Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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Everybody have some sweet dreams last night? This has nothing to do with the above pictures of Jason and Hoyt making babies on this week's True Blood (via) - if that's a spoiler for you, it's also a damn incentive to catch your ass up - but I had a dream last night that my grandmother was throwing me a Game of Thrones themed birthday party! All I really remember though is the buffet table where there were all these jello molds in the colors and shapes of the various houses - a red lion jello for House Lannister, for example - oh and also there was this giant platter of grey meat that had the picture of a direwolf sitting behind it. That was gross.

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I watched the movie Red Hill over the weekend, which reminded me of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13... only set in Australia, and starring Ryan Kwanten, and taking place across an entire small isolated town instead of a lone police station, and with just one guy attacking instead of a big gang. Okay they're not really that much alike at all, I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway it really wasn't very good. Kwanten was decent enough - he's a good actor but his acting abilities are constantly overshadowed by his muscles (but oh what muscles!) - but I never really found it capable of building much tension. You never care enough about the people being hunted because they're all dicks, and it's obvious from early on they want you to sympathize with the hunter but they don't give you enough to do so in order to have to both ways for way too long. Sloppy storytelling gets all up in its own way.

Anyway I saw in the credits that the film was produced by Greg McLean, the director of a film I've talked at length about here at MNPP with effusive praise heaped upon effusive praise, 2005's Wolf Creek. He's been busy producing stuff like this and the previously-posted-upon flick Crawlspace, but hasn't directed anything since his killer-croc movie Rogue way back in 2007 (co-starring Sam Worthington before Avatar and also before everybody forgot who Sam Worthington was again). I wrote in September of 2010 that there was talk of a Wolf Creek sequel from McLean... well now here nearly a full year later there's an actual announcement, and funding. So this will probably happen? With McLean behind the camera I am excited about this, although I tremble at the balls it takes for him to face off with what I consider a modern masterpiece.

But then I realize we're talking about silver stallion Greg McLean's balls and I completely lose my train of thought. What?

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In the wake of Ryan Kwanten sauntering around in a cop uniform on this weekend's True Blood premiere, I find my brain a little bit fixated. Y'all don't mind, I'm fairly sure of that.

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Since I'm always watching all the shows on a delay and we live in an insta-society it usually feels pointless to write up my thoughts on shows by the time I get around to watching them, but I'm gonna go ahead and offer up a few thoughts on some anyway right now, and you're gonna have to summon up the strength to just deal. So let's look at Sunday night's premiere of True Blood then, which I got to last evening.

First up, the obvious: there wasn't anything in the way of dude-nudity (BOO) but everybody was looking so good I almost didn't notice. The guys are competing with each other at this point who can be the most ridiculously fit, right? Because everybody looks amazing. But the MVPs (Most Valuable Pieces) of the episode were Ryan Kwanten first in that cop uniform which is tailored obscenely snug, and then in just his jeans and t-shirt, which well was also tailored obscenely snug.

And then of course Alexander Skarsgard, who shows up in a black t-shirt just a fraction of an inch too short for his torso (SIGH) threatening the mot wanted fang-rape in the history of ever.

Honestly, this cast is just ridiculous though. Guys aside, you know you've tapped into some sexy sorcery when you've got me rooting for two female characters to go at it - no, not Tara and her underwear-model slash kick-boxer girlfriend, but PAM AND JESSICA - oh my god they need to do it.

Fave line of the night:

"Toilets are for humans only.

Do I need to explain why?"

It's all in the delivery. Oh Pam. How I adore your endless snark. And the bat wings framed around her head! Glorious. And I'll agree with the general consensus that the arrival of Fiona Shaw as the head witch was the bright spot, but why would anyone be surprised?

Fiona Shaw is about as crazy (emphasis on that word) talented an actress as there is working today, and she's gonna go for this shit 1500 percent. I give you Black Dahlia. Gutsy broads like this are in short supply and there aren't many shows on the air that'd let them do their thing quite like Blood will so this is a match made in heaven, methinks.

Speaking of shows like True Blood, generally I liked the episode a lot. True Blood has never ever never ever been about anything approaching sane consistent storytelling. So I sat through this episode understanding that I was getting a whole bunch of, "Okay, this is who these people are now for this season, and this is a the ridiculous crap we'll be flinging at them for several weeks." Okay! Sure I'll take a "Charmed if it had aired on SciFi" level Faerie-world shot on old Land of the Lost back-lots! Sounds great! Okay, Tara's a lesbian now, sure, that's how those things happen, right? You just keep giving me Eric Northman rape fantasies and Jason Stackhouse dumb as a pile of steroids in pants so tight you know his religion and little girls biting into sacks of raw meat and you and me? We're good, True Blood.

The other show I want to give a couple moments to is the finale of The United States of Tara, which aired a thousand days ago but I just got around to this weekend. I am going to miss the Gregsons so freaking much, y'all. Has there ever been a better sibling relationship put onto TV than the one between Marshall and Kate? Marshmallow! How I will miss Marshall. 

And having Toni Collette beamed into my life every week felt like such a gift. Even if the show was wobbly here and there, even if I could take or leave mostly leave John Corbett, even if the introduction of that new alter there at the end felt a little bit scatter-shot, I still can't deny that the arrival one-by-one of the alters we've come to love and hate over these three seasons as they said goodbye to someone and were snuffed out really got me. When Alice showed up I screamed, "NO!!!" at the TV and then I was all, "Wait, what? Alice is awful!" And yet there it was. 

In summation, I can't be the only person that screamed, "Goodbye Porpoise Spit!" at the last shot of the show, can I?

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--- An Impressive Phallus - Back in May I posted a couple of pictures of James Franco from his movie about the gay poet Hart Crane, as well as the news that there'd be "a love scene" between him and Michael Shannon in it - well I guess the film screened in LA and word on it (via K212) is even more explicit:

Indeed! James Franco is dedicated. (To being awesome.) There's an interview about the film with James at that second link. The film will supposedly come out next year. 

--- Kill Bots - Steven Spielberg's supposedly going to make a movie out of it, but the new book Robopocalypse hadn't even been seen by the general public yet. Til now - it's out, and io9 says it is awesome. I just finished a book and need something to pick up and this sounds awfully perfect for June reading. Killer robots ho!

--- Mars Needs Men - JJ has a couple of shots of Colin Farrell looking like Colin Farrell (aka hot) in jeans and a t-shirt on the Canadian set of the Total Recall remake, which I guess means that movie's finally shooting. Huh.

--- Little Person - Ian McShane is playing the head dwarf in Snow White and the Huntsman (that's the one with Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron, not the Julia Roberts one). The head dwarf is named Caesar, snooze - make him act all tough and regal and shit while pulling off a Dopey, dammit. That's acting.

--- Speaking of our current revisionist fairy tale craze, Guillermo Del Toro would love to make Maleficent, he says. He even busts out some dorky knowledge about the dragon's wings! God I love him. But the basic point stands that Guillermo Del Toro would love to make a million movies, but there is only one of him. So I won't hold my breath on that.

--- No Strangers 2 Strange - Bryan Bertino's successful 2008 horror film The Strangers has come up in my home a couple times these past weeks so I'm feeling inclined to hear what's up with its sequel; thankfully STYD got some news from Liv Tyler herself. Unfortunately it's not good news:

Indeed it is, Liv. Bertino's got nothing else lined up on IMDb either. WTF.

--- Tara Burns - PopWrap chatted with everybody's favorite True Blood doormat Rutina Wesley aka Tara and she says Tara will not be victimized this year, dammit! Everybody seems to think the rumor of a character going gay this season will be her, but god do I have my fingers crossed that it's Ryan Kwanten. That ass needs to be appreciated! Publicly. And what happened to all that homo-vibe between Bill and Sam anyway? Explore that some more dammit!

--- O Khaleesi - I still haven't gotten around to the Game of Thrones finale - tonight, tonight! - but you should check out Sean's recap of the episode alongside his friend Megan - Sena's read the books, she hasn't - to see a take on the first season from both perspectives. But only if you've seen the finale already!

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(via) 24 days til fresh True Blood!

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