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!

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First off, I’d like to apologize for getting so literary with this column. I always assume Matt breaks down in tears whenever sees one of my posts. I do have reviews of Federico Fellini’s La Strada, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (which might just have one of the greatest and most compact scripts in cinema history) in line; however, they are not finished. I also want to talk about the amazing pop cultural pastiche that is The Venture Bros. sometime down the road as well. I was in the process of working on a two part piece about liberature (no, I spelled it right) and how video games can provide hints to literature’s ability to remain valid in the 21^st century, when I decided it would be best to do something a little more…light. Don’t worry though, the literary torture will resume next week.

In the meantime, since I’ve been living in Poland for five years this month, I thought it might be fun to make some general observations about Polish pop culture from an American’s perspective. (more…)

Quick and easy entry this week as my choices are pretty close to universally awful. The obvious film to see this weekend is American Teen. This is an outstanding documentary on a group of Indiana High School seniors living out their last year of High School. It is a great little film that truly deserves a huge following. But being an Indie documentary it is probably bound to live in obscurity.

The other interesting film to watch is Midnight Meat Train, if you can find it. Suffering through multiple release delays and a change in directors (controversial Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura is now in charge) the film was slated for a direct-to-dvd release but is now getting some rather odd treatment by Lionsgate. They have now chosen to have a very small release for the film, 100 screens nationwide, and all of them will be on the secondary market. Meaning you will have to find your local dollar theater and hope they have it, because the odds of the film lasting more then a week are incredibly slim. Is the movie any good? Who knows? But the studio seems terrified of it so that has to account for something, right?

As for DVD releases, The Counterfeiters, the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film finally gets a release. While not the best foreign film of last year, it is still a very good movie that is easily worth a rental. Which is more then I can say for Nim’s Island.

As always trailers are after the break! (more…)