Before the encore presentation of J.J. Abrams’ kick ass new show “Fringe” on Fox last night, an extended 7-minute preview for the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still aired. Now I do want to say this before you get to carried away with watching it below. Keanu Reeves is a horrid actor. He is a one facet actor and every role he plays, he plays the same way. With that out of the way, the earth will not stand still for this horrible looking movie.

Check out the trailer below and let me know if you think Keanu is acting any different than in an other of his movies. I would go as far as saying he and Brenden Fraser are up for the worst actors of our time.

The Day the Earth Stood Still will open on December 12th of this year.

“Cloverfield”, the high-profile monster movie produced by Master of Mystery J.J. Abrahms, has been on DVD for a few months now.  And if you were one of the many who caught the film in theaters back at the beginning of the year, then more likely it’s already in your DVD library.  However, for those of you who haven’t caught it on home video yet, then here’s the rundown on how the film itself looks on the small screen and how good the extras are.

The film takes place over the course of one terrifying night, when Manhattan is abruptly attacked by an enormous creature that looks like a cross between a praying mantis and a spider.  We follow a group of twenty-somethings who happened to be throwing a “Going Away” party for their best friend Rob as they embark upon a rescue mission to save Rob’s true love, Beth.  Of course, everybody knows that the movie was filmed in a unique way, namely from the perspective of the viewfinder of an extremely jiggly video camera, one being manned by Hud.  It’s obvious that this idea was inspired by “The Blair Witch Project”, which was another revolutionary thriller during its time because it too employed the use of of the shaky cam.

There were many complaints from people who saw “Cloverfield” during its theatrical run about how the film’s constant camera movements caused uneasiness where their stomachs were concerned, but I personally didn’t have that problem, so I can’t really say if watching the movie on a regular T.V. screen makes a difference where that issue is concerned.  “Cloverfield” is presented in its original theatrical exhibition of the 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, and the transfer is pretty well-handled.  However, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a guy who pays attention to the sharpness of a movie’s digital transfer, so suffice it to say that for the most part the picture looks good.

The extras on the disc include a feature commentary by director Matt Reeves, deleted scenes and alternate endings, multiple “making of” featurettes, and looks into how the film’s visual effects were done.  The deleted scenes aren’t really that special; just extra fluff that easily leant itself to editing.  The two alternate endings aren’t any better, as they just include the same ending in terms of what happens to the characters, but here the very last scene before the credits is changed.  However, the making of features are particularly interesting, as they show exactly how the monster was conceived and constructed, in addition to how the movie itself was filmed.  Believe it or not, the filmmakers actually let the actor portraying Hud hold the camera as they filmed everything.  Also included is a link to a website called www.cloverfieldfiles.com, which contains some extra secrets about the film.

All in all, I’d say the “Cloverfield” DVD is definitely worth buying for those who liked the movie.  It’s certainly interesting to see how such a unique monster movie was pieced together, and the glimpse of all the behind-the-scenes magic makes you appreciate just how creative this chilling film really is.

Movie Rating: 3.5 stars

DVD Rating: 3 stars

No movie in recent years has poked fun at, mocked and downright dragged the good name of Hollywood through the mud, laughing all the way quite like “Tropic Thunder”.  In a time when theaters are overpopulated by comedies that somehow have Judd Apatow’s name attached to them, “Tropic Thunder” is Apatow-free, but it still retains that gleeful sense of vulgarity that audiences seem to now love so much.  Not only does “Tropic Thunder” work with that vulgarity, it soars with it, easily making this the funniest movie I’ve seen so far this year.

In this laugh-a-second action comedy directed by its star, Ben Stiller, the very idea of Hollywood is taken for a ride.  “Tropic Thunder” also happens to be the title of a war movie being shot in the film, its cast a hodgepodge of movie stars.  There’s the action guy, Tugg Speedman (Stiller), the star of countless special effects-driven films that have gradually lost steam and the star of “Simple Jack”, a box-office dud centered around a retarded farmer.  Next is Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comedian famous only for his film flatulence but yearns for more respect for his name.  Then comes the five-time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an intense method actor who undergoes a controversial skin pigment alteration procedure in order to play the film’s main black character.  This really ticks off the cast’s real black actor, a rapper who goes by Alpa Chino (say that name out loud).  Anyway, the fed-up director (Steve Coogan) gets the idea from  the writer of the film’s source material (Nick Nolte) to take his actors out into the real “battle zone”, a jungle rigged with hidden cameras and shoot the entire film “guerrilla style”.  The only problem?  Well, the actors are mistaken for D.E.A. operatives and get caught up in a war against Korean drug runners, with good humor all the way.

Well, the real gem of “Tropic Thunder” is Robert Downey Jr., who shines as Kirk Lazarus.  In the hands of any other actor, I think the role could have easily gone off the rails as a result of stereotyping, but thankfully, Downey Jr leaves stereotypes of any kind at the door.  He’s black, but in a tasteful manner as he spews profanity, talks about collard greens and takes offense when Speedman says “you people”.  Downey Jr never overplays it, and his many arguments with Alpa Chino and the other cast members are sure to have everybody in the audience gasping for breath while laughing hard; the audience I saw the film with certainly behaved that way.  Downey Jr has always been one of my personal favorites, despite his personal problems, and I’m happy to see him back on his game.  He’s on a roll this year with “Iron Man” and now this.

However, that’s not to say that everybody else is just mediocre, because they’re not.  “Tropic Thunder” has a lot of funny performances, in addition to great cameos which are really supporting roles.  Matthew McConaughey has a good one as Tugg Speedman’s spaced-out agent, whose primary concern seems to be getting his star a Tivo.  And the other one that I just have to talk about is Tom Cruise as a vulgar, mean-spirited studio executive with no hair and quite a bit of paunch.  Cruise gets great laughs, both from his profane demeanor and his weirdly funny dance moves.  And suffice it to say that this role is one of the highlights of Cruise’s career.

Stiller both acts and directs perfectly for this material, as he amazingly makes us forget that he helmed the god-awful “Zoolander” back in 2001.  Stiller is clearly mocking Hollywood as best he can, and having fun with it.  The way the actors, agents and studio executives are portrayed in this movie will have film buffs such as myself cracking up continuously.  The film opens with clever fake trailers that introduce each actor to us, and they are hilarious.  Ben Stiller really does have a sense of what notes to hit for this movie, and it all winds up being a comedy experience for those interested in the film.

So, would I see “Tropic Thunder” again?  Definitely, because even though you can pretty much catch every joke about the movie industry the first time through, I think there’s still some subtlety underneath the surface of these jokes that cannot be picked up in the first viewing.  What Stiller has done is essentially created a biting commentary on Hollywood itself, one that always has something funny and interesting to say about how the studios operate and how actors can be taken as something they don’t want to be.  But the trick is that Stiller, who also co-wrote the screenplay, does so in a very fast-paced manner, hitting us with jokes left and right as he makes his point.

In the end, I would gladly take “Tropic Thunder” over other crude comedies like “Knocked Up”.  The movie is a laugh-riot with a LOT of F-bombs and other four-letter words, but that works here…somehow.  I know, crudeness and profanity actually working for me is something that rarely happens.  But I guess you could say “Tropic Thunder” is that rare type of comedy that I can say with all confidence that I loved.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Let me clear the air by saying that I was unwillingly dragged to see “Mamma Mia!”, the latest Hollywood interpretation of a stage musical.

Clearly, I’m not the type of person the people behind the film adaptation of “Mamma Mia!” were trying to please.  People like me, who are generally against musicals can and should find a better way to spend their time at the movies and leave the people who are actually interested in this film to see it.  However, I truly feel bad for anybody dragged to this incessantly corny and nearly insufferable movie musical that is so bad, even the presence of Meryl Streep can’t save it.

So, if I normally resist big, lavish movie musicals such as this, am I really the right person to review “Mamma Mia!”?  Well, I’d say no, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.  I’m not reviewing this movie for the fans of the musical, because I know that they’ll be pleased with what they get; I’m reviewing it for everyone else.  Now, that’s not to say that I automatically give every single musical I see a negative review.  I really enjoyed 2005′s “The Producers” as well as “Chicago” from 2002, and last year’s “Sweeney Todd” was my pick for the second-best film of 2007.  What ultimately made me not like “Mamma Mia!”, I guess you could say, was the simple fact that the film seriously missed every single mark it was trying to hit.  This movie is meant to be a fun, breezy hour and forty-eight minutes at the theater, but I thought there wasn’t any fun to be had and due to its dragged-out songs, there was nothing breezy about it.  Whereas “Sweeney Todd” played like a smooth flowing and hauntingly beautiful opera, and rather successfully at that, “Mamma Mia!” instead plays out like karaoke night in Greece.

Well, let’s face it.  Musicals aren’t meant to have elaborate or intricately crafted plots and that’s the case here (which invites another comparison to “Sweeney Todd” that I’ll make later).  The plot for “Mamma Mia!” is paper-thin and it always comes to a complete halt whenever the next musical number starts up.  So, the light and bright Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married to stud muffin Sky (Dominic Cooper), who incidentally has cloudy eyes.  Sophia’s one wish, though, is to have her father attend her wedding and give her away to her McDreamy.  The only problem is that her catamite of a mother named Donna (Meryl Streep) slept with three different men around the time Sophia would have been conceived.  That means that there are three possible candidates for the title of ‘Dear Old Dad’: Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth).  And yet another problem is that Donna doesn’t want any of them at the wedding.  But as we all know, they’ll inevitably stay and that will cause serious romantic decisions to be made in one weekend that would normally take more than a weekend to decide to be made in, well, one weekend.

The plot’s only true purpose is to act as an engine to get us from one musical to the next, and that’s one of the biggest problems I’ve always had with musicals.  I can understand the necessity for an uncomplicated plot, but still, why can’t the writers at least try to bring more to the storyline so that the movie doesn’t feel like it can simply end at any given moment if one of the three men just came up and revealed that they are the father of Sophie?  Plus, I think it’s safe to say that you can pretty much guess who the father is by the way the camera lingers on each individual bachelor.  Now, I will admit that “Sweeney Todd”  does have a similarly thin plot, but the difference there is that the songs of that movie essentially were part of the plot.  It avoided that choppy style because the songs actually moved everything forward.  Here, the songs seem to be there just for the heck of it and while they may be mildly enjoyable, the choreography that accompanies them just makes everything feel like an overdone production of Riverdance.  And I’ll say this: if I had to sit through one more musical number where men and/or teenage boys tried to imitate professional dancers on a pier, I’d have been ready to throw my bag of popcorn at the screen.

For a musical meant to have purposefully bland performances made even more bland by professional actors such as Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, then there’s something wrong in the acting department.  Meryl Streep has always been a terrific actress, but she’s given virtually nothing to work with here.  Oh, she can sing just fine and is definitely capable of holding her own whenever she bursts  into song, but it’s the in-between stuff that had me scratching my head in wonderment, trying to discern how Streep couldn’t be up to her own standards.  Also, her two shallow, giggly girlfriends portrayed by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are the character equivalents of nails on a chalkboard.  And the serious overacting of Amanda Seyfried as Sophie doesn’t help much, either.

I think the best thing about “Mamma Mia!”, though, is the scenery of Greece.  Every outside scene carries vibrant sunshine, aqua-blue ocean and lime-green trees that at least give the movie points for eye candy.  And if I had to say something good about the cast, it would be that Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard do pretty decent work and are the most interesting to watch.

However, when a musical is iffy on the music and very noticeably at that in addition to being a challenge to sit through, then something went wrong somewhere.  I think it’s safe to say that the people who want to see “Mamma Mia!” will probably end up liking it, but me personally, I prefer my musicals to lay off the annoying choreography and make the songs pieces of the plot, rather than roadblocks to it.

Rating: ★½☆☆☆ 

Well this is some news that I am pretty darned excited about. I loved Iron Man and cannot wait for my Blu-Ray system to blow my mind once again. Below are the details about the Blu-Ray disc and the standard(crappy) version of the DVD.

The IRON MAN Ultimate Edition two-DVD set is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, French 5.1 Surround and Spanish 5.1 Surround with English, French and Spanish subtitles. Total runtime is 125 minutes. Bonus features include

Disc 1:

* Feature film
* Deleted/Extended Scenes

Disc 2:

* I Am Iron Man
o The Journey Begin
o The Suit that makes the Iron Man
o The Walk of Destruction
o Grounded In Reality
o Beneath the Armor
o It’s All in the Details
o A Good Story, Well Told
* The Invincible Iron Man
o Origins

o Friends & Foes
o The Definitive Iron Man
o Demon in a Bottle
o Extremis and Beyond
o Ultimate Iron Man
* Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man
* Robert Downey Jr. Screen Test
* The Actor’s Process (scene rehearsal with cast)
* The Onion “Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer to be Adapted into Full Length Film”
* Image Galleries

Soaring Hi-Def Features on Blu-ray: One of the most anticipated releases of the year, the IRON MAN Blu-ray presentation offers even more exclusive content for an incredible entertainment experience including a “Hall of Armor” that allows fans to enter the Stark database to zoom in on any of the three Iron Man suits – or Iron Monger. They can then activate the digital 3-D schematics to check out every weapon and the full high-definition renders let users fly around each suit to explore each of the armors in comprehensive detail.

The “Iron Man IQ” is a user-friendly web application that lets users create and share new multiple choice quizzes based on clips from the film. Fans can also download other users’ challenges via BD-Live.

The IRON MAN Ultimate Edition two-disc Blu-ray is presented in 1080p High Definition with English 5.1 Dolby True HD, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. Bonus features include:

Disc 1:

* Hall of Armor
* The Invincible Iron Man (HD)
o Origins
o Friends & Foes
o The Definitive Iron Man
o Demon in a Bottle
o Extremis and Beyond
o Ultimate Iron Man
* Deleted/Extended Scenes (HD)
* BD Live:
* Iron Man IQ

Disc 2:

* I Am Iron Man (HD)
o The Journey Begins
o The Suit that makes the Iron Man
o The Walk of Destruction
o Grounded In Reality
o Beneath the Armor
o It’s All in the Details
o A Good Story, Well Told
* Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man (HD)
* Robert Downey Jr. Screen Test (HD)
* The Actor’s Process (scene rehearsal with cast) (HD)
* The Onion “Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer to be Adapted into Full Length Film” (HD)
* Theatrical Trailers (HD)
* Image Galleries

Single-disc DVD: The IRON MAN single-disc DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, French 5.1 Surround and Spanish 5.1 Surround with English, French and Spanish subtitles. Bonus features include the deleted and extended scenes.

Which one will you purchase? I for one will only get the Blu-Ray!!

How long is too long for a sequel? Really, how long do you think is too long for a sequel before it becomes something it shouldn’t be? 5 years? 10years? 15 years? 20 years or more?

Let me start off with the definition of what a Sequel truly is:

A sequel is a work of fiction in literature, film, and other creative media, that is produced after a completed work, and set in the same “universe”, usually following the events of the original. It continues elements of the original story, often with the same characters and settings. A sequel is similar to a series, in which the same character appears in a number of stories, although the distinction is arbitrary, and some media franchises have enough sequels to effectively become a series, whether originally planned as such or not.

In the last couple of months we have seen a few sequels to well known films pop up. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Lost Boys 2, are just a few of the films being brought back from the dead. Lost Boys 2 is coming to a theater almost 20 years after its first debut. “Indiana Jones” is strapping on his hat one more time after a vacation of 19 years. And how can we not forget about “Terminator” making a come back in 2003 after a hiatus of over 12 years. These are just some of the sequels that make me wonder why?

Stallone has become the king of sequels with 2 films bringing in over 7 sequels all while creating two of the most likeable characters on film in Rocky and John Rambo. We can’t forget Rocky and his latest try for a belt almost 30 years after we first saw him in the ring in 1976.

Should “Rambo” stop killing hundreds of people in a few minutes time? Should “Rocky” stop getting punched so much? It looks like Rambo is coming back around for number 5!!

In my opinion yes! And a resounding “yes!” at that. After Rocky 4 it went downhill. Rambo should of been left alone after the second film.I hate to see a film made just to bring someone back from the “dead” for the sake of money. I know that is what the Studio’s do day in and day out but come on folks!

For all of you “Star Wars” fans out there… dare I say how bad the last three films were? The first three films recently given to us by Mr Lucas in my eyes ruined the franchise. The filming, acting, special effects etc all ruined the original experience after all of those years of loving something for what it was. The gap in between was too big and too long ago for it to be a success.

With actors such as Arnold, Harrison, Bruce (can’t forget the Die Hard series) and Sylvester growing older every second, is this a ploy to bring us the best in entertainment or just to make some extra cash on a name for the big studios?

Pros:

• Name: The name could bring back an audience.
• Story: If the writing was done well and the movie was a hit, why not try and bring back us more.

I think overall a sequel is a sure thing if done correctly with the same people involved as the 1st.

Cons:

• Sequels always have the possibility of going wrong. An actor doesn’t sign back on, the directing and or writing crew is no longer interested or time constraints wont allow for it.
• Lapse in audience. The audience may of outgrown their love or interest of the film or lost touch with it over time.

So when is enough, really enough? After 5 years? After 10 years? I understand there will always be the exception to the rule such as the production schedule or special effects etc, but when has enough time passed when we consider a film “dead” in the best sense of the word?

I know I have forgotten many classic sequels, horror sequels, films that should have not been made in the 1st place, but I have captured some of the characters in my mind that actually have places in the hearts of most movie addicts.
Questions to you, the readers:

What is the ultimate motive of folks involved with a sequel? Do we need a sequel after 30 years? Am I a horrible movie fan?

What are your thoughts? I would love to hear them!