This Week In Movie Posters and Hyper Specific Thirst Traps
We got Mickey 17, Tom Green, and a big-breasted lady who gives survivalist tips.
Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since I started FilmDrunk in 2007. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.
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The Hyper Specific Thirst Trap of the Week
Last week I promised a new segment called The Hyper Specific Thirst Trap of the Week. While I envisioned most of these as OnlyFans models promoting their niche to a hyper-targeted demo on Instagram or TikTok, this week’s is a little different. This one seems to be promoting a YouTube channel (quaint!). And that channel, BraveGals, in turn promises “Survival hacks, outdoor adventures, woodworking, tourism tips.”
And they have packaged those in the form of videos featuring generously-endowed women with visibly protruding nipples (love to protrude, no choice but to protrude, etc.). This week’s installment featured one of the models (there seem to be multiple) burning tree fungus as a solution to annoying mosquitos. Great nip, I mean tip! And the YouTube channel has 1.87 million subscribers. Must be from all the great tips.
My only question is whether the “gals” in question are the women survivalists, who are being brave, or if they mean “gals” as in the euphemism for breasts, as in “those gals sure are brave to be out in nature barely covered like that?” Could be a double meaning? Discuss.
I Interviewed Leigh Whannell, Director of Wolf Man and Other Kick-Ass Movies, For SF Gate
You can read that here. We didn’t get to talk for as long as I would’ve liked, but it was fun nonetheless.
This Week In Movie Posters
Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.
Here’s a new poster for The Monkey, which, somewhat confusingly, features only a knife on the poster. Does the monkey have a knife? Is “monkey” a metaphor? Is the knife named “Monkey?”
All that aside, I get what they’re doing here and I appreciate it. As we’ve been rewatching Mad Men for the latest season of Pod Yourself A Gun, Mad Yourself A Man (subscribe now!), I’ve been going through old newspapers from 1960 (when Mad Men was set) for every episode. One of the first things that strikes you about old ads is just how many words there were (here’s a good example). As someone who has occasionally earned money writing ad copy, it’s almost inconceivable that in the olden days, copywriters could just write stuff, in full sentences and paragraphs and everything. As opposed to modern times, when I mostly had to come up with 27 Christmas-themed calls to action for a swingers website, all of them in 46 characters or less. Living in the heyday of magazine copy must have been nice. They probably got liquor breaks and all-you-can-smoke cigarettes too.
Anyway, this was an “ads with lots of words” throwback, and I liked it.L
Now let us attempt to parse this poster for You’re Cordially Invited.
Okay, so there’s some young Asians getting engaged on the left, and some older whiteys getting married on the right, and then there’s Will Ferrell out front, covered in dirt or chocolate or blood or something and Reese Witherspoon seems really mad at him about it. You ate a blood-filled chocolate dirt cake? On the day of my sister’s wedding?? We had been saving that for my adopted Godniece’s engagement toast! Unbelievable!
The tagline is relatively simple by comparison, “FERRELL VS. WITHERSPOON.” It’s a fairly straightforward throwback to the “Frat vs. Family/Dad vs. Stepdad” style marketing campaigns from Neighbors and Daddy’s Home. Remember those?
I actually wrote a whole thing about that phenomenon in 2018:
Concepts are shrinking. Night School. Girls Trip. Book Club. Game Night. Fist Fight. Tag. The title is the poster is the plot is the marketing campaign. Why bother seeing it? You can even do a Fuddruckers/Buttf*ckers Idiocracy-style montage with some of them to illustrate the gradual dumbing. We go from The Hangover, which is a fairly illustrative title, but still describes a feeling; to Bridesmaids, two years later, which now literally describes the main characters; to Girls Trip, six years after that, which now describes the entire plot.
And that was like eight years ago. So now we’re doing the cheap streamer throwbacks to it. It’s also kind of convoluted, because they forgot that the point of the whole “BLANK VS. BLANK” conceit was that it was supposed to be instantly parsable. This is how most things are now. Pointlessly reminding you of older things for half-forgotten reasons.
One of my proudest career achievements was writing the oral history of Freddy Got Fingered, so naturally I’m thrilled about the idea of a Tom Green documentary (I don’t want to say I gave him the idea or anything…).
This Is The Tom Green Documentary launches January 24 on Prime Video. The Amazon Original follows Green’s early beginnings in Canada to Hollywood stardom and a full-circle return from L.A. to a rural farm in Canada.
The Amazon Original unscripted series Tom Green Country follows Green’s life on his country farm, which includes his 1,500-pound mule, a donkey and six chickens. It launches January 31. [Deadline]
Damn, that’s a big fuckin’ mule. Daddy would like some sausage, thank you very much.
Not a poster, but I’d remiss if I didn’t share with you the latest still and news of The Accountant 2. That’s right, baby, it’s happening! The sequel I’ve demanded almost as loudly as a Master & Commander sequel!
Official synopsis:
Christian Wolff [Affleck] is brought out of hiding by Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina [Cynthia Addai-Robinson] after someone close to them is killed by unknown assassins. To solve the murder, Wolff must recruit the help of his estranged but highly lethal brother Brax [Jon Bernthal].
Hell yeah. The only Accountant character I like almost as much as the Autistic Accountant Assassin played by Ben Affleck is his “highly lethal brother Brax,” played by Jon Bernthal. Would that we all had a highly lethal brother Brax. Rolls right off the tongue too. “Highly lethal brother Brax.”
“This is my highly lethal brother Brax, and my other highly lethal brother Brax,” as Bob Newhart might say.
(How old do you have to be to get this stupid joke? God, put me on an ice floe).
He ain’t highly lethal, he’s my brother Brax.
I’m not sure that “Official Selection: City Of Angels Women’s Film Festival 2023” laurel is doing the work it’s meant to here. I’m also pretty sure the city on top is Seattle? And the one upside down is… Córdoba, Spain, that famous skyline we all know and recognize upside down. Not sure where women or Los Angeles fit in, but the good news is that I’ll probably never find out.
I like to imagine that When I’m Ready is a faith-based film promoting abstinence. The shooting stars are cum!
Let’s see how close I was:
It's the end of the world. Seeking meaning and thrills in their last days alive, Rose and Michael embark on a cross-country road trip as a devastating asteroid threatens to wipe out life on Earth.
Damn, turns out this poster is very literal. I like my version better.