December calls for our 25-day countdown to Christmas!  So, as others count down the days til Christmas by eating pieces of chocolate or ripping off paper rings from the traditional Christmas chain, we here at HOLLYWIRE are counting down the days with Hollywood’s 25 most delicious pieces of eye candy (both male & female!).

#1 IT’S CHRISTMAS!!! These two stars had a year just as HOT as they are!

Taylor Lautner

Taylor Swift

#2

Shemar Moore

Natalie Portman

#3

Pierce Bronson

Megan Fox

#4

Ashton Kutcher

Demi Moore

#5

Tom Brady

Kim Kardashian

#6

Hugh Jackman

Jennifer Lopez

#7

Colin Farrell

Kate Beckinsale

#8

Robert Pattinson

Beyonce

#9

Johnny Depp

Jessica Alba

#10 We are down to the final 10, let the hotness begin!

Ryan Reynolds

Miley Cyrus

#11  Here are some sexy athletes to brighten up your holiday season.  What athlete other than David Beckham looks so hot in undie ads?  None that I know of!  David Beckham def takes the cake–yum!

David Beckham

Serena Williams

#12 These are two people I’d really love to see more of, because I just can’t seem to get enough!  If you look on his IMDB, he’s got a lot in post production, so maybe I’ll get my Christmas wish fulfilled & see more of his beautifulness in 2010!

Chris Pine

I’m so intrigued by former Sexy Spice.  I really wish she’d come out with a sequel to her reality show,  Victoria Beckham: Coming to America… I wanted to see what it was like for her, her hubby David, & their cute little boys once they were all in the U.S. together.

Victoria Beckham

#13  I’ve given you a lot of hottie-potottie actors & actresses, so here’s a couple musicians to provide us with some delicous eye candy this season.  Usher’s gotta have some of the best lookin abs in the industry…that’s way more than a 6-pack!

Usher

Lady GaGa may pull off a lot of crazy looks, but I just can’t get over her body.  She must really work hard to look this good!

Lady GaGa

#14  The next two hotties come from the UK.  There’s no way could we leave action man, Jason Statham, off our Christmas Hot List!  He’s always sizzlin’ hot!

Jason Statham

Singer Cheryl Cole, who was voted UK’s “Ultimate Fantasy Body,” is a combination of both beauty and talent.

Cherly Cole

#15 Some of the hottest men in Hollywood are action heroes and there’s few better than Vin Diesel.  Just look at his muscles!

Vin Diesel

As for the leading ladies of Hollywood, Emma Watson has really grown up since the first Harry Potter and with age comes beauty.

Emma Watson

#16 As Christmas gets closer, the stars get hotter and these are two of my personal favorites.  I’ve loved Ben Affleck since Good Will Hunting and Halle Berry, well… She looks good no matter what she does.

Ben Affleck

Halle Berry

#17 These up and coming stars are not as known as the rest, but man are they SEXY!  Alex Pettyfer been modeling for years, but came out on the big screen in Tormented eariler this year.

Alex Pettyfer

In Austrailia, Abbie Cornish, is already a well known award winning actress; maybe she’ll become the next Nicole Kidman in the U.S.

Abbie Cornish

#18 — For all you teens and tweens out there, here are two of Disney’s hottest stars.  Lucas Till and Demi Lovato are not only talented stars, they are also two of the sexiest teens Disney has to offer.

Lucas Till

Demi Lovato

#19 –Definitely one of Hollywood’s hottest and most powerful couples, Jesse James and Sandra Bullock are hot enough to fulfill most people’s fantasies.  Talk about a power couple!

Jesse James

Sandra Bullock

#20–These two Hollywood Hotties prove that when it comes to sex appeal, sometimes age doesn’t matter.

George Clooney

Catherine Zeta-Jones

#21–Ok all you Twihards this one’s for you!

Chaske Spencer

Kristen Stewart

#22–Straight out of Bollywood are two of India’s hottest actors/actresses. Shahid got his start working in music videos is now one of India’s leading men and won the Filmfare Best Male Debut Award.

Shahid Kapoor

Shilpa Shetty has appeared in 40 films and is also a model.

Shilpa Shetty

#23–Thought I’d throw some reality TV stars in the mix and who’s hotter than Brody Jenner and Lauren Conrad?

Brody Jenner

Lauren Conrad

#24–Giving a little shout out to the troops this holiday season.  What man in uniform doesn’t look sexy?

Matt Damon

And, you gotta a give a girl some credit for her hard work and determination.  Britney showed off a slimer more fit body throughout her Circus tour.

Britney Spears

#25–I know, Brad usually ranks in the top 10, but lately his fashion hasn’t been the greatest, and to tell you the truth, I can’t stand his goatee.  However, he is still Brad Pitt and the name alone is sexy enough to get him on the list.

Brad Pitt

Kate is usually more cute than sexy, but her role in Nine shows us a whole different side of her. Kate can be sexy and seductive, or innocent and cute, either way she’s just plain HOT!

Kate Hudson

It’s been quite a number of years since I’ve seen a Fast & Furious movie. I remember being pretty thoroughly unimpressed with the original movie and I saw the second one at a second run theater and found it pretty much the same, so I skipped Tokyo Drift. The latest installment in the turbo-charged franchise jumps on the bandwagon of the latest craze of just reverting to the original name when adding a new installment in a long-running series, although I have to admit it was a lot better than I expected.

Granted, when I say a lot better than I expected, it’s important to keep that statement in perspective. A Fast & Furious movie getting three and a half Beans is a lot different from, ah, how should I say this, a normal movie getting three and a half Beans. Know what I mean? Kind of like how horror movies or bad comedies are rated differently from regular movies. For example, recently I have re-watched all of the old Police Academy movies in response to the horrifying news that Steve Guttenburg is attempting to put out a seventh sequel, and I awarded three Beans to Police Academy 3. This doesn’t mean that Police Academy 3 is a three-Bean movie, it means that it’s a three-Bean Police Academy movie.

Similarly, as far as the Fast and Furious movies go, I would venture to say that the newest installment may very well be the best one yet, although this is not exactly a huge compliment, because it’s a pretty lunkheaded action movie. Then again, the lunkheadedness has generally been the greatest appeal of the series in the first place.

Vin Diesel is back as Dominic Toretto, who has been living in Panama City for the past six years working on his Spanish, but when the girl that he loves is murdered, he returns to the U.S. where he is a wanted criminal. Our old friend Brian O’Conner, of course, has been reinstated in the FBI (you may remember him letting Dom escape, which is generally something that doesn’t go over so well with the Bureau). He is leading a task force in an attempt to bring down a massive drug cartel, and also now to track down Dom.
The first thing that O’Conner comes up with is a name – David Park – a scout who recruits street racers and who O’Conner is counting on to lead the FBI to the bad guys.

The connection is that the street racers that Park recruits are hired by the drug cartel to speed $60 million carloads of narcotics across the Mexican border into the U.S. There is a bizarre tunnel stunt thrown in for a  nice car chase scenario, although all it really did for me was make it look like they were speeding through the Indiana Jones set. I’ve seen video games more effective at creating suspense, so it’s good that at least there are some good crashes, although they come after some occurrences that are so preposterous that I found myself laughing out loud. Wait until you see the stunts that Dom pulls in the tunnels! Even Frank Martin wouldn’t attempt such things!

But I digress. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m telling you about the plot of the movie, because as soon as the rice rockets show up the entire plot goes flying out the window so fast and so completely that the DVD should come with a disclaimer warning viewers to watch the movie with the windows open so the studio doesn’t get swamped with people demanding payment for windows shattered by the high velocity evacuation of the story.

But obviously, the story is just an excuse to string a lot of car chases into a movie and then to follow it up with a video game. I don’t know anything about fast and furious video games of either the past or the future, but they went so far as to animate a preview of the forthcoming video game right into the movie this time, so it doesn’t require a whole lot of foresight to see one coming.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Fast & Furious is a high-speed car chase action movie, and in that way it delivers exactly what it promises.

Basically the movie is a dance club with car crashes, so if you’re into either of those things then you’re pretty likely to have a good time. Oh, and if you can believe Paul Walker as a seasoned FBI agent then you’ll believe anything and definitely you’ll have a great time. Just don’t operate any heavy machinery or, you know, leave the house without a helmet on.
Also, whether you like the movie or hate it, you have to admit that the last 20 minutes or so are pretty good. This is when Dom pulls his superhuman tunnel stunts, but there is also a great chase from Mexico back to the U.S. that involves everything from street racers to pickup trucks to those big off-road race trucks that can go over jumps like dirt bikes. Remember that movie Dust to Glory? The documentary about the Baja 1000? The last race in this movie looks a lot like that, and I mean that as a compliment.

Can I make a request, though? There is no reason to trick yourself into thinking that this is the end of the series, so when they make 5 Fast 5 Furious, can we get some monster trucks or something in there? I’d really get a kick out of that…

My first reaction to Babylon A.D. was that it’s not nearly as bad as its own director, Matthieu Kassovitz, has been claiming it is, although that reaction came to me before I got to the end of the movie. The movie has a cool set-up and a few good action sequences, although they suffer from that all too modern symptom of having been put together by editors who must have been on some kind of amphetamines. Like so many other recent action films (Death Race, for example), the fight scenes and chase scenes and whatnot are cut together so fast that they fly by with dizzying speed, and you move on with the rest of the movie with only a vague impression of what just happened.

Vin Diesel stars as Toorop, a hardened loner of a mercenary whose latest mission is to escort a mysterious young woman from a convent in Russia to America, where he is listed as a terrorist, although like so much of the rest of the movie, we never learn why. Michelle Yeoh comes across as a bizarre casting decision for a bizarre character. She plays Sister Rebekah, Aurora’s guardian. This woman I just don’t get. She’s Chinese and plays a kung-fu fighting nun in Russia.

She and Toorop have an immediate power struggle, and then during the mission Aurora exhibits more and more strange powers and abilities. She can feel other people’s pain, she can operate old submarines, and can predict the future. The rest of the movie is basically Toorop’s mission to get her to New York alive, avoiding the mysterious figures pursuing her for their own agenda, and figure out what’s wrong with her along the way.

The movie moves along from one on-location set piece to the next, with action scenes and fights popping up out of nowhere and then wrapping up nicely as our heroes rush off screen to the next set. But I would argue that at least most of the action is fun along the way.

Unfortunately, I happened to have learned before watching the movie that a 160-minute version would be released in Europe, compared to the 90-minute version I just saw, and let me tell you, you can really feel the blank spots. There is, for example, a major, major plot development revealed in the third act of the movie that is so bizarre that it’s almost like someone slipped in a page from a completely different movie. It comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, and adds nothing to the movie except provides a spot to slide in the ending, which leaves you with the feeling that the writer was hit by a truck or they ran out of money or just lost interest. The end is so sudden and so witless that the movie immediately transformed in my mind into an endless maze of loose ends and confusion.

There is a brief scene in the movie where Sister Rebekah explains hers and Aurora’s history to Toorop, but it doesn’t explain anything and doesn’t really matter anyway, because the story is so clearly just a backdrop to the futuristic landscapes and the cookie cutter fight scenes, many of which are hilarious in their badness. There is one scene, for example, where the trio outrun not only a couple of what look like futuristic Stealth bombers, but also their missiles, and they do it on snowmobiles!

I don’t think we ever learn the exact time period, but the futuristic element of the film is badly incoherent. New York City is jam-packed with neon advertisement, fold-out road maps are like Google Maps on paper and touch sensitive, and taxis have scrolling message boards on their sides, but Coke Zero is still around and advertising on passenger jets and the bad guys drive vintage, mint-condition 2008 Range Rovers. They must really like classic cars.

I have to say that Babylon A.D. left me with the feeling that it could have and should have been so much better than it was, and I’m guessing that was the money-hungry hand of the studio that swept away all of the good parts of the movie. I’m hoping that when Babylon DVD comes along it will include the uncut, 160-minute version that the Europeans saw, along with an explanation of why it was so badly butchered before released to American audiences. At any rate, any Director’s Cut is sure to be a different movie entirely. I recommend waiting for it.

Most people I know hate missing the previews but also tend to be not so great at getting out of the house on time. Luckily I spend a lot of time at the movies, so if you have bad luck with the red lights on the way to the theater, here are some of the previews you’re missing…

BABYLON A.D. (2008), Action/Adventure/Sci-fi/Thriller, PG-13, 90 mins.

Well, judging by the preview, the movie looks cool as hell, even though Vin Diesel plays a guy named Toorop. He’s a veteran-turned-mercenary whose peaceful and quiet life is disrupted when he accepts a job escorting a Russian woman to America. What he doesn’t know is that her body hosts a mysterious organism that allows you to turn into a shapeshifter or manipulate your DNA somehow. Something like that. Anyway a lot of shady characters are after her with shady plans for her powers. The details are pretty fuzzy thus far, but what we do know is that throughout most of Europe a 160 minute version will be released into theaters, so we’re going to see about half of the movie here in the states. That hardly seems fair.

I’ve heard that this is a sign that we are sure to lose a lot of Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s trademark violence, but I think the loss of his faith is a far larger concern.

In a highly unusual move for the director of a major movie, Kassovitz has been loudly badmouthing the film, which will not be screened for critics prior to its release, for some time now.

“It’s pure violence and stupidity…All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Not a good sign, especially since Kassovitz had been working on the thing for five years. But then again, this could be a learning experience for us in the audience. Last week, The House Bunny was released, with possibly the most inappropriate PG-13/content combination ever. Kassovitz claimed that he suffered massive interference from the studio, who were willing to make any sacrifice for that PG-13 rating, so it should be interesting to see what kind of film that gives us.

Sounds to me like a case of a director who saw a great script and signed on to the movie only to watch it butchered to death in front of his eyes by money-hungry producers.

“I like the energy of it and I got some scenes I’m happy with. But I know what I had – I had something much better in my hands but I just wasn’t allowed to work.”

Babylon A.D. will be released August 29th.

BANGKOK DANGEROUS (2008), Action/Crime/Thriller, R, 100 mins.

So the IMDb lists a synopsis of the plot of Bangkok Dangerous which does not inspire confidence. “A hitman who’s in Bangkok to pull off a series of jobs falls for a local woman and bonds with his errand boy.”

What?

The story is about a ruthless American assassin who is in Thailand to assassinate four enemies of a brutal crime boss. Being a tourist in Thailand, he hires a local boy to run errands and cover his tracks for him. His intention is to get rid of him after he finishes his assignments, but he ends up forming a mentoring relationship with him, teaching the boy his murderous craft at the same time as he begins to develop a romantic relationship with a local deaf-mute girl.

These budding relationships cause him to question his extreme loner lifestyle, and he begins to let down his guard at all the wrong times.

I don’t know yet whether this will be any good, but either way I recommend a similar Nicholas Cage movie, Matchstick Men.

Bangkok Dangerous will be released September 5th.

RIGHTEOUS KILL (2008), Crime/Drama, R, 100 mins.

I am of the opinion that you can’t make a bad movie with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in it, especially when DeNiro is saying things like “There’s nothing wrong with a little shooting, as long as the right people get shot.”

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran New York City police officers who sense a connection between a recent murder and a case that they believed they had solved years before. Now their questions is whether there is a copycat serial killer on the loose or they put the wrong man in prison in the old case.

The movie raises interesting moral and political questions when it turns out that the killer is targeting violent criminals who managed to squeeze through the legal cracks in the judicial system, basically doing the job that the criminal justice system couldn’t do because the cops’ hands were tied with red tape, or some technicality put a criminal back on the streets.

Righteous Kill will be released September 12th.

MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL (2008), Comedy, R, 101 mins.

Not to be outdone by Babylon A.D. director Matthieu Kassovitz, My Best Friend’s Girl director Dane Cook has been badmouthing his own movie prior to its release. But not so much the movie, just the poster. The movie, he says, “is the best/funniest film I’ve done to date. It’s got a terrific cast. Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin, Jason Biggs, and myself really kicked the funny around. This movie showcases our talents as it expands on them. It’s a fun R-rated flick. An edgy comedy with a dash of romance”

Sounds good, but wow, you should hear him rail on this poster. I invite you to take a quick look at his MySpace page, where he has posted a vast list of the Photoshop crimes committed behind his back on this poster, including the fact that the angle of his neck makes him look like he was raised in an abandoned barn by a family of owls, and that his left side “looks like Brittany Spears’ vagina.”

Personally I think he’s being a little too hard on the poster which, in my opinion, does nothing worse than make the movie look no different from every other by-the-numbers romantic comedy to come along in the last six or eight years.

I’m hoping that Cook is right about the comedy in the movie being good, because the story has nothing going for it. He plays Tank, a cocky anti-hero whose best friend (Jason Biggs) hires him to take his ex-girlfriend on a terrible date so that she’ll realize she made a mistake breaking up with him.
I’m curious about what kind of disasters they might come up with to make Jason Biggs look good to someone like Kate Hudson. This has to be the most unlikely and incongruous pair of the year, to say the least!

My Best Friend’s Girl will be released September 19th.

BLINDNESS (2008), Drama/Mystery/Romance/Thriller, R, 118 mins.

A mysterious epidemic of “white blindness” ravages a city, and the affected are quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital, forming an unstable society of the newly blind, in which the physically powerful prey upon the weak, rationing food and committing violent and atrocious acts.

The only eyewitness to the outbreak is a woman whose sight is somehow unaffected, and who follows her husband into quarantine. She keeps her sight a secret and uses her advantage to help guide her husband and a small group of strangers to safety. Their dangerous journey takes them through the ravages streets of the city, where all manner of civilization has broken down completely.

Blindness stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Sandra Oh and will be released September 26th.

NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (2008), Drama/Comedy, PG-13, I’m guessing 100 mins or so.

Michael Cera stars as a young musician without the female magnetism that should come along with such a thing. Devastated that his girlfriend has recently left him, she shows up soon after the breakup at one of his gigs with a new guy.

Desperate to show that he has moved on as well, he accepts an offer from a strange girl in a bar to be her boyfriend for five minutes, beginning an epic night of song writing, exotic foods, stripping nuns, singing in the rain, and psychotic ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.

I guess I’ll just come out and say that by now it’s getting a little old that Michael Cera is still playing exactly the same character he played in the brilliant TV sitcom “Arrested Development.” I’m hoping he branches out soon, because he’s clearly a talented actor. Still, the movie looks pretty good so far…

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist will be released October 3rd.

QUARANTINE (2008), Horror/Mystery/Thriller.

Jennifer Carpenter, of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, plays a television reporter assigned to spend the night with a Los Angeles Fire crew. A routine 911 call brings them to an apartment building where police are already on the scene in response to mysterious screams coming from inside.

It turns out that the screams are coming from a woman who has been infected with an unknown but extremely infectious virus, and Carpenter and her news crew find themselves quarantined inside the building with the few remaining residents. All phones, cell phone service, and internet are cut off, and the people inside the building are not given any news as far as what is going on. After the event is over, the only evidence that anything unusual took place is their news footage shot inside the building.

Quarantine will be released October 10th.

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MAX PAYNE (2008), Action/Crime/Drama/Thriller, probably R and 110 mins or so.

Mark Wahlberg plays the perectly named Max Payne, a New York City DEA agent investigating a series of murders in the city. Payne has a personal vendetta to satisfy, it seems that his family was killed as part of a conspiracy, and in his investigation he is teamed up with an assassin named Mona Sax, who is out to avenge her sister’s death.

Complicating matters is that the pair are taking the law into their own hands, and find themselves hunted not only the police, but also the mob and a ruthless corporation.

Mark Wahlberg is great at roles like this (see his hardened character in The Departed), but he seems to have made the mistake of claiming that he could kick Batman’s ass.

“Take off the suit and if you want to go one-on-one, two-on-one, and put a couple of you guys together – they all like to put the comic book characters together – come at me.”

Isn’t that kind of like saying you’re bigger than Jesus? At any rate, the movie looks cool, and will be released October 17th.