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John Latchem

March 11, 2010
‘Drawn Together’ Movie Heading to Comic-Con

Not that Comic-Con.

Paramount Home Entertainment and Comedy Central will screen The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! during the Anaheim Comic-Con Saturday, April 17, at 7 p.m. The movie hits DVD a few days later, on April 20.

The screening will be followed by a panel with creators Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser.

Anaheim Comic-Con runs from April 16-18 and is organized by Wizard Entertainment as part of its Wizard World series of conventions held throughout the year across the country.

With the big show, San Diego Comic-Con International, quickly outgrowing its current venue, the San Diego Convention Center, speculation has run rampant over where the show will be held after its contract ends in 2012. Several cities have thrown their hat into the ring, such as Las Vegas. San Diego could expand its convention center and maintain its hosting duties. Anaheim with its convention center has made a play as well, and attracting top talent with fanboy-type programs such as movie screenings are a positive step in showing it can handle higher-profile events.

The Drawn Together Movie is a continuation of the raunchy animated series that lasted three seasons from 2004-07, and featured parodies of cartoon stereotypes in a reality-show setting.

Extras on the DVD include commentary, deleted scenes, “Drawn Together” minisodes and the featurettes “Drawn Together: True Confessionals,” “Drawn Together: The Legacy,” “Anatomy of an Animated Sex Scene,” “Re-Animating Drawn Together: From the Small Screen to the Slightly Bigger Screen” and “D.I.Y. 3D Glasses.”

Additionally, the movie will be available April 20 in HD and standard-def on download-to-own platforms such as iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune, Sony PlayStation Store and Amazon Video on Demand.
 

March 10, 2010
Trailer Wars: 'Iron Man 2' vs. 'Tron Legacy'

This past week, fanboys were treated to not one, but two new trailers for some highly anticipated blockbusters due in cinemas this year.

First up, after the Oscars, came the Iron Man 2 trailer:

It looks awesome and oh-so-cool, especially seeing Tony Stark deploying the new Mark V suitcase armor. The movie hits theaters May 7.

Also out this week is the new Tron Legacy trailer:

Looks like a slick CGI re-imagining of the computer world created in the original Tron from 1982. I don't know if it can be as groundbreaking as the first one but it still looks like a fun ride with a hefty heap of nostalgia. Tron Legacy hits theaters Dec. 17.

March 09, 2010
Busy Post-Oscar Week at Stores

Wal-Mart's Planet 51 with lunch bag

With awards season behind us, the bulk of the contenders not yet on disc are finally making their way into stores. March 9 saw the release of two six-time Oscar nominees: Precious (which won two Oscars) and Up in the Air (which was shut out).

Barnes & Noble was among the few retailers setting up an Oscar display, even using its Web site, BN.com, to list the winners, and offer a link to buy those that were on disc.

Most retailers weren’t keen on offering exclusives with the bigger new releases. Of the theatricals new to disc, only Planet 51 generated any action, with Wal-Mart offering the DVD packed with a lunch bag emblazoned with the movie’s logo.

As far as exclusives go, retailers took more interest in Universal’s new Barbie in A Mermaid Tale DVD. Wal-Mart offered the direct-to-video movie with a charm necklace, while Target offered a Barbie beach doll with purchase of the DVD. Target also took the opportunity to promote a $14.99 Barbie mermaid doll.

Wal-Mart also offered Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s new Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day DVD in a steelbook case with an exclusive bonus disc.

Among other interesting displays, Best Buy offered previous “South Park” seasons on DVD at $18.99 apiece, in advance of the March 16 release of the 13th season on disc.

A Barnes & Noble in Costa Mesa, Calif., had a display cross-promoting DC Comics movies and comic books.

March 05, 2010
‘Up in the Air’ Should Win Best Picture

The greatest works of literature tend to have an indelible quality rooted in their ability to present a multifaceted story that both entertains and enlightens. Such classics are bound to mean different things to different people, who interpret them as they see fit.

Which brings me to Up in the Air, my favorite movie of 2009. (It takes this position over Inglourious Basterds and The Hangover, two films that had been perched near the top spot for a while.) Jason Reitman’s third directorial outing is easily his best. And when your first two films are as good as Thank You for Smoking and Juno, topping them is no easy feat.

The setup is simple enough. Professional journeyman Ryan Bingham (George Clooney in a classic leading-man performance) is the corporate hatchet man whose company hires him out to downsizing businesses that lack the temerity to fire their own employees. He relishes his time on the road, but his free ride is threatened by up-and-comer Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who proposes using Internet chat services to fire client employees from afar, thus creating huge savings on the travel budget.

As a mosaic of the travel industry, the only other film I would think comes close to capturing the isolation of living in a state of perpetual motion is Fight Club, which of course only touches on those themes before veering in a radically different direction. (One of Up in the Air's deleted scenes echoes Fight Club's theory of the single-serving friend, met on a flight and then forgotten, so I'm glad it didn't make the final cut, lest it invite the inevitable comparisons to the earlier effort.)

Since Ryan is not grounded, he has nothing to hold on to. His only goal seems to be accumulating enough miles on his travel account to earn a mythical elite status, but can such a journey sustain him without anyone to share in it?

To show Natalie the ropes of their industry, she is paired with Ryan for one last road trip. Along the way, Ryan encounters Alex (Vera Farmiga), another wayward traveler who appears to be a female version of himself.

The arrangement gives Ryan a chance to learn how to care for others, and Natalie a chance to learn about life.

Ryan seems more comfortable in the artificial hospitality created by the travel industry to put its customers at ease, which probably forms the core of his personality, letting him remain charming and persuasive as he’s tearing people from their livelihood without a second thought.

In one discussion I had about this film, I suggested that Ryan was a metaphor for the Grim Reaper, given a chance at life only to be forced to understand his own tragic role in the cosmic ballet. The comparison was meant with some skepticism, but consider this pitch Ryan makes when describing the essence of his job to Natalie:

“We are here to make limbo tolerable. To ferry wounded souls across the river of dread and to a point where hope is dimly visible. And then we stop the boat, shove them in the water and make them swim.”

Up in the Air is as much about the idea of its characters as it is a story of their lives. The film lets viewers project their own traits onto whichever parts of the film with which they most identify, raising questions but never providing the hard answers. Like great literature, Up in the Air has so many layers you can watch it multiple times and achieve a different experience with each viewing that is just as fulfilling as the last.

Is it a movie about people on the road? Is it a tragedy about a lost soul or a positive message about embracing who you are? Is it about Ryan and his slow emergence from a self-imposed banishment from the real world? Do you follow Natalie as she comes to the realization that life is more than theories and routines? Is it a treatise on the nature of feminism in the career cycle? Is it a buddy movie in which Ryan and Natalie can learn from each other about the holes in their lives? Is it an examination of the role our careers and families play in defining us? Is it the story of harsh economic realities and the people who nonetheless can take advantage of the system? Is it about a quest that is ultimately meaningless? Is it a warning about the dangers of fantasy escapism? Or do you see it as a parable about a world that has ironically grown more isolated despite the technological innovations that should keep us more connected?

Up in the Air is all these things and more, tightly wrapped in a tidy package at under two hours. So many moving parts, yet under Reitman’s skilled guidance they all manage to come together perfectly. At a time when far too many films try to be about a state of being and forget to tell a story, it’s refreshing to see a movie such as Up in the Air that reminds us it’s possible to do both. While individual scenes may lack the bravura of sequences from Inglourious Basterds or The Hurt Locker, the totality of purpose that Reitman has carved from Walter Kirn's original novel delivers more than enough substance to compensate.

Even the extras on the DVD and Blu-ray add something to the equation. The deleted scenes are so good they play like short films based on the movie, adding character depth and additional meaning. (To see all the deleted scenes you have to get the Blu-ray version. The DVD has only about half of them.)

Up in the Air hits DVD and Blu-ray Disc March 9 from Paramount Home Entertainment. Be sure to check it out.

 

March 04, 2010
HBO Brings the Blu With a Side of ‘Seinfeld’

HBO Home Entertainment is bringing three of the cabler’s comedies to home video in June.

Due June 8 (order date May 4) is a two-DVD set for Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Seventh Season ($39.98). This is the season in which Larry David orchestrates a reunion of the “Seinfeld” cast to make a special episode 10 years after the show ended. The season-long arc is a great nod to the fourth wall and a clever way around the usual criticisms and pitfalls of a sitcom reunion show. We get all the fun of a “Seinfeld” reunion without any of the overhyped expectations. And it all leads to perhaps the most surreal moment in “Seinfeld” lore, in which David (playing the show’s fictionalized version of himself) actually tries to play George, the character that was based on him and played by Jason Alexander.

June 22 (order date May 18) comes Hung: The Complete First Season and Entourage: The Complete Sixth Season on both DVD ($39.98 each) and Blu-ray Disc ($49.99 each).

The two-disc “Hung” sets include commentary and a featurette. The show stars Thomas Jane as a well-endowed high-school teacher who moonlights as a gigolo.

The three-disc “Entourage” sets include commentary and behind-the-scenes footage. The Blu-ray release represents a first for the series.
 

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