Cutting Room for December 8

by Ryan Syrek

• If you’re a loyal Reader reader — and why wouldn’t you be, you bright and sexy person — you have undoubtedly heard all about writer/director Nik Fackler and his darling, locally shot indie film Lovely, Still. Well, our little boy is “all grown up,” as Fackler was just nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. The awards ceremony will be shown on the IFC Channel Feb. 26, and will be hosted by my personal patron saint of snarkiness, Joel McHale. But Fackler doesn’t need a trophy to be pumped; as he states on his personal site (nikfackler.com) “I’m so f***ing stoked to be nominated” before thanking his friends and suggesting “let’s get drunk and go sledding soon.” I believe Dame Judy Dench celebrated her various nominations in the same manner. If you haven’t seen it, Lovely, Still is available from Netflix streaming, so you have no good excuse. Congrats Fackler, and I hope you wear the appropriate headgear whilst sledding.

• Testing your circulation, Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater (filmstreams.org) will spend Dec. 10-16 unspooling Carlos, a film with a running time of seven days. I’m kidding, of course; it’s only a mere 329 minutes, which is longer than some of my previous relationships. The film was originally a French TV miniseries but was sewed and stitched together into one giant epic that explores the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal. His nickname is way cooler than mine: Ryan the Easily Impressed. The film will be shown with an intermission for weaklings, but feel free to really see what your bladder is capable of.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to {encode="film@thereader.com" title="film@thereader.com"}. Check out Ryan on the radio on CD 105.9 (Fridays at around 7:30 a.m.), on his blog at thereader.com/film/C19 and on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).

What a Crowe wants

by Ryan Syrek

I don't know if it's simply a matter of his size and notorious anger or just because I'm soft-brained, but I imagine that when the cameras stop rolling, Russell Crowe turns into someone who talks like the Incredible Hulk. "Crowe want be left alone! Crowe hungry! Crowe smash! Crowe make poor decisions on films of lesser quality because Crowe not stop to consider the ramifications of what he doing. Crowe HUNGRY!"

After the so-so performance of Robin Hood, and the absolute forgettablility of The Next Three Days, Crowe has turned his sight elsewhere, taking to Twitter to post "If you want a Master and Commander sequel I suggest you e-mail Tom Rothman at Fox and let him know your thoughts."

Huh?

For those who don't remember, that movie was the rather dull naval exercise film that had Crowe dressed foppishly while barking orders at people. It's kind of what I imagine his weekends to be like. At this point, and I believe this to be a 100% scientifically accurate total, zero people have done this. I know, it's shocking that a 7-year old modestly successful naval film hasn't garnered the kind of fervent support necessary to kick-start the heart of this franchise. I'm shocked. I guess the take home message is: If you want to see another one of these movies, get to emailing. Oh, that and "Crowe HUNGRY!"

Follow me on Twitter or Russell Crowe will eat you.

After you’re dead, George Lucas will take your soul

by Ryan Syrek

Good Tuesday morning to all of you! George Lucas is now collecting dead human souls.

Sorry, was that too abrupt for you first thing in the morning? Well, too bad. It's true. According to The Toronto Sun, McMidget the Throat Beard is buying the rights to dead actors like Orson Wells in an attempt to use computer voodoo and cyber jackassery to resurrect them, likely to make them sing and dance or step in poop or something in terrible movies. Jesus, maybe he's going to insert James Dean next to Anakin Skywalker on his podracer. Why? I don't know. Why did that mean kid in elementary school always pull the wings off of butterflies? He's 98% evil...and 2% marshmallow fluff.

First off, I thought we were passed this malarky, having experienced the whole Fred Astaire selling vacuums and dead celebrity duets left and right. Leave it Lucas to think that the only problem we had with that is that the technology wasn't advanced enough for us to see every pore on Astaire's vacuum-shilling face. Second...come the f**k on, Lucas! You don't know that people ALREADY hate you? You think that documentaries entitled The People vs George Lucas and Internet memes like "Lucas raped my childhood" are just done in good fun? If it was legal and nerds were physically capable of the strength necessary, you would have been stoned to death years ago. The way back into the public's heart is not to purchase the rights to dead celebrities.

This leads me to believe he's not doing this for movies, but rather is actually on the final stage of his universe-destroying machine of pure evil and death. It must run on dead celebrity souls. That's my best guess.

Follow me on Twitter or George Lucas will buy you.