s like a combination of “Renee” and “Esmee!”

Every year in the ruins of what was once North America, the evil Capitol of the nation of Panem forces each of its twelve districts to send a teenage boy and girl to compete in the Hunger Games. A twisted punishment for a past uprising and an ongoing government intimidation tactic, The Hunger Games are a nationally televised event in which “Tributes” must fight with one another until one survivor remains. Pitted against highly-trained Tributes who have prepared for these Games their entire lives, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is forced to rely upon her sharp instincts as well as the mentorship of drunken former victor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson). If she’s ever to return home to District 12, Katniss must make impossible choices in the arena that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

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Boy, this is sad news. Every time Mickey Rourke drops out of a movie, the baby Jesus cries and my Ganesha statue stops drinking milk. The clay-faced tough guy with a heart of gold and a soft spot for whores, tiny dogs, kids with cancer, and Eric Roberts is the perfect addition to any cast, but apparently his soft spot doesn’t extend to Irish auteurs, because he won’t be joining In Bruges director Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths. Which is a shame, because Seven Psychopaths was once set to star Rourke, Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell, and Christopher Walken, a cast so amazing it makes the Justice League look like four hobos pissing on a trash fire.

Now Mickey Rourke is out and Woody Harrelson is in, and Rourke says McDonagh is a “jerkoff.”

Back in October, it was reported that Mickey Rourke dropped out of ‘The Expendables 2′ so he could negotiate to appear in Martin McDonagh’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’ with Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell. About that: “The director was a jerkoff. He wanted a whole lot for nothing,” Rourke told Moviefone late last week during an interview for ‘Immortals.’ When asked to confirm that he won’t appear in the thriller, Rourke had this to say about McDonagh (‘In Bruges’): “He can go play with himself.” [Moviefone]

If anyone ever stops Mickey Rourke from being totally candid at all times, I vow before my colleagues and creator that I will fight that person. Hollywood needs inappropriate Uncle Mickey to keep shooting from the hip, if only to remind everyone else how completely full of sh*t they are 98 percent of the time. Anyway, it’s a bummer that Mickey’s out, but Woody Harrelson’s okay too, I guess. He’s no Mickey, but I could never be too disappointed with Pepper from The Cowboy Way.

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Bunraku premiered to tepid reviews at Fantastic Fest last year, and come this September, you’ll be able to see for yourself what all the critics were bored by. It’s a posture-heavy Kill Bill/Sin City clone (note to filmmakers: as soon as the novelty of the visuals wore off, Sin City was actually pretty boring) starring Woody Harrelson and Josh Hartnett. Woody Harrelson opens the trailer with the following awesomely ridiculous expository set up:

“Gangbusters, a cowboy, in a world without guns, and a samurai with no sword team up to defeat a common evil.”

Well sure. That pretty much answers everything. Luckily, this whole thing is made up almost entirely of similar faux-profound one liners. I think it was in discussing Kimbo Slice’s “I discovered that the ENNERMY, was the INNER ME,” speech on Ultimate Fighter that we first coined the phrase “existential buffoon” to describe this kind of meathead philosophizing (see also: Duffy, Troy). This trailer is another beautiful showcase.

“Honorable men, they die hard. …But they still die.”

“The hero is not always the strongest man. Sometimes it’s just the guy who leads the way.”

“There’s always someone more powerful than you.”

“Life’s not all about fighting.” “Come on now, you know that ain’t true.”

You can practically hear the screenwriter snorting a celebratory line after typing each of those. Though I do enjoy that this stars an actor known simply as “Gackt.” GACKT! THIS SUMMER… GET GACKT! IN… GACKT TO THE FUTURE! Yes, I like the sound of that.

[AICN via IFC Films]