New pics have been posted on the Official site for Baz Luhrman’s upcoming film, Australia. This is the director’s long-awaited follow up to 2001’s Moulin Rouge. It stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. IMDB.com has this synopsis: Continue reading →

Cut To The Chase: Don’t waste your time.

Opening tomorrow, 88 Minutes stars Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor and a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. A series of murders are being committed that match the work of a serial killer on death row whom Gramm help send to prison. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he uses his skills and training to try and narrow down the possible suspects and the connection to the murders before his time runs out. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman and Neal McDonough also star.

To say this movie is getting ripped to shreds by the critics would be an understatement. Metacritic.com, which compiles reviews from movie critics around the world, has ranked the film at #3 on their All-Time lowest review scores. Having seen the film, I must say that while it is far from being a good movie, I don’t feel it deserves to be so vilified. I can easily think of several recent films that are much worse (Thanks again, Dane Cook). Perhaps it’s because Al Pacino is considered to be such a good actor, with a list of several incredible film roles, that makes this movie seem so much worse than the movies out there that are expected to suck. For an Oscar-winning actor with such credibility, this is a remarkably weak movie. Continue reading →

Living up to his reputation as the most unfunny and annoying guy in movies today, Dane Cook has scored another romantic-comedy with a paper-thin plot. And just to make matters worse, it also stars Kate Hudson, his female equivalent. The movies is called “My Best Friend’s Girl” (formerly “Bachelor #2″) and Myspace has scored a trailer. You might be saying “Oh come on, they aren’t that bad.” But wait, you haven’t seen the trailer yet:

Following in the footsteps of the absolutely horrible “Good Luck Chuck”, Dane Cook pretty much recycles the idea and twists it a bit. Here is the description at ComingSoon.net:

My Best Friend’s Girl, opening September 19, stars Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs and Alec Baldwin. In the film, Cook plays Tank, a master at seducing – and offending – women. When guys get dumped, they hire Tank to take their ex-girlfriends out on the worst date of their lives – an experience so horrible it sends them running gratefully back to their beaus. So when Tank’s best friend, Dustin (Biggs), is dumped by his new girlfriend, Tank naturally offers to help out… and ends up meeting the challenge of a lifetime. Smart, beautiful and headstrong, Alexis (Hudson) is the first girl who knows how to call his bluff, and Tank soon finds himself torn between his loyalty to Dustin and his love for his best friend’s girl.

Part of me wants to see this just to reinforce my suspicion that Dane Cook is the devil sent to destroy us. But another part of me doesn’t think I can sit through him AND Kate Hudson. In theaters, September 19 (on DVD probably by September 20).

Disney/Pixar released a new behind-the-scenes clip of Wall-E on Movieweb.com. It’s hosted by the director, Andrew Stanton, who talks about what the movie is like and how innovative it is. Wall-E hits theaters June 27th.

We all know that There Will Be Blood was one of the best films of the 2007 season. With its eight Oscar nominations, and two wins. It could even be said that There Will Be Blood is one of the best films ever, though that will be fiercely debated by the die hard The Notebook fans, so lets just leave it as the best of 2007. The question is, can the same be said about the DVD?

The DVD (Normal Edition) comes in a cardboard package, and when the shrink wrap is taken off, it pops up, and won’t go down…no matter how hard you try (Yes, I know how that sounds). In their attempts to save money on the production of the DVD, they had the great idea of ignoring any ideas about keeping the disc slightly safe from scratches, and just throw it in. Let me explain. After you open it, there is a big picture of, I assume Daniel Day-Lewis, laying around, and the back half of the DVD case is just a slot, and the DVD is put in there. Yep. No protection from scratches…anything. I’m normally not nit-picky about this sort of thing, but that kind of defies any logic.

Whatever. After you put the movie in, you are presented with an extraordinarily stark menu, featuring three options “Scene Selection” “Setup” and “Play”. I appreciate the simplicity, no horribly animated mile long menus, but that brings up something interesting…no special features. None. No commentary, annotated script, making of…nothing. There are some people who will like that, they will appreciate the refreshing change, away from the “Making of the making of” featurettes, and the commentaries of the narcissistic actors talking about their messy makeup. But on the other end is everyone else. Throw us a bone here…maybe just some behind the set pictures…anything?

It’s worth the $16 if you’re just in it for the movie, but if you are looking for something special, you should check out the collector’s edition ($24)

Movie: 9.5 of 10

DVD Extras: 0 of 10

Amazon

(Remember, you can still enter to win the Collector’s Edition here)

A film adaptation of the 1922 short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It’s a story around an 80-year-old man (Brad Pitt) who is born aging backwards, causing complications when he falls in love with a 30 year old woman (Cate Blanchett). Fincher said, “It’s dark, it’s romantic, and it also deals with mortality in a pretty unflattering way. The guy is born in 1919 - with the film itself beginning in World War I, traveling around the world and carrying on all the way through to the year 2000.”

Okay, the story-line is a bit confusing… but it’s got my attention. I’m a fan of the director and the actors. David Fincher has worked before with Brad Pitt in Fight Club, and Cate and Brad worked together in Babel. From watching Cate’s performance in Elizabeth (1 & 2) and Brad’s performance in The Assassination of Jesse James, they are both very mature actors and definitely bring any story to life with amazing emotion and reality.

This is David Fincher’s seventh film, and has a cameo by Pitt’s daughter Shiloh. The film will be released December 19, 2008.

The Hollywood Reporter says that Milla Jovovich will star in the new Thriller from Gold Circle Films, “The 4th Kind”.

The thriller is entirely fact-based and involves an unsolved mystery in Alaska, where extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances have occured in a single town during the past 40 years and there are accusations of a federal cover-up.

Milla plays a woman investigating the disappearances in the town.

Olatunde Osunsanmi is making his directorial debut on the film, which he also wrote. Shooting begins late June.