Lily Tomlin Snaps and David O. Russell Adolescentizes Before Your Very Eyes: VIDEO PROOF! (Also "Watchmen" Tease and Davendra's "Insect Eyes")

Hello all. I'm back from my sickness. Pretty sure it was strep throat. Probably the worst viral dustup I've had in my life - during the worst of it, when every swallow of water was an ordeal, I felt acutely every one of my 30 years. I've still got a lingering cough that makes getting to sleep slightly problematic, and eating takes a little effort because my throat's still kind of swollen, but the worst of it is over.

Anyway, over the hiatus my Nyquil-sloshed brain has been half-heartedly composing blog entries (mostly about "300" and "Zodiac"), but I'm going to save those for another day. Today, something appeared on-line that demanded the immediate attention of the Inanities. Indeed, it demands your attention.

A few years back (perhaps more) I was over at a fledgling cinematographer's apartment who lived in the same building as me. We'll call him David. While I was over there, David's roommate, a fledgling editor we'll call Mike, popped a DVD into the player. On it were two clips unlike anything I'd ever seen before. What they showed was an actress (Lily Tomlin) and a director (David O. Russell) screaming obscenities at one another on a movie set ("I Heart Huckabees"). The director even trashes the set and throws things, narrowly missing humans (but then hitting one accidentally). "Is this what goes on on Hollywood film sets?" I wondered. "Or is this kind of bullshit unique to these people and this movie?" I don't know but I suspect the former. Anyway, I looked for those clips later to watch them again and revel in the bad behavior, but they were nowhere to be found. Well, no more. Today they're up for all to enjoy, for all eternity. Click here for the clips.

It's hard to tell who's the bigger asshole from these. If you only saw the car one, you'd think Lily Tomlin deserved the prize. If you only saw the office clip, you'd think it was Russell. In a way, they kind of offer both sides of the story: they're both assholes and they each deserve the abuse they so liberally heap on each other. Though I haven't heard of Lily Tomlin being quite as awful as this on other film sets, I have heard of David O. Russell being a belligerent asshole on the set of "Three Kings". Such an asshole in fact that George Clooney had to physically pull Russell's big ass off of some Iraqi extras who weren't seeing the fullness of his vision. So perhaps the asshole edge goes to Russell.

And finally, I saw this a while back but never had a chance to put it up. Since "300" blew up two weekends ago, the heat on Zack Snyder's next project, "Watchmen", got turned way up so that even non-geeks are interested in it. Turns out Zack, Mel Gibson-like trickster that he is, inserted a conceptual, pre-production still from his work on his next project into a late trailer for "300". Here's the link to the Aintitcool story, but I thought it would be easier if I just posted it up. So here it is:










Frickin' cool huh?
Anyway, it's the first in a long sequence of cool, teasing imagery that will culminate in the first big trailer, which will be amazing, and then the sequence will end when the actual film's released, which won't be half as good as we'd all been led to believe. Perpetual build-up and letdown. The new Hollywood model.

And lastly, have you guys noticed the cool weird song in the "Hills Have Eyes 2" trailer? It starts up about halfway through and it's pretty much the only eerie thing about the trailer. The song's called "Insect Eyes" and it's by an artist called Devendra Banhart, in case you want to grab it up off the internet for the price of $On The House. It's kind of cool.

Okay. All done.