THE NICHOLAS CAGE AWARD FOR EGREGIOUS SELLOUT
Nic Cage - Season of the Witch
Nic Cage – Drive Angry
Anthony Hopkins – The Rite
Winner: Nic Cage – Season of the Witch. The Return of the King! Apparently the green paper god to which Mr. Cage must burn money in tribute was especially feisty this year. Drive Angry was understandable. Season of the Witch? Even the title doesn’t pass the laugh test…it sounds like Star Wars Episode 7.

ARE WE DONE HERE?
Clint Eastwood – J. Edgar
Adam Sandler – Everything
WINNER: Adam Sandler. Too lazy to ever be funny again. I swear he’s just making movies to hang out with hot chicks. He can’t possibly need the money. Besides, Clint told everyone to get off America’s lawn at half time. It’s still there somewhere. America needs a Dirty Harry coda.

WE’RE DONE HERE:
Robert Redford - The Conspirator
Kevin Costner – Company Men

Robert Redford is no Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood tells Robert Redford to get off his lawn and stop cluttering it with weird “sympathy for Lincoln’s assassins” movies. Costner has a 20% chance that he will someday swallow his pride and take a role in someone else’s project that turns out to be good and briefly revitalizes his career. Redford’s too old for that.

DID WE EVER GET STARTED?
Ryan Reynolds
Jennifer Aniston
WINNER: Jennifer Aniston. After the British Isles launched an invasion of Colins in the late 90’s, America turned to a young stable of Ryans to face the Hollywood cookie-cutter machine guns: Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, and Ryan Phillipe. Of those, Reynolds is the one we’re all supposed to pretend is A-List without ever having done anything good. By now, everyone should be well aware that Ryan Reynolds has managed to become a famous movie star without any actual hits or necessarily any talent beyond his abs. Given the success of Jersey Shore, he may well have been better served creating a funny nickname for his abs and leaving it at that. Really we all should. I’m thinking I’ll go with “The Crescendo.”

Anyhow, Jennifer Aniston does not make sense. She should have been Clooney, the best thing on some popularly forgettable network drivel turned into a movie icon. She started with Office Space and then…she’s failed to launch. I guess she was trying to be funny as a Horrible Boss but, let’s face it, A-list stars don’t take roles where they get turned down by Charlie from Always Sunny. I still think Brad made the wrong choice but, seriously, John Mayer does nothing for my argument. Check her out, as she insists, in “Just Go With It.” She actually has a bikini showdown with Brooklyn Decker and might have won. (That last sentence is what I meant when I said Adam Sandler seems to be making movies as an excuse to hang out with hot chicks.) She’s lost, she might have to go back to TV.

MOST UNNECESSARY ARTISTIC EXCURSION
Everything Must Go – Will Farrell. No explanation needed.