The FilmJabber Movie Blog

I normally don’t attack other websites, but since this other website is one of the largest portals in the world, I had to point this out. I’ve noticed this occurring on Yahoo!’s homepage for the last month or two now, and normally don’t think much of it, but today is just ridiculous.

As you know, Yahoo! features several news stories separated out by “Featured”, “Entertainment”, “Sports” and “Video”, and the “Entertainment” tab is generally movie and music related. What I have noticed is that Yahoo’s scoops are generally a day or two old, which is generally not a big deal except that Yahoo! is one of the biggest companies in the world. I sometimes report on things a week late or longer if it catches my fancy, but Yahoo! has someone paid to be on top of things.

Anyway, this isn’t about a day or two delay. Today, January 3rd, 2008, I went to Yahoo! and noticed a headline: Indiana Jones’ love child? with the subtext: “Rumors about the new Indiana Jones film hint at a possible son.”

Are you kidding me? Hasn’t this been old news for a year now? Haven’t we known that Indiana Jones has a son, and that son is played by Shia LaBeouf? How can they report this as “the latest scoop”? Here’s a screenshot:

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.

Watch the new kick-ass preview of Cloverfield, which debuted on Dick Clark’s New Year’s show:

I like Johnny Depp. He’s a fun, dynamic actor. But ever since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl put him back on the map, critics and audiences alike have kissed his butt like he is the ruler of the world. Has everyone failed to notice that he has only done two good movies since Blow in 2001?

That’s right, you heard me! Sure, some of his bad movies weren’t THAT bad, but they sure as hell weren’t that good, and some have been downright awful. Here are the good ones:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
  The idea sounded dreadful from the start, but somehow Disney and Johnny Depp managed to make an entertaining, funny and dark “family” film. A surprisingly good film, especially considering it’s based on a theme park ride.
• Finding Neverland
  This award-winning drama wasn’t particularly memorable, but was still entrancing while you were watching it.

And that’s it! Two good movies in the last seven years, yet Depp is still as popular as ever. That’s all fine and good, but acknowledge his failures, people!

The bad ones:

• Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
  This follow-up to one of my favorite action films of all time – Desperado – was supposed to kick ass, but instead it was one of the worst movies ever to grace the silver screen. Depp was dreadful in it, too.
• Secret Window (2004)
  This movie was good for a while, until the final act killed any chance of it being any good. The final minutes are particularly bad, especially when Depp dons braces.
• The Libertine (2004)
  Not as dreadful as it was boring, most people probably don’t even know Depp starred in this film – if they even heard of it in the first place.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
  Another Tim Burton collaboration, this one had the makings of being awesome, except Depp’s portrayal of Willy Wonka came off more like a creepy Michael Jackson than anything else. Again, not horrible, but not very goo, either.
• Corpse Bride (2005)
  Probably his best of the bad, the only thing wrong with Corpse Bride is that it is no Nightmare Before Christmas. It was mildly entertaining but never very engaging.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
  They should have left it as a sequel. This movie sucked balls.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
  Not quite as bad as #2, this one still also sucked balls.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
  Quite possibly the worst musical I have seen in a long while. Depp isn’t bad as the title character, and Tim Burton tries, but the story is surprisingly dull and the musical, presumably derived from the play, is terrible and often cringe-inducing.

As the New Year fast approaches and the first week of January 2008 beckons, there are a slew of new pictures out at theaters, some of them good and some of them not-so-good. I’ve seen a lot of movies over the last couple of weeks, and while I haven’t posted reviews for all of these films, I wanted to share what I’ve seen and make recommendations. Keep in mind that this time of year I am most interested in seeing dark and depressing pictures (Atonement) rather than mindless entertainment (National Treasure), and that I will generally avoid chick flicks (P.S. I Love You).

Here are the movies you should see:

• Atonement
  The best movie of 2007 so far, though I’m still holding out hope for There Will Be Blood…
• Juno
  Funny and oddly powerful, this will have females going “awwwww…” (seriously, there were several) and guys cracking up. Also has a potential Oscar winner starlet in the form of Ellen Page.
• No Country for Old Men
  Still one of the front runners for Best Picture of the Year. An awesome thriller, even if the ending stumbles a bit…
• I Am Legend
  If you want mindless entertainment, go see this one. Some people haven’t liked it, but it’s a tense thriller, at least until the final act. Will Smith is also great in it.
• American Gangster
  This one is still playing in many theaters, and while it doesn’t blow one away, it’s still quite good.
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
  Impress people by seeing movie slightly off the beaten path. Luckily, it’s still a pretty slick crime drama.
• The Golden Compass
  It is a bit rushed and could have benefited from a better director, but if you don’t mind anti-Christian themes, The Golden Compass is a lot better than what critics give it credit for.
• National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
  I can’t believe I’m putting this one on my list, but despite the fact that it sometimes doesn’t make much sense or isn’t even slightly plausible, going in with low expectations meant that I actually found this one pleasingly entertaining.

Movies I haven’t seen but plan to shortly (because I hear they’re good)

• Charlie Wilson’s War
• The Great Debaters
• The Kite Runner
• The Savages
• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Movies to avoid at all cost

• Sweeney Todd
  Yeah, this one just sucked. I like musicals, but no one told me that Sweeney Todd was going to be a boring movie with some of the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life.
• Fred Claus
  I didn’t see this movie, but it just looked bad.

Hi everyone,

Sorry about the broken links over the last day and a half. The problem is resolved and we don’t see any major issues forthcoming. Thanks for your patience!

Erik

I hadn’t heard anything one way or another about the new season of Lost (Lost: Season 4), but it looks like Lost is arriving on TV as planned on January 31, 2008. Having written that sentence, I looked up the show on Wikipedia and found that Lost has indeed been hit by the writer’s strike – which means we get an eight episode season. This was the same trouble that the show ran into last year, so we’ll see how it fares. What is unclear is whether the other eight episodes that have not yet been filmed will appear at a later time, or if the writers – when they return – will simply shorten the three 16-episode remaining seasons by eight.

Anyway, the preview for Lost: Season 4 is now online, and I must say it’s quite impressive. After not liking the season three finale all that much, I’ve grown to appreciate it a lot more over the last few months. Obviously the writers have something clever up their sleeves, and, as it is quite clear, the rescuers aren’t Heaven-sent as the survivors think they are.

Here’s the preview:

Don’t piss this referee off. Hell, you better be on your best behavior.

According to Reuters, a soccer referee in Malaysia pulled a gun and fired it into the air after issuing a red flag to one of the players – a suspension that cause several unruly players to get even more unruly. After the man was “attacked” for the call, he ran to his car and grabbed his service revolver. After all, he’s also a cop.

Officials have arrested the referee on tentative charges of unlawful discharge of a weapon, and are also holding several of the players on possible rioting charges.

Not an incredible story, but certainly a funny one. After all, I always thought the red card was the most serious punishment you could receive in a soccer game. Malaysia decided to add a new tier.

I am so doing this when I die…

According to an AP article, Chet Fitch (not the random guy in the picture) is one awesome dude. Or he was, before he died in October at age 88. The old guy, known as a joker/prankster, decided to freak out some of his closest friends and family this Christmas by sending them Christmas cards from beyond the grave. This month, 34 cards were sent out, hand written by him with a return address of – you guessed it – “Heaven.”

The greeting read:

“I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no; but at my insistence he finally said, ‘Oh well, what the heaven, go ahead but don’t terry there.’ Wish I could tell you about things here but words cannot explain.

“Better get back as Big Guy said he stretched a point to let me in the first time, so I had better not press my luck. I’ll probably be seeing you (some sooner than you think). Wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Chet Fitch”

Apparently, Fitch had been working on this prank for two decades with his barber, Patty Dean, who says he paid her whenever postage rates went up and continued to add to the mailing list as he saw fit. This fall, he told her: “You must be getting tired of waiting to mail those cards. I think you’ll probably be able to mail them this year.” He proceeded to die a week later.

I think this puts to rest the debate of whether it’s good to know about your death ahead of time. This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.

As you may or may not know, the FilmJabber Blog is a part of the bigger movie website Movie-Source.com, a massive database of nearly every mainstream movie from 1995 and up. You may have noticed that there have been less blog posts and movie updates over the last week or so, and that’s not entirely due to the holidays…

We’re in the process of developing and finalizing several exciting new features or improvements that will help bring these brands together and provide a much more cohesive experience. Keep checking back, as these big changes are coming soon…

I recently got my hands on Rush Hour 3, a movie I normally would have seen in theaters had it not looked a bit dull at the time. A relatively big fan of the first two Rush Hour movies, I’ve found the franchise to be entertaining, even though I have been thoroughly frustrated with the watered down action for Jackie Chan in his American releases.

Rush Hour was fun. While I was never a big Chris Tucker fan, the pairing of Tucker and Chan is a surprisingly good one, even if Tucker acts and sounds like a complete idiot. The action in this one isn’t great, but the movie is fun and certainly worthy of a sequel.

Rush Hour 2 flipped the scenario and landed Tucker in China, which is a bigger fish-out-of-water story than in the first movie (Chan in the United States). There are a lot of good gags in this one, and the action is a bit better. The presence of beautiful Zhang Ziyi also put this one a notch above the first Rush Hour.

Rush Hour 3 is exactly like the second two, only this time the two characters are both out of their element in France. There’s nothing remotely unique about this movie, and everything, from the character relationships to the action to the comedy to acting, seems less interesting. While not a disaster by any means, it just doesn’t have the spark it needed.

You can read my full Rush Hour 3 movie review here.

Wow. I just watched The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller and directed by the Farrelly brothers, and it is one disaster of a film. Could The Heartbreak Kid be the unfunniest movie of 2007? I think it’s quite possible. There have been less entertaining films this year, but The Heartbreak Kid is the most mainstream movie to make so little of its ingredients.

Does anyone else think that Ben Stiller is no longer funny?

Read my Heartbreak Kid movie review.

Now that Sopranos, Deadwood, Carnivale and several other classics are retired for good, I have been considering canceling my HBO subscription to save a few bucks. However, each time I consider that move, I think of The Wire, the absolutely sensational cop drama the station has flown under the radar for several years. And, guess what? On January 6th, The Wire returns for its final season…

The Wire Trailer

The Wire Behind-the-Scenes Footage

Jackass 2.5: Unrated is coming to DVD on December 26th, and would be a perfect late stocking stuffer for your parents. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why the movie is going straight to DVD, and that’s that it just isn’t that funny.

Clearly a release made to cash in and nothing else, Jackass 2.5 has all the same cast members from the previous films, but the footage consists entirely of deleted scenes from Jackass 2 and some interviews with the cast. So, basically, the DVD consists of a bunch of gags and painful moments that weren’t funny enough to make the cut, and weren’t even funny enough to make the deleted scenes of the original DVD.

Jackass 2.5 is barely an hour long, which is more than enough time to show all of the remaining footage and then some. To fill the movie out, there are quite a few interviews with the cast members, who remark on their favorite moments and so on and so forth. While not all that funny, these interviews are at least somewhat insightful and allow us to see the cast acknowledging that what they do is pretty stupid. My favorite part is where they show some of the crew members discussing how they can never let their guard down on the set, because the cast is always up to something gross. As one might imagine, the crew members grow quite annoyed at times.

Nevertheless, there really isn’t a memorable sequence in the entire movie, unless you count a slightly funny one that has Preston Lacy dressed up as King Kong on top of a port-o-potty while the rest of the cast fly remote control airplanes at him.

I loved the last two Jackass movies, but Jackass 2.5 just isn’t very good. It’s not terrible (unless you think Jackass is complete trash that should never be made), but Jackass fans would be better off watching the first two movies.

It’s been a few days since I last posted on the blog (holiday stuff!), so here’s a movie review for you: American Pie Presents: Beta House. This latest installment of the American Pie franchise has Erik Stifler (John White) heading off to his first year of college (remember, in The Naked Mile he simply was visiting his cousin at the dorms) for sex, nudity and freshman girls. It arrives just in time for Christmas (December 23, 2007).

And nudity, American Pie Presents: Beta House definitely has. The film is loaded with it, and that’s not a bad thing. While hardly representative of a real college (and in some ways getting away from what made American Pie so good in the first place: the decision to set normal guys in normal situations but with ridiculous results), the movie is shock full of scantily clad or downright naked “college” girls, who could all compete for prettiest girl on campus. The nudity alone made Beta House enjoyable enough.

There’s also some decent sex, for those of you who are interested.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is pretty lame. Take away the nudity and the sex and you really have very little here, other than a pretty typical frat movie. There’s nothing wrong with typical frat movies, except typical frat movies that aren’t funny. Beta House has tons of nudity, but it’s not funny, and there’s something really wrong with it. The creators of the movie became so obsessed with showing tits that they forgot that they were doing an American Pie movie, which means there should be at least a few laughs in it. Hell, the movie even lacks awkwardly gross sequences, other than a rather disturbing Russian roulette scene involving horse semen.

For the most part, Beta House doesn’t have much going for it. The screenplay is bland and fails to capitalize on its storyline. Strangely, the first half of the plot is about the freshman trying to complete 100 tasks by the end of the semester so that they can join the fraternity, but the second half of the movie departs from this entirely and decides to focus on the typical rival frats squaring off in a competition. While it is sort of funny that the underdogs are the jocks and the asshole jerk frat is made up of nerds (after all, in the 21st century, nerds are where the money is), why Beta House decided to detour from a storyline with so much potential to an utterly cliche one is beyond me. Had the whole movie focused on the 100 tasks, Beta House could have been something, but director Andrew Waller literally skims through them all.

I liked American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile well enough, but Beta House is nowhere as good. This is one direct-to-DVD comedy you can skip, unless nudity is enough to please you. Hmmm…

A new DVD edition of Braveheart comes to stores this Tuesday, December 18th, and with it comes some supposedly new special features that fans of the film might be interested in. From what I could find on Amazon.com, at least some of the special features haven’t been done before, though I can’t say for sure. Even with some new featurettes, it is clear that this DVD release is here just to make a few extra bucks around the holidays, but oh well – if you don’t own the movie, now’s your time to get it.

Braveheart is one of my favorite movies; even though it takes great historical license, it is funny, dramatic, entertaining, bloody and romantic all at the same time, and is easily one of Mel Gibson’s best movie, if not the best movie. But I don’t need to go on and on about how good Braveheart is, as everyone and their mother has probably seen it – or at least know it won Best Picture in 1995.

This new 2-disc, Special Collector’s Edition offers audio commentary by Mel Gibson (presumably the same commentary found on other versions), but the features I’m going to talk about are these:

• A Writer’s Journey
  This is an interesting look at the creative process that brought Braveheart to light, based on an interview with the writer, Randall Wallace. Interestingly enough, Wallace first learned about the hero of his movie, William Wallace, when he traveled to Scotland to learn about his heritage. From there, he wrote the screenplay, but claims he doesn’t research his work until after he writes his movies. This interview definitely shows the passion Randall Wallace had for the film.
• Alba gu Brath! The Making of Braveheart
  I think this is just a remixing of the making-of featurette found on the original Braveheart DVD, but it shows how Gibson approached the creation of the movie. Most interesting is that we get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes looks at the editing process as Gibson and his editor discuss how to make scenes work much better.
• Tales of William Wallace
  This one explores the rather vague historical facts revolving around William Wallace. Not bad, but not particularly useful, either.
• Archival Interviews
  There are some interviews with the cast. Nothing spectacular here, as it’s a bunch of actors saying what actors say about their “powerful” characters.

All in all, it’s a good DVD, but those of you who already own Braveheart should have no need to purchase this new edition, which only adds a couple rather meaningless special features.