Lionsgate and Millennium Films have finally picked the man to play the titular role in their upcoming Conan redux. However instead of going through a casting agent or sending out offers to “stars” through their representatives as one would traditionally cast a $60 million movie, they just went down to the parking lot of the Phish concert, found themselves a drum circle and pit the hippies against one another in a fight to the death for a plate of hash brownies. Emerging victorious was Jason Momoa, whom the six people who watch SyFy Network will recognize as Ronon Dex on Stargate Atlantis, and the rest of us will recognize as the stinky barefoot guy who begged us for change that one time we drove through Sedona.

The hunky trustafarian is 6’ 5” — so if he were walking down the other end of a dark alley you’d probably be pretty scared, until you caught a whiff of the patchouli. He also used to be on Baywatch, so there’s that. He’s half-Hawaiian, which definitely makes him the perfect choice to play a blue-eyed Celtic warrior. And apparently this guy’s a big Lenny Kravitz fan, having gone so far as making a baby in the same Cosby kid’s vagina as the similarly-dreaded retro-rocker. As a matter of fact Momoa and Lisa Bonet have two kids together: Daughter Lola Iolani Momoa, and a son named Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa.

No, seriously. Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa. Try to say that three times fast. Now, having failed that, try to say it once, at all. That’s what this guy named his first-born son. Either that or he was having an epileptic seizure and the nurse just jotted down whatever babble came out of his foamy mouth.

Another interesting rub here is that Mickey Rourke is rumored to play Conan’s father in the film. As my fellow 1980s late-night cable masturbators might recall, Rourke is the guy who violated Lisa Bonet’s every orifice in the controversial sex scene from Angel Heart – the film the pretty much ruined Bonet’s career. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Mickey ruined Momoa’s career too? By violating his every orifice? That would be delicious irony indeed.

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Okay, I know I said Stretch Armstrong was the stupidest movie adaptation ever, then Battleship, then Bazooka Joe, but I think we’ve finally nailed the absolute dumbest of the dumb: Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia (not sure if it’s the movie studio or the record club), will be slitting his wrists in about 18 months over career-ender Risk, the Hasbro war strategy game (that I’m pretty sure no one has played since 1978) which Belgrad apparently believes has some sort of multiplex cross-over potential. Which it obviously doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game… if you’ve been stuck in a bomb shelter since the mid-seventies and you’ve lost all the Hungry Hungry Hippos marbles. But there is absolutely NOTHING to Risk that is unique; no story elements, no characters, not even an overarching concept or theme. It’s fucking WAR. You have plenty of actual HISTORY in the public domain to draw from if that’s what you’re looking for.

But no, Columbia House would rather shill out some undisclosed sum for what essentially amounts to a one-word, monosyllabic title. Which, by the way, should not be confused with 2007’s Risk, or the Risk of 2006, or even the Risk of 2003, or the 2001 British series Risk, or Risk the Swedish documentary from 1999, or 1994’s Risk which co-starred The Mentalist’s Molly Price, and then there’s the 1988 Russian film Risk, which shares its title with 1970’s Risk, which sounds a bit like the Van Damme film Maximum Risk, and James Brolin/Anthony Quinn’s High Risk, but only slightly like the Kurt Voss film Genuine Risk, which starred Terrence Stamp, who’s been known to take a risk with his acting choices. So yeah, this was basically the smartest decision by a studio head ever. Doug Belgrad, I can only assume you’re trying to fail your way into a golden parachute and overhead deal on the lot, so kudos to you for taking feigned incompetence to the next level.

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Holy… shit… was that funny.

Two interesting projects were announced in the trades today. And by interesting I mean the exact opposite of interesting, but hey, I’ve got to write about something to keep the Google traffic coming. Cha-ching, AdSense!

First up we have Matrix producer Barrie Osborne’s proposed $150 million biopic about Islamic prophet Muhammad. No, this won’t be the sexy Salman Rushdie take on the religious icon, but a good ol’ fashioned historical epic intended to “educate people about the true meaning of Islam,” or at least the parts that don’t involve flying 747s into buildings. Osborne will be dipping into one of the many newly-minted film funds coming out of the Middle East, specifically Qatar-based Alnoor Holdings.

Next up we have Marmaduke, the big screen adaptation of the only comic strip less funny than Family Circus. This project has rightfully been lingering in development purgatory for a while, but today’s announcement that suicide-failure Owen Wilson will be voicing the titular Great Dane indicates that we’ll unfortunately be seeing Shanghai Noon director Tom Dey’s CGI/live action monstrosity in the multiplexes sooner rather than never. Well at least they found a capable actor to lend his voice to a character that DOES NOT TALK.

So we’ve got a talking dog, and a guy who thinks he talks to God… I’m I the only one seeing the symmetry? I think the makers of both films are missing a golden opportunity to combine their efforts and make a Turner & Hooch style buddy comedy. The rambunctious mutt and the holy man going on adventures, solving crimes, smiting infidels? Genius. They can hit the four quadrants and the five pillars all in one fell swoop.

Please forward all death-fatwas to boxofficepsychics [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Like most people who don’t live in their parents’ basement, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about James Cameron’s Avatar. I know it’s a bunch of 3D computer-animated nonsense and stars Blue Man Group but beyond that I had no idea what it was about until today because a) I like girls and b) sometimes these girls let me touch their no-no place which means that c) I have no time for such bullshit. Life is too short to devote mental energy to some 800 zillion dollar, two-hour-long videogame cut-scene that you can’t skip through no matter how hard you mash the X button. How many achievement points will I get for sitting through this shit? Zero? Thanks, but no thanks.

But apparently, whatever this film’s about, it wasn’t James Cameron’s idea, but rather that of Nebula-winning sci-fi author Poul Anderson, care of his short story Call Me Joe. Per this website:

Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar’s Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificial created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body.

Could be a coincidence, right? Perhaps, except recall that James Cameron’s Terminator was lifted from the works of another award-winning master of speculative fiction, that curmudgeonly lovable rapscallion Harlan Ellison. Ellison swiftly sued Orion Pictures (the studio that made Terminator) and was awarded an undisclosed sum plus an acknowledgement in the film’s end credits. Is Cameron really dumb (or ballsy) enough to make the same “mistake” twice? Who knows, but I do know that researching this article (i.e. reading Wikipedia) led me to this awesome Harlan Ellison quote re the sanctity of his intellectual property:

“If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump.”

Unfortunately for Poul Anderson, he’s dead, so he can’t really do much about it except come back as a ghost to haunt James Cameron. And even if he did James Cameron would only use the experience as fodder for a film about a family that moves into a house and discovers it was built on an Indian burial ground, and there’s a portal to another dimension hiding in the closet, and by the way it’s haunted by poltergeists. Which is basically the same plot as Titanic.

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