I was pretty jazzed when Ryan Reynolds was cast as Green Lantern, but I figured it severely slimmed the chances of his reprising his role from X-Men Origins: Wolverine in a Deadpool solo flick.  But, apparently, Deadpool is still a go, and the Zombieland guys are writing it.  Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (authors of my second favorite film of the year) have demonstrated an excellent mastery of  dry wit and dark comedy, making them a solid choice for a successful adaptation of Deadpool.

And this will make Reynolds the first big name I can think of to headline as both a Marvel and DC hero (although, I guess if you count his role in the third Blade movie, he was there already.)  All we need is a competent director, maybe somebody willing to let Reynolds improvise here and there, and this thing might turn out alright.

[via /iFilm]

Remember, kids, you can check our respective IMDb pages (Logan here and Ryan here) year round if you want to see what we gave a particular film. But here, for your reference, is each of our complete ratings for 2009.  And below that, our respective best and worst lists.

To hear us chat about this year in movies, make sure to catch our 2009 Wrap-Up podcast.

All ratings are on a 10 point scale.

Hey, ladies...come a little closer and let me link my ponytail to your banshee.

I can’t quite explain why Avatar is still number one at the box office and is well on its way to breaking records.  I also can’t explain why a lot of this is apparently due to repeat business.  Do people really want to sit through that film twice?  All 162 minutes of it?  Sigh.

Whatever the case may be (Personally?  I think that a lot of people are just plain dumb, but what do I know?), Cameron has announced a longer version of the film when it finally reaches DVD/Blu-Ray.  I’m sure this makes a lot of you dateless losers very excited, but before you go pitching a tent in your pants, consider this great quote from Cameron in regards to the laughable sex scene that was merely hinted at in the theatrical version:

“We had it in and we cut it out. So that will be something for the special edition DVD, if you want to see how they have sex.”

Yes, that is a actual quote from Cameron…and he’s not kidding.  I couldn’t make this crap up.  CHUD has the full story, which goes into slightly more detail.

You are now free to pitch that tent…perv.

Can you believe we’ve been doing this for a whole year?  Seems like only yesterday you were disagreeing with our 2008 wrap-up.  REVIEWED: The highlights and lowlights of 2009.

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This man has more money than you'll ever see in your entire life.

In the upcoming week you’ll get a chance to both hear and read your ol’ pals Logan and Ryan’s “Top Ten Films of 2009” lists.  Until then, why not read what Stephen King has to say over at Entertainment Weekly.  I think he’s put together a great list (featuring several films that have made most peoples “worst” lists), and I’m especially fond of what he had to say about both the original Last House on the Left and the 2009 remake.

Apparently there’s a yearly poll that asks theater owners to vote on which actors generated the most business for them that year.  Here are the results for 2009:

1. Sandra Bullock
2. Johnny Depp
3. Matt Damon
4. George Clooney
5. Robert Downey Jr.
6. Tom Hanks
7. Meryl Streep
8. Brad Pitt
9. Shia LaBeouf
10. Denzel Washington

So, according to theater owners, if you slap any of these ten names on a poster, you’ve got a hit on your hands.  Now I’m just a simple country blogger, but it seems to me that if Sandra Bullock can bring in $300 million with a cheesy football flick all by herself, then Sandra Bullock and Johnny Depp could easily pull in $600 million.  I mean, we’re talking twice the bankable stars.  Throw in Matt Damon?  That’s a cool $900 mil.  George Clooney pops in?  Oh, I’m sorry, I got distracted by this BILLION DOLLAR BILL!  Where’d the other $2 million go?  I left it as a tip at the Olive Garden.

It’s an obvious scheme, so why hasn’t Hollywood put all ten of these heavy hitters in one blockbuster, creating the mathematically best and most profitable movie of all time?  Because no writer has been able to dream up one story that could contain them all…until now!

Here’s the pitch:  Sandra Bullock is a MILFy, but lonely librarian at the Library of Congress, whiling her ho-hum days away by flipping through old newspapers and pining for the love she’s never known.  Will she ever meet her swarthy soul mate, the man who exists only in her wildest rubber-cement induced fantasies?

YES!  He’s Johnny Depp!  A constantly drunk pickpocket from the turn of the century who emerges from the pages of one of the library’s many books when Sandra Bullock accidentally reads aloud an ancient magical incantation from John Hancock’s diary!  You can bet the two don’t see eye to eye, what with Johnny Depp’s abrasive behavior, outdated attitude toward women, and flatulence problem (Only thing more bankable than Johnny Depp?  FART JOKES.)  But with a few sardonic quips and a few more hilarious costume montages, the duo just may be able to get along, and dare I say it…get it ON?

But just as things start to heat up, the whole situation gets complicated when Matt Damon (a down on his luck Library of Congress janitor who’s SO smart if he’d only apply himself) enters the picture.  Matt Damon finds out that Johnny Depp is his great great grandfather!  This leads to proof that Matt Damon’s father was the one behind the big Library of Congress murder scandal a couple years back, so he’s got to hide the evidence to save the family name.  He tries to curse Johnny Depp back into the book, only to accidentally open a temporal rift that sends the trio back in time.

And who should they meet but the Everley brothers as brought to life by George Clooney and Robert Downer Jr.!  Matt Damon is still trying to kill Johnny Depp in comical ways, but everyone’s distracted when George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr. ask for help writing the lyrics to Bird Dog. They’ve only got a day until the big concert and if they don’t perfect it, they’ll never impress their pal Budd Holly (David Cross in an unrelated and non-bankable cameo).

Of course, our heroes pull it off, but just as Sandra Bullock and Johnny Depp go in for a celebratory kiss, they’re interrupted by a passing Hollywood producer, none other than Tom Hanks.  Tom Hanks is a big city guy with small town roots and a secret penchant for dirty Japanese comics (this part not shown, just for Tom’s character work) who is looking for his next big star.  And Sandra Bullock is it!

“Baby, you’re gonna make me on average 300 million dollars!” he remarks!  Sandra is whisked away to Hollywood to star in major motion pictures, but she soon realizes that everyone there is a huge phony, not like Johnny Depp, the magically incarnated pickpocket for whom she still longs.

The only person Sandra Bullock really connects with is her wise old makeup gal, Meryl Streep, who’s been around the block once or twice and may even be able to teach our mousy heroine a thing or two about love (NOTE:  Lesbian scene between Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep probably a bad idea.  Film anyway and save it for the DVD bonus features).  But when the two decide to play hooky for the day and drive out into the country for an impromptu female empowerment road trip, they never expect to have a run-in with creepy drifter Brad Pitt!

Brad Pitt wants something from Sandra Bullock.  And it sure isn’t a library card. He wants to tell her she’s the only one who can stop the alien invasion that only he knows about!  Crazy?  Sure he’s crazy.  CRAZY LIKE A FOXY BRAD PITT! Sandra Bullock isn’t buying Brad Pitt’s tall tales, or his handmade hemp chokers (product tie in?), but things get a little too real to ignore when a giant metal spaceship lands, crushing Brad Pitt’s smelly trailer.  Sandra Bullock looks up in horror to see hundreds and thousands of aliens emerge from the ship.  And they are ALL Shia LaBeouf!  Some of the Shias are wise and grandfatherly, while some are street tough and slangy, but all of them like pizza and skateboarding.  (Does EACH Shia bring in its own $300 million?  The answer is yes of course!)

The head Shia tells Sandra that Brad Pitt only got half of the story right.   Yes they are aliens, but they aren’t invading.  All they want is the incredi-shard, a long lost piece of their homeworld that drifted to Earth millions of our years ago, though it’s only been three Shia-cycles.  They don’t know who on Earth has it.  All they know is they’re going to need the toughest damn cop we’ve got to track it down.  Enter Denzel Washington whose wife was killed by the incredi-shard bandit several years ago while visiting the Library of Congress.  With the aliens’ help, he’s finally got the lead he needs to reopen the case and make the bastard pay once and for all.

Sandra Bullock and Denzel Washington spend a lot of time staring pensively at computer screens, scrolling through old records, and chasing shadowy figures into alleys only to lose them.  Finally, they track down the culprit!  Seen only in shadow, they chase him through an abandoned warehouse until they have him cornered.  Dramatically, he turns around to reveal his identity…IT’S YOU!  Yes, thanks to James Cameron 3D face scanning technology, you the audience were the killer the whole time!  Smash cut to a stylishly late title card and roll the opening credits.  That’s when the movie really gets going!

The ball’s in your court, Hollywood.  Just send me a $20 billion advance to finish up the script (a mere 1/10000000 of the film’s projected earnings) and we’ll be in business.

Ryan and I have talked at great lengths about how much the experience of seeing a film in an actual theater has gone to crap.  While it’s easy to blame cell phones for this, don’t forget that the real blame should fall on the idiots who refuse to turn them off during the movie.  As this decade comes to a close (and more importantly, Critical End! turns one year old!), it’s time to start looking for a few solutions.  Luckily, CHUD has made an amazing list of ways to improve this problem so I don’t have to.  Give it a read by clicking the great image they made below, and be sure to keep these things in mind when you head out to see Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Jason Lee’s Suicide Note. 

Happy New Year, kids.

Catching up on 2009 movies for our big year end wrap-up, I finally saw G.I. Joe.  During my viewing, Dennis Quaid gave me a message that he wanted me to pass along to you.  He says to…

“DEPLOY THE SHARKS!”

Just so you know.

Is Robert Downey Jr. hording all of this money in a basement somewhere, fully aware that his star could fall again at any moment?  Or is he like “What the hell, I can always make a sequel to Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree!”   REVIEWED: Sherlock Holmes.  PLUS: More musings on the trials of theater-going, including the secret world of the Kiosk Gnome.

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We all know Tom Wilson as Biff from Back to the Future,  and if my DVR is any judge, he’s still doing okay for himself making the rounds on procedural crime dramas.  But who knew he did stand up?  You do now (thanks to /Film).  And–shock of shocks–he does a musical bit about BTTF in his act.

They live in a secret world touched by magic and surrounded by nature, and the only human who has ever been there, must now fight to save it.  This is the story of FernGully: The Last Rainforest.  REVIEWED: Avatar.  PLUS: Bye Bye Squeaky.

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Daws Butler at work.

First, we learned that Dan Aykroyd would, for some reason, be voicing Yogi Bear in the upcoming CGI/live-action hybrid film. Weird for several reasons, including:

• Dan Aykroyd hasn’t been the kind of name that can sell a film for years
• Dan Aykroyd is “retired”
• And most important to me, Dan Aykroyd is not a voice actor.

Voice actors are a talented breed. Daws Butler made Yogi and a ton of other Hanna Barbera characters the cultural icons they are today. Since his death, a select group of voice professionals, many trained by Butler himself, have stepped forward to keep his characters alive. So now that Yogi’s going all big budget, it seems unfair to rob a working voice actor of the payday by giving the role to a semi-retired purveyor of magic skull vodka.  No offense, Dan.

But it’s certainly not the most egregious offense ever levied against our golden-throated brethren.  After all, Yogi hasn’t really had a regular voice since Greg Burson stopped working in 2004 (Google that for a truly sad tale), so recasting the part doesn’t hurt any one specific artist.

"This makes me very angry. Very angry indeed."

Which brings us to the rumor that Mike Myers may voice Marvin the Martian in yet another half CGI/half C-list actor combo movie.  Really?   Really, everybody?  We’re cool with this?  Mike Myers, the guy responsible for what may be the least watchable movie of all time?  (FUN HOME GAME: Find a friend.  Got one?  Good.  Now refer to Mike Myers as “the guy responsible for what may be the least watchable movie of all time” and see which film your friend thinks you’re talking about.)

Yes, a man who is already immeasurably rich is going to get the keys to another dump truck full of money in exchange for what will very likely be a terrible, unresearched imitation of Mel Blanc, while Joe Alaskey–easily one of the most talented voice actors working today–continues to toil in relative obscurity.  Or, more likely and more insulting, Alaskey will end up doing one of the movie’s disposable bit characters while Myers ham-tonguedly mars (Get it?  Mars?) Marvin’s legacy.

Their love didn't follow the rules...of space.

Look.  Some of the most recognizable (and lucrative) characters in the world are cartoons.  Yet, Hollywood continues to treat the performers  who bring them to life like second class citizens.   Take a look at any poster for Space Jam (WARNING: Do not take a look at the movie Space Jam.)  You’ll see that the top-billed stars are Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny.  Oh, I’m sorry!  Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan. So why is it that when the movie premiered, Michael was led into the prestigious Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, while Billy West and the rest of the voice cast were shunted into an entirely separate screening.  I mean, I get that Jordan is going to get the press attention, but were they afraid he might accidentally catch some talent if he spent 90 minutes in the same room with a voice actor?

I’ll tell you what will change things:  If the audience starts caring.  For every ten people who know Will Smith starred in Shark Tale, I want one who can name any Maurice LeMarche character.  The more Hollywood thinks you care, the more we’ll see voice actors in trailer credits and on talk shows, and the less likely Justin Long will somehow end up voicing Alvin the Chipmunk.  I dream of a day when our children’s children will line up to see Frank  Welker walk the red carpet to receive his lifetime achievement award.  And if somebody tells Tom Kenny he can’t go to the same premiere as David Hasselhoff, he can look them right in the eye and say “Fuck you, man.  I’m SpongeBob SquarePants and I’ll go any place I Goddamn please.”

So…what if he’d kissed a regular frog?  REVIEWED: The Princess and the Frog.  PLUS: A bunch of Christmas Retro Picks including Jack Frost (not the Michael Keaton one) and a whole messa Muppets.

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Am I posting this just so there will be something between the two tragically late episodes of the podcast I just edited?  Perhaps.  But also because it’s awesome.

So many things to learn.  But we’ll enjoy each lesson.  Problems don’t worry us.  When half the fun is guessing.  REVIEWED: Brothers (2004), Brothers (2009).  CHRISTMAS RETRO PICK: It’s a Wonderful Life.

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