This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr recovers from his colossal failure in getting any of his votes in the Critic’s Choice Movie Awards to count (except for A Separation for best foreign film, but who didn’t think that would win?) by engaging in therapy via multiplex. Unfortunately, it’s January, and his only choices were Marky Mark and the Smuggling Bunch or Queen Latifah going mano-y-mano with the robot Dolly Parton. He opts for the action film, but he may have also fallen asleep during it. How soon until good movies are released again?

The Rum Diary marks Johnny Depp’s return to Hunter S. Thompson territory, following his cult favorite work in Terry Gilliam’s delirious adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Yet audiences expecting more of the same drug-fueled mania will be disappointed. While it’s filled with offbeat characters and the occasional stylistic quirk, Bruce Robinson’s film offers a straightforward, earnest narrative about a young marble-mouthed author finding his writing voice while fighting capitalist corruption. Set in a volatile Puerto Rico, circa 1960, Thompson’s semi-autobiographical story follows struggling journalist/alter ego Paul Kemp (Depp) as he joins the staff at a local rag run by domineering editor-in-chief Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). It’s a day-to-day portrait of Kemp’s hard living in paradise, set against a backdrop of conflict between the natives hoping to protect their land and the capitalistic cronies interested in transforming the archipelago nation into an overdeveloped tourist spot.

The first trailer for Mark Wahlberg’s upcoming team-up with Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, Contraband, has hit, and it packs just about every action movie trope that you can think of into two and a half minutes. First off, Wahlberg plays a former criminal, who “got out of the life” and started a family. Then there’s the matter of a trouble-making brother (or in this case brother-in-law) who does something stupid and draws the protagonist back into doing “one last job.” We get the development of the wife and family being kidnapped, and even a Mexican stand-off with everybody pointing guns at each other. Pretty much this movie has everything an action fan could want. Check out the first trailer after the break.

If you haven’t been reading along, I’ve been gushing about Ruben Fleischer’s upcoming crime drama The Gangster Squad for quite a while. Story details about the cops and gangsters flick about real life gangster Mickey Cohen can be found in my first article about the movie, where it was announced that Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Ryan Gosling had all been cast in key roles. Penn is in the starring role as Cohen, and Brolin and Gosling are two of the members of the titular gangster squad that is put together to take him down. After hearing that, I didn’t think that life could get much better, but then it did. The second Gangster Squad related bomb that Fleischer dropped on me was that man about town Bryan Cranston would also be joining the cast as a rough and tumble member of the LAPD by way of Texas. Suddenly the original Triumvirate of Awesome that was the Gangster Squad cast became the Cornerstones of Awesome instead. And now that the film has such a solid foundation to build a metaphorical house on, it’s time to start picking out pretty curtains and stuff by filling out the cast further. The big news of the day from Deadline Monowi is that grizzled, crazy actor Nick Nolte has also been cast. He will play Bill Parker, the incorruptible chief of police who takes it upon himself to form this so-called gangster squad. That sounds like a big role. Seeing as Nolte’s upcoming movie [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 Family Guy creator’s funny looking upcoming comedy Ted just got funnier looking. Joining such names as Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and Giovanni Ribisi will be the star of the much lauded and loved NBC sitcom Community, Joel McHale. You might also know him as the handsome yet goofy host of The Soup. Or maybe you’ve seen him touring around out on the standup circuit. Look, point is that Joel McHale has a lot of jobs. He’s a funny man. McHale joins the cast playing the unsavory boss of Kunis’ character. He reportedly spends much of the film making inappropriately forward come-ons to Kunis. And who among us could blame him? Usually when we see McHale on screen he is playing some version of likable, or at the very least he is a cad with a whole lot of charm. It will be interesting to see him really sleaze it up playing a character that sounds like a villain and see what kind of humor he can create with that. Being a member in good standing of the Church of McHale, I have faith that he will produce good things. And while I haven’t bothered to watch The Family Guy in years, the more I’m hearing about this raunchy teddy bear movie, the more I’m starting to think that it could be something good. I just wonder who’s running all of McFarlane’s hundreds of Fox cartoons while he’s away. Source: Deadline Greendale

The film, called Ted, sounds interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, it will be the first live action work that we get to see from the main brain behind Family Guy, which has become a boundary pushing institution over the last ten years that people mention in the same breath as other edgy animation like The Simpsons and South Park. Secondly, it will be the first time we get to see McFarlane create in the R rated realm of raunch. Family Guy has done everything it can to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to its audience since its very inception, but it is still just a prime time network show when you boil things down. We’ve maybe not even scraped the surface of the depravity that might be lying hidden inside McFarlane’s mind. Also, Mila Kunis is reportedly attached to the project as well. Any movie that I hear pitched instantly gets at least twice as intriguing when you tell me Mila Kunis is going to be in it. The film centers on a man, played by Mark Wahlberg, who made a childhood wish that his teddy bear would come to life. Several decades later, when he’s well into adulthood, having a living, breathing teddy bear following him around everywhere isn’t as great as it seemed when he was 7. As a matter of fact, it gets pretty annoying. Especially when the bear, Ted, is a drinking, smoking lout. The bear itself will be stop motion and voiced [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]

Paramount Pictures has released a full red band trailer for their upcoming internet porn opus, Middle Men. For those who missed it when we posted the first trailer — of the green band variety — this film tells the story of the guy who invented the method of collecting money for subscriptions to adult websites. His innovation almost singlehandedly led the rise in the internet pornography business, which is now one of the world’s most lucrative entertainment sectors. Why? Because they made it fast and easy — and people like fast and easy, especially when it comes to porn. Check out the film’s synopsis and the new red band trailer after the jump.

This far into the age of the internet, we all just know and accept it as a porn filled cesspool – but do you know the story behind the digital hooters? The Middle Men explores the unexpected birth of the online porn blow-up.

20th Century Fox and IGN UK have unleashed yet another new look at Avatar. And at this point I would normally say that we’ve reached a saturation point with clips, trailer and featurettes, but we must remember that this is a 19-hour movie.

The time has come. For many of you out there, this is the event you’ve been waiting all year to see — the first official footage for Avatar, the upcoming sci-fi epic from director James Cameron, is online.

In about 10 hours, the first trailer for Avatar, the highly anticipated CGI-driven 3D sci-fi epic from director James Cameron will be online. But before we can get to that, we need pictures!

Vince is finally coming to realize his career is in the toilet; Eric attempts to increase his client base by adding two unproduced screenwriters to his minuscule stable; Drama deals with an obsessive girlfriend who may not actually be that obsessive. and Ari wonders how to deal with Vince now that his career may be over.