Thighs Wide Shut

Changeling
Cloche, But No Cigar
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

‘Changeling’ is defined as a child who replaces another child that has been taken. And that’s 1/2 of what Clint Eastwood‘s latest ditty tis all about, based on the actual kidnappling case of one young boy named Walter Collins. The crooked LA police, mired in awful publicity and poor standling with the public, finds some boy that sorta looks like him and passes him off as the missling kid to the mother (Angelina Jolie, wearling enuff lipstick to hid her gross lips), mainly juss to close the case and shut her the hell up. She’s not havling it, since this ‘changeling’ is 3 inches shorter and magically circumcised (when she spouts this revelation, it packs more laughter than the power we assume it’s supposed to inflict). She pleads with the police (led by way too overly clenched jawed and Irish-accented Jeffrey Donovan) that they gave her the wrong kid, but they aint havling it either, eventually lockling her up in an insane asylum (Girl, Interrupted Part II anyone?). The other 1/2 of the film revolves around the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders (hmmmm, wonder how the two parts are related), and you put the halves together and you end up with somethling halve not. It’s an all around uneven, neverendling affair (with almos more false endlings than Return of The Kling) that does nothling much with such an intriguling true life crime

This is easily the weakest film Eastwood has made since he put out such pedestrian fare as Blood Work and Space Cowboys. It lacks the raw emotional power of his recent rightfully glorified work (even repeating the themes of the vastly overrated Mystic River, not to be confused with Mystic Pizza) and is purty much a dull entry from start to finish (the dour subject matter doesn’t help). Changeling seems more like a straight-forward Ron Howardish flick, and fittlingly enuff, he was original attached as the director. Look, juss cause a movie takes place in the lates 20s and totally rocks out the 20s cars and clothlings and hairdos and those cool lady cloche hats doesn’t mean that the movie is guaranteed to be any good (did you see The Black Dhalia? didn’t think so). There’s been much discussion about Jolie gettling an Oscar nomination for her work as the wronged mother, but we say pish-pa, as she’s basically riffling on Mel Gibson in Ransom, shoutling ‘my son! my son!‘ more times than the NY Times. We’re sure they’ll give her one, but lettuce juss say it’s a make up call for not gettling one for her much better performance in A Mighty Heart (in which she also co-starred with ‘that guy’ actor supreme, Denis O’Hare). The only award she should win is best roller skater in a 2008 movie (please don’t bother asking why she’s roller skating in Changeling), although she’s nowhere near lifetime achievement status in that category the way that Heather Graham is [NSFW, duh]. Forget it, Jake. This isn’t Chinatown

Short Changeling: an interestling title, but not a very original one, as there’s a horror movie starrling George C Scott with that name, as well as a Star Trek episode, apparently which was one of only a handful to take place entirely aboard the Enterprise

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

I’ve Loved You So Long
(Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)
We Love This Movie, And It Hasn’t Been For So Long
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

I’ve Loved You So Long walks the same mother woe is her over a lost son walk that Changeling does, but treats the matter at hand thigh with much more resonance and therefore much more success. The mother in question is Juliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas, the consummate pro, whether acting in an English or a French language film), who has paid her dues in prison for killing her son. The answer as to why she did such a heinous crime to her own offspring comes late in the film, and like Heinz ketchup, it’s well worth the wait. The film begins with Juliette fresh outta the big house, worn and tattered, not really ready to assimilate back into society. Her sunny younger sister of fifteen years Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), whom she barely even knows, takes it upon herself to help ease her transition back into a normal life, even if Juliette could care less. Léa invites Juliette to live at her house, filled with a skeptical husband, a mute grandfather and two adorable adopted Vietnamese daughters. She also forces her to hang out with her middle-aged friends, including a most uncomfortable dinner party where the drunk host pokes and prods as to where Léa’s sister’s been hiding all these years. She finally relents by telling them about being in jail, there’s a pause, and then laughter erupts. They don’t have to believe it, but it’s something that she has to live with for the rest of her life. Eventually Juliette begins to begin again, taking a job, some responsibility, and more importantly, opening up her long dormant heart to others. Powerful stuff
peoples! French author Philippe Claudel makes such remarkable debut directing I’ve Loved You that all we gotta say is, what took him So Long? We hope to love him long time

Girl B: luckily for Juliette, she didn’t have to spend her entire adolescence behind bars and grow up too quickly upon release like Jack did in the equally affective Boy A, a film that’s also…

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Synecdoche, New York
Kaufmanesque-sess
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The one thing about Changeling that’s actually praiseworthy is you can get an idea of the goings on found within by looking up the definition of the title. The same cannot be said for Synecdoche, New York (yes, your read that correctly, it’s not Schenectady, NY, although the action does begin in that city). ‘Synecdoche’ is defined (in the press notes) as a figure of speech in which, a part is used for the whole (the screen for movies), a whole stands for a part (the law for police), a species stands for its genus (cutthroats for assassins) , a genus stands in for its species (creature for person), a material stands for a thing (ivories for piano keys), yet that doesn’t help one bit in trying comprehend this incomprehensible movie. No big sirprize there, coming from the pen of the crazy brilliant Charlie Kaufman, but by putting himself behind the director’s chair for the first time and not letting his boys Spike Jonze (directed his Adaptation. and Being John Malkovich) or Michel Gondry (directed his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature) take the reigns, there aint any playful whimsy to offset his always dense, overly heady material. There’s no denying that Kaufman is a genius, and we’ll admit that the same is true of this movie, but it may be so much genius that it takes 383838 geniuseses to finger out what transgressed. We aint one of them as our brain melted so much by the end of it that we didn’t even remember how to go pee-pee after the screening. Luckily someone was there to lend us a hand

So we may not get it, but it’s about something, right? We guess. Phil C Hoffs is a theater director whose wife, Catherine Keener runs off with their daughter to be a major artist in Germany. He’s left with a broken heart, and after winning a grant, he pours his time and energy, as well as pain and suffering, trying to stage a play about his life, told in realish time. Along the way he crosses paths and hearts with an extraordinary set of today’s bestest actresses (Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hope Davis… WOW), and time keeps passing and everyone grows older and stuff happens that’s stange and odd and odd and strange! URGH! Writing this review has refried our brain again! To understand it all, you will need the following, which we lifted from Ms Modern Age’s review of the Fiery Furnaces’ questionable Rehearsing My Choir album that had the siblings’ granny running the show:

a white steno pad, a pencil, some graph paper, flow chart stencils, a calendar, a dictionary, a rewind button on your CD player [in this case it will be a DVD player], access to Google, a map of the continental United States, a color wheel, and a public library card. I’d equate listening to Rehearsing My Choir [replace that with ‘watching Synecdoche‘] with trying to write your senior year college thesis paper. You’re trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but even though you’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time working on it, it still makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it feels as though you may have wasted 4 years of your life on something you may never understand and may never master.

If the LORD truly wants to melt people who dare to open his Ark of the Covenant, maybe he should put this movie inside of it

Picture Pages: in the flick Keener’s a painter of itsy bitsy paintings. the actual work was done by artist Alex Kanevsky, but it’s currently being eggzibited in LA under Keener’s character name of Adele Lack, even though some people have no clue that it’s linked to the movie tat all!

Verdictgo: A Whole Lotta Frickin Merit But Sadly No Stinkin Badges

Pride & Glory
Ride This Same Old Story
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We’ve all been down this Glory road a thousands thymes before: good cops vs bad cops, squaring and circling off in a gritty crime drama, with lotsa carnage along the way, and in the case of this movie, a lotta ultraviolent carnage (beware of the bathtub scen
e, it’s a stomach churner!). A movie doesn’t have to be original to be good, and so Pride & Glory, with all its clichés and predictability, gets by cause it’s downright (and upright!) entertaining, and the acting is a niiiiiice. It starts off kinda poorly (wow, cops playing football!), but gradually becomes more engaging as the time passes. Most movies suffer the opposite fate, where it can’t finish after a fast start. Pride & Glory isn’t trying to be something that it’s not, but still, it at least sends the message that you gotta do the right thing, even when someone in yer family doesn’t. The good cop in this story is Edward Norton (although his goatee looks mighty evil). The bad cop is his brother-in-above-the-law Colin Farrell (amazing how he can play soft and hard the same exact way). And the ugly cop stuck between em both is Norton’s bro Noah Emmerich (sorry, but his Noriega–Norv Turner cheese grater face is mighty uuuugly). Dispensing wisdom here and there and trying to save the force’s face is their pops Jon Voight, the chief of police. Besides the commendable performances by the four males (and Jennifer Ehle‘s strong turn as the dying of cancer wife of Emmerich, a side story lost somewhere between all the gunplay), we loved the fact that the film’s action takes place in the mean streets of NYC (and was actually shot on location, giving it a nice taste of authenticity), instead of the clean streets of Boston, where this genre’s flicks (The Departed, Gone Baby Gone, etc) have been played out way too much recently. P&G is far from being New York’s finest, but no one said it had to be

Grease Lighteningers: Rick Gonzalez and John Ortiz are always the greasiest lookin actors on screen. both appeared in P&G, and both tried their best to out grease the other. both are also fab actors, but we’d rather talk about how greasy they look, or at least how Rick looks like Joakim Noah

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

So Long and Synecdoche open in NY/LA only, Changeling in select cities, and P&G everywhere today. Also opening in NY is The Universe of Keith Haring, which we saw at the Tribeca Film Testical and weren’t exactly in love with

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

back by popular demand (although no one really asked for it, but you will after you see the pic below), Run Fat Boy Run hottie India de Beaufort

Triumph the Insult Dog meets David Blaine

come play with Danny, Jack and Wendy this Halloween at the Timberline Lodge as they celebrate The Shining

watch Amblin’, Señor Spielbergo’s first filmed entertainment on 35mm film

wtfrak, Sardo Numspa once banged that hot chick from Art School Confidential?

keep an eye and a thigh on Zoe Kazan

Lily Cole in French Playboy [barely NSFW]

Truthful TV Cards [Defamer]

Hole in the Wall host Mark Thompson daylights as a jumping around weatherman

free Slumdog Millionaire screenings

Genghis Tron, sorta maybe kinda the greatest band name ever?

nice to see that our John Kerry @ Wendy’s gif is reporting for YTMND duty

Boyd Aviation lives! Hopefully it’s still all ball bearings nowadays

The Face(s) of the Earth

plenty more Креативные люстры

meat Zita Vass, aka Californication‘s Destiny
who was ‘mouth raped’ by Hank [NSFW]

she’s so fine that even Sarah Palin would f%ck her

W.
The Fortunate Son Also Rises and Falls
Trailers & Mo

We know what yer thinking, George W. Bush’s life and crimes, told thru the cracked glass eye of Oliver Stone, a slam-dunk of left-wing filmmaking that would make Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a walk in a 7-11, right? Well, believe it or snot, the sword remains in the Stone, as the olde blowhard holds himself back a little in sending up our reviled 43rd President. There’s even a bit of respect and humility to be found within, and you might juss find yerself sympathizing with the man who improbably followed in his father’s giant footsteps, even if he wasn’t remotely qualified or interested in the first place. Of course Bush doesn’t get off easy (this is Oliver Stone flick we’re talking about here), but the Cowboy Prez has given us all so many lay-ups throughout his two terms filled with poor policies, decision making and infinite amount o’ malapropisms that it’s impossible to make a GWB flick that doesn’t skewer him… although we’d love to see David Zucker give it a try. The result ends up being one of Stone’s most pleasurable, hilarious and rewatchable films to date. Not saying it’s close to being one his best, but this one’s a bit easier to digest than say Born On The 4th of July, Natural Born Killers or the headache that was U-Turn, which we saw on a plane and made us so sick that we almos jumped off the plane

They’ve never had an Academy Award category for best casting, but if they did W. would mos definitely win in less than a heartbeat. You’ve never seen so many spot on picks of look-a-likes (with a lotta help in the make-up dept) and the performances to back it up. James Brolin as Bush is beyond yumcrecible, and from Toby Jones slicking it up as Karl Rove to Richard Dreyfuss frightening us to death as Dick Cheney to Jeffrey Wright honoring the dishonored Colin Powell to Elizabeth Banks finally acting in a real movie as Laura Bush to Thandie Newton hamazingly sticking a pole up her butt to stiff it up like Condoleezza Rice, it’s one humongo treat to see such a display of near-perfect mimicry (SNL doesn’t count, especially since Darrell Hammond does 98% of the impressions). Everyone else in the cast is mad dandy, from Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush to James Cromwell as George Sr (Brolin suggested him for the role) to Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld to Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair (what, Michael Sheen wasn’t available?) to Bruce McGill as George Tenet, but they merely appear, while the others mentioned above disappear into their real-life roles

After about an hour into the film, which shuttles back and forth between his wild and crazy salad days (although no mention of his coke habit?) leading up to being born again and the infancy of his presidency that dealt with selling WMD rumors to the World (and on the internets), the OMG novelty of the imitations wears off on the audience, even if the actors continue to ham it up. Since Bush’s story isn’t even close to being fully written, this premature take on his life, without the benefit of looking back (in anger), really has no where to go, other than wagging a no-no and uh-no finger over and over. We were eggspecting another bout of depression, like what happens when a Democrat watches HBO’s Recount, but the film ends up in a state exactly where our Commander in Chief currently resides, lame duckdom. Nonetheless, it was a duck worth shooting (filmwise, not bullet you sick fork!)

Stiller The One: would somebody please turn Ben Stiller’s Oliver Stone Land skit into a reality already?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

What Just Happened
Barely Levinson
Trailers & Mo

Besides a few decent bit parts here and there, Robert De Niro hasn’t shined dramawise since 1997, the year that saw the triple golden release of Jackie Brown, Wag The Dog and Cop Land. So many films in between have wasted his talents, turning the next cunning young Brando into the next sloppy old Brando. With Barry Levinson‘s What Just Happened, De Niro finally has a movie where he can be cool and not act the fool. Based off of Hollywood producer Art Linson‘s tell all book What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line DeNiro walks a marathon in his shoes, hand-holding needy actors, dealing with ex-wives (Robin Wright Penn?) and his offspring, and trying to convince a director (the always throaty, always amusing Michael Wincott) that having a dog shot on screen in the closing moments of a movie is probably not the recipe for box office success. De Niro as Linson makes perfect sense, considering he produced a bunch of Bobby’s films, including but not limited to The Untouchables, Heat and We’re No Angels
, which also starred Sean Penn, who plays himself in the dog gets shot movie within the Happened movie. There’s plenty o’ insider jokes strewn about (like Bruce Willis, also playing himself, who vehemently refuses to shave his beard before production begins on a film, juss like what happened with Alec Baldwin and the Linson produced movie The Edge), but most of them will go straight over the heads of any Hollywood outsider. The film plays out like a more mature, realistic season of Entourage, De Niro acting as an Ari & E composite, yet without all the glitz and glam and gams, it doesn’t even come close to being as delectable as the way too guilty pleasured HBO show. Entourage makes you want to jump in on the fun, but Happened makes you want to run away from it. We should probably follow the advice of the later, yet we’d rather keep watching Entourage. Wait, what just happened?

More Good Than Meagan?: Moon Bloodgood, so darn bloody good. we pray she MOONS us. and oh yeah, she shows one of her brestestestest to Bobby D in Happened

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Filth and Wisdom
Crazy/Beautiful Strangers
Trailers & Mo

There aren’t many out there who are fans of Madonna’s work in front of a camera, us included, and for the non-believers we should all be pleasantly sirprized at what she can do behind the camera. Filth and Wisdom is her first foray into directing, and while it definitely reeks of someone’s first try, it’s promising enuff that we certainly hope she tries again. The film is visually bare, and the script, by her recently divorced hubby’s EPK maker, Dan Cadan (she also snatched Tyrone, and Thigh fav Tommy The Tit from his Snatch), is overly trite (we coulda done w/o the looking into the camera narration with deep ‘wisdom’), but her characters, a pharmacist who steals drugs and wants to save starving kids in Africa (bright eyed Vicky McClure, see below), a ballet dancer turned stripper (hottie Holly Weston, but not this Holly Weston? [NSFW]), a formerly abused child now making cash as a S&M master to support his gypsy band (Gogol Bordello ringleader Eugene Hutz, a long overdue follow-up to his incredible work in Everything Is Illuminated), and a writer who lost his lust after going blind (Madonna pal Richard E Grant), are so colorful that you’ll want to see how the painting turns out

SeeQuest: is it juss us or does Vicky McClure look an awful lot like dearly departed Jonathan Brandis? you be the judge (dreads)

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

W. opens wide, while Happened hits up limited theaters and Filth rocks out only in NY today

Rental Round-Up Dawg, Billy Donovan Edition:

You know how we feel about Donovan, don’t you? Well, if you didn’t, he’s probably the mos unappreciated living musician in the world today. While his 60s contemporaries like the Beatles and Bob Dylan have rightfully reached iconic status, Donovan’s extraordinary wealth of work has been hiding in the shadows for decades (having one’s songs in commercials don’t count). A crying shame if you ask us. And unlike the Beatles and Dylan, Donovan’s never had a documentary chronicling it all… until now. Juss released a week ago was Sunshine Superman – The Journey Of Donovan, a 3 hour + (!!!!) look back and forward on the folky Scottish troubadour that wants you to wear your love like heaven. Donovan himself does a majority of the talking here, and although it would have benefited from a few more outside sources (we wanted to hear Jimmy Page talk all about playing guitar on ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’), his tales are worth listening to. This is a perfect DVD to get to know him and then some, especially for the diehards, and probably best watched in two sittings. There’s an additional bonus disc chock full o’ goodies including music videos, TV appearances and concert footage, unreleased songs and much much much much much much more. Go on now, take the journey!

Odds are pretty high that you missed last year’s absorbing and deeply tender doc Billy The Kid, about a wonderfully energetic and slightly off centered kid named… Billy. We loved it like crazy (it’s like American Teen, but with
one teen, who has more problems then all them teens combined!), and you will too, if you ever give it the chance. Had we seen it a bit earlier in 2007, it woulda most likely cracked our top ten of that year, and not juss been an Honor Blackmanable Mention. Sure, the disc may be a bit late in arriving, but we’re rewarded with a nice lil special feature of what Billy’s been up to and how the attention from the movie has affected him. Also, be sure to czech out the interviews with director Jennifer Venditti, which only enhances second viewings of this mos honest doc. The DVD will be released on 10/28

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Raiders fans, the only thing scarier than Raiders owner Al Davis

Diora Baird is Topless in Maxim, But Not Topless Enough

Whitney Port, Betty Draper understudy

Kristen Schaal, waiting to be cast on Dancing With Cattle

don’t know how we missed this one: Girls Of Maxim In The Bath Calendar – 2007 [NSFW]

Hollyoaks Hottest Ever Honeys

what the valley forge did they do to our girl Carey Mulligan’s hair?

Michael Winslow/Larvelle Jones scenes from Police Academy 1-7

1996 McDonalds Hamburger

Dewey Readmore Books

and justin case you’ve missed it here or st else-wear: CakeFarts and Diesel SFW XXX [NSFW]