Massive "Twilight" Payday Looming?

A report in Variety suggests that the Twilight gang might be in for a massive payday. Summit Entertainment were an also-ran production company when they acquired the rights to the series, but as New Moon closes in on $500 million at the box office, they are no doubt now players in the game. The series has been - and will continue to be - a gravy train for Summit because they've made the films on modest budgets and locked up their cast to inexpensive four picture deals back when they - and the franchise - we're barely a speck on the pop culture radar.

However, when you do nearly half a billion in box office the executives start clamoring for a way to milk the golden cow again. The final book in the series, Breaking Dawn is the only property not filmed yet and now the studio wants to split it into two separate movies. (This is the same thing that Warner Bros. recently did with the last Harry Potter book.) This, of course, means the four picture deals no longer cover all of the films they want to make and that means they need to re-open all of their negotiations, only this time, they don't have the power and the principals know exactly what they are worth. This would require Summit sitting down with author Stephanie Meyer and cast members Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and asking what address they would like them to back up the dump truck full of cash to. Those would prove to be incredibly expensive conversations.

Scorsese Poster Re-Designs

Ivan Vidovic is a Bosnian born, Portland-based graphic designer who was tasked with re-designing the poster art for some of Martin Scorsese's films as an assignment for class (and seemingly for a Scorsese retrospective in Portland.) This sort of thing hits me square in my nerd button. I've previously posted about a cool custom This is Spinal Tap poster that was created for a screening at the Alamo Draft House. I really love some of the posters they have commissioned. The Spinal Tap one is something I'd like to buy and I'd love to get my hands on this Blues Brothers one as well. This Shining poster is also highly flammable and they recently did a cool Halloween one as well.

Click Image to Enlarge

Moving on to the Scorsese re-designs, they're a mixed a bag. Vidovic, who did these posters for Portland's NorthWest Film Center who were hosting a small Scorsese retrospective, has some successes here, but also a massive miss as well. First, if we're gonna get nerdy about it, I prefer my poster re-designs to incorporate the credits at the bottom like a real movie poster, which these do not. That being said, I really like the Taxi Driver one, even though it's not terribly original. His Gangs of New York one works well and I think the Age of Innocence poster is a drastic improvement over the one sheet the studio actually used. However, his Aviator poster really doesn't work for me at all. It appears he was more interested in coming up with a design then he was in conveying anything about the movie it's supposed to be advertising.

The image of Scorsese's glasses and eyebrows at the top of this post is also the work of Vidovic. Check out a gallery of his work here.

Schwarzenegger as a Hick

I just recently saw Terminator Salvation - when it hit Blu Ray - and was incredibly disappointed. The film seems like a confused mess. Is it about Christian Bale's John Connor, is it about Sam Worthington's Marcus character, is it about Kyle Reese; it never really decides and the movie suffers greatly as a result. I wasn't expecting the film to be great after the luke warm reviews, but I thought the idiotically named McG - the film's director - would at least be able to create some fantastic actions scenes because his brain-dead Charlie's Angels filmsdefinitely delivered over the top glossy actions scenes and this movie, with the exception of a cool helicopter crash scene, doesn't even have that. The entire film seems to be set in boiler room with four constants: smoke from an undetermined source; sparks raining down from an undetermined source; strobe lighting, again, from an undetermined source and finally balls of fire that randomly shoot up in the air, again, of course, from an undetermined source. The movie looks like it takes place entirely in the video for Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys.'

There are a lot of things missing from Terminator Salvation that made the series successful in the past, chief among them Arnold Schwarzenegger, (who briefly appears in a cheesy FX-created cameo.) Also missing is a villain, which is really inexcusable as this series has thrived on great villains, but also totally absent is any sense of humor at all. Easily the funniest (and funnest) part of Salvation is the tape recording of star Christian Bale having a hissy fit on the set. Other then that, this is an utterly humorless affair, and the story is too stupid to be taken totally seriously.

Which leads me to the above clip, which is a deleted scene from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, that I somehow missed on DVD. In this scene, we see an industrial video for Cyber Research Systems and we meet Sergeant William Candy, the US soldier selected to be the human model for the T-800 cyborg we would learn to know and love in the first three films of the series. My favorite part is when the guy says "I dunno about the accent," and the response, from a man with a suspiciously Austrian twang is "We can fix it."

JB Smoove Interviews JB Smoove

This season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which just ended last week, was absolutey fantastic. All of the press about this season centered around the plot line that saw star Larry David script a Seinfeld reuinion episode which led to many of the actors from the series playing themselves on the show within the show.

As great as all of that was - and it was pretty terrific, hilighted by learning that George Costanza had become a multi-millionaire inventing the iToliet, an iPhone application that told the user where the nearest public toliet was, only to lose all the money to Bernie Madoff - my favorite character on the show has always been Leon Black who's played by comedian/actor J.B. Smoove. He had some hilarious moments this season, but none will top when his entire family moved out of Larry's house following a felattio related misunderstanding - it happens - but Leon just casually headed upstairs to his room cementing him as Larry's rent-free roommate for life.

Check out the video above where J.B. interviews J.B. As funny as J.B. is in this; the funniest part is how truly awful the sight-line for the J.B. on the left is, which instantly shatters the illusion that they are in the same room.

Super Lame

One of the lamest horror series of the 1980's was the Amityville Horror franchise. The original, which claimed to be a true story but subsequently ignored the true horror of the story (a man killed six of his family members in the house in 1974) and instead focused on the bullshit (a family of sleaze balls moved into the house and claim the had to flee it in 1976 because of paranormal activity. The film, of course, treats their claims as fact.) It was soon followed by a prequel, Amityville II: The Possession, which had nothing to do with the real case; despite claiming to be about the family that lived there before the people depicted in the original film. A year later, a 3D sequel followed and then the franchise hibernated for six years before returning as a made-for-TV movie which then led to a string of straight-to-video sequels in the 1990's that were only connected by the house with the iconic windows.

These sequels got so desperate that many of the plots centered around "cursed" items from the original house spreading evil. The last one, titled Amityville Dollhouse, is, like the title suggests, about a dollhouse version of the Amityville house that is, of course, haunted and evil. Under the stewardship of schlockmeister Michael Bay, the franchise got re-booted in 2005 with a flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George and while the movie was mediocre at best, it did over $100 million at the box-office. Bloody-Disgusting.com, a solid source for all things horror, is reporting that the Weinstien Company - who seem increasingly desperate these days while they spending most of their time pissing on their legacy while they churn out shit - are planning to remake the film yet again. So, to be clear, there have been nine movies - all of them based on a bullshit account of a haunted house with zero evidence that anything supernatural ever occurred there - and all but one of them have been utter shit. So of course it's time to make another one. Just like the old expression - tenth times the charm.

A new Amityville film based on the actual truth of the story - a son in his early twenties awakens in the middle of the night and systematically slaughters his enitre family with a rifle while they lie sleeping in their beds for seemingly no reason - might be interesting. But I think we all know why the Weinstein's are suddenly interested in reviving this franchise yet again, and that is the massive box office success of the haunted house flick Paranormal Activity. News like this makes me really sad about the state of Hollywood. It's bad enough that remakes are so common place in the industry now, but now we're remaking remakes of movies that weren't even that good in the first place. And to make matters worse, this remake is just five years after the last lame attempt to cash in on this property. We need another Amityville Horror film like we need a hole in the head.

And I'll pass on the hole.

Close Encounters of the Red Neck Kind

If Steven Spielberg got hammered at Lynyrd Skynrd concert and did a hasty re-write of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the film might have turned out something like this. Marc Bullard has mashed up the musical elements of the decidedly unmusical - and iconic - 1970's films Close Encounters and Deliverance. "Dueling Banjos" representing the musical bridge between humanity and an alien life form seems like a solid idea to me. I particularly like the inclusion of the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee's horn to add another level of the southern-fried hillbilly vibe.

"Back to the Future" Rap

Have you ever said to yourself, "How come nobody's taken the time to write and record a rap song about the events of the movie Back to the Future?" I know I certainly have. And now, finally, comes proof that dreams really do come true. The incredibly famous band Futuristic Sex Robotz have released "Back to the Future" a rap track that almost painfully details the entire plot of the classic 1985 movie. The only thing missing is a collab with a free styling Christopher Lloyd spitting mad rhymes about the flux capacitor. But then again, there's always the remix.

"Family Guy" Tackles "Empire Strikes Back"

In 2007, Family Guy did a fantastic spoof of Star Wars called Blue Harvest, which was a surprisingly faithful re-telling of the films story with some very clever casting choices in terms of matching characters from the show to the movie. It was a big hit on TV, and also sold well on DVD, so it was inevitable that they would return to the well for a sequel. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is essentially Fox's golden boy (and he's got the $100 million plus contract to prove it) and as a result, he's able to raid the vaults and mine gold from some of the properties in the Fox catalog, which includes the Star Wars films. I was stunned watching Blue Harvest (which was the fake working title of the third Star Wars flick Return of the Jedi) by what they got away with and some of the liberties they took with the Star Wars universe. For example, the local town pedophile was cast as Obi Wan Kenobi and openly lusted after Luke Skywalker. Had they been forced to be too precious with the material, it wouldn't have been nearly as funny, or as a fun, so I applaud Fox for allowing MacFarlane to do what he does best with their most sacred of lambs.

Today the trailer for the long-awaited sequel finally arrived. The follow up, titled Something Something Something Dark Side is their spoof of The Empire Strikes Back, and it's set to hit iTunes, DVD and Blu Ray on December 22nd. You can only assume that their decision to spoof Empire means a Family Guy take on Return of the Jedi is a virtual certainty.

Check out the trailer above.

The Next Big Thing

The short film you see above was made by a Uruguayan filmmaker named Fede Alvarez. Amazingly, he shot this flick for $300 using friends as actors and provided the considerable special effects himself. The film, titled Panic Attack, shows a full-scale alien/giant robot invasion and the considerable destruction they cause. Two weeks ago, Alvarez put the short up on YouTube, and shortly after he began fielding calls from Hollywood ranging from agencies that want to rep him to production companies that want to work with him. His story mirrors Neill Blompkamp's. Blompkamp, the South African filmmaker who exploded onto the scene this summer with the excellent sci-fi flick District 9, was discovered by Peter Jackson in part on the strength of his excellent FX heavy short Alive in Joburg. (You can see that short at the bottom of this post.)

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Alvarez is in L.A. this week taking meetings and mapping out what he'll do next.

Instant Karma

In hockey, you often hear coaches singing the praises of players that score goals and then simply skate to their teammates for congratulation then head to the bench. No over the top celebration, no fist pumping, no arms thrown in the air. There's no need to rub it in the face of the opposition or show up the goaltender with corny theatrics after you've scored. In football, they actually assess a penalty for "end zone celebrations;" a rule created out of neccessity when players began to choreograph eloborate celebration routines, some of them even involving props smuggled onto the field of play. Sadly, I'm not joking about that. If this rule didn't exist, I assure you, we'd already have seen a bunch of NFL players in the endzone doing the dance routine from Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

In hockey, Don Cherry in particular would be quick to criticize players he felt celebrated their goals with two much pizzazz and not enough of humility. Countless times Cherry has shown old footage of Bobby Orr, his long time mancrush, scoring a jaw dropping end to end goal then Orr never celelbrates. In fact, he skates back to the bench looking sheepish, almost embarassed by the adulation raining down on him from the crowd. The old adage is "act like you've been their before." The simple implication being if you're this excited about scoring, it seems like maybe you've never scored before in your life and you're surprised as hell that you did it.

Check out the clip below. It is, after all, a pretty good goal, but his celebration - and the instant karma that follows - is priceless. (As an added bonus you also get a little scat)

"Stu's Song" for Oscar!

I can't really think of an Oscar category I could care less about then Best Original Song; especially after last year's debacle with Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler" inexplicably getting snubbed.

But that has all changed now.

"Stu's Song (What Do Tigers Dream Of?)" from The Hangover has officially been submitted for Academy Award consideration by Warner Bros. Ed Helms - who plays Stu and performs the song in the film - talked to GQ in the current issue about the process. "Warner Bros. asked me to submit "Stu's Song (What Do Tigers Dream Of?)" in the best-song category for the Academy Award. So we wen through the rigmarole of actually having it transcribed and writing out the score. Todd (Phillips, the films director) and I made an official submission. It's so ridculous." Co-star Zach Galifinakis (who also appears in the excellent series Bored to Death) added "I saw Ed passing out flyers at the Grove (an L.A. mall) for it to be nominated, and I think that is supertacky."

For those of you that haven't seen The Hangover; first of all, go see it, it's terrific. But more on point, the song appears toward the end of the film when Stu slides behind a grand piano in their pimping Las Vegas suite and plays an impromptu song that tells the story of a kidnapped tiger, a lost friend and crystal meth tweakers. I would absolutely love for this song to be officially nominated for an Academy Award, but I think the odds of that are staggeringly long. That being said, I think this is a cause I can really get behind, so please, spread the word about "Stu's Song." We need a grass roots movement to get "Stu's Song" some official Academy love. So spread the word. Take the bottle, drink it down, pass it around.

Lusty Legos

When I was a kid I loved Lego. I had a massive Lego town in the basement that sprawled off of a big work table, spilling over onto counters in the basement kitchen. The town was so big that it had it's own airport (with full terminal) two police stations, two fire stations, a little sub-division of homes, a movie studio, a hockey arena (home of the Legoland Killers) and the occasional mansion. I was a very easy child to buy for. If it was Christmas or my birthday you could never go wrong giving me Lego. Every block I had was used in my ever-expanding Lego city.

I thought I was awfully creative with the things I built in my lego city, but in the hours and hours of time I spent playing Lego, it never occurred to me that Lego could be used to create naked ladies. Looking back, I'm kind of ashamed that I never figured this out. Check out these brilliant examples of what I should have been doing.

The Griswolds Return... In an Ad

National Lampoon's Vacation, the original classic, is one of my favorite comedies. The sequels got worse and worse and til the franchise bottomed out with the straight-to-video clunker Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure that, for obvious reasons, I've never seen, but juding by it's title it sounds awful, shameless and embarrassing. Because of the sad state of the series, I had no ambition to see it revived. After the woeful, poorly written and poorly made Vegas Vacation, the franchise was essentially dead (and that was before the strangely titled Christmas Vacation 2, a direct sequel to the third film in the series that was made following the fourth film and is strangely titled part two, but that's neither here no there.) However, Chevy Chase, who hasn't really been funny since the late 1980's, has consistently been delivering the goods on the underated new comedy series Community so there's reason to believe Clark Griswold can still deliver the laughs.

Today came news that the Griswolds will in fact return, but not in another ill-fated sequel, instead, they will resurface in a Super Bowl ad campaign for HomeAway Vaction Rentals. Both Chevy Chase and Bevery D'Angelo, who played his wife Ellen in the series, will reprise their roles. D'Angelo, who's been seen recently on Entourage where she plays Ari Gold's partner, looks very different today then the woman we remember as Ellen Griswold. It should be interesting to see her step back into the role. Hopefully it's funny as well. No word on whether the kids, Rusty and Audrey will be featured in the campaign though because no actor can really claim to have "owned" the part, that casting is less crucial. The Griswold kids were recast in almost all of the sequels (only Dana Barron, who appeared in the original, in 1983, and returned to the series twenty years later for Christmas Vacation 2, has reprised the role.) It's really kind of irrelevant, the children were only a source of laughs in the first film when young Rusty Griswold was played by the brilliant Anthony Michael Hall. Hall, in the two years after Vacation, went on a great run starring in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live as a 17 year old. (Then left the show a year later to check into rehab.)

It would be fantastic to see Anthony Michael Hall back in the role again for this ad campaign but I suspect that won't happen. Last month /Film reported that Fred Dobkin, the director of Wedding Crashers, has been hired to produce and possibly direct a dreaded "reboot" of the Vacation series that would focus on a now adult Rusty Griswold and his vacation road trip with his own family with Chevy Chase and Bevery D'Angelo returning as grandparents. Never was Anthony Michael Hall's name mentioned despite his excellent comedy pedigree. I've never understood why someone with his incredible delivery and timing hasn't done any comedy work in over twenty years.

But what the hell do I know?

Bullshit: Anvil Gets Shafted

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the folks behind the increasingly irrelevant Academy Awards, released their short list of 15 documentaries that will be "eligible" for the Best Documentary Oscar. Why these clowns feel the need to make a short list instead of simply letting Academy members vote for whatever they want is unclear, but alas, that's not the problem here.

Missing from the list is Anvil: The Story of Anvil! the fantastic documentary that told the story of the Toronto heavy metal band that formed in the late 70's and spent the bulk of the 80's somehow just missing the wave of metal mania then much of the 90's playing forgettable gigs in lousy venues refusing to give up on their dream of being rock gods. If you haven't seen this film, you really should. It was one of my favorite movies of last year, and the message of the movie: never give up on your dream no matter what anybody says and the unbelieveable spirit of these guys makes the flick - which is equal parts sad, funny and inspiring - a true gem. Yet somehow, amazingly, the Academy saw fit to omit it from the list. I'm baffled by this decision.

Also not making the cut is the excellent Davis Guggenheim film It Might Get Loud, which I posted about back in August. This is another documentary that I really, truly enjoyed, and I'm absolutely amazed that this film somehow didn't make their cut. Another surprise omission was Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Check out the entire list of documentaries the Academy selected here.

End of the Decade: The Albums

With the decade coming to a close, we're quite busy at MTV News putting together our "best of the decade" lists. The first one we collectively tackled was Best Albums from 2000-2009. These lists are never easy - and are always fun - and of course spark interesting debates and amusing, often vicious mockery among the staff. It should come as no suprise that when it comes to pop culture, and music in particular, we've got a pretty opinionated bunch.

Without further adieu, here's my personal list for favorite albums of the decade.

10) The College Dropout - Kanye West (2004)

9) How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - U2 (2004)

8) Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand (2004)

7) The Marshall Mathers LP - Eminem (2000)

6) Elephant - The White Stripes (2003)

5) Alligator - The National (2005)

4) Heartbreaker - Ryan Adams (2000)

3) Funeral - Arcade Fire (2004)

2) Oracular Spectacular - MGMT (2007)

1) All That You Can't Leave Behind - U2 (2000)

MTV News will reveal our definitive, collective, much-argued-over list closer to the end of the year/decade.

Global Destruction Proves Profitable

Roland Emmerich, who appears to hate the planet earth, just had a monster opening for his latest end of days flick, 2012. Emmerich, who's previously trashed cities in Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow easily won the weekend with a $65 million haul, but the movie went supernova world wide. 2012, amazingly, just had the fifth biggest global opening of all time (move over Da Vinci Code) with a mind boggling $225 million over the weekend. The film opened simultaneously in 105 different markets and finished first in all of them.

During this global economic downturn, I've often read about how Hollywood is "recession proof" and the box office numbers certainly back up this notion. I get it, too. It makes sense to me that people would want that escape, even if it is for a few hours, that going to the movies provides. But I do think that it's interesting that in a time when our planet isn't exactly coasting on easy street; when there is so much uncertainty in the world; so much fear; that the planet has collectively chosen to find their escapist release by watching a film about the end of the world.

But what the hell do I know?

Stallone Listens! Rambo Ditches the Sci-Fi Angle

Back in early September, I posted about Sylvester Stallone's uber-lame plan for Rambo V. The premise saw John Rambo sent to the arctic circle to hunt down a "feral beast;" the unfortunate product of a secret military experiment gone horribly wrong. I thought Rambo treading on sci-fi turf was a big mistake for the series, and now it appears, Stallone does too. Sly sent an email to the brilliantly named fan-site Stallone Zone explaining that the film had "changed courses" and the movie would now be rooted more in the traditional Rambo style. Stallone explained: "The story about hunting the man/beast will be done using another character in the lead." Good idea, Sly, I'm with you on this one. So what is the plan for Rambo V? "Rambo will be heading over the border to a violent city where many young women have vanished."

This sounds very much like an early draft for Rambo IV, that was ultimately discarded, that had Stallone hunting down a human-trafficking ring peddling women into the sex trade industry in Mexico. This premise, while not wildly original, seems like a much better direction to head in. By the time you get to Part V, I don't think a lot of people are expecting a groundbreaking screenplay; on the contrary they want more of the same. They just want to see Stallone blow shit up and murder the bad guys, ideally with a crossbow. Sly, who clearly knows exactly what his audience is looking for after all these years added one more detail in his brief tease about the new direction for Rambo V: "There will be blood."

Yes, yes indeed.

Movies at the Ballpark: Part One

Of all the sports, I think baseball has the best relationship with the movies. There are more good baseball movies than any other kind of sports movie. The baseball season just came to a close with the Yankees capturing another championship (just goes to show what hard work, determination and a $250 million payroll can get you) so in honor of their title, I'm going to name my All-Time Movie Baseball Team. There's only one rule: I've disqualified any players that are based on real players. That means I can't have John Goodman batting clean up for me, but I still get to laugh at the notion that John fucking Goodman once played a professional athlete in a movie! The second rule is I'm allowed to cheat, which is why a few of my players are from TV, not film. Today, we'll look at my pitching staff.

STARTERS

1) Steve Nebraska The Scout Nebraska became the only player to make their Major League debut in the World Series. But the legend doesn't stop there, that's just where it begins. The kid, who throws gas at 109 miles per hour and has stuff that's so sick I recommend you get your H1N1 shot to even watch him, threw a perfect game in his debut. And he achieves that perfect game by striking out all 27 batters on 81 consecutive pitches. If you need him to, he is also one of the best home run hitters in baseball. He's clearly the product of a screenwriter that literally knows nothing about the sport of baseball. (Played by Brendan Fraser)

2) Billy Chapel For Love of the Game Chapel, who spent his entire 19-year career with the Detroit Tigers is a first ballot Hall of Famer; a three-time Cy Young winner and is famous for having pitched a perfect game - at age 40 - in the final start of his illustrious career. He brings experience, veteran savvy and, most importantly, the possibility of David Giamarco hanging around the locker room. Not only a proven winner, he's also a dead ringer for our catcher Crash Davis. (Played by Kevin Costner)

3) Ebby Calvin "Nuke" Laloosh Bull Durham Laloosh is a young fireballer with some control issues and ten cent head to go with his million dollar arm. Laloosh consistently throws stuff in the high-90's and made a name for himself early in his career by setting a Carolina League record with 18 strikeouts in a game during his professional debut; but he also set a record with 18 walks in the same game. He's dumb as a stump but highly coachable. (Played by Tim Robbins)

4) Ryan Dunne Summer Catch Dunne made the Philadelphia Phillies despite a minor league incident that should have ended his career before it began. Dunne walked off the field in a Cape Cod league game with one out to go with a perfect game on the line. Normally this kind of cowardice would merit banishment to the Mexican leagues, but because he left to go try and fuck Jessica Biel, he's being rewarded with a spot in my rotation. (Played by Freddie Prinze Jr.)

5) Eddie Harris Major League Deep into his forties, Harris is the very definition of the wily veteran. He extended his career by being one of the craftiest pitchers in the game and relying on every trick in the book to win. He's not above putting snot on the ball if he thinks it will help; a notion that's hard not to respect. He's also ballsy enough to say "up your butt, Jobu." If he can laugh in the face of voodoo, he can certainly pitch for my team. (Played by Chelcie Ross)

RELIEVERS

Henry Rowengartner Rookie of the Year Rowengartner is a youngster gifted with freakish velocity after a fall on his arm, this kid can throw it nearly as hard as Steve Nebraska. This one-time Chicago Cubs phenom has started in his career but here he will be absolutely devastating coming out of the bullpen. The bonus is this kid is young enough to pitch for another thirty years. (Played by Thomas Ian Nicholas)

Kenny Powers Eastbound and Down Kenny Powers was once a feared closer with 101 m.p.h. stuff and the catch phrase "you're fucking out" which he would scream after each strikeout. Powers' velocity quickly faded and he was soon known more for his off color remarks, racist rants and diminishing skills as he bounced from team to team before being spit out of baseball. The troubled pitcher really doesn't have much left at all, but he once requested a trade from Atlanta during the teams annual Christmas charity event, and for that reason alone, he has a place here.(Played by Danny McBride)

Sam "Mayday" Malone Cheers Talented Red Sox reliever who's career was derailed by alcohol and a penchant for skirt-chasing. When he's sober, he's decent, and when he's loaded, he's awful. "Mayday" Malone serves as the set up man on the rare occasion that our starters don't throw complete games. (Played by Ted Danson)

Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn Major League On a team stacked with pitchers with insane velocity, here's another smoke thrower who routinely tops 100 m.p.h. on the radar gun. Control is an issue, as are off-field issues, and he tends to shake off the catcher unless he calls fastball every pitch, but he's been known to deliver when it matters most and the guy has his own theme song. (Played by Charlie Sheen)

Jay-Z joins U2 at MTV's European Video Awards

Today is the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall so it seemed fitting to post this performance of U2 from last weeks MTV European Video Awards. While the band played the suitably politically charged 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate they were joined by Jay-Z. Check it out above.

U2 are personally linked to the fall of the Wall. (Despite Bono's well known politicking they are just linked to it, not responsible for it.) The band was actually in Berlin, writing and recording Achtung Baby (hence it's partially German title) when the wall fell, back in 1989. When the wall came down, the band took the streets and partied into the wee hours of the night. Early the next morning, through the fuzz and fog of a hangover, Bono was wakened by voices in his rented home and crept downstairs naked to discover a family in his hallway. Amazingly, the family had returned to their home for the first time since the wall went up and the key still worked. They were their to reclaim what was theirs. Bono ultimately found other accommodations.

Christopher Walken Covers Lady Gaga

Christopher Walken sings "Poker Face" - watch more funny videos

Christopher Walken recently appeared on Jonathan Ross's BBC program where they proved that the Brits do TV better by having Walken recite Lady Gaga's Poker Face. I'm not convinced that Walken's version is better, but it sure is entertaining.

Expect a slew of "remixes" of this to surface on the net in the very near future.

UPDATE: Here it is!

Eminem's Return To the Screen Sounds Lame

I was a fan of Eminem's film debut 8 Mile. I thought he showed a lot of intelligence in partnering up with a filmmaker like Curtis Hanson and by taking on a role that was so autobiographical that he didn't have to stretch too much and expose himself as a neophyte actor. That being said, I thought he was pretty good in the film; though there is always the nagging question of whether he was good strictly because he was playing a part that is essentially himself. As more and more time passed since he made that impressive debut without any word on what he might be doing next in terms of film work, I started to wonder if he didn't enjoy the process of filmmaking, or perhaps, he was waiting for another situation like 8 Mile to present itself so he could work with a talented director in a role that spoke to him personally. Well, throw all that out the window.

After seven years, Eminem is returning to the screen with a new project getting the green light last week that sounds... disappointing. He will next star in Shady Talez, a 3D horror anthology film that's been described as "Twilight Zone meets Creepshow." Really? Doesn't this sound like something Snoop Dogg would do? Wait a second, isn't this something that Snoop Dogg already did ? This whole thing really seems cheesy. A deal has already been struck for a four issue comic series about the film that will share the same title. Speaking of the title; it really truly is awful. Shady Talez sounds like the title of a crappy unauthorized biography on Eminem. It nauseates by working Eminem's alter ego in, as well as tagging a word with a "z" instead of an "s" to show us how cool and urban it is.

While the film is being described as a "Twilight Zone meets Creepshow" project, I'd like to point out that Twilight Zone was aided by the direction of people like Steven Spielberg and John Landis and Creepshow boasted of the talents of Stephen King in the scripting department and George A. Romero behind the camera (Not to mention the special make up effects wizardry of the legendary Tom Savini.) Shady Talez is being scripted by a guy who wrote one episode of South of Nowhere and the guy who underwhelmed us with Underworld. The film doesn't have a director attached, but Dallas Jackson, the man who brought us the South of Nowhere episode and who will also double as a producer on the film says he'll be looking at some of the "hot directors from the music video world." He also promises (threatens?) that his script will pay a "hip hop homage to classic horror films." Among the films mentioned to get the "urban wink" (according to /Film) are Christine, Aliens and The Lost Boys. I suspect this movie will be really shitty, but Christine is gonna look so sick lowered and with some sweet rims.

Special Day

While everyone is talking about November 5th being significant because of Guy Fawkes, the folks over at /Film have pointed out a much more important thing that makes today special. It was 54 years ago today, on November 5th, 1955, that the eminent Doc Brown invented the flux capacitor which, of course, made time travel possible. (Provided, of course, you can find a way to generate 1.21 jigawatts of power.)

Obviously we can credit this invention with the greatness that is Back to the Future (and the not-so-greatness that is Back to the Future Part III) but also The Terminator, the wonderful Time Bandits and the fantastic 12 Monkeys. Those alone make this a great day indeed. However, with the good comes the bad, and because of this invention, we also got The Butterfly Effect and Time Cop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, so it's not all gravy.

Who Needs To Get Fired Up?

Here's forty of cinema's most inspirational speeches (and a few not so inspirational speeches) cut into a two minute montage. I think not including Alec Baldwin's epic speech from Glengarry Glen Ross is an almost unforgivable oversight, but alas, this is still pretty cool. For those of you that are gonna say Baldwin berating the staff in Glengarry isn't exactly inspirational, well, if Samuel L. Jackson quoting scripture before murdering people is considered inspirational so is Baldwin's rant.

For my money, the movie that always gets me feeling like a world beater is Rudy (which is included here) but strangely, they don't use the key part of the speech where Charles S. Dutton tells him "You're five foot nothin', a hundred and nothin' and you have barely a speck of athletic ability and you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years!" Such a great movie. The scene, toward the end, where the players file into the coaches off laying their jersey's down on his desk and saying "Coach, I want Rudy to play for me" gives me chills each time I watch it.

I also think it's odd that John Belushi's Animal House speech is included, though not the classic line where he says "Did we give up when the German's bombed Pearl Harbour? No!"

My thanks to the incomparable epop for the link.

Try and Match This, iTunes!

German industrial metal band Rammstein have revealed their upcoming album Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da in a special edition boxset that comes with a special metal case that holds a pair of handcuffs, a bottle of lube, and, of course, six pink dildos cast from the actual band members.... members.

At a time when the music industry is becoming digital and the need for consumers to have a physical copy of an album in their hands is becoming and antiquated notion; bravo to these gentlemen for finding a good reason to make me head to the record store. 'Cause as great as listening to this industrial metal album would be, I'm sure it would be even better if I was listening to it while pleasuring myself and pretending it's the bassist ravaging me. Meow.

Their first single off the record is called 'Pussy.' In case you think this is just a crass, desperate attempt to be "edgy," let me clarify that they are actually insanely talented. The chorus is "You've got a pussy / I've got a dick / so what's the problem / let's do it quick." See? Brilliant! (By the way, this track was Rammstein's first number one single in their native Germany.) The video - which is pretty mind blowing and clearly not safe for work - is the first video I've ever seen that instead of just showing the band performing the song shows the band performing the song and having sex. Check it out here, but you've been warned.