The Wackness

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to the selections below you can also take home Battlestar Galactica: Season Four and Righteous Kill.

Pineapple Express
You guys, Pineapple Express is not just a stoner movie, OK? James Franco was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work! This is award-worthy stuff! I kid, I kid. But it is funny to me that Franco is up for a serious award for playing a pot dealer who has lines like, "Pandora can't go back into the box — he only comes out."

This movie was a lot of fun to see in the theaters and as a DVD it will probably get the most play in dorm rooms, frat houses, and 20-something apartments across the nation. Seth Rogen and James Franco are a match made in stoner heaven, but be warned: The movie is actually pretty graphically violent (just a heads-up if that's a buzzkill for you).

Special features include an extended version of the film, commentary with the filmmakers and cast, and of course, the gag reel.

Three more up next so read more

Yo, if you consider yourself any kind of Vintage Geek fan, then get thee to a theater to see The Wackness.

Needless to say, I agree with Buzz's glowing review of the movie, but sitting in the theater, what was I cooing over more? The proliferation of mix tapes (I told you they were mad hot), the declaration of being loyal to cassettes, the boomboxes and — wait for it — blowing into a Nintendo game.

Young entrepreneur Luke Shapiro also rocks, oh yes, a pager, and constant headphones. Even though the movie takes place a mere fourteen years ago, it's the tech stuff that really gives the movie its nostalgic sheen. Basically, it's the dopiness.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

I can't wait to check out The Wackness to see what kind of 1994-era tech they might have, but the movie is giving us something else to do with its online Graffiti Throwdown contest!

To promote the film, Brickfish has teamed with Sony to sponsor a contest that challenges participants to create their best web graffiti and title the piece "The Wackness." I've always shied away from making real graffiti, it being illegal and all, but I am more than happy to indulge my inner riff-raff, especially including the grand prize — a Sony Bravia home theater system!

• FilmExperience asks: If you could weekend at the beach with any movie character, who would it be? (Their pick: Madison the mermaid from Splash.)
• The TV Addict has audio from chatting with Wentworth Miller and Sarah Wayne Callies at yesterday's TCA Prison Break-fast.
• Popwatch's Annie Barrett laments the fact that movies she'd like to see in the theater don't stick around the theaters long enough for her to see them and she wants to start a chain of Theaters for the Lazy.
• Vulture wonders whether Kids or The Wackness is more authentically 1994.
• Stereogum has the new Radiohead video for "House of Cards," which makes my eyeballs hurt a little bit.
• TV Squad reveals that there's a campaign afoot to save The Mole — and the show's own producers are waging it.
• Cinematical marvels at the insane anticipation and hype surrounding The Dark Knight — among geeks and non-geeks alike.
• Calling all fans of The Smiths: Take BellaSugar's new "Beauty Product or Morrissey Song?" quiz!

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After viewing The Wackness I had lots of nice overall feelings about the movie but one tiny little part of it still makes me go, "Eeesh!" And that would be the part where Mary-Kate Olsen makes out with Ben Kingsley. Yeah, that makeout session (because it's definitely more than a little peck!) gave me the opposite of warm-fuzzies inside.

The romantic pairing up of old and young, sometimes given the lovely term "May-December romance," can be kinda icky to witness. Steve Martin locking lips with Claire Danes in Shopgirl is another one that sends an uncomfortable shiver up my spine.

It's not always the age thing, though. Sometimes there's poor chemistry, or one of the actors looks like he's falling asleep during a supposedly passionate embrace. There are awkward ones, like the tongue kiss between Sarah Michelle Gellar's conniving Kathryn and Selma Blair's painfully naive Cecile in Cruel Intentions. And there's the small screen, too: How awful was that kiss between Joey and Rachel on Friends? I distinctly remember yelling at my TV, "Stop! No! This isn't right!"

Those are just a few of kisses that have made me squirm in my seat, and as Defamer recently pointed out, there's often some squirming on the set as well during these kissing scenes. What are some of the worst screen kisses you can think of?

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• American Idol's Kristy Lee Cook has signed a recording deal with Arista Nashville, USA Today reports.
• According to the Futon Critic, AMC has enlisted Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel to star in a six-part miniseries remake of the TV show The Prisoner.
• Variety reports that The Real World producers Bunim-Murray could be tapped to run Project Runway when the show moves to Lifetime.
• Ne-Yo has bumped Coldplay out of the No. 1 spot on the UK singles chart, Billboard reports.
• The Wackness and the documentary Man on Wire were audience favorites at this year's Los Angeles Film Festival, Variety writes.
• Neal McDonough is the latest actor to join Desperate Housewives as a possible love interest for Edie, Zap2it reports.
• Billboard announces that Bon Jovi will play a free show in Central Park on July 12.
• Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and Google are teaming up for an Internet-only animated series that will be released this Fall, writes the New York Times.

Photo courtesy of Fox

Mary-Kate Olsen looked put together and pretty in white and a little more mussed up in a short flowered number at last night's NYC premiere of The Wackness. Can't blame her for the unbrushed hair when we can clearly see she just slipped out of one dress and into another. She missed the LA Film Festival premiere of the movie on Tuesday, but was happy to pose alongside her costars Olivia Thirlby and Josh Peck. While we anxiously await this one on the big screen around the country, I can't wait to see Mary-Kate on one of my new favorite shows Samantha Who? next season. Here's to more acting and fewer negative rumors from this half of the twins from here on out.

To see more from the premiere just read more

Hilary Duff flashed a smile for the camera with Josh Peck and Olivia Thirlby at The Wackness premiere during the LA film festival last night. Hilary has a new movie of her own to start working on, she has just signed on to the star-studded cast of Stay Cool. Hilary will play a high school teenager who flirts with an older alumnus, which sounds like it should fit right in with the former teen queen's new mature persona.

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Previously, I'd mostly known The Wackness as that weird-looking Sundance movie in which an Olsen twin makes out with Ben Kingsley and which features a ton of pot smoking. While those things are true, I also gotta say I really liked this weirdo pot-smoking movie. I can easily see why The Wackness won the audience award at Sundance this year: it's funny, it's got that tender boy-grows-up storyline, and there's plenty of sex, drugs and a ridiculously awesome, rap-heavy soundtrack.

Also, it's got Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby and Ben Kingsley at the heart of it, which is what ended up endearing this movie to me most of all. Peck plays Luke Shapiro, a kid on the Upper East Side who deals pot and feels alone amongst his classmates. He lives with parents who fight about money nonstop and he sees a therapist, Dr. Squires (Kingsley) in exchange for weed. Luke soon graduates high school and starts another summer of peddling his goods from out of an ices cart. He befriends his therapist's stepdaughter Stephanie (Thirlby) and then quickly falls in love with her. That's not all, though, so read more