You go, Paul Ryan. (TIME Magazine)

– Just in time for the vice presidential debates, here's Paul Ryan looking like Zach Morris's stand-in during a TIME Magazine photo shoot that teased him by saying it was considering naming him its man of the year. Yeah, right!

– The reason Lindsay Lohan was fighting with her mom on Tuesday? Apparently it had something to do with a $40,000 loan Ms. Lohan gave to her mother to keep her Long Island home from being foreclosed on.

– Last night was the New York premiere of Seven Psychopaths. Watch Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Colin Farrell reenact a scene from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo last night.
http://youtu.be/NzIsz3fU9xQ

– Here's how you know you've been hanging around brooding British vampires too much ... you start referring to yourself as a "miserable c**t." In Marie Claire of all places. Oh, K-Stew!

Harrelson and Walken in Seven Psychopaths.

Garbage comes in all sizes, and every one of them seems to fit into a load of violent, hateful and incomprehensible trash called Seven Psychopaths. Written by talented Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who shocked Broadway audiences with dark, funny, gothic creepshows like The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan and A Behanding in Spokane,this movie is proof that moving to Hollywood is poisonous Kool-Aid to the creative process. Kneeling at the trough of Hollywood pop psychobabble that has come to symbolize the New Cinema, Mr. McDonagh seems to have taken leave (temporarily, I hope) of his senses. He proved in 2008, with a brooding job called In Bruges, about hit men on holiday in Belgium, that he cannot stretch his bristling ideas into one full-length feature. Unfortunately, he also thinks he’s a director—a job for which he shows no patience, aptitude or proficiency. The result is a twitching convulsion of vicious drivel passing itself off as a movie, which can be best appreciated by the kind of people who dig Showgirls, the Saw franchise and Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman flicks.

For starters, the title means nothing. Don’t even try to count the number of psychopaths who bang around from scene to scene without reason or rhyme. Colin Farrell, a fellow Irishman who bonded with Mr. McDonagh on the In Bruges shoot, plays Marty, a drunken Hollywood screenwriter who has lost his inspiration in the middle of a numbskull morality tale (called Seven Psychopaths, natch) about a serial killer who longs for love, murder and world peace. His best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), an actor who can’t get a job in the movies because he keeps punching out the directors, is determined to help Marty finish his script at all costs, including a few massacres of his own. The first thing he does is introduce his hapless pal to his partner in crime, an aging Polish loser (Christopher Walken, looking like 10 miles of broken asphalt painted green) with a dying wife, who cooks up a scheme to steal dogs then return them to their desperate owners to collect the rewards. The blocked writer finally gets a glimmer of the Real McCoy when the dognapper makes the mistake of stealing a fluffy, yappy, sissy Shih Tzu named Bonny (played by a real Shih Tzu named Bonny) that belongs to a macho gangster (Woody Harrelson). The effeminate but brutal thug goes viral and tracks down the Polish thief and everyone he knows, beginning with his terminally ill wife, whom he exterminates in the cancer ward. Thanks to a plot that backfires and a newspaper ad that Billy places inviting closeted psychopaths to come forward and be interviewed, Marty the ill-fated scribe is suddenly up to his inkjet printer cartridges in real serial killers, including Tom Waits, who is not much better as an actor than he is as a tone-deaf musician (except he mercifully does not sing out of tune this time), as a maniac who ties his victims to a table and chops them up with a meat cleaver while a white rabbit licks up the blood, then pours gasoline on the corpses and sets them on fire. You sit there trying to figure out what’s going on, before you finally realize they’re making it up as they go along. As they act out their different versions of events in the unfinished screenplay, the movie is making it up, too.

Suddenly the entire cast is busy slaughtering each other as the screen is crowded to capacity with psycho killers and more psycho-killing psycho killers, including a pair of homicidal maniac lovebirds, a razor-slashing Quaker and a Viet Cong killer disguised as a priest seeking revenge against America. They all end up in Joshua Tree National Park in a blazing shootout that leaves almost everyone dead except the delusional writer, whose finished screenplay might be on its way to an Oscar. I’ve never seen such a colossal waste of talent. The acting is so bad in this picture that even the quirky, inventive Sam Rockwell can’t save it. The pulpy Quentin Tarantino-style dialogue mixes Little Caesar with Grand Guignol to no effect, the camerawork is garish, the pacing ludicrously twisted, the bloodshed gratuitous. The women in the film (Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko and Gabourey Sidibe from Precious) are underdeveloped to the status of walk-ons. The direction has a scattered buckshot effect, which may be trendy but is not meant as a recommendation. At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, where it premiered in a sidebar event called Midnight Madness, one wag informed me that Seven Psychopaths is actually a comedy with a potential cult following and that I just don’t get it. Whatever. This time ignorance is bliss, but to me, the movie is genuinely humor-resistant. Any cult it develops will be chewing gum and wearing Halloween costumes.

rreed@observer.com

 SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS

Running Time 109 minutes

Written and Directed by  Martin McDonagh

Starring Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell

0/4

Jeff Bridges is not aging well, but when he stopped shaving, he started acting. The acting shows in Crazy Heart, an otherwise boring slice of country-fried steak with an exceptional performance by the gravel-voiced good old boy that raises the film several notches in the direction of unforgettable.

Bad Blake, a once-famous country western singing attraction now reduced to one-night gigs in bowling alleys, drives his truck into Santa Fe, pours out his urine from a gallon milk jug, slugs down enough whiskey to float a cargo ship and leaves the stage in the middle of his show to vomit into a garbage can. The next morning he rolls his gut out of bed and hits the road again, leaving a haggard fan behind in the motel sheets. It’s a routine he knows by heart. Moaning in an inaudible croak like a cross between Tom Waits and Harvey Fierstein, he’s a sort of first cousin to Robert Duvall’s Oscar-winning role in Tender Mercies, a 1983 movie that was also about a down-for-the-count country singer trying to put the broken pieces of his wasted life back together. (Mr. Duvall produced Crazy Heart and plays a Houston bartender in it.) But Tender Mercies was supported on the literary columns of an Oscar-winning screenplay by Horton Foote, who knew how to take his time and examine his characters with a flashlight to the soul. When Crazy Heart takes its time, it’s more like stretching a short story into a feature film. Well directed but sketchily written by actor Scott Cooper, the film relies a great deal on the star to flesh out what is only implied. It’s a lot of work, but Mr. Bridges is merely miraculous.

A 57-year-old has-been who is slowly killing himself with alcohol and cigarettes, Bad Blake is also a variation on the revolting creep Mr. Bridges played in The Big Lebowski, as well as the white bearded, pot-bellied version in The Men Who Stare at Goats. The once handsome, clean-cut embodiment of reliable Hollywood aristocracy has just about got a patent on stumble-bum reprobates. Bad Blake refuses to reveal his real name or discuss his four failed marriages, but he’s impressed enough with the pretty young reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who comes to interview him after one of his shows that he takes her to bed, befriends her little boy and thinks maybe he’s finally found the girl who could mean more to him than another meaningless one-night stand. But first, he’s got a trying gig in Las Vegas as the opening act for his arch-nemesis Tommy Sweet (a miscast, unconvincing Colin Farrell). A lot of guitar-plunking Nashville crooning ensues, followed by a potentially life-altering decision. What happens in the 111 minutes of Crazy Heart can be written on the head of a bobby pin, but there’s no arguing about the sweet impact of the central performance.

Whether you like the film depends on how much you like hillbilly music and Jeff Bridges. He’s pretty dog-eared and over the fence by now, but he sings the original songs with real conviction, and there’s something about him that’s as down-home as a bowl of grits with sawmill gravy. Anyone who remembers his father, Lloyd Bridges, with the legendary Kim Stanley in both The Goddess and John Frankenheimer’s Playhouse 90 production of Clifford Odets’ Clash by Night knows he comes from great acting genes. His performance as Bad Blake—lonely but aloof, talented but self-destructive, desperate for roots but a victim of his own addictive demon—leaves no shadowy corner of a complex life unexplored. He’s aging like a sweaty, chain-smoking King Lear.

rreed@observer.com

Everyone complains about the lack of decent sitcoms on television right now, but there are a few winners out there: How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine, 30 Rock. We aren't totally prepared to bump The Big Bang Theory into the all-star category yet, but with a little more time, it may just get there. Four nerds, a beautiful woman, lots of science puns: it's cute. It's also pure as the driven snow, given that none of the guys seems to have done so much as hold a girl's hand. [CBS, 8pm]

Tuesday: Brokeback Mountain

Many of us loved Heath Leger for his roles in the underrated Ten Things I Hate About You and Lords of Dogtown,  among other films.

Monday: The Big Bang Theory

Everyone complains about the lack of decent sitcoms on television right now, but there are a few winners out there: How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine, 30 Rock. We aren't totally prepared to bump The Big Bang Theory into the all-star category yet, but with a little more time, it may just get there. Four nerds, a beautiful woman, lots of science puns: it's cute. It's also pure as the driven snow, given that none of the guys seems to have done so much as hold a girl's hand. [CBS, 8pm]

Tuesday: Brokeback Mountain

Many of us loved Heath Leger for his roles in the underrated Ten Things I Hate About You and Lords of Dogtown,  among other films. But Brokeback Mountain put him on the map. You've probably seen it before, but watch it again now and compare his sensitive, nearly-silent Ennis Del Mar to his terrifying, delirious Joker in The Dark Knight. Amazing. [HBO 2, 8pm]

Wednesday: Top Chef

The New York season of the Tom and Padma hosted cooking contest has showcased mostly mediocre food, banal personalities, and the Whole Foods on Houston. Still, we can't stop watching. Tonight is super-sized, and superbowl-tastic, with seven  star contestants from previous seasons making chili frito pie and the like. We don't care so much about football, but we  do like the foods! [Bravo, 10pm]

Thursday: Golden Girls

Did you realize that reruns of the most hilarious, adorable show about old people on television air on Lifetime? We didn't either! If you need to fill up your DVR, start taping at 8pm, and remember why you, your mom and your grandma loved this show in the 80s. [Lifetime, 8pm]

Friday: The New World

Although there is some talking in The New World, we like to call it the best silent movie of the modern age. Clocking in at 150 minutes, Terrence Malick's film about Captain John Smith and Pocahontas features an impressive cast of actors-Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale-few lines are spoken; the movie is as much a tribute to nature as it is a portrait of early America, with long, dreamy shots of the marshy reeds of the Virginia coast and the forests around Jamestown.  It's no Days of Heaven, but we'll recommend anything by the incomparably talented Mr. Malick. [IFC, 4pm]

Alex Rodriguez split his Thanksgiving day between wife Cynthia's house in Miami (where his children live) and Madonna's house on nearby Star Island. Bonus: at some point, the pair met up with billionaire Jeff Soffer and Gwyneth Paltrow, who seems to have decided against spending the holiday with husband Chris Martin. [NYDN]

Amy Winehouse has started meeting with divorce lawyers to talk about officially ending her marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil. [The Sun]

Sort of average girl Sam Durrani—an "actress and US Army reservist who claims to be descended from Afghan royalty"—claims she refused to invite Colin Farrell into her apartment after they split a cab home from Greenhouse, though the actor's rep says "[Farrell] does not know Sam Durrani and does not remember ever meeting her." [P6]

Saw V

What's the story: If you're wondering what the October Surprise is, look no further than Saw V. It's absolutely stunning that this horror franchise is on its fifth go-around. We don't know anything about the latest edition, but presumably the plot deals with a bunch people dying violent deaths. Expect this to make lots of money.

Who should see it: People who thought Saw IV didn't really tell the whole story.

High School Musical 3

What's the story: Speaking of making lots of money... allow us to introduce you to HSM3. (Hey, that's what the kids are calling it!) If you're a parent, there is a good chance you'll be seeing this over the weekend. Don't worry. As Sarah Palin would say, your reward will be in heaven. If you don't have kids, just know that this movie is the start of Zac Efron's world domination.

Who should see it: Every single tween in the tri-state area.

Pride and Glory

What's the story: The first time we saw the trailer for Pride and Glory, the Edward Norton/Colin Farrell cop flick from writer Joe Carnahan (Narc) and director Gavin O'Connor (Miracle), we thought it looked pretty interesting. The cast! The writer! The director! The problem? The trailer ran in front of No Country for Old Men. Since then Pride and Glory has been pushed back and forth like a kid on a swing. That's not a good sign.

Who should see it: Ed Norton fans that can't wait until January when Pride and Glory gets released on DVD.

Changeling

What's the story: Angelina Jolie wants her son back in the latest from Clint Eastwood. The reviews have hung on the good side of mixed, and Changeling looks like it could finally net Ms. Jolie the well-deserved Best Actress nomination she's been striving for. However, we have a feeling Mr. Eastwood's other 2008 film, Gran Torino, will get the bulk of his Oscar buzz.  

Who should see it: Brad Pitt.

Synecdoche, New York

What's the story: Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman as an aging theater director who spends his whole life creating a life-sized replica of New York inside a warehouse. Our Rex Reed calls it the worst movie ever made. Looks like somebody just got crossed off Mr. Kaufman's Christmas card list.

Who should see it: Donald Kaufman.

Noted playwright Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, from his own screenplay, is set and literally immersed in the well-preserved medieval Belgian city described as the “Venice of the North,” a title once held by Dresden before it was virtually obliterated by Allied bombers in World War II. Over the years, Bruges has become a great tourist attraction, though Mr. McDonagh and his resourceful cinematographer, Eigil Bryld, have rendered it in more sinister terms as the misty, ghostly background for a gothic gangster tale full of unbridled violence, and yet graced with a perversely soulful spirituality in the exposed feelings of its three major characters, killers all.

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are two Irish hit men who have been dispatched by their London boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), to take a few weeks’ holiday in Bruges just before Christmas. We learn later that Ray has shot a priest in his confessional booth on a contract from Harry, but has accidentally also slain an altar boy, which was not in Harry’s contract. These murders, like all the violence, are rendered very vividly.

Ray has become suicidally inclined over his killing of the altar boy, and Ken has to spend much of his time in Bruges trying to comfort and reassure Ray that all is well and accidents will happen. Ray refuses to be consoled, and he complains that he can’t wait to get back to London. By contrast, Ken is transformed by the city, and pushes Ray to explore and enjoy its rich history and culture on display everywhere they turn. Then, on a call to Ken from Harry, who insists that Ray not be present for the call, Harry reveals his purpose in sending the two men to Bruges. Ken is to dispose of Ray for mishandling the priest assignment, but not before Ray has had the dreamlike experience of discovering Bruges as Harry himself had done many years before. Such tender whimsy in the midst of callous ruthlessness is typical of the film as a whole.

What happens next is unusually convoluted, and I’d better not tell you in advance. As the homicidally and suicidally tangled narrative unfolds, Ray has time to discover a true and lasting love in the arms of a Dutch prostitute, Chloë (Clémence Poésy), who hangs around with a dwarf director named Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), who is making an art film on a Hieronymus Bosch-like set. In the course of consummating his courtship of Chloë, Ray savagely beats up a “Canadian Guy” in a restaurant for his loudly and profanely complaining about Chloë’s smoking, and ends up partially blinding Chloë’s jealous skinhead procurer, Eirik (Jérémy Renier).

The language Ray, Ken and Harry unload is unusually obscene in its casualness and instinctiveness. These are characters without civilized limits on their behavior, and their obscenities express their anarchic impulses, which makes their climactic submission to the morbid spirituality of Bruges all the more overwhelming. Ultimately, the plot contortions are less important than the film’s complex tone, which impels the three main characters to release all the demons of guilt and shame from their tortured souls, on a blood-soaked pavement in front of a holy bell tower.

In Bruges is not entertainment for the faint-hearted and mindlessly censorious, and in this particularly chaotic period, it seems right in tune with the times. It goes almost without saying that the acting of the three leads, and that of their colleagues, is, in a word, splendid.

>> Review: "Moody Bruges! Colin Farrell as a Killer With a Conscience" By Andrew Sarris 

For Mr. McDonagh, previously known as the playwright of The Pillowman and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, directing a feature film was a first. “I tried not to get in their process,” he said, of his actors. Mr. Farrell, smoking a cigarette, waved this away. “A director is kind of a conduit between the writer and the actor,” he said. “With this one, the actors just had to rise to the occasion and bring themselves up to the standards of the script, which was daunting because it so brilliant. But that’s a really nice place to be.”

The film recently opened the Sundance Film Festival. “People seem to like it,” said Mr. McDonagh, turning to Mr. Farrell. “At least that’s what they say when they come into the room.”

“No, listen,” Mr. Farrell said with a laugh. “If they didn’t like it, they’d be asking you if you miss home or what hotel you like to stay in. Anything to not talk about the film.”

In Bruges arrives in theaters on Friday, Feb. 8.

"It's my first year, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I just got in last night late, man. We had the screening tonight and it seemed to be a fairly decent response to it, you know. There was a lot of laughter. It's a beautifully offensive piece you know. And people seem to go with it. It's quite an extreme world it in habits for an hour and a half. The characters, their way of expressing themselves, the situations. It's fairly extreme and for people to enjoy it--I think they just have to allow themselves to be immersed in that world, you know? And after the first ten or fifteen minutes they seemed to really enjoy it. That was nice man."

SM: What is the state of independent film in this country?

"I mean I don't know, I don't look at the box office man. You know, I hear every now and then a particular vibe about a particular piece but that's more to do with the content of the piece then the public's response to it, so I'm not really up on those facts or figures at all. But you know Sundance obviously is growing year after year and there always has to be a place for independent film, for the purity of certain stories and certain stories that are very personal, a platform for them to be realized."

SM: Are you going to go skiing?

"I don't think so man. It's just talking shit about this film."