Weekly Dose of Ridiculous: Kathie Lee, ‘Hobbit’ Money, ‘Jurassic Park 4,’ and ‘The Canyons’
We come to the end of another week, which means it's time for another Dose of Ridiculous. In this week's edition: What Kathie Lee did to a puppy, New Zealand's new Middle Earth currency, what 'Jurassic Park 4' thankfully never was, and a really bad teaser for a movie starring Lindsay Lohan and a porn star.
We get it, New Zealand. Peter Jackson chose your pretty country to shoot all his Hobbit-y movies in, so now you think you're the official country of Middle Earth. Guess what, NZ? You are not Middle Earth. There are no shires. You do not house Hobbits or Gandalfs or orcs or elves or trolls (maybe trolls, we're not sure). Just because someone shot some movies on your soil doesn't mean you have magically become the fictional setting of the film. Last we checked, you don't have a Gollum or a Mordor or some wicked elf magic.
New Zealand doesn't believe us, though, and they've decided to take this whole 'Hobbit' obsession to the next level by introducing completely usable 'Hobbit' gold coins into their currency, making their debut on November 1. They cost way more than they're actually worth because they're made of gold. You know, the next logical step in 'Hobbit' appreciation might have been some live action roleplay or a rollercoaster or something, but hey, go for the gold or whatever it is you do.
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During a segment on 'The Today Show's fourth -- or fifth? or 20th? -- hour, wino Kathie Lee was allowed to hold a small, fragile creature, and surprise! She dropped it on its head. While promoting a new adoption services app, photographer Nigel Barker hands Kathie Lee a puppy, and then she's all "It looks like Hoda! Puppy needs a bath!" And then she goes and drops the puppy on its head. Okay, so maybe the puppy sort of jumped, but if a pushy British photographer forced you into the arms of a functioning morning-drinker who may or may not have just made a racist proclamation followed by insulting your hygiene, wouldn't you jump away too? I've been in this situation with my mom after she gets into a box of wine, and I can tell you that puppy made the right call. Bonus: making Kathie Lee look even more incompetent than usual.
Not going to lie here -- we would buy all of the tickets to see a movie about human-dinosaur hybrids strapped with guns, tearing everything to bits with jaws and claws and bullets. It sounds awesomely bad. Just not as a 'Jurassic Park' movie. The series has had its ups and downs, but this concept art leaked onto Reddit from artist Carlos Huante is not what we're hoping to see in the next sequel. Jeff Goldblum or we're out, man.
According to a previously published script online, 'Jurassic Park 4' would have been about the UN creating a task force to eliminate dinosaurs, a new mercenary character, and Dr. Hammond creating a strain of dino that can't reproduce so it wipes out the entire species -- but there's a problem: the UN has banned dino breeding and the sale, possession, and mining of amber, which holds all the (Mr. DNA voice) DI-NO DNA Hammond needs. Okay, this is so ridiculous for so many reasons -- who can even picture the UN debating the best course of action for dinos run amok?
"We will now hear from the representative from Russia." "In Soviet Jurassic Park, dinosaur create you." And then the US objects and demands to nuke the hell out of everything because we've had these weapons sitting around for years and we're booooooored.
Sorry, there's just no eloquent way to put that. Bret Easton Ellis wrote a script and Paul Schraeder teamed up with him to direct this new movie called 'The Canyons.' The plot synopsis has us intrigued because it features all the stuff Bret Easton Ellis is really awesome at: sex, violence, paranoia, mentally unbalanced pretty people. He really knows how to take a slick, shiny, and well-groomed person and make them off-kilter in the most unsettling ways.
But the movie stars Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen -- the former hasn't been good in anything since 'Mean Girls,' and the latter is really, really talented at making porn, but we've seen some of the porn parodies where he's allowed to "act" and it's about what you'd expect. We hope Deen and Lohan prove us wrong, and even though there's no dialogue in this wonky grindhouse-style teaser, just seeing them interact with the camera looks awkward and sort of... well... like porn people trying to act.
Moreover, why is this teaser presented like a grindhouse film? The movie is not a throwback film and it wasn't shot that way, so there's really no point in making a grindhouse teaser unless they hired someone from a first year film class to put it together for free. Because that makes sense.
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