DVD Releases: November 3, 2009

Got My Eye On
Yes, I'll admit it. This week I'm most looking forward to the release of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, one of the funnest straight-up entertaining films from the past summer. Also in release is the documentary looking at the business of food with Food, Inc., the surprizingly sweet comedy I Love You Beth Cooper and the Canadian comedy 40 is the New 20.

Wildcards
Every week going through the releases I'm surprized at how many titles are completely unfamiliar. This week there are three that looked interesting and the first time I've heard of them. Not Forgotten a thriller starring Simon Baker and Paz Vega, Dark Mirror which is about a strange house and a creepy mirror (scary!) and Before the Fall / Tres días an award winning Spanish Sci Fi film about a meteor set to collide with the Earth.

Gifty Goodness
With the holidays getting closer, which I only acknowledge *after* Halloween, we start to see more and more gift like items, and this week the one that sprung off the screen was High School Musical 3 pack, which includes all three of the High School Musical films. I'm refraining from bursting into song as we speak.

Blast from the Past
The highly acclaimed Wings of Desire receives a Criterion release and several Pedro Almodóvar films are newly available including my favourite Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, along with Matador and All About My Mother.

You've Heard of 'em
Along with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, this weeks big players releases are subway train action flick The Taking of Pelhem 1, 2, 3 (although I'd be more likely to buy the original 1974 version The Taking of Pelhem One, Two, Three, which luckily enough was released on DVD back in June), romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You and the animated flick Aliens in the Attic.

Titles on Amazon.ca (Canada):


Titles on Amazon.com (US):

Reverend's Reviews: Pot Shots

The last piece of candy may be gone, but the Halloween-appropriate Gravestoned (from Painted Pictures) is hoping to cash in on DVDbeginning today.

Shot in and around a real, spooky cemetery in Texas, this independently produced horror-comedy has a little something for everyone: college cheerleaders with exotic-dancer moves and the cute guys who love them (or at least want to do them); a one-armed zombie on the prowl for his missing, rotting appendage; a hit-hungry movie producer and two young "entrepreneurs" hoping to make it in the industry via his latest film; a cute but randy Scottish terrier with a $5 million life insurance policy; and a pair of pot-smoking, perpetually-high gravediggers.

The problem with Gravestoned is that it doesn't feature enough of these various elements, any one of which has comic potential. Whether the result of poor writing, a limited budget or both, first-time director Michael McWillie takes a restrained, scatter-shot approach to what could be funnier in more experienced hands (Kevin Smith would have had a field day directing this). A wannabe mash-up of Up in Smoke and Night of the Living Dead, it doesn't feature enough cannabis or T&A, frankly, to succeed as a sexy satire nor adequate scares and ghoulish violence to please horror fans.


The film's cast, which includes Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood alumna Lar Park Lincoln in a brief turn as a bitchy washed-up movie star, is negligible. Worth noting and watching, however, is cinematographer Alan Lefebvre. His work throughout Gravestoned makes the movie appear to have had a bigger budget than it likely did, and his mist-shrouded night photography in the cemetery is excellent.

Though Gravestoned falls short in the horror and hilarity departments, it isn't awful and wasn't painful to watch, thankfully. It has no shame billing itself "the comedy horror flick for stoners." They are likely to find the movie a lot funnier than I did.

Click here to watch the Gravestoned trailer.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

Reel Thoughts: Citizen Lame

When Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx read the script for Law Abiding Citizen, it probably seemed a lot better than it plays on screen. A grieving man (Butler) survives a brutal attack and watches his wife and daughter get butchered, only to watch helplessly as the district attorney (Foxx) lets the real rapist/murderer off with a plea deal. Who wouldn’t go a little Death Wish vigilante crazy?

In F. Gary Gray’s well-made but off-the-charts preposterous thriller, Butler waits 10 years to launch the king of all revenge plots against anyone and everyone remotely connected to his case. Like most “ambitious district attorneys” Foxx gets free reign to be everywhere he shouldn’t be when the cops try to unravel what Butler’s done and where he might strike next. Meanwhile, Butler manages to be everywhere and rigs everything across Philadelphia to “blow up real good.”


The main problem (and there are many to choose from) with Kurt Wimmer’s script is the filmmakers don’t know whether Butler’s whack-job is a justified vigilante or a Hannibal Lecter psychopath. Foxx’s character is equally hard to care about, so who is there left to root for? Suffice it to say that Butler’s Clyde Shelton is not even a poor man’s Dr. Lecter, even after he eviscerates a cellmate with a T-bone. And don’t get me started on the iron-fisted Philadelphia mayor of Doubt's Viola Davis. It’s perhaps the single worst follow-up performance by an Oscar nominee since Halle Berry’s Catwoman.

If you are able to run out to the snack bar before the climax for a quick lobotomy, you may appreciate the big twist ending. Otherwise, you’ll be yelling at the screen for them to just put Clyde in with the regular prison population and put us all out of our misery. Even “that buff guy from 300” wouldn’t last five minutes with those animals. It would sure have been a better ending than the convoluted mess perpetrated by this Law Abiding Citizen.

UPDATE: Law Abiding Citizen is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

New Moon Monday: Post Halloween Pre New Moon

New Moon Re-Read Countdown
Getting hyped for New Moon? Of course you are! Re-reading the book? I bet you might be? Don't want to go at it alone? You don't have to! The great folks over at NewMoonMovie.org are having a New Moon Re-Read Countdown where they read & post a chapter a day until the release of the film on November 20, 2009. Today the chapter in question is Chapter 7 so even if you just started re-reading that isn't too far along to catch up and play along! I know I will.

New Moon 15 City Tour
Between November 6 - 19, 2009 there is a 15 city tour over the US starting in LA and ending in Times Square, New York. Cast members at the events are subject to availability and several of the events will have New Moon Soundtrack artists performing at the events. Thanks to Geeks of Doom for the heads up!

Eclipse Shooting Done & Xavier Samuel as Riley
Although I'm trying to stay focused on New Moon as it's just over 2 weeks again, it's hard to not heard, share & be excited about Eclipse new. Last week we got to see the Eclipse title card, and now that shooting for Eclipse is official done, David Slade treated the Twitter folk to an image of Xavier Samuel (The Loved Ones, September, Newcastle) as Riley in Eclipse. Looking good! I impressed that the look and feel are different than Twilight, but still fit in really well with the world.

I Want Some More: Vampathon
The Vampathon: Vampire Film Marathon continues with reviewing vampire films and last week I went double bill style with Anne Rice book adaptations of Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned. Amazing how they don't feel like the two films are related at all. If you don't feel like reading you can always watch the vlog when I talk about them along with other recent viewings including Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. Next vampire film for review is George A. Romero's Martin. I've very curious to what the king of zombies does with vamps. Review will be up Wednesday October 4, 2009.

Twilight Halloween Costume Contest
Did you dress up for Halloween? And if so, was it Twilight related? If yes why not enter the His Golden Eyes Costume Contest? And because I if you talk the talk... walk the walk. I went as Victoria. Here are some pics!

Poll Results: The Scariest Films Are...

The votes are in and Psychological films are voted the scariest with a whopping 46%. Ideas... scary! Paranormal films takes second place with a spooktacular 30%, still pretty high - although I thought this one would win hands down! Aliens are 10% scary and Creatures & Slashers film tie for 6%. Looks like no one gets scared by Gore films which bottomed out at 0%.

46% - Psychological
30% - Paranormal
10% - Aliens
6% - Creatures
6% - Slasher
0% - Gore

Thanks for voting!

MD News Desk: F is for Furry

Keep up to date with all the latest from the entertainment world with the MD News Desk:

Cinematic Crushes:
- Fuzzy-wuzzy Jake Gyllenhaal to visit Sesame Street. Other celebs stopping by this season include Christina Applegate, Matthew Fox, Hugh Jackman, Eva Longoria-Parker, Paul Rudd and Jake's sis Maggie.
- If Taylor Lautner won't take off his shirt in future movies, there's another Twilight hunk willing to fill the void: fellow New Moon werewolf Alex Meraz.
- Can James Franco save daytime TV?
- Dancing with the Stars hunk Maksim Chmerkovskiy will re-join Broadway's Burn the Floor along with another DWTS pro, the perky Kym Johnson.
- Matt Damon beefs it up as a South African rugby player in the trailer for Clint Eastwood's Invictus.


The Princess and the Frog:
- While Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen land in Disneyland ...
- Ne-Yo releases his end credit pop ballad from the movie, "Never Knew I Needed".

Awards Watch:
- Hugh Jackman doesn't want to be Oscar host two years in a row, but wouldn't mind being named the first back-to-back "Sexiest Man Alive".
- Three of this year's big Oscar bait movies — A Single Man, Nine and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire — are directed by out gay men — Tom Ford, Rob Marshall and Lee Daniels, respectively.
- GLAAD announces the winners of their first awards for GLBT-inclusive advertising.
- Could Tennessee Williams win his first Academy Award ... 27 years after his death?


Coming Soon:
- First Look: the new A-Team.
- Sequel Watch: Men in Black 3 gets a screenwriter, Charlize Theron joins Mad Max: Fury Road, and Robert Zemeckis has some good news about the long-in-the-works Roger Rabbit follow-up.
- Adam Sandler to play both Jack and Jill.
- Milk It While You Can: Twilight to return to theaters for one day only.
- Anthony Hopkins will be Odin, King of Asgard and daddy to Thor.
- Top Guns: Tony Scott to direct a biopic of Chippendales creator Steve Banerjee.

Tune in to TCM:
- The Oscar winning composer of "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe", "Moon River" and "Days of Wine and Roses" is spotlighted in the new documentary Johnny Mercer: The Dream's On Me, premiering Wednesday.
- Thursday kicks off a month long 80th birthday tribute to screen legend Grace Kelly. Every movie she ever appeared in will be screened throughout November.

From Screen to Stage:
- Cate Blanchett is Blanche DuBois in Kennedy Center's A Streetcar Named Desire.
- Recently filmed with its original cast, Shrek the Musical will be released on DVD.
- A Christmas Story, The Musical! aims for Broadway.
- Little Miss Sunshine herself, Abigail Breslin, will play Helen Keller in the upcoming Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker.
- Xanadu to hit the road in a new US tour.
- The new stage version of Robin and the 7 Hoods will have its world premiere at San Diego's Old Globe next summer.

GLBT Entertainment:
- Funny lady Liz Feldman is developing a female buddy comedy with a lesbian lead for NBC.
- That's Gay: sassy Bryan Safi on the whole "ex-gay" thing.
- Casting Notices: Yes, you too could be one of Bravo's Real Gay Housewives of San Francisco, while MTV's True Life wants you if you're an out athlete.
- 90210 unzips their lesbian storyline.
- The Advocate chats with Christine Woods on the recent coming out of her FlashForward character.

Women We Love:
- Cover Story: Chelsea Handler does Playboy.
- Casting About: Amy Adams in the dramedy Town House, Becki Newton (and her hunky hubby Chris Diamantopoulos) in Encores' Girl Crazy, Kelly Lynch on 90210 and Reese Witherspoon in the drama Rule #1.
- Angela Lansbury to be celebrated by the Drama League.
- Sharon Gless on being a lesbian in Hannah Free.
- Kathy Griffin has Balls of Steel in her new stand-up special, debuting tomorrow night on Bravo.

Glee:
- Album Notes: While the cast will promote Volume 1(out tomorrow) with in-store appearances in NYC and LA, Volume 2gets a release date: December 8. The track list includes such upcoming musical treats as "True Colors", "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" and "Don't Rain on My Parade".
- More Music News: star Matthew Morrison announces a solo disc.
- Glee gets its first award!
- Watch This: The cast, led by Amber Riley (Mercedes), sings the National Anthem at the World Series.


Out in Film:
- Cheyenne Jackson Watch: First look at him in 30 Rock, and he catches up with The Advocate.
- Director Anthony Fabian finds parallels to the gay experience in his new film Skin.
- David Marshall Grant gets a promotion at Brothers & Sisters.
- Watch These: Chaz Bono on Entertainment Tonight; a video preview of Arias With a Twist starring Joey Arias and Basil Twist.
- Housewives honcho Marc Cherry signs a Desperate deal.
- Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Doug Wright to pen a George Gershwin biopic, produced by music man Michael Feinstein.
- AKA director Duncan Roy joins Dr. Drew's Sex Rehab.
- Author Bret Easton Ellis adapts The Follower for HBO.
- Legendary director James Whale to be celebrated at NYC's Film Forum next month.

MD Poll: Party Like It's 1939

1939 is widely considered "Hollywood's Greatest Year". Therefore, in honor of the 70th anniversary of the classic films from that legendary 12-month period, we are dedicating this month's MD Polls to celebrating them.

However, instead of asking you to simply pick your favorite 1939 movie (let's face it; this is Movie Dearest and we all know what film would win that contest), we will be holding a special dual poll spotlighting the best onscreen performances of that year, with one poll covering the men, the other the women.

The ten contenders in each poll consist of the five Best Actor and the five Best Actress Oscar nominees, plus an additionally five male and female favorites that have stood the test of time. The top twenty contenders are listed in the polls located in the right hand sidebar, and remember to vote in both polls! The winners will be revealed at the end of the month.

UPDATE: This poll is now closed; click here for the results, and click here to vote in the next MD Poll.