Hello, friend.

Brother, have I got a movie for you…

FWIW, I feel genuinely envious of anyone whose soul is intact enough to look at that poster and not immediately assume that it’s a parody of something. It’s the kid that does it – I cannot look at this and not think “You have GOT to be kidding.”

I’m sorry. I feel kinda bad about shitting on this because the real guy it’s based on sounds like a “real deal” hero, and if there’s ONE decent function of religion it’s inspiring guys like this to do this sort of thing… but the poster? The trailer? Everything from the dramatic-rise-from-baptism shot to the title to the poster to the very presence of Gerard “We Couldn’t Afford Jason Statham” Butler screams ‘unintended parody’ to me.

Below, the trailer for “Underworld: Awakening,” aka “Underworld: Part 4,” aka “Len Wiseman Presents: Yeah, I’m Hittin’ That – Part 3.” Basic premise this time around? It’s “Futurama” (or “Idiocracy”) but with Kate Beckinsale’s leather-clad vampiress as the time-displaced hero.

I’m kind of embarassingly fond of the “Underworld” movies, which benefit from a pretty novel (and dense) approach to the vampire/werewolf mythology and are unique in that they do so without having been based on some previously-written material.

Apparently the vampires and lycans are on the same side now, fighting againt the human race that has previously been played as largely ignorant of the centuries-old monster-war going on in it’s margins (hence the title.)Unfathomably gorgeous actress in a pleather-onesie doing a lucha-libre scissor-kick move on an 8-foot practical-effect werewolf? That’ll work.

Here, via JoBlo, is a clear snap that doesn’t include any of other participants also seen taking part in the shoot whose presence seems to suggest the potential imminent reveal of some other big “Avengers” details. (I advise the spoiler-phobic to NOT go digging around for them just yet.)

I wonder how many people are aware that the word “Hysteria” originated as polite shorthand for “Women be crazy!!!” back in the day. About as many, I’d wager, as realize that in the not too distant past locker-room humor about the female orgasm being a myth was taken very seriously; leading to what we’d now call sexual-frustration being diagnosed as a kind of female-specific stress disorder requiring “medical massage” (read: handjobs) as treatment – which really took off once the process got “automated” (read: vibrators.)

In the upcoming film “Hysteria;” Hugh Dancy, Johnathan Price and Maggie Gyllenhaal give the history of that last part the gently-ribald British-comedy treatment.

True story: Back during one of my later DVD-retail jobs, I was privy to overhear a customer (male, late-teens) attempt to describe the movie “Kinsey” to his similarly-dispositioned companion. He explained that it was a film about “The dude who invented the blowjob.”

People do NOT seem enthused about “Immortals;” which I get but am still slightly depressed by. The idea of Tarsem Singh’s signature Fellini-in-an-opium-den style applied to what’s being pitched as a mega-macho “300” riff equals must-see to me, whether it’s a triumph or a disaster. At least it’ll be memorable…

Hat-tip: io9

Wow, when was the last time someone put one of these things in theaters? The Law&Order/CSI/NCIS/CriminalMinds/etc TV world has pretty much gobbled up the entire “Here’s an otherwise formula thriller built around this random obscure condition/persausion the writer just read about” genre of pitches, so it’s kind of amazing to see Milla Jovovich – THE great B-movie starlet of our time – in “Faces in The Crowd;” as a woman whose stature as the only surviving witness able to identify a serial killer is imperiled by being struck with prosopagnosia or “face-blindness,” meaning that her brain is incapable of recalling people by their faces.

There is no feeling quite so warm to me as being proven correct about humanity, and the segment of humanity that occupies the political realm in particular. I understand that some view naked demonstrations of craven opportunism and bald-faced unironic sleaze with dismay, but for me they are cause for contentment – for they affirm that my instincts regarding a sizable majority of my loathsome species are still sharp and well-founded…

You may or may not be aware that Kathryn Bigelow is following up her Oscar-winning – though now essentially forgotten – “The Hurt Locker” (oh, now, be honest: for most people, reading that was the FIRST time you’ve thought about that movie in at least a year) with a feature based on the military operation dedicated the chasing down Osama Bin Laden. As you can imagine, the film now has a MUCH different ending than it would’ve when they started out.

You might imagine that American “conservative” lawmakers – whose relationship with the film industry for the last decade has been largely complaining that Hollywood wasn’t delivering enough movies where Islamic Terrorists got blow’d up real good – would be psyched about this. I mean, set aside the whole “ALL Americans should be united on this” angle: 9/11 avenged by a gunshot wound to the face delivered by a Navy SEAL team on an “eff your borders, we want this bastard dead!” nighttime raid… you CANNOT get more bad-ass/macho right-wing “Amurrica Fuck Yeah!!!” than that. Right?

Well, not quite. See, the guy who happened to be President when we finally found Bin Laden – and thus got to be the President who gave the order – is a Democrat. And also a secretly-Muslim Kenyan Communist, apparently. And since a movie that, by it’s very nature, will serve to remind people that Obama gave the order and thus MIGHT make people feel positively about him… IT MUST BE STOPPED! After all, if he IS re-elected, it’s only a matter of time before whatever White Christian Babies haven’t yet been ordered-aborted will be forcibly re-educated to believe in evolution during gay marriage ceremonies, and surely some other bad stuff, too.

And so, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill specifically designed to damage the film’s production under the guise of “fiscal concerns.” Essentially, it would bar the government from spending “taxpayer money” in the pursuit of sharing information between the Pentagon and the film’s research/verification department – which would amount to asking Sony Pictures to reimburse the cost of all the copy-paper and bandwith used to answer Bigelow etc’s “how did we do ______” questions.

But, really, it’s ALL about making sure that a movie that MIGHT concievably lead someone to think a sliver of positive thought about Barack Obama. Honoring the service of SEAL Team 6? Immortalizing the end of an era in a proper narrative art form? Offering Americans still traumatized by 9/11 a small measure of catharsis? The GOP apparently does not consider those things to be nearly as important as making sure that Obama does not get a second term.

Folks… do you have any idea just HOW shameless and ethically-bankrupt ANY given action has to be for ME to be morally-affronted by it?

Of all the 90s-indie-kids-made-good filmmakers, the one I’d NEVER have expected to flame-out in a spectacular, slow-motion, ego-drive career collapse would’ve been Kevin Smith. But it’s been happening, and now it appears to be reaching a crescendo: Slashfilm reports that Smith’s much-ballyhooed “final film” before self-imposed retirement from directing, a comedy/drama about a hockey player called “Hit Somebody,” has a script so long that Smith can’t (or won’t) find a way to compress it into one movie… so instead he’s making two.

For those who’d stopped caring enough to follow the production of Kevin Smith movies (so, pretty-much everyone I imagine) “Hit Somebody” is about a lovable-bruiser of a “goon” hockey player whose employed by his team (and celebrated by the crowds) for his ability to bust heads for the cause of protecting the star players who score the big goals… but he’s actually a nice guy, and has always dreamed of scoring one big goal himself. In case you’re wondering – no, Smith didn’t swipe the screenplay for an unproduced Adam Sandler vehicle; this is actually an adaptation of a Warren Zevon song written by Mitch Albom. You cannot make this shit up.

The song starts out in the character’s childhood and follows him into the NHL, and that’s more-or-less the way Smith says he’ll split it – Part I being about the character growing up, the Pro-Hockey stuff in the Part II. Again, this is a comedy about a guy who starts hockey fights for a living.

Sean William Scott was originally supposed to play to lead, but bailed in favor of another hockey comedy called “Goon.”

Hardworking (seriously, click through – dude WORKS for his traffic) film blogger Jeffrey Wells of “Hollywood Elsewhere” has done the digging and come upon what the supernatural/fantasy angle was that made Disney’s Bruckheimer-produced, Johnny-Depp-As-Tonto “Lone Ranger” project so expensive that the Mouse House pulled the plug yesterday: Whereas “Pirates of The Carribbean” (which this was being nakedly modeled after) featured Depp and company as pirates fighting ghosts and/or sea-monsters; “Ranger” would’ve featured it’s Cowboy/Indian buddy-heroes battling Old West WEREWOLVES – thus adding a new explanation to the Ranger’s signature Silver Bullets.

I’ll give those who had previously felt like this project could not possibly sound any MORE like an “Onion” parody of everything tired, bad and wrong about the present-day blockbuster scene to compose themselves…

You should really go to Wells’ site and read the whole thing, but it’s pretty incredible sounding: Tonto would’ve been the main character, a sort of Qui-Gon Jin to the Ranger’s Young Obi-Wan; showing him how to deal with native-mythology Lycans with shamanistic magic – hillariously, it was apparently a big deal to Depp that the Native American spirituality surrounding said werewolves be taken “very seriously.”