Guy Royale: The Week in Film: Bateman and Bullock, battlin' John Greyson, and the hottest new trailers

Sandra Bullock: Is it a bad thing we're opening Labor Day Weekend?

Bradley Cooper: Whatever. It's not like we were ever an Oscar contender.

Memorial Day weekend is such a big-deal launching pad for summer movies while the three-day Labor Day holiday is generally where the mediocre (and the downright awful) go to die.

Let it be known that 2009 doesn't deviate from that formula with this weekend's big nationwide releases.

If you thought Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Ugly Truth were as witless and inane as movies were going to get this summer, you clearly haven't seen All About Steve, a ramshackle rom-com so blisteringly stupid and off-the-rails that you find yourself wondering if anyone in the production has ever met a human being.

Sandra Bullock (who also produced, so she can't blame anyone else) stars as Mary Magdalene Horowitz, a crossword puzzle creator whose wealth of knowledge — and her inability to stop yapping about it — tends to keep men at a distance.

At one point Mary literally lunges for TV news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) after they meet on a blind date, and before long she's hounding him from disaster to disaster. Including, apparently, the premiere of All About Steve.

Mike Judge (Office Space, Idiocracy) returns with Extract, starring the appealing Jason Bateman as the owner of a food-additives factory who's trying to keep things together despite the fact that his wife (Kristen Wiig) has grown sexually disinterested and a sexy con-woman (Mila Kunis) is conspiring with an injured employee to sue for the whole company.

Lots of hilarious individual scenes, but they never add up to a complete, coherent story. Points to Judge for getting one of Ben Affleck's funniest performances in many a moon.

Finally, there's Gamer, which is apparently so totally awesome that its distributor couldn't be bothered to screen it for the press. But I know this website and its readership well enough to know that you'll dig these shots of Gerard Butler:

Where are my sword and shield!

What do you mean this isn't a sequel to 300?
Why aren't I wearing a shirt then?

Red Carpet Shilling

Seriously, the cast and crew of All About Steve owe an apology to the tiny fraction of the moviegoing audience that's going to suffer through this film. Memorize these faces and shake them down for your $10 when you see them next.

Producer-star Bullock, surrounded by Cooper (left) and Thomas Haden Church at the Mann Chinese Theater in Hollywood on August 26. Look deeply into their eyes. They cannot hide their shame.

British TV comedy guy Phil Traill, who makes his directorial debut with All About Steve. Laugh today, cry tomorrow, my friend.

And just for the hell of it, one more look at Gerard Butler, who — judging from the trailers I've been seeing recently — is in every single movie opening between now and Christmas.

That's Butler (left) with UFC wrestler Dan Henderson and former NFL player–turned-actor Terry Crews at UFC 101: Declaration at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia on August 8.

Los Trailers

Because Hollywood hasn't stomped on our collective childhoods enough with sequels and remakes, now we get Astro Boy. This time around the legendary Japanese robot ... wears pants?

George Clooney is rockin' the 'stache opposite Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey in The Men Who Stare at Goats, which promises some darkly comic military wackiness.

An indie called Trucker is starting to emerge with the apparent hopes of snagging a Best Actress nomination for Michelle Monaghan in the title role.

And just to show how committed he is to getting asses into seats for Extract — after his first two films died theatrically, only to become cult faves on DVD — Mike Judge resuscitated two of his legendary characters to shill for his new movie.

John Greyson Throws Down

Queer Canadian filmmaker John Greyson has yanked his latest movie from the Toronto International Film Festival in protest of the fest's presentation of films from Tel Aviv. (Greyson won awards there for his short The Making of Monsters and his brilliant AIDS musical Zero Patience.)

The September Issue Racks Up Absolutely Fabulous Box Office

Opening on six screens in New York City last weekend, the behind-the-scenes-at-Vogue doc The September Issue earned $240,078; its impressive per-screen average of $40,013 gives it the fifth-best per-screen numbers ever for a documentary's first weekend. If anyone was worrying whether or not R.J. Cutler's new film would do any business outside of big cities, it now appears that it doesn't have to.

The September Issue will expand its release on September 11.

The week's big box office winner was The Final Destination which nailed down $27 million followed by Halloween II which only bloodied up $16 million in ticket sales. Of course, it was Taking Woodstock which proved to be the true box office horror, only managing $3.5 million. Good thing Demetri Martin still has his Comedy Central show.

What's Bryan Singer Doing This Week?

Since not a week goes by without some news of a new project from the gay guy behind Superman Returns and the good X-Men movies — the last few weeks' bulletins involved big-screen remakes of Excalibur and Battlestar Galactica, as well as the possibility of an X-Men prequel — we'd might as well just make it him regular feature here.

This week's Bryan Singer news involves a new web series. While promoting the upcoming slasher flick Sorority Row, director Stewart Hendler let slip that he was working with Singer on webisodes for a futuristic sci-fi series for Warner Bros. that was described as having Lost-esque touches.

For You Twilight Gays

I have no idea what "Volturi" are, but Summit Entertainment has been nice enough to share images of them from the upcoming The Twilight Saga: New Moon movie. Enjoy!

Cameron Bright (the kid from Birth, all grown up) as Alec