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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Say What, Magic Mike (and Matthew)?

Amuse us. Add dialogue or a caption to this new still from Magic Mike.

another new (more strip-tastic) still after the jump...

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Review: 21 Jump Street (The Movie)

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

"High concept" was the hot showbiz term of the 1980s. The thinking went that if you couldn't describe your movie/tv show in one sentence, it wouldn't sell. That popular marketing wisdom stuck and High Concept itself shrank. First it devolved into This meets That, each new pitch being a mashup of preexisting hits. Today instead of one sentence pitches or previous hit fusions most new potential blockbusters are required to rely on a simple colon. It works like so… "Title of That Thing You Already Know: The Movie!"

The 1987 cast of "21 Jump Street"

This has led to all sorts of unfortunate movies based on books, games, plays and tv shows (and vice versa) many of them big hits. The danger is obvious. When you don't even have to try to make your entertainment memorable because the audience brings half the affection with them, creative laziness can often follow. But every once in awhile the audience gets lucky and Title of That Thing You Already Know: The Movie is surprisingly fun on its own terms.

Chan & Jonah in High School21 Jump Street began its life as a high concept television series...

Young-looking cops go back to high school… undercover!"

And now it's a 21 JUMP STREET: THE MOVIE (the last half of that title is silent/implied) The twist is that rather than the earnest though light-hearted procedural drama it was in its infancy when it introduced us to Johnny Depp, it's now a full fledged buddy comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. Continued after the jump...

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