A Week In Hollywood

IN CINEMAS: HEREAFTER
Now that 9/11 is a totally valid thing for Hollywood to centre a rom-com around, it’s about time someone did the same for the Indonesian Tsunami, the 7/7 tube bombings and anything else that has ruined loads of real lives simultaneously in the last ten years. As it turns out, Clint Eastwood is that someone, and his Hereafter handles tragedy with all the subtlety you’d expect from a movie which features Cousin Andy from Curb communicating with the dead and Matt Damon whispering the line “it’s not a gift, Billy… it’s a curse” (trailer).

SUNDANCE IS ON
Keep your eyes stapled to ‘the blogosphere’ this week if you want to read about what some American people think of some twee indie movies you won’t be able to see for another 18 months. Kevin Smith’s still making films. He’s made a new one – get this – on a low budget, and if the trailer‘s anything to go by it’s almost exclusively about people being distraught because their children have all been rounded-up and put in cages (yeah, snoochie fucking boochies). Paddy Considine’s directorial debut Tyrannosaur will also be showing, as well as Adam Yauch’s Fight For Your Right Revisited, which is basically an update on the ‘epic bantz’ Beastie Boys vid but starring Hollywood’s own funboy three Elijah Wood, Danny McBride and Seth Rogen.

IN CINEMAS: HOW DO YOU KNOW
Given the current vogue in the movie titling world for roping in 3-year-old children to doodle the punctuation for you with a crayon (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, anyone?), it’s pretty unforgivable that there’s no question mark on the end of How Do You Know, a new James L Brooks make-you-laugh film starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson, Bunk from The Wire and a load of other people who haven’t exactly been rolling around in champagne and plaudits recently.

THAT X-MEN: FIRST CLASS CAST PHOTO WAS FAKE
Who would have believed it? It turns out that photo of the X-Men: First Class cast which went online last week and looked like a really bad fanmade Photoshop turned out to be a really bad fanmade Photoshop. If only there’d been some sort of clue, like it looking like a really bad fanmade Photoshop. We live, we learn.

IN CINEMAS: TANGLED
This used to be called Rapunzel but they renamed it because they thought the title was too girly and would put off gun-hungry, cootie-fearing boys like myself. They changed the title to Tangled but I probably still won’t go and see it, not because I’m afraid of my feminine side or empathy but because it’s full of wacky chameleon sidekicks making jokes that wouldn’t have been funny in the 1930s and Mandy Moore. Incredibly, it’s also the second most expensive movie ever made. Is the acronym ‘WTAF?’ part of the mainstream vernacular yet?

SASHA GREY IS SAYING SOME STUFF IN I MELT WITH YOU
Two years after making her mainstream debut in Steven Soderbergh’s arty pseudo-sexual drama The Girlfriend Experience, Sasha Grey once again makes the journey from Spankwire window to silver screen in Mark Pellington’s arty pseudo-sexual drama I Melt With You; a film about a group of guys who ‘look like other men going through life: they have careers and families and responsibilities. But as with many people, there is more to them than meets the eye.’ Sounds like quite a revelation I think you’ll agree, and if the above clip is anything to go by, it’ll be absolutely crammed full of wanky philosophical soliloquies delivered to your pretentious inner perv.

THERE MAY OR MAY NOT BE A TRON 3
Trendsetting (and only slightly outdated, ugly and fucking shit) movie blog Ain’t It Cool News (doesn’t deserve a hyperlink) revealed this week that ‘teaser footage’ for Tron 3 has been shot for possible inclusion on the Tron Legacy DVD release. Still, don’t get too excited: the stunningly banal leaked scenes were shot back in November 2010, before anybody really knew that Legacy was going to be such unwatchable, unprofitable crap. Presumably Disney will be having a good, hard think about whether they really want to lob another $200m into this particular money pit.