Here’s something sort of bizarre – director Garry Marshall and writer Katherine Fugate‘s latest star-crammed desecration of random, non-religious holidays is not monumentally or irremediably terrible. It is also not good, but it’s certainly better than its predecessor, the rancid Valentine’s Day (though that’s not saying much). New Year’s Eve is not so much a film as a gimmick – tons of stars! lots of plots! all kind of connected! just one day! – and such a gimmick can yield some unexpectedly positive results just as often as it can ending up being simply terrible entertainment not worthy of being called cinema. New Year’s Eve is not so much a film as a two-hour piece of wish fulfillment for the sort of people who read US Weekly on, well, a weekly basis. Unlike Valentine’s Day, its very existence is not offensive, but it’s bloated and kind of boring and really, just really, tremendously unnecessary.

The horror…the horror… The best part about this poster for New Year’s Eve is either that it features all of the names and pictures of the actors, but not in the same order, or that the catchphrase “Let The Countdown Begin” lets us know that it’s a Doomsday Movie. Garry Marshall, who should be ashamed of himself for directing Valentine’s Day, proves once and for all that he owes some serious men down at the race track by stepping up to direct this sequel which seeks to squeeze even less screen time out for even more famous faces. Also, Homeless Hector Elizondo is kind of cruel considering they made everyone else look halfway decent (except for Ashton Kutcher who clearly didn’t show up for a photo shoot and forced the marketing department to find a paparazzi shot of him smiling). Enough with the words! Check it out for yourself, and feel free to largify it by clicking (if you dare):

If the multiple storylines, loose connections, and a total lack of chemistry of Valentine’s Day was simply not enough for you, director Garry Marshall has yet another holiday-themed film for the masses – twice the storylines! twice the loose connections! twice the total lack of chemistry! Wait, that math isn’t right. Even less chemistry! Everyone, meet New Year’s Eve. Like last year’s chillingly empty Valentine’s Day, Marshall’s latest film tracks a group of romantically challenged love losers across the course of one holiday. Will they find love? Will I hiss in the theater again? When is he making Flag Day? New Year’s Eve moves the action to New York City, though it inexplicably features two stars of VD (Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel) who appear to be playing totally different roles than in the previous film. If that hints at some sort of alternate universe, well, that’s still not very interesting to me. The really strange part about this trailer is the sense it gives off that all of its many stars were thrown into a blender, set to “frappe,” and poured out onto the pages of the script. How else can we possibly account for a film that pairs up Katherine Heigl with Jon Bon Jovi, Michelle Pfeiffer with Zac Efron, Lea Michele with Ashton Kutcher, or Jessica Biel with Seth Meyers? And that’s only about a quarter of the cast, everyone else flew by so quickly that my own mother could be in this film, and I wouldn’t [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The cinematic doppelganger effect seems to happen on a cyclical basis. Every few years, a pair of movies are released whose concepts, narratives, or central conceits are so similar that it’s impossible to envision how both came out of such a complex and expensive system with even the fairest amount of awareness of the other. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Antz and A Bug’s Life. Capote and Infamous. Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report. And now two R-rated studio-released romantic comedies about fuck buddies played by young, attractive superstars have graced the silver screen within only a few short months of each other. We typically experience doppelganger cinema with high-concept material, not genre fare. To see two back-to-back movies released about the secret life of anthropomorphic talking insects, a hyperbole-sized rock jettisoning towards Earth’s inevitable destruction, a Truman Capote biopic, or a movie about a mall cop seem rare or deliberately exceptional enough as a single concept to make the existence of two subsequent iterations rather extraordinary. Much has been made of the notion that Friends with Benefits is a doppelganger of No Strings Attached (the former has in more than one case been called the better version of the latter), but when talking about the romantic comedy genre – a category so well-tread and (sometimes for better, sometimes not) reliably formulaic that each film is arguably indebted to numerous predecessors – can we really say these films are doppelgangers in the same vein as the high-concept examples, or [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Without dragging the back story out too much, back in January Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen went bat shit crazy to the point of no return. The highest paid actor on television (two million an episode) took all his winnings and flushed them down the toilet along with his heroin, crack, marijuana, alcohol, and what ever else he flushes down there when the cops show up. His behavior forced CBS and Warner Brothers to halt production on the show and cancel the rest of the season. A few weeks later the bomb shell came out that Warner Brothers (who actually produces the show) fired Sheen from the program for good. The question then became, who could replace him? Well that answer has come today in the form of former sitcom and “current” movie star Ashton Kutcher. Yup, Mr. Good Looking himself will indeed be coming on to replace Sheen for at least a season. No other details on how Kutcher will be integrated into the show have been announced, but there is no doubt that all of that will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Justin Beiber has already provided some musical interludes for movies (including arthouse icon Marmaduke), and he brought in a ton of money with Justin Beiber: Never Say Never – the concert biopic about a kid who achieved all of his dreams before your first hair popped out down south. It was uplifting, and made us all feel better about ourselves. Now, according to Variety, Beiber is ready to act as something other than “Self,” and he’s going to get his first shot at the screen alongside Ashton Kutcher (because life has a sense of humor) in What Would Kenny Do. In a twist on the old Big model, this story focuses on a high school kid who starts hanging out with his older self (which means Kutcher will be credited with playing Justin Beiber) and starts getting advice. Piece of advice #1? Trucker hat, tilted to the side, is always clutch. Sony is developing in with a start date, but nothing’s been set in stone (the preferred contract material for Hollywood) just yet. Also, the rumors are true. Nathan Adams was going to write up this bit of news but was rushed to the hospital when his mind broke from imagining all the sarcastic comments he could make. I’ve set up a Beiber-playing boombox on loop outside his window in lieu of flowers.

The day that Hollywood waits for all year is here. Also, the day that people who write about Hollywood wait for all year is here. Hollywood is probably paying attention to the Oscar winners, but for the rest of us it’s time to see who won The Razzies. After all of the paychecks have been cashed and all of the artistic compromises have been made, the moment to find out who crapped out the worst schlock comes here: The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation has poured over all of the nominees and named their winners for the worst work of the year. Watching bad work earn Razzies isn’t quite payback enough for having to suffer through all of the crap that Hollywood churns out every year, but for people who watch everything in hopes of steering the public towards the good, it does serve as a little peace of mind. If the ceremonial blowjob of the Oscars has to exist, then I’m glad the Zen of the world is maintained by the Nelson Muntz “ha-ha” of The Razzies; the snarky yin to the gushing yang.

This week our Saturday tradition known as The Week That Was takes on a new look. And as I’m sure you probably won’t notice (because I’m not entirely convinced that anyone reads this column), I will be the first to point out that the new format was at least in part inspired by a new feature I read over at Cinematical. And because sometimes the best ideas are stolen, I’m not sorry. I just can’t apologize for finding a better way to help you catch up on all of the excellent content you may have missed here on Film School Rejects. I won’t do it. Now lets forget all about this nonsense and focus on what matters: the best articles of the week, as brought to you by the lovely and talented FSR contributors.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Live Free or Die Hard, the list of franchises that were long past their glory days but decided to go for another sequel anyway is growing every year. A lot of these movies end up financial successes when everything is tallied up, but they all have one thing in common: they are needless and lame from a story perspective and they turn off people who used to be fanatics of the brand. We’ve been hearing about a potential Ghostbusters 3 for quite some time now. Everybody seems to want to do it except for Bill Murray. Well, as of now, news on that front seems to be at basically a standstill, but with a little Ashton Kutcher thrown in.

I’m going to share something with you. I have a sick obsession with sex movies. I don’t mean I always watch them with salacious intentions, because I have to draw the line between art and pornography somewhere. Let me be clear, I really enjoy a movie whose sole purpose is to titillate a viewer so much that they question what they are really watching. I’ve spent many nights snuggled up on my couch cringing my way through Catherine Breillat’s many sex shockers. I made a boyfriend attend a viewing party for the highly controversial, yet exceptionally boring, 9 Songs. I’ve even gotten into fights with Netflix over its recommendation of Salo based on my high rating of Irreversible. Those last two movies have nothing in common, by the way. Sex-centric dramas have been a secret, back alley passion of mine. But in all my years devouring these movies, I rarely see comedies that both deal frankly with sex and show it. Sex is usually the butt of a joke in comedies, rather than a catalyst for moving a couple forward.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr trolls around hospitals looking for a scorching hot young doctor who doesn’t want a real relationship but would rather have someone she can have copious amounts of sex with many times throughout the week. Upon returning from that fantasy land, he heads to a job-placement agency to rub elbows with laid-off corporate executives who have trouble making ends meet so they can pay the lease on their Mercedes. Kevin is handing out grades for No Strings Attached and The Company Men, and the grades are not good.

There’s a sweet romance developing in No Strings Attached that’s infused with equal parts hope, humor, and hesitation. Both the characters and the actors bringing them to life are funny and capable of expressing their desires and doubts with brief exchanges and glances that feel honest and heartfelt. But unfortunately for the movie (and the viewers) the romance in question is not the one featuring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. Instead it’s a couple of supporting characters who manage to do in fifteen collective minutes of screen-time what the leads fail to accomplish throughout the entire film. Adam and Emma (kids here, but soon to be played by Kutcher and Portman) first meet at summer camp where he tries to turn sympathy over his parent’s impending divorce into a sexual opportunity, but she finds his emotional needs even less appealing than his offer of a good old fashioned fingering. They meet in passing a couple more times over the years, but their story proper begins when Adam awakens naked one morning on a couch belonging to Emma and her three roommates. He’s an emotional mess after discovering his ex-girlfriend is now dating his father (Kevin Kline) and she’s an overworked doctor uninterested in relationships, so the duo decide the best course of action is a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement. And the downside is…?

There’s a lot of trailer action this morning as Hollywood executives are just now waking up from their Hybernol-induced winter comas, but the funniest one out there (counting the past few months even) is hands down this new red-band trailer for No Strings Attached. The premise is simple and as old as sex itself, but when you toss in Natalie Portman staring at Asthon Kutcher’s penis with 3D glasses on (a commentary on the fad if there ever was one), a metric ton of clever cursing, and Ludacris making a self-reference to every “Ho” pun-themed song he’s written – the world has a little bit more brilliance in it. In fact, the catalyst for the pair getting together will make you look at your own father in a gross and terrible new way. Don’t put yourself in Ashton Kutcher’s character’s place. Don’t do it. Just don’t. Seriously, don’t.

Valentine’s Day was a terrible movie. It was everything that is syrupy and wrong with Hollywood, so of course it’s getting a sequel in New Year’s Eve – a trend that will most likely continue until Flag Day is made. Then it will be rebooted. That follow-up will now possibly see Ashton Kutcher re-enlisting as a brand new character (who doesn’t like New Year’s Eve), and he might also be joined by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, two-time Academy Award winner Robert DeNiro, and three-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s looking to shoot soon, and will most likely strive for a release close to New Year’s Eve 2011. Until then, the world longs for Flag Day. [THR]

Director Will Gluck had a fairly middling (yet harmless) introduction with the world through Fired Up! but his follow-up, Easy A, has earned him a place as one to watch. With more eyes on him, he’s chosen to make Justin Timberlake perform oral sex on Mila Kunis while singing a Semisonic song. Ivan Reitman, on the other hand, is a veteran. He’s the man who directed every movie you liked in the 80s. He’s hit a snag as a director recently (with My Super Ex-Girlfriend), but he’s on fire as a producer. Friends with Benefits is the Casual Sex Between Friends Armageddon to No Strings Attached‘s Deep Impact. Both movies deal with the same exact plot, both involve incredibly attractive people that in no way would ever realistically be hurting for carnal pleasure, and both come out around relatively the same time. Who will come out on top? Probably Kunis, but you should check out both trailers and weigh in for yourself.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr grades four new films: Get Him to the Greek, Splice, Marmaduke and Killers.

Neil makes a triumphant return to the Magical Studio in the Sky and celebrates the occassion by seeing one of the four movies opening this week. Sadly, Kevin is not that much farther ahead, having only seen one and 9/10th of another due to a freak lightning storm.

Despite the lack of Ghostbusters 3 rumors this week, Ivan Reitman is still getting himself into the news quite a bit. It must have something to do with him being hard at work casting his next film, Friends with Benefits.

The actress will either keep Portman and Kutcher from getting together, or impart some wisdom on the pair as the geeky female best friend.

One seasoned director. Two stars. One working title. Finally an exploration of the sexual politics between men and women.