Natalie Portman is pregnant and engaged to some choreographer. But before she transforms into a fat housewife she was nice enough to pose topless for this Miss Dior perfume ad. Consider this the final testament of how awesome she used to be. I guess Harvard doesn’t teach you that kids ruin everything.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAGE! Yes, the world’s greatest actor turned 47 last Friday, which also happened to be Season of the Witch‘s opening day. Cage had this to say about the combination birthday/premiere:

“I’ve never had a movie open on my birthday before. We’ll see what the movie gods wanna do about it.” (via)

Well *ahem* the movie gods must have been sleeping because SotW got shit reviews (including from me). January is always a dismal month for movies. It’s when studios infamously dump out the leftover projects after awards season is over. But I have a very good feeling about next month’s Drive Angry. VERY good.

So besides bumming on SotW, it’s an exciting week at Cage Match. Yesterday I posted a video on YouTube that was currently unavailable. It’s some rare shit and Devin at BadAss Digest first posted yesterday. I hope you all get a kick out of it. I did. We also get the dish on why Michel Gondry is a moron and a chance to revisit Christoper Coppola’s classic Deadfall on Netflix. Let’s go!

Season of the Witch Is a Silly, Silly Movie; Inspires a Lousy Critic

The long awaited release of SotW came over the weekend. It made a noble $11 million but garnered truly abysmal reviews   – including our very own. It currently has a 5% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and while cruising some of its bad press, I discovered a critic who may possibly be six-years-old. Seriously:

This is the puffy-faced Nic Cage.  The one who fights for Christ and Little Debbies and not necessarily in that order. (Editor’s note – WTF does this mean?)

Before the opening credits roll, it’s clear that Season of the Witch should have been called Season of the Which Way out of this Theater?

“I wish I had that big red fist from Hellboy now,” said Perlman.  ”But I left it up  Guillermo del Toro’s ass.”

His entire “review” is made up of zingers like the ones above. You’ll laugh until it HURTS!

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Directed by Twilight Zone veteran Ted Post and written by schlock scribe Abe Polsky, The Baby is a standout of ’70s unhinged depravity. I saw it for the first time last year through Cinemageddon, an obscure movie lover’s wet dream website. Last week, schlock film distributors extraordinaires Severin Films announced that they will be rereleasing The Baby. It was originally released on DVD in 2005. I’m not sure of the quality of that one, but judging from Severin’s treatment of Psychomania and Hardware, The Baby is going to get the primo-fucking release it deserves. Trust me when I say you’ve never seen anything like it.

It’s not gory or sexually explicit. It didn’t push the limits of the film censors. And, surprisingly, it’s not the film’s premise that shocks. The sight of a 30-year-old man dressed and acting like a baby seems to shock very little people – even in the film. For me, it’s the twist at the end that left me open-mouthed as well as the well-executed ingredients sprinkled over this exploitation romp.

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I don’t think anyone was expecting much from Season of the Witch. So in that respect, I guess it doesn’t disappoint. The film has been rotting in distribution hell for 10 months now. It was originally slated for a March 2010 release, but sour business between Lionsgate and Relativity Media forced it to be shelved…until now. Cage’s presence is probably the only factor that saved this silly film from a direct to DVD ditch.

Personally, I will see anything with Nic Cage in it. I think he’s a genius. And in college I studied under one of the leading Black Plague scholars, Dr. Donna Vinson. So Cage starring in a Black Plague-related film? Sounded like a dream. But as more and more info trickled out, it became obvious SotW was going to be a throwaway in Cage’s oeuvre. I took the bullet anyway – just for you guys.

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While this may not exactly be nerdy news or the usual OL steez, I’ve been drooling over this news since last night and had to post. Mildred Pierce, one of the greatest tales of greed and sex from the oeuvre of roman noir, is getting a much-deserved treatment by HBO and director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven). The 1941 novel, by crime scribe god James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) was originally adapted by Warner Bros. in 1945. That version, starring Joan Crawford, had its balls cut off to appease the censors and features none of the book’s complex narcissism or an ounce of its darkness.

Winslet is playing Mildred, a housewife turned pastry chef desperately trying to maintain her family’s social status during the Great Depression. She’s also desperately trying to win the acceptance of her ungrateful daughter, Veda (Evan Rachel Wood). She’s a total biotch. When Mildred falls in with dashing playboy Monty (Guy Pierce), a twisted tangling of wills begins between Mildred and Veda. Cain’s major works were always about sex and the fast-buck. While Midred Pierce isn’t my favorite of his work, it’s unarguably his most ambitious and “epic.”

Depression era LA looks abso-lutely gorgeous and Winslet definitely has the chops to pull of Mildred’s grim naivete. This pleases me.

Ok. Back to your regularly scheduled nerdiness and sexual euphemisms.

Some old lady in Britain dropped 14 dress sizes and decided to celebrate in the most logical way imaginable: getting an enormously creepy Twilight back piece. So basically she has a mural of teen virgins on her wrinkly back. Fucking brilliant!

But this lunatic instead done. No. From the DailyWhat:

She plans on covering the rest of her body with Twilight tats, starting with her arms: “There are still a few bits to do. I am going to get my arms done before my 50th birthday in summer. I love Robert Pattinson. I want to tone up so I can get his character Edward Cullen on my stomach.”

You do that, you fuck. Flip the script for a second. What if a 49 year-old man got a huge tattoo of Miley Cyrus or one of those other tween douchebags? He’d be called a pervert.

This old lady is a pervert. Case closed.

Welcome to the first Cage Match of 2011, dear readers. Last week we posted two days late due to the holidays and stomach flu, but the tides of Nicolas are now calm and we’re back on schedule. If I look like I’m glowing this week, it’s because Season of the Witch comes out this Friday! I haven’t experienced Cage on the big screen since his turn as Big Daddy in Kick Ass, so I’m stoked. January releases almost certainly suck, but I love Cage and the Black Death so look for my review on Friday!

The majority of the news this week concerns Season of the Witch, but being a Cage bloodhound I managed to find some other nuggets, including the streaming of a forgotten Cage gem on Netflix. Let’s do this damn thing.

AP Talks Season of the Witch With Cage; His Horse’s Name Was Dali

Cage recently sat down with AP and talked about some of his horse training for Season of the Witch. Just like his during his interviews for Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Cage says that he’s been waiting to play this role since he was a boy. First he dreamed of shooting plasma out of his hands now he says he dreamed of being a knight. I kid, I bet he did.

Cage makes it point to say that his horse on Season of the Witch was named Dali, like Salvador. Because when he first said it I thought “Dolly” which is the name of his right testicle. Only hardcore fans know that.

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From 1971 until about 1979, Blaxploitation was enormous. At one time there was something like 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. that played exclusively Blaxploitation films. Film movements like that just don’t exist anymore. Blaxploitation played off of white stereotypes of blacks, sometimes, unfortunately, reinforcing them. Film critic Ryan Diduck once explained Blaxploitation really well when he called it “empowerment through an overturned representation of long-established agency limitations for black men.”

I thought of revisiting Boss Nigger yesterday when Rendar mentioned how he was in the mood for westerns after seeing True Grit. I’m not a huge fan of the genre by any means – far too many of the “classics” are racist toward Native Americans and I don’t play that –   but Blaxploitation I do know so this popped into my mind. Hit the jump to read more about a unique film that packs more than a controversial title!

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Take off your shoes and step into the Cage. We’re coming at you a couple days late this week. Partly because of the holidays, partly because I had a large writing order to fill for another site. In all honesty, I had a debilitating stomach virus Tuesday-Wednesday that had me living in a bathroom and surviving off of saltines. It was most heinous. But we’re back with the final Cage Match before 2011. Thank you for taking this trip with us, you swine.

I wish there was more news to spill into your laps this week, dear readers. But after his outburst in Bucharest, it seems Cage is laying low and keeping his real life activities limited to buying Marvel action figures. Wait…that’s awesome! Let’s go!

Cage Scoops Up Some Marvel Figures in Weston

On Monday, The Weston Mercury reported that Nic took advantage of those sweet after-Christmas sales by picking up some Marvel action figures at Lloyds Toys and Models. Man, that image in my head is so so awesome. I bet they’re not even for his son, aptly named Weston. He probably won’t even let Weston look at them.

Cage was also seen shopping at a couple cell phone stores. But I know what that’s all about. You hit a certain age and you have to balance out action figure purchases with “adult” purchases. For every R2D2 I buy I balance it out with a shower curtain or bird seed. I hear ya, Cage.

The above picture is from when Cage lit the Christmas lights in Bath. I just really like it.

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With their take on True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen didn’t remake the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name. And they didn’t “update” the film’s 1968 source material by writer Charles Portis. What they’ve done is make the best damn western since 1992’s Unforgiven. But the Coen’s masterpiece isn’t filled with brooding and extraneous landscape shots. In true Coen fashion, the two hours are stocked with dark humor, bursts of violence, Roger Deakins‘ masterful cinematography, and characters so well-crafted that no time gets wasted on unnecessary background stories. In one of the great surprises of the year, one of these characters is played by 14-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.

Young Hailee effortlessly steals the show from acclaimed veterans Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. She plays Mattie Ross, a girl whose father is shot dead by drifter Tom Chaney (Brolin). Because Chaney flees into Indian territory, the local authorities will not pursue. Mattie hires Deputy U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Bridges), a man with a merciless reputation – a man with “true grit.” Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Damon) is also on Chaney’s trail, for a murder he committed months previous in TX. And the great adventure begins.

Bridges plays Cogburn hardboiled as hell, without the character devolving into a goofy, tough-guy brooder. He’s filled with interesting contradictions: gruff marshal with the heart of gold, drunk mess who’s a competent lawman, constant heckler with a sensitive spine. All of this makes up another classic, quotable character for Bridges. Damon’s La Boeuf is the all-American Texas Ranger swollen with pride. His boasting makes him sound foolish, but he’s got the gunslingin’ chops to back up all the touting. Out of the plethora of colorful characters the Coen’s have penned over the years, True Grit‘s cast makes up some of the best. They all deliver dated dialogue in an obsolete, contraction-less language that comes off Shakespearean at times. I left the theater wishing people still talked that way.

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