January 2012 - Izmovies - Watch Full New Movies movies Youtube

Adam Sandler to star in "Candy Land: The Movie." Yes, this is something that's happening.

At this point, it's not even possible to come up with "joke" versions of these things - it's like there's no light left between "actual movie pitch" and "Robot Chicken sketch pitch" anymore. But yeah, Adam Sandler will star in a feature film version of the "Candy Land" board game.

The "interesting" thing, relatively speaking, is that Sandler pal Robert Smigel - late of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and "TV Funhouse - is coming along to do the script. He's a real talent... but I can't really see his general sense of humor (or Sandler's, for that matter) matching well with what Hasbro clearly will want to be a kid-friendly franchise-starter.

A Commercial For A Commercial For "The Avengers"

Yup. Marvel has released a preview of their "Avengers" Super Bowl ad, which gives us a brief glimpse of (maybe?) bad guy flying-machines (the main one is still Loki on some kind of jet-bike, though) and The Hulk:

Big Picture: "Oscars: The Grouse"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Oscars: The Grouse

Is "The FP" The Next Great Movie About Video-Games?

From Devin at BAD I learn that said BAD's partner/overlord, Drafthouse Films, has picked up distribution rights to the SXSW-buzzed oddity "The FP;" which I'd previously heard spoken of as "the next 'Six String Samurai.'" The basic pitch is a send-up the "such-and-such-familiar-game-BUT-AS-A-GLADATORIAL-BLOODSPORT!!!" genre and the late-80s/early-90s punk-rock-post-nuke aesthetic that often accompanied it, the comic hook being that the rival clans of The FP settle their issues in winner-take-all deathmatches of... "Dance Dance Revolution" (Here called "Beat Beat Revolution.")

Yup. Drafthouse has announced a limited theatrical-release on March 16th of this year. This is real. Here's a (NSFW) trailer.

Somehow Innevitable

You will be unsurprised to learn that the emerging "modernized fairytale" trend has inspired someone to reboot the Linda Hamilton/Ron Perleman "Beauty & The Beast" series as what sounds an awful lot like "Castle-but-with-a-sorta-wolfman"; but Moviehole's report on the pilot script adds an "are you kidding me!?" detail: the "new" Beast is a guy who got transformed into (more or less) a half-animal version of Captain America... by 9-11.

Yeah, I know. Ten years, Bin Laden is dead, but still... yikes.

Not The Movie We Want; But The Movie We Need

Hat-tip BAD

Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait has only directed a handful of films, but they're all pretty damn great - pitch-black yet somehow not "gratuitous" stuff that cuts straight to the bone in ways few other comedies would dare. Example: "Sleeping Dogs Lie" starts out as a movie (partially) about bestiality and winds up as possibly the most honest romantic-comedy ever concieved (it's moral: Want a healthy relationship? LIE.)

The word on his newest feature, "God Bless America," has been that it's dark stuff "even for Bobcat;" a bastard lovechild of "Super" and "Idiocracy" by way of "Falling Down" for the Fox News era. The premise? A suicidal everyman has an epiphany: Why kill himself when it's everyone else - particularly reality TV stars, cell-phone addicts, religious nuts and "American Idol" - who're the problem? What follows is either a trailer for the most incendiary movie anyone has attempted in years... or a direct-feed from the inside of MY mind at any given moment:

Holy. Shit.

Yeah. CANNOT WAIT for this one.

Escape to The Movies: "The Grey"

Go see it. Now.

"Intermission" finishes the convention-rundown.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Grey

Ferris Returns?

Yes, what is apparently just a Super Bowl commercial is considered important enough to warrant a teaser trailer. Unless, of course, they really ARE making a sequel (probably not.)

I have what you'd call a "complicated" relationship with "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." On the one hand, it's hard to ignore that it's a movie that essentially treats a narcissistic semi-sociopath - who "get's over" on anyone trying to keep him from doing whatever he wants even though he's a priviliged upper-middle-class white suburban kid who could easily do all the things he's conning his way into WITHOUT the conning part - as a kind of aspirational role-model. On the other hand... maybe it's because I TOO was a mostly-comfortable middle-class suburban smartass when I saw it and really did identify with him. Either way, it's still a fun movie.

Also, something just occured to me: If you took the original film and did some digital-trickery to all of Ferris' fourth-wall-breaking moments so that it looked like he was talking into his webcam/smartphone... it would essentially play out like an ULTRA up-to-date movie about teenagers in the youtube/facebook oversharing age. That's how cool Ferris was - he was VLOGGING HIS LIFE two whole decades before "Vlogging" was invented.

Post-Movie Podcast (Again)

This is going up a little late, but worth a listen none the less. I sat in for John Black on The Post-Movie Podcast with Steve Head, the subject being year-end top-ten lists. This is part 1 of 2. ENJOY!

Click HERE to download (free!) from iTunes.

Steven Spielberg to Part Red Sea For Warner Bros?

For the past two decades, Steven Spielberg has - quite openly - been structuring a lot of his directing schedule around the "one for me, one for them" model: frequently Interspeding his high-end "prestige" projects with projects more likely to be tentpole blockbusters (though it's not always a one-to-one ration.)

The next "for them" project (next year's Abe Lincoln biopic being the "for me") is supposed to be "Robopocalypse" - a machine-uprising-against-humanity movie based on Daniel H. Wilson's book - slated for the July 4th weekend of 2013. Now, Deadline reports that he may already be circling another major prestige-entry after that for Warner Bros: "Gods and Kings;" A big-budget biopic of Moses. Yes, that Moses. Basket in the reeds, Egypt, burning bush, ten plauges, "let my people go!," parting-seas, Ten Commandments, golden calf, the whole nine yards.

The buzzword on this one is "Braveheart-like," which means it's aiming to be a big, straight-faced, action-oriented version of the story; though there's no indication if it'll be a "realistic/historical version" or feature the explicitly-supernatural driving forces as in the original scripture. Either way, I really, REALLY hope he does this...

Obviously, the most famous version of this story in movie terms in the DeMille movie from 1956. It's fashionable to snark at this movie, and not without reason - it's garish, overblown and corny as hell - but those are precisely the reasons why it's one of my favorite "classic" movies: DeMille, for all his myriad issues, was the perfect guy to make what was essentially trying to be a "living" version of the way Exodus was depicted in Rennaissance religious-art. It's the swords-n-sandals "high fantasy" (and I mean no disrespect in either direction by "fantasy") version of The Old Testament; rippling muscles, heaving bosoms, stern declarations of honor and rage, wailing high-pitched emotional breakdowns, thundering orchestral score and God's Wrath visualized through what were then cutting-edge FX.

DeMille's movie - especially the showpiece FX scenes - are SO iconic it would probably be a fool's errand for any present-day filmmaker to try and top them (I would bet on this being a mostly-historical with "subtle" mystical elements for the most part) but if anyone can pull it off it's Spielberg. The real question is: Who plays Moses - or, rather, who wants to stand up to the innevitable comparisons to Charlton Heston giving one of the most culturally-entrenched performances of his (or anyone else's) career?

Oh, and please allow me to weigh in on the obvious Movie Geek question: YES, I absolutely think that when they build the Ark of The Covenant it should totally end up looking just like the version from "Raiders" (bonus points for "Map Room"/"Miracle of The Ark" getting repurposed as "God's Theme") thus making this an Indian Jones prequel. That would be awesome.

2012 Oscar Nominations Play it Safe, Boring.

Eh. You were expecting something else?

If it wasn't partially my JOB to cover this sort of thing, I'd prefer to declare that the entire shindig this year is rendered irrelevant by the failure to nominate Albert Brooks in "Drive" for Best Supporting Actor. The most "interesting" thing about this year is that there are NINE Best Picture nominees - they changed the rules again so that the list could be "between 5 and 10" based on total number of votes per individual film, meaning that there's some poor unfortunate movie out there that would have been the tenth nominee under last year's rules.

"The Help" simply does not belong on a Best Picture list in any year, but certainly not in a year that also included the shut-out "Drive." "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is kind of a mess, but it was a given that the first big-star "let's all have a cry about 9/11 memories" movie was going to be nominated. "The Artist" is probably going to win, and will quickly join "A Beautiful Mind," "English Patient" and "Dances With Wolves" on the future "REALLY!?" lists - though I suppose they deserve big propers for acknowledging "Tree of Life."

Full list (and comments) after the jump:

Best Picture
War Horse
The Artist
Moneyball
The Descendants
Tree of Life
Midnight in Paris
The Help
Hugo
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

BOB COMMENT: Obviously, I'd prefer to see "Tree of Life" win, but y'know what would be an even better spoiler in some ways? "Midnight in Paris" - 'Classic Woody' making a big comeback is a big deal.

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Actor
Demián Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

BOB COMMENT: This should be Oldman's to lose, but the role is likely too restrained for Oscar. Dujardin probably takes this, will be the most popular "funny foriegn guy" in American movies for about six months and then promptly be banished back home a'la Roberto Benigni.

Best Supporting Actress
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

BOB COMMENT: Respect where it's due, Melissa McCarthy is a delightful surprise here. "The Help" is obviously the more 'popular' movie, but I really doubt Chastain would've been noticed in this if she didn't have "Tree of Life" the same year.

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max von Sydow Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

BOB COMMENT: No Albert Brooks, no sale.

Best Director
Michele Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

BOB COMMENT: Y'know what? I like Hazanavicius. The "OSS" movies are hilarious, and he seems like a cool cat. But the "one of these things is NOT like the others" on this roster is staggering, and the idea that he'd be a frontrunner for something as inconsequential as "The Artist" on a list where the great Alexander Payne is the LEAST accomplished filmmaker otherwise is completely ridiculous.

Best Original Screenplay
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Annie Mumolo Kristin Wiig, Bridesmaids
J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

BOB COMMENT: Will probably be Woody, and he deserves it, but it'd be great to see Wiig win.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash, The Descendants
John Logan, Hugo
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, Ides of March
Steven Zallian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin, Moneyball
Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Foreign Film
Bullhead
Footnote
In Darkness
Monseiur Lazar
A Separation

BOB COMMENT: I'm assuming "The Artist" isn't on this list because it's technically "Foriegn LANGUAGE Film" and the only spoken dialogue in the film is in English.

Best Animated Feature
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

BOB COMMENT: My overseas readers are probably wondering how "Tintin" didn't make this list. Likely answer? A lot of "Tintin" was accomplished via motion-capture, and there's a vocal and powerful contingent of the American animation industry that sees mocap either as a threat to their livelihoods or a "low" form of the medium; and they've circled the wagons.

Best Animated Short
Dimanche/Sunday
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
La Luna
A Morning Stroll
Wild Life

Best Live Action Short
Pentecost
Raju
The Shore
Time Freak
Tuba Atlantic

Best Art Direction
The Artist
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
War Horse

Best Cinematography
The Artist
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Best Costumes
Anonymous
The Artist
Hugo
Jane Eyre
W.E.

BOB COMMENT: The lack of ANY 'genre' films outside of "Harry Potter" in the tech/art categories is baffling, until you remember that the prospects would include Captain America, Thor, XMen, etc. Bias against scifi/fantasy? Lessening. Bias against supehero-subgenre? Alive and kicking.

Best Documentary Feature
Hell and Back Again
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Libration Front
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Undefeated

Best Documentary Short
The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
God is the Bigger Elvis
Incident in New Baghdad
Saving Face
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Best Film Editing
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Moneyball

Best Makeup
Albert Nobbs
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Iron Lady

BOB COMMENT: Really? Red Skull get's nothing?

Best Original Score
The Adventures of TinTin
The Artist
Hugo
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
War Horse

BOB COMMENT: WHAT!? Okay, not to channel poor Kim Novak here or anything... but "The Artist" get's Best ORIGINAL Score?? Forget that the original part of it's score is deeply generic even as "tribute" scores go, big chunks of it are sampled from other scores. Two years ago, "The Will Be Blood" got shafted on a score nod because the composer sampled ONE riff from his OWN catalogue - how does this get a pass? Even the fucking Weinstein's shouldn't be this powerful...

Best Original Song
"Man or Muppet", The Muppets
"Real in Rio", Rio

Best Sound Editing
Drive
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse

Best Visual Effects
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Real Steel
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon

BOB COMMENT: Oh, look, some non-Potter genre movies finally make the cut in the usual place. This should go to "Apes," as consolation prize for the rank cowardice in not giving Andy Serkis an acting nod.

Big Picture: "Monster's Movie"

Kim Jong-Il - the late dictator of North Korea - once kidnapped a famous South Korean filmmaker, held him and his wife prisoner for nearly a decade and forced him to make a Communist knock-off of "Godzilla." Really. Here's a show about it.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Monster's Movie

How America's Hatred of Intelligence is KILLING It, Explained in Under 4 Minutes

Hat-tip io9

I often strain for sober-sounding methods to explain my disgust with the villifying of "intellectuals" or "elites" in American culture; or why I get as furious as I do with Climate Change deniers, Creationists, Intelligent Design proponents and all other manner of superstitious wastes of skin (see, there I go again...) rather than just ignoring them.

Fortunately, Neil deGrasse Tyson (who's supposedly going to step into Carl Sagan's shoes for Seth McFarlane's "Cosmos" revival - yes, really) helpfully explains it by means of a simple infographic that shows the United State's standing as a scientific-innovator dwindle to near-nothingness within a mere decade:

This is why I DON'T get mad when people in Asia, Europe, Japan etc. gloat about how stupid my country is now percieved to be, because it's increasingly TRUE and it has very simple, tangible sources: America, as a whole, does far too much "believing" (religiously and otherwise) and not nearly enough THINKING. We prize moral-righteousness over intellectual prowess, we hold "common sense" superior to educated analysis, we slash funding for research to meet short-term budgetary goals and expect "the market" to pick up the slack (it won't, "the market" LIKES a stupid population) and we treat people walking around in the 21st century denying cold hard proven facts like evolution, climate-change etc as having "beliefs" or "a different opinion" instead of obvious mental failings not worthy of ether discussion OR respect in a modern world.

We're having an election soon. Not ONE Republican can hope to be nominated if he doesn't swear to his constituents that he believes the proven fact of evolution to be false, and no one of EITHER party can hope to win period without reassuring a significant number of people that they believe - sincerely and without a hint of doubt or questioning - that there is an invisible man living in the sky calling the shots via a ten-item "don't" list. These are the signs of a society that is not only failing, but that deserves to be failing.

So while the fundamentalists, hardcore believers, absolutist pro-lifers, "traditionalists," creationists, homophobes, climate-deniers and all the rest MAY in fact include some otherwise perfectly nice individuals among their ranks, collectively the ignorance they espouse and the anti-progress, anti-reason political leaders, candidates and movements they support are murdering my future; and I feel wholly disinclined to continue being "tolerant" of them. Differences should be tolerated, but ignorance should be corrected - and if it cannot/will-not BE corrected it deserves only to be shunned.

REVIEW: "Underworld: Awakening"

I actually really like the "Underworld" movies, overall. The whole series has a mountain of problems following it from sequel to sequel, but the whole production is so unblinkingly, unironically wrapped-up in itself that it almost feels like conventional aesthetic criticism doesn't "matter" - like the golden age Bond movies or the "Rocky" series, it more-or-less demands to be met on it's own terms.

Helpfully, other than the first film sucking for almost a FULL HOUR before it suddenly gets interesting and engaging, the terms are pretty reasonable - for a franchise comprised chiefly of complicated-for-complication's-sake revisionist vampire fan-fiction and director/producer Len Wiseman's (largely successful) attempt to enshrine wife Kate Beckinsale as an iconic genre-film sex-goddess; the whole affair has been pretty damn watchable.

For those not up to speed on the "Underworld" lore: Vampires and Werewolves are real - except Werewolves are called "Lycans" - and the two teams don't get along (Lycans = blue-collar, Vamps = aristocrats) on account of the Lycans having once been Vampire slaves until some star-crossed-lovers stuff went down between a wolf-guy and a vamp-princess back in medieval times; and they've been fighting the equivalent of an unseen-by-humanity mob war (hence the title) for centuries. Oh, and they share a common ancestor in some guy who made himself immortal trying to cure a plague and passed the gene on to his twin sons who were bitten by a wolf and bat, respectively.

Beckinsale is Selene, a vampiress with a blackbelt in wolf-exterminating who winds up on the outskirts of the fight after she falls for Scott Speedman as a guy who's been mutated into a vampire/lycan Hybrid and learns that the monster-war backstory is actually MORE complicated than she thought - bad guys who aren't so bad, good guys who're secretly evil, the usual. To it's credit, the franchise keeps track of this information in what was initially a novel way: When "Underworld" vampires drink blood, they also absorb the bleeder's memories.

"Underworld 3" was actually a prequel, with Michael Sheen (really!) and Rhona Mitra as the lycan/vamp Romeo & Juliet analogues. "Awakening" brings back Selene and takes the story to the next logical step: At some point between Part 2 and now, human beings finally found out about vampires and werewolves being real and tried to wipe them out. After a prologue explaining this, Selene wakes up sans-Michael in science lab where we learn she's been locked up for eleven years. The movie makes a big deal out of this "lost decade" business, but it doesn't really have much resonance - part of the "conceit" of the previous films was a near-total lack of reference to where or when ANY of this was actually taking place beyond "medieval times" and "modern big-city."

So, despite the whole "it's the future now" setup, everything is pretty familiar: Selene running about in her black pleather skin-suit and duster beating up enemies, some of whom can morph into big bipedal wolf-monsters. I will say that I like that the series maintains it's creatures-eye-view conception of it's world despite the new wrinkle of actively-involved humanity - it's a trip that our ostensible heroine casually murders human canon-fodder en-route to her various goals since, hey, to her these are basically just free-range cattle, after all.

Granted, it's at last become impossible to ignore that the series really isn't "about" anything other than it's own worldbuilding (it really does have NOTHING to "say" after four films than "here's the next addition to the 'Underworld' mythos!") so at this point it's all about the novelties - this time around, the "new stuff" includes a giant-size mega-Lycan, Stephen Rea(!) as a scientist and a pair of fairly surprising plot twists.

I don't really know that I "needed" a fourth one of these, and I'm not exactly demanding a fifth one... but I can't say it's not worth a shot.

The Good Guys Win

The ESA has dropped it's support of SOPA. Holy shit.

Okay, kind of beside the point since the bill (and it's cousin PIPA) are both effectively dead, but still a pretty big deal and a HUGE moment for the video-gaming community. If nothing else, it shows that the same fervor that's often mounted in support of silly causes like Diablo III's color-scheme or "nerfing" of this or that feature CAN in fact be mobilized to effect real concrete change in the industry; and that in itself is an incredibly positive development.

In terms of business/politics/history, this whole series of events also represents a pretty massive shift in the entertainment-industry power structure - essentially, the tech/digital side of the amusement biz (video games, Google, Wiki, YouTube etc) were on the winning side of a legislative defeat while the film/TV side came out the (corporate) losers. The Internet is now "officially" more powerful than Hollywood - that's a big change, and the aftershocks will be felt for a long time.

For those who're wondering about the status of the Stand Together boycott... as of right now, I don't know. Speaking only for myself, I think that it's incumbent upon to me to acknowledge that they "listened to us" and rescind the "no E3 coverage whatsoever" blackout for my own blogs; but I don't think I'll be throwing them a party either - they never should've supported the bill in the first place. I'll clarify that further once everyone invovled in the initial boycott gets on the same page.

As to "what's next?" Tomorrow night (Saturday) at 10pm CST, I'll have a NEW episode of The Game OverThinker up for ALL audiences that - rather presciently, if I do say so myslef - has a few things to say about where anti-piracy legislation and the relationship between the entertainment industry and it's audiences in an increasingly-digitized age needs to go. I hope you'll tune in - it also features the announcement of some "tweaking" to the format of the series that I think many will find very pleasing.

Escape to the Movies: "Red Tails"

Turned out pretty good. Whaddaya know?

"Intermission" chronicles my recent convention-going.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Red Tails

Resident Evil: Retribution Trailer

At this point, I think it's fair to say that the "Resident Evil" movies are more stable as a B-movie institution than the original franchise is as a video-game institution. The new trailer for the fifth(!) go-around doesn't show off any story points (or zombies, for that matter), other than a handful of shots that seem to be set during/around the earlier sequels - is this the "fill-the-plot-holes"/continuity-porn installment? It also looks like Umbrella now has a fleet of airships... where do they keep GETTING this stuff after the end of the world?

Eh, whatever. Each film after the original has been a romp on some level, and the amount of fun the husband/wife team of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich seem to be having with this ongoing family project is always in evidence. In fact... am I the only one who thinks it's probably time for Alice to turn up in one of the games? At this point, she's as much an iconic part of the brand as Wesker is...

Media Sandwich, Once More

Here's the second part of the Media Sandwich podcast, featuring me. But really, you should be keeping an ear on this one even when I'm NOT the guest.

STAND TOGETHER - The Gaming Community vs SOPA and PIPA

Short version: In solidarity with ScrewAttack.com and other websites, I will not be attending or directly-posting any news coverage of this year's E3 unless the ESA (which runs E3) rescinds it's support for the SOPA bill. Longer version:

Please link, repost, tweet etc. this video/blog as widely as possible; and I stand with the others in asking that you encourage other gaming/web outlets to join the "boycott" of E3.

HOWEVER! please remember that regardless or what this or that person may feel about SOPA; not everyone is in a position to refuse to attend or cover E3 and should NOT be ill-treated if they opt not to join this particular movement of SOPA opposition - the last thing we need at this time is to splinter and fractionalize, so I don't want to see anyone pulling any "this or that site is still going to E3! Traitors!!!" bullshit, okay? Okay.

Big Picture: "Junk Drawer - Game On"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Junk Drawer: Game On

Mitt The Ripper

Ever since the infamous Supreme Court "Citizens United" decision, Stephen Colbert has been engaged in a piece of long-running, high-concept political theater - creating his own flagrantly-corrupt "SuperPAC" to raise money for his own not-at-all-directly-coordinated political career - to point out the absurd possibilities of the new campaign laws.

As of last week, the performance has entered a new act: Colbert will run for president in the South Carolina Republican primary, while an "unaffiliated" party - Jon Stewart - will take over Colbert SuperPAC, making it "legal" for the SuperPAC's funds to be spent on Colbert's campaign... a legal manuver that required only ONE document to be signed. The point, of course, is to point out how simple it would be for a REAL campaign to pull the same basic shennanigans.

In any case, "Colbert SuperPAC" has released it's first ad, targeted at Colbert's "opponent" Mitt Romney, that joins in the chorus continuing to slap Romeny around for the "corporations are people" line: If Mitt thinks corporations are people, argues the ad, his time as a Venture Capitalist (read: corporate raider) makes him a serial killer:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Obama Comes Out Against SOPA

Another exceptionally busy - but extremely rewarding - day down at Arisia. MANY thanks to fans who turned up to say "hi" at the Gender in Gaming, PC Gaming panels. More details, naturally, when I get settled back home on Monday night (or Tuesday morning.)

Anyway! Proving once again that the BEST kind of politician is a politician facing a "base versus base" re-election fight, the Obama Administration has come out against the SOPA bill... and was subsequently dissed for doing so by Rupert Murdoch. Like I said, Election 2012 is reliable-base versus reliable-base (neither party has a record worth running on, so the strategy on both sides will be to fight so dirty that the only people who'll show up to vote will be the pre-decided base) so big, sweeping "stuff that's popular with my likely supporters" moves are the name of the game. Score one for the good guys.

Since I know someone is already prepping the "b-b-b-but the NDAA!!!!" response, here's my take on that: It sucks, it's scary, I hate it... but I also recognize that ANY electable U.S. politician would've signed it at this point in time regardless of party. Speaking only for myself, MY calculation goes like this: Right now, the NDAA would be unlikely to survive a challenge at the Supreme Court, and will get even LESS likely to survive with each new "liberal" justice that could potentially be appointed in Obama's second term... BUT, should the Republicans re-take the Presidency, the judges they'd be likely to appoint could easily swing the Court toward UPHOLDING the NDAA.

For me, this is the ultimate "politics for grownups" realization: You don't elect presidents as "leaders," you elect them as MASCOTS - vanguards of a broad party/political-philosophy. NOTHING is more important in modern (and forseeable-future) American law than the makeup of the Supreme Court and Federal Bench, and only Presidents can appoint judges. That's why it doesn't matter what Obama (or Romney, or whoever else) "says" they believe about abortion, gay-marriage, etc - they WILL appoint Judges who'll side either with the broad-liberal or broad-conservative narrative, and THAT will decide the course of countless future laws.

George W. Bush replaced two right-wing Supremes with two more right-wing Supremes. If ANY liberal/democrat/progressive politician had been President instead, we'd have an UNSTOPPABLY-progressive, secular, pro-science, pro-reason, anti-tradition-for-tradition's-sake Supreme Court and would be living in (IMHO) a vastly better America as a result. THAT - above all else - decides who I support and how I vote. Not men. Not character. Not even speeches or promises. Judges, judges, judges.

Jackson's "West Memphis" Doc Has a Trailer

Day one at Arisia went swimmingly. Now to breakfast and trying NOT to make an ass of myself at the Gender & Gaming panel.

Anyway, here's a trailer for Peter Jackson's "West Memphis Three" doc:

There's a minor controversy surrounding this one, of course, as it's seen in some quarters as taking away from the OTHER recent doc on the same subject by the filmmakers whose earlier two pieces on the subject more-or-less turned the case into an international cause; but Jackson and company are no mere latecoming interlopers: Upon the recent release of the three men, it was revealed that they (Jackson, Fran Walsh and their partners) had been putting up a BIG chunk of the money that went into the new legal push that finally put things right.

MovieBob is NOW at Arisia 2012

Hey all!

As mentioned before, I am now checked in at ARISIA 2012 and am prepping for my first panel as we speak. Here's a quick rundown of panels/events where I'm schedule to appear (whole schedule available HERE) and any fans/viewers in attendance are welcome to say "hi!"

Friday 5:30 PM - "E.T. at 30."
Friday 7:00 PM - "The Future of Bioethics as Portrayed in Film"
Friday 8:30 PM - "Batman Through the Ages"
Friday 10:00 PM - "More Terrible SF/F Movies We Love"

Saturday 10:00 AM - "Gender and Video Games"
Saturday 1:00 PM - "Monsters in Motion: Harryhausen at Work"
Saturday 4:00 PM - "If You Liked Part 1..."
Saturday 10:00 PM - "The Death of PC Gaming May Be Greatly Exaggerated"

Sunday 1:00 PM - "Wonder Woman"
Sunday 10:00 PM - "Marvel Movies"

Monday 10:00 AM - "Star Wars at 35"
Monday 11:30 AM - "MST3K: The Panel"
Monday 1:00 PM - "The Alien as Metaphor"

Escape to the Movies: "The Iron Lady"

Review is found HERE.

"Intermission" finishes-up the anticipation game.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Iron Lady

Neanderthals

The only thing more irritating, in the 21st century, than people overly-fixated on their own historical victimhood are people overly-fixated on their own imagined historical victimhood.

"Men's Rights Activism" (MRA) has probably always existed in one form or another, but it got supercharged by The Internet because - shocker! - there's a lot of undersexed, pathologically-aggrieved men in the anyonymous realm of web forums. The "public face" of MRA is, of course, typically presented in the context of legal arguments about fathers disenfranchised by custody hearings or the ever-dreaded boogeyman of Affirmative Action; but a short amount of web-digging exposes just how sinister the movement's thriving "base" actually is - a toxic stew of half-baked evolutionary-psych jargon, beta-male sexual-frustration and right-wing backlash against "the feminization of the culture"... the white-hot rage of a middle-aged child-support dodger filtered through the sophistication of a cootie-phobic six year-old.

My colleague Jim Sterling highlights a particularly horrifying-yet-hillarious exchange currently going down on an MRA forum involving video-games. Give it a read.

Money quote, sampled from the larger rant of the MRA forum's original poster:

"I think I have the right to ask steam and other gaming companes: WTF with the subliminal brainwashing? What now when I buy or play a game women will be doing all the ass kicking? I seen some similiar patterns on the game advertisements on television and the internet recently and want to know if anyone else is seeing the pattern?

I call bullshit on this subject. Video games are the last place for guys to hang out and now women are taking over. Why not just save us the trouble and instead of eliminating our fantasy world just throw us in work camp to provide for thier bastard children (literally speaking) while they shit all over us...wait they already do that."

That last part with the "work camps" is a pretty good primer on where the "bottom" of the MRA rabbit hole is - it's an article of faith with these folks that "feminism" is actually a conspiracy of power-hungry women to trick/seduce "real man" (read: men who buy into MRA doctrine) into impregnating them and paying child support while they and their "feminized men" (read: men who have sex more often than MRA believers) go about their mission of stealing men's high-paying jobs and "taking over" the culture; with the logical extreme being some kind of matriarchal men-as-cattle dystopia.

For me, an extra dollop of hillarity is to be found in the fact that the ENTIRETY of "Men's Rights Activism" was both predicted and parodied by, of all things, "Married With Children" over a DECADE ago. What, have we already forgotten about "NO MA'AM?"

Another take was offered by my friend and editor Susan Arendt, here.

Moonrise Kingdom

The trailer for Wes Anderson's latest - in which the twee, quirky residents of a twee, quirky seaside town awkwardly pursue a twee, quirky 12 year-old couple who've run off together in advance of a coming storm - looks kind of like a cross between an NPR dramatization and a live-action/period version of "Peanuts."

Oh, calm down. I kid because I love. I'm interested to see how Anderson's signature style works with the kids-who-seem-like-adults angle rather than the adult-children routine he more-typically operates from.

Steven Spielberg Predicts The Future (In 1982)

Film geeks who haven't seen "Room 666" should definitely put it on their must-watch list. It's a documentary, shot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982, wherein filmmaker Wim Wenders asks a laundry-list of prominent filmmakers in attendance (including Jean Luc Goddard, Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog, Fassbinder, Antonioni, etc) to briefly opine of the future of movies. The responses range from hopeful to depressing to to strange (first thing out of Herzog's mouth: "I think I'll start by taking off my shoes. You can't answer a question like that with your shoes on.") but surprisingly the guy who really seems to "call it" is the (relative) youngster Spielberg.

For context, at the time of this interview "E.T." had been filmmed but not yet widely-released...

I can't decide if it's more spooky or LESS spooky that this prediction is coming to us courtesy the executive producer of "Transformers."

Big Picture: "Most Anticipated Movies of 2012"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Most Anticipated Movies of 2012

George Clooney's Next Movie Could Be Monumentally Awesome

"South Park" witticism aside, I've always thought that the "George Clooney is soooo smug!" thing is a little overstated and probably has less to do with his "attitude" and more to do with his actual accomplishments - he really is that good an actor, he really is also a damn good director, he really does have that good an eye for screenplays and he really is aging more gracefully than you probably will. Damn him.

In any case, he's setting up his next writer/director/star project; and it's one I've been waiting for: an adaptation of Robert M. Edsel's "The Monuments Men."

The so-called "Monuments Men" remain one of the great unsung stories of World War II heroism, and it's easy to see how their story appeals to Clooney's well-established aesthetic, topical and even socio-political sensibilities - it's period drama with a (potential) dash of action/adventure about the importance of preserving art and culture, whose heroes were primarily educators and intellectuals as opposed to "regular joe" men-of-action.

Officially formed in 1943 on the orders of General Eisenhower himself, the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives Program of the Allied armies were set up on the premise that restoring (and preventing further destruction of) Europe's artistic and cultural heritage during the war was a vital component of the Allied efforts. Select groups of art historians, professors and other experts were dispatched to areas of conflict (often behind enemy lines and ahead of ground-troops) with orders to help hunt down and properly catalogue/return art-treasures stolen by the Nazis AND to ensure that priceless statues and architectural works were not seriously damaged in bombing raids. It's hard to imagine such an effort being mounted today - the outcry from both the culture-hating Tea Party ("wasteful spending!! only ELITES care about art!!!") and likely also a good deal of the Left ("Save people, not paintings!!!") would be defening.

Clooney's film will apparently focus on the hunt for stolen/looted artworks in Nazi strongholds following D-Day, but I'd hope they squeeze in some of the combat-period scenarios: One of the MFAA's most dramatic successes was the re-taking of Florence - where precision-mapmaking by Monuments Men experts allowed Allied planes to bomb the Nazi occupation-forces into submission while avoiding damage to a remarkable number of priceless buildings, statues, frescos, etc. This was actually a subtle plot-point in "Inglorious Basterds" - we learn, during the Nazi propaganda movie about his actions, that Frederick Zoeller (the seemingly-sympathetic German sniper) was able to maintain his position because the American general had been ordered not to destroy the famous tower which he (Zoeller) was using as a sniper's-nest.

Tim Burton and Robert Downey Jr. Team For "Pinocchio" Reboot?

We may be nearing a truce in the epic battle between Tim Burton and Robert Downey Jr. over which of them can make the least-interesting mid-period career choices; as the two titans of the "Guys We Like Despite MOST Of What They Make" cinema are poised to team for a live-action "reimagining" of "Pinocchio."

The proposed project is currently called "Gepetto," and would be partially a prequel detailing the origin-story (sigh...) of the puppeteer and partially a side-story explaining what kind of adventures Gepetto was having in between starting his search for Pinocchio and winding up in the belly of a whale/sea-monster/whatever.

Downey would play Gepetto. No word yet on which roles will innevitably go to Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter - the easy guesses being Pinocchio (or Jimminy Cricket!) and the Blue Fairy, respectively - though I believe it's based on a "Black List" screenplay called "The Three Misfortunes of Gepetto" which, if so, gave him a love-interest named Julia Moon.

Eve if you take away the "Burton-ized fairytale" thing, this feels tired - another Tim Burton fantasy about estranged father/son relationships? Granted, this'll be the first time he's approached it from the older-party's point of view, but still...

Somebody Said My Name On a Thing

The ever-amusing Indoor Kids had the great Film Crit Hulk on their most-recent podcast, and he graciously gave me a mention at the start of some "Arkham City" discussion. Have a listen HERE.

Why Don't Republicans Want YOU To See a Movie About Killing Osama Bin Laden?

Believe it or not, it's possible for something to be so shamelessly, tranparently cynical that even I'm impressed.

Blustering bigot congressman Peter King has been leading the charge to use trumped-up accusations of Pentagon-leakage impropriety to taint the impending release of Kathryn Bigelow's tentatively-titled "Kill Bin Laden" movie (summary of charges: the filmmakers may have had access to details about the mission earlier than non-military personel were supposed to) and is now bragging about having prodded the Department of Defense to investigate the matter.

You don't need to be particularly politics-saavy to grasp what's at work here: Of all the things tangible or otherwise that the Republican Party hates, one of the most potent is the fact that the mastermind behind 9/11 got his ticket punched on Obama's watch. No impending 2012 campaign commercial strikes as much terror into their hearts as the ones that will feature Obama's circa-2008 "we will capture and kill" declaration, followed by right-wing pundits and talking heads snarking about it, followed by last year's "we got him!" press conference... and they REALLY don't want movie trailers for what amounts to "We Got Him: The Movie!" running all over the place, either. So they're flailing around madly in search of a way to discredit it.

It's particularly galling to see the wastes of humanity at Breitbart's madhouse creaming themselves over the prospect. I watched that gaggle of goons pontificate for eight years about how there weren't enough present-set heroic-military movies getting made, and now that the ULTIMATE "happy ending" War on Terror movie has the green light they HAVE to come out against it... because it MIGHT make their arch-nemesis look good.

Escape to the Movies: "The Artist"

I knew I forgot to do something today...

"Intermission" is a new version of "Quit It."

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Artist

The Oscars Have a Trailer

And now, a not-terribly-funny commercial announcing the return of Billy Crystal as host of this year's Academy Awards to anyone mercifully-detached enough from entertainment news so as to NOT already be aware that he'd been brought in to salvage the show after the originally-planned Bret Ratner/Eddie Murphy production blew up in everybody's faces - which, come to think of it, is exactly the audience Crystal's return will thrill the most, so... good call, I guess:

I know, I know, it's trite to bag on Crystal. I actually like the guy as an actor, and he IS good at the "your gracious host" schtick... at least, as good as anyone is.

Come to think of it... anyone else think maybe Crystal overshot his true calling? I mean, it felt like in the 90s he stopped doing standup and transitioned out of regular host-type gigs in a bid to become a Tom Hanks style comedy/drama leading man and it didn't really "take" outside of the first "City Slickers." I wonder if he wouldn't have been better off (to say nothing of better-suited) to getting into something like the Late Night Talk scene? Like, imagine if Billy Crystal had become the host of The Tonight Show instead of Leno? Or, better yet, if Letterman had gotten the Tonight Show like he ought to have and Crystal got the competing (and more-appropriately New York-based) Late Show instead? He would have KILLED at that!

Have One Last Funny XMas Thingee

The Nostalgia Critic (whom you should all be watching anyway - hardworking dude doing great material) got hit by some computer issues in the midst of his December shows, but has now finished airing his run of planned XMas episodes anyway with a review of one of my all-time favorite "WTF?" cult-classics: "Santa Claus: The Movie."

Give it a watch before you put the last of your lights and such away ;)

I Am On A Podcast And You Should Listen To It

I'm on the Media Sandwich podcast with Chris and Kyle today; which you should be listening to anyway but especially now:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/media-sandwich/5182-Media-Sandwich-Episode-3

Here's Where MovieBob Will Be at ARISIA 2012

Hey all!

As mentioned before, I'm scheduled to be at the Boston Area scifi convention ARISIA 2012 the weekend of January 13 - 16 at the Westin Boston Waterfront. Here's a quick rundown of panels/events (preliminary) where I'm schedule to appear (whole schedule available HERE)

Friday 5:30 PM - "E.T. at 30."
Friday 7:00 PM - "The Future of Bioethics as Portrayed in Film"
Friday 8:30 PM - "Batman Through the Ages"
Friday 10:00 PM - "More Terrible SF/F Movies We Love"

Saturday 10:00 AM - "Gender and Video Games"
Saturday 1:00 PM - "Monsters in Motion: Harryhausen at Work"
Saturday 4:00 PM - "If You Liked Part 1..."
Saturday 10:00 PM - "The Death of PC Gaming May Be Greatly Exaggerated"

Sunday 1:00 PM - "Wonder Woman"
Sunday 10:00 PM - "Marvel Movies"

Monday 10:00 AM - "Star Wars at 35"
Monday 11:30 AM - "MST3K: The Panel"
Monday 1:00 PM - "The Alien as Metaphor"

Vox To Launch Gaming Site

Big news from the world of games journalism today, as Vox Media (the folks behind The Verge) have announced the launch of a gaming news site. To start with, they've hired up a murderer's-row of established industry talent: Chris Grant (formerly of Joystiq), Justin McElroy (Joystiq), Brian Crecente (Kotaku), Russ Pitts (The Escapist), Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick, Arthur Gies and Griffin McElroy.

Russ Pitts I know personally - he's one of the people who helped pluck your's truly out of YouTube obscurity and was a key figure in shaping Escape to The Movies and The Big Picture. Just wanted to toss he and his new compatriots some extra promotion. Good luck, guys!

Big Picture: "MovieBob's 2011 Top Ten"

Sorry this didn't get up earlier. Busy week, already...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's 2011 Top Ten

Sacriledge

I'm no great fan of "Moulin Rouge," but of all the things I despised about that movie the one criticism I never quite "got" was that it had committed some kind of capitol offense by reconfiguring various pop/classic-rock anthems into cheeky Broadway-style ballads.

Well, if you DID feel violated those particular covers, it's safe to say you are not the audience for "Rock of Ages;" Adam "Hairspray" Shankman's movie version of the popular "jukebox musical" that repurposes a laundry-list of 1980s Cock Rock (re: "Hair Metal") into your basic young-lovers-with-dreams Broadway crowd-pleaser with an on-and-off "self aware" streak (our female lead's name is "Sherrie Christian," to give you an idea where this is shooting from.)

The thrust of the story involves the owners/patrons/etc of an infamous LA rock bar trying to stop an evil developer's plan to "clean up" the Sunset Strip by getting a soon-to-break-up super-band to play their farewell show at said bar; as experienced by a busboy and a waitress with dreams of rock/acting stardom of their own.

The big stunt-casting is Tom Cruise as the Axl Rose/Brett Michaels hybrid who fronts the main band; which is kind of inspired - comedy, particularly self-parody, is the only thing that seems to bring real energy out of Cruise anymore, and he's every bit the weirdly-ageless Reagan-era relic as the songs (particularly "Wanted Dead or Alive") he'll be singing.

"Upside Down" Trailer

Happy New Stuff!

Do you enjoy science-fiction movies that employ an elaborate visual-effect and/or worldbuilding-conceit to make a really, really heavy-handed societal point? Then you'll want to reserve your seat for "Upside Down," a French-produced English-language film with Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst as star-crossed lovers inhabiting a pair of alternate worlds seperated not by dimension but by gravity - his world is essentially the "floor" below her's which is the reverse-gravity "ceiling" above his. Are you wondering if "above world" is ostensibly wealthy-looking while "below world" is working-class? How'd you guess?

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