In honor of Hayden Christensen’s latest attempt to convince us he’s actually a really really good actor (SPOILER ALERT: He fails.), and Rachel Bilson’s triumphant big screen debut (SPOILER ALERT: She’s hot.), here are some pics from their new movie Jumper, with a little TheJay.com love added to them. Enjoy!

Bangarang!

A little Lost-spoofage from my boys at Ravenstake to get you in the mood for the Lost Season 4 Premiere:

Vader is actually perfect as a villain for this show. He has a huge bad daddy complex, becomes less menacing as time goes on, can easily perform a one thousand yard stare, totally believes in things that don’t make any sense (hello, the Force!), and is, under the mask, actually a really annoying guy. He’s like Ben, but with breathing problems, a lightsaber and a much higher midichlorian count.

I’m sure once Lucas sees this he’s gonna put out a Revenge of the Sith Special Edition where Anakin brings Obi-Wan to see the Emperor in a shack on Degobah, only the Emperor is INVISIBLE!!! Mace Windu will still be a complete bitch, though. That won’t change.

(Btdub, isn’t “I Find Your Lack Of Faith Disturbing” the absolute BEST title for a post about Lost? Damn I’m creative! Holla atcha boy!)

Bangarang!

She’s the lead in a critically acclaimed new film coming out this week that’s generating her some serious Best Actress Oscar buzz, she starred in the fourth highest grossing movie of the year, she’s recently been named the new spokesperson for vaunted perfume company Chanel and she’s successfully swatted away the incessant tabloid reports that she’s anorexic, so why does she keep flashing the Lemonface? What could be bothering her so much?

Being as I am 1) a fan of the Bend It Like Beckham star, 2) always support survivors of the Orlando Bloom Blandness Plague, and 3) am still trying to show my appreciation for her making Pride and Prejudice so surprisingly watchable, I decided to do a little digging to determine what’s dragging our pouty darling down (man, that literation came out of nowhere!). So I clicked open the Firefox, went down the Google rabbit hole and gazed into the magical glowing ball of fictional magicalness and this is what I came up with:

Things That Are Giving Keira Knightley A Lemonface…

• She’s deep into her research on a Victoria Beckham biopic. The hunky soccer husband and scary alien boobs arrive shortly.

• Shook hands with Tommy Lee at an industry party last week. Two words: Herpes Scare.

• Can not get that damn Feist song out of her head! She’s planning to sue Apple for damages.

• Still stung by the poor reception to Domino. Don’t people realize that the incoherent narrative, pretentious color timing and excessive editing were a metaphor for the broken existence that all humans share in their lonely walk towards disillusionment? It was a poignant metaphor, people! Also, she gave that one guy a pretty awesome lap dance while Mickey Rourke watched. So there was that.

• Just once could people not come up to her and say they loved her in Star Wars? Just once! Or even go up to Natalie Portman and tell her she was great in Pride and Prejudice?

• All she’s saying is that if she doesn’t get to play grown up Ginny in the Deathly Hallows movie, bitches are gonna pay!

• Seriously, whatever happened to Mazzy Star?

• Her TiVo cut off the last two minutes of Grey’s Anatomy. What happened to Seth Green?!

• Just this very second realized how bland Orlando Bloom really was. Is now rethinking every decision she’s made over the last five years.

• The plight in Darfur (uh oh, it just real. Quick Jay, make fun of something. Pink is a tranny. Phew. Close one!)

• She made the face so much as a kid that it stuck that way. Mom was right (please don’t tell her, or she’ll force me to stop cracking my knuckles)!

• Afraid of bees flying into her mouth. Consequently, currently HATES Jerry Seinfeld.

• She’s bummed that Ben Affleck doesn’t make more movies. He was just SO good in Phantoms, yo!

• Still trying to figure out the plot of Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End. That shit was confusing! Keira became a Chinese ship captain and then Tia Dalma became a giant and was in love with Bill Nighty and what was with Orlando having to become Davy Jones with the who and the what now and the heart when why where how then the ship had to turn upside down to come back to the land of the living but what was up with the thousand Jack Sparrow’s and the crabs that walked the Black Pearl back to the beach and why again was Orlando even trying to save Jack when he totally macked down on Keira not to mention double-crossed him like eleventy billion times over the trilogy and good lord does anyone really WANT to see a Sweeney Todd movie? Remember when the whole thing was just a cute Johnny Depp performance? Yeah, me neither.

• All kidding aside, she’s just really, really hungry. Sucking on air is pretty much her daily breakfast.

• Would it kill a brother to say they liked King Arthur? The movie has its merits. Keira did spend half the movie painted blue and rocking a leather string bikini, after all. And it did have Clive Owen in it (albeit not telling Julia Roberts to fuck off and die, so it loses points in that regard).

• She’s just doing whatever she can to avoid being put on The Jay’s list of The Biggest Mouths In Hollywood.

• Taking over for the retired Derek Zoolander to create a sequel to Magnum. But I shouldn’t even be talking about it, it’s nowhere near ready!

• Actually sucking on a lemon. Apparently it’s good for the gums. Who knew?

But really? It’s probably this:

• But I want an Oompa Loompa NOW, Daddy!

Cheer up Keira, it’s all gonna be OK. You don’t have to make any more Orlando Bloom movies. The Jay promises.

Bangarang!

(NOTE: This column was originally written in 2002, to commemorate the release of Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones. In honor of the release of Live Free or Die Hard I am re-publishing it as a tribute to the man who started my love for waiting in line for movies. The man, the myth, the Bruno, Mr. Bruce Willis. I can’t wait to come full circle and stand in line for a Die Hard movie, one more time…)

The date had been embedded in my mind for months: July 4, 1990. On a Wednesday in the middle of an unusually hot summer, Die Hard 2: Die Harder would be released to the public. The first film, Die Hard, had quickly become a family favorite amongst me and my two brothers. We had seen the film countless times, reciting racy lines of dialogue and reenacting brutal violence at an age when we should have been playing baseball, not terrorist and hero cop. When the release date of the film was set, our house went into a collective frenzy. There was no doubt in our minds what we were going to do the night of July 4th. Forget barbeques or baseball games, if it did not entail Bruce Willis fighting terrorists, we were not interested.

The days leading up to the opening night were agonizingly slow. The commercials advertising the film only served to increase my frustration of not having seen the film. The day finally arrived, filled with joy and the feeling of vindication. My patience would finally be rewarded. Little did I know, trouble was brewing. My mother was called into a late evening meeting, we would not make the 7:30 p.m. showing. Ordinarily this would not be a problem since most films have multiple showings on any given night. Die Hard 2, however, was a longer film than most. My local cinema, the only one playing the film, was airing only two screenings, one at 7:30 and the other at 10:45 p.m. My mom arrived home at 8:30, and we commiserated on our misfortune. Being only nine years old, my strict bedtime of 9:30 p.m. would not be wavered, even by the rogue charms of Mr. Willis. I was well aware that the film would be playing in theaters for the duration of the summer and beyond, but my desire to experience the film “right now” was too overwhelming. Clever use of a guilt-trip sullied my mother’s defenses and soon we were off waiting in line for the late show.

It was my first experience seeing a movie that late; my eyes were wide with excitement and energy. The line extended around the back of the theater but no one felt inconvenienced; they all shared my deep rooted love for this film franchise. They let us in at 10:15, and I could barely contain myself. A nine-year old ball of energy, up way past his bedtime, waiting to see Bruce Willis save the world. The lights went down, and I was hooked.

Even at such a young age, I could feel the power of the opening night. At no other time is the energy as high, the audience as passionate, or the experience as genuine. My need to see movies on opening night became an obsession I have been feeding since that fateful Independence Day. My movie-going life was changed, and film’s place in my social life was forever altered. I blame it all on Bruce Willis.

The years passed, and the opening night experiences grew in number. Braveheart, summer of 1995. Watching the movie we all knew what was happening. The first night of the film’s release and we could all sense it. We were watching a Best Picture in the making, and no one else knew. Then, Apollo 13, just a few weeks later. The air-conditioning in the theater turned up so high, I felt as if I was the one trapped in space.

November 1, 1996. Throngs of pre-pubescent and newly adolescent teenagers pack an unsuspecting local movie theater, awaiting the release of the highly anticipated re-imagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I was fifteen, anxious, and surrounded by braces and Clearasil as far as the eye could see. The theater had underestimated the film’s appeal, and chose to screen the film in a theater two sizes too small. Teens were turned back at the door, openly crying at the thought of a Leonardo-less Friday night. As the 7:30 p.m. mark moved ever closer, the theater began to hum with the excitement. Six hundred adolescents giddy at the prospect of watching two hours of spastic, tragic Shakespeare. When Leonardo’s face first appeared on-screen relationships ended. Girls openly wept and their dates hid in their seats. This was not a film screening, it was hormonal torture.

On another end of the spectrum was the Friday late show of Michael Mann’s sprawling L.A. crime thriller, Heat. On an atypically scorching December evening, I decided to turn my opening night obsession into a sociological experiment. The Oxy pad crowd of Romeo and Juliet had taught me that certain sects of people would only attend certain movies at specific times. To this end, I decided to forego the usual mid-evening show, and instead see the final show of the night.

Returning to the conversations heard in my Die Hard line roots, I anticipated a crowd of film-loyalists; pretentious movie-lovers spouting home-made philosophies on the merits of Pulp Fiction as a new filmic-religion. What I got, however, was a collection of individuals so contrary to anything I had expected that all my theories immediately went out the window. Entering the densely packed theater, I first noticed a preponderance of leather. Everyone seemed to be wearing it in some form, be it the jacket, shirt or pants variety. They all seemed to be unusually large and bedecked with lengthy beards. It was then that I realized what type of audience I walked into. This was no crowd of kids. I had come to the late night trucker show, with access granted to only those who owned and operated a vehicle that could double for the malicious big-rig in Steven Spielberg’s Duel. The crowd reaction was unnatural: no catty comments thrown Pacino’s way, no standing ovations or audible gasps. The only sound you heard was the rustling of leather. I was a child amongst grizzled grown-ups. Two hours of crime drama could not go fast enough.

I began to examine the crowds that joined me in my opening night excursions, finding just as much joy and pain from who I watched, then what I watched. The unusually high number of people seated legs-crossed, near the back of the theater, for Boogie Nights. The crowd full of blown hankies and teary sobs for Carl Franklin’s One True Thing. And most famously, the crowd of somber adults, turned stone silent by the effect of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, Schindler’s List.

(more…)

The bar none coolest thing at the Celebration was The Vader Project, and art exhibit based around a reimagining of the Darth Vader mask. Artists from around the world, and from all different genres, were given a basic black mask as their canvas and told to make it their own. This was the result. For more info on The Vader Project, including information on the artists involved, you can go HERE or HERE.

(NOTE: I’m sure these masks all have official names, but I’m not gonna go look them all up. Besides, my versions are probably a lot funnier. Also, the lighting in the room was way wonky, and it resulted in a lot of blurry pics. I did my best to correct it where possible, but not all of them are crystal clear. My apologies to the vision impaired. And those easily made naseous.)

Cool character renditions on this one.

Brain Vader

The Cabo Wabo Vader Shack (located on Tatooine, natch)

The Uni-Vader

The Statue Of Vader-y (bring me your whiny, your fearful, your bad actors)

This is crazy blurry, but I love the Yoda on this one.

Um, …ok. Kinda lame.

Rocky and Bullvader (”But Palpatine, when do we get to kill Luke and Obi-Wan?”)

The artist put NO effort into this. What is that, paper mache? This helmet is low-fi.

Pink, but still Punk Rock.

Darth Vader looks so pretentious with that goatee. What a art house douchebag!

This one is fun. Kinda youthful.

Patriotic Vader. God Bless (The) America(n) (Empire)!

I’m Seamus O’Kenobi, this is Bobby O’Vader. i’m ready to get drunk (and force choke some bitches)!

Star Wars plastic surgery gone bad. This guy has a worse eye job than Rose McGowan.

Dude, how awesome is this one? Reminds me of one of the light up bad guy from Running Man (”Thought it was pretty funny in the Death Star, didn’t you!”).

This reminds me of candy for some reason.

Darth Hick

Bozo the Sith Lord

Love the colors on this helmet. Wish I had gotten a clear shot.

Darth Hippy

Darth totally should have rocked a naked chick on his grill. He would have been less intimidating, but he would have gotten invited to A LOT more parties. A Darth Vader upside down force keg stand would be a site to behold.

And finally, my favorite helmet of the exhibit. Spy vs. Spy Vader. I would pay large amounts of money to see a cartoon of two Vaders, one white and one black, trying to blow each other up. It would totally absolve Lucas of the awful prequels. We really need to get the people of Mad Magazine on the phone. Pitch this project up.

Bangarang!