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!

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I committed a bit of a faux pas recently, I bragged on an Internet message board at how punctual I have been with my reviews. While I’ve had a few complications in finding the movies I want to review, I’ve been pretty good at getting the film watched before the weekend ends, thus giving me a day or so to write my flowery prose. Then Netflix went and shipped me a copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright, rather then Michele Soavi’s StageFright.

This, as you probably assume, this caused a bit of a dilemma. First off, what the hell do I do for a movie review? Do I pick something different? Or should I just review the film they sent me? But more importantly, how do I write an intro for this?

You see I wanted to write about how I dragged a small group of people to a beer tasting out in St. Louis Park that was taking place at a new specialty beer store that was opening called The Four Firkins. The store was devoted entirely to imported beers and domestic specialty brews. They were having their Grand Opening on Saturday, and to celebrate several local breweries were giving out free samples for people to try. And while Summit is probably the best known of the breweries that were present, I was going because Surly was giving out samples.

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After last week’s hijacking of the column in favor of hanging out with some old friends I knew this week I could have no excuse for not writing a review on Vampyr. Sure the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival opened this week but that wouldn’t get in my way. Yes, the multiplexes actually had a small handful of potentially decent movies for me to watch but that couldn’t possibly get in my way. And sure, I had a screening of the uncut version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly that I simply had to go to and Manda Bala burning up my Netflix queue but those were mere distractions while I prepared myself for Vampyr. Awesome distractions to be sure but they shouldn’t do anything more then slow me down. Then Ben Folds had to go and muck up my whole plans.

You see my girlfriend bought tickets to go see Ben Folds in concert this past Saturday night but somewhere along the way both of us, along with a friend of ours, somehow mistook the concert venue of St. Peter, Minnesota for St. Paul, Minnesota. We didn’t really think much of it at first, but once we MapQuested it we saw the error of our ways. See St. Peter, Minnesota was over an hour south of the Twin Cities. Needless to say this had a rather large effect on our plans.

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