A little while ago, I wrote about David Ebershoff's amazing debut novel, The Danish Girl:

In early 2001, David Ebershoff released a short, beautiful book called The Danish Girl. The novel, set in the 1920s and '30s, is about a painter named Einar Wegener who, with the tentative blessing of his wife, Greta, becomes the first man to successfully undergo a sex-change operation. The writing is a revelation from the very first page, as Einar, relaxing with Greta in their Copenhagen apartment, paints a roiling black sea:

The neighbor below was a sailor, a man with a bullet-shaped head who cursed his wife. When Einar painted the gray curl of each wave, he imagined the sailor drowning, a desperate hand raised, his potato-vodka voice still calling his wife a port whore. It was how Einar knew just how dark to mix his paints: gray enough to swallow a man like that, to fold over like batter his sinking growl.

In just that half paragraph, the work that Ebershoff does is tremendous: establishing Einar's all-consuming interior doubts, his confusion about gender and marriage, and his worldview. It's ornate and sorrowful, just as one would imagine Einar's paintings to be. It's Ebershoff's portraiture of Einar and Greta's marriage—a partnership in every sense of the word, and a true friendship, as they both transform in new and unexpected ways—that makes The Danish Girl truly exceptional. Most readers don't understand until the end of the novel that the story of the Wegeners is based on real life; Einar was the first successful MTF transsexual in the world, and Greta willingly sacrificed her marital status out of love for her husband.

Word comes from The Vulture Blog that Nicole Kidman has agreed to play Einar Wegener, with Charlize Theron as Greta, in the film version of The Danish Girl. On the one hand, it's probably a good thing for transsexual awareness that Nicole Kidman is playing a MTF in a film, with Charlize Theron as the supportive wife. On the other hand, the appealing thing about The Danish Girl is the writing. Without that, it's just another biopic about overcoming adversity. I want this movie to succeed, and I hope it retains even a quarter of the literary value of the book.

But that's not what I want to think about. What I want to consider instead is this scene from Shoot 'Em Up:

Yes, yes! It's amazing! The amazing thing about it, however, is not that Clive Owen can fuck Monica Bellucci while killing a unit of assassins but that he can maintain his erection during a very stressful situation.

Some science: Erections are only possible if the human male is relaxed. To get hard, the body must turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. The opposite of this system is the sympathetic nervous system, which releases adrenalin. This system accelerates the heart and breathing rate (there is danger in the air, one must fly or defend themselves from harm). The parasympathetic system, on the other hand, slows down the heart and breathing rate (the pleasant digestion of a heavy meal, an afternoon nap). The bottom of this slow down is the place where the cock can get hard. And sex is essentially a return to the alert level of the sympathetic system--the moment it is reached, the man ejaculates.

Clearly the hero in Shoot 'Em Up is not human or a man. His flight/fright system does not turn on in a moment of danger. His muscles do not need the extra energy for increased speed and strength. He can kill in a perfectly calm state--the state a normal man/human is in when taking a nap.

Via Variety:

MGM has engaged Peter and Bobby Farrelly to renew their quest to channel the comic mayhem of the Three Stooges into a contemporary comedy.

The MGM news marks a homecoming for both the Stooges as well as the Farrellys, who spent five years trying to make the Stooges movie at Warner Bros.

The studio has staked out a Nov. 20, 2009 release date on the film.

That puts the Stooges film up against the Robert Downey Jr. starrer Sherlock Holmes, and the animated film Planet 51. Disney has scheduled the male-skewing comedy Old Dogs with John Travolta for Nov. 25.

Which led me to this exchange on the imdb message board:

Moe: Jim Carrey or Mike Myers
Larry: Jeff Daniels
Curly: Jack Black
Shemp: James Gandolfini

One of the stooge's love interest: Debra Messing

JACK BLACK WOULD MAKE A HORRIBLE CURLY, HE REALLY ISN'T THAT FUNNY. KEVIN JAMES WOULD COMPLETELY REINVENT CURLY!

I hope you die in a fire.

More details about the deadly fire, the funniness of Jack Black, and how much I don't want to see "the male-skewing comedy Old Dogs with John Travolta" as they become available.

More information as it comes, full presser after the jump.

Beyonce wants to be Wonder Woman!

Pop star Beyonce has said she wants to play Wonder Woman in a film of the comic book heroine.

The singer has met DC Comics and film studio Warner Bros to express her interest in future superhero roles on the big screen.

"I want to do a superhero movie and what would be better than Wonder Woman?" she told the Los Angeles Times.

"And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right?"

The former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan shares Daniel Craig’s opinion that the new American president would make a good 007 agent.

“He's cool enough. He's definitely got the walk and the talk, yes,” said Brosnan...

In case there’s trouble or we’re under attack, have no fear, because Bond is black.

There are lots and lots of movies opening this week, almost all of them reviewed by the great Charles Mudede:

Charles absolutely insists that you see The Romance of Astree and Celadon:

In the room with the three women (one of whom is actually a man—watch the movie to solve that mystery), what's charming is clearly this nipple. It casts a spell on the rays of light, the fresh blankets, the beings in the beds, the walls, the tall windows, and the magical forest that surrounds the castle. The director of this exquisite composition, Rohmer, is 88 years old! It's hard to believe that a man of that age still has access to a realm that is often closed to old folks—the realm of the senses.

He says much the same for Paris Vu Par:

In Paris Vu Par, a perfect balance is struck between the big city and individuals, the cityscape and interior spaces, the public and private. In one apartment, a bourgeois family is slowly but surely falling apart (at the dinner table, the wife and husband debate with no real emotion or concern about important matters like the death penalty). In another apartment, a young dishwasher prepares pasta for a proud but aging prostitute.

He also offers opinions on The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (yea); Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (nay); and Soul Men (dead). Thanks, Charles!

Jon Frosch does not recommend the bland, pretty, French-sploitation number I've Loved You So Long:

The story is ripe with tantalizingly creepy questions about Juliette's crime, her motivations, and her sister's reluctance to ask questions; a more daring, visually rigorous filmmaker might have made this stuff shiver with mystery and paranoia. But Claudel (a novelist trying his hand at directing) delivers little more than a gracefully packaged, Gallic Lifetime-TV soufflé. Juliette's path back to normalcy is so predictably plotted and staged—and accompanied by such annoying acoustic guitar—that it's hard to maintain more than minimal interest.

And I risk incurring your highbrow wrath by totally enjoying the totally stupid Role Models:

There is something so satisfying about a dumbass comedy, made by dumbasses about dumbasses for dumbasses. I used to live for this shit, way back when (not that long ago). And if you're going to watch a dumbass comedy, you could do worse than one from the remnants of The State (David Wain, Kerri Kenney, Joe Lo Truglio) and their attendant pals (Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks)—a comedy crowd that's always been a few rungs higher on the smart/funny/weird ladder than, say, Road Trip or Dude, Where's My Car? or, I don't know, Spring Break Boob Poop Party Train Poop Train 2: It's Boobies Time! (coming soon).

Oh, and I completely stand by my words about the overwrought, overcomplicated, under-understandable, long, dismal grind that is Synecdoche, New York. I still love Charlie Kaufman. I didn't even hate this movie. It wasn't boring, just exhausting. And no fun. Anyway (as always), what Anthony Lane said.

In Limited Runs:

You've got Goke: Body Snatcher from Hell (late night), It Came from Outer Space, and Creature from the Black Lagoon at the Grand Illusion; Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback and the Sprocket Society Secret Sunday Matinee at Northwest Film Forum; Hank and Mike at Central Cinema; Thelma & Louise at the Egyptian late night; and the Olympia Film Festival in, you know, Olympia.

Have fun, you crazy kids. Complete Movie Times here.

Beyoncé: I Want to Play Wonder Woman

"What would be better than Wonder Woman?" she tells the Los Angeles Times. "It would be great. And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right?"

The singer-actress, 27, has met with representatives at DC Comics and Warner Bros. to discuss donning the red, white and blue bathing suit on screen, she says.

Via People.com

Finally, the top poster was pulled away to reveal this movie poster:

It's Megan Fox in a Wonder Woman costume, with a bunch of helicopters and tanks behind her, presumably as an advance for an upcoming Wonder Woman movie. The problem here is that there is no Wonder Woman movie coming out. Warner Brothers, who owns the rights to any potential movie, have denied any involvement on the Wonder Woman film website front. The entire thing was produced by a Wonder Woman fanboy—I'm assuming it's a boy, here, and I'll apologize if it turns out I'm wrong—who's apparently trying to build publicity for Megan Fox to star in a Wonder Woman movie. He photoshopped Fox into the picture and even applied logos for Warner Brothers and DC Comics, as though it was a real website for a real upcoming movie.

Thank God, on this week of all weeks, this anonymous fanboy put all this energy into making sure Megan Fox would star in the not-even-close-to-being-a-reality Wonder Woman movie. His bravery and resolve should be an inspiration for us all.

Eastwood himself might star as the ailing author in the bookend scenes of the movie. It would be called Remembering Mark Twain. Eastwood would be working with the producer of Cannonball Run on the movie. I hope they get Sean William Scott to star as young Samuel Clemens. Bleh.

Me:

Remember how good a documentary The War Room was? I hope someone gave a speech like this at Obama HQ last night.

Paul Constant doesn't think so:

The biggest travesty of RocknRolla requires me to spoil the ending. Ready? THERE IS NO ENDING. The film actually ends with a promise that the story will continue in a sequel, called The Real RocknRolla, and Ritchie has declared these films to be a trilogy in the making...It takes real balls to announce a sequel to a movie at the end of a comeback movie, and it takes a heroic act of imagination to believe anybody besides Ritchie actually gives a shit about these characters. If the universe is a good and just place, the proposed trilogy will be aborted with the swift and decisive failure of this awful, awful movie at the box office.

A sample:

5. VIDEODROME (1983)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Special Makeup Effects by Rick Baker

To the best of my knowledge, James Woods does not have a vagina in his stomach. To watch Videodrome is to be almost convinced that he does.

Whole thing here.

And it's clearly the creepiest thing I'll see all day. I've never seen Romance and Cigarettes. Is the entire movie like this?