Mickey Rourke

I've been a terrible host this week, and I apologize.

Blogging is a very different discipline than just running a website or editing part of a website or even writing a column.  Blogging is a marathon of marathons, and it requires a constant pace, something I'm not used to maintaining.  That's not an excuse or even an explanation... just an observation.  I'm still learning how to keep that rhythm going, and as long as you guys are willing to indulge me a few stumbles, I think I've got it in me to get good at this.

It's been a week of heavy embargoes, so I find myself looking at playing catch-up as I put all of this week's screenings on the back-burner as far as writing about them right now.  We'll be able to discuss some of them soon enough, and until then, there's plenty of other stuff happening.  In fact, skipping Thursday means we've got an almost ridiculous amount of material out there worth digging into, so let's get right to it.

[more after the jump]

Brett Ratner explains to Miley Cyrus exactly why he sees her as the perfect candidate to play Conan

Credit: Michael Simon/MileyCyrus.fr

A few days after I first broke the exclusive story that Brett Ratner was the director of "Conan," he called me at home.  This was when I was still at AICN, towards the end of last year.  The conversation was actually a pretty cordial one, since unlike some, I don't write giant editorials demonizing the guy.  I may not be a huge defender of what he does, either, but I think he gets lumped in with some other filmmakers whose work is much, much worse, and it's a little bit unfair.

Brett Ratner is, more than anything, a talented mimic.  When he made the "Rush Hour" films, he obviously looked at the Hong Kong films of star Jackie Chan and the way those action sequences were built, and he imitated them.  Successfully, too.  When he made "Red Dragon," he drew equal inspiration from Michael Mann's earlier film of the same book and Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning "Silence Of The Lambs."  A lot of people seem to like "Red Dragon," so again... it seems to have worked for him.  With "X-Men: The Last Stand," he built off the already-established world that Bryan Singer spent two movies defining, and I think he made a film that's about on par with the first "X-Men," all things considered.

So if someone else sets up the template, Ratner's a guy who can come in and make a slick, mainstream film that will fairly accurately reproduce that template.  And that's not a slam.  That's just an observation about what his strengths are.  I don't think he's got much of a voice on his own as a filmmaker, but that's not a huge sin.  I don't think Brett Ratner ever tried to sell anyone on the idea of himself as a starving indie artist.

[more after the jump]

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel commit crimes against the music of Rush in 'I Love You, Man'

Credit: Paramount Pictures

I had a chance to see "I Love You, Man" at this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon, and although it's not a Judd Apatow production, I guarantee a lot of people will think it is.  It's actually written and directed by John Hamburg, whose best credit before this was the underrated and underseen "Safe Men" with Sam Rockwell and Paul Giamatti.  The Apatow confusion will probably result from the presence of both Paul Rudd and Jason Segel in the film, as well as a general bromance tone that the Apatow films have mined so successfully the last few years.

I liked the film a lot, and I think it benefits from a really engaging chemistry between Rudd and Segel.  They've appeared in a few other films together, but this time, they're the whole show.  It's all about their relationship and the way it impacts Rudd's life.  Rudd plays a guy who has always been "the boyfriend," moving from one relationship right into another to such an extent that he really doesn't have any guy friends.  He's just better at talking to women, and they love him.

[more after the jump]

'Friday the 13th'

Credit: Warner Bros.

I count six films coming out today, between wide and limited releases, and the big boy on the block is obviously "Friday the 13th."  It's not your only choice, though, so let's review what else you'll see if you venture out to the theaters this weekend.

"Friday the 13th"

Marcus Nispel last collaborated with the guys at Platinum Dunes when they decided to ruin "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" a few years back.

Oh, I'm sorry.  I meant remake.

I guess you can tell I'm not a fan of what they cooked up that time.  So why would I expect anything different this time?  After all, these movies are all the same, right?  Only... they're not.  The original Hooper "Chainsaw" is a masterwork of subtlety, a movie that makes you imagine all its worst moments, a fairly bloodless affair that convinces you by the end that you've looked right into the mouth of Hell, captured by accident by cameras.  Nothing about the original felt like a "movie" in any typical sense, and that was its appeal.  Nispel's remake is an overly literal dunder-headed steroid-soaked version of the first film, and it gets wrong everything that the first film did right.

[more after the jump]

This morning's Morning Read got sacrificed to (A) my "Lost" recap, which you should go check out, (B) some computer issues, and (C) today's meeting and movie schedule.

My apologies, and I'll try to offer an Afternoon Read when I'm back at the house but before I have to leave again.  If it doesn't work out, then you'll just get a wave of stuff this evening that will be worth reading, and we'll be back on-schedule for tomorrow's Morning Read.

Harrison Ford in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'

Credit: Paramount

If it's not one thing, it's another, right?  Yesterday, my only concern was the health of my youngest son as we took him in for some minor surgery.  Everything went fine, but now I've got a nasty deep lung cough going which knocked me out earlier than normal last night.  Serves me right for burning the candle at both ends as hard as I have been.

Still, lots of ground to cover today.  I've got some video interviews I'll be posting right after The Morning Read, so we should get moving if everything's going to get done in a timely manner, eh?

Have you seen the three new teaser posters that we put up for "Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince"?  Striking.  I'm very interested to see what the IMAX 3D version of this film's going to look like this summer... that final sequence from "Order Of The Phoenix" showed some real promise when I saw it presented that way, and I haven't heard yet what the details are about this summer's film and how they're using the format.  Will it be like OOTP, with one major sequence in 3D?  Or will we see a more significant portion of the film handled that way this time?

[more after the break]

Chances are, even if she shows up in 'Wolverine,' Storm won't be in the form fans recognize

Credit: Marvel

I've been getting a barrage of mail today from people asking me to weigh in on the latest rumbles from the post-production process on "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."  Seems there is a piece of an interview that went up over at Widescreen Vision, which appears to be a foreign DVD site, where Lauren Shuler-Donner said that Storm's cameo had been cut from the film.  Evidently, she showed up in a scene set in her village when she was very young.  Shuler-Donner also referred to the film as "waaaay under two hours."

Neither of those statements appears to be accurate at the moment.  The movie's current running time (and keep in mind, they are in post right now, mixing the reels, tweaking the ending, and things are still in flux to some extent) is pretty much right at two hours.  Maybe a few minutes under.  But there is a strong chance the Storm scene has made it back into the film, according to my source, as one of the many last-minute changes that director Gavin Hood has made while working with producers to nail the film down.

[more after the jump]

Melanie Laurent has some questions for a Nazi soldier in Quentin Tarantino's 'Inglorious Basterds'

Credit: The Weinstein Company/Universal

I'm not sure how long this morning's Morning Read is going to be.  I'm preparing it a little earlier than normal since my youngest son, Allen, is having his tongue operated on this morning at 7:00 AM, and I need to post this before we leave the house.  It's a minor thing, but it's still enough to keep my wife and I on edge until we see how things turn out.  It's been something we've been trying to schedule for a while, so it's nice that we'll finally have it out of the way.

The first big piece of news today, of course, is that we're about to see the first trailer for Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds," and there's a quick tease for the premiere of that trailer already online.  Holy cow.  That monologue of Pitt's is the reason I bet he took the project... it's that good a monologue, and I'm not at all surprised to see the trailer use it as the spine on which the footage hangs.  I'm dying to get a look at the entire trailer, and also to read the set visit report that Harry Knowles is going to publish at some point over at Ain't It Cool.  He just spent five days on-set, and I'm willing to bet he'll have all sorts of new info about the film to drop on readers as soon as he gets the go-ahead to publish.  If you want to see the tease in HD, YouTube's got it.

[more after the jump]

Shia LaBeouf faces down a new Decepticon threat in "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen"

Credit: Paramount Pictures/Dreamworks

UPDATE:  I should probably read Michael Bay's personal website, since he revealed this information about a week ago, before the Super Bowl.   Consider it confirmed:  Bay's using one Bay film to sell another, and you can check it out starting Friday.

Sources have revealed to HitFi x today that the new teaser trailer for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will be in theaters on Friday, and that your best bet for seeing the trailer will be in front of the new remake of "Friday the 13th" that's opening nationwide.

That's cool.  "Friday" is a lot of fun, and the place you want to see a trailer like this for the first time is in a packed theater with a lot of fans who are pumped up and ready to cheer.

So what can you expect?  Are we going to see this mysterious "Fallen" in the trailer?  Are we going to finally learn what this installment in the series is about?  Or are we just going to see a whoooooole lot of stuff blowing up.

It is, after all, Michael Bay.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that what we'll see will be a larger, crazier version of the Super Bowl spot that aired last weekend. 

In case you missed that one, check it out in all its HD glory right after the jump...

Joel and the 'Bots, ready to mock, in Shout! Factory's fourteenth 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' DVD collection

Credit: Shout! Factory/Best Brains, Inc.

Okay, so that's the last time we skip a week on this column.  Seriously.  There are so many titles to discuss this week as a result that it's forced me to realize that there have to be fundamental changes to the way I do this particular feature here.  I think instead of trying to write one glib paragraph about each and every title, I need to focus on what's worth your time and mine on DVD each week. 

After all, there are entire websites dedicated to release dates for both regular DVD and BluRay, so you don't really need me to put up a list of every single title here.  What I'd like to do is pick a handful of titles each week to emphasize... the things you absolutely need to know are coming, and then include at the end a simple list of what I'll be adding to my own shelf for review and for pleasure.  I'll be working on the new format for next time, since it was the preparation of this article that made me realize how I think I can do this better.  That's not to say today's piece is bad... it's just endless.  You'll see.

I love how quick people are to declare DVD dead and to say that the industry is folding.  I've read at least a half-dozen trend articles in the last month all but declaring video-on-demand to be the only game in town.

Nonsense.

[more after the jump]