TOKYO -  In recent years, Japan has fallen prey to a horrific sequence of natural disasters: first an earthquake, then a tsunami, then the nuclear reactor near-meltdown that spawned a real life Godzilla. It was only a matter of time until Hollywood would decide to take the tragic story and use it to tug at the world’s heartstrings.

Who better to formulate characters, plot and emotional tension than America’s most beloved filmmaker and Renaissance man, Michael Bay?  That’s right: sources indicate that Michael Bay is already hard at work with his latest epic, Japan: The Movie.

Early rumors suggested that this project would actually be Bay’s third installment of Bad Boys.  In it, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence would reprise their roles in the landmark Academy Award winning series, wherein they would chase drug dealing intergalactic transforming robots to Japan to stop a deal with a major Yakuza gang.  Jackie Chan had agreed to play a co-starring role.  Unfortunately, Martin Lawrence was already working on another Big Momma’s House sequel, and was unavailable.  Will Smith refused to sign on without his “artistic muse,” Lawrence, and so Bad Boys III: Black and Yellow was scrapped.

Despite these major setbacks, Sir Bay decided to continue plans for a Japanese project.  As of last week, Japan: The Movie has already completed filming and is now in post-production, despite the fact that writers have only written two pages of screenplay.  In an exclusive interview with The Northwestern Flipside, he had this to say:

“Yeah, I figured that what I want to express really transcends anything that can be written down.  I want to show the hardship that every Chinaman in Japan has to go through every day.  That’s why I mostly skipped plot and characters and pretty much jumped directly to the special effects.”

Despite claiming that his film will be full of more chaos and destruction than a Middle Eastern country during election season, the visionary director did leave some space for plot development.  He seems particularly excited about a more dramatic and sensitive scene in which Optimus Prime, in a supporting role as a single father of three struggling with radiation-induced testicular problems, declares, “REPRODUCTIVE CAPACITY IS THE RIGHT OF ALL SENTIENT BEINGS,” before blowing a nuclear reactor to dust with a plasma cannon.  Prime is already receiving Oscar buzz for his portrayal.

Winter’s Bone: 2/4 star-shaped pasties

Winter’s Bone tells the story of a teenage girl trying to find her daddy to save her house. Yeah, thats right, who’s your daddy, girl. Great start. Then some shit happens and a cop comes. This is where you expect it to start getting heavy, right? Nope! Instead of ripping off his uniform and taking her “downtown,” he just warns her that her dad needs to show up to court. 

Ok, so when’s the winter bone going to happen? 

She walks around the neighbors house and finds some fat old neighbors. Is this it? Nope, they just tell her to get off their lawn.

So now they’ve set it up all nice and good waiting for the titular bone. What comes next? She throws on two more sweaters; that’s three more than you really want her to be wearing.

Ok, so now comes the dangerous part where there’s four guys and her. They beat her around a little bit (not my style, but you know they have to appeal to everyone’s tastes) and tie her up. Then her uncle comes… and that’s where I drew the line. Bondage? OK. Incest? No way. The only type of incest I can handle is Incest-ption. That shit blew my mind, and some other organs as well.

Towards the end of this hour-and-a-half-long movie she finally starts taking some clothes off to fish some crap out of a lake. She even rolls her sleeves up, hot damn! She grabs a human hand or something… and the movie ends.

In my opinion, the filmmakers definitely focused too much on the “winter” and not enough on the “bone.” Still, should it win Best Picture? Does it have Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman making out? The answer is no.

HOLLYWOOD—Lionsgate Entertainment announced Tuesday that filmmaker Tyler Perry has plans to create a picture about African-Americans. The movie is to be released in theaters on October 23rd, but most critics are surprised that it managed to break free of the “straight-to-DVD” branding of most “stupid” movies.

“This is a huge step forward in filmmaking,” said Cornelius Jones, a Lionsgate executive. “Never before has there been a film geared mostly towards an ethnic audience about a single ethnic group. [Perry] is really stepping out of his comfort zone with this endeavor.”

Perry’s last picture grossed an astounding $40 million dollars, so the release of Madea Does Some Moderately Funny Shit may shape up to be not only a groundbreaking film, but also one that somehow actually makes a ton of money. The posthumous appearance of both Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes (making a cameo as Chef) should also boost sales. Furthermore, Oprah Winfrey endorsed the film as, “Practically as good as Roots, except without Willis from Different Strokes.” This kind of endorsement, judging by the success of A Million Little Pieces, could skyrocket Perry to super stardom.

Reportedly, UPN offered to buy the rights to a sitcom spin-off, starring one of the twins from Sister, Sister, Steve Harvey, and the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish. Says Maya Angelou, “At this rate, we could have a black President of the United States.”