The FilmJabber Movie Blog

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.

For years, Robert Downey Jr. has been poison. Maybe not complete box office failure poison, but he was a name people immediately associated with drugs, career suicide and uncontrollable. Oh, how a couple of years of sobriety and a super hero can make a difference. Downey is at an all-time career high, and it isn’t too surprising that Chaplin, for which he earned an Oscar nomination fifteen long years ago, is being re-released in a – you guessed it – 15th Anniversary Edition.

I had never seen Chaplin before, nor did I know much about the famed actor other than the few short films I’ve seen of his. The movie, directed by Richard Attenborough, is pretty good, but Downey is tremendous as the British, silent-film innovator. Much of the time he is unrecognizable, and not just physically. He transforms himself into Chaplin, capturing his moves, his mannerisms, accents and behaviors with amazing sincerity. Given that this is Downey’s one and only Oscar nomination, one has to wonder what he would have done over the last fifteen years had he not been flying a kite the entire time.

Beyond his performance, Chaplin is dotted with a dizzying array of supporting actors, including Anthony Hopkins, Diane Lane, Dan Akroyd, Milla Jovovich, Marisa Tomei, Penelope Anne Miller and Kevin Kline. All turn in fine performances, but none stand out in any way or form.

The movie itself is pretty good, chronicling Charlie Chaplin’s life from childhood through his honorary Oscar acceptance in 1972. Attenborough keeps things rather biographical and subtle, avoiding dramatized moments where possible. Unfortunately, this approach leads to an understated feel and a lack of power; while good, the movie rarely captivates. It also doesn’t help that the makeup used on Downey when he’s portraying Chaplin in his later years looks pretty God-awful.

Chaplin is a worthwhile film, though not tremendous by any means. Downey, however, delivers the finest performance of his career.

Check out the latest movie trailer for Transporter 3, which once again stars Jason Statham. The movie looks like it should satisfy fans of the previous flicks, as it will contain plenty of ludicrous action. While I prefer more realistic action, I must admit that I have a small soft spot for the Transporter movies; I’ll probably wait until DVD, but am looking forward to this one. The final few moments of the trailer leave little to be desired; Statham driving a car on the top of a train is, shall we say, stupid?

Here’s the new Transporter 3 movie trailer:

I am young, by cinematic standards. I didn’t grow up in the 40′s and 50′s where the film industry was still, in many ways, relatively young. I haven’t had sixty years to watch movies and say with sincerity that dozens of films from the 1940′s are masterpieces. I do see old movies and appreciate them – and sometimes love them – but not all old films are great just because other people say there are. Take Cool Hand Luke, for example. It’s ranked #118 on IMDB’s Top 250, which means that there are only 117 films that are better. In the world. I’m sorry, folks, but Cool Hand Luke isn’t that good.

Cool Hand Luke is a pretty good movie starring the late Paul Newman, but I’d have to say my reaction to the film was lukewarm at best – forgive the quasi-pun. The movie is about some cool dude named Luke who’s a bit of a troublemaker, so much so that he finds himself in a minimum security prison for two years for destruction of private property. However, the rural prison can’t hold a man like Luke, physically or mentally. Constantly beaten down, Luke refuses to give up, and often escapes – only to be dragged back in time after time. After his mother dies, though, the warden sets all sights on Luke, determined to break him.

The movie features some good and likable performances from a recognizable cast. George Kennedy delivers a great performance as Luke’s eventual sidekick, and Newman himself turns in a quality performance. Unfortunately, while Newman is good, his subtle performance – and the movie’s subtle approach – just didn’t work for me. I wouldn’t say that the movie doesn’t stand the test of time; now out on a new DVD, the film looks great, especially when the scantily clad woman is washing her car. The writing, direction and look and feel all hold up well.

It’s just that the movie is sort of boring. I like character-driven stories, but Cool Hand Luke just isn’t one of those stories. Its plot is minimal at best, and I never felt like I could connect with Luke or any of the other characters. Ultimately, Luke keeps resisting and escaping, but I don’t care.

There’s not much more to it than that. Cool Hand Luke isn’t a bad movie, but it certainly isn’t one of the world’s top 250 movies.

When hearing that Year of the Fish is a modern-day Cinderella story, that’s not a cue to take your children to it. After all, the movie is about a Chinese immigrant named Ye Xian (An Nguyen) who finds herself working for and in debt to the owner of a massage parlor – in actuality a brothel – in New York.

Year of the Fish is a film festival picture that opened in Seattle (and presumably elsewhere) over the weekend and that rolls Chinese folklore, modern-day issues and a Cinderella love story into one. The result is mixed, but given the obvious small budget and limited scope, it is decent enough.

Read the full article »

Iron Man. The movie shocked audiences by raking in $100 million in its opening weekend and lots of critical praise. This, a movie about a guy who dresses up in a metal suit and goes around blowing things up. Who would have thought?

The huge box office winner is coming to DVD this Tuesday, September 30, 2008, and Marvel and Paramount managed to forward me an early copy of the two-disc special edition. The DVD is a great addition to anyone’s collection, though I doubt this review is going to have any bearing on your decision one way or another. You either liked the movie or you didn’t, though I haven’t met a person who wasn’t blown away by the flick.

As far as special features go, there is a good deal of deleted scenes, some of which are halfway decent. I suspect that a couple of them were removed to keep a PG-13 rating, as one makes a rather direct allusion to a three-way, and eventually a four-way. Others add unnecessary exposition and explanation to the story; you can see where they fit in, but were most likely removed for pacing reasons. Nevertheless, they make for good deleted scenes.

Moving onto the second disc, we are greeted with a series of seven featurettes that look at various stages of the production, from location shooting to suit design to special effects. Some of the best behind-the-scenes featurettes come from the biggest of films, and this single feature runs for a good hour and a half. The featurette is pretty insightful and not promotional in the least, meaning you get a lot of sincerity from Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., the stuntmen and everyone else involved.

Other special features include a deeper look at the visual effects, a screen test with Robert Downey Jr., a featurette called The Actor’s Process that I was too lazy to watch (actually, after watching most of the special features I got so eager to watch the movie that I returned to the first disc to fire it up… though I then got interrupted by the Presidential debates for a couple of hours) and your typical stills gallery, previews, et cetera. Why do they even bother including stills galleries on DVDs? Does anyone actually look at them? Ooh, cool! I can look at non-moving images of a movie I just watched. This is most awesomest.

The DVD is pretty good, though I’d expect there to be an even bigger version to be on the horizon. Regardless, Iron Man itself is well worth the $20 to add this to your collection. You can read my full Iron Man movie review here.

Legendary actor Paul Newman has died at the age of 83 after a battle with cancer. And no, to those readers who haven’t appreciated my fake articles, this is no joke.

He had most lately been attached to a project to direct Of Mice and Men in the fall, but dropped that earlier this year for “unspecified health reasons.”

I just watched Cool Hand Luke the other day (review coming soon), but Newman is known for a lot more than just that film. I have to admit that, having grown up in the 1980′s, I really haven’t seen that many Paul Newman movies for some reason, but he’s always been considered one of the classiest and most respectable actors in the world… and that guy on the salad dressing bottles.

Anyway, I won’t drag on any long emotional thoughts as that’s not my thing – but it’s a sad thing to wake up to on this Saturday morning.

A movie that sort of flew under the radar earlier this year, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a romantic comedy that proved that it was a lot more than a fluff-and-kiss romantic comedy. In reality, it’s in the same vein as Knocked Up, as it’s a romantic comedy for guys – there’s swearing, boobs, crazy sex and lots of awkward situations, including a break up scene with full frontal male nudity. Of course, none of this is surprising since it’s just one of many successful Judd Apatow-produced comedies.

To be straight, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the funniest movie of 2008 to date, thanks to its crafty writing and likable characters. Thankfully, the movie comes to DVD on September 30, 2008, and Universal was kind enough to send me an advanced copy of the 3-Disc Unrated Collector’s Edition. Here are the bonus features:

• Two versions of the movie. Guess. Guess, dammit! OK, fine, you’re going to feel stupid. The two versions are… the normal, R-rated version and – yes, you didn’t guess it – the unrated version. The unrated version has a few additional or extended scenes, but it doesn’t really matter – the movie is just as funny the first time I saw it.
• Deleted/Extended scenes. In addition to those seen in the unrated version, several other funny scenes are available for viewing. To the pleasure of all male audience members (well, the straight ones), the DVD includes a fair amount of additional sex scenes, several of which are pretty funny. There’s also an alternative get-back-together-with-Sarah scene that is notably different in one piercing way. Ha ha, I crack myself up. Don’t get it? Nevermind.
• Auditions. Some entertaining moments of the cast preparing for their roles. The DVD gives extra focus to Russell Brand, who plays the British sex addict rock star boyfriend. Interestingly enough, the character was originally written as a cocky yuppy writer, but Brand’s audition impressed the casting crew so much that the character was rewritten for him. Brand is certainly a funny guy; his “U Show” that is included on the DVD is also quite funny in a limited way.
• Crime Scene. See some alternate NBC television shows that Sarah Marshall will be starring in over the coming months. Some, if not all, are absolutely ridiculous.
• Drunk-o-Rama, Sex-o-rama, Line-o-rama. These little featurettes take the best moments and establishes montages of related material.
• Video Diaries. I watched these, but don’t remember much.
• Gag reel, cast and crew commentary and a few other special features.
• Oh, and the third disc is devoted to a digital copy that you can copy to your iPod. In the day of environmentalism, it’s sad that studios are starting to do this.

Read my full Forgetting Sarah Marshall movie review, or… enter to win a copy of the Forgetting Sarah Marshall DVD.

Holy crap. How things can change in six months. The top-rated NBC action series Heroes, which was an instant hit two years ago, has been canceled after a 25% drop in viewership with the third season’s premiere. With advertisers dropping off left and right, NBC will air the remaining seven episodes that have already been filmed and, presumably, wrap things up with a quick season finale – if fans are lucky.

No doubt, fans like me are going to protest this like crazy, as Heroes is one of the most refreshing shows on television. It was a risky venture by NBC – after all, even with superheroes being as popular as ever after successful franchises like X-Men and Spider-man, TV audiences can be finicky, and the thought of a television show about “realistic” superheroes was pushing the acceptability factor of people. Nonetheless, it launched with a slam dunk and just went from there, delivering some of the best television we’ve seen in years (OK, not nearly as good as Lost or Battlestar Galactica).

Unfortunately, the second season was a bit weak at times, and the last several episodes were hurried by the writer’s strike, cutting short major season arcs and conveniently wrapping them up in overly ambitious ways. Season Two saw a ridiculously small amount of episodes, and apparently that was more than enough to kill it for audiences. Still, a 25% decrease is pretty shocking, and NBC must have passed the break-even point as I’m sure Heroes is quite pricey (despite having rather crappy special effects by today’s standards).

Anyway, while Heroes did experience a 25% drop with its season premiere, NBC of course is not really canceling one of its most popular shows. Did you really believe that? Did you?

Holy crap. This just in from a legitimate source: The Godfather 4 is coming to theaters sometime in 2010. Word has it that Francis Ford Coppola has already penned the script, and the movie is currently in the pre-production phase. It is rumored that Al Pacino will return, though the film will focus heavily on a new character played by Nicolas Cage, who as we all know is related in some way or form, by blood or otherwise, to the famed director. This is amazing news.

However, that news is not real. What is real, however, is that a new DVD set was released today called The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration, which includes the three films remastered and with all-new special effects a la the Star Wars re-releases (it’s pretty crazy seeing Marlon Brando in The Godfather Part III, let me tell you). The collection contains five massive discs of goodness. You can probably guess what the first three discs are used for – the last two are saved for special features, and there are a lot of them.

One of the things I find frustrating by being a movie reviewer, other than constantly receiving free DVDs and invitations to LA press screenings, is that in these renewed box sets that exist solely to make the studio just a little more money by duping die hard fans into buying the latest and greatest version when the DVD they bought five years ago is just as good, the new features and old features are rarely separated. So when I actually take the time to review bonus features – which is not that often because I think most bonus features are a waste of time – I have no clue whether these features have been available for years unless I manage to find the info on Amazon.com or something like that… but the extra ten keystrokes is just more effort than I’m willing to spend.

Thankfully, with The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration, disc four includes special features previously available, whereas disc five is exclusively designed for new bonus featuers. In other words, for review purposes, I skipped disc four and went straight to disc five.

I didn’t make it very far, though. I was building a dresser while watching, and I tried watching the deleted scenes, of which there are many (they are broken out by the chronology of the characters, not the movies). Unfortunately, there’s no “Play All” feature that I could find, and thus it wasn’t worth my time clicking on each thumbnail to watch a deleted scene. So… I moved on to the behind-the-scenes videos, and started watching one of them. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was good. Real good. The video features interviews with practically everyone involved in the movie, and goes into thorough detail about the challenges of making the film – primarily, the fact that Coppola and Pacino were always two seconds away from getting fired. The video is extremely detailed and interesting, and one of the best I’ve seen.

There were many other special features, but that’s as far as I got. Why? Because after watching 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes action, I couldn’t resist but put in the first movie. Having never seen it before, I thought now was as good of time as any. OK, I’ve actually seen The Godfather at least ten times (is that all?), but these movies – yes, even the third one – are so incredible it’s hard to believe they were made so long ago. Absolutely stunning.

The Godfather trilogy consists of three of the best movies ever made. This new DVD set includes a ton of new features that are, I hate to say it, worth owning if you really like your Italian gangsters.

If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been seeing a lot of movies lately. At least not at theaters. I have been making my rounds through the DVD racks, but with a lull in new releases worthy of my time, I haven’t been reviewing a whole lot. Even though the end of August and September are considered dead times for theaters, there have been several films out that I want to see, one of them being Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the latest Woody Allen movie that stars Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Why? Because I actually like Woody Allen movies for the most part, the cast rocks and the film has Johansson and Cruz going at it… and I don’t mean fighting. Alas, due to an extremely busy month and some so-so reviews from friends, I have yet to get around to the romantic comedy-drama, and probably won’t see it until DVD.

Thankfully, my coworker Alice Graves, who is a diehard Woody Allen fan, did see the movie and has weighed in with her opinion. I trust it, even though she did think Javier Bardem was “cute” in No Country for Old Men.

Read Alice’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona movie review!

I just received some new Megan Fox pictures from her upcoming, R-rated movie How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, starring Simon Pegg. When I first saw previews for the movie, I assumed it was going to be a harmless PG-13 comedy, but with an R-rating that includes “graphic nudity,” one has to wonder exactly what’s in store.

The new Megan Fox pictures provided (which I’m sure have already circulated around the Internet a thousand times over by now, considering that I actually have to work for a living and only get to attend to this website at night when I don’t have better things to do like go on dates with beautiful women – doesn’t happen nearly enough – or watch the season premiere of Heroes) feature Megan Fox parading around in a swimming pool, still fully dressed (sorry). But, you know what happens to clothing – especially women’s clothing – when they get wet, right? And cold? Anyway, without further ado, here are some steaming, not-so-naked pictures of Megan Fox:

I have several more new Megan Fox pictures here.

We’re two episodes into Fox’s new sci-fi show Fringe, going on #3. The show, from the creator of Lost and with the fans of The X-Files in mind, is an interesting one, about genetic testing, mutations and some kind of conspiracy or invasion that is yet to be revealed. The season starts off with a bang, with a plane full of passengers getting subjected to some biological agent that causes the flesh to melt off their bones. From there, a crazy scientist is introduced, as well as an attractive federal agent and Joshua Jackson. I’m not a fan of Jackson and I don’t think I ever will be.

In the world of Fringe, brains can be hacked into using the electricity of brain waves, death does not mean that people are completely dead (can we really believe that the woman’s boyfriend, who was revealed to be a bad guy in the first episode, won’t return from the dead?) and women can give birth to a full-grown man who dies of old age an hour after being born. Behind it all: a company of great respect, or a government, or something else entirely. We know that Fox wants several seasons of this show, and clearly what we’re seeing here is only the beginning. It’s intriguing stuff.

Still, I’m on the fringe about Fringe. It’s entertaining and works, but it isn’t a great show. It’s no X-Files, that’s for sure, no matter how hard it wants to be. For starters, the characters aren’t particularly interesting or likable, save for John Noble, who plays the senile scientist who holds many of the answers the other protagonists are seeking. Anna Torv, who plays Agent Dunham, is attractive but a bit too mannish for her own good; in this day and age, they want to make her beautiful, sensitive and tough all at the same time, but she can only switch from one mode to the next, rather than embrace all of her character’s attributes and take true advantage of them. I expect this to be fleshed out in time, but Scully she is not. And if she’s not Scully, Joshua Jackson is surely not Mulder, as he seems to be around to add a “name” to the cast, throw in some pretty bad sarcastic one-liners and prove he can have a sustainable career beyond “Dawson’s Creek.” The dynamic between the two is stale and hardly captivating.

The show has a nice, glossy feel to it, but it’s almost too glossy at times. The direction and editing is also a little sloppy, as if the crew got 95% complete and then let their kids do the rest. It’s hard to be specific, but so far the show has failed to build tension or mystery despite the story arc that makes such a thing so easily attainable. Compared to Lost, for example, it fails to keep you curious commercial break to commercial break, and that’s a bit of a disappointment.

All in all, Fringe is decent enough that I’m going to continue watching for a while, but right now I don’t know if I’ll make it a season. I have high hopes that as I write this Fox is conducting focus groups to see what they need to do to improve over future episodes, but let’s just hope their tinkering isn’t too late.

At least it’s already better than this year’s X-Files movie.

My contacts over at Electric Artists alerted me to this ridiculously insane event: the

Netflix Movie Watching World Championship. What is the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship, you ask? Well, it’s a laid back event where all you have to do is watch movies, and lots of ‘em.

Easy peesy, you say, while chuckling and saying this is a great way to earn $10,000, a lifetime subscription to Netflix and the first-ever Popcorn Bowl. If you love movies, one can’t possibly think of a better way to make some quick cash.

But wait, there’s more! (said in the tone of voice that Matthew Lillard whines as he reveals the plot to murder teens during Scream) You don’t want to enter this event… at least I hope you don’t. You see… the point of the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship is to beat the world record of straight movie watching, which right now is 120 hours and 23 minutes. 120 hours and 23 fucking minutes. Are you kidding me???

I love watching movies. Absolutely love it. But I would pull my eyes out, slice them up into little pieces and then trickle the shavings back into my gaping, bloody sockets before subjecting myself to anything near that many hours. How or why anyone would want to do this to themselves is beyond me, but

Ashish Sharma of Mathura, India – who will also be competing in the event to defend his title for his country – watched for 120 hours and 23 minutes. Jesus Christ, Allah, Buddah and 1,000 Hindu gods! Let’s through in Ra and Zeus for good measure.

Netflix is also running a Facebook contests for people to submit video applications. I’m told to search for “Netflix Championship” on Facebook, but wasn’t able to find it. The World Championship runs from October 2nd to the 5th, 2008, and participants are not able to sleep or take their eyes off the screen, aside from 10-minute breaks between movies.