Cutting Room for May 11

by Ryan Syrek

• Bogey and Bacall? Amateurs. Hepburn and Tracy? As if. All of cinema has been waiting for this moment. Cameron Diaz. Benicio Del Toro. Don’t worry, it gets even better. The movie is Agent: Century 21, which is perhaps the first movie to have product placement in its title. And the plot sees Diaz as a real estate agent captured and sent on some kind of adventure by a Mexican drug lord played by Del Toro. Incidentally, if they had flipped the casting for the parts, they’d have comedy gold. Don’t worry, though! It’s written by the guy who wrote Stuart Little! How can it not be amazing?
• I adore the 1990s sketch comedy show “The State,” and I don’t care who knows it. Sure, it’s dated, but me, a bag of Funions and the boxed set have been known to kill a Saturday night. Nobody’s reading this, right? At any rate, some of the gang from that show are reuniting once again. As they did with Wet Hot American Summer, David Wain and Michael Showalter are pulling in their buddies Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd for They Came Together, which is not an entry in the “50 Shades of Grey” series, despite its title. It actually follows an on-again, off-again relationship between a big corporate dude and a small business owner lady. Based on the pedigree alone, I’m in. Based on the title alone, I’m not telling anyone I’m going.
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sacha Baron Cohen have both exited Django Unchained, presumably because writer/director Quentin Tarantino fears that all people with three names are secret assassins. More than anything, this is likely a result of the push to get this into theaters by December, but if either of those actors wind up murderers, don’t say QT didn’t warn you.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).

Movieha! - Omaha’s favorite movie podcast

by Ryan Syrek

I can hardly believe it. A year ago, Matt Lockwood and I began the crazy process of recording a weekly audio extravaganza to drop on your ears. And a year later, neither of us have lost interest enough to walk away. If you knew our short attention spans, you'd be amazed. So before I tell you the goodness you can enjoy on this, our anniversary, I would ask that you take a moment to consider WHAT YOU WANT FROM US?! I mean that in a serious way. If there is something you want more of or less of, if there are things that work and things that don't, now is the time to tell us. We want nothing more than to give you what you want.

Now, as far as this week goes. We will talk to you of Prometheus (the movie, not the Greek character). We will ponder the future of James Cameron (in terms of movies, not his personal life). We will explore The Avengers (as a movie, we don't conduct a cavity search). We will discuss Knuckle (the documentary, not the joint). And we will deliver some haikus (as in write poetry, not give birth to poems). So listen up, and meet me on the other side for the trailers that we mention.

On Your Radar: After School Midnighters

Look, I understand that Japanese animation isn't for everyone. But if we can't rally around a movie in which skinless squirrels shoot machine guns at an anatomic representation of a human being, I don't know what we can come together on. Watching the trailer below is the safest way to drop acid.

Netflix Roulette: Cemetery Junction

I almost chose a movie that centered around a porn star. Maybe next week? This is a coming-of-age story that is created in part by Ricky Gervais. So you know it's both funny and moderately narcissistic. Enjoy!

Please sign up for our RSS feed HERE, download our podcasts and rave about us in the comments section of iTunes HERE, follow us on Twitter HERE, and become a fan of us on Facebook HERE! You can also listen to our bit we do for KVNO radio HERE. And as always, email any comments and concerns to movieha@gmail.com.

Cutting Room for May 4

by Ryan Syrek

• Slimmer though he may be, Jonah Hill has developed a new hunger…to be taken seriously. Rumor has it that he is in talks with Martin Scorsese to appear in The Wolf of Wall Street, which sadly is not a documentary about the jerks who trade futures being devoured by wildlife. The adaptation of a memoir of the same name is sure to do wonders for our image of brokers, as it details the life of a coked-out douchebag. Hill wouldn’t be the lead, as Marty and Leonardo DiCaprio are still going steady, but given how loyal the director is, Hill may just satiate his dramatic appetite by placing himself on Scorsese’s menu.
• Speaking of Hill, he and co-stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Richard Ayoade had what we’ll call “unfortunate timing” with a potentially hilarious upcoming release. It’s the rarest of all comedy breeds, a sci-fi ha-ha, that sees a bunch of Joe Averages stumble onto a global threat. The problem? It was titled Neighborhood Watch, a title tainted by the Trayvon Martin tragedy. So now the film is just The Watch, because it’s far better to sound like a documentary about timekeeping than a comedy about the homicidal perils of ill-conceived gun laws.
• Setting aside the snark for a moment, our sympathies go out to friends, families and fans of Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Although obviously primarily known as an influential musician, Yauch founded Oscilloscope Laboratories, a film distribution company I have had the pleasure of working with many times. They are the folks behind We Need to Talk About Kevin, Exit Through the Gift Shop and Dear Zachary to name just a few. The man wasn’t just an audio pioneer but a visual visionary as well. And he’ll be missed.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).