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11-11-11 is a 
special day that only comes once a century, where people who write the day first and people who write the month first can live in harmony, not to mention all those neat little ones all in a row. It'd be nice for us movie people if that meant we got a bunch of good stuff to choose from, but no. We've got “J. Edgar,” which a grand total of two critics in the universe like and everybody else is calling a howlingly risible pile of shit. We've got “Immortals” and “Melancholia,” two pictures by crazy foreign auteurs operating at opposite ends of the respectability spectrum but who are united in consistently making films that are more interesting than good. And, of course, there's “Jack & Jill,” the trailer alone for which should lead to Adam Sandler being tried at the Hague. All in all, not the most exciting movie weekend ever. Yet.
I'm a sports fan, and one of my favorite things about sports is when your team sucks you can make a trade in the hopes that you might subsequently unsuck. Trades are exciting. When the Knicks (oh, how I miss basketball....) traded for Carmelo Anthony last season, I wasn't worried about the fact that he needs the ball in his hands on offense and doesn't play defense even though he can when he does, I was just like, “Wow, Carmelo!” Problem is, trades don't happen often enough in real life because a lot of money and stuff is at stake, which leads to stick-in-the-mud-ism.
But fantasy sports, now we're talkin’. I made one of the worst football trades ever this season, trading a top 5 quarterback and a top 10 running back for a guy who sucked so bad I had to cut him and an eccentric, underperforming wide receiver. And I regret nothing, because the act of pulling the trade off and being like “Fuck yeah, I made a TRADE, motherfucker!” was such a blast. Thus, I propose that we do the same thing with the 11-11-11 movie releases. Cast, directors, writers, any or all could change.
Now, as John Belushi told Stephen Furst in “Animal House” before naming him Flounder, “I've given this a lot of thought.” My main criteria were entertainment value, humor, and being vituperatively mean to Adam Sandler. I'm not particularly interested in improving any of these movies, since I only have to review one out of the four, “Immortals” (shameless plug: look for it on Tor.com Friday morning, and all this week my reviews of Stanley Kubrick's science fiction and fantasy movies will be running, so check that out!) I'm more interested in creating more magnificent disasters. With that said, let's begin:
J. Edgar
New Director: Immortals' Tarsem Singh
New Lead Actor: Melancholia's Kirsten Dunst
New Supporting Actor: Immortals' Freida Pinto
Tarsem, whose background is in music videos, is often criticized for valuing visuals over all else to the exclusion of all else, so at least we lose Clint's weirdly bleak desaturated color scheme. Even more important is casting Kirsten Dunst as J. Edgar Hoover. The angle we're going with here is, since Clint's movie apparently doesn't have its political bitch heels on anyway and he was already taking it easy on Hoover, why not go the whole nine and have Hoover be adorable? Kirsten Dunst, your country needs you. For truth, justice, and the American way, you give the performance of your life as the man who couldn't tell Martin Luther King from Vladmir Ilyich Lenin, girl! Also, her dressing up as a man to play Hoover gives any “cross-dressing” scenes a nice “Victor-Victoria” vibe. And “Victor-Victoria” was great.
Freida Pinto, in a career-making turn as Clyde Tolson, more than makes up for the lost homoeroticism, which is still mostly repressed except for the one kiss with Kirsten Dunst, but the entire Internet still shuts down for three hours when the clip is uploaded.
Melancholia
New Director: Jack and Jill's Dennis Dugan, fired midway through production
New Cast: J. Edgar's Naomi Watts in the Kirsten Dunst role, everybody else stays the same
This one is kind of a heart-warming story. The cast is bullshitted by craven movie executives and told they're going to be doing an art film that'll play at Cannes and be nice and prestige-y and cool and all that stuff. To their abject horror, they turn up for the first day of work and find that Adam Sandler's house director is in charge, and he's had the script “punched up” with all kinds of stale, casually sexist and homophobic comedy. At first, the actors, crestfallen though they are, gamely attempt to plow through.
But one day, Udo Kier simply cannot bring himself to play “the fart scene,” and he starts yelling at the director. Naomi Watts gets pissed about always getting in cast in stuff because someone else quit or was fired, Charlotte Gainsbourg joins the resistance because that's what French people do, though it's only when Keifer Sutherland snaps and has a Jack Bauer flashback and ties Dugan to a chair and starts screaming “WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?” that Dugan finally says, “Somebody else. Fuck this.” and quits.
After the triumphant overthrow of their oppressor, the cast bands together as one, and in a truly inspiring tale of togetherness in the face of hardship, they pull together to finish the movie without a director, and even—in one of those coincidences that make for great on-set anecdotes on the talk-show circuit—actually stop a renegade planet from crashing into the Earth. The irony of this ending, though, is that in trying to finish their art film they accidentally make a note-perfect Hollywood movie.
Immortals
New Director: Melancholia's Lars von Trier, who also co-scripts
New Star: Jack and Jill's Adam Sandler
New Writer: J. Edgar's Dustin Lance Black co-scripts with von Trier
Lars von Trier, bored, decides to kidnap Adam Sandler. Upon arriving at his estate, he finds Dustin Lance Black, dressed all IN black, also plotting to kidnap Adam Sandler.
“What brings you here?” Black asks von Trier.
“I am here to make Adam Sandler star in my newest film,” von Trier replies. “And you?”
“I wanted to duct tape him to a chair and Taser him in the nuts for making I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry,” Black says, adding “But now I'm thinking we should work together and make a film.”
“Yes, this is good.” von Trier smiles. “We will have to make a very violent film with torture.”
“But with gay-positive content,” Black says. “Independent of the torture, of course, so there are no unfortunate negative semiotic associations.”
“Yes,” says von Trier, “It will be good. And unsimulated.”
“Really?” Black raises an eyebrow. “Wow, okay, I wasn't going to go that far, but cool.”
“I think Ancient Greece,” says von Trier. “We will shoot Adam Sandler with arrows and then men have sex. This is our film. I think it will be a very good film.”
“I agree,” Black agrees. “Now let's kidnap the son of a bitch.”
Jack and Jill
New Director: J. Edgar's Clint
New Lead Actor: Immortals' Mickey Rourke, in dual roles.
Heh heh heh. Oh boy, this'd be great. Just think about Clint squinting in Mickey Rourke in drag and saying, with no irony whatsoever, “Now, this is the scene where you need to look....pretty.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man. And Mickey Rourke doing his post-‘80s customary (unless it's “The Wrestler” or “The Pledge”) job of not giving a fuck and phoning it in and doing his Rocky Dennis Zen routine. My favorite thing about this is that all of Mickey's purse dogs (he has purse dogs) would play Drag Mickey's purse dogs, as themselves.
Why, you might ask, am I inflicting this on Clint? Well, I'll tell you why. Because Clint don't take no shit off no one. Mickey'll fuck around and not put in the work and Clint'll get frustrated because he's directing “Jack and Jill” and finally one of the purse dogs will fail to shut up and Clint'll snap and beat the shit out of Mickey. Not because I have any beef with Mickey Rourke or anything, but I just think it owns that Clint is 81 and could straight drop Mickey Rourke without breaking a sweat if it was necessary. I like Clint.
So there we go. NOW you've got yourselves an 11-11-11 weekend, and due to all my tweaks, Melancholia is the runaway box-office champ, which would be hilarious. Oh man, can you imagine a Lars von Trier who could get $200 million budgets, $10 mil a picture, a quarter of first-dollar gross, and final cut? The Earth would melt. Anyway, that's all I got this week. Peace.
Danny Bowes' is a prolific writer and critic who lives in New York City. You can look for his column every Wednesday, and read him online at moviesbybowes.blogspot.com.
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lucas02sp
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... I Agree!!! 11/11/11 should've been an epic day for movies! and all we got is immortals which i think wont be ALL that (i may be wrong). Jack and Jill is the one i'm looking forwards to after Immortals; Adam Sandler most of the time does not disappoint, but i am a little skeptical. |
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