The FilmJabber Movie Blog

I hate to say it, but the new Step Brothers movie trailer is not that funny. The movie stars one of my favorite all-time actors, John C. Reilly… oh, and Will Ferrell… and is about two grown men who become step brothers when their parents get married. The catch: they’re both losers, so they both live at home, which means they have to share a room. Essentially, it’s like Billy Madison only with two of them.

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If you’re any kind of comic book fan, you’ve already checked out the spanking new movie trailer for the upcoming Iron Man movie. All I can say is: this looks good, but not that good.

Once again, the teaser trailer rocked; the movie trailer just underwhelms a little bit. The teaser trailer was very serious and action-oriented, whereas the Iron Man movie trailer has a lot more humor and silly stuff. Not exactly the kind of things I like to see.

That being said, the comedy in Iron Man is pretty funny. Tony Stark’s suit fails on him mid-flight, and he goes crashing through a roof and into an expensive car. Gwenyth Paltrow walks in on him getting the suit assembled, but she’s seen him in “more awkward situations.” Funny, but funny doesn’t bring me to these kinds of movies.

With a full movie trailer, I want to see a little bit of plot and a lot of action, and the Iron Man movie trailer lacks that to some extent. Only a smidgen more of the plot is revealed than was in the teaser trailer, and the teaser trailer actually sets up the attack sequence in the beginning much better. The trailer focuses heavily on Stark making and putting together his suit, which, in my opinion, is a bad move. It’s this kind of thing that stretches the bounds of reality, and fans on the fence might be turned off by that kind of thing. For me, personally, I don’t care how the suit is made or how Stark puts it on – I want to see him use it.

I’m sure another Iron Man movie trailer will come along soon enough, especially since this one’s a bit underwhelming. I still have high hopes, but the trailer is just a bit poorly constructed in a few places.

Has anyone watched the new movie trailer for The Love Guru, the Mike Myers/Jessica Alba movie? It is absolutely dreadful. The only funny part in the whole preview is Justin Timberlake’s cameo as he walks around in an overly tight Speedo, but even that’s barely funny.

The Love Guru stars Myers as a “guru” from India, apparently, who travels to the U.S. to get a Maple Leafs hockey player back together with his girlfriend before the Stanley Cup. Jessica Alba gets involved somehow, but the trailer never explains her purpose other than to look hot. Regardless, this movie looks dreadful beyond belief. Myers isn’t even remotely funny, his character sounds like a poor amalgam of his more popular characters (surprise, surprise) and there isn’t a joke to be seen for the whole two minutes.

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The full movie trailer for the new Get Smart movie came out today, and while it still looks pretty funny, it doesn’t look nearly as funny as the Get Smart teaser trailer made it out to be.

The teaser trailer showed only a couple key scenes, but they were well constructed and perfectly timed. The phone booth scene is priceless and set the stage for the rest of the preview, but that scene is suspiciously missing from this full movie trailer.

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Continuing to prove that there is no God, The Weinstein Co. has announced that they will be distributing a sequel to the animated film Hoodwinked!, failing to realize a lack of demand for low-budget, Shrek rip-offs that are about as entertaining as a sack of potatoes that have been left rotting, petrified, then turned to dust over a million years.

Hoodwinked 2: Hood vs. Evil is the lame title of this sure-to-be lame movie, a clear indication from the beginning that one, especially parents with small children, should avoid this film at all costs and probably restrict your children to only watching late night, adult programming television to lessen the risk of them ever seeing a preview full of bad special effects and pathetic humor and potentially wanting – or even begging! – you to go see it.

I gave the first Hoodwinked! movie a pleasant D+ (read my Hoodwinked movie review) for a variety of reasons, as seen in such comments from my review as “Hoodwinked sucks butt” and “Unfortunately, it pales in comparison [to Shrek] in every possible way”. Let’s not forget these equally Shakespearean quotes: “The graphics in Hoodwinked are terrible” and “The movie isn’t funny.”

Sadly, this is what we get when a studio spends $15 million on a film and they get $50 million back in ticket receipts.

OK, I know the blog title doesn’t make any sense, but I’m tired so leave me alone! Paul Dano, according to The Hollywood Reporter, will star in and executive produce Gigantic, a movie which is describes as “an offbeat romantic comedy being helmed by first-time director Matt Aselton.”

Dano, who is best known for his popular roles in Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood (both Oscar nominees for Best Picture), will co-star with Zooey Deschanel. Paul Dano will play a mattress salesman and Deschanel a young woman he meets at the store. The screenplay is written by Aselton and Adam Nagata.

If you haven’t seen this video clip from The Moment of Truth, you have to watch it now. I’d never watched the show before and don’t plan to watch it in the future, but while driving to work today, I heard Jackie and Bender talking about it on KISS. So, first thing I did when I got to work was to look this puppy up on YouTube, and I must say it is one of the most painful things you’ll ever watch.

Basically, it’s about this young woman who’s in the hot seat, who gets confronted by her ex-boyfriend with the question: “If I were to ask you to get back together with me, would you leave your husband?” Her husband is sitting on stage at the time. That question is followed up by EVEN MORE PAINFUL questions.

Needless to say, The Moment of Truth certainly caught my attention. It’s sad that I find this entertaining, but she had to know what she was getting herself into:

If you missed it, watch this funny video of Gary Busey kissing Jennifer Garner on the neck and “making her nervous” on the red carpet at the Oscars. Busey continues to play into his stereotype that he’s a bit off his rocker – Laura Linney actually pulls Garner away like friends do at a bar when a sleazy guy is hitting on them. Of course, see for yourself:

The Oscars are over, and it was a pretty good show. No Country for Old Men was the clear victor, taking Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Motion Picture. I would have liked to see things spread around a bit more as the competition was fierce (and, thanks to the lack of an ending for the Coen Brothers’ film, better, more deserving films), but am not surprised.

Javier Bardem deserved his Oscar, as did Marion Cotillard for her amazing performance in La Vie En Rose. Not only was she most deserving of her award, but she was also a bit of a surprise victory, and the most emotional winner. Surprisingly, the winners that the audience connected with the most were Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the lead actors and singers of the Oscar-winning song “Falling Slowly”, from Once. There actually would have been a riot had this movie not won for Best Original Song, and the Oscar crew recognized this to the point where they actually let Irglova back onto the stage after a commercial break to allow her to finish her acceptance speech. Classy.

Daniel Day-Lewis, of course, won for Best Actor. Has anyone else noticed that on screen, he always look so tough and powerful, yet off screen, he always looks like he’s on the verge of death? Anyway, I was happy to see him win, and seriously would have murdered my neighbors if someone stole Oscar gold from him.

Thank God Atonement won for Best Original Score. Any film that can incorporate a typewriter into its score deserves an award… Why wasn’t There Will Be Blood nominated in this category, though?

There were only two awards that really shocked me:

• Tilda Swinton, for Best Supporting Actress. She was great, but I was almost certain Cate Blanchett would win for I’m Not There. That was a career-best performance for the actress, and I have to wonder whether her dual nominations split her own votes. Still, I was disappointed to see her not fully recognized for such a groundbreaking performance.
• The Golden Compass, for Best Visual Effects. Are you kidding me? This was the weakest film of the three, and Transformers should have won handily. I was disappointed that 300 wasn’t nominated in the category; I’m even more disappointed that The Golden Compass somehow won. I didn’t even know enough people even saw that film.

So, overall, it was a great, streamlined presentation. Jon Stewart didn’t have a great opening, but he threw in enough quality jokes to get by. The joke about Jack getting more women pregnant before the end of the night was a good one. The montages were also quite good and not time killers, and the production only ran 20 minutes overboard. The binoculars montage was probably the highlight of the evening.

A bootleg teaser trailer for The X-Files 2 from Wondercon has made its way online. It’s a little hard to tell exactly what the movie is about, but the shots of Mulder and Scully certainly draw great crowd reactions. Check out the movie trailer below, and hopefully an official version will arrive online soon enough.

One of my favorite action franchises – the Jason Bourne series -  is returning for yet another installment, and the key players, director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, are returning. Without them, I would be much more hesitant, but now the film is all but guaranteed to be good.

Following Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, which was very good but not great, Greengrass took over and absolutely blew me away with The Bourne Supremacy. Most people liked The Bourne Ultimatum even more, but I slightly favor Supremacy for its more complex plot.

All that I ask, Mr. Greengrass and Mr. Damon, is that you write a plot involving Carlos the Jackal. He was the main villain in the books, and the whole reason for Jason Bourne’s existence. Sure, the movies have veered so far away from the original plot of the books (read The Bourne Supremacy book and tell me it’s not one of the coolest books ever written – even though it’s nothing like the movie) that some elements will be lost (the movies have killed off two of the three main characters from the books), but Ultimatum really set the stage for something about Carlos the Jackal. Sure, Ultimatum tried to explain David Webb’s transformation into Jason Bourne, but it never touched upon why the program was created in the first place. Why? To take down Carlos the Jackal!

The one thing the Bourne movies have lacked is a truly evil villain, and it’s about time Jason Bourne met his match. The Bourne Identity 4, or whatever it’s going to be called, better star Carlos the Jackal, or else I’ll… hmmm. Well, just put the dude in there. What about Javier Bardem as the bad guy? Benicio Del Toro? Paulie Shore?

Update: this fourth Bourne Identity movie is currently slated for a summer 2011 release date.

Here are all my Oscar predictions for the 2008 Academy Awards (some categories are left blank because I don’t feel I can make an intelligent guess, i.e. for Best Sound Mixing, etc.): FilmJabber’s Oscar predictions.

And here are some Academy Award nominations from other websites that I read quite often:

• Box Office Prophets
• Crave Online

While there are several highly competitive categories at this year’s Academy Awards, Joel and Ethan Coen will win the Oscar for Best Director. If you look at the competitive, there is just no question.

Paul Thomas Anderson would be my pick if I were to select the winner, as There Will Be Blood was the boldest, most unique film of the group. Unfortunately, this is not his award to win, and I won’t be disappointed. The Coen Brothers did a spectacular job with No Country for Old Men, despite forgetting to add an ending to the film.

And that’s my Oscar analysis for Best Director, as I’m sick of writing these things…

The day is almost here: the 2008 Academy Awards. For a while, there was fear that this show wouldn’t even exist, but, as one could have predicted, the writer’s strike ended far enough in advance for that not to happen.

It’s an incredibly competitive bunch this year, and all films are deserving in some way or another. Here is my Oscar predictions for Best Picture:

• No Country for Old Men will win, even though I think it’s only the third best movie of the group. One of the earliest films to be released wide, the movie faced the challenging of losing steam over the months, and at times, it appeared to be doing so. But the Coen Brothers’ movie has been resilient and proven to be a powerhouse at many major award shows, and it will be a shocker if No Country for Old Men doesn’t win. If the Coens had bothered to stamp a real ending on the film, I would be voting for this film look no other – after all, it is one of the best thrillers ever made – but the ending sucked. To me, an Oscar winner should be a complete film… and endings are an essential part for any film.
• Atonement was my favorite film of the year. It is my most mainstream choice in years, though I have several friends who have told me the movie sucks. I honestly don’t know what they watched; Atonement is an engaging, emotional, interesting and unique war drama, with great direction (how did Joe Wright not get nominated?) and a great score. I would be happy if this movie wins, if not just to prove to my friends that other people feel the same way I do, but this movie doesn’t have much of a chance. Despite winning many major awards, including Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes, analysts have counted this one out of the running. I don’t know why, exactly, but I’d be very surprised if this movie won.
• Despite my decimal-point favoring to Atonement, There Will Be Blood is my pick (not my prediction) to win Best Picture. The movie is phenomenal and unique, and I want it to win because it is so bold and different from the other films nominated. Unfortunately, the movie will have to be satisfied by a win for Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor.
• The final two films are lesser entries, and I will be highly disappointed if they win. Michael Clayton was great, but not that great – especially compared to the other contenders – and Juno… well, it’s a great movie, but it’s a simpler film that doesn’t deserve the title of Best Movie of the Year. Juno will win for Best Original Screenplay, and it will deserve it: after all, the screenplay is what makes the film. I’m not a big fan of comedies winning major awards, and will be upset if Juno steals the award from other, greater films.

More than likely, No Country for Old Men will win. An upset isn’t out of the question, however. No Country and Blood could split votes, leaving an opening for Atonement or, more likely, Juno. I hope that doesn’t happen, but it could. Either way, expect Michael Clayton at the bottom of the pile.

View the Oscar nominations and my picks, or visit my Oscar analysis section of the blog.

The Signal is now out in limited theaters, and here are some new film clips for the movie:

Film Clip: Laura

Film Clip: You Have the Crazy

Interview Featurette

The Signal Synopsis

Imagine every cell phone, radio, and television in your city suddenly broadcasting the same mysterious signal over and over. Now imagine these “terminus” transmissions evoking violent, uncontrollable, psychotic chaos from everyone who comes in contact with them. More…