I took one for the team on Friday and took a date to see Enchanted. And while I had no real problem with the movie other than the fact that it was for six year-old girls and not twenty-six year-old guys, the one thing I could NOT stomach was the trailer for P.S I Love You that preceded the movie. I was so traumatized by watching King Leonidas pussify it up and woo Steve Sanders’ ex-girlfriend that I couldn’t even concentrate on the royal pompous awesomeness of The Patrick Dempsey Pompous Coiffure of Awesome Pomposity (tm The Jay), the note-perfect tongue in cheek performance of James Marsden or the coming out party for Amy Adams, a.k.a. the New Queen Of The Awesomely Hot Redhead Actresses Club (it’s her, Kate Walsh, Isla Fisher, Christina Hendricks, Marg Helgenberger, Gillian Anderson from Playing By Heart and the long-distant memory of Mean Girls-era Lindsay Lohan).
Even AWESOM-O couldn’t come up with a shittier idea for a romantic dramedy. Hilary Swank plays a girl (red flag #1) dating kinda dumpy, schmoopy jazz man Gerard Butler (red flag #2 – Butler should only play ripped badasses who have no time for music, only growing beards and killing Persians) – which, by the way, like he’d ever stoop to schtupping her when he could be nailing girls who don’t look like they had Julia Roberts-sized chiclet veneers put in instead of teeth (red flag #3), but when Butler dies she starts receiving beyond-the-grave letters from him that help her to move on with her life (red flag #4). He sets her on a creepy quest to wackily shimmy around singing karaoke, get into fishing hijinks, befriend a cranky Lisa Kudrow and further taint Harry Connick Jr.’s rep by dropping clumsy flirt bombs on him (seriously, tagging Debra Messing wasn’t the low point for him?) (also, red flag’s #5-8). Also, it was written and directed by the guy who brought you Freedom Writers, The Horse Whisperer and The Bridges of Madison County (red flag #infinity). There couldn’t be fewer reasons for men to watch this movie.
Butler could be decked out in full Spartan war gear and kick Swank into a well and I’d still wait for it to come out on video. The movie could be two hours of Swank hitting her neck awkwardly on a stool and getting paralyzed for two hours and I’d probably still skip it until it showed up on TNT. Co-star Gina Gershon could bring back her Bounce character and get down with every hot female extra on set and I STILL would opt to see Alvin and the Chipmunks if given the choice.
What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to see this movie. At all. I’ve seen some pretty shite-y romcom’s in my day (The Wedding Planner comes to mind), and I’ve sat through some weepy love conquers all B.S. in my time (hello, What Dreams May Come), but I’ve never willingly sat through anything this heinous-looking before. And I’m not about to start now.
In fact, here’s a list of all the atrocious things I’d do BEFORE agreeing to see this movie:
- Be the moderator at the “Paul Haggis Fanatics Convention”.
- Sit through Million Dollar Baby every day for a year.
- Run a highly-trafficked Two and a Half Men fansite.
- Stare down the black smoke monster after I’ve just sucker punched a nun and punted a litter of puppies off a bridge like Jack Black in Anchorman.
- Have a kickass superpower and run into Sylar in a dark alley.
- Let Alan Thicke drop a Cleveland Steamer on my chest (his specialty!).
- Walk in on Natalie Portman, Megan Fox, Keri Russell and Rachel McAdams celebrating Emma Watson’s eighteenth birthday by making her a woman, and then getting the nod to enter the game only to find I’m a eunuch.
- Be Horatio Sanz’s official taint cleaner.
- Be a steroid mule for the WWE.
- Bet my life on a coin toss with Anton Chigurth (I’ll even let him call me “Friend-o”).
- Go back in time to when I was nine, watch every Nightmare on Elm Street movie in a row, and then take enough Nyquil to drop a T-Rex in its tracks.
- Have my TiVo changed so that the only thing it will record is reruns of Designing Women and Strong Medicine.
- Stand in for Kyle and suck Cartman’s dry balls.
- Sit next to Reese Witherspoon as she reads every mean thing I’ve ever written about her, than have her turn and give me the devil face from Cruel Intentions until I have a massive stroke like the victims from The Ring.
- Get roofied by Aileen Wurmos, but not the Charlize Theron version.
- Let Brandon Walsh give me a pretentious lecture about being a better man.
- Accidentally knock up Marissa Cooper and get forced by Julie Cooper to make that dipshit psychobag an honest woman.
- Have my face permanently set to Blue Steel.
- Have Steven Spielberg tell me I’m an untalented, worthless writer who will never have the skill to write a movie for him, or even something as low rent as a Baby Geniuses sequel. And mean it.
- Piss off John Lithgow until he swears a blood oath against me (I mean, have you SEEN Ricochet?)
- Be in a horrific car accident where the only chance of survival is a combo-liter transfusion of blood from Tommy Lee and Pete Doherty.
- Attend a Blue Collar Comedy Concert.
- Spend time with Shannon Hamilton in a very uncomfortable place (like the back of a Volkswagon).
- Sit next to Vince Vaughn on an 18-hour flight while he’s hopped up on Speed and in a “talkative mood”.
- Force-feed myself Rachel Green’s Shepherd’s Pie (“It tastes like feet!”)
- Share the same needle with every member of the Celebritard club (and Britney is cooking the drugs).
- Fellashe Kevin Spacey.
- Become a Scientologist.
So yeah, I think I’m gonna go ahead and pass on P.S. I Love You. But call me when Butler gets his balls back from the pawn shop and Hilary Swank goes back to playing ugly people. Until then, you can find me daydreaming about how fantastically NSFW Amy Adams would look in a live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, wondering why James Marsden got such a hard shaft in the X-Men movies when he’s so totally ninja, and attempting to add some awesome pomposity to my humble head of hair.
I mean, really!
Bangarang!
So People Magazine has named 
This month brings us The Prestige, a flick about dueling magicians, as well as being yet another in a string of movies released this year to star the dewy blonde fleshpot, Scarlett Johansson. And while many people will be going to see Batman and Wolverine duke it out to see who gets to kill David Blaine’s great-great grandfather, an even greater number of people will be going for one simple reason: to see if Scarlett finally, at long last, gets naked. Well, I’ll save you all some time. She doesn’t. And she won’t in any movie for the foreseeable future. And that sucks. Because as the reigning sex symbol in Hollywood she sells herself as the personification of adolescent male fantasy, yet seemingly refuses to bestow us the honor of showing us the chest pillows we men dream of laying our heads on. What kind of modern sex symbol would be so selfish? 
Getting naked doesn’t hold the same stigma it once did. It used to be that if you stripped onscreen you were branded, or typecast, as someone cheap enough to disgrace the acting profession with their evil jumblies. Case in point, Meryl Streep has never been naked in a movie (not that we’d want to see it). But now we don’t think poorly of someone who exposes her blouse bunnies. In fact, we commend them. We applaud their willingness to give their all, to bare their entirety, to us, the little people. That they grace us with their nude presence makes them heroes to a nation of men so overloaded with sexual imagery in advertising and pop culture as a whole, that the only thing that really holds weight anymore is classic movie nudity. Trust me, internet porn is all well and good, but it doesn’t compare to being pleasantly surprised by Katie Holmes’s Cruise-less boobies in the third act of The Gift. That’s Joey from Dawson’s Creek, those are her boobies, and the screen is sixty feet big! Tell me how you top that with a low res jpeg on your Apple iBook? You can’t! Movie Nudity has become the classiest smut on the market. It’s almost high class. And as anyone who’s seen Charlize Theron’s nude work in Two Days in the Valley can attest, it may even be art.
When an actress comes on to the scene, and is even remotely attractive, men across the world start an unofficial clock in their heads, that counts down to the moment they get naked onscreen. It’s why we buy those magazines like Stuff and FHM; we’re hoping to catch a preview of future naked goods to come. And when they finally do get naked, we rejoice and thank the girl for her generosity. And we become lifelong fans. Do you think the Cruise-Holmes ship would be so frenetic if she was merely the lead female in a crappy, now-canceled WB teen drama? I think not. But when you give like she gave, we give back. So you see nudity can help build a loyal fanbase. Nudity can help make you seem vulnerable in the eyes of critics and Academy voters. Nudity can buy you a house in Malibu (assuming you are as shrewd an extortionist as Halle). From where I, and rest of the male population stand, nudity has no downside.
WINONA RYDER
JESSICA BIEL
KATE BOSWORTH
BEA ARTHUR
Things Overheard… On The Oscar Red Carpet
Jake Gyllenhaal – I gotta go kiss some more girls to prove I’m not gay. Where did Hilary Swank go?
William H. Macy – Did you see the dick on my wife in her movie? Yeah, that’s right people! I take her home EVERY NIGHT. 
As the saying goes, there are two things you never want to see get made, laws and sausages. Whether that’s true or not I can’t speculate, but if I could add one thing to the expression, I would say the third thing you never want to see made is the Academy Awards. Now I know what you must be thinking… “You can’t see how the Oscars are made!” Ah, but you’re wrong. Of all the awards, positions and accolades given out by a body of people, the Academy Awards are easily the most transparent. Even the Mtv Movie Awards have more suspense these days (How could Dustin Hoffman in Meet the Fockers beat Will Ferrell in Anchorman for Best Comedic Performance? He’s Ron Burgundy! He has many leather bound books! I mean, Dustin Hoffman… really?). 
Some think that the acting categories are merely a popularity contest, the High School student-body president race of the Oscars. Those people are wrong. I know this, the Academy knows this, and most importantly, actors know this. Actors are well aware that there are ways of manipulating the Academy into giving you an Oscar. Ever heard the phrase “Oscar bait” when someone is talking about one of those pretentious December movies that Miramax puts out? Career decisions are often made not by money, but by how it will affect their relationship with the Academy. It’s a dance, you see. Some are good at it, and dip their way into Oscar gold before their feet even hurt. Others take so long to learn the steps that when they finally figure it out, they can barely do a box-step waltz. But make no mistake, every actor knows the way, and now you will to. 
2. Be Challenged (Mentally or Physically, it doesn’t much matter)
3. Be Old (Dying also helps. As does being near death. Reese, take note of this.)
4. Be Ugly
5. Be Owed / Be Needed 
6. Give the Undisputed Best Performance of the Year
Hindsight is 20-20. Ok, now that we got that out of the way, let’s be a bit less politically correct. Some actors, writer and directors, they come out, they are lauded for whatever reason, then as time goes by we realize something quite substantial… they suck. Maybe an actor got lucky with a role, or a director’s movie touched audiences because it related to what was happening in the world at the time. For whatever reason, Oscar chose them, and history has to deal with them. 
Yes, that’s right, if you follow up your Oscar with a string of crappy movies, and not even make an effort to make an effort in anything worthwhile, you should forfeit your rights to the Oscar, and the award should be re-voted on, to determine the new winner. Just like with Miss America, if they fail to live up to their title, it gets stripped and given to the runner-up. Wouldn’t this make the Oscars better? Wouldn’t this remove some of the atrocities in Oscar history? Wouldn’t this shake-up the power in Hollywood, and give past accolades and due back to where it belonged the entire time. No more will we have to stifle our laughter every time we see the graphic “Marisa Tomei, Oscar Winner”. No longer will Julianne Moore be considered the best actress never to have won an Oscar, because Kim Basinger forfeits her win for L.A. Confidential due to the craptastic line-up of Bless the Child, I Dream of Africa, Elvis Has Left the Building and Cellular. 
Another cheap shot (the last one on this list), but there’s some truth to it. Callie Khouri wrote The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, the signature chick flick of the last twenty years, and easily the most derisive date movie since Sleepless in Seattle (Are men even aloud to see a Meg Ryan romcom if they haven’t been castrated? I’ll look into it.). Thelma & Louise was a terrific script and a great movie, but until she atones for her date movie sins, she owes the Academy her little golden boy.
If you are a writer or a director and you win an Oscar, you have only one responsibility: make another movie. It doesn’t matter if it takes you fives years to do, or if it turns out bad, you have got to produce something else, or take the risk that history will judge your win as a fluke. So… tell me again what this writing team has produced since their surprise win in 1997? Oh yeah, that’s right… NOTHING! Sure, it was cute to see them on stage together, whooping and hollering and bringing their mothers as dates, and forgetting to thank Kevin Smith, who was the sole reason the movie ever got made. But their Oscar could have gone to Paul Thomas Anderson for his landmark film Boogie Nights. And PTA has gone on to write two acclaimed films since then (Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love), which I remind you, is two more than Matt and Ben. Supposedly, later this year the wonder twins are set to write a new movie together about crusading lawyers, but until an usher takes my ticket and their latest script comes to life on the big screen, I’ll be campaigning for the forfeit of their Oscars.
