Halfway 2012. Supporting Actors (Thus Far)

We're surveying the "best" of the year thus far even if the pickings are slim. Previously we covered Actress, Actor and Picture. Now, the gentlemen in the sidelines.

SUPPORTING ACTOR  January through June Releases
Surveying what we've seen so far in this particularly category is challenging. In ensemble pieces from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to To Rome With Love, there just wasn't a breakout performance that rose so far above the film's limitations that you had to praise it. Mark Ruffalo's funny Hulk and Michael Fassbender's suave killer in The Avengers and Haywire respectively came closest but were better showcases for the commanding charisma of the actors than their actual skills. So if I had to turn in a ballot RIGHT NOW (god forbid) it'd go like so... 

Explanations and Team Experience survey  if you click to continue...

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Review: "Magic Mike"

An exhilarating all night double date is winding down on a bridge in Tampa, just before the sun rises. Mike (Channing Tatum) stands up on the railing, looks over his shoulder and dives gracefully backwards into the water to the mild delight of the anonymous girls. His new protégé "The Kid" (Alex Pettyfer), already eager to follow in his new buddy's footsteps (and body rolls), jumps in awkwardly after him.

Hey Mike, I think we should be best friends!" 

The Kid blurts the invitation out with both of them bobbing in the water. He's like a little boy who's just discovered a whole new playground. It's a perfectly crush-worthy unguarded moment -- the kind that makes you give yourself over completely to a movie. My heart is yours, movie. Treat me right. 

This gem of a scene is also, as it turns out, the exclamation point to a perfectly formed Act One, "June". The movie takes place over the course of one life-changing summer for Mike and The Kid: June, July, and August. You go to Magic Mike to see seven spectacularly formed male bodies but the movie turns out to be all sculpted, too: June is introductions, flirtations and promise, by July you're deep in love/lust and too hot for clothing, and in August... 

the cock rocking kings of Tampa

Well, you know how sticky August gets...

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New "Magic Mike" Stills in Ascending Order of Hotness

It's annoying that Magic Mike did not premiere in the Lusty Month of May and even more annoying that it did not premiere for my birthday. But at least it's arriving at the tail end of Gay Pride Month, because oglers of male beauty (aka roughly 70% ? of the population including gayz, women, and straight men who aren't insecure about such things) should thank the gays for this new era of male objectification. Unrealistic self-punishing beauty standards aren't just for women anywhere. Hooray.... ?

If someone will collect all the stills and trailers and clips into one YouTube reel maybe none of us will even need to see the movie. What? Studios release way too much pre-release material. We still don't know if Magic Mike the movie is any good or not but I did hear from a reader who loved the test screening he saw (especially Chan's dancing), adding:

I'm watching this 6 times and concentrating on one hot body per viewing.

LOL. If everyone interested does that, Channing Tatum will easily have his third $100 million blockbuster of the year.

20 new stills after the jump in totally subjective factual order of hotness. Here we go.

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Thoughts I had while staring at the "Magic Mike" poster

• I see no magic being performed unless Alex Pettyfer is about to pull something out of that hat.

• If this movie had been made in the 1980s or by Nicolas Winding Refn the blue letters would've been in pink neon.

• I keep wanting to spell something out. If you squint, Matthew, Matt & Joe, and Alex are spelling out Y.M.A but Channing is letterless. Maybe if you flipped Channing horizontally he'd be an "R". What does it all mean? R. Y. M. A.?

• "work all day. work it all night" is kind of an awesome tagline. It's self aware. Movie, know thyself!

• If this movie shows less Joseph Mangianello skin than any random episode of True Blood, Steven Soderbergh has failed us all.

• That camouflage will only hide Matt Bomer if he's surrounded by thousands of male strippers in a muddy forest. Hmmmm. 

• Why isn't this opening for my birthday (June 6th) instead of June 29th?

The five most important things about this poster after the jump...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Magic Mike"

One of this year's true novelty pictures will likely be Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike. It's at least partially based on star Channing Tatum's own experiences as a male stripper pre film stardom and there are very few male stars of his magnitude that would so willfully go there. We hope the film is as much of a novelty in execution as it sounds in concept. (When's the last time someone made a mainstream male stripper movie? 1983?!?) Let's give it the Yes No Maybe So treatment even if we were already "Yes" when it was less a movie in production and more of a rumor called  Channing Tatum Wants to Make A Movie About His Own Life As a Stripper. 

'Magic. Mike.' You are the husband that they never had. You are the dreamboat guy that never came along."

YES

• The trailer begins almost giddily by embracing the oldest stripping cliche -- it's the ol' legit man in uniform is cheekily anything but legit. And he's also soon out of uniform. more yes (and a little no maybe so after the jump)

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