I am totally a day late and a dollar short. I had to work early yesterday and I also wanted to finally swing by the comic book shop to pick up my comics for the past month. I really just wanted to pick up a trade from Top Shelf called Veeps, but evidently it isn’t coming out until next week.

For the second week in a row the theaters are flooded with 50,000 new releases, all of the potentially crappy. That being said, I am still interested in seeing Clint Eastwood’s latest effort Changeling, even though his last film was so awful it almost put me off his movies for good.

DVD releases are even tougher as they are limited AND crappy. I don’t care what buzz you heard about Transsiberian, it is truly terrible. Avoid it like the plague. Thus my DVD recommendation is for When Did You Last See Your Father, a film that I heard was good, but looks far too sappy for me to ever watch it for fear of crying like a 32 year old me tends to cry, in bunches.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

This is going to be a quick post as my router has been incredibly passive aggressive with me all day, cutting in and out whenever it is most inconvenient, causing me to lose the hundreds, nay, thousands of hours of work I did this morning. And now as we speak the network has completely vanished, leaving me to run off the overloaded connection being dispersed by the local library.

So yes, even though it is evidently Liv Tyler week (The Incredible Hulk, The Strangers) when it comes to new DVD releases, I am going with something completely different. Primarily because The Strangers was stupid and The Incredible Hulk looks stupid. So, in honor of on screen stupidity I am picking a Paul Walker flick, The Lazarus Project. Surely it can’t be any dumber then the previous films mentioned.

As for theatrical releases, even though W is being released and Rachel Getting Married is garnering some rather surprising critical acclaim, my selection this week is The Pool. From director Chris Smith, best know for the amazing documentary American Movie, comes his first fiction film about a poor boy living in India who becomes obsessed with a swimming pool in one of the richest neighborhoods in his city.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

Forgive me if my mind is somewhere else today. It is difficult to select new releases to recommend when I have recently received word that Bruce Campbell, The Chin himself, will be coming to the Twin Cities for the opening of My Name is Bruce. Which means I will get to meet him. This, along with meeting the Coen Brothers a few weeks ago, really makes me so much cooler then any of you. In my mind.

Anyways, it is slim pickings once again for DVD releases on Tuesday. I’m tempted to pick The Happening, which I actually did enjoy, but decided I’d pick a film I wanted to see but only had a split-second release in theaters. That movie being Boy A.

For theatrical releases it seems as if somewhere close to two dozen films are being released this weekend. While Flash of Genius, Appaloosa, Religulous and A Girl Cut in Two all look interesting enough for me to watch at some point, this week I am recommending a movie that I have already seen, enjoyed quite a bit and am quite confident most people will not like at all because nothing really happens in it. This movie is better known as Blindness.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

I’m running a bit behind today so I am going to have to keep this relatively short. In semi non-related news I finally broke down and bought an Eee this week, and it should arrive sometime next week. I’ve been eyeing one for sometime so I can actually get some work done while I am on the road visiting family, and it should allow me to not have to sit in my cramped room all the time when I type things up.

As for new releases this week the easy choice for theaters is the new adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Houston and a slew of other people you will recognize but not know their names. I had the chance to see it several months ago at the Mpls/St Paul International Film Festival and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Hopefully you will too.

But the film I am most excited for this week is getting released on DVD this upcoming Tuesday, and that is Bigger Stronger Faster*. It is a documentary on the steroid culture in the United States and it is outstanding. It is one of a slew of excellent documentaries being released this year, which is looking to be yet another banner year for the genre. Do yourself a favor and watch the movie.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

I am suffering through yet another weak of tepid interest in theatrical new releases. Sure last week had Burn After Reading, but as it stands now it seems that right now their simply isn’t much worth getting excited about in theaters. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be another week or two before the big guns start getting rolled out for Oscar season. As for this week, Battle in Seattle at least looks possibly interesting, though I would be far more interested if it was a documentary on the subject of the 1999 WTO protests rather then a reenactment filled with Hollywood stars. But at least it isn’t a Dane Cook movie.

As for DVD releases, their is a clear winner in this department. It is a movie that I enjoyed quite a bit when I watched it in the theater, but have been eagerly awaiting the inevitable release due to its infinite quotability. This movie drips trendils of awesome wherever it goes. Chuck Norris kneels before this movie. This movie, is The Foot Fist Way. Meditate on that.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

Easy week for recommendations, as there is a plainly obvious one for both new theatrical releases and DVD releases, despite both actually offering up some decent content after several weeks of crapitude.

My DVD pick for next Tuesday is The Rape of Europa, a documentary on World War II that is quite unlike any other documentary on World War II. It focuses on the priceless artworks and artifacts that the Nazi’s stole during the course of WWII and how the Allied powers attempted to reclaim them. It also offers an interesting perspective on how the Allied forces attempted to fight battles in cities that were literally priceless works of art themselves. It is a fascinating documentary, and well worth watching even for those who hate “war films”.

My recommendation for theatrical releases today is also an easy pick, the Coen brothers newest comedic offering, Burn After Reading. I had the pleasure of seeing a screening of it last week and I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. It is a fairly dark comedy, and word of warning it has several moments of graphic violence, and it fits in perfectly well with the Coen’s other comedy films. It’s not quite The Big Lebowski, but it isn’t far off either.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)