Month: March 2010

Categories
Movies

Make it funnier than the last one!!!

Kal Penn Abandons Obama To Smoke Pot During Christmas
Weíve known a new Harold & Kumar movie was coming for awhile now, but the big question hanging over A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas was whether theyíd be able to get Kal Penn involved since, Kal (who plays Kumar) quit acting about a year ago to work for Obama at the Whitehouse. Even though Pennís best known for playing a lovable stoner, the guy actually doesnít smoke weed at all and heís really more into politics than tasty, tiny burgers. Well, he was for a year anyway.
Now heís going back to the world of irresponsible drug use on screen. Deadline confirms that heís leaving his position as the Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement to co-star with John Cho in A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. And…get ready for this…Warner Bros. is considering releasing it in 3D and plan to start shooting this summer for an R-rated holiday release in 2011 or 2012.

Categories
DVD & Blu-ray

It should look and sound awesome!!!

Beauty And The Beast will sparkle like a diamond this fall
Walt Disney Home Entertainment has announced a Diamond Edition release for their animated feature Beauty And The Beast, bringing the film to Blu-Ray Disc for the first time.
Set in and around a quaint French village during the late 18th century, ìBeauty and the Beastî follows the fantastic adventures of Belle, a bright and beautiful young woman who finds escape from her ordinary life, and the advances of a boorish suitor, Gaston, by reading books. Meanwhile, off in a castle in the distance, a cruel young prince is cast under the spell of an enchantress who turns him into a tormented beast, while transforming his servants into animated household objects. In order to remove the curse, the Beast must discover a true love who will return his affection before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose. When Belleís inventor father stumbles upon the Beastís castle and is taken prisoner, Belle comes to the rescue and agrees to take her fatherís place. With the help of the castleís enchanted staff, she sees beneath the Beastís exterior and discovers the heart and soul of a human prince.
Arriving for the first time on home video since 2003, this high definition version will arrive on 3 discs, offering up the movie itself in a newly restored 1080p high definition transfer that presents the film in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio, complemented by a DTS 7.1 HD Master Audio track. The Fast-Play enabled disc will also offer hours of additional viewing experiences that include Behind-the-scenes Features, Deleted Scenes, Enhanced Music Tracks, Immersive Games and a whole lot more.
Mark your calendars! ìBeauty And The Beastî will arrive in high definition on October 5. A 2-disc DVD version will also arrive seven weeks later, on November 23.

Categories
Comics

Dammit!!! My bid was $1.4!!

Superman comic book nets $1.5M
NEW YORK – The record price for a comic book, already broken twice this year, has been shattered again.
A copy of the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1 sold Monday for $1.5 million on the auction website ComicConnect.com. The issue, which features Superman’s debut and originally sold for 10 cents, is widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books.
The same issue sold in February for $1 million, though that copy wasn’t in as good condition as the issue that sold Monday. That number was bested just days later when a 1939 comic book featuring Batman’s debut sold for $75,000 more at an auction in Dallas.
There are about 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 believed to be in existence but only a handful in good condition. The issue that sold Monday was rated slightly higher than the one that sold in February; it had been tucked inside an old movie magazine for years before being discovered.
The issue was bought from a private collector and then sold by Stephen Fishler and Vincent Zurzolo, the co-owners of ComicConnect.com. It was bought minutes after being posted Monday at the asking price of $1.5 million by “a hardcore comic book fan,” Fishler said.
“There’s been a lot of attempts to acquire this book over the last 15 years,” he said. “The recent activity, I guess, did the trick.”
Fishler speculated that the sudden burst of record-priced sales are due to “pent-up demand.” Issues of such prized comic books rarely become available for purchase. Rarer still are issues in such good condition.
“I can’t imagine another book coming on the market that exists that would top this,” Fishler said. “This may be the final say – at least for the next 10 or 20 years – for a record price of a comic book.”

Categories
Comics

I got the books for my birthday!!!

‘Walking Dead’ comic book headed to AMC network
NEW YORK ñ AMC network says it’s bringing the popular “Walking Dead” comic book to TV as a live-action series set to debut in October.
Created by Robert Kirkman, “The Walking Dead” explores the aftermath of a world overrun by zombies. It follows a group of human survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, who journey in search of a safe home.
AMC announced Monday that the series will begin filming in Atlanta in June. It was initially scheduled for six episodes.
Only Jon Bernthal has been announced for the cast. Among those behind the camera is executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, whose feature credits include “The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “Armageddon.”

Categories
Movies

When he gives me my ten bucks back, then we will be even!!

Battlefield Earth Writer Apologizes And Blames Scientology
A few weeks ago The Razzies voted Battlefield Earth as the worst movie of the decade and the world pretty much responded with a ìno duhî. In fact, even the movieís screenwriter seems to agree and heís responded by apologizing.
Thatís right, he actually feels bad about the part he played in making an epic piece of crap. He could lash out at the world, blame film critics, blame studio marketing, or pretend the movie has fans; but instead J.D. Shapiro has decided to accept reality and face the music in an article posted on NYPost.com, where he says: ìIt wasn’t as I intended — promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.î
Shaprio explains how he came to the project and managed to get the job while wandering the halls of Scientology without actually becoming one of them. He also claims his script was different from what appeared on screen. He says, ìMy script was very, VERY different than what ended up on the screen. My screenplay was darker, grittier and had a very compelling story with rich characters. What my screenplay didn’t have was slow motion at every turn, Dutch tilts, campy dialogue, aliens in KISS boots, and everyone wearing Bob Marley wigs.î
I buy it. There might actually be a decent sci-fi script in there somewhere. Apparently his script went through a lot of rewrites and by the time they were done theyíd changed the entire tone. He blames a lot of on Travolta, refused to make the changes they wanted, and was fired so that they could do it anyway. He also theorizes that a lot of the changes had something to do with notes left by deceased Scientology founder and Battlefield Earth author L. Ron Hubbard, including some strange aversion to the color purple.
So maybe in the midst of all those explanations heís kind of distancing from the movie. But give Shapiro credit, at least heís owning up to how bad his movie is. Thatís increasingly rare in Hollywood. Check out his full apology over at the NY Post.

Categories
Concerts

Wish I could go!!

Them Crooked Vultures map spring North American dates
Them Crooked Vultures have mapped spring dates ahead of and following the band’s upcoming appearance at Southern California’s Coachella Music Festival.
The rock supergroup–Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighers), Joshua Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin)–start the trip April 14 in nearby Los Angeles, about an hour’s drive from the band’s April 16, opening-night appearance at the three-day Coachella event in Indio, CA. The following month brings a slate of Canadian dates, kicking off May 11 in Quebec City, after which the group will finish things up back in the US with a May 18 show in Chicago.
The schedule is included below. For additional information on pre-sales, sign up for the Them Crooked Vultures newsletter at the band’s website.
The group continues to tour in support of its self-titled debut album, which surfaced in November, debuting at No. 12 on The Billboard 200 with sales of 70,000 copies its first week in stores.
The band recently confirmed to UK newspaper The Sun that it had begun planning a follow-up album. “I felt we’ve only just started to pick up steam. Why would we want to stop now?” Homme told the newspaper.
Both Homme and Grohl have announced impending new activity with their main musical projects following their TCV-related commitments, with Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age lining up August European dates and Grohl’s Foo Fighters planning to enter a recording studio with Butch Vig later this year to begin work on a new studio album.
TOUR DATES
April 2010
14 – Los Angeles, CA – Club Nokia
16 – Indio, CA – Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
17 – Las Vegas, NV – The Joint
19 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium
May 2010
11 – Quebec City, Quebec – Pavillion de la Jeunesse
12 – Montreal, Quebec – CEPSUM Stadium
13 – Ottawa, Ontario – Scotia Place
15 – Toronto, Ontario – Air Canada Centre
16 – Windsor, Ontario – Colosseum at Caesars
17 – Indianapolis, IN – The Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
18 – Chicago, IL – Aragon Ballroom

Categories
Music

I love both bands equally!!

Dixie Chicks Duo Does Double Duty As Court Yard Hounds
Sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire are figuring out how to be both Court Yard Hounds and Dixie Chicks during the coming months.
The Dixie duo will be releasing their self-titled debut as Court Yard Hounds on May 4 and plan to tour in support of it. But the Chicks, which have been on hiatus since touring to support 2006’s Grammy Award-winning “Taking the Long Way,” have announced an eight-date stadium run in June with the Eagles. Robison and Maguire tell Billboard.com they don’t think the Dixie Chicks shows will hamper Court Yard Hounds’ rollout.
“One had nothing to do with the other,” Robison explains. “When (the Eagles shows) came up we were in the middle of planning promotion for (Court Yard Hounds), and we were like, ‘Is this going to derail us?’ But at the same time we were so excited to do it because of the opportunity it represents. And it answers the biggest question, the elephant in the room, which is ‘Have the Dixie Chicks broken up?’ To us it’s almost the perfect, ‘Shut up! Stop asking! Believe us when we say we’re still together, we’re just not working right now.` So it just kind of helped us do that.”
Court Yard Hounds — which was born last year after third Chick Natalie Maines decided she wasn’t ready to return to the group yet — played several shows at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, where the 12-track album was recorded at Maguire’s home studio. “It was a big leap of faith,” she says of the project. “We’ve always been part of a band, even when we were kids, not just us two. There’s always been somebody in between us, and now I turn (looks left) and I’m like, ‘Oh, hi. That’s my sister!’ It’s like we’re getting to know each other in a different way.”
Robison wrote all but one of the songs on “Court Yard Hounds,” which the duo co-produced with Jim Scott and features contributions by Lloyd Maines, Natalie’s father, and a duet with Jakob Dylan (“See You in the Spring”). Court Yard Hounds are booked for a June 18 appearance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and will play on some of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair dates during the summer, and more dates will be announced in the near future. Meanwhile, Robison and Maguire plan for the group to be a going concern parallel to the Dixie Chicks and have enough additional material written during the first album sessions to make for a good start on the next album.
“We’re ready to do the next record,” Maguire says. “We have more repertoire; we had, like 20 songs. We just hope the songs resonate with people so they want to hear them in years to come. That’s always the goal, that you’re making something that lives for a really long time and that people want to hear more of.”

Categories
Awards

Pick me!! Pick me!!!!!

Fans can choose nominees for MTV Movie Awards
LOS ANGELES ñ Film fans will choose the nominees and winners of the 2010 MTV Movie Awards.
Viewers of the irreverent awards show can log on to movieawards.mtv.com beginning at noon EDT Monday and submit their choice nominees in 13 categories. Submissions will be accepted until April 9.
Any 2009 film or performance is eligible for consideration in categories including best villain, best fight and best kiss.
MTV added three new categories to the competition this year, and the titles of two are so racy they can’t be printed here. The two unmentionables are action- and horror-related. The third is best global superstar, and for the first time in MTV Movie Awards history, voting in that category will be open worldwide.
Last year’s new category, best WTF moment, is returning for the 2010 awards.
Other categories include best performance, best breakout star and best movie.
Fans will also pick the winners of the show’s golden popcorn trophy by voting online from May 11 to June 5.
The 19th annual MTV Movie Awards will be presented June 6 at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Voting for the top prize, best movie, will remain open throughout the live show.

Categories
Games

Get ready!!

Music video games primed for new dance revolution
DENVER (Billboard) ñ Music games are about to come full circle, with the next stage of the struggling genre coming from the familiar category of dance music, driven by new motion-capture controllers expected to hit the market this fall.
Microsoft plans to have its Project Natal motion-capture game controller available for sale in time for the holiday season. The device is a camera that recognizes user gestures and body contortions as a means of controlling gameplay. Sony’s Move, announced at the Game Developers Conference in March, is more like Nintendo’s Wii system, with a controller that users hold in their hands, a sensor to track its movement and a camera to project it all into the game.
A host of game developers, including “Rock Band” developer Harmonix, is expected to release games that use these new motion-capture controllers as early as this year, although most titles aren’t expected until 2011. Sources say they expect developers to unveil some of these new titles at the E3 video-game conference in June.
Dance-based games will feature heavily in that rollout and should provide a much-needed shot in the arm to the music-game market. Sales in the category plummeted last year as interest in the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” franchises faded. The problem, according to Jesse Divnich, vice president of analyst services at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, is that there wasn’t any innovation in features within the genre despite a flood of new content. And content, Divnich says, will sustain a franchise for only so long.
The precursor to music and rhythm games like “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” was Konami’s “Dance Dance Revolution,” the hit arcade game that later migrated to home gaming platforms. The game relied on an exclusive floor-pad peripheral, which underwent little evolution, much like the guitar and drum controllers of “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”
“It was massively popular, but it didn’t really reach a mainstream audience like ‘Guitar Hero,'” Divnich says. “Project Natal and Sony’s Move will allow the dance category to reach a broader audience … This could be a billion-dollar category over the next 24 months.”
NON-EXCLUSIVE CONTROLLERS
Unlike the “Dance Dance Revolution” floor pad — or the “DJ Hero” turntable or the band kit for “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” — these new controllers aren’t exclusive to any one franchise. That means developers are free to create games using their functionality rather than developing exclusive peripherals. Analysts expect between 10 percent and 20 percent of existing console owners to buy a Natal or Move device, and both Microsoft and Sony are expected to bundle the controllers with new consoles shortly after their release.
A recent survey from Game Informer on the state of music games found that readers were most interested in “different music genres” (35.7 percent) and “more realistic gameplay and peripherals” (32.3 percent) when asked which features in a new music game would excite them most. Dance games based on Project Natal and the Move will feature both.
Current Wii hit “Just Dance” is an early indicator that dance games based on motion controls have great potential. Taking advantage of the Wii’s motion-based controllers — as well as tracks like MC Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This” — “Just Dance” has defied negative reviews to sell more than 850,000 units in the United States since its debut in November, according to NPD Group. In February it was the fourth-best-selling game stateside and the third-ranked game in the United Kingdom.
Moreover, the dance category allows for a broader sampling of music. While “Guitar Hero” and “DJ Hero” focus heavily on the use of specific instruments, dance games can incorporate all manner of musical styles so long as they’re danceable.
“This gives all sorts of different bands the opportunity to get their music into these games,” Wedbush Morgan Securities gaming analyst Michael Pachter says. “Everybody dances. Maybe we suck, but we’ll try it.”
Cynthia Sexton, executive vice president of global brand partnerships at EMI Music — which contributed about half of the 32 songs on the “Just Dance” soundtrack after submitting more than 200 for consideration — says dance games are already starting to pay off.
“For me as a label person and for our artists, it just means more revenue,” she says. “I won’t tell you what the check looked like, but it was very, very healthy. And I look forward to the next game, whatever that is.”

Categories
Movies

I saw – and loved – “Hot Tub Time Machine”!!!

‘Dragon’ stokes up box office with $43.3M debut
LOS ANGELES ñ “How to Train Your Dragon” breathed a bit of box-office fire with a $43.3 million opening weekend and a No. 1 debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Distributed by Paramount, the DreamWorks Animation adventure came in well behind the studio’s last cartoon comedy, “Monsters vs. Aliens,” which opened with $59.3 million over the same weekend last year.
With strong reviews and enthusiastic responses from viewers in exit polls, DreamWorks expects “How to Train Your Dragon” to have more staying power than “Monsters vs. Aliens” in subsequent weekends, though.
“People just love the film, so we’re really anticipating we’ll benefit from strong word of mouth going forward,” said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks.
“How to Train Your Dragon,” featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera in the tale of a Viking youth who tames a fire-breathing reptile, did outperform some other recent animated movies, among them “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” which opened with $30.3 million last September.
Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which had been No. 1 the previous three weekends, slipped to second place with $17.3 million. It raised its domestic total to $293.1 million and its worldwide haul to $656 million.
John Cusack’s raunchy comedy “Hot Tub Time Machine” had a lukewarm No. 3 debut of $13.7 million. Released by MGM, the movie features Cusack as part of a group of losers hurled back by a time-traveling hot tub to the 1980s, where they have a chance to set their lives right.
“How to Train Your Dragon” pulled in 68 percent of its revenue from 3-D presentation, another triumph for the digital technology that allows theaters to show movies in three dimensions.
Yet it also highlights the limits on how much 3-D traffic theaters are equipped to handle. “How to Train Your Dragon” took over the bulk of 3-D theaters at the expense of Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland,” because the roughly 4,000 screens capable of showing digital 3-D movies is not enough to handle two full wide-release films at the same time.
“There’s no question there are not enough screens yet,” said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. “People who want to seek out ‘Alice’ in 3-D may have to travel a mile or two more than they used to. … It’s competition. I’m used to it.”
After a phenomenal 15-week run, James Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar” lost most of its remaining 3-D theaters to “How to Train Your Dragon.” The 20th Century Fox release finally fell out of the top 10, taking in $2 million to finish at No. 11, raising its domestic total to $740.4 million. Worldwide, the movie has taken in $2.7 billion.
Another new 3-D release, Warner Bros. action tale “Clash of the Titans,” arrives Friday. While the success of 3-D movies has driven theater chains to speed up their conversion to systems that can project digital 3-D films, a screen shortage will remain for the near future.
“There is a limited amount of shelf space. It’s like a traffic jam at the multiplex for these 3-D movies,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. “It’s a high-class problem to have, but it’s still a problem.”
Films playing in 3-D have topped the box office for nine of 13 weekends this year, Dergarabedian said.
Overall revenues were down for the first time in a month. Domestic receipts totaled $127 million, off 13 percent from the same weekend last year, according to Hollywood.com.
For the year, revenues are at $2.6 billion, 8.8 percent ahead of last year.
Results for “Hot Tub Time Machine” came in on the low end of distributor MGM’s expectations.
“It’s not great, but it’s OK,” said Erik Lomis, head of distribution for MGM. “It had a lot of Internet buzz, so we thought it might come in a little bit higher.”
In narrower release, Sony Pictures Classics’ sex thriller “Chloe” opened with $1 million in 350 theaters, averaging a weak $2,863 a cinema. That compared to an average of $10,678 in 4,055 theaters for “How to Train Your Dragon” and $4,956 in 2,754 theaters for “Hot Tub Time Machine.”
Directed by Atom Egoyan, “Chloe” stars Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried in a drama about a woman who hires a prostitute to tempt her husband and find out if he’s cheating on her.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. “How to Train Your Dragon,” $43.3 million.
2. “Alice in Wonderland,” $17.3 million.
3. “Hot Tub Time Machine,” $13.7 million.
4. “The Bounty Hunter,” $12.4 million.
5. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” $10 million.
6. “She’s Out of My League,” $3.5 million.
7. “Green Zone,” $3.3 million.
8. “Shutter Island,” $3.2 million.
9. “Repo Men,” $3 million.
10. “Our Family Wedding,” $2.2 million.