Before they introduced the world to Eric Cartman and friends, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were hired by Universal to create a "training video" geared toward boosting team moral after Seagram's company bought the studio back in 1995. However, at the time, no one knew who Parker and Stone were, let alone the fact that they were complete maniacs. What followed was a hilarious (and, as far as Universal was concerned, unusable) training video starring folks like Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, James Cameron, Michael J. Fox, Demi Moore and Angela Lansbury, among others.

If you're one of those people looking for a few laughs on a crummy Monday afternoon, then this is sure to do the trick ... if only to watch Speilberg act as a tour guide traveling through the Jaws attraction. Enjoy! (Note: Due to foul language, this video is potentially NSFW.)

[via The Movie Blog]

Browsing CNN at 5:00 am yesterday -- it was TV morning -- I saw the story that the MPAA has decided to 'red-band' the trailer for the upcoming doc Deliver Us From Evil. The trailer -- cut by Lionsgate from Amy Berg's excellent documentary -- has, essentially, been rated 'R,' and can't play anywhere except in front of an R or NC-17 movie. Of course, as the CNN story explains many theater chains won't play 'red-band' trailers at all, meaning that the most traditional mode of publicizing a movie -- in the Coming Attractions -- isn't available to Lionsgate or Deliver Us From Evil in many cases. This decision is prompting Lionsgate to release the film unrated -- again, affecting where the film can be shown and advertised. (I wish Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated had done a better job of explaining that, in fact -- the mall leases and newspaper policies that strangle unrated films in their crib with red tape.) I've seen Deliver Us From Evil, and while it's about rough stuff -- a serial child abuser who was essentially protected by the Catholic Church for 20 years -- it's real stuff; this all happened, and nothing in director Amy Berg's treatment of the story is salacious or sensational or cheap. But the MPAA (whose anonymous ratings board includes representatives of clergy) is choosing to significantly impact the marketing of Deliver Us From Evil with their decision. As has been asked before: Who are these people again? And what, exactly, are they protecting us from? (Addenda: For the trailer, click here.)

I spent a good portion of my most recent weekend shooting, slugging and racing through the video game version of The Godfather, and it's a fairly clever offshoot of the classic gangster tale -- even if, really, it's not much more than Grand Theft Auto set in old-school New York and with a lot more Italian accents.

It's getting to the point where it's not enough for game-makers to produce simple "tie-in" games (King Kong, for example); nowadays the big gimmick is to go retro: License a title like, say, Reservoir Dogs and go from there. As a matter of fact, the Reservoir Dogs game will hit the shelves this October, and after clicking through the official site, I think the game looks pretty darn cool.

But what really caught my attention was this pair of UK TV commercials for the game. Those who adore Reservoir Dogs absolutely HAVE to check these clips out, but I must warn you that they're neither "work-safe" nor "kid-friendly." So tread lightly.

[Thanks to Film Fatale for the clip linkage.]

Supposedly Paris Hilton will not be in the Revenge of the Nerds remake, but she does star in a college comedy called National Lampoon's Pledge This!, in which she plays a senior student in a sorority filled with hot girls. The movie screened at Cannes last week for international buyers and Hilton is reported to have deliberately missed the premiere due to a dispute with the picture's producers. She has been quoted saying that she took the part with the promise that she didn't have do nudity, because she, "wanted to do something where I'd be taken seriously." After the producers supposedly sneaked in extra scenes with other girls getting naked, she was too angry to attend the premiere.

Now I don't want to point any fingers and call anybody a hypocrite, so I'll only comment on the fact that Hilton thinking she'd be taken seriously by doing Pledge This!, nudity or not, is probably a better demonstration of her intelligence than we've ever witnessed before. And, anyway, if she was promised that she wouldn't do nudity but the movie features other girls baring flesh, what is the problem?

Well, other rumors are flying now that contradict her reasons for snubbing the premiere. There is a story circulating that she does in fact get naked in the movie, although from the way she's being quoted in these reports, I don't believe this to be true. It seems she told the British magazine Top of the Pops that there are, "lots of sexy scenes with me." Somehow that is being translated to mean she strips in the role.

Either way, you don't need this movie to see Paris naked -- she did another breast flash while shooting a music video just last week -- so I guess it doesn't matter.

Look out for flying pigs: The wildly unmarketable, compilation-style porn flick Destricted (review) has actually been picked up for US distribution. Though the movie was passed over by American companies at Sundance where it had its debut (at that time only UK distribution was secured), IFC Entertainment bought the rights at Cannes following a recent screening. According to Screen Daily, IFC plans to give the film one of those increasingly-popular simultaneous home-and-theater releases; it will be on screens -- presumably in IFC's own facilities, at least in New York -- and available via video-on-demand through their FirstTake branch.

For those of you not up on your arty porn, Destricted is made up of seven segments by different directors (Larry Clark, Matthew Barney, and Gaspar Noé among them) who were told to make pornography and to keep it shorter than 20 minutes - anything else they did was up to them.

So  maybe there's hope for Shortbus after all, huh? Screw the MPAA, bring on the porn!

You know how sometimes a movie will get a fresh infusion of "adult material" before being released as a very special Unrated Edition? Well, get this: MTI Home Video has decided to go in the opposite direction entirely: They'll be releasing an R-rated sex-free version of the big-budget porno flick Pirates!

Now, I'm not exactly sure who the intended market is for an R-rated sex-free porno movie, but this Pirates flick (often referred to as the priciest smut film ever made and the winner of numerous AVN awards) promises a lot of high-end action, tons of special FX and some inordinately swanky production design. The original sex romp clocked in at an overstuffed 129 minutes, while MTI's R-rated version will run only about 82 minutes ... which tells me that the original version had only about 47 minutes of hardcore humpage in it. For a rather ... thorough ... review of the adults-only version of Pirates, click right here.

If this experiment works, expect MTI to deliver a "violence-free" version of Hostel, an "animation-free" version of The Incredibles, and an "ineptitude-free" version of BloodRayne.

One of the few movies that has been almost universally praised at Cannes thus far is John Cameron Mitchell's (he of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame) Shortbus -- the film is screening out of competition and won't be winning any big awards, but critics have loved it. You'd think, then, that at a festival where the sales market is reportedly pathetically light on quality films, distributors would be lining up to buy Mitchell's film. There's one problem, though: The movie is charming and funny, but also happens to feature real sex, including an opening made up of "a young man performing oral sex on himself in front of a camera, another a young man masturbating as he is whipped by a dominatrix and ... a couple having acrobatic sex in their apartment." So yeah, distributors are facing a bit of a dilemma.

In the US, for example, the movie will obviously be slapped (and like it) with an NC-17 rating, immediately slashing the number of theaters that will even screen the film, in addition to making mainstream advertising practically impossible. While the film could still be released by a canny distributor -- witness ThinkFilm's success with the NC-17-rated Aristocrats last year -- it nevertheless represents a very risky investment in an industry that is nothing if not profit-driven.

James' Shortbus review -- like everyone else, he dug it -- is here; distribution updates will come as we get them.

Early buzz about John Cameron Mitchell's follow-up to Hedwig and the Angry Inch was that it was going to be loaded with real sex -- not the blue-lit, horizontally docking faces of mainstream movies but not the characterless coupling of porn, either. After years of buzz, actually seeing Shortbus leaves you wanting to invent new adjectives -- Fucktastic! Cocktacular! Breastalicious! -- but it also leaves you more than a little impressed by how funny and loose and, yes, emotionally engaging the film is. All the sex makes Shortbus kinda hot, but what's surprising is how Mitchell's sensibility and comedic charm makes it warm, too.

James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ De Boy) are a gay couple dealing with the monotony of monogamy -- and, as we learn, the fact that one half of the couple is a bit more hopelessly devoted than the other. Couples Counselor Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is trying to help Jamie and James -- although when she reveals she's never had an orgasm with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker), the phrase "physician, heal thyself" flits through your mind. Jamie and James invite Sofia to a sex/performance space called Shortbus, where Sofia meets and befriends the Dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish). Of course, these are contextual introductions: The film opens with James masturbating furiously before Jamie gets home, Rob and Sofia running through a gallery of positions like they're proofing the Kama Sutra with an imminent deadline and Severin beating the hell out of an annoying-yet-appealing client in a hotel suite overlooking Ground Zero.

Joe Swanberg, the driving force behind Kissing on the Mouth and LOL, basically doesn't sleep. Even as he follows both of his features around the country on the festival circuit, he's somehow found the time to write, direct, produce and star in Young American Bodies, one of the initial offerings of Nerve.com's just-launched Nerve Video portal. Bodies is a lot like Kissing -- in that it's basically concerned with the sex lives of a gaggle of self-absorbed 20-somethings -- but snappier, soapier, and chopped up into time-release capsules for easy consumption. Of the three episodes currently available, my favorite is the second, Ben's Night Out, in which the sudsier elements really start to take off. It doesn't seem to be enabled yet, but soon you'll be able to vote for your favorites right on Nerve. So go forth and check them out. Actually, maybe wait a couple of hours -- it's definitely not safe for work.

For reasons that have not been even slightly explained, Mike Figgis made an eight minute film shilling for lingerie house Agent Provocateur. The bad news is that he's a total sellout. The good news - depending on what interests you - is that he's sold out to make lesbian porn. Seriously. Titled Tied Up at the Office, it's shot in grain black and white and features some women, lacy underwear, lots of touching, some panting, and a touch of bondage at work.

While I'm afraid I'm a little light on details (I couldn't tell any of the women apart - there were either like six or only two of them. And there either was a Mannequin-style transformation thing going on, or there wasn't. What do you want from me? It's poorly lit, ok?), the thing really is pretty sexy, in a voyeuristic sort of way. I don't, however, feel a greater need to buy trashy fancy lingerie than I did before watching it, so I'm not sure it actually worked as an advertisement for the company. But at least I've heard of them now, so that's something. Good work, Mike.

So in case you somehow missed it, the "Read" link below is NSFW.

[via fimoculous.com]

Someone at New Line apparently just remembered that sex sells, because they've decided that the best way to promote the forthcoming Running Scared is via a website game wherein you get to play Paul Walker's character and, well, orally pleasure his wife. Seriously. Despite the fact that the movie is "a crime [story] told in flashback, covering 18 hours...of bloodshed in New Jersey and New York" and not, in fact, a porn film, I suppose the vague promise of oral sex rarely fails to put some asses in the seats.

Sadly enough (or happily, depending on your perspective), however, the game seems to be down. If you're over 18, you can keep trying at the official site (knowing us web users, their server probably melted down), where you click "game" and then "mature content," and hope for the best. Otherwise, the good/demented people at AICN have a whole pile of screenshots up, so you can at least pretend that you did the deed.

If anyone actually cares about the movie - again, it's really not porn - it comes out in the US on February 24, and you can find links to a whole lot of clips here.

[via Defamer]

Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction – the long-delayed sequel to the over-the-top "erotic thriller" that made Sharon Stone a superstar – has been slapped with a "hard R" by the MPAA. It's a victory for director Michael Caton-Jones, whose first cut originally earned an NC-17. According to the ever-reliable Lloyd Grove, the MPAA objected to "some scorching orgy scenes" – which sort of begs the question: "What kind of script makes room for orgy scenes, plural?" Though, as Martha reported on Monday, Stone is apparently interested in stretching her acting muscle elsewhere, Basic Instinct 2 is about proving a different kind of stretch is still well within her repertoire: the 47-year-old Stone reportedly refused to use a body double in any of the film's sex scenes. According to an on-looker who spoke to Grove, the aging looker has nothing to worry about: "Believe me, she's still hot."

Destricted, the compilation-style porn flick (presumably extremely un-MPAA friendly), has managed to secure distribution, albeit only the in the UK. As indicated by our exhausted team on the ground in Park City, this buy - by niche experts Revolver Entertainment - is surprising for a couple of reasons. First and most obviously, because the film is so totally unmarketable, due both to its subject (the seven participating directors were told to make pornography and to keep it shorter than 20 minutes - anything else they did was up to them) and its unconventional style (there's a review here). The second reason comes more from the deal's context - the fact that something so intentionally risky and difficult would be picked up while many of the competition films are still on the table is seen as yet another sign of "what an odd year this is, deal-wise."

In addition, word is that negotiations are underway with "several companies" for US rights to the film. You never know, we still might get a chance to see the MPAA swallow its collective tongue.

So we've all been aware of the MPAA ratings talk surrounding Kevin Smith's sequel to his independent hit Clerks (a film that garnered a tough NC-17 rating from the board in its initial manifestation). Smith is certainly no stranger to the far side of the R-rating; his only film that flirted with anything less (Pg-13, to be precise – on re-appeal) was the much derided Jersey Girl.

So what does Smith intend to do with the rating for his new film? He's admitted on several occasions that the language and subject matter will be as frank and uncensored as anything he's done yet – and he has acknowledged that this will make an "R" rating tough, maybe unattainable. So his solution? "We're not even going to rate it — we're going to go out unrated," Smith declared defiantly. "If we put it in front of the ratings board they'd be like, 'You're insane. We have to create a new rating for that.'"

Thoughts? Does the dangerous "unrated" label make a film tougher to sell? It certainly hinders the availability in some markets, but it probably beats out giving the sucker an NC-17, which is no doubt what the MPAA would have (quite rightfully, from the sounds of it) slapped on the sucker. Does Smith have a prayer with his latest vulgarity filled comedy, or has the man outlived his schtick? Personally, I'm pulling for the guy – but regular readers probably knew that already. However, if this one tanks, its probably a safe bet that he'll have a hard time selling himself on any future projects.

Late last year, The Weinstein Company released The Libertine, Lawrence Dunmore's long-awaited, unrated, Johnny Depp-starring staging of the wine-soaked life and syphillis-stoked death of the Earl of Rochester, for one week for academy consideration. The plan, according to a Weinstein rep that we spoke to in November, was to then put the film back in theaters in January. But its initial re-release date was yesterday, and, needless to say, it's hardly playing at a theater near you. Coming Soon still has The Libertine listed as a January TBA release, but there's not a hint of a release date on the film's official site. I couldn't get anyone on the phone at Weinstein yesterday, but it seems pretty clear what's going on here: Depp has thus far failed to earn any significant nominations, and the film made not a single notable critic's list, and so the distributor assumes there's no financial incentive to give it a wide release. Do you think this is valid? It's not a great picture, but it is worth seeing, and one would imagine that Depp could draw a reasonable audience to anything. Johnny Depp superfans, rise up in revolt!