MTSBM: The Lay of Leithian

 I don't want to talk about it.

As we all know, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy is a marvel of modern film-making. More importantly, though, it made scads of money. The obvious Hollywood response to such an obvious cash cow is to milk it for all it’s worth, and to that end The Hobbit will be released in two parts sometime in the next five years. But The Hobbit is a happy children’s tale, not the gritty epic that is Lord of the Rings. I mean, come on, in the book, the main character wins the One Ring to Rule Them All in a riddle contest, and spends most of the climactic battle unconscious. Oh, and it has an even worse deus ex machina than Lord of the Rings. But even if The Hobbit does bomb, Hollywood executives need not fear! Because Tolkien had significantly more than just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit up his literary sleeve. Tolkien wrote entire detailed histories of Middle-Earth, going back all the way to it’s creation, with stories spanning thousands of years. That’s a lot of movies. But one of these is so perfectly suited to be a movie that it’s almost shocking no Tolkien nerd has ever sent this idea off to MGM, and that is the Lay of Leithian, or Release from Bondage, possibly called more simply “Of Beren and Luthien.” The story goes sort of like this:

Joseph's Top Ten List of the Decade ('00 to now (Sept. '10))

Spoiler Alert . . .

Well, after Ben did his Top Ten of the Decade list, I thought I would just copy him with my own personal take on the best films of the decade. A couple notes: I haven't seen vast amounts of the movies released this decade, so if you have some ideas of what might be better than these movies, feel free to throw them out there. I'd love some suggestions for more awesome movies. Also, this is influenced a lot by my personal opinion, rather than attempting to objectively analyze the best films of the decade (not that this list is completely subjective), so if you're appalled by any of my choices, remember that that's a personal insult to me, 

so . . . way to go.

Upcoming Films: Zooey Deschanel News

Obsessed? Me? What are you talking about?

For all you out there obsessed with Zooey Deschanel (you are out there, right? It’s not just me, right? You guys are obsessed too? No? Whatever.) here are the latest news slash rumors about her upcoming projects.

How could this go wrong?

Firstly, and most concretely, she’s set to appear in upcoming film My Idiot Brother as one of the three sisters of Paul Rudd’s “idiot brother” character. Although I’m mostly a Paul Rudd skeptic, her fellow sisters, played by Emily Mortimer and Elizabeth Banks, seem at least passable, and despite the title the movie looks to be quite different from his more uncouth movies (I Love You, Man, Knocked Up, etc.). Each of the sisters lets Rudd’s character stay with them for a period of time, engendering much family bonding as the (presumably) endearing loser younger brother helps them recognize their problems, such as workaholism or, in Zooey’s case, coldness and lack of intimacy. This aloofness is damaging Zooey’s character’s relationship with her girlfriend (yes, you read that right), and it’s pretty clear that a movie involving Zooey Deschanel as a bisexual can hardly fail to be awesome. Hopefully this movie will stay away from the more raunchy jokes, and stick to entertaining comedy, but I will confess to some fear about this movie’s quality. We’ll have to wait and see.

MTSBM: Ridin' in My Car

Oh . . . too soon.

One thing's for sure:
it will involve these sunglasses.

As far as the ultimate movie goes, many have posited several theories for what it would look like. Some envision it as the ultimate action movie (of course, after The Expendables, that’s pretty much shot), while others see it as a romantic comedy involving their favorite actors (again, depending on which actors this is, it probably already exists). The critic types imagine it as the ultimate meaningful psychological drama that finally reveals the depths of the human psyche once and for all. Some maintain that the ultimate movie either already exists or can never exist. While I do admittedly find myself among the latter camp, I have a vision for a movie that would probably be my favorite of all time. I would watch this movie multiple times in theaters, buy it when it came out on DVD (possibly also multiple times) and force my friends to watch it so many times that, despite its glory, they would inevitably groan as soon I gleefully pulled it out and forced it into the player before they could rip it from my hands. This movie goes something like this:

Upcoming Movie: Your Highness

Watching this movie will make you almost as cool as these guys.

As a self-professed Zooey Deschanel stalker, all of her upcoming movies are sources of great excitement for me, but Your Highness should be a genuinely entertaining movie. Everything about this movie promises laughs aplenty, from the irreverent premise to the actors to the writer. The writer I’m referring to is Danny McBride, who also wrote the ludicrously silly Hot Rod, a favorite here at YAMB which stars Andy Samberg in a ridiculous coming-of-age role. Danny McBride also stars in Your Highness, as a slacker younger prince who must man up to save the kingdom from darkness and evil.

Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer

The whole movie is like this.

Expectations, as we all know, have a tendency to be significantly different than reality. So I need to be careful what I say, because about this movie, I might have a tendency to set up the expectations of you, dear reader, to unrealistic heights. (500) Days of Summer is one of the best-made, most entertaining movies I’ve seen in my entire life (and I’m not just saying that because I’m obsessed with Zooey Deschanel (no, really)). Not only was it an excellent movie, but it was that rare exotic artifact quickly disappearing from movie-making: an original, hard-to-define movie. (500) Days of Summer just never does exactly meet expectations, no matter what you’re expecting.

Actor Profile: Zooey Deschanel

Personal Life

Zooey Claire Deschanel (pronounced Zoh-ee Day-shuh-nell) was practically born into fame. Her parents were Caleb and Mary Jo Deschanel, a director slash filmographer and actress respectively. She was born in Los Angeles, California on January 17, 1980 and is of French and Irish descent. Her name, with its odd spelling of Zoe, comes from the main character of J.D. Salinger’s work Franny and Zooey, despite the fact that the Zooey in that book is a male. Because her director father shot many of his films on location, she spent much of her childhood traveling, which Zooey didn’t like. She’s allergic to dairy, gluten, and eggs, and spent quite some time as a vegan, before she decided her allergies made it too difficult to stay healthy. She attended a private preparatory school in Santa Monica, California with fellow actors Kate Hudson and Jake Gyllenhaal and dropped out of Northwestern University to pursue a career in acting. She is a talented singer, and can play the piano, banjo and ukulele. Her older sister Emily is also an actress; she plays the title character in Fox’s crime drama show Bones, which Zooey made an appearance in as a distant relative of Emily’s character, marking the first time the Deschanel sisters appeared on screen together. On September 19, 2009, a date that shall live on in infamy, she married Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, crushing the dreams of many innocent people. She is also the “she” in the band She & Him, of which M. Ward, who she worked with on The Go-Getter, is the “him.” The band has two albums, the appropriately titled Volume One and Volume Two. Her interests include jazz singing, fashion, and philosophy, and she shares an eerie resemblance with pop singer Katy Perry. To conclude, she’s basically the perfect person.