Some old lady in Britain dropped 14 dress sizes and decided to celebrate in the most logical way imaginable: getting an enormously creepy Twilight back piece. So basically she has a mural of teen virgins on her wrinkly back. Fucking brilliant!

But this lunatic instead done. No. From the DailyWhat:

She plans on covering the rest of her body with Twilight tats, starting with her arms: “There are still a few bits to do. I am going to get my arms done before my 50th birthday in summer. I love Robert Pattinson. I want to tone up so I can get his character Edward Cullen on my stomach.”

You do that, you fuck. Flip the script for a second. What if a 49 year-old man got a huge tattoo of Miley Cyrus or one of those other tween douchebags? He’d be called a pervert.

This old lady is a pervert. Case closed.

Welcome to the first Cage Match of 2011, dear readers. Last week we posted two days late due to the holidays and stomach flu, but the tides of Nicolas are now calm and we’re back on schedule. If I look like I’m glowing this week, it’s because Season of the Witch comes out this Friday! I haven’t experienced Cage on the big screen since his turn as Big Daddy in Kick Ass, so I’m stoked. January releases almost certainly suck, but I love Cage and the Black Death so look for my review on Friday!

The majority of the news this week concerns Season of the Witch, but being a Cage bloodhound I managed to find some other nuggets, including the streaming of a forgotten Cage gem on Netflix. Let’s do this damn thing.

AP Talks Season of the Witch With Cage; His Horse’s Name Was Dali

Cage recently sat down with AP and talked about some of his horse training for Season of the Witch. Just like his during his interviews for Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Cage says that he’s been waiting to play this role since he was a boy. First he dreamed of shooting plasma out of his hands now he says he dreamed of being a knight. I kid, I bet he did.

Cage makes it point to say that his horse on Season of the Witch was named Dali, like Salvador. Because when he first said it I thought “Dolly” which is the name of his right testicle. Only hardcore fans know that.

Keep Reading »

From 1971 until about 1979, Blaxploitation was enormous. At one time there was something like 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. that played exclusively Blaxploitation films. Film movements like that just don’t exist anymore. Blaxploitation played off of white stereotypes of blacks, sometimes, unfortunately, reinforcing them. Film critic Ryan Diduck once explained Blaxploitation really well when he called it “empowerment through an overturned representation of long-established agency limitations for black men.”

I thought of revisiting Boss Nigger yesterday when Rendar mentioned how he was in the mood for westerns after seeing True Grit. I’m not a huge fan of the genre by any means – far too many of the “classics” are racist toward Native Americans and I don’t play that –   but Blaxploitation I do know so this popped into my mind. Hit the jump to read more about a unique film that packs more than a controversial title!

Keep Reading »

Take off your shoes and step into the Cage. We’re coming at you a couple days late this week. Partly because of the holidays, partly because I had a large writing order to fill for another site. In all honesty, I had a debilitating stomach virus Tuesday-Wednesday that had me living in a bathroom and surviving off of saltines. It was most heinous. But we’re back with the final Cage Match before 2011. Thank you for taking this trip with us, you swine.

I wish there was more news to spill into your laps this week, dear readers. But after his outburst in Bucharest, it seems Cage is laying low and keeping his real life activities limited to buying Marvel action figures. Wait…that’s awesome! Let’s go!

Cage Scoops Up Some Marvel Figures in Weston

On Monday, The Weston Mercury reported that Nic took advantage of those sweet after-Christmas sales by picking up some Marvel action figures at Lloyds Toys and Models. Man, that image in my head is so so awesome. I bet they’re not even for his son, aptly named Weston. He probably won’t even let Weston look at them.

Cage was also seen shopping at a couple cell phone stores. But I know what that’s all about. You hit a certain age and you have to balance out action figure purchases with “adult” purchases. For every R2D2 I buy I balance it out with a shower curtain or bird seed. I hear ya, Cage.

The above picture is from when Cage lit the Christmas lights in Bath. I just really like it.

Keep Reading »

With their take on True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen didn’t remake the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name. And they didn’t “update” the film’s 1968 source material by writer Charles Portis. What they’ve done is make the best damn western since 1992’s Unforgiven. But the Coen’s masterpiece isn’t filled with brooding and extraneous landscape shots. In true Coen fashion, the two hours are stocked with dark humor, bursts of violence, Roger Deakins‘ masterful cinematography, and characters so well-crafted that no time gets wasted on unnecessary background stories. In one of the great surprises of the year, one of these characters is played by 14-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.

Young Hailee effortlessly steals the show from acclaimed veterans Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. She plays Mattie Ross, a girl whose father is shot dead by drifter Tom Chaney (Brolin). Because Chaney flees into Indian territory, the local authorities will not pursue. Mattie hires Deputy U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Bridges), a man with a merciless reputation – a man with “true grit.” Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Damon) is also on Chaney’s trail, for a murder he committed months previous in TX. And the great adventure begins.

Bridges plays Cogburn hardboiled as hell, without the character devolving into a goofy, tough-guy brooder. He’s filled with interesting contradictions: gruff marshal with the heart of gold, drunk mess who’s a competent lawman, constant heckler with a sensitive spine. All of this makes up another classic, quotable character for Bridges. Damon’s La Boeuf is the all-American Texas Ranger swollen with pride. His boasting makes him sound foolish, but he’s got the gunslingin’ chops to back up all the touting. Out of the plethora of colorful characters the Coen’s have penned over the years, True Grit‘s cast makes up some of the best. They all deliver dated dialogue in an obsolete, contraction-less language that comes off Shakespearean at times. I left the theater wishing people still talked that way.

Keep Reading »

Hello there, dear readers. Welcome again to Cage Match, the innernet’s only column solely concerned with Nicolas Cage. We want what you want: to be able to catch up with Cage without having to scour the world wide bowels of information. So, you’re welcome.

This week there’s some new Drive Angry goods: an international trailer and an interview with director Patrick Lussier. There’s also some info on Cage’s planned trip to India and a Blu-Ray release date for a classic early Cage flick.

I apologize for the lack of insight and fart jokes this week, we here at Cage Match HQ are caught up in the holiday rush and have to catch a plane to the Garden State in a little bit. Here’s hoping your holidays are filled with family, friends, laughs, and CAGE!

UK International Drive Angry Trailer; Get Behind Nic Cage, Devil

Put your jealousy caps on, you stinking limeys, Summit Entertainment has dropped the UK International trailer for Drive Angry. It seems we not only won our independence from your taxing, pig King George III, we also won the privilege of seeing Nicolas Cage movies two weeks before you redcoats.

I’m pretty stoked for this one. It looks balls-out ridiculous and for chrissakes it’s the first time Nic Cage is in 3D. Now I care about 3D.

Drive Angry Director Talks Drive Angry

In an interview with MovieFone, director Patrick Lussier talks about collaborating with Cage, his reboot of the Hellraiser series, and what it’s like to destroy s many classic cars. On the subject of Cage, Lussier says:

One of the key things for Nic when we were talking about the movie was specifically how he’d play stricter in terms of the tone of the character. Working within that framework, which he loved — he said he’d never played a character that was this hard and this cold and this relentless. And even within that, Nic found the humanity of the character and brought it out; even more-so than on the page. He really found the human charm of this murderer that you root for and made him positively likeable, which was really key in bringing him to the story.

India Is About to Get Awesome

The Times of India reports that Cage is heading to India in January to promote The Season of the Witch. India is a huge market that remains relatively untapped by Hollywood. Cage’s visit is an attempt to begin chipping away at that market. There’s already a language barrier, so I’m sure Cage spouting off his usual esoteric musings mixed with samurai philosophy is bound to blow the roof off India.

Moonstruck Coming to Blu-Ray in February 2011

Now you can relieve the amazing “I lost my hand” in gorgeous Blu-Ray. The classic Cage/Cher collabo from 1987 is coming to Blu-Ray on Feb. 15, 2011.

Before he became the junior welterweight champion, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) had to fight his magnificently dysfunctional family. His mother and manager, Alice (Melissa Leo), seemed to only book him mismatched fights that led to an ass whooping. Dicky (Christian Bale), his half-brother and trainer, is a motor-mouthed crackhead who used to be the “pride of Lowell, MA.” Once upon a time he went toe-to-toe with Sugar Ray Leonard and managed to knock him down. Micky also has six sisters that echo his mother from the sidelines like an ugly and unwelcome Greek chorus. This is his family. When outside forces tell Micky that his family is holding him back and retarding his dreams, Micky’s only reply is “It’s my family!”

His attitude begins to change when he falls for a potty-mouthed barmaid named Charlene (Amy Adams) who suggests finding a new trainer; someone who isn’t high 24/7 and can actually spar. After about an hour of family infighting, actual training, and exceptional Boston accents, Micky gets his title shot. And the crowd rejoiced.

It’s the tried and true formula of an underdog boxing movie: the fighter has to overcome something out of the ring before he can dominate within it. David O. Russell‘s The Fighter, based on Ward’s true story, really never strays from this worn path, although there’s a few factors that keep it from feeling too played out. The acting is terrific across the board, except for Bale who is downright amazing. And the fights are shot like an actual televised event — ESPN style. They even used that specific film stock for the bouts.

I love Wahlberg and he’s great as Micky, but he takes a backseat to the other actors in The Fighter. Not because he puts in a sub-par performance, I just think that Micky was that kind of dude. He would stay quiet and do his best to shrug off his shitty family. Melissa Leo (Frozen River) turn out an intense performance as the territorial mother who doesn’t want some “slutty, MTV girl” moving in on her son. As said slut, Amy Adams busts out of the image I’ve had of her since Enchanted. She plays a hardboiled Boston chick with ease. But Bale. Whoa. He’s a chameleon once again and delivers the most moving junkie performance since Bubbles. He also serves as the main source of comic relief. A-yuk.

In the end, the awesome performances don’t save The Fighter from being a mediocre boxing movie with not that much going on. Wait for it on Netflix.

Bonus: Enjoy the “Not You” viral video above!

This review originally appeared on the Mishka Bloglin. Patrick reviews movies on there under the nom de plume Oh Mars.

From left to right: Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, and Coppola

Yesterday was Spielberg’s 64th birthday and the HollywoodReporter posted this photo from George Lucas’ 50th birthday party. Makes sense.

I love how everyone is dressed up except for De Palma. He totally photobombed them. It’s like he doesn’t really like Lucas but heard there was going to be free booze. What’s so funny, Ron Howard?! Sweet tie, Lucas. Coppola’s such a lush.

For the second Christmas Creep in a row, I’m putting my foot in my mouth. When I pitched the Creep to the fearless leaders of OL, I told them I would be writing up the shittiest, most painful Christmas specials/movies. Like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun and blew my load on the premiere installment, Christmas With the Turtles. Is that like Icarus? It doesn’t matter. What I mean is that after that first article, I keep accidentally watching AWESOME Christmas jams! It’s a Christmas miracle (which I didn’t think was possible since I’m engaged to a Jew). Earlier this week I enjoyed the hell out of Max Headroom’s Giant X-Mas Turkey and yesterday, over a Diet Coke and toast, Santa With Muscles (1996) tickled my bad-good movie bone. And my pecs.

Hulk Hogan plays a militaristic, millionaire grinch who gets knocked out during a mall debacle and wakes up thinking he’s Santa. He befriends the residents of an orphanage – including a 13-year-old Mila Kunis – and helps them wreck some plot by nefarious developers to shut down their facility. Along the way there’s singing, inept figt scenes, and explosive crystals. Yes, explosive crystals. Needless to say, it’s awesome.

Directed by John Murlowski, a volunteer at the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center hotline *record scratch* Say wha? Hold up. I’m sure his noble activity as a suicide hotline volunteer has nothing to do with shame over the films he’s directed. Moving on, this movie is the perfect storm of ’90s cheese with a Hulkamania cherry on top. Hogan was on fire in the first half of the ’90s. Suburban Commando, Mr. Nanny, and the Thunder in Paradise trilogy. Near the tail-end of this streak is Santa With Muscles, his movie-fart swan song, so to speak.

The “film” also stars Ed Begley, Jr. as an evil scientist and Clint Howard as a mall cop. As mentioned earlier, a 13-year-old Mila Kunis plays an orphan and in a weird twist of TV Fate, her future castmate on That ’70s Show Don Stark plays Lenny the Elf. Fellow WWF superstar Brutus the Barber Beefcake has an entirely too brief cameo as a thug but it’s Hogan who carries this turd on his shoulders like Atlas. And Icarus. Atlas and Icarus. I guess

This might be the perfect Christmas Hangover movie. There’s enough cheese to enjoy and enough crap to enjoy heckling with your pals. Consider hunting this down online before you channel surf for some more traditional X-Mas flick.

WARNING: Performing an image search for “santa with muscles” will open up a Pandora’s Box of porn that I’m guessing does not fall into our readers’ preferred spank material.

Sorry to turn OL into a gossip rag for a minute but this is too good. Magnolia Pictures threw its holiday party last night at the IFC Center in NYC and it appears that one of the center’s employees is not a fan of indie-horror filmmaker Ti West. It’s reported that an employee exchanged words with West, allegedly calling him an “egotistical prick.” He then proceeded to pour his beer on West, which is something you just don’t do to anyone. West punched the employee in his smart face, breaking his nose.

This information comes from Devin at BadassDigest, who read a tweet this morning that led him on a hunt to find out what happened. Not that many details have surfaced yet but West was apparently stunned at his own strength. The blood-covered employee was taken to a nearby hospital.

Maybe the sucker is one of the many people who think West is overrated and that his movies have miserable pacing. I’m not one of those turkeys. West’s House of the Devil was one of my favorites of 2009 and a terrific homage to classic, slow-burning terror like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. His 2007 thriller Trigger Man has a third act that will keep your ass clenched until the credits roll. The Innkeepers, West’s latest, comes out sometime next year and at 30-years-old it’s scary to think how bright this kid’s future is. Oh, he also sports the GREATEST IMDB profile picture in history.

Hopefully that glass-jawed employee doesn’t press charges and they can settle like this men; over a beer and a handshake. On a related note, tune into OL tomorrow evening for my review of The Fighter!