The FilmJabber Movie Blog

I was W. on Monday night and saw this cool new movie trailer for a flick called Dark Streets. It’s hard to tell exactly what the movie is going to be like, but based on the previews, the film looks like a more subdued Moulin Rouge with a less romantic focus. The plot isn’t quite clear, but it appears as though it’s set in the 1920′s and features a murder or crime or something along those lines. Anyway, check out the Dark Streets movie trailer below:

I don’t know what to make of this one. The novelty of a 3D horror movie is compelling, as you could definitely get some good scares out of knives or pick axes flying at your face, but I’m still not sold on 3D in general. The movies made for 3D seem to be gimmicks, as the directors focus more on the visuals than storytelling. My Bloody Valentine 3D seems prime for such a massacre; the movie trailer isn’t particularly effective, other than marketing the gimmick. The movie looks generic, the scares dull and the acting bad, but, like I said, I think it’d be fun to see in theaters. Of course, I’ll probably still end up hating it.

Watch the My Bloody Valentine 3D movie trailer below:

Walt Disney is going to be very happy this weekend as their unprecedented TV-to-theater movie franchise High School Musical 3 raked in $16.5 million in Friday box office tickets, all but guaranteeing a $50+ million weekend (so says Slash Film) for the harmless teen movie. UPDATE: Slash Film was a bit off… HSM3 made an estimated $42 million over the weekend.

Personally, I thought High School Musical 2 was one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time; though I am outside of the target market, I just don’t get it. The music is bad, the choreography terrible and the story so sanitized that I don’t get how anybody outside of the most protective of families could enjoy it. Maybe they mixed things up for High School Musical 3, but I highly doubt it.

Anyway, congrats to Disney for turning the most-watched TV movie franchise into a lucrative box office behemoth.

The best thing about High School Musical 3‘s box office success? Lionsgate can’t claim complete victory as Saw V opened in second place. The bad news? The movie still made $12.3 million on Friday, good for about $29 million (UPDATE: $30 million) over the weekend. We’re starting to see the gleam come off the Saw movies, but only just. As long as the Saw movies continue to make more in their opening weekend than their entire budget, Lionsgate will continue to produce this crap.

Pride and Glory, the new movie starring Ed Norton and Colin Farrell, opened to only $2.2 million on Friday, good for just over $6 for the box office weekend.

An adamant John McCain supporter and recruiter was attacked recently by a 6’4 black man while getting cash at an ATM. This horrible black man, supposedly upset that this girl was stupid enough to vote for John McCain, etched a “B” into her cheek with a knife and told her that she was now a Barack Obama supporter. Of all the things to do!

Of course, police became suspicious after ATM video footage didn’t confirm her story – and the fact that the “B” was etched backwards on her cheek.

And, as it turns out, the 20-year old girl made it up, and while she’s not sure why she did it, she in fact carved the “B” into her own cheek, presumably in a mirror. Because if you weren’t looking in a mirror, how could you be so stupid as to carve the “B” backwards? Dumb ass.

This is just the latest race-related item to come up in this Presidential debate, which is as disturbing as it is funny.

In lighter news, watch George W. Bush endorse Governor Palin and John McCain on Saturday Night Live:

Check out the decent little teaser trailer for Friday the 13th below. The teaser trailer is from SCREAM 2008, as is not a normal, theatrical teaser trailer by any means. Basically, a couple wanders across an abandoned summer camp and discover what it’s like to be filleted like a fish.

I am not a fan of the Friday the 13th movies at all – as I believe they suck royal suckage – but I am looking forward to seeing what a re-imagining can do to Jason. Hell, it can only be better than the crap that has been produced over the last 20 years.

Despite Raffaello Follieri being sentenced to 4 1/2 years of prison, Anne Hathaway has said that the former couple is looking to rekindle their relationship. OK, not really, but I wanted to point out that Hathaway, as she must have realized by this point, has really bad taste in men. Sure, the guy could have been a druggie or a girlfriend beater (normally called wife beater, but that doesn’t really apply in this case), but a scam artist responsible for duping investors out of millions of dollars is almost as bad, no?

“I dishonored my family name and embarrassed the church I love. I’ll never be able to wash away that stain, and I will have to live with it the rest of my life,” he said in an AP interview. Yes, way to embarrass the church. Because the church can’t do that well enough on their own.

When do you think Anne Hathaway figured it out? When he started buying her elaborate gifts without having a real job? Or when he told her that he was the Vatican’s chief financial officer? Or when he showed her a letter written personally by John Paul II?

Or when the cops showed up at his door one day?

It’s OK, Anne. I’m available and ready, and I’m not that bad. But then again, maybe that disqualifies me.

Oh, Beyonce, how I loathe the. I’ve never been a fan of the smiling beauty and probably never will be, despite her being ridiculously hot and slightly younger than me. I don’t know why, but there’s something about her incessant need to smile – and her attempts at an acting career (I was not tricked by Dreamgirls like so many other people were) – that just drives me up a wall. And now… Sasha Fierce.

My frustration with Sasha Fierce does not have anything to do with Beyonce; it has to do with musicians choosing foolish names. Sure, authors change their names sometimes, but I’ve never understood that in most cases, either. Branding is important – and you don’t want to confuse your readers by doing a trashy romance followed by a murder mystery – but why, if you’re creating material for the world to read, would you not want people to know your real name, the name your mother gave to you, the name your friends know you by, the name your teachers will recognize and your fans know for eternity? The music industry takes this concept to a new extreme, as it seems almost wrong to use your real name. Again, I can understand if your name is Danza Krakenpoofheisen or something, but most people’s names are not that bad.

And now, Beyonce, for her new record, is calling herself Sasha Fierce. In fact, the title of the album is “I Am… Sasha Fierce.” Jesus Christ.

“I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am,” Beyonce said in a Reuters interview. “Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I’m working and when I’m on the stage.”

I’m sorry, Beyonce, do you have a split personality? Do you have a serious psychological issue that compels an alter ego to get her day in the spotlight? And you do realize that Sasha is also a guy’s name, right? Stupid, stupid move. And slightly creepy.

Watch the international trailer for Australia, the new Baz Luhrman film that stars Aussies Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The movie looks OK, but I still have high hopes.

Fans were already apprehensive with the casting of Seth Rogen as The Green Hornet, one of the world’s oldest superheroes, and now they have a reason to be downright upset. With the hiring of director Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), it sounds like the movie is headed back towards being more of a comedy than the serious action flick “promised” a little while back.

Read the full article »

OK. I am going to start with a rant that has nothing specifically to do with The Incredible Hulk (2008) or its DVD. Well, maybe there is some relation. The box boasts that it is a 3-Disc Special Edition, which sounds pretty damn good by anyone’s standards. Three discs, huh? The movie is two hours long, which means that the other two discs must be reserved for special features, right? Wrong, biotch!

The studios have found their latest trick to market things that aren’t nearly as good as they sound. First there was “Collector’s Editions” and “Special Editions” when in fact they were just normal DVD packages. Then there was Unrated DVDs which rarely contained any new, “unrated” material. And now, we have the DVD that contains the digital copy. The digital copy. Who the f**k cares about a digital copy? What percent of people actually give a damn about getting The Incredible Hulk in digital format so they can watch this action movie on their three-inch iPod screen? Five percent? Three percent? Give me the damn digital copy, but don’t market to me that I’m getting three discs of goodness. The digital disc doesn’t give me anything new; it just saves me a step of ripping the movie from the normal DVD. Come on, studios, don’t go down that path!

Anyway, now that that’s out of my system, let’s take a look at The Incredible Hulk special features from its single bonus disc.  To be fair, the first disc – with the movie on it – contains a few deleted scenes and a feature commentary as well, but essentially all of the special features reside on a single disc. Here they are:

• Deleted scenes
  A pretty good amount of deleted scenes that were generally cut for pacing reasons. Some of the scenes go into a little more detail than what was seen in the movie, though there were none that stood out to me as being good enough that they should have avoided the cutting room floor.
• An alternate opening
  You can watch the original opening sequence to the movie. Let’s just say that thank God this one wasn’t used in theaters, because it really isn’t good at all.
• The Making of Incredible
  Your standard making-of featurette. Like the rest of the featurettes on the DVD, it isn’t too promotional at all; at the same time, there’s nothing new or particularly interesting here. Compared to such documentaries as the making of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, it just doesn’t offer anything original. Still, fans of the Hulk should find some tidbits of interest here.
• Becoming the Hulk
  This is an exploration of the creature design, from the models to the special effects to the involvement of Ed Norton. Norton’s insistence that he actually get to play the Hulk in his green transformation is a bit odd, and one makes me think that director Louis Letterier was quite annoyed with the actor by the end of the picture.
• Becoming the Abomination
  Slightly more interesting than “Becoming the Hulk,” this one has Tim Roth doing motion capture and making fun of the suit he has to wear, completely unaware that the guy doing motion capture with him wears that suit for a living. When all is said and done, this one has some value because you get to hear about the intentional differences between the Abomination and the Hulk; though a lot of the effects talk is, for obvious reasons, pretty ambiguous.
• Anatomy of a Hulk-Out
  I never quite figured out what these chaptered segments were for, as they seem to rehash other featurettes on the DVD. Still, for the Hulk fan, the more the merrier.
• From Comic Book to Screen
  These are the kind of featurettes I hate, where some animator is brought on to draw a bunch of semi-static comic book/storyboard friends to make a mini-movie. What a waste of time; I only sat through a couple of minutes of this one.
• Digital copy of the film
  Everything I wanted and more on its very own disc!

All in all, there are a good amount of bonus features to be had on The Incredible Hulk: 3-Disc Special Edition DVD. Of course, none of these really matter to me. The quality of the film matters to me. And it was good enough (read my The Incredible Hulk movie review).

Halloween may not boost theatrical horror releases in the way you’d expect, but DVD sales and rentals have to go up for scary movies come the end of October. Thus, it’s no surprise that the hit Liv Tyler thriller The Strangers slashes its way onto DVD this Tuesday, just in time for the spooky holiday.

The Strangers is about a couple going through relationship troubles who find themselves subjected to a night of terror when a family of masked hoodlums shows up to wreak havoc. What at first appears to be a practical joke gone bad soon reveals itself to be something much more deadly. Basically, the movie is about Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman trying to escape from a bunch of really freaky sound effects.

The movie is pretty scary at times, and the director does a good job of presenting the villains, who often stand silent in the background while the good guy looks the other way. As horror movies go, it gets the job done. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t nearly as good as the director thinks it is, and the film ends up lacking a satisfying resolution or climax. The characters – especially Liv Tyler – turn out to be just as dumb as your typical horror victim, if not dumber, and that’s not good.

Nevertheless, The Strangers is one of the scarier movies of 2008 (read my full The Strangers movie review here), so in that regards it’s worth renting. If you need bonus features to move you from the rental to purchasing stage, however, bonus features does The Strangers lack. Hell, this is a pretty sad DVD by anyone’s standards; other than a few forgettable deleted scenes and a small, rather promotional behind-the-scenes featurette, the DVD contains nothing of value. Wow.

Oh, and the cover artwork is terrible, too.

So, there you go. Decent movie, crappy DVD. You decide. I’ll vote for Obama.

This was released last week, but I’m just getting to it now, so deal with it! Here’s the movie trailer for The Uninvited, which is based on one of my all-time favorite horror movies, A Tale of Two Sisters. Needless to say, expectations are high with me… or, in other words, really, really low. After all, this Asian horror remakes seem to be getting worse and worse, and judging by The Uninvited movie trailer, this one is going to suck.

The great thing about A Tale of Two Sisters was that it was subtle, almost a drama in some ways, except that it was pretty damn freaky. The Uninvited looks like a cliche and uninteresting teen horror movie with all the typical, boring ghost elements that American directors like to use. The Uninvited is uninvited in my opinion.

Here’s the movie trailer so you can decide for yourself:

Further proof that traditional animation is by no means dead, Walt Disney recently released its acclaimed classic Sleeping Beauty to DVD and Blu-Ray in an all-new Platinum Edition… and it ended up topping the DVD sales charts for the week. Not only that, but it beat out previous #1 earner Iron Man for such a spot.

It never ceases to amaze me how much demand there is for Disney’s old cartoons; beyond the fact that this implies traditional animation is not dead as long as the story and production values are good, this sales success story also implies that even with all the big kid’s movies that come out each year, parents still scramble for anything that would be good and entertaining for their children to watch. Hollywood, pay attention.

I actually have a copy of Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition, and while laying on my death bed last week, I managed to watch most of the movie (I fell asleep near the end due to drugs and the magic potion the DVD releases into the air to make the viewer feel more involved inthe picture. Personally, I think sleep-inducing drugs is going a bit far, especially for a children’s DVD, but I guess I trust the Disney marketing executives to do what’s best for their audiences). Having not seen the movie since my childhood, I was once again pleasantly surprised at the quality of the picture. The animation, acting and music is great, the story mesmerizing.

Still, a few pieces of the production show their age; when the fairies grant Sleeping Beauty their gifts, the movie sidetracks into a rather cheesy array of special effects that really add no value and will be a bit off-putting to modern audiences. The effects look like they were added because they could be added, nothing more.

Nevertheless, these moments are rather brief and not all too distracting. All in all, Sleeping Beauty is still an effective classic; it has its outdated moments, but its rich animation and artwork make up for those shortcomings.

The DVD includes several special features I didn’t bother exploring, including a virtual tour of the castle, a dance game, an alternate opening, deleted songs, a making-of featurette and a few other thngs.

I was over at Box Office Prophets the other day and came across an article/discussion on High School Musical 3, examining the box office fortunes of the upcoming Disney film. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but the analysts at BOP – whom I consider to be right more often than not, at least when it comes to estimating revenues – raised the interesting question: just how much money will High School Musical 3 make?

The first one was a big hit on television, and the second was a downright monster, with 27 million people tuning in when it debuted. Disney, wisely, has decided to transfer the film to the big screen, where they can actually make some real money off of it. But just how much?

As BOP points out, the potential box office for High School Musical 3 is anyone’s guess, though the analysts who took the conversative route and suggested under $50 million on opening weekend were pretty much ridiculed. On the high end, one went as far to suggest it could make $100 million in its opening weekend. Thus, middle-of-the-road estimates were around $70 million. $70 million! For High School Musical 3? In its opening weekend?

God, it’s so hard to tell. BOP is right, in that there is mad demand for the franchise. They may well be right. But logically, I just can’t see $70 million worth of people going to theaters on opening weekend to see an overly cheerful, colorful, poorly written and poorly acted piece of theater. And if they do, I still won’t understand. I made the mistake of watching High School Musical 2, and it was one of the most terrible things I had seen in a long time. I understand that parents want their kids to watch something wholesome and harmless, which the High School Musical franchise is, but the songs are just so annoying and poorly choreographed that I just don’t get it.

Either way, I hope BOP is wrong, but now I am very, very nervous at the prospect that High School Musical 3 will, indeed, be a box office monster.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull rolled onto DVD on Tuesday, and with it the crushed dreams of children-past who were hoping for a flawless, action-packed adventure. Indiana Jones 4 came to theaters amidst a torrent of mixed reviews, and mixed reviews it deserved. The most highly anticipated adventure film was, as it turned out, about aliens. Aliens with big, shiny, plastic-looking skulls. Combine that plot with unnecessary supporting characters and so-so CGI and you get… the latest Steven Spielberg fine?

Frustrations aside, I’m happy Paramount sent me the 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, because I will watch this movie again, and hopefully with dampened expectations I’ll be able to enjoy the picture more. In the mean time, though, I watched the special features. With further special editions inevitably coming in the future, the 2-Disc Special Edition is not jam packed as one might expect; there are no deleted scenes, bloopers or even a commentary. However, the discs do contain some in-depth production featurettes, which take you from pre-production through post-production.

These featurettes are pretty good and rather lenthy, though I compare all of these to the best I’ve seen, those from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and they don’t really compare. While detailed, the Indiana Jones featurettes have an air of promotion to them; the interviews with the actors are very sanitized and not particularly insightful. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the exploration of some of the film’s more eleaborate sequences.

Other than that, there’s nothing but a couple of the movie’s trailers. Oh, and if you have an XBox 360, you can play a demo of LEGO Indiana Jones. However, I don’t, so I didn’t.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull has some decent DVD features, but if you aren’t sold on the movie alone and want some superstrong DVD features, you may want to wait until the next edition comes out.