Starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary-Louis Parker, Karl Urban and Richard Dreyfus, Red is the second most popular movie in the country, loved by fans and critics alike.

Now is your chance to win an authentic Red mini-poster that's been autographed by Bruce Willis, Karl Urban, Helen Mirren and Mary Louise Parker. Here's all you have to do to win: Shoot me an email or reply to this post by saying you'd like to be entered to win. That's all you have to do.

The winner will be chosen at random on Friday, Oct. 29.

If you haven't seen Red, get details, watch trailers and buy tickets here.

<< MORE >>

Dirty Harry, Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby - these are some of the Clint Eastwood favorites included in Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years, a special collection from the Warner Bros library.

Eastwood's Malpaso Productions and Warners have a relationship that goes back 35 years. The partnership is noteworthy not only for its longevity and Eastwood's prodigeous output but also for the quality of the work.

Eastwood, at 80, is one of the few working filmmakers who has personal experience with Hollywood's old factory-like studio system. Decades after its demise, he in many ways continues to produce like a worker under contract, churning out movies one-after-the other, like clockwork. As you might expect of so prolific a filmmaker, not every film is a masterpiece, but Eastwood retains the ability to astound with both his choices in material and with how he handles it.

The collection will be released on Nov. 2, but you can pre-order now and get it on the day of its release. It'll make a great Christmas gift. Click here for pricing and additional information.

You'll get his Dirty Harry movies, war movies, Westerns, Oscar winners, comedies and more.

<< MORE >>

<< MORE >>

Disney is working overtime to drum up interest in its upcoming 3D sequel to TRON. TRON: Legacy opens Dec. 17, but Disney will kick off a 10-week countdown, rolling out events, announcements and previews leading up to the movie's release.

One of the events will be TRON Night: An IMAX 3D Experience on Oct. 28 - a 20-minute sneak peek at the movie that will be presented at select IMAX theaters nationwide and at 3D and IMAX theaters internationally.

Information about how to get free tickets to the previews will be available on the movie's facebook page: Facebook.com/TRON.

Fans also can buy advance tickets now  to the IMAX 3D midnight screenings of TRON: Legacy. Tickets may be bought at participating IMAX locations and online at Disney.com/TRON. ... << MORE >>

Captain America is on his way to the big screen in two upcoming movies. Soon he will have his own video game as well.

SEGA announced  that they will bring out a game in 2011 that lets players take the  role of Cappy as they battle the Red Skull and his army in a World War II adventure.

The game will be called Captain America: Super Soldier, which SEGA's press release says is the same as one of the upcoming movies (The working title of the movie had been Captain America: The First Avenger). The movie is scheduled to be released July 22, 2011. Captain America also will be a part of the Avengers movie scheduled to come out in 2012.

The game's hero not only battles the Red Skull's army but other enemies serving the Red Skull, including the Iron Cross, the forces of Hydra and an evil scientist.

The game will be released on the Xbox 360 video game system, Play Station 3, PSP, Wii and Nintendo DS.

I have more screenshots and concept art after the jump....

<< MORE >>

As I got into my car yesterday, i caught the tail end of an NPR story that seemed to be making a point I'd thought about: The movie Wall Street caught fire in 1987 because it powerfully and perceptively portrayed a defining force in the culture. Oliver Stone tries mightily (and ineffectually) with the sequel to ride the zeitgeist again, but The Social Network may well be the film that best defines this era.

At least, I thought NPR was making this point until I heard the reporter contrast Gordon Gekko's goal in Wall Street (to make money) with Mark Zuckerberg's goal in The Social Network, which she said was "to make the world better." It became clear at that point that she hadn't seen the movie.

So let's forget about NPR.

I've seen The Social Network twice now and my appreciation for it has grown since the first viewing. It's a marvelous movie, particularly the script. Box office prognosticators note that, while it was the No. 1 film last weekend with $22.4 million, it didn't do particularly well in the middle of the country or with younger people.

True enough. But I predict it will have legs that will carry it straight through the Oscars, where it likely will have a large number of nominations. The attention and awards it wins leading up to that should make up for any perceived softness in the box office numbers now. << MORE >>

Unka Erk met T.I. the other day. I don't want to say Unka is, like, overly sensitive or anything, but the rap star clearly rubbed him the wrong way. Unka posted a piece on his movie site running down my man for being late to a screening of Takers, the crime movie T.I. stars in, and for keeping reporters waiting 90 minutes the next day, for wearing sunglasses during interviews, acting aloof and for refusing to answer questions about his movie.

T.I. isn't just a star but also a producer of Takers, a fast-paced, good-looking crime movie that opens Friday. The other stars include Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Chris Brown, Hayden Christenson and Michael Ealy.

I get the impression Unka Erk liked the movie but thinks T.I. is a jerk. He's posted soundbites that I think he believes proves his point.




<< MORE >>

How real is the 3D backlash?

As the Aug. 27 re-release date for <i>Avatar</i> nears, the website 3DMoviesOnDVD.com asks that question, noting that both the New York Times and David Poland's Hot Blog have joined the discussiion in recent days. The Times notes the number of filmmakers who spoke publicly at the recent ComicCon about their resistance to 3D. Poland, predicting a "3D bloodbath," notes that 28 3D movies are scheduled to be released next year. Some of them are bound to fail. Both Poland and 3D Movies On DVD discuss what that likely will mean.<< MORE >>

Movies starring well-known actors — even past-prime, Oscar-winning stars — get sent straight to DVD fairly frequently. Still, the fate of Hurricane Season is surprising.

The movie set, set in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, stars Forrest Whitaker, Taraji Henson and the rapper Lil Wayne. Whitaker won an Oscar only three years ago for his starring role as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Henson was nominated just last year for her supporting role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Tim Story, the director, isn't likely ever to win anything of significance for his directing work, but he did an admirable job with Barbershop (2005) and blasted off into the big ... << MORE >>

 
In Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson returns to the screen for the first time since his supporting role in The Singing Detective in 2003 (unless you count his uncredited appearance as an anger management patient in 2004's Paparazzi), and it's his first appearance before the cameras since he was arrested for drunken driving in 2006 and, according to the police report, became belligerent and went on an antisemitic and sexist tirade.

So you'd think he would expect to be asked about it during interviews. I wouldn't expect him to welcome ... << MORE >>

The Houston Film Critics Society honored The Hurt Locker as the best movie of 2009 on Saturday and named George Clooney and Carey Mulligan as best actor and actress for their work in Up In the Air and The Education, respectively.

The critics also announced its bestowal of a lifetime achievement award to the late Patrick Swayze and  presented G.W. Bailey with the humanitarian of the year award or his work with the Houston-based Sunshine Kids Foundation.

Bailey, a veteran character actor who appears on television's The Closer, joked that he first thought the award was late recognition for his work in the Police Academy movies, but he teared up while ...

<< MORE >>

Invictus opened in third place this weekend (behind The Princess and the Frog and The Blind Side), but as one of the few feel-good adult dramas of the holiday season (and a likely Oscar contender on several fronts) there's a good chance it will have legs. Since it purports to tell the true story of how Nelson Mandela used the unlikely vehicle of rugby to unite his divided nation, it doesn't hurt to know what really happened.

Did Mandela really become as obsessed with rugby as he does in the film? Did he start poring over materials a year-out to determine who South Africa's team would play in the quarter-finals? Did he interrupt top-level meetings to learn game scores? Did he form a close personal bond with the team captain that pushed the young athlete (and therefore the team) to perform better during the long lead up to the 1995 World Cup?

Paul Ackford, a writer with Britain's Telegraph newspaper, says "poppycock."

You may read his brief account of how it actually occurred HERE.

And if after seeing the film you're moved to learn the full story behind it, here is a link to the factual book on which the movie is based.

Looks like somebody strung together a bunch of outtakes from the Transformers' movies, except that I don't see the Fox dame. Maybe Bay saved that for his private collection.




... << MORE >>

After a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer, the Houston-born star of Dirty Dancing and Ghost has died.

Swayze not only outlived his six-month prognosis but went on to star for a full season in the A&E series The Beast while undergoing chemotherapy. He was 57.

Swayze's publicist said he died with family members at his side. Read the story.

Milestone Cinematheque has done it again. The distribution company that rediscovered and released Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep and My Brother's Keeper now has restored another long-overlooked masterpiece  — 48 years after the movie was completed.

Kent MacKenzie finished The Exiles in 1961 while still a student at the University of Southern California. The starkly realistic portrait of the lives of young American Indians living in downtown Los Angeles premiered at the Venice Film Festival that year and won some critical acclaim. Sadly, it never found theatrical distribution.

From the trailer, the movie looks magnificent.

MacKenzie met the subjects of his movie while making a student short about LA's Bunker Hill neighborhood in 1957. After making friends and winning their confidence, he persuaded the young people to portray themselves in the movie, which was entirely written based on interviews with them about their lives. You can read more about the movie, the upcoming DVD and about how Milestone's release of the film is coming about HERE on the movie's website.

MacKenzie made only one other feature film — Saturday Morning (1971). He died in 1980.

I haven't yet seen either film — I only learned of the existence of The Exiles today. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

The DVD will be released November 17th.


 

        

When did it come to this? When, exactly, did people begin mistaking advertising for entertainment? Did marketers somehow conspire to create this phenomenon or did they merely rush in to fill the need once they recognized that it exists?

Whatever. Summit Entertainment would like you to know that its unveiling the new trailer for The Twilight Saga: New Moon on Friday. The trailer will preceed Summit's new Bandslam movie, which I gleefully will miss (just looking at the poster makes me ill). But if you can't wait until Friday, Summit also would like you to know that it started airing a 10-second tease today. Even trailers get trailers now.

That's right: Summit is announcing the unveiling of a trailer for its upcoming trailer of a new movie that doesn't open until November. And people like me are helping them do it. And then, because people like me are whores hungry for your greedy eyes, we will run the 10-second tease on our blogs. And people like you will click on it.

I guess I can live with that.

But if you run out and buy tickets for Bandslam just so you can be the first on your block to see the full trailer...well, I don't want to know you.

(Oh, but if you do decide to see Bandslam, click on this link and buy you ticket from Fandango. That way, you avoid standing in line, and this hungry whore gets to pocket a few cents.)

        

Bob Berney, who used to manage an art house movie theater in Houston before he went on to found and operate such film companies as Picturehouse, NewMarket and IFC Films and release such works as Pan's Labyrinth, Memento, The Passion of the Christ, The Whale Rider and Y Tu Mama Tambien, has launched a new company. The company's first releases will be doozies.

Berney is partnering with Bill Pohlad, who has produced such films as Brokeback Mountain and Into the Wild.

Apparition's initial slate includes David Malick's The Tree of Life, which stars Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, and Jane Campion's Bright Star, which premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

“Working with filmmakers like Terrence Malick and Jane Campion right out of the gate is a great indication of the kinds of relationships that we hope this company will be built on,” Berney said in a press release.

"Bill and I are creating a company where the art of filmmaking is truly a priority," he said. "The birth of a new company that works in concert with artists while employing creating marketing strategies is a winning combination and is the essence of Apparition."

The Tree of Life will be released in 2010. Bright Star is scheduled to be released Sept. 18

        

After wowing early audiences at a series of film festivals, Borat (full title: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan) opened to boffo business in 2006. Can Sasha Baron Cohen do it again with Bruno?

We'll find out Friday when the movie opens in the US.

Cohenplays an Austrian gay fashionista who claims to be an Austrian TVreporter and worms his way into a succession of hot spots.

This week's other wide release is I Love You, Beth Cooper, a teen romantic comedy directed by Chris Columbus (Rent, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Home Alone).

I have a knee jerk skepticism about documentaries that strive hard to convince you that it's really more like a thriller or detective story or comedy than documentary, My skepticism goes into overdrive when a doc bills itself, as The Cove does, as "part Flipper, part Bourne Identity."

The trailer for The Cove flashes that description across the screen as dramatic music builds to a crescendo and a series of quick cuts tries to persuade us we're watching something dangerous and exciting. In the face of something like that, I automatically start to wonder how much of what I am seeing is restaged reenactments, how much of the scary-looking stuff would seem benign without all the trappings.

Still, I look forward to seeing The Cove. It's about an important subject and the "ecological crime" at its core deserves attention, even if the filmmakers do seem determined through their hyperbolic ...<< MORE >>