Hey, Mickey! (clap-clap!) Don't Do That!

Since Mickey Rourke made his triumphant return to the limelight on the wings of his widely-acclaimed (and deservedly so) performance in The Wrestler, everyone--including those too young to have been aware of the actor during his original heyday--knows the story of his long, hard fall from respectability.

But now Mickey's back! He won a Golden Globe (and thanked his dogs in his acceptance speech)! He's a favorite to win the Oscar for Best Actor! He didn't win that category's SAG Award on Sunday, but that's okay!

You know what's not okay, though?

The fact that--a couple of hours before Mickey Rourke lost the aforementioned prize to Sean Penn--the Oscar-nominated star of The Wrestler announced that he will be participating in "Wrestlemania 25".

You shouldn't do that, Mickey. You really shouldn't do that.

At the very least, you shouldn't have announced that you were planning on doing that before the Academy Awards...'cause it is sure to cost you some votes.

Exactly how many votes remains to be seen, but--god forbid...it might be just enough to greenlight Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man Ride Again.

UPDATE (1/28): Defamer has the exclusive that Mickey, per my suggestion, will not be doing that. A wise choice on his part.

Oscars for All Women Who've Made Terrible Life Decisions!

It appears as though there is no end in sight to the fallout from the cultural apocalypse that was Diablo Cody's Oscar win. According to the New York Post, strippers are, heartbreakingly, viewing their former colleague's achievement as an achievement for all of them. A plaque has been hung in Rick's Cabaret in New York that reads, "Dedicated to Diablo Cody, who has taken our calling to new levels."

No, strippers. No, no, no. Diablo hasn't raised stripping to a higher level; she's lowered screenwriting to stripping's already established one.

Don't believe me? Perhaps my friend George Washington will convince you.

Super Deluxe Suicide Prevention

Although this is far from the funniest parody video in the world (or even of the last three days), it does help to ease the pain of Sunday night's unforgivable affront to humanity.



Thanks to Jesse for the tip.

You Don't Have To Be Very Funny to Dominate a Fake Fight

...As proven by Jimmy Kimmel.

The 80th Annual Academy Awards Honor 'The Sopranos'

When ABC cut to black just as Harrison Ford was about to announce the winner of Best Original Screenplay during Sunday night's telecast of the Academy Awards, I was surprised how long it took me to realize that it was not a technical glitch, but a deliberate (albeit somewhat dated) homage to the 'Sopranos' series finale.

It was strange enough that I suddenly found myself in the back of an ambulance, but the situation has grown even weirder: every time I ask someone to tell me who won for Best Original Screenplay, time seems to jump forward and I find myself in another location--all within Cedars-Sinai Hospital, at the time of this writing. I still haven't found out, and it's starting to get annoying. (Not nearly as annoying as that poorly-written movie Juno, naturally, but annoying nonetheless.)

So, seriously...who won?

Honest to Blog, Our Standards Are Low

Its merciless public relations onslaught aside, Juno is not a horrendous film. Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen movies released in 2007 to which it is considerably superior.

Nonetheless, it is an extremely unlikable film, for both the well-documented, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard faux-hipster dialogue that permeates it and, concurrently, the slobbering praise it has been receiving since even before its release. Public Enemy Number One on both counts is ex-stripper Diablo Cody, as skilled at self-promotion as she is overrated as a screenwriter. With the help of her hardworking publicist, she has positioned herself as the cool-kid commodity du jour in Hollywood (at least for the next 14 minutes or so)--and one need look no further for evidence that she is more image than substance than her ridiculous self-applied moniker. "Brook Busey" apparently didn't ring false enough for our lady's tastes, so she became "Diablo Cody"--a name so obnoxiously stupid for a human being that it might as well be "Crunchwrap Supreme".

On Saturday, Crunchwrap disappointingly won the WGA Award for original screenplay, proving that even writers have not remained immune to Juno's ubiquitous PR snowblower.

Everyone involved with Juno--especially those on the marketing side (and I include Crunchwrap in that group)--wants us to believe that it's an "outsider" movie that defiantly bucks tradition with an unlit pipe clenched in its teeth and a jug of Sunny D hanging loosely from its fingertips. But the truth is that simply eschewing explosions and Sandra Bullock in favor of the Moldy Peaches and hamburger phones does not classify unconventional storytelling. Beneath its surface, Juno is just as much of an assembly-line product as a piece of crap like Transformers is, only it came off a line of a different sort: the realm of cookie-cutter quirk (much like its equally overpraised predecessor, Little Miss Sunshine). I did not find a single moment in Juno to be unexpected (except for, perhaps, the discovery that I had it in me to want to slap a fictional 16-year-old pregnant girl for talking like a fictional 29-year-old screenwriter), right down to the red-alert copout of turning Jason Bateman's otherwise likable character into a lecherous would-be pederast for the sole reason that Crunchwrap couldn't figure out what to do with him. You'd think most voting members of the Writers Guild of America would have least keyed in on that--alas, they did not, and the phony-baloney Crunchwrap Supreme train rolls on toward the Academy Awards with a full head of steam.

Crunchwrap winning a WGA Award is equivalent to Mira Sorvino winning an Oscar. Should Crunchwrap win an Oscar, it will be equivalent to Milli Vanilli winning a Grammy. And just like the Recording Academy did with Rob and Fab, one's only hope in such a scenario will be that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will later realize that they were had and revoke Crunchwrap's undeserved prize.

In the meantime, let's just sit on a stoop and expeditiously commence an acoustic duet. 'Cause that's real, homeskillet. That shit's real.

Brian Robbins Openly Declares War on Quality

No doubt emboldened by "the best [financial] month of his career", director/producer Brian Robbins--the artist behind such landmark cinematic achievements as Good Burger, Ready to Rumble and The Perfect Score--has used a profile in today's Hollywood Reporter as a platform to lash out at anyone who has ever questioned his abilities--specifically film critics, but also anyone with eyes and/or ears and/or a fully-functioning brain.

Robbins' defense? I'm rich, so I must be talented.

Citing the high audience test scores of his latest directorial effort, the Eddie-Murphy's-Oscar-chances-annihilator Norbit, Robbins seems genuinely confounded as to how the movie could have scored a pathetic 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, asking: "Is the audience that stupid? Is America's taste that bad? I don't think so."

If I may be so bold as to address Mr. Robbins' concerns in consecutive order: yes, yes, and you should.

Apparently gaining momentum from his completely asinine assertion that "the only films that get good reviews are the ones that nobody sees", Robbins goes on in the THR piece to take a rather wide swing at Alan Arkin, the victor over Murphy in last year's Supporting Actor Oscar race, claiming that the 73-year-old "couldn't do what Eddie did in Norbit."

That's a low blow, Robbins. For a man of Arkin's advanced age to strap himself into a latex fat suit and scream at various pitches would be a genuine health risk much more than it would an accurate barometer of his thespian skills...and I think you just might know that.

Then again, perhaps not...for a man who thinks that "work with movie stars" passes as insightful advice for aspiring filmmakers might not know too much of anything.

AARP The Magazine Cashes In on Sexagenarian Softcore Action Craze

In the time between when she emerged as "unexpectedly doable" at the 2007 Golden Globe Awards and when Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly musically expressed their sexual attraction towards her at the Oscars ceremony, Dame Helen Mirren firmly established herself as the over-sixty object of inappropriately lustful thoughts worldwide. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that even a publication as seemingly innocuous as AARP The Magazine would utilize the sex appeal of the Oscar-winning actress du jour in an attempt to spice up the presentation of articles on the rising cost of prescription drugs and Rod Stewart concert promotions.

To be sure, the AARP cover isn't nearly as racy as that of February's Los Angeles Magazine featuring Mirren, but one can't expect a periodical aimed at America's retirement community to go whole-hog on the Helen Mirren sex train its first time out of the box; to do so would run the risk of eliminating a large percentage of their readership via coronary. What counts in the latest AARP The Magazine cover is what's implied...and what's implied is eventual full-frontal nudity.