HARRISON FORD IN EARLY TALKS FOR ‘BLADE RUNNER’ SEQUEL

If Ford plays Deckard 30 years in the future, that would answer the question of whether or not he’s a replicant. Hard not to be excited about this, especially if Ridley Scott returns. There are so many possibilities, so many places to go with the character and the world.

Knowing Hollywood, they will muck it up immediately by casting Shia LaBeouf, or something.

HUGE NEWS:  VERIZON, REDBOX TO LAUNCH STREAMING SERVICE THIS YEAR

One cannot overstate how big of a deal this is or how symbolic it is within the context of Hollywood standing at the station not even knowing they’ve missed the train:

The joint venture plans to introduce the product portfolio in the second half of 2012. It will offer subscription services and more in an easy-to-use, flexible and affordable service that will allow all consumers across the U.S. to enjoy the new and popular entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the media and devices they prefer. Additional brand and product information will be revealed in the coming months.

Redbox understands that New Product is no longer king. Hollywood can’t hold Redbox or the customers hostage by withholding this product because the product is so unappealing. People want the value and convenience of streaming — and people will watch whatever is provided via streaming.  The bottom line is that Hollywood can either go to where the customers are (and are headed) and try to better monetize that reality, or they can continue to pretend they hold all the cards with their lousy product.

Everyone complains about Netflix Streaming lacking in product, which I find absurd. What’s happening is that my wife and I (and, I think, millions of others) are discovering programming to enjoy on streaming we might have otherwise dismissed. Right now, she’s hip deep in British television imports and I’m finding that without commercials, all kinds of Discovery Channel programming is truly addicting.

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Hollywood spends a ton of money for these coveted advertising slots, which are even more expensive than advertising during Hollywood’s big night to shine, the Academy Awards. But that’s because almost a hundred million people watch the Super Bowl and only about a third as many watch the Oscars.

America loves the NFL, Hollywood not so much.

Hollywood does, however, whip out the testosterone for the Super Bowl.

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Uber-producer David O’ Selznick would bring director Alfred Hitchcock to America from England, team him up with one of the most popular novels of the day, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 phenom, “Rebecca,” and win that year’s Academy Award for Best Picture (Selznick’s second in a row after a little programmer called “Gone With the Wind.”) Not a bad start.  Of course, it helps if you make an amazing motion picture in the process, which is exactly what “Rebecca” is.

Our heroine is never named other than with the pronoun “I,” and is portrayed by the then somewhat-unknown Joan Fontaine (sister of Olivia De Havilland), who offers up one of history’s most impressive “arrivals” as a full-blown movie star. Our heroine is an innocent who’s terribly vulnerable and a newlywed very much in love with her husband, Maxim (Laurence Olivier), a deeply troubled man still working through the death of his first wife.

Swept off her feet, this orphan who made un undignified living as a paid companion and doormat to an insufferable woman, is suddenly thrust into a world she never knew existed. Maxim is incredibly wealthy and sole-owner of Manderley, a breathtakingly gothic estate populated with servants and also the intimidating and suffocating shadow of Rebecca, Maxim’s dead wife.

It’s within this shadow that the new mistress of the house, already a fragile flower, wilts even further. Rebecca’s hold on the living is supernatural and the primary keeper of that flame is housekeeper Miss Mrs. Danvers (an unforgettable Judith Anderson), who wields the memory of her former mistress like a psychological club to break down her “replacement.” Miss Danvers is destined to succeed until a shipwreck uncovers truths that will either result in the destruction of all involved or their salvation.

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To celebrate its centennial, over the course of 2012, Universal Studios will release 13 of their masterpieces on Blu-ray after a full restoration. Titles include, “The Birds” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “All Quiet On the Western Front,” “Buck Privates, “Jaws,” “The Sting,” and “Schindler’s List.”  Appropriately enough, this campaign starts off with that most American of films, director Robert Mulligan’s stunning 1962 adaptation of novelist Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Set in the Depression-era South in 1936, our narrator (Kim Stanley) is Scout Finch (a remarkable Mary Badham), who tells the story as an adult looking back on three defining summers of her childhood as an impoverished tomboy who lives in a small town with her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford) and their father Atticus (Gregory Peck), a lawyer and widower in his middle age.

The story’s themes are as rich as they come. We see everything through the eyes of the children and though they don’t realize it at the time, this is when they lose their innocence — thanks to events that involve the very worst kind of bigotry, the kind that leads to death and murder. But they will also learn to overcome their own childish prejudices when, as children will, a man they turned into a boogeyman turns out to be just the opposite.

For his portrayal of the quietly heroic Finch, Peck would win one of the biggest no-brainer Oscars in Hollywood history. In the special features, Peck’s co-stars and others involved in the film’s production (he would remain friends with many of them, and Harper Lee, until his death in 2003) compliment the actor by saying he won an Oscar playing himself. That might well be the case, but possessing certain qualities and having the talent required to portray them on screen are two entirely different things. 

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I love Ellen DeGeneres. She’s America’s kid sister.

Daily Caller:

Ellen DeGeneres is the new face of JCPenney, and one conservative group is not happy about it.

One Million Moms, an organization whose goal is to stop the exploitation of children by the entertainment media, is hoping to convince JC Penney to fire her for being gay, the Inquisitr reports.

The group argues that the retailer’s decision to hire the openly gay talk show host and comedienne will backfire because most of their customers are from “traditional families.”

I find Ellen’s politics obnoxious but doubt she’ll be advocating for abortion, Obama, and same-sex marriage in these JCPenney ads.

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THE ARTIST STAR’S RACY ‘LES INFIDELES’ POSTERS DRAW COMPLAINTS

JoBlo’s Alex Riviello chimes in:

It’s always amazing to me how a few morally uptight individuals can ruin things for everyone else. Enjoy the posters.

Maybe I’m a prude or just old-fashioned, but men used to reflexively want to defend women, to protect their dignity and honor.

What a con that feminism has made it not only a virtue for women to behave in this fashion, but also for men to wag their fingers at the rest of us for wanting to speak out against women demeaning themselves.

THE UNDERRATED FILMS OF WOODY ALLEN

Other than “What’s up Tiger Lily,” which I’ve always felt was OVERrated — a 3 minute joke taken to feature-length excess, I am in full agreement. I would also add “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” “Another Woman,” “Cassandra’s Dream,” and “Sweet and Lowdown.”

Other overrated titles would most definitely include “Midnight In Paris,” which was nominated for an Oscar this year.  But that probably says more about the state of movies today than anything else.

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As much of the rest of Hollywood dutifully sides with an abortion mill (responsible for killing more unborn women than Stalin), over a respected foundation that has done more to fight breast cancer and save women’s lives than any other, one high-profile star isn’t afraid to swim against these left-wing Tinseltown hordes:

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Ellen Barkin, Roseanne Barr, John Legend, Lance Armstrong, and many others have pledged to not only end their support of Komen, they are also urging others to do the same. But that’s how the left thinks. First off, how dare a private charity make a private decision (so much for “choice”). Secondly, you can’t support both for heaven’s sake, Harvey might not invite you to his next shindig.

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HOLLYWOOD’S REPUBLICAN-BASHING COST THEM SOPA SUPPORT

EXCELLENT op-ed courtesy of THR, one of the few entertainment outlets that doesn’t carry Hollywood’s water:

The two parties reacted very differently. Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, Democrats in Congress (and the administration) were reluctant to oppose the bill outright. The MPAA was not shy about reminding them that Hollywood has been a reliable source of funding for Democratic candidates, and that it would not tolerate defections.

But that very public message also reached another audience: Tea Party conservatives. Most of them had never given a second thought to intellectual property enforcement, but many had drawn support from conservative bloggers. They began to ask why they should risk the ire of their Internet supporters to rescue an industry that was happily advertising how much it hated them. Pretty soon, far more Republicans than Democrats had bailed on SOPA, and the Republican presidential candidates had all come out for what they called “Internet freedom.”

We’re just hating you back, Hollywood. And never forget that you assholes started it.

On principle, most of us opposed SOPA, but sticking it to Hollywood sure was a bonus.

This industry has blown all of its goodwill with 65% of the American people. Why in the word would we lift a finger to help them reap more of the profits they use to insult, ridicule, marginalize, and campaign against us? That would be no different than running to the side of the ACLU, DNC, Politico, Media Matters, or MSNBC.

They sided with the terrorists during the darkest days of the War on Terror, and now they can rot in hell.

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Left-wing operatives, like those who run Politico, are intentionally attempting to create their own reality. In the same way the left turned “30 Rock,” a show that ranked 106 in the ratings last season, into some sort of cultural phenom, the idea here is to push the political and social values of something no one watches into our country’s cultural and media narrative as though it’s something it’s not — popular.

Politico loves Stephen Colbert because Stephen Colbert loves Barack Obama and is waging war against the Right and free speech. America, however, is, to be kind, indifferent to Colbert. 1.44 million viewers and only half that among the 18-49 group, does not make you King of anything.

But Colbert knows how to play the game and understands that if he wants these kinds of hollow accolades and the opportunity to push his left-wing agenda and to have history revised in his favor, he must appeal to the right people, and the right people are not THE people; the right people are the left-wing elites who infest our corrupt media.

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Quick note: For the sake of this review it’s important to explain the world in which “In Time” takes place. The film itself provides details but “The Minutes,” a special feature included with the Blu-ray/DVD set, is all about the origins of this society, so some things you read here come from that.

Director Andrew Niccol’s “In Time” opens with  a lot of promise and no small amount of tension, thanks to a terrific premise. Unfortunately, the narrative sputters and misfires in the second-half, but as a political allegory, by design or accident, we are treated to a damning look at what our culture and country might look like should Obama and his fellow leftists continue to prevail.

The year is 2161 and some years ago, due to fear of over-population, scientists not only discovered a genetic cure for aging, they implanted a clock in the forearm of every newborn that counts down the years, hours, minutes, and seconds you have left before you die. No one ages a day after they turn twenty-five, but once that birthday hits, you’re given a year to live. That is, unless you’re able to earn more time. Where Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives, a working class ghetto called Dayton,  your choices are limited to manual labor, begging, and crime.

Will’s not alone, either. In Dayton, the average person won’t survive the day unless they can earn more time. Here, a cup of coffee costs you four minutes, a bus ride two hours, and the rent a couple of weeks. Time is this nation’s currency, and with the cost of living always going up, it’s a hand-to-mouth existence for the half-million or so residents who live with their mortality constantly hanging over them and in the knowledge that something as mundane as missing a bus can mean you count down to zero and die on the spot.

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MEL GIBSON’S FILM ‘GET THE GRINGO’ BYPASSES THEATERS WITH DIRECTV VOD DEAL

“Get the Gringo” is actually the new title. The film has been advertised as “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

This is a radical move on Gibson’s part. “Get the Gringo’ will never see the inside of a movie theatre (other than some special screenings). Instead, 20 million DirecTV subscribers will have the opportunity to VOD the film for a very reasonable $10.99. Then, later in the year, the film will move to other VOD outlets and Fox will release it on home video.  

The smartest move here is the price point. $10.99 is a very attractive figure for a brand-spanking new Mel Gibson action picture. You’re able to enjoy this in the comfort of your own home with the entire family. Also, the advertising is much cheaper. Everything is done through DirecTV, who has a stake in the success of the film, as opposed to mass media markets.  

While “Margin Call” was also released in theatres, it still managed to gross a very impressive $4 million on VOD while in theatres, and that’s without the attraction of an A-list star in an action flick.

Crunch the numbers. 2 million buys, or 10% of DirecTV subscribers, equals $22 million. Toss in the subsequent VOD release and DVD and what you have here is a potential game changer.

Another brilliant move on Gibson’s part (his Icon produced) was to not allow himself to be put in a position where theatre owners could blackmail him. “Tower Heist” was a theatrical release that wanted to experiment with same-day VOD. Theatre chains freaked and threatened to not screen the film. Universal blinked and that was that.

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You wouldn’t know it to read me, but when it comes to my language regarding movies, I am careful. It’s not that I’m overly enthusiastic, it’s just that I really do believe that many films qualify as a classic, a masterpiece, or an epic. I’m more than willing to concede that my threshold might be lower than some others, and in that respect I may be a little too enthusiastic, but that doesn’t mean I throw those words around carelessly.

Something you almost never hear from me, though,  is “my top 5″  or “my top 10″ or “my top 25.” That description is used for all-time favorites, and represents a pool of about 50 steady titles that, over the years, have fallen in and out of one of those categories. So when I tell you that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 romantic-thriller “Notorious”  has been a perennial top 5 of mine for over two decades now, you understand what this film means to me.

There is no other movie that makes me feel as much as this one does. Thanks to the extraordinary performances of two of the most beautiful people ever to stand before a camera, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann, “Notorious” throws me on an emotional roller coaster of suspense, exhilaration and, most of all, heartache, for the full 101 minutes. And the reasons are many.

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REDBOX VOWS TO ACQUIRE WARNER BROS DVDS ‘THROUGH ALTERNATIVE MEANS’

I love capitalism, and now you get another look into why Hollywood loves Castro and hates liberty:

Looks like Redbox has told Warner Bros to take a hike with its effort to double the waiting period for new rental DVDs to 56 days. When the contract to acquire discs directly from Warner Bros expires today Redbox will “work to provide Warner Brothers’ movies through alternative means[.]” …

(Earlier this morning Walmart agreed to continue housing Redbox kiosks to early 2015.) But Warner Bros also is taking a gamble: There’s nothing to stop Redbox from flooding the market with used Warner Bros DVDs a few weeks after they’re released, when rental demand for the titles lets up. Still, Warner Bros wants to increase the delay before providing discs to low-cost rental companies because it believes that will help to boost sales.

Warners next step is to convince retailers to only sell a limited number of titles to each customer, that way it’s more difficult for Redbox to acquire the number of titles necessary to fill their kiosks. But there are two incredibly stupid points made in this articlee worth pointing out:

Redbox is taking a big risk by choosing to buy Warner Bros discs from outside sources: That could be more costly. What’s more, the company may not be able to buy enough copies of hit films to satisfy its customers[.]

What? A ‘big risk?” As opposed to satisfying NO customers at all by not having any of these titles? But the article’s closer is the real howler:

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Five Best Picture winners in one Blu-ray collection with no shortage of special features is a pretty good deal… if you like the movies. Because I’m a fan of four out five of the titles, this was a real find.

The English Patient (1996)

Director Anthony Minghella’s sweeping WWII romance ranked as #24 in my countdown of the greatest left-wing films of all time:

Filled with poetic dialogue, lush cinematography, some truly extraordinary scenes — such as the sandstorm sequence where Katharine and Laszlo fall in love — and  a charming subplot involving the short-lived but sincere romance between Binoche’s Canadian nurse and Kip (“Lost’s” Naveen Andrews), a brave Indian who defuses bombs, you almost will yourself  not to notice the film’s depraved and shockingly selfish philosophy. The film is seductive, though, and you want to give into it, but in the end the only moral outcome would be to have the cast of “Inglorious Basterds” storm in and beat Laszlo to death with a baseball bat.

If you don’t mind being manipulated by an ingeniously crafted and immoral piece of propaganda (and I don’t), another bonus is the look of the film (the cinematography won an Oscar), which is a jaw-dropper on Blu-ray.

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Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Many will never forgive the fact that director John Madden’s fictionalized account of a passionate but ill-fated love affair between a young, struggling William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes)  and the beautiful young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) who inspires some of his greatest work, beat out Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” for that year’s top Oscar prize.

This might be heresy, but I think the best film won.

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‘THE HELP’ WINS THREE SAG AWARDS, STREEP AND CLOONEY LOSE

This is a good sign for “The Help,” which is a superb film. SAG is one of the most reliable Oscar bellwethers because so much of the Oscar voting pool is made up of actors:

[T]he big winner of the night was Tate Taylor’s The Help, which took home three of the five SAG film acting awards it was up for with Octavia Spencer winning in the Female Actor in a Supporting Role category, followed by Viola Davis taking the Female Actor in a Leading Role award, solidifying her lead over her primary awards season competition Meryl Streep. …

French actor Jean DuJardin pulled an upset himself by taking the SAG Award for Male Actor in a Lead Role for his performance in The Artist over the favorited George Clooney

Because I haven’t seen “The Artist,” or the films for which Clooney and Streep have been nominated, there’s no way for me to judge if this is fair. What I do know is that Clooney’s improved dramatically as an actor over the last decade while Streep’s become a parody of herself, and the snippets I have seen of “The Iron Lady” tell me nothing’s changed.

ANALYST: PAY TV PROVIDERS HAVE ENOUGH MUSCLE TO BLOCK COMPETITION FROM THE WEB

I don’t completely disagree, and there are a few points worth highlighting but also a few to add.

First off, what you’ll read immediately below is why you pay for a ton of crap on cable you don’t watch. Secondly, this is how crap nobody watches stays alive. Finally, and most importantly, this is how a VERY FEW monopolize our popular culture:

Six companies — Disney, News Corp, NBCUniversal, Time Warner, CBS, and Discovery — account for 90% of all viewing hours. They demand that their channels be sold in packages, ”and only that way[.]” …

Well, then what’s to stop an online service from creating a virtual cable company — offering packages of channels via the net but for less than current pay TV providers charge? You’d think there’d be room for someone to do that considering that that consumers pay Comcast about $79 a month for programming that costs the company about $29.

Three reasons follow, and each is valid:

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“It’s almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as being … news!”

The Fox News segment Kermit and Miss Piggy are responding to (in the video below) can be watched here, and you can see it’s a rather innocuous and perfectly valid discussion about the culture. As a response, and nearly a week after the segment aired, the Fox-hating entertainment media (which is all of them) viralized the clip, blew the controversy up into something it really wasn’t, and did so because they find it impossible to turn down an opportunity to prove they’re one of the minions in the club.

What effectively happened, though, is a week-old Fox Business segment was consequently amplified into the news narrative, which turned the new Muppet film into a political and partisan football. Only our wildly out-of-touch entertainment media minions would think this is a good thing, and as a consequence, a well-reviewed film that opened above expectations entered the divisive culture and political wars and didn’t do anywhere near as well at the box office as some had expected and hoped.

That, however, wasn’t the fault of the Muppets.That was the immature, clubby entertainment media. The video below, though, puts the Muppets themselves into this controversy, which will only further alienate a very large segment of their audience:

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The Los Angeles Times (we read it so you don’t have to) is reporting that “The Grey” director, Joe Carnahan, is attached to write and direct a remake of Charles Bronson’s vigilante classic.

As chance would have it, less than 12 hours ago,  I watched a documentary looking back on the “Dirty Harry” films where Carnahan said, and I am paraphrasing, “I’m liberal on a lot of things but very much a law and order right-winger.”

That’s all well and good, but I doubt present-day Hollywood has the maturity to tell this story with the same courage of conviction we saw in director Michael Winner’s 1974 genre-masterpiece. For starters, Paul Kersey’s (The Mighty Charles Bronson) vigilantism is shown to work and is portrayed as a solution to a serious crime problem the ineffectual police and liberal courts can’t solve. For emphasis, there’s a wonderful scene where we see how Kersey’s actions inspire everyday people to finally fight back.

Secondly, the Kersey character (a conscientious objector during the Korean War) is made to see up close and personal the cost of his limousine liberalism and haughty pacifism. Intolerant Hollywood giving a character that kind of arc today is inconceivable. In films like the superb 2007 remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” we’ve seen it. But if you listen to the director’s DVD commentary, you learn it was by accident.

Finally, this first entry in what would become a fantastic five film franchise isn’t like its sequels. Here, Kersey isn’t exacting revenge on the same punks who blew a hole in his family. He’s simply working through his grief and refusing to be a victim through the awesome act of cleaning up the streets and, in the end, he is not at all repentant for his actions.

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If love really meant never having to say you’re sorry, I’d have enough time on my hands to get a PHD.

Yes, the tagline for director Arthur Hiller’s “Love Story” is unforgivably stupid, no question. Almost as bad is Ali McGraw’s performance as the gorgeous but doomed Jennifer. My wife hates this film and MacGraw’s performance so much that she only agreed to screen the Blu-ray with me so that she could delight in Jennifer’s cancerous demise. My wife’s tagline for the film is, “Marrying the studio head means never having to take an acting class.”

So what was it about this fairly mediocre 1970 tear-jerker that made it, not only the highest-grossing film of the year, but also the 6th highest grossing film of all time — the “Titanic” of its day?

Believe it or not, I saw this “chick flick” classic for the first time ever when the Blu-ray screener arrived last week, and thankfully I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit that the story got to me. You can’t disagree with the film’s critics and their many criticisms, but in the end I’m not completely ashamed to admit that Jennifer’s death choked me up and that I found the third act a little gut-wrenching as that reality became increasingly inevitable.

For everything the story does wrong, it does two key things so right that those moments help to overcome the rest. When, in the middle of a perfect day, Jennifer tells her husband, Oliver (Ryan O’Neal), that she has to go to the hospital, it’s a real kick to the gut. Laugh all you want, but just thinking about it gets to me. And then there’s how we learn that she’s died. (No spoiler warning necessary. We’re told Jennifer will die in the opening scene.)

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In Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-magnet, “The Apartment,” winner of Best Picture, Director, Editor, Screenplay and Art Direction, there’s an unforgettable moment about halfway through that perfectly pays off everything that came before and beautifully sets up the unexpected to come.

The Mighty Jack Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, a worker-drone in the Kafkaesque office located on the 17th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper that’s home base for the insurance company Baxter works for and is desperate to get ahead in. With thousands of employees competing for a very few executive positions, Baxter decides to stand out by joining the good-ole-boys club. The awful men who can help to promote Baxter are a gaggle of adulterers in need of a place for their trysts. Believing the inconvenience is worth the eventual payoff, Baxter lends out the key to his bachelor pad a few nights a week.

As smitten as he is with the idea of becoming an executive, Baxter also has his head turned by one of the building’s many elevator operators, Fran Kubelik (a delightful Shirley MacLaine), who on the outside stands out as a confident, composed, and charming young woman who has it all together. The opposite, unfortunately, is true, but by the time Baxter figures this out he’s already in love with her.

The key to Baxter’s executive dreams is held by the company’s powerful personnel director, Jeff Sheldrake (a superb Fred MacMurray), and Baxter’s cynical plans all appear to come together when Sheldrake agrees to his promotion… in exchange for the key to Baxter’s apartment. It seems the very-married Sheldrake is just another good ole boy, but that’s no skin off Baxter’s nose, until the perfect moment I mentioned above arrives.

You see, it’s Fran Kubelik Mr. Sheldrake is trysting with, and it’s at the company’s wild Christmas party (a clothed Roman orgy) where Fran finally learns she’s being used — that she’s not the first subordinate Sheldrake’s conned into bed with the promise of a future together. This is also where Baxter learns the truth about Fran.

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With six feature credits already under his belt, some of them classics, co-writer/director Woody Allen finally became Woody Allen with the brilliant “Annie Hall,” and in doing so would be rightfully rewarded with four major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Original Screenplay (co-written by Marshall Brickman), Director and Actress (Diane Keaton). 35 years later, the simple story of Manhattan neurotic Alvy Singer (Allen) and his years-long romance with the delightfully ditzy Annie Hall (Keaton) still delights in ways that few romantic comedies ever come close to.

Told with a scattershot timeline (that somehow works) and through an endless number of short scenes that could stand on their own as insightful, amusing, and romantic skits, “Annie Hall” is a story told to us in the first-person by Alvy, a famous New York comedian. His story isn’t so much about his romance with Annie; it’s more about what he’s learned from the experience — not only about himself but human nature in general. And if you judge the film by its touching closing scene (as I do), you can count this among Allen’s rare optimistic offerings.

Keaton’s performance is a wonder to behold. When you compare the “la-dee-da” Annie Alvy first meets to the more worldly and composed Annie she eventually becomes (much of it due to Alvy pushing her in that direction), Keaton’s Oscar win is a no-brainer.  Right along with Alvy, we fall in love with Annie at first sight and, in the end, long for the innocence she loses. And this, of course, is also why the film is so bittersweet. With the best of intentions (mostly), Alvy helps Annie grow up, and she ends up outgrowing him.

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