Towelhead
American Ugly
Trailers & Mo
Remember how uncomfortable, yet completely mesmerized you were when watching Kevin Spacey seduce Mena ‘Surfin’ Suvari in
American Beauty (no NSFW link here, cause she and her 9-head kinda gross us out)? OK, maybe you non-perverts weren’t as transfixed as we were, but no one cares what you think. Well imagine experiencing that same conflicting feeling, stretched out over 2 hours and that’s purty much how we’d sum up the icky-goodness of
Towelhead,
Alan Ball‘s follow-up screenplay to
Beauty (based off the
Alicia Erian novel) and also his directorial debut. This is easily the worstest date movie of the 2008 (surpassing the porn waiting to be made that was
The Babysitters and the abortion fun of
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and is easily one of the more memorable films of the year as well. Don’t be too scared though, cause there’s plenty of laffs to be found in and around all the squeamish bits
The title is misleading (and so is the trailer, which tries to paint this black dramedy as more of a white comedy, so please don’t bother watching it). Sure, the racial slur ‘towelhead’ is verbally thrown a few times at our babe in the woods heroine Jasira (Summer Bishil, making a remarkable screen debut), who’s been sent by her mother (Maria Bello) to live with her strict old-world Lebanese daddy (Six Feet Under‘s waaaaaaaay over the top art teacher Peter Macdissi, chipping in a revelatory performance of his own) in a very vanilla Houston suburb during the first Gulf War era, but the film isn’t as focused on racism as it is on Jasira’s spring awakening. Her path of blossoming into womanhood is about as rocky and confusing as Carrie‘s was, although luckily she didn’t have her first period in the gym shower. Come to think of it, her father’s a lot like Carrie’s mom (they’re all gonna laugh at you!), cept he actually has interest in banging the opposite sex, unless of course when it comes to his daughter who starts dating a black kid (Eugene Jones III). Jasira’s maturation catches the eye of her Army reservist neighbor Travis (Aaron Eckhart, the king of playing scum bags) and the plot slowly turns into Spacey hunting Suvari round II, where yer juss waiting for something horrible to happen scene after scene and feel really really dirty in the process. Jasira finds solace from all her sexual uncertainty and anxiety in the form of her earthy next door neighbor (Toni Collette), who also acts as a mother figure that she’s badly in need of, but once her safe house is compromised, there goes the neighborhood!
Ball obviously revels in the innocence of the young surrounded by the dark side of suburbia, and even if he is repeating himself a bit in Towelhead he’s still the master of this domain. It’s quite curious that this film is being released at the same time as True Blood, his new HBO show that’s far from the burbs, cause the two couldn’t be any more different. Towelhead is teeming with life, while Blood is (un)dead on arrival. Suck on that Sookie Stackhouse!
Dirty Jobs: Jarisa gets turned on by nudie magazines, and in turn, we getz to get turned on (screen) with a lil NSFWness from the likes of Nathalie Walker (Twaddle), LoriDawn Messuri and former playmate Irina Voronina, last seen topless in the Reno 911 movie
Verdictgo: Breast In Show
The Women
She’s Got Female
Trailers & Mo
We passed on the
Sex And The City movie this summer, so this
long gestating remake of
the 1939 George Cukor film (haven’t seen it), which is obviously gunning for all the leftover change in the
SATC fans’ wallets, will have to make do as our affluent aging ladies be having man, work and life troubles flick. And despite an overly ovarian trailer that made us want to run for the windmills, this new
Women pic helmed by
Murphy Brown creator and first time director (and it shows)
Diane English is not entirely awful. On the other thigh, it’s nuttin special tat all, but partnering up
Meg Ryan (and her
Grinched face) with BFFs
Annette Bening (second hottiest old lady ever behind Susan Sarandon),
Debra Messing and
Jada Pinkett Smith, throwing in
Candice Bergen,
Bette Midler,
Cloris Leachman and
Debi Mazar for comic relief, while givin the men
Eva Mendes (and
Ana Gast
eyer :) as a bit o’ eye candy adds up to something completely watchable. As was the case with the original
Women, not a single man appears in the film and it’s a gimmick that’s absolutely refreshing. We’re slowly turning gayer and gayer as this review progresses, so we’ll end it here by saying: men, take yer bizatches to see
Towelhead, and then let them get even by forcing you to watch this. It could be a lot worse, like seeing any movie where
Jennifer Garner opens her mouth more wide than our thighs are shut
No Man’s Land: In addition to its all-female cast, every animal that was used in the film (the many dogs and horses) was female as well. In addition, none of the works of art seen in the backgrounds were representative of the male form. [IMDb trivia for the 1939 version of The Women ]
Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers
A Secret (Un Secret)
A Titillating Tattle Tale
Trailers & Mo
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
it’s a/un secret. What is? We dunno, cause we aint saying shiz, cept you should habsolutely czech out this never dull, always colorful semi-true account (based on
the novel by Philippe Grimbert) about a bunch of French Jews, and their not so simple family relations, who are riding out the tide of Nazi occupation. Moist importantly, this is the second movie outside of
Munich we’ve seen in the past few years that features totally wicked hot actors (
that skinny wide-eyed blond mademoiselle from that awful movie
Haute Tension,
Ludivine Sagnier, once again not in
NSFW mode and
Diving Beller and the next Bond baddie
Mathieu Amalric) playing Jews even dough they’re about as Jewish as Jesus covered in bacon.
Goy dog goy!
Ill Gérard: some of the cast hactually do look kinda druish, including Gérard Depardieu’s sirprizngly kinda/sorta cute daughter Julie. here’s sum random pics we found of her in Jeremy Piven’s lap
Verdictgo: Breast In Show
Towelhead joins Secret in very limited release today, while Del Women opens everywhere where women live. and although we didn’t get to screen Burn Before Reading, of course wees gonna see it and report back. as for Righteous Kill, we didn’t get to screen that either, but if we don’t run out and see it this weekend, we fear that the word of mouth may dissuade us from ever seeing it. anywho, why are you listening to us when you could be listening to the lady from Eagle Eye telling you to do things, like THINGS!
until next thyme the balcony is clothed…
29. Sep, 2008 
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