With Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich directed the year-to-date's top-grossing film, as well as the highest-grossing animated film of all time. And he's ready for a vacation. But first, he's got to talk to as about the Toy Story 3 Blu-ray Combo Pack (out today), which offers a gorgeous (albeit two-dimensional) version of this terrific comedy-adventure, as well as extras that will keep fans both young and old enrapt. (And you know you cried during the last 20 minutes; don't front like you didn't. I refuse to believe that even Armond White didn't weep at this film's dénouement.)
more »
While Edgar Wright's criminally under-loved Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (out November 9 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment) pushed a lot of envelopes -- particularly in marrying cinema to video games, which until now has been, at best, a testy relationship -- it is, at its heart, a triumph-of-the-nerd movie. Scott (Michael Cera) may be an awkward and shy guy (in a band named for a Super Mario reference), but if he has to defeat the seven evil exes of the beautiful Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in order to win her as his girlfriend -- then dude, that's just what he'll do.
more »
As with most things in life, how much you enjoy Tonight: 4 Decades of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Respond2 Entertainment) will depend a great deal on what you're expecting from it.
more »
Assuming you've been able to shield your children from the Hostel and Saw movies on DVD (not to mention the scarier selections in Movieline's Halloween 25), there are plenty of great films out there that provide fun scares while remaining safely kid-appropriate. Before you know it, your little moppets will be adolescents who will be completely jaded by the splatteriest of gorefests, so enjoy this magical moment before their innocence is forever shattered with these flicks that will entertain the whole family.
more »
Two of this week's classic TV releases on DVD truly span the spectrum from sublime to ridiculous, but they also whet the appetite for the many boob-tube treasures that still aren't available to a wide audience. Which long-forgotten television series should wind up with their own collector's edition boxed sets? Click ahead to find out.
more »
To say I hated The Clone Wars film that was released in theaters in 2008 would be a bit of an oversimplification: I despised that film with the intensity of a thousand suns. I remember being so livid that I wanted to write a letter to the creators that just read, "E Chuta" (which, I know, would have been rude). "This is everything that I have feared in a Star Wars film," was my take at the time; particularly berating the character of Ahsoka Tano: "The new, hip, cool, sassy, spunky, teenage female sidekick -- who refers to Anakin as 'Sky Guy.'" Since then I've sought to avoid The Clone Wars television series... until last night's second season Blu-ray marathon. And strangely enough, I liked it -- quite a bit, actually.
more »
Singularly eccentric filmmakers making flat-out bonkers movies has led to a treasure-trove of films that are so uniquely awful in an outsider-art kind of way that audiences just can't get enough: The Room, Dangerous Men, Birdemic, After Last Season, and -- if early reviews are to be believed -- the recently released N-Secure have viewers scratching their heads and howling with laughter at the same time.
more »
Today is the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future. Sort of. I know, I know -- you're thinking, Didn't we just go through this back in July on Twitter? Wasn't it all a hoax? Well, yes and no. That's the problem with Back to the Future trilogy: There are so many dates involved with the three films -- as well as so many claims of what turn out to be false prophesies -- that it can all get a bit confusing. This calls for a timeline.
more »
This week's extras-laden Blu-ray releases of Moulin Rouge! and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (both from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) spotlight how quickly the shocking can become acceptable. Rocky Horror went from being a scandalously successful and polymorphously perverse midnight movie that, 35 years later, can now be performed in an only slightly sanitized version during the family hour on Glee. (It's also the subject of remake rumors, but that's just too disheartening to contemplate.)
more »
This week's release of a remastered The Opposite Sex from Warner Archive -- not to mention the campy glow of a certain Cher film on the horizon -- serves as a potent reminder that we can only actively disdain so many movies at any given time.
more »
"My movie is not about Vietnam," Francis Coppola once famously noted about his epic Apocalypse Now. "My movie is Vietnam." And now you, too, can have Vietnam -- or, rather, Apocalypse Now -- in your own home with more bells and whistles than ever thanks to this week's new three-disc Full Disclosure Edition, which boasts stunning Blu-ray presentations of both the movie and its longer "Redux" re-release, the feature documentary Hearts of Darkness, new interviews with actor Martin Sheen and screenwriter John Milius, a never-before-seen Roger Ebert interview with Coppola from the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, the 1938 Orson Welles Mercury Theatre radio production of Heart of Darkness, and scads more goodies. On the eve of this new set's release, Coppola spoke with Movieline about making movies like Apocalypse Now in the pre-CGI era -- and packaging them today for home video.
more »
One of the most profitable fields in the movies today -- and thus the most competitive -- is feature animation. Ever since Disney's animation division came roaring back 21 years ago with The Little Mermaid, cartoon have reaped big bucks for studios, not only at the box office but also through merchandising, DVDs, spinoffs, theme-park attractions, and other ancillary goodies. All of which brings me to a big question: How the heck could Disney let Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois leave the fold?
more »
When John Cameron Mitchell set out to make his explicit opus Shortbus, he talked about wanting to make a movie where the sex scenes revealed something about the characters and advanced the plot, the way a song-and-dance number does in a smart musical. Given the history of American pornography, Mitchell's goals were both ambitious and almost unprecedented, but European directors have been using explicit sexuality to drive the story (and, admittedly, a boner or two) for decades.
more »
You can't scan through the news these days without hearing about another tragic teen suicide and the relentless bullying that prompted it. But sadly, this is anything but a new phenomenon -- statistically, queer teenagers have always been more likely to end their lives than their hetero counterparts, and fulminating evangelists blather on about the horrors of the "lifestyle choice," remaining blithely ignorant of the fact that their bigoted sermonizing is very much part of the problem. Some interesting films have presented anti-gay bullies, and -- true to what we know about the most vocal homophobes -- it's the bullies, and not necessarily their victims, who have the issues.
more »
The cotton-white shag carpets, the eight-inch-wide dinner jacket lapels, the nightclub bongo jazz, whiskey decanters in every room, sideburns on every over-tanned skull, Vaseline on every camera lens -- the 1975 of Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough is where old Burbank movie agents go when they die. Finally out on DVD from Olive Films, this smelly Persian cat of a movie was a middle-aged sensation in its day, which may help us understand a few things, like why Richard Nixon was elected President. Twice.
more »
