Deadpool Pulls a Burt Reynolds. (Don't Tell Archer.)

Ryan Reynolds posted the first "official" photo of himself (presumably) in costume for the forthcoming Deadpool movie, which is due in approximately 11 months (expected to open in February 2016). The synopsis goes like so:

Based upon Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, DEADPOOL tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.

A gazillion bonus points for doing it so cheekily a la Burt Reynolds on a bear rug because costume reveals are usually SO unimaginative.

Burt Reynolds super-fan Archer Sterling would approve. Or be very jealous. 

But isn't it weird that Ryan Reynolds, who obviously works hard to maintain one of the most spectacular bodies in the movies, keeps getting covered for the movies that require men have great physiques - i.e. superhero movies? First it was that all CGI costume for Green Lantern (blargh) and now a full body suit with literally not one square inch of flesh showing. 

Burt Reynolds would not approve of the modesty (neither would Archer come to think of it) and if you are very young or tune out anytime anyone discusses stars from before your time, you'll see why after the NSFW jump...

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Tim's Toons: All Dogs Go to Heaven, the strangest animated film of 1989

Tim here. We’re talking 1989 this month at the Film Experience, and as any dabbler in the history of animation knows, 1989 is most important for being the year that Walt Disney Feature Animation get back on track after some two decades in the wilderness with the smashing success of the fairy tale musical The Little Mermaid.

That’s not what we’re here to talk about. The Little Mermaid doesn’t need me: it’s a stone-cold all-time classic that everybody reading this has an opinion on already. Instead, I would like to take you to the other animated feature that opened on November 17, 1989, and which crumpled in the face of Mermaid’s juggernaut performance at the box office. That day, y’see, also bore witness to All Dogs Go to Heaven, a film which shriveled up and died in the face of Disney's singing crabs and diva octopodes.

This was the fourth feature made by Don Bluth, who had once been the heir-apparent to the Disney studios until he fled that company during the joyless production of The Fox and the Hound in 1979. Throughout the ‘80s, he and his succession of companies had represented an old-fashioned, back-to-basics alternative to the confused, often unpleasant films Disney was miserably trying to hawk, and his two biggest successes – 1986’s An American Tail and 1988’s The Land Before Time – found him effectively beating his old employers at their own game.

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Citizen Peeta

JA from MNPP here, with that there the first teaser for Mockingjay, the third Hunger Games film and the first half of the two-part finale. (What convolutions our sentences must take in this new world of franchise logic.) If you ask me Donald Sutherland would already have a couple of golden boys (I mean even some nominations, at least!) on his mantle, I love him that much, so highlighting his sparkling sneering performance as President Snow in this video seems wise to me, and makes my extremities tingle. And I love Josh Hutcherson playing the role of "Kept Boy" up in there -- because my wiring is strange I immediately thought of Burt Reynolds in Citizen Ruth, of all things, with that young boy he always had beside him. Now that would take the Hunger Games to a whole new level of complications, eh? Katniss storms the Capitol and finds Peeta massaging oil into Snow's shoulder-blades? Be brave, Francis Lawrence!

Monologue: Sterling Archer, Burt Reynolds & Dead Bodies

Have you ever watched Archer? I had tuned in here or there but hadn't ever committed. This weekend I binge watched about 10 episodes and now I'm madly in love. I'm beginning to think it's one of the great sitcoms, each character is so fully defined and there are jokes of so many varieties, not just verbal but visual and physical and recurring and always true to character. One of my favorite recurring gags is Archer's obsession with Burt Reynolds. In the Season 2 episode "Pipeline Fever" he keeps talking about Gator (1976) since he and his ex-girlfriend/coworker are going to the swamp. They're arguing about the element of surprise when Archer gets distracted.

Which is why mobility is key. And how will we achieve mobility, huh? An airboat, Lana. Just like Burt Reynolds in White Lightning. Not to mention Gator! Which... even though it's a sequel I think it's the stronger of the two films.

Remember Jerry Reed's character in Gator? McCall? No? Well, whatever. Check this out, I stol--borrowed it from Woodhouse? RIGHT! It's just like in Gator.

Archer has blown their cover by pulling a gun and an air marshall is now pointing a gun at them. Later in the episode he shows up in an outfit that read suspiciously like Burt's insanely memorable rubber vest from Deliverance (1972) though it's not remarked upon.

Which brings us to a Burt Reynolds speech from that great 70s picture

What to do with a dead body... what to do? That's always a (movie) question. Fifty-three minutes into the classic Deliverance (1972), the shit has hit the fan or, rather, the men have already squealed like pigs. Four increasingly unhinged friends are now freaking out over the fresh corpse in their midst. Drew (Ronny Cox) in particular wants to be done with their time in the woods and turn things over to the law. Burt Reynolds has the answer in his greatest pre-Boogie Nights role (the one he was famously Oscar snubbed for).

You let me worry about that, Drew. You let me take care of that. You know what's going to be here, right here? A Lake! Far as you can see. Hundreds of feet deep. Hundreds of feet deep!

Did you ever look out over a lake? Think about something buried underneath it. Buried underneath it!

Man, that's about as buried as you can get.

It must have been tempting to film Burt's take-charge moment entirely in tight sweaty closeup. That's exactly what a modern filmmaker would do, beholden as they now all are to constant closeups and the TV-centric emphasis on the dead center of each frame, as if stardom can't be grasped if more than one person inhabits any frame. Thankfully, director John Boorman, his Oscar nominated editor Tom Priestley and the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond trust that alpha male star Burt Reynolds doesn't need any help in seizing a scene.

Instead we get a riveting and creepy mix of longshots, closeups, and slow pans which never let's us forget any of the players, their specific relationships to one another ...and especially the unsettling constant presence of that intruding dead body, draped inelegantly across a tree branch.

previous monologues

Beauty Break: Horizontal Lovelies

From top to bottom chronologically: Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Burt Reynolds as The Cosmopolitan Man, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa, Miss Piggy, La Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Rollergirl of Boogie Nights fame, Charlize Theron as Aeon Flux, and Dame Helen Mirren.

P.S. If you would like to replay this post at maximum volume, might I suggest queueing up the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack whilst doing so?