Parker Posey – Podcasting Them Softly

I’ve always liked The Sweetest Thing, a deranged sex comedy from the female perspective that has the winningly bonkers personalities of Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair to make it something memorable, if not that original. This got royally shit upon by critics and while I’ll concede that it’s slight, airy stuff without much to say overall, there’s no denying it’s hysterical energy, lovable chemistry between the three leads and overall enjoyable lunacy.

Diaz, Applegate and Blair are three early thirties party girls in San Francisco, all looking for that special guy or at least one to have fun with for the night until he comes along. Diaz is the ruthless player of the bunch, and as the film opens we see a montage showing all the guys she’s dumped, one and done-d and left in the dust, until one night at a club she meets her match in Peter (Thomas Jane), a seemingly perfect guy who vanishes later that night, leaving her with a bunch of what-ifs in her head and the desire to track him down. With Applegate’s help she embarks on a mini road trip to find him, while Blair has some raunchy misadventures with her boyfriend (Johnny Messner) and his massive dong. Others show up along the way including Parker Posey, Frank Grillo, Lillian Adams, James Mangold, Johnathon Schaech and Jason Bateman as Jane’s goofball brother.

I think this wasn’t received well because most super crude sex comedies are done from the male perspective, and there’s this reluctance or uncomfortableness when it’s perceived the other way round, which is sort of unfortunate and not at all a fair or honest angle. These three chicks know how to have fun, love to party and are a blast to watch onscreen, especially seeing the insanity apparent in their group dynamic, which if seems excessively zany for a group of girlfriends, trust me.. it’s not. There’s some really raunchy stuff like a semen stained dress getting licked by an elderly dry cleaning owner and a dick piercing getting snagged down a girl’s throat during a blowjob, and don’t get me started on The Penis Song. It’s all in good fun though, and the guys get to have a blast too, as we see Jane and Bateman at a driving range whacking balls at the hapless groundskeeper who wears a confederate flag hat. Not a great film, but definitely a hilarious one and worth it to see Cameron, Christina and Selma clearly having about as much fun as you can in front of a camera.

-Nate Hill

I think that Patton Oswalt’s stories about Wesley Snipes’s hilarious behaviour on the set of Blade: Trinity are more entertaining than the actual resulting film, to be honest. Having said that, I also don’t think it’s as terrible as its reputation. Worst of the trilogy? For sure. Silly as hell? Definitely, but it’s not entirely terrible. Blade has apparently relocated his operation to Vancouver, because regardless of where this is actually supposed to be set, I’ve never seen my city so thinly disguised as I have here, one wonders why they bothered at all. So why is it any good? Well, Ryan Reynolds for one in arguably his first turn as Deadpool. As snarky vampire slayer Hannibal King, Reynolds has stated on record that he was basically just playing Wade Wilson, and he’s a lot of fun, a torrential fountain of creative insults (“You cock juggling thundercunt!”) and sassy attitude. Jessica Biel is less memorable as the daughter of crusty weapons guru Whistler (Kris Kristofferson shows up again briefly). The three of them begrudgingly team up to do battle with the king of all vampires, Dracula himself (Dominic Purcell), but spend most of their time in skirmishes with nasty vampiress Danica Talos (Parker Posey), her minion brother (Callum Keith Rennie) and their hired muscle, played by wrestler Triple-H for fucks sake. Posey actually gives the best performance of the film, her moody brat villainess is an underrated Blade antagonist and she almost steals the movie, with cameos from Eric Bogosian as a talk show host and James Remar as a bumbling, overzealous FBI Agent. This is for sure a WTF entry in comparison to two excellent predecessors. I mean, you have Triple H setting vampire Pomeranians on Blade & Co. and more shattered plate glass windows than the entire Die Hard franchise combined, they’ve thrown a bunch of elements at the wall hoping they’ll stick without any real formula or reason, so a lot of it is misplaced and dumb, but I had fun here and there, particularly when Reynolds and Posey were around to chew scenery. Snipes is pretty much a walking two by four for most of it, but you can tell he’s not having much fun and isn’t firing up the dark charisma he brought to the first two. Rumours about him on set include locking himself in his trailer for hours and hotboxing it, threatening poor David S. Goyer and refusing to communicate with him using anything other than post-it notes and fiercely disliking Reynolds. Whether it’s all true or not who knows, but it’s pretty fuckin’ funny and I hope we get to see a behind the scenes documentary about these shenanigans one day called Blade 4: Snipes Rising.

-Nate Hill