Do 50 Splits for JCVD

I almost let the day slip on by without wishing the Muscles from Brussels a Happy 50th Birthday. So happy birthday to the Time Cop himself, Jean Claude Van Damme, our Universal Soldier. He hit the big 5-0 today.

He can do the splits and you can't.

 (For a brief moment I considered posting 50 pics of JCVD doing the splits. Then sanity returned.

Or at least I can't.

But even if you can, I think maybe the Cannes Film Festival is not the place. Just sayin'.

This post has been brought to you by repressed 90s memories that came roaring back last night whilst perusing the wacky world wide webs !

The Blog Saga: New Link

Movies Kick Ass deconstructs yet another photoshop casualty (i.e. movie poster), this one for NINE . My thoughts on that film will hopefully be up later today... time is a tough taskmaster.
Cinema Styles looks forward to Luise Rainer's 100th birthday in January. We should all be celebrating! Especially since she'll (god willing) still be alive for it. She was Oscar's very first two-time acting winner... beating Spencer Tracy to the title by one year.
Topless Robot Batman's TV villains who should make the leap to the screen
Scanners (sarcastically) hates on ambiguous movie endings
Empire keeps track of Thor's ever expanding cast list so you don't have to. The only person this chart is missing (as far as I know) is Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)
In Contention looks at the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race
Noh Way expresses photographic love for director/muse duos beyond Pedro & Penélope

Sexiest Men Alive?
popbytes is on the Brad Pitt beard watch. Did it cost Brad the title of...
People's "Sexiest Men Alive". It's not just Johnny Depp. Roughly every famous person shows up. Though...
Go Fug Yourself has a laugh about the Glee photoshoot therein
My New Plaid Pants, uninfluenced by mainstream rags, remembers his love for Jean Claude Van Damme [nsfw]

Twi-Hard
Bright Lights After Dark "tortured longing is the new coke" Erich's inner 13 year old makes a case for The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Erik Lundegaard gleans box office meaning: stop ignoring girls
Variety director Chris Weisz blames New Line for the way The Golden Compass (2007) turned out. You know, I liked that movie more than most but it was but 1/20th of what it could have been given how excellent the book is. But I'm not sure you can take this in a black & white way, blame wise. Why would they interfere so much there but not on The Lord of the Rings? Would they have interfered with Peter Jackson if he weren't such a goddamn visionary? I just think this is probably a gray area unless Weisz has suddenly shown new cinematic mastery with New Moon. And well...
Antagony and Ecstasy thinks it's "boring as fuck-all". And wouldn't that indicate some degree of problems with Weisz' powers behind the camera?

...and no, I have no real plans to see New Moon. Unless it falls into my lap, I shan't ever know if it improves upon the original (which wouldn't be a significant hurdle). Time and money are both precious commodity this time of year. I have so many movies left to see in such a short time frame before awards are passed out. So I'm not going to pay hard earned $ to be bored (and support Mormon causes financially) if I don't have to for Oscar write up purposes. I'm guessing I don't have to worry about this movie securing nominations. If I'm wrong I promise to stare at Kristen Stewart and her dead eyes (shouldn't she be playing the vampire?) for 2.5 hours and issue my mea culpas.
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Linkanizer

Variety your daily dose of Pushing Daisies cancellation (?) paranoia
Anne Thompson Oscar's Animated race
Defamer mixed buzz for Curious Cases & Revolutionary Roads
Reel Artsy Screenwriter Jenny Lumet wins the first of presumably multiple prizes for Rachel Getting Married
Pfeiffer the Face a new poster for Personal Effects (now aiming for 2009 release) and editing officially wraps on Oscar hopeful Chéri. Will we really have double Pfeiffer next year?
MTV Will Dolph Lundgren (50) and JCVD (47) actually reteam for a Universal Soldier sequel? (Let's do the time warp again)
A Socialite Life Jolie floats the notion that she's headed for retirement. I personally don't believe it. It's not like that lifestyle comes cheap. Those $20 million paychecks come in handy
The Hot Blog more Prop 8 fallout in filmmaking community
Getty Images Blame the Stylist: Maggie Gyllenhaal (oops)
EW's Entertainers of the Year: Pleased to see they included Neil Patrick Harris, Richard Jenkins (that Best Actor bid isn't going away, is it? --maybe I should move him back up in my predictions), Tina Fey, Jon Hamm, SJP & pals and La Streep. Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. is #1, natch
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Now Playing: Gay Zombies, Role Models and Zoo Animals

Just opened, from least to most screens... roughly. Links go to trailers

JCVD in which the Muscles From Brussels plays himself all washed up in some sort of pseudo-doc like comedy biopic? Very strange... but it might make an interesting warm up to The Wrestler, in a way, might it not? But the real question is 'can Van Damme still do the splits while fighting in his undies?' If so: sold.
Otto; or Up with Dead People in which Bruce LaBruce (of must see fringe cinema like The Raspberry Reich) tries to scare up the horror crowd and then torture them with undead gay sex
Pray the Devil Back to Hell a in which women struggle to bring peace to civil war plagued Liberia (documentary)
The World Unseen in which two women fall in love in South Africa during the early days of Apartheid

Repo: The Genetic Opera in which stunt-casted names (Giles from Buffy, a certain hotel heiress, Andrew Lloyd Webber's ex, rock stars, etc...) rock their way towards intended cult movie glory in this busy bloody story of organ theft terror. Unfortunately clips suggest a major ear sore. At least our Giles can sing...
The Boy in Striped Pajamas in which two young boys separated by the barbed wire of a concentration camp fence, forge a friendship. With Vera Farmiga and David Thewlis
House in which two stranded couples are terrorized in a satanic motel
Soul Men in which Samuel L Jackson and Bernie Mac (RIP) do road trip comedy on their way to the Apollo Theater for a reunion concert

Role Models in which adorably dim Seann William Scott and just plain adorable Paul Rudd are forced into Big Brother type community service. Directed by David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) so it might actually be hilarious
Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa in which the giraffe, hippo, zebra and lion are reunited for another madcap adventure that one marvels is not a DVD knockoff sequel but an actual movie playing on (gulp) 4,056 screens

Expanding: Jonathan Demme's vibrant Rachel Getting Married added over 200 screens so it should be easier for some of you to catch my latest cinematic obsession. Happy-Go-Lucky and Synechdoche New York both moved into extra markets as well. Warning on the latter two: If intensely cheerful souls OR pathetic miserabilists enrage/annoy you these aren't the movies for you as both films definitely follow the lead of their main character's worldview. But both have ardent fans, too. More on both later I hope.