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I’m not sure if it’s the Harry Potter franchise or whether it goes back even further to the Peter Jackson Lord Of The Rings films. Somewhere along the way the studios began to cater to the children’s fantasy genre, and the rewards have often been huge. Just about every literary secret fantasy world either has now been explored or is about to be converted to film soon. Even the Tom Swift books of my childhood are about to join in the box office party. While many of these fantasy stories are older classics, some, like Harry Potter, are far more recent.

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I have to be straight up honest here. I have never seen a true western movie. When I say true western, I am speaking about westerns that took place at the height of the western movie making era of the 50’s and 60’s. The Professionals would be my first movie and I have to say right away, after watching the film, my interest is definitely peaked.

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I have seen plenty of Clint Eastwood films throughout my lifetime. I have always been a fan of his although I have yet to watch any of his Westerns, aside from The Unforgiven. Eastwood, for most of his career, has been the typical badass who you didn’t want to meet up with if you were doing something wrong. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s character was the trend setter of what movie cops were to become; the loaner who does things his own way regardless if anyone else likes it or not.

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Paramount has been late to the Blu party but more than makes up for it with the recent addition of There Will Be Blood on Blu-ray. The film is such a visually visceral experience that I can now no longer stand to see the recent standard DVD version of the film. Now, it’s important that I clarify that this is not to say that the transfer is anywhere near the best I’ve seen. In fact, I’m a bit disappointed. I’m commenting mostly on how much HD in general complements this film. This is now the second time I’ve watched this film in a relatively short span of time.

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It might be hard for me to admit, but there are certain instances where having a high definition transfer of even a modern film is not necessarily a better thing. The recent Blu-ray release of Cloverfield is one such instance. There is no question that the transfer is about as sharp and clean as anything I’ve seen on Blu to date. The problem is that it only helps to accent the stylistic flaws inherent in this kind of film. The most noticeable improvement is in the first third of the film. Of course, that part of Cloverfield is about as entertaining as watching paint dry.

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Love him or hate him, Terry Gilliam’s directorial career has experienced more twists and turns than anything I could even imagine. Shoot, a film about a Gilliam production failure was even done and well-received by many, including the former Monty Python cast member himself. When Heath Ledger died, I guess it would only make sense that a film with Gilliam would potentially be thrown into turmoil as a result (Gilliam was directing Ledger at the time of his death), though it does appear to be working fine now. So while he’s dealing with his current production, this year is a milestone of sorts as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen celebrates its 20th anniversary on disc.

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My exposure to the Justice League (JLA) and to comics as a whole is pretty limited. Sure, I go see Iron Man, Batman and a lot of the other adaptations, and I remember seeing Superfriends growing up, but I was never really a comic book guy so to speak. I do understand and respect the following; it’s just something I never really got into. I also respect the concept of the JLA: you get all of your singular heroes together in one spot and perhaps introduce new villains or have the existing ones get into some epic throwdown? Hell yeah, I say!

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When it comes to teen high school comedies, I think I have seen them all. They all seem to have the same premise. It is usually a couple of guys who are in high school and are looking to get laid at a prom or party or wherever they can get it. Nothing has changed in the 33 years that I have been watching movies. It works, the premise still works. But not all movies can pull off the perfect teen comedy…but Superbad comes super close.

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I like TV shows. It seems that most of the time I am always late to the party. It took me a year to watch 24 for the first time, 4 years to watch CSI and so on and so forth. The same thing can be said for Damages. I didn’t watch the first airing of it on FX. I honestly prefer to watch TV shows either on disc or via my on demand or DVR so I don’t have to deal with commercials. So, when I popped in Damages last night, I didn’t expect that I would be finished already. Yes, all thirteen 45 minutes episodes done. It was that addictive.

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Having never seen A Passage to India before this Blu Ray release, I was not sure what to expect. I did inquire with someone who had seen the film to give me a brief description of what I was to expect. Basically, my taste in movies is of the basic variety, more mainstream type movies. So, I really had to go into this viewing with a very open mind.

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I have a cousin who is absolutely in love with the Broadway production of Rent currently playing in New York. To date she’s made the trip to New York from the Philly area no less than 3 times and will likely do so again. I attempted to channel that passion as much as I could as I sat down to watch this Blu-ray version of the production. Unfortunately, I don’t believe I was quite successful. From what I can see there is no doubt in my mind that Rent is a phenomenal experience

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There was first the cloned sheep, Dolly. Now today, cloning is actually very popular in science. Just do a simple Google search and you’ll find many articles on cloning that are occurring or have occurred. Heck, there was even an active website at one time about gene banking a pet. How far is science willing to go? The cloning of humans is not so far out of reach but most likely will not happen in my lifetime. When it does, you can bet that government will try and step in and stop it.

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Cuba? What the hell…?

What’s next Norbit 2? Please noooooo!!!!

I don’t get it, why does this movie exist? What’s the thought process? Let’s take an already mediocre movie (Daddy Day Care) and make a less inspired, poorly conceived sequel. I miss the days when only good movies got less inspired, poorly conceived sequels.

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I am sure at one point or another in everyone’s life; they wished they could be successful, smarter or healthier than they already are. It is only natural. Now what if I told you that when you have children of your own you could make that decision for them? Would you do it?

Vincent’s (Ethan Hawke) dream is to one day go into space. Since a very young age, he had read every book he could get his hands on to find out what it would take be an astronaut. Vincent fought off his parents urges to give up that dream because they knew he could never do it. Why? It was because he wasn’t created the”natural way.”

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It was back in 1999 when I first saw Run Lola Run. I remember exactly where I rented it, what city I was in and who I watched it with. I read about the film online and when the opportunity came about to rent it, I jumped at the chance. One of my main reasons for wanting to rent it was because my companion was in fact German and from Germany and I knew she would enjoy watching a movie in her native language. Little did I know before watching Lola, it would become one of my all time favorite movies.

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The last time I saw both Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in a movie together, it was in 2000, in The Yards. It just so happens that the director of We Own the Night, James Gray, also directed that film. Having not worked for 7 years should have been a tell-tale sign of things to come. However, I was hopeful that this time around, with We Own the Night, Gray would be able to hit pay dirt. Sadly, We Own the Night comes up broke.

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I love vampire movies. I remember watching Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee with my father on late night Saturdays when I was a kid. Since those days vampires have evolved. Ann Rice certainly deserves a lot of credit for breathing new life into the undead. Her gothic depictions of the creatures in her Vampire Chronicles stories added a wealth of new mythology and atmosphere to the age old monsters. Underworld would bring us even more vampire lore and, of course, the most attractive vampire to date in Selene.

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I’ve never understood book clubs. Of course, I’ve never been intimately involved in one. I prefer instead to let my brain have its own debate on whether or not a certain event in a novel was a metaphor or anything more than meets the eye. However, Jane Austen is a horse of another color. A book club focused on Austen might actually be interesting. But this one wasn’t.

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Chucky returns with bride Tiffany and androgynous child Glen/Glenda in a modern sendup of old Hollywood. A little bit of gore, some John Waters, and a healthy dose of Jennifer Tilly keep this film fresh and original despite its obvious 80s slasher gimmick origins. Universal has put together an excellent package for this HD DVD release that should please Chucky fans young and old. HD DVD dead? Oh well….worth a pickup at your nearest firesale.

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What do we know about Dragon War that the layman might not be familiar with? Well, Hyung-rae Shim, who wrote and directed the film, was a popular Korean comedian who really, really wanted to make a film about this longtime native tale of dragons, so much so that he spent several years getting it made. And yet when it comes to filmmaking, it appears that Dragon War borrows heavily from a lot of other films in the process and winds up underwhelming a lot of people.

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Wow, a film with religious themes, I sure hope I don’t get protested by some sort of league or something. But to be fair, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, collectively known as the British Monty Python comedy troupe, and their film Life of Brian doesn’t necessarily skewer Christian beliefs or life of Christ per se, rather it looks at his life with the occasional parallel, and there is a joke or two thrown in, in typical Python form.

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“The Invasion” is a remake of the classic “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This time around, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are the heroes that uncover the diabolical truth behind a secret plot to take over the world. This is a film that has been re-made several times before, in various forms. Each time, the film is turned into a heavy-handed metaphor for the current political climate. That is most certainly the case this time around as well, as the oblivious citizens are expected to accept everything their leaders tell them, no matter how implausible that information might be. I’ll spare you the pop politics, but the parallels between the Bush administration and the story are rampant.

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I’m going to be honest with you, I can’t stand the stand up comedy of Robin Williams. Growing up, I used to like it and thought it was pretty hilarious, but two things have changed since then. First off, my voice changed and I grew hair in strange places, but secondly, Williams stopped doing cocaine, which as any artist will tell you, seems to neuter them creatively (Eddie Van Halen, I’m looking at you). But hey, at least in his later years he seems to have mellowed out and Patch Adams seems to be a progression of that.

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