In this fantastic mashup of The Matrix and The Big Lebowski, Morpheus has a rather difficult time explaining the intricacies of the Matrix to the Dude. Sure, but why can't he answer one simple question: WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR HIS RUG?? (Seriously, watch this. It's great.)

Hat tips to Film Drunk!

I'll start with this: the Fosse estate is going to sue, right? And... when is this set exactly? The 1930s? Does this signal the end of the burlesque revival? Or will Burlesque be burlesque's Whip It?

Blockbuster reportedly plans to file something called a "pre-planned bankruptcy" and will continue to pay the studios and other most other major creditors. This development shouldn't surprise anyone. For years, Blockbuster has closed stores, laid off thousands, and generally been tumbling towards extinction. Driving to a video store to rent a movie is rapidly becoming as unnecessary as hiring a travel agent, developing film, or listening to music on compact discs.

While Gizmodo is sad about Blockbuster's rumored impending bankruptcy, I'm still sadder about all the mom-and-pop video stores that closed up during Blockbuster's rise. (And the way they sanitized the video rental scene to the point where the back room of X-rated titles, once a standard in small-town video stores, became virtually extinct. Suck it, family values: Here comes the internet!)

P.S. Seattle still has some great video rental shops.

• Wikipedia
• Face-lift!

Greg Wood, who runs the Roseway Theater in Portland, is taking over operations. My counterpart at the Portland Mercury, Erik Henriksen, called the Roseway "the best movie theater I've ever been in," and said of Wood:

He took an old theater, gorgeously renovated it, stuck in the best digital picture and sound I've experienced, and kept it all independent. It gets first-run movies on opening dates, but he sells concessions at non-rapey prices, hires charming teenagers to work there, and generally runs a hell of an outfit.

I spoke with Wood about his plans for the Cinerama—will it be as gorgeously kick-ass as the Roseway? Will it be a hell of an outfit?

I’ll be leading a strong charge to put the Cinerama back in the forefront of Seattle’s brains again. It’s a multi-million dollar renovation, with emphasis on high-end new technology, while at the same time keeping our film roots in place. A lot of it is just getting interaction with Seattle, getting in touch with the community, and figuring out what people want to see. A wide range from bread and butter first-run 3-D movies all the way to grittier stuff like, for example, a Godzilla film festival. We’ll be doing a lot of partnering with SIFF and community organizations, and trying to bring ownership back to Seattle a little bit.

And what of the alleged non-rapey prices? What of the teenage charm?

[Laughs.] We plan on having a really wonderful support group, and I will say price-wise, box office prices kind of have to stay comparable to other theaters in the area. But we’ll offer extreme value for concessions areas.

Did you hear that, people? EXTREME.

"The big emphasis," Wood says, "is getting feedback from Seattle." Do you have feelings, Seattle? Cineramatic opinions? If so, e-mail Greg and let him know what you want to see.

For all of its eye-pinging bells and ticket-inflating whistles, modern 3D has yet to have its Jolson Sings! moment — a display which sizes up the possibilities of said technological breakthrough, boldly hurdles the gap, and forcibly shifts the paradigm. Midway through Piranha 3D, there’s a scene where two pneumatic bikini models nudely cavort underwater for at least a solid minute, to the strains of classical music. Welcome to the future, fellow travelers.

Following Joe Bob Briggs’ credo about having absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story, director Alexandre Aja wastes no time in getting to the gooshy stuff. After a borderline cine-sacrilegious cameo, an underwater earthquake frees thousands of Lil’ toothy prehistoric bastards, bent on crashing Spring Break. Throw in a handful of seasoned actors (including Elizabeth Shue and Ving Rhames) playing it mostly straight, a bajillion gallons of blood, and a gaggle of tanned, fit, and readily disposable extras, and you’ve got the blissfully empty-headed savior of the summer.

Director Aja first made his name with movies like High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake — technically accomplished, expertly paced movies that often went out of their way to be actively unpleasant. Here, though, he lightens up, doubles down on the ridiculous excess, and delivers an exploitation movie that may actually surpass its 80’s Velveeta inspirations — a film so absurdly gratuitous that it somehow becomes weirdly pure. It knows precisely what it is.

Screenings of the legendarily awful green-screen drama The Room aren't rare—Central Cinema hosts one every month and it's always a howling blowout.

But screenings of the legandarily awful green-screen drama The Room with writer-director-star Tommy Wiseau in attendance are indeed rare, and this weekend brings two of them, both at midnight at the Egyptian.

For tickets, click the Egyptian link above.

For proof of why attending at least three public screenings of The Room over the course of your life is a must, watch the clip below. It's short, but will give you the proper idea.

And for info on the Room-themed party going down tomorrow night at HG Lodge—with actor Greg Sestero in attendance!—watch this Room-flower-shop-scene-parodying video.

Dearest friends! I know your boner is at maximum alert right now about the new trailer for Black Swan, directed by Darren "The Wrestler" Aronofsky, and starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as competing ballerinas who COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE LESBIAN SEX. However, there's a few very confusing things here that may compromise this film's bone-osity. For example, "ballet." And "bloody eyeballs." "Mirror images that come to life." And perhaps "weird things growing out of Natalie's back." Did I mention "wrinkles"?

• I'm running like a young man! I'm running like a young man!

About halfway through The Expendables, though, I got bored and decided to try a thought exercise. (The inspiration for this: I had a friend who thought that Elvis movies were much more interesting to watch if you pretended that they were documentaries about a mentally ill Elvis who would occasionally develop amnesia and try to embark on a new career—race car driver, diving instructor, race car driver, doctor, race car driver—in a new persona.) Since The Expendables is all about cashing in on your tired old glory, I watched the movie as though it was a meta-experiment.

Rather than playing a boring action character, each of the actors was instead playing an old character from their glory days who decided to make an action movie. Example: Stallone is playing Rocky Balboa, if Rocky Balboa had decided to try being an action star after he got too old for the ring. Mickey Roarke is playing Randy "The Ram" Robinson playing a washed-up tattoo artist. Dolph Lundgren is an expatriate Ivan Drago gunning for the spotlight one more time, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Jack Slater from The Last Action Hero and so on. (The only exception is that Jason Statham is playing Jason Statham. Jason Statham is so motherfucking cool that doesn't ever need to act.) It made all the characters instantly more empathetic and likable. It made the movie's ridiculous plot and cheesy effects seem more tolerable—any filmgoer knows that if you're watching a movie-within-a-movie, you don't bring the same expectations to it—and it made the story behind the making of the movie much more interesting than what was going on onscreen. My thought experiment made the second half of The Expendables much more tolerable than the first.

In his latest Critics' Picks video segment, the New York Times' A.O. Scott shines a much-deserved light on Woody Allen's 1984 film Broadway Danny Rose, the bittersweet showbiz comedy featuring the best performance ever given by Mia Farrow (which is saying something), the best performance ever given by Woody Allen (which is saying a little less), and an unspoken moral that will improve your life. As die-hard Broadway Danny Rose lover Jen Graves puts it, "This film will make you a better human."

Speaking of people who do some things you love and some things you hate, here's a news story about the man hailed as a hero for attempting to rescue two men in a plane crash before being arrested on child-sex charges.

Gina Lollobrigida's breasts...

The constant and confusing back-and-forth volleying of the lovers never allows an empathetic comfort zone, which might be part of the agenda, but Dassin's camera smartly never strays far from The Law's central symbol—Lollobrigida's glorious cleavage, lit, flaunted and micromanaged with a meticulousness Howard Hughes would've appreciated. That her tits themselves are Marxist tokens of unearned presumption is the funniest undercurrent here

Happy Holiday, Everyone!

Dear Hollywood: Stop doing computer-animated blood effects. I realize we have finally reached a time when it's cheaper to pay someone to doodle in explosions of blood on action sequences than to pay someone to clean up a gooey mess after a shoot, but the problem is that computer-animated blood isn't satisfying like real fake blood. It doesn't react the way a real liquid does. It's not satisfying in the way that actors covered in red corn syrup can be satisfying. Everything feels too clean. Maybe one day, science will perfect computer-animated gore, but that day is not here yet. It looks cheesy and you should stop.

As a show of goodwill, I am linking to JoBlo's post explaining how to make real fake blood. Keep this recipe close to your heart. Use it often. We want blood, and you're not giving it to us.

This has been An Andy Rooney Moment™.