McG’s latest film, the spy thriller/romantic comedy This Means War, just hit theaters this week, and, so far, I haven’t really talked to anybody who likes it. That’s pretty par for course at this point though, because it’s rare that I talk to anyone who likes any of McG’s movies. Despite that fact, the guy must be making somebody somewhere some money, because he keeps on getting new jobs.

Speaking of which, McG recently talked to The Playlist about what he’s going to be doing next. First off, he described his new project, Puzzle Palace, as a “thriller” that is “tonally similar to Die Hard,” and then went on to give a more lengthy plot synopsis by adding that the film is about, “A kid who has to clear his father’s name by breaking into One Police Plaza in New York, which is the most secure building imaginable in a post-9/11 world. It’s a smaller picture, it’s designed for a [Ryan] Gosling [type actor]. It’s not as small and antithetical as Drive, but it’s not a big giant over-the-top action picture, it’s meant to be a fun, intelligent action character study.” If it manages to be either fun or intelligent, then it will be a huge break from the stupid, visually frustrating things that McG’s done so far; so I’m excited to hear him say that he’s planning on branching out.

All snark aside, if McG is going to continue to make movies that will getting released in the multiplexes, it’s good to at least hear him talking about doing things that he finds interesting. I’d rather feel that I was watching a movie that somebody tried, and maybe failed, to make intelligent and fun than a movie that is just cynically attempting to churn out what is most likely to pop a big number on opening weekend. Maybe this will be the project where McG stops shouting and ends up finding his voice.

Still though, if he actually gets Gosling to waste time on this I’m going to be pretty disappointed.

After waiting basically my entire childhood for a movie where Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger would team up, I ended up entering adulthood a disappointed, broken man. It wasn’t until 2010’s The Expendables that the two titans of my childhood would even appear in the same movie, and in that case Arnie just showed up for like thirty seconds and didn’t really do anything. It was kind of a slap in the face. Things might be different once The Expendables 2 comes out this summer; it’s a much more legitimate all-star gathering of action heroes than the first film, and Schwarzenegger is said to have a much more expanded role than he did in the first. But seeing as that first film was so boring and ended up being yet another disappointment, I’m not going to get my hopes up.

The Tomb though, now this is a movie that I’m willing to start naively anticipating. This one doesn’t just sound like the big Sly/Arnie team-up flick that I’ve always dreamed of, but it’s also the sort of dumb prison movie that I grew up loving. Stallone is set to star as Ray Breslin, basically the best guy in the world when it comes to designing prisons. That’s a good sign right there. The star of any action movie should always be the best in the world at something. But it gets better; this film sees him getting thrown in a prison of his own design and needing to figure out how to escape a trap that he himself created. How metaphorical.

Schwarzenegger is playing the role of Church, a fellow inmate who sounds like more of an anti-hero than Sly’s character, but who apparently ends up helping him in his attempts to escape. That’s a big, cool concept for an action movie with a big, cool cast, but it turns out things get even better. Every good action movie needs a smarmy villain you can hate, and in prison movies that means an asshole warden; and The Tomb has cast a doozy.

According to producer Mark Canton, “[Jim] Caviezel will be playing the role of the Warden of the prison in which Schwarzenegger & Stallone attempt to escape from.” Damn him and his handsome face and piercing eyes! I can just picture how smug and smarmy he’s going to be already. I can’t wait until one of these beefy olds guys gets the chance to knock his rotten block off. As far as I’m concerned, The Tomb can’t get here soon enough. [The Matthew Aaron Show via JoBlo]

Occasionally, Austin Cinematic Limits is going to post interviews with key players in Austin’s film community. It might be common knowledge that there is a rich pool of directors in Austin, but there are also a ton of fantastic actors, cinematographers, composers, animators, make-up artists, and other cinematic people with whom we also want to converse. Maybe — just maybe — we will gain a better understanding of why all of these talented people have chosen to live and work in Austin rather than Los Angeles or New York City.

We are starting with producer Kelly Williams — partly because there are only a handful of producers who actually live and work in Austin, but also because he is currently juggling so many great projects. Since resigning from his role as Film Program Director at the Austin Film Festival in June 2011, Williams has already produced Kat Candler’s Hellion (premiered at Sundance 2012), the anthology film Holiday Road (premiered at Slamdance 2012) and Mark Pott’s Cinema Six (scheduled to premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival in April 2012). Don Swaynos’ Pictures of Superheroes just completed post-production and Williams has two more films already in the pipeline, the feature-length version of Hellion and Yen Tan’s Pit Stop.

So, let’s get right to the point — what brought you to Austin and what keeps you here?

I came here for school [at the University of Texas] and just stayed, like a lot of people do. I honestly came because I was a big fan of Slacker. Of course by the time I got here, that version of Austin was long gone; but it was the idea that movie got made in Austin and it saw an international audience, and then Richard Linklater continued making movies here. That was a big motivation for someone who had always been told that if you want to make movies you have to move to Los Angeles, and I didn’t want to do that. In the long run, I started working at the Austin Film Festival and I was there for a long time. In the course of being there I got married and bought a house, so Austin feels like home.

What it boils down to for me is that I want to work with people I like — fun people. I feel like I found those people in Austin. That is motivation in a sense too, to get to work with people like Don Swaynos and Kat Candler. And the crews here are a lot of fun too.

In a very short period of time you have already gotten to a point that you are turning down projects. That must be a great position in which to find yourself.

I can only produce so many movies per year, but I wish I could make more. I wish it was more sustainable, of course, but ultimately I hope that it will be. So far I have had the luxury of being able to work with directors who [while at Austin Film Festival] I was able to program their previous films. Yen [Tan] is the first director I’ve worked with who I didn’t program a film of his, but I saw Ciao as a film festival juror. I might not have met him or been aware of his work otherwise.

In what other ways has your tenure at AFF benefited you as a producer?

I was already producing short films — including Scott Rice’s Perils of Nude Modeling (2003) — when I got the job at AFF. Then I learned that putting a film festival together is a lot like producing a film. A lot of people don’t realize that there are a million other aspects to programming a film festival besides just programming. Programming is a really small part of it, but an important part obviously. I took a couple weeks off from AFF to produce Cinema Six last February and that’s when I realized how similar festival programming is to producing.

And so many doors were opened for me, I met so many people over those years at AFF. When I segued into producing, it was nice to already know a lot of people. Also, watching thousands of movies year after year really sharpens your skills regarding what you like, you learn what works for you.

How do you define yourself as a producer?

Personally, I am drawn to the creative side of producing, but I don’t ever want to be overbearing. I like being a bounce board for the director, to help them focus on what they want. That is what makes post-production a lot of fun for me. As slow as it can be, watching countless cuts is one of my favorite parts of the job. My expertise right now focuses on what I call the “finish line” — which is film festival strategies and distribution. That is the part I have been most involved in so far.

And knowing both sides of the festival programming process must be pretty invaluable.

It definitely gave me a good grasp of the film festival landscape. You can’t help but watch and see what is programmed at different film festivals, so that helps determine where a film might have its best chance. It is best to be strategic about festival applications. The festival world is a weird game — like a poker game, some people get to cash out early but others have to know when to hold ‘em.

Can you give us an update on where your various projects stand?

Cinema Six is the first feature that I produced. I produced it with Don Swaynos and Nick Tankersley; Mark Potts and Cole Selix co-wrote and directed it. Mark and Cole are guys whose films I have been programming since 2006. They are just a couple of guys in Norman, Oklahoma making movies. We were always planning on shooting in Oklahoma, but we found the perfect location — a movie theater — in Lockhart. Cinema Six is totally done and it is premiering at the Dallas International Film Festival in April.

Holiday Road is a project I came onto about halfway into its production. It is an anthology of 12 short films by 13 different directors and was made by a lot of guys I went to UT with who are now living in LA. Holiday Road world premiered at Slamdance 2012.

Hellion is the first project I did after leaving AFF full-time. It is a short film that Kat Candler wrote and directed. It just world premiered at Sundance [2012] and we are currently developing a feature version, which we will hopefully be shooting in Spring 2013.

Pictures of Superheroes by Don Swaynos just picture-locked last week, so it will hopefully be premiering at a film festival in the second half of 2012.

Pit Stop is Yen Tan’s upcoming feature which I am producing along with Eric Steele and Jonathon Duffy. We are looking to shoot Pit Stop in May 2012.

And you have been juggling those projects with other jobs as well, right?

I have to make a living somehow, because producing doesn’t pay the bills yet. I am the Director of Programming at the Lone Star International Film Festival, which keeps one foot in the programming world. I am also helping out with the Moontower Comedy festival, which is a different type of event for me. And I am teaching Intro to Digital Filmmaking at the Austin School of Film. I am halfway through the six week course. This is my first time ever teaching a film class.

What do you perceive to be your next steps in your career as a producer?

To do slightly bigger projects each time. Sustainability is the ultimate goal, to be able to just focus on producing. I really just want to continue making good films, which in itself can be a challenge.

Cinematic Things To Do in Austin This Week:

2/20 – Alamo South Lamar - Gearing up for the 12th annual Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards show on March 8 at ACL Live at The Moody Theater, Austin Film Society will be screening films by this year’s honorees. This week is Infamous by Midland-raised director Douglas MacGrath. (More info)

2/21 – Alamo South Lamar - AFS kicks off their new Essential Cinema Series — Children of Abraham/Ibrahim 6 — with Bader Ben Hirsi’s New Day In Old Sana’a. (More info)

2/25 – Alamo Ritz - Asian Invasion Hong-Kong-a-Thon! Five movies! 10 hours! All curated by Grady Hendrix (New York Asian Film Festival) and Lars Nilsen (Fantastic Fest) with special Hong Kong-centric food and drink options! (More info)

Have you ever wanted to stick it to those smarmy white-collar crooks who raid pension funds and embezzle money from hard-working citizens? Well, you may never get this chance, but you can do it vicariously through the characters in Brett Ratner’s blue-collar revenge film Tower Heist, out on DVD and Blu-ray this week.

Though, since no one is going to try to rob a fat cat’s penthouse apartment (because if you’ve got the time, ingenuity and energy to do that, you’d be rich by now), why not relax a bit when you watch the film. And what better way to relax than with some of your favorite adult beverage to keep you company?

And now, to cover our butts… This game is only for people over the age of 21. Please drink responsibly, and don’t give your life saving’s to a Wall Street crook to “invest.”

TAKE A DRINK WHEN…

• A phone rings
• Someone eats or drinks
• Someone mentions chess
• Someone rides in an elevator

TAKE A DRINK WHEN YOU SEE…

• A Ferrari logo
• A skyline or cityscape
• The exterior of the Tower
• A Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon

TAKE A DRINK WHEN SOMEONE SAYS…

• “Shaw”
• “tower”
• “pension”
• “mister” or “missus”

CHUG YOUR DRINK WHEN…

• The hidden money is discovered

Click here for more Drinking Games

It took its second weekend – and even Saturday and Sunday of that – but Safe House slipped by the competition this President’s Day Weekend, just edging past The Vow‘s second weekend take and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance‘s debut. The Denzel Washington starrer might find itself down a notch when the actual numbers are revealed. When the numbers are this close, it could be anyone’s ballgame until all the numbers come in. For now, though, it remains at #1.

This is Washington’s first film to hit #1 at the box office since American Gangster debuted in 2007 with $43.5m. Not surprisingly, that film remains Washington’s biggest domestic earner to date with $130.1m. Safe House‘s chances of toppling that are not completely out of reach. The film dropped just over 40% from last weekend. That’s not great, but it’s definitely below average. With a few more solid weekends such as this, the film could very easily get past that $130m mark. I’m sure Ryan Reynolds would appreciate that, as well.

The Vow and This Means War were vying for the Valentine’s Day crowd, and while the more action-driven of the two didn’t open with horrible numbers, there’s not denying the strength a film has when it involves Channing Tatum looking for love. The Vow is well on its way to topping $100m. At this point, it’s become a race to see which film, this or Safe House, will be the first of 2012 to do so. Strong money is on Safe House simply because it appears to have the more stable longevity. Regardless of its place when the end of the year comes, The Vow is already seen as an impressive success story. You can be sure Tatum is getting more and more romantic movie offers as the days go on.

After Trespass, which brought in $24,094 domestic and died a forgettable death On Demand, Cage needed a hit. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was not it. The film, which reportedly cost $57m as opposed to the $110m 2007′s Ghost Rider had to spend, made less than half in its opening opening weekend than its predecessor did. The first Ghost Rider didn’t have 3-D dollars working in its favor, either. Cage will be just fine. This won’t be the first bomb he’s ever headlined, nor will it be his last if track record is any indication. However, don’t expect Ghost Rider 3-D to be greenlit any time soon. That title is just redundant, anyway.

Some international numbers should be noted. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and The Secret World of Arrietty didn’t exactly light the world on fire with their domestic numbers. Journey 2 has made $53m in the US so far, and Arrietty opened this weekend with $6.4m. However, the real winner for each of these films has been in their foreign box office. Arrietty, a Japanese film, has already pulled in $126.3m outside of the US making its worldwide total $134.4m. Journey 2 has made $128m in foreign markets bringing its worldwide total to $187.5m. Arrietty‘s foreign financial success is a given. Foreign ticket sales, particularly in Japan, are the reason Studio Ghibli has a film in theaters every few years.

But the reason behind Journey 2‘s foreign success is a little more shrouded. Dwayne Johnson is an international star. That’s without a doubt, but not all of his films are huge moneymakers in foreign markets. Journey to the Center of the Earth made decent money internationally. It ended its run in 2008 with $241.9m. Looking at Walden Media as a whole, we see that most of their films fare particularly well outside of the US. The light-hearted family entertainment aspect combined with Johnson gives us a good idea why Journey 2 is becoming such a huge, worldwide success. Journey 3 might not be too far off. Don’t worry. It’ll be in 3-D.

Phantom Menace dropped 64.4%. That would be it, and we’d leave it as a joke unto itself if it weren’t for the fact that Star Wars: Episode I has now become the most successful Star Wars films in terms of domestic box office. Phantom Menace slipped past the original Star Wars to become #4 on the all-time domestic chart. It’s total domestic gross is now $467.1m, $997.4m worldwide. Look for it to become the 11th member of the Billion Dollar Club sometime in the next week. That is a lot of money made off of a “poodoo” joke.

Here’s how the weekend broke down:

1. Safe House – $23.8m (-40.8%) $78.1m total
2. The Vow -$23.1m (-43.9%) $85m total
3. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – $22.1m NEW
4. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – $19.9m (-27.1%) $53m total
5. This Means War – $17.3m NEW
6. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace – $8m (-64.4%) $33.8m total
7. Chronicle – $7.6m (-36.9%) $51.1m total
8. The Woman in Black – $6.7m (-33.6%) $45.3m total
9. The Secret World of Arrietty – $6.4m NEW
10. The Grey – $3.1m (-37.7%) $48m total

$138m is a step down from last weekend, but it’s an increase over President’s Day Weekend 2011 when Unknown debuted with $21.8m. I Am Number Four and Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son were the supplemental releases making $19.4m and $16.3m, respectively. While the numbers for the top 5 were every bit as close together this year as they were last, they’re still higher with three films coming in with $20+m as opposed to just one.

Next weekend might not see the return of huge numbers, but there are four new films ready to make their box office splashes. Act of Valor, Gone, Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds, and Wanderlust are all hitting wide release. It’ll be Oscar weekend, so the odds of The Descendants and/or The Artist returning to a place on the charts are very good.

We’ll be back later in the week to see how the weekend is shaping up.

There’s no director set. No cast. And Lionsgate wasn’t just thrilled about getting another Kick Ass out into the streets. Apparently none of that matters because comic creator Mark Millar is boasting a summer shooting schedule for a movie that has appeared dead since early last year. Of course, this comes after the last time Millar claimed Kick Ass 2: Balls to the Wall would be moving forward, and the time before that.

In his latest interview with the Daily Record, Millar upped the ante by stating that the sequel to the Matthew Vaughn-directed ode to violence would start shooting this summer in addition to a film version of his comic “American Jesus.” A movie he first announced three years ago. He also claimed that he was responsible for Marvel’s success and the hype surrounding The Avengers, that he turns down tons of huge projects, and that he refuses to move to LA because he has major Hollywood players coming to him anyway.

Seriously. The interview feature is a must-read simply for how bodacious it is. His newest sci-fi book will be the biggest franchise since Star Wars? This guy has brass bollocks. It’s a shame not even half the stuff he says publicly comes to pass.

In his last day on the planet, Satché (Saul Williams) doesn’t go sky diving, and he doesn’t go skinny dipping. He probably doesn’t even have a bucket list. What he does have is a vibrant world at his fingertips and a courageous ability to walk calmly toward death.

In Aujourd’hui (the french word for “Today”), writer/director Alain Gomis has used the stuffy old cliche of impending death and faced it with a poetic tone and a philosophy rooted more in sex and friendship than in deeper thinking. This is a mirror world that resembles our own. Possibilities are shunned, the end is embraced, life is just as dull and beautiful as it’s always been.

The movie opens with Satché’s eyes greeting the sunshine and a tearful crowd in his mother’s home. This is the ritual, and just as it’s never explained why our healthy hero is guaranteed death by the time he closes those big brown eyes again, we enter the world with a sense of bewilderment that matches our main character. Pulled from his mother’s arms, he heads out into the street where he’s greeted as a celebrity. An impromptu parade forms, but as Satché  and his best friend head into the city, the day becomes more callous and cynical. It also comes alive.

Aujourd’hui is a movie that refuses to explain anything, but it feels familiar enough to work even as an alien culture comes into full view. Satché day trips from one encounter to the next with varying degrees of meaning, but even the smallest acts are made enormous by his impending demise. Gomis plays with that human misconception that what we do at the end defines us fully, and the result is something quietly powerful.

The pace is slow, yes. Sometimes too slow, but when it sins the most against time, it becomes introspective, pulling out fears of mortality and the desperate need to live quickly in the face of a clock with no more hours left on it. Gomis toys with that concept of death, perhaps arguing successfully that it’s better to experience something fully than fast.

Plus, the movie has three pivotal scenes that build enough momentum to keep the kinetic energy flowing smoothly. The first comes when Satché visits an “Uncle” who pantomimes the death ritual he’ll be performing the next day. The man runs his hands along motionless skin in an unbelievably intimate act that’s both sweet and sad. The second is a montage of vibrant city scenes which scream out the reality of a planet that dances on even as we disappear. The third is an extended segment with Satché ‘s wife and children which is first stubborn, then soft.

Williams, known for his spoken word prowess, is relatively silent throughout. He’s a passive presence here as the character is almost completely defined by everyone he meets. It’s only his actions that mean anything at all, and Williams manages a thousand words with a youthful yet stormy weathered face instead of reams of dialogue. In his way, he’s a ghost wandering the wilderness trying to understand all of it for the last time.

For what it’s worth, Gomis doesn’t make purposefully obtuse choices here. He doesn’t simply hunt for the opposite of the cliche. Still, it’s clear that he doesn’t approach the time-worn questions with the same old answers. It’s refreshing, and his structure echoes an entire life in a 24-hour period. From the confusion of birth, to the first steps away from mother’s house, to first loves, to the wife and kids. This is as serene and colorful a movie about death as was ever made, and it’s comforting to know that as Satché lays down in bed for the last time, somewhere else in the city a couple is dancing the tango.

Complete Berlinale Coverage

Why Watch? With a sketch show premise given the short film treatment, Two Trick Pony delivers a young man trying to pitch his new board game to an eccentric figure that’s part parody and part obsessive. It’s a sadistic version of Mr. Pennybags whose line delivery makes the comedy work. Plus, the sheer amount of ways they toy around with board game rules makes the interview as frustrating as it is funny.

There are easy jokes here, but it’s the unexpected ones that make this short shine, and the punch line might be the sweetest of all.

What will it cost? Only 3 minutes.

Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films.

For the first time in recent memory, I’m going into Oscar Sunday having no idea who is likely to take home many of the major awards. I’m sure there are entire websites out there devoted to an accurate prediction of who and what will take home the gold on Sunday, but there seems something a bit different about this year. Of the nine films nominated, I don’t have a clear sense of what would be the top five had AMPAS not changed the number of entries in the top category. While The Artist may clearly have more of a chance than, say, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, there’s no grand battle between likely leads like there was between The King’s Speech and The Social Network last year. And I don’t think I’m alone in stating that this year’s uninspiring list of nominees seems to reflect a growing indifference against the ceremony itself.

Sure, on Sunday, like I have every year since I was eleven years old, I’ll watch the entire ceremony from beginning to end. And, like every year since I was twenty-one years old, I’ll make fun of the pompous and excessive self-congratulatory nature of the proceedings. But while in most years I have had some skin in the game, besides the two nominations afforded to the excellent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the presence of the transcendentally excellent Pina in the Best Documentary Feature category, this year I didn’t even get a sense that the Academy was awarding quality filmmaking, even if it’s of a quality that I don’t gravitate toward (had The King’s Speech not been an Oscar winner, it would have been a perfectly fine little film). While last year’s nominees were accompanied by loud advocates (specifically for those outside the “big two” like The Fighter, Winter’s Bone, The Kids Are All Right, and Inception), with the exception of the aw-shucks modesty of Moneyball, no Best Picture nominee this year is without its fervent backlash.

It’s not that 2011 was a bad year. There was plenty of interesting and even great work that made it to theaters in the mainstream (Contagion, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 50/50), in the arthouse (Meek’s Cutoff, Take Shelter, Weekend), in between (Drive), and the many great titles that emerged from the world of nonfiction (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Bill Cunningham: New York), but you wouldn’t know it from the Oscars themselves. I’m not attempting here to resurrect the tired “snubs” conversation (as a friend of mine says, anytime someone says that a film or person was “snubbed,” they must identify which nominee they’d remove in turn), but simply stating what I’m sure the producers of the Oscars know all too well in their fledgling attempts to reconnect with an audience: the awards as of late, for the most part, reflect neither the interests of mainstream audiences nor the interests of cinephiles and critics.

In the face of sagging ratings, a recent history of awards hosts who irreverently put the silly excess of the ceremony front-and-center, and a growing sense that many Best Pictures of past and present haven’t and won’t age well (American Beauty, A Beautiful Mind, mandatory Crash mention), it’s easy to say that the Oscars simply don’t matter. But, for worse and for better, they do.

Why It Sucks That the Oscars Matter

The Academy Awards are an active project of canonization and history-making. And, as with any canon and historiography, they engage in a practice of selection. There comes a point in the life of a cinephile in which they look toward canons in order to broaden their knowledge of and exposure to film. One of the most authoritative resources the American filmgoer has in this regard is the list of Best Picture winners. Such a list indicates to someone interested in film that Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Cowboy, Annie Hall, All About Eve, and The Silence of the Lambs are films worth seeing. Now, perhaps this is giving the academy too much credit as these films are also canonized elsewhere, but the Academy Awards represent a forum that maintains a certain degree of authority.

That titles like Cave of Forgotten Dreams or performances like Michael Shannon’s in Take Shelter have been overlooked does carry with it certain consequences. I’m not talking about snubs, but about the reality of selection: certain films and people are automatically preserved by the authority of the nomination (and the win), while others are not. This provides a distinct advantage or disadvantage for the subsequent lives of certain films. I don’t mean the pragmatics of preservation, like that these rather accessible films will go out of print otherwise, but canonization preserves films discursively. Yes, some films do maintain their toehold in the zeitgeist otherwise, but an Academy Award nomination does preserve a powerful index for historical importance that outlives its moment. This isn’t a new or particularly revelatory point by any means, but it does contradict the increasingly accepted idea that the Oscars don’t matter.

Then there’s the other side of the debate – the gold-plated lining.

I was only eight  in 1989, but from what I remember it was pretty much the year of Batman and Driving Miss Daisy; two movies that my 8-year-old self was less than impressed by. Perhaps we’ll talk about Batman at a later date, but today I want to talk about Miss Daisy, a movie that won so many awards and got so much critical praise that it made even those of us who had yet to sprout pubes aware of who Jessica Tandy was. The hype on this thing must have been huge to get me to tear my attention away from G.I. Joe and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles long enough to watch a film about a couple of old people driving around, but it did.

The other movie I want to look at is from 2008. It’s Clint Eastwood’s acting swan song, Gran Torino. This one was well-liked, from what I can tell, but it didn’t get the hype or attention that I imagined it would once awards season rolled around, and consequently I don’t think as many people saw it as should have. I mean, with this one’s racial themes and its focus on old people you’d think it was a shoo-in for baiting the Oscars into giving it recognition. Perhaps it had too many racial slurs and too much gunplay to get embraced by the intellectual bourgeoisie that make up the Academy though. Give something a little color and suddenly it can’t be viewed as “serious material.”

What do they have in common?

They’re both about prickly old codgers who have grown accustomed to their ways and who use a generally grumpy demeanor to push people away. In Driving Miss Daisy, we get Jessica Tandy’s Daisy growling at her new chauffeur because she doesn’t want to admit that she can’t drive herself around anymore. In Gran Torino we get Clint Eastwood’s Walt, who growls at pretty much everyone because he doesn’t want to accept that his neighborhood is changing both demographically and in its values. There’s a lot of race stuff going on in both as well. Daisy is learning to live in a world where her black employees are quickly becoming her only company, and Walt is struggling to understand his Hmong neighbors, who won’t stop trying to talk to him and giving him presents. And these are great movies when it comes to car porn. In Driving Miss Daisy we get plenty of long looks at a gleaming ’48 Hudson Commodore, and in Gran Torino it’s the same thing with a ’72 Ford Gran Torino.

Why is Driving Miss Daisy overrated?

This movie is nice. It’s slow and pleasant, not unlike a weekend drive through the countryside might be. But important? A watershed moment when it comes to art about race? No, I don’t buy that. This movie is much too nice for that. Half of the characters we meet are Jewish, the other half black, and generally everyone is tolerant, wise, and a joy to be around. Sure, the relationship between Daisy and Hoke (Morgan Freeman) is strained at first, but there aren’t any characters in this movie that are bigots, any that even have real prejudices. For a film that eventually invokes footage from a famous Martin Luther King speech, that seems pretty safe. Were the writers afraid that we wouldn’t like Tandy’s character if she was legitimately mean or racist in the beginning? No risk, no reward. If none of the characters get painted in a negative light, then nobody here has anything important to learn, and the journeys that the characters take end up feeling insignificant.

This movie can be pretty boring, too. Some of the back and forth is clever enough to cause a smirk or two, but until the third act rolls around nothing at all happens. Daisy goes to the store, she plays mahjong, she goes to a birthday party… this really is just time spent driving an old lady around to do boring old lady things. The big conflict of the second act is whether or not Hoke stole a can of salmon, and it gets wrapped up in about five minutes. Am I watching a movie that has something to say or is this a training video for being a chauffeur? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

And for a movie that only had an hour and thirty-nine minute runtime, this one felt like it was well over two hours. We’re an hour in before Daisy’s housekeeper dies and her and Hoke really have to start spending time alone. That felt like it should have been the establishing conflict that set things into motion, but instead it came around when we were already approaching the home stretch. And what is Dan Aykroyd doing in this movie? We keep going back to his character, but his story arch ends up having very little impact on the Tandy and Freeman bonding story that makes up the heart of the film. Why not just have the son character be a small part and really dig into the relationship this script was primarily concerned with? The gray powder that’s eventually in Aykroyd’s hair was pretty much my only indication that years had been passing though, so maybe hiring a recognizable actor whose aging we would notice was the point of him getting so much screen time. I mean, really, how big of a timespan are we covering here? Nothing happens! Or, maybe things happen, but they’re subtle. Too subtle. By the end of the film Daisy is taking an interest in the civil rights movement, but she still won’t even admit she likes Hoke. They get no big bonding moment before she starts to lose her mind, and maybe that’s bittersweet and appropriate to the era, but for a movie about little other than two people coming together, it feels like an empty experience.

Why is Gran Torino underpraised?

This movie has a real edge to it, especially for something directed by Clint Eastwood. His character is a real bastard; scowling, growling, and tossing racial slurs at everybody. During the first act you don’t like him at all, and you’re not even sure if he’s going to be worth redeeming. But they pull it off, and since he starts out so abrasive, the feat looks all the more impressive. That applies to a lot of the other characters as well. The first glimpses we get of the neighbors see them chopping the head off of a chicken in a weird backyard ceremony and having douchebag gang members as relatives. Nobody here seems like anyone you’d want to spend time with at first, but once you learn more about them they start to charm with their idiosyncrasies. It pretty effectively recreates the experience of becoming adjusted to another culture.

The aggression and hate that this movie taps into is more visceral than I was expecting as well. There’s some real tension that gets built as people keep trying to interact with Walt. You don’t know if somebody is going to get shot, if Walt is going to get increasingly racist to the point where it becomes unacceptable, or what; but clearly it’s all leading to shit going down, and watching is a nail biting experience. The hate we get out of all the kids is very unpleasant to watch. There’s so much senseless aggression and hate among the pockets of today’s youth that don’t have any good work to do, and tragically it often explodes into violence. In fact, the kids in this movie get so intimidating and violent that I can’t imagine any other aged actor who could have stood up to them and made it believable; but Eastwood gives great, grizzled, action movie swagger, and more than proves he still has it. Nobody growls, “Get off my lawn,” quite like he does.

This movie just goes deeper than something like Driving Miss Daisy. It shows how nice it can be when people from different backgrounds come together, sure, but it doesn’t stop there. This one asks the hard questions too. It explores the dark side of people, it asks what should be done when people are too broken and willfully ignorant to be anything but a hindrance to everyone around them. It shows the heartbreak and despair that a closed off heart leads to. Those that are unwilling to accept others for who they are, or that try to force the world into their idea of what’s acceptable inevitably cause pain and suffering. Gran Torino gets bleak. Violent acts go down, people are seriously hurt. This one answers the easy questions that Driving Miss Daisy does in its first half, but then it moves on to more complicated material.

Evening the odds.

Say what you will about which of these movies you think is better than the other, but Tandy got an Oscar for her performance and Eastwood didn’t get shit; even with the awesome song in the end credits that he co-wrote and sings a few lines of. You don’t hear Tandy doing any crooning in her movies. Eastwood is the working man’s actor. Somebody should give him a variety show.

If you’re not too busy driving around with elderly in your life, why not read more Over/Under?

Wegottold? Deadline Calabasas, ever an outlet to gracefully announce news, reports that Michael Fassbender is indeed committed to lead the Cormac McCarthy-written and Ridley Scott-directed The Counselor. We’ve known this was a strong possibility for a couple of weeks now, but isn’t it nice to have things confirmed? Even if we apparently need to be loudly “TOLD!” so?

What we know about the film has not changed – it’s been described as “No Country For Old Men on steroids” and it’s a modern tale that takes place in the American Southwest. Fassbender will play the title character, “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation.” It’s no surprise that Scott went to Fassbender, who is not only a hot name, but who Scott just worked with on his new Prometheus. It seems a natural (and solid) fit.

Scott is reportedly looking to start shooting on May 1, so we might be getting this baby sooner rather than later.

In an age where Hollywood studios finally seem to be wising up to the value of streaming rights to their content, I’ve been questioning the continued viability of all-you-can-watch subscription services like Netflix. But, if the company is able to continue inking deals like the one they made today, we could all be safely watching gobs of cheap movies through their platform for the foreseeable future.

What’s this deal I speak of? Brothers Harvey and Bob’s Weinstein Company has made an agreement with the service to make a host of their recent films available for streaming on Netflix exclusively, instead of sending them to cable. That includes titles like the Madonna-directed W.E., the Shakespeare adaptation Coriolanus, and probably the crown jewel of the deal, Best Picture Nominee The Artist.

As usually happens when deals like this are made, ass-kissing by both sides commenced. Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos said, “We couldn’t be happier to be working again with Harvey and Bob, who have an unmatched track record of creating critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies.” He then added, “The Artist is a symbol of the Weinsteins’ triumphant return to the top of the film business. Through deep passion, great taste and phenomenal vision, Harvey and Bob continue to surprise audiences and make history.” You hear that? These returning heroes are making history. That Uggie was one cute dog.

Back-scratching is a two-way street though, so old Harv had some flowery quotes to toss at the press as well; though his were a little more self-aggrandizing than Sarandos’ own comments. Weinstein said, “It is a fantastic coup for Netflix to acquire The Artist and the package of additional titles. With this deal, a company that loves movies, Netflix, joins forces with a company that is built on that same love. It’s exciting that we can offer consumers a supremely convenient way to see the kinds of movies that made us want to be in this business in the first place.”

The financial and term details of this deal aren’t known, but it’s said to be a multi-year thing that will give Netflix subscribers exclusive access to many of the Weinsteins’ foreign, art, and, documentary films. As somebody who is in love with Netflix’s subscription service and also worried about how their rights negotiations with newly savvy studios are going to evolve going forward, I’d say that this deal is damn good news, and hopefully it will set an example that other companies look to emulate going forward. Visions of a world where every production company has their own $10 a month streaming service keep me awake at night. [Inside Movies]

Popular (I think) online comic website The Oatmeal recently uploaded an entry titled “I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened,” a riveting tale of online piracy. As this is the Internet, the comic has already been widely disseminated with many individuals championing it as a justification for piracy, while others have rallied against it as a perfect example of why pirates are big fat babies.

For one view, you can go to what seems to be the first response from Andy Ihnatko, while Devin Faraci also weighed in at Badass Digest.

Both of these gentlemen have mostly targeted the pirates themselves in terms I agree with. Let’s run down that quickly before I move on to something both of them have missed.

HBO is a paid subscription cable service – one of the first and most popular at that. They make the majority of their money by getting people to pay a fee to subscribe and see what they have to offer. Predominantly, HBO licenses movies and shows them. If you want 24 hours of movie options in your own home, you can subscribe to HBO. They also started offering original programming rather early, starting with documentaries and sports programming. They later successfully moved into producing original fiction program, with hits including The Sopranos, Deadwood, and now Game of Thrones.

What the proponents of this comic say is that HBO is making it too difficult for people to watch Game of Thrones. Why can’t they stream it on Netflix, rent it on Amazon, or buy it through iTunes already? Why is it so hard! The answer is simple: HBO is a subscription-based service. They make the vast majority of their money through subscription fees. People subscribe to HBO because they want what it offers. If what you want is to watch Game of Thrones you either subscribe to HBO or you wait until it becomes available via other outlets, which is coming in March.

I pay a premium price to watch the show before people who refuse to pay the premium price. Why should you get to skip the line and the payment? If you don’t want to pay for cable, you don’t get to watch it. If you don’t subscribe to HBO, you don’t get to watch Game of Thrones until it comes out on DVD. It’s simple.

I agree that the cable subscription service is outdated. I wish I could just pay a fee and watch brand new episodes of certain shows. I’m a huge fan of Spartacus on Starz! They streamed the first season concurrently on Netflix, so I watched it. They didn’t do that for Gods of the Arena so I waited and bought the Blu-ray. They decided, for whatever reason, not to stream Spartacus: Vengeance. I wanted to watch it, so what did I do? I subscribed to Starz! It was either that or wait – or pirate?

You can’t get mad at HBO for not offering you the service you want. Or, I mean, I guess you can, but you shouldn’t pirate their programming to “get back at them” for not giving you exactly what you want that you’re unwilling to pay for. I fully encourage you to write to HBO and say that you’d be willing to pay some number of dollars to watch Game of Thrones as it airs on-line or something. Go for it. But pirating their show because you don’t like their service? That’s like stealing a DVD player from Best Buy because they don’t have an express check-out line and you just have the one item. You wait in line or you don’t get the product. You can go somewhere else.

But who does piracy hurt, you ask? What’s the difference between pirating Game of Thrones or The Office? Is it different than pirating a movie?

Pirating from HBO is about the worst type of pirating you can do. Especially if you really want to watch Game of Thrones. At least most people who download music or movies say, “Well, I didn’t want to see/hear it enough to pay for it, so it’s not like they’re losing money.”

In this case, The Oatmeal is saying that he really really wants to watch Game of Thrones. It’s not something he’s just interested in viewing to test the waters. No, in the comic he downloads the entire season and seems to enjoy it. Last I checked even movie pirates say they pay to see the movie when they really really want to.

Beyond that, HBO, again, is a subscription-based service. Their primary business model is licensing movies and sporting events. Original programming is a big expenditure for them. The total budget for Game of Thrones is estimated between $50-60m, which is about $5m an episode.

HBO created Game of Thrones, at this big expense, to entice more people to subscribe to their service. If people do not subscribe to their service to see Game of Thrones, it becomes a source of loss to them and it gets cancelled. HBO doesn’t need Game of Thrones, they have an otherwise successful business that doesn’t include risking $50m.

So every pirate who doesn’t pay to see Game of Thrones hurts it. Everyone who doesn’t subscribe to see Game of Thrones hurts it. HBO needs to generate new subscribers to justify new costs. Game of Thrones can help retain subscribers, which is beneficial, but it also needs to help generate new ones.

Don’t think HBO would cancel something so critically successful? Remember Deadwood? That was a phenomenal show that garnered tons of praise, but at an inflation adjusted cost of $5.7m per episode, it didn’t provide the subscription boost needed to justify the cost. Game of Thrones is already almost as expensive as Deadwood, so we can assume the margin for error here is slim. There are already five books out in the series, with two more on the way – that’s seven seasons, at least, of material. Want to see all seven? Give HBO some of your cash. HBO is a business, an a no nonsense one at that. They recently declined to renew critically acclaimed shows that failed to provide subscriber retention or acquisition, such as Hung and Bored to Death.

I’m not trying to be holier than thou. In the modern day, with so much at your fingertips with so little risk, I’m sure everyone with an Internet connection has done some form of piracy, or recorded and displayed a game without the express written consent of the NFL.

While I think pirating movies is wrong too, movie studios make movies. That’s what they do. HBO is not a movie studio. They don’t generate income from direct receipts. They make money off of subscribers and pirates are not subscribing. Pirating won’t change the way HBO does business. This isn’t a law that discriminates against people based on race or sexuality that we need to fight against. This is a company doing business as it does, selling a product that you want to see – so do the right thing and pay to see it. Pay the subscription fee and sign up for cable or pay less and see it later. That’s how the world works.

As a final aside, I’d also like to point out where The Oatmeal feels some remorse about pirating because author George R.R. Martin won’t get the payment he deserves if the show is pirated. I’m sure Martin has already been paid a great deal by HBO (and his publishers), and is doing just fine. Sure, he’ll make more money the more season there are, but also consider the actors, directors, writers, extras, drivers, set dressers, horse wranglers, caterers, wardrobe people, and construction workers who are employed by the show. George R.R. Martin is doing fine, but if this show ends up cancelled, all those people end up out of work. And yes, many of them are probably doing okay anyway, but losing your job sucks.

In conclusion, the Cliff Notes:

1. Pirating is wrong.
2. HBO is a subscription service. You either pay to see it now or you wait and see it later.
3. HBO and Game of Thrones are particularly vulnerable to pirating because of their subscription service business model.
4. Hurting Game of Thrones through piracy won’t change HBO’s business, it will just get the show cancelled.
5. The Oatmeal, while pointing out the flaws in the subscription based business model, is wrong to condone the pirating of material, especially when it is available on DVD and Blu-ray in two weeks.

The Motion Picture Association of America has a history of questionable practices when it comes to their content rating of film releases. And Harvey Weinstein has a history of going up against the organization when he doesn’t agree with harsh ratings they’ve slapped on Weinstein movies. In October of 2010, his indie project Blue Valentine got slapped with an NC-17 rating due to an oral sex scene, and Harvey successfully appealed the decision, arguing that nothing in the film was exploitative or unessential, and that the rating would be financially harming a great work of art if it was left to stand.

It looks like it’s time for round 2 in the Weinstein/MPAA war. This time the fight is over a documentary called Bully, which takes a look at schoolyard bullying in the United States. The MPAA has deemed that the film should be R-rated due to “some language,” and Weinstein is pissed because a restrictive rating would prohibit the youths who need to see a movie like this most from being able to buy a ticket.

Director Lee Hirsch said of the controversy, “I made Bully for kids to see—the bullies as well as the bullied. We have to change hearts and minds in order to stop this epidemic, which has scarred countless lives and driven many children to suicide. To capture the stark reality of bullying, we had to capture the way kids act and speak in their everyday lives—and the fact is that kids use profanity.” Damn right. Hirsch continued, “It is heartbreaking that the MPAA, in adhering to a strict limit on certain words, would end up keeping this film from those who need to see it most.”

The appeals hearing will be happening on February 23rd, and both Harvey Weinstein and one of the bullied kids from the film, Alex Libby, are said to be attending. Hirsch said of his young subject, “No one could make this case more powerfully than Alex Libby, and I am so proud and honored that he is stepping forward to make a personal appeal.”

That Weinstein was able to successfully make a case for Blue Valentine leads me to believe that Bully will be able to get its R-rating revoked, but any way you look at this situation, I’d say that giving a movie that speaks out about bullying an R-rating because there’s some nasty language in it is just more proof that the MPAA must die. [THR]

When I first heard details about Diablo Cody’s upcoming inaugural foray into the directing world, Lamb of God, I was kind of on the fence with whether or not I was looking forward to seeing it. I hadn’t liked any of Cody’s work up to that point, but a cast that included names like Holly Hunter and Octavia Spencer didn’t sound so bad at all. Add in names like Julianne Hough, who surprised me by doing a good job in Footloose, and Russell Brand, who is always more enjoyable in movies than I give him credit for, and I was thinking that I might be ready to give Cody another chance to get on my good side.

Things have changed since then. First off, the latest movie penned by Cody, Young Adult, came out and was generally well liked. I wasn’t as enamored with it as most seemed to be, but it did show me that there was some potential in Cody as a filmmaker, and I liked the way she handled Patton Oswalt’s character in that one quite a bit. And now a bomb has been dropped that completely changes the whole complexion of Cody’s career in my eyes. According to Deadline Pawnee, Nick Offerman has agreed to join the Lamb of God cast.

That’s right, Ron Swanson himself is going to be in a Diablo Cody movie, and I don’t know about you, but that’s good enough an endorsement for me. Couple this great cast with the intriguing sounding story, that of a young girl losing her faith after a plane crash and moving to Las Vegas to get all hedonist, and Lamb of God is starting to look like a very promising picture. I don’t know if it will be able to make up for me having to sit through Juno, but hopefully it will be enough for me to join the Diablo Cody party that everybody else has been having without me. A party I’ve been so sorely jealous of.

Larry the Cable Guy only wants the best for the insides of your children’s mouths. In a publicity move in support of Tooth Fairy 2, a film that is as unlikely as a large redneck supporting the oral well-being of the nation’s youth, the comedian and co-star Brady Reiter have created “a Public Service Announcment (PSA) which teaches children the importance of good oral health care.  Dental health professionals from across the country will get the exclusive first look of the PSA when it debuts at the America’s Tooth Fairy Celebration of Smiles event  February 23, 2012 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency-McCormick Place.”

“We always look for partnerships that can help compliment and expand the story of our projects,” explains Mary Daily, President and CMO, WW Marketing, from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. “Larry the Cable Guy as the Tooth Fairy lends itself to great family fun and partnering with the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation is a perfect fit.”

Tooth Fairy 2 heads out from under its radar cloaking device for a Blu-ray and DVD release on March 6, telling the story of Larry Guthrie (they seriously didn’t even change the man’s first name), “a fun-loving dreamer with a serious mission: win back the love of his life before she makes a terrible mistake and marries the wrong man!  In his attempt to get back on his long lost love’s good side, Larry visits the school where she works and make’s a horrible mistake…  He accidentally tells a child that the Tooth Fairy is just a myth.  Crushing the child’s dreams sets off a chain of events that are far more than Larry bargained for including being  “sentenced” to become a Tooth Fairy or face  having his memories erased for good…PLUS losing any chance of getting back the girl of his dreams!  Larry is brought before a 500-year-old Tooth Fairy stuck in a 10-year-old girl’s body (played by newcomer Brady Reiter) for sentencing.  The Tooth Fairy demands that Larry make retribution by temporarily serving as a Tooth Fairy and proving that Tooth Fairies really do exist. His mission?  Larry must collect 20 teeth in 20 days. With his orders in hand, Larry embarks on a journey to prove the existence of Tooth Fairies and to win back the love of his life.”

There’s nothing left to say. Unless you’d like to share your thoughts in the comment area below. But please, before you comment, consider the ramifications of Larry the Cable Guy sneaking into your young child’s bedroom late at night to leave a special surprise in their bed.

There is little additional commentary that one writer can add to such a headline. It’s simple: that show you and everyone you know loves so dearly, NBC’s redheaded stepchild from the twisted, unendingly nerdy mind of Executive Producer Dan Harmon, is coming back to finish its current season and march toward its goal of six seasons and a movie. Except for that last part. At least that’s the news thus far. The story stands, however, that Community is coming back.

The news was broken this afternoon via a Dan Harmon tweet, confirming that the show will return to NBC on March 15, in the 8 p.m. ET time slot that it had once inhabited before being forced into an untimely break, one that brought the wrath of the internet to the email inboxes of many a NBC exec. HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall later got more specific, outlining the details of the show’s return. Parks and Recreation will take a five-week break, leaving room for the Greendale clan to come in and finish its season. Nothing has been said about the prospect of a fourth season for Community, though there’s obviously still a fighting chance. Which means that you’re going to have to tune in. Especially those of you who live in a Nielsen household. If not, perhaps you should kidnap a Nielsen household, but on Thursday nights.

Image courtesy of MissCritter

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that decided to celebrate President’s Day in honor of its favorite United States President, Ulysses S. Grant. The beard on that motherf**ker…

We begin tonight with some stuff about John Carter, a film that has been awash with a diverse array of opinions this past week, most of which came from a number of pundits who had not yet actually seen the movie. “I heard that John Carter is a mess,” they’ve said, in more sensational and agenda-driven words. Tonight the record has been set straight. Disney lifted the Twitter embargo on those who attended last weekend’s press junket and some more level-headed opinions have entered the world. According to Devin Faraci, “Hopefully the internet will be able to put aside binary ‘It sucks/It rocks’ stuff and look at John Carter as a movie w/ good and bad aspects … The best parts of John Carter are Woola and Dejah Thoris. A generation will be ushered into puberty by Lynn Collins.” Also, someone named @Rejects said, “I was told that I could now tell you that I liked John Carter. I’m no puppet, but I follow the rules sometimes. So yeah, Carter ain’t bad … Some truly vivid and massive special effects work, some kickass aliens and a needlessly imperfect rhythm. But fun.” Both are highly credible sources. One is me.

Fans of the board game Settlers of Catan and Star Trek, two groups that I’d guess overlap a bit, will now have the ability to unite two loves — if they live in Germany, that is. Kosmos is set to release a Star Trek Catan game that will be awesome. I will have to have our own Dr. Cole Abaius pick on up for me, seeing as he runs the FSR Eastern Europe Office, which I’m told is in Germany somewhere.

The Awl columnist Eric Spiegelman has a great article over at AllThingsD describing Four Weird Things the Internet is Doing To Our Understanding of Television. The internet, she’s changing everything.

If the marketing minds at Disney have proven anything with their campaign for John Carter, it’s that taking vacation and leaving their first big movie of the year to the interns and office robots was probably not a good idea. Back from their trip, the folks at the Mouse House have teamed with Mondo for the release of an awesome John Carter IMAX poster, which shows off a little more of what this film is all about: massive, gorgeously rendered red planet scope.

The folks over at IGN have a little historical op-ed about the 100 year-old saga behind that movie I was just talking about in tonight’s lead story. Did you know that Without John Carter There Would Be No Star Wars. And yes, we’re talking about episodes IV, V and VI, here.

Hollywood.com is Making a Case for Rise of the Planet of the Apes for the Oscars this year. Even though Andy Serkis will not be challenging for the Best Supporting Oscar nod, the film should very well win Best Visual Effects.

Peggy Noonan delivers unto Newsweek the saga of one of Hollywood’s contemporary bad boys and How Harvey Weinstein Clawed Back to the Top. After a slight fall from grace, the rotund and grizzled grump is back to stealing Oscars, bullying the MPAA and distributing some really goddamn good movies.

Over at Lifehacker, Adam Dachis tells of How Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem. If only every great comedian turned TV sitcom star turned terrible reality TV show host/producer could be so useful.

Seeing as the show is creeping up on its 50th anniversary — making it the oldest thing I will spend an hour in a room with — there are plenty of stories to come about the legend of Doctor Who. Charlie Jane Anders at io9 has a great one, of how The Doctor Who creators were a scandal in their day.

The LA Times has a fascinating exposé on the ranks of voters who will undoubtedly disappoint you on Oscar night. Did you know that 94% of Oscar voters are white and 77% are male. This explains a lot, like why Crash won that one time.

Speaking of The Oscars, IFC’s Tim Grierson has a great article about how it’s not who wins that matters most, but how they win. “I’d like to thank the Academy…” The Art of Oscar Speeches is one of the best, offbeat Oscar-related reads you’ll see all year. And I say that with the knowledge that FSR’s Oscar coverage hasn’t even started yet.

Scott Weinberg of Movies.com fame chronicles The Complete History of ’80s 3-D Films — All 10 of Them, including gems such as Jaws 3-D and Metalstorm. Believe it or not, there was a time when 3-D was a total gimmick, but a hell of a lot of fun.

We close tonight with more John Carter. I promise that I’ll get back to other things tomorrow evening. Until then, however, I’d like for you to behold this completely badass fan-made John Carter trailer, which outdoes everything Disney has put out thus far. I’m sensing a trend, here. Perhaps Disney, like anyone would be, wasn’t quite clear on how to market such a genre-defiant film. This trailer is far more representative of the movie you should be seeing on March 9.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Some fun titles are hitting shelves today, and not a single one of them rocked the box office. Of course, some of them never had the chance… but Tower Heist? Pretty sure that was intended to be a hit. Other releases this week include the Elizabeth Olsen stunner Martha Marcy May Marlene, the Korean action epic War of the Arrows, the bland Channing Tatum (redundancy alert!) thriller Son of No One, and more!

As an added bonus one of the eleven entries below has been contributed by the highly educated and spry Landon Palmer! Can you guess which one?

As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it.

Retreat

A couple dealing with marital issues heads to a remote island to save their relationship, but when a stranger washes up onshore with a fantastical tale of a worldwide plague the three of them enter into a deadly game of survival.This British thriller takes major cues from the superior Dead Calm, but it manages to create solid suspense, tension and uncertainty of its own. Cillian Murphy and Jamie Bell give strong, convincing performances as the husband and stranger, respectively, but Thandie Newton doesn’t fare as well. Still, this is the kind of thriller that deserves better than to get lost in the shuffle. Check out my full review here.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Pitch: The twins got the billions, but she got the talent (and looks)…

Why Rent? A young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) escapes from a mildly oppressive cult and moves in with her older sister and her husband, but physical freedom doesn’t guarantee emotional safety. She begins questioning her surroundings, but is she just mentally damaged or has the cult’s charismatic leader (John Hawkes) actually come to take her back? Olsen really does give a powerful performance here, and the film becomes a real slowburn of suspense as it builds towards a real conversation-starter of a conclusion. Writer/director Sean Durkin’s film is a highly atmospheric thriller about paranoia, madness and unbreakable bonds.

War of the Arrows

Pitch: Cupid ain’t got nothing on this son of a bitch…

Why Buy? The first half of the 17th century sees an attack on Korean soil by the Chinese empire, and when a group of hostages are taken by the invaders two young men head after them with rescue on their mind. Lucky for them one of the men is an expert marksman with the bow and arrow, but will skill and passion be enough to defeat a much larger enemy? This historical action film is loaded with some pretty stellar action sequences, both up close and via ranged weapons, but it pales beside the film’s final thirty minutes. That third act is essentially one long chase scene filled with combat, wicked archery shots and stunning cinematography.

The Way

Pitch: First Martin Sheen’s son Charlie exploded like a balloon full of meat, and now Emilio dies while hiking in France…

Why Buy? An American doctor (Martin Sheen) gets word that his only child (Emilio Estevez) has died while hiking the “Way of St. James” in Europe, and he soon finds himself attempting to complete the journey in his son’s name. Estevez wrote and directed this simple but inspiring little tale about the lives we lead and the lives we’re missing. The core story of loss has some real emotional power, but the meat of the story exists in the people Sheen meets and the enlightenment he finds along the way. I expected something cheesy and more fitting of a movie of the week, but while viewers looking for a spiritual angle will find one even the more grounded among us will have our spirits lifted by this man’s journey. It’s a comfort film, no doubt, but one you’ll want to share with friends and family.

Blank City

Pitch: Bon Iver is to mumblecore as The Ramones are to…

Why Rent? For a brief period during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a dilapidated downtown NYC gave birth to a bustling subculture of aggressive creativity known as No Wave. Celine Danhier’s documentary provides an in-depth look at the incredible moment in which people like Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Vincent Gallo, and John Waters made gritty 8mm films, The Ramones and Blondie played loud punk rock, and Jean-Michel Basquiat painted the walls nearby. Like many docs about film “movements,” Blank City often feels like a one-time viewing clip show that only scratches the surface of a greater library of work, but what a clip show it is.

Last Fast Ride: The Life Love and Death of a Punk Goddess

Pitch: This documentary is so punk it blurs out the vagina shot…

Why Rent? Marian Anderson was a punk star from the San Francisco music scene, and as lead singer of The Insaints she became something of a legend for her antics onstage and off throughout the 90s. Her songs were deeply personal and appropriately filled with rage, but her non-vocal antics which sometimes included nudity, urinating on the audience, and the mishandling of bananas quickly took the limelight. Her tragic childhood, difficult life and sad death are the focus of this doc. The punk genre is not something that appeals to me (unless you count borderline groups like late career Green Day or The Offspring which you probably shouldn’t), but Marian’s life was a fascinating one filled with pain and beauty, and it makes for a compelling story.

London Boulevard

Pitch: It’s at the cross streets of Overbite Ave and Fookin Midget Way…

Why Rent? A recently paroled ex-con (Colin Farrell) is hired as a bodyguard for a young, reclusive actress (Keira Knightley), but what should have been an easy job turns deadly when his criminal past catches up to them both. Screenwriter William Monahan makes his directorial debut with this adaptation of Ken Bruen’s slim novel, and he fills it with a spectacular supporting cast including Ray Winstone, Eddie Marsan, David Thewlis, Ben Chaplin and Anna Friel. Knightley’s character is a bit too thinly drawn to make the inevitable romance very compelling, but Farrell brings charisma and pathos to his role. The ending is a unfortunately a pretty weak let down, but until that point the film manages to be an engaging little crime drama.

Nurse Jackie: Season Three

Pitch: If TV is to be believed all hospitals are run by sex-starved pill-poppers…

Why Rent? Jackie (Edie Falco) is a nurse with an addiction. Well, two addictions. She loves her pills, and she loves being on the receiving end of a good, fleshy injection. That’s gross, but what I’m trying to say is she’s having relations outside of her marriage. Season two ended with her secrets being discovered by her husband and best friend, but for someone as practiced at deception as Jackie this is just one more necessary hurdle. Falco has never been finer than she is here as a sarcastic but capable nurse who makes rules just so she can break them, and the supporting cast that surrounds her are almost as entertaining.

Tower Heist

Pitch: “Oh shit, you guys ever see Boys Don’t Cry? When Hilary Swank plays that dude? That scared the shit out of me…”

Why Rent? A group of 99%-ers devise a plan to steal back their pensions from the Wall Street billionaire (Alan Alda) who swindled it all away. Brett Ratner’s latest is Ocean’s 11-lite, which, if you’ve seen Ocean’s 11 you know means this is lighter than air. There are some laughs to be found, but with a cast like this (Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Michael Peña, Matthew Broderick, Téa Leoni) there really should have been a lot more. Still, Affleck and Peña deliver some great lines. Headliners Stiller and Murphy (who talks like the donkey from Shrek all through this for some reason) are far less successful on the comedy front.

Bad Actress

Pitch: Truth in advertising…

Why Avoid? A has-been actress (Beth Broderick) who now spends her days shilling for her husband’s chain of air-conditioning stores decides to off him after he becomes too charitable with their savings. She would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for her own meddling kids. This is essentially a low budget black comedy, but while it’s filled with capable and recognizable faces (including Chris Mulkey, Whitney Able, Greg Proops and others) it just never manages to be funny. The one gag that works involves Dee Wallace, but you have to wait the whole movie for it. Skip it and watch Swimming With Sharks instead.

The Son of No One

Pitch: I’d put my kid up for adoption too if he was this boring…

Why Avoid? A rookie cop (Channing Tatum) finds himself immersed in a decades-old crime that holds a very personal connection to his own childhood. The cast alone should have made this a watchable thriller as names like Ray Liotta, Al Pacino, Juliette Binoche, Tracey Morgan, and Katie Holmes seem like an interesting and eclectic bunch, but sadly they can’t salvage this disaster from stinking up your TV. The central story is so uninteresting that you expect something bigger is hiding around the next bend, but that corner is never turned. As weak as that story is though the narrative structure does it no favors by jumping through time too soon and too frequently resulting in a lack of suspense or curiosity. Skip it and watch Orphan instead.

Also out this week, but I haven’t seen the movie/TV show, review material was unavailable, and I have no blind opinion:

Anatomy of a Murder (Criterion)
The Fades: Season One
Honey 2
Inkubus
J. Edgar
Puss In Boots
Return to Bloodfart Lake
World on a Wire (Criterion)

Read More: This Week in DVD

What are you buying on DVD this week?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of movie news, notes and links that will make you very happy that you decided to stop and take a look at what’s going on. Seriously, it’s the bringer of joy.

We begin tonight with a shot from this evening’s episode of Archer, which has mixed a little bit of Justified into its plot-lines. The AV Club has begun a campaign for a cross-over comic that would team Sterling Archer with Raylan Givens. I support this idea 100%.

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You can now follow Movie News After Dark on Pinterest, a place where our FSR scavengers will pin awesome movie-related things to a board in the cloud. It’s very New Age, we assure you. Just click the button below.

Don’t be surprised if tonight’s column points you in the director of several wonderful articles about Lord Oscar and his forthcoming night of magic. In case you haven’t heard, the Academy Awards are happening and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. We can read the best of what the web has to say, however, including this article at HitFix by Roth Cornet, Women and Oscar: And Other Things Rich White Men Like. Oh, snap! She also included this video made up by Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood:

With the exception of We Need to Talk About Kevin (read: terrible movie), she’s got one hell of a point.

Over at Criterion, The Messenger and Rampart director Oren Moverman presents his favorite Criterion Collection titles, one of which is Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. That one’s a good choice.

Hero Complex has a short, but interesting preview of a show I’m looking forward to, Tron: Uprising, a Disney XD show from Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, the guys who wrote Tron: Legacy. They speak at length about the freedom offered by doing an animated series. A freedom that led Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to do wonderful things with Transformers: Prime following their stunted collaboration on Michael Bay’s second live-action Transformers flick. Here’s hoping they pull it off.

For those who hadn’t realized yet, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is dense material. So dense that it confused its own star and its screenwriter. “If you simplify it too much you’d lose the flavor of it,” explained writer Peter Straughan. “You’re supposed to be in this dark shadowy world.” Thankfully they didn’t simplify, because it’s excellent.

Apparently Universal is using the pro-environment, anti-greed story of The Lorax to sell Mazda SUVs. This has put pundit Devin Faraci on a new plane of rage. I drive a Mazda, and I like it very much, so I’m conflicted. That said, using a movie that’s about the quest to save the environment (or something along those lines) to sell a gas-guzzling SUV is more than a little out there.

Speaking of Badass Digest, they inducted Judy Blume into the Badass Hall of Fame today. And rightfully so.

Disney has released a very neat poster for Frankenweenie, Tim Burton’s feature-length adaptation of his own 1984 stop-motion animated short film. As much as I loathe all of the crap Tim Burton has done lately, I can’t wait for this one. Anything stop-motion that he touches is brilliant. And even though he doesn’t have Henry Selick on this one, I’m sure he’ll do just fine.

Over at Film.com, veteran film critic Eric D. Snider looks back at his rave review of Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday and thinks twice about calling it “The Saving Private Ryan of football movies.” The only thing I remember about that movie is that one football player loses an eye. And that football players often have to take violent number twos during half-time. Okay, so that’s two things.

Gentleman journalist James Rocchi provides a number of suggestions for How Oscar Can Swing for the Fences, along with other sports analogies. In the end, he makes a number of good points. You could say that he was patient, deliberate, waited for his pitch and found himself content with a ground-rule double. That’s a baseball thing.

Geekscape wonders What if X-Men was made in the early 1990s?!? (The appalling punctuation is theirs, not mine). Excited punctuation aside, they do get around to dropping names like Jeff Goldblum as Magneto, Val Kilmer as Scott Summers, Nicole Kidman as Jean Grey (so basically it would be just like Batman Forever, then, only magnetism would find a way). And of course, Morgan Freeman.

Guy Lodge’s editor Kris Tapley called this one of the best pieces Mr. Lodge has written. It’s called The Long Shot: Don’t go to bed angry. It’s about an Oscar pundit’s thoughts as Oscar night comes within reach. And yes, it’s a really great read.

Movies.com asked a real life Navy SEAL to rate the authenticity of 10 Navy SEAL movies. How dare he call the Steven Seagal led 1992 thriller Under Siege ”such b.s.”! I believe he was referring to that lack of believability behind the part about Seagal being able to cook. (Side note: SWCC — mentioned in the last paragraph — is hardcore. Can’t wait to see them play out on screen in Act of Valor.)

NY Times Oscar expert Melena Ryzik, best known as The Carpetbagger, presents her 2012 Oscar Predictions. Surprise, surprise, she’s putting her chips in the corner of The Artist. Her and everyone else, that is. (Come on, Moneyball!) Also, The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, a version that was aimed more toward adults than family audiences. It’s a fascinating diversion caught in a time capsule of absolute absurdity. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the heads up.