The Boys' Box-Office Report / Recent Concert Reviews

It was starting to look like nothing could topple Avatar's long reign atop the box-office. Jeff Bridges' superb, Oscar-nominated performance as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart certainly couldn't do it. Not even a revenge picture starring the crazed Jew-hater Mel Gibson could do it. But then along comes...Dear John, a new "weepie" based on a best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks (of The Notebook fame) and starring young sexpot Amanda Seyfried (of HBO's polygamy drama Big Love) and young hunk Channing Tatum.

Were the boys impressed?

Chip: "I cried, of course, because I'm only human, after all, and the fact that I look a bit like Channing Tatum made it easy for me to visualize myself in the love scenes with Seyfried."

Richard: "Obviously, I'd bang Seyfried like a young Mormon bride, but I still think her best film work is the lesbian make-out scene with Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body."

Surprisingly enough, a reviewer on fanboy-site Aint It Cool News gave a moderate recommendation to the tearjerker, leading to numerous fanboy charges that he must be gay and that Channing Tatum fucking ruined the recent GI Joe film. Let's take a look at some of the responses from AICN.

IndyCollector asks the reviewer: "Did you receive a complimentary cock-shaped straw to go with your sodie?"

Ieatgarbage says (presumably sarcastically): "Imagine if A FEW GOOD MEN had sex with an OFFICER AND A GENTLEMEN and we begin to understand what this film is capable of doing to one's sense of purpose, love, fate, and honor. See it for Tatum, but stay for the Emotions."

But the snarkiest (and also often the cleverest) of on-line talkbackers reside at the AV Club website, where they delight in playing a game that involves condensing the site's film reviews into hilarious nonsense through a skillful use of ellipses. Here's a great one:

"[T]he... romantic fiction of Nicholas Sparks reads like a [t]erminal illness[:]... dreaded[,]... bittersweet[,]... indefinite[.] Just a few minor tweaks away from... eating... a block of wood... Lasse Hallström, the once-great director of Chocolat[] and Casanova,... is... in love with... a... horse[,]... but... he... is... [im]potent[.] Hallström’s gentle... Sparks adaptation... Dear John... is... a... polite, middlebrow 9/11[.]

"[G]eneric[!] [R]estrained[!] [A]utistic[!]"

-Scott Tobias, AV Club

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Sometimes the boys feel a little bad that they don't see as much live music as they used to, but then they read the Pitch's concert reviews and realize that staying home is probably the wiser choice after all:

"In front of a crowd dense with fringed leather and body odor, Blakeslee (a dead ringer for George Harrison circa All Things Must Pass) shed his shirt--and his inhibitions--as the Entrance Band began their set on the Jackpot on Saturday night in a masterfully spewed Jackson Pollock-like smattering of sound."

and also:

"The band's meditative jam sessions extended out of enough explosive inertia to sustain themselves, but the longer instrumental stretches found the crowd laughing, chatting, and making shadow puppets in the band's static lighting."

Richard: "Actually, I probably would have gone to this show, but all my K2 connections have dried up, and I can't make good shadow puppets unless I've got my K2 on!"