A Christmas Story: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out

Click to watch the A Christmas Story trailer at Zuguide.com

With Christmas just a day away, I thought I’d offer up the trailer for the quintessential basic cable holiday movie, A Christmas Story. Shown no fewer than 300 times each December, A Christmas Story is basically an honest, if slightly exaggerated, view of the holiday season as seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up in the 1940s. All Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun, but his pleas are ignored by his parents and even the mall Santa Claus shuts him down. With Ralphie’s overwhelming desire for a BB gun at its center, the rest of the film revolves around his dysfunctional family and their various failures at achieving the perfect American Christmas.

Highlights of the A Christmas Story trailer include: 1) Mrs. Parker dropping a wrapped present that is obviously a bowling ball into Mr. Parker’s unsuspecting lap. 2) Ralphie and Randy throwing the socks they just unwrapped over their shoulders. 3) Randy eating his dinner like a little pig. 4) The Parker’s house being overrun by hound dogs and Mr. Parker shouting at them from his porch. And, 5) The mall Santa Claus sending Ralphie down a slide by pushing him in the forehead with his foot. My favorite part of the trailer is when Mr. Parker points out that the Peking duck they are about to eat is smiling at them just before their server chops its head off with a butcher knife. Check out the A Christmas Story trailer at Zuguide.com.

Terminator Salvation: Nick Stahl Is No Edward Furlong

Click to watch the Terminator Salvation trailer at Zuguide.com

First, we were supposed to believe Edward Furlong grew up to become Nick Stahl (maybe). Now, we’re supposed to believe that Nick Stahl magically transformed into Christian Bale (I don’t see it). The Terminator franchise may center on time traveling cyborgs and an artificially intelligent computer ushering in the apocalypse so machines can rule the planet, but they could have paid a little more attention to the continuity of their heroes.

I’m all for Batman taking over as John Connor in the upcoming Terminator Salvation, and obviously Furlong reached the apex of his career as a whiny juvenile delinquent who fell in love with Arnold Schwarzenegger in T2, so the weak link here has to be Stahl. Without Stahl’s stint in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, it’s not hard to imagine the Furlong Connor embracing his destiny, working out a little bit, and becoming the machine-killing machine that the Bale Connor appears to be in the new film. But, the Stahl Connor was such a clumsy, uninspiring wimp that he made Claire Danes look tough by comparison. I’d feel much better about the whole thing if they had simply cast someone like Chris Evans in T3. He might not be Laurence Olivier, but at least he would have been the toughest cast member on My So-Called Life.

As it stands, we’ll just have to pretend that the Stahl Connor somehow grew a pair, went through Dark Knight training camp, and came out the other side as the convincing, battle-tested leader of the human resistance. Or, maybe we could just forget about T3 all together.

Highlights of the Terminator Salvation trailer include: 1) A machine grabbing a human out of warehouse like the claw game at the grocery store. 2) Bale shooting a Terminator in the head after landing on it with a helicopter. 3) Robot motorcycles tearing down the highway. 4) Bale striking the “Charlie Sheen in Platoon” pose, while screaming in the rain. And, 5) Bale getting in Sam Worthington’s face and saying, “We’ve been at war since before either of us even existed.” My favorite parts of the trailer are the eerie shots of a lone Terminator standing menacingly in the rain. Terminator Salvation opens May 22, 2009. Check out the Terminator Salvation trailer at Zuguide.com.

Yes Man, AKA Liar Liar Part II

Click to watch the Yes Man trailer at Zuguide.com

In honor of Jim Carrey completing the long awaited second installment of his forced behavior modification trilogy with Yes Man (the first being 1997’s Liar Liar), I’ve decided to put forth a few ideas for the final, closure-bringing film that should hit theaters towards the end of 2017. But, before we get to the possible plots, let’s do a little recap.

In Liar Liar, Carrey was a lawyer magically forced to tell the truth for 24 hours after his son made a birthday wish. The experience had him saying and doing things that put a major cramp in his scumball lawyer day, like admitting to farting in an elevator and pronouncing himself to be in contempt of court .  In Yes Man, Carrey is a perpetual naysayer challenged to say yes to every opportunity that comes his way for an entire year after attending a self-help seminar. As a result, Carrey drinks too much Red Bull, takes up guitar and Korean, and orders a Persian bride on the internet.

For the third film, I imagine Carrey will start out as some type of jerkhole and, through an outlandish set of circumstances, discover that his anti-social behavior has been holding him back from realizing true happiness.

On to the scenarios:

The Day the Earth Stood Still: Keanu Takes the Planet Hostage

Click to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still trailer

After portraying a kind-hearted, time-traveling dimwit whose rock music leads to the creation of a Utopian society (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) and a messianic computer hacker who frees the human race from unconscious slavery using kung fu (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions), Keanu Reeves decided to stretch his bones and accept a role that would allow him to approach saving the world from a slightly different angle: threatening to eradicate the human race. In the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Reeves plays Klaatu, an alien messenger sent to Earth to assess humankind’s ability to peaceably coexist and reverse the environmental damage they’ve inflicted on the planet. Rather than saving humanity with power chords or martial arts techniques, Reeves must decide whether the earthlings deserve to live, or if their existence poses too great a threat to their planet’s rare ability to sustain complex life.

Not surprisingly, Reeves’ alien impression basically consists of his patented vacant stare combined with his naturally emotionless speaking voice. For someone who grew up listening to Robert Stack narrate thousands of alien abductions on Unsolved Mysteries, this doesn’t exactly strike fear in my heart. Compared to the countless nights I spent dreading the thought of waking up in a distant galaxy strapped to an ice-cold metal table in a room filled with light, doomed to spend the final terrifying hours of my life in intense anguish, listening to Reeves calmly forewarn his human captors that their time is running out has little effect. I mean, the mere fact that he’s willing to sit down and talk means that there’s still a chance for salvation, and, even if things don’t work out, I’m pretty sure there won’t be any probing involved.

Highlights of The Day the Earth Stood Still trailer include: 1) Jennifer Connelly hiding a cell phone in her cleavage. 2) Don Draper (Jon Hamm) pretending to be a NASA scientist. 3) Reeves dryly answering a couple questions while hooked up to a polygraph before telling the man administering the test that he should let him go.  And, 4) Reeves telling Connelly and Jaden Smith (the future Next Karate Kid), “If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives.” My favorite part of the trailer comes near the end when Gort, Reeves’ menacing robot enforcer, is shown for a brief moment with a beam of light coming out of his cyclops-like eye. The Day the Earth Stood Still opens December 12, 2008. Check out The Day the Earth Stood Still trailer at Zuguide.com.