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Where to begin? I saw this when it reared its ugly head in theaters back in December. I couldn’t recommend it, although I did see a few things that may be worthy of a view. Watching it for a second time on DVD, I am not sure I can even say that. I guess the problem starts with making a sequel that doesn’t contain the title character, although they try very hard to mention his name every few minutes. I assume that is to make sure you remember you are watching a Van Wilder movie and that you didn’t actually walk in on the neighboring screening of Turistas (which opened the same weekend, and had the same effect on audiences). If you are in the mood for a dreadfully predictable and particularly dull time, this may be the movie for you.

A couple years ago, Pixar and Disney were just two companies with a distribution deal. When the word came out that Pixar was looking to unload the Disney yoke, the Mouse House developed an internal division to do their own CGI features.

The debut film from Disney was “Chicken Little,” a fun and entertaining film. Probably what was best about “Chicken Little” was that it was cut from a completely different cloth than the Pixar movies. Sure, it had cute and cuddly anthropomorphic animals, but it had an entirely different flavor. This helped differentiate it’s style.

She didn’t have Renee Zellweger’s pout, couldn’t ride like Dale Evans, and never golfed like Babe Didrikson Zaharias. She couldn’t sing like Janis Joplin either, and she was not really pretty like Donna Reed, but Kim Stanley was probably the greatest American actress who ever lived. Funny thing is, Kim Stanley told everyone she was a Texan, and said it so many times and so well, people believed her, even genuine Texans like Horton Foote of Wharton.

Going into “Blades of Glory,” I knew that this movie was going to be either a work of genius or it would suck like no other movie has sucked in the history of time.

Fortunately, genius ruled the day. I laughed throughout the film, both at things I saw coming and also at things that came out of left field. “Blades of Glory” is easily one of the funniest movies of the year, and it’s going to be hard to beat on the comedy front.

I admit that I’m a sucker for me-against-the-world guy movies. I could spend time for a Dolph Lundgren flick and walk away totally guilt-free. It’s a sub-genre that guarantees, if nothing else, thoughtless identification with the hero and mindlessly violent, action sequences. I can’t remember the last movie i saw where the hero walks towards the camera while an unbelievable explosion goes on in the background. Oh! I know, it’s “Shooter” where Mark Wahlberg kicks some corrupt government guys’ ass and goes his way.

What’s better than watching Roger Ebert talk about movies on TV? Listening to two Fat Guys from Film School Rejects spout off about movies in the comfort of your own office, car or even your bedroom (if you are Jessica Biel, that is. She listens to our show in the nude.) Today we are proud to bring you Episode 1 of our NEW Podcast, Fat Guys at the Movies. Hosted by Kevin Carr of 7m Pictures and myself, Neil Miller, Fat Guys at the Movies is a revolution in film criticism. If you are sick of all of the stuffy, snobby film critics who drone on and on about film theory and artsy-fartsy films or you can’t handle the random fanboy blogging from his mom’s basement, then we are your cure.

This Week’s Episode: Welcome to the Program!

From Bionic Woman to mattress salesgirl, Lindsay Wagner has run the gamut from Nielsen numbers to Sleep Numbers. It must be hard for her to accept that her old 70s show, The Bionic Woman, is having a makeover by NBC/Universal Studios with David Eick, the writer-producer who changed Battlestar Galactica from a rather nothing sci-fi show into a pretty good space drama.

This time around, The Bionic Woman will be dealing with a rebellious teenage sister who lives with her and, according to the producers, there will be other changes from the old show.

I will never be able to escape from the fact that I grew up a Disney kid. No I didn’t watch The Mickey Mouse Club (and it’s a good thing too, otherwise that Britney Spears affair I had would have started at an inappropriate age), but my grandmother did have a collection of hundreds of Disney animated movies on VHS. Remember VHS? It was so cool in it’s heyday.

From a flood of six wide release films to two, this weekend has downsized its output to a mere trickle. Still, the trickle has the potential of generating this weekend’s top two hits. Lately it seems that you can always count on Will Ferrell and Disney animation, and that is what you are getting this weekend. But, if those two don’t make you salivate, I am sure that there is a a film or three that you missed out on last week, making this a good opportunity to catch up on those desirables. If you need a little blood in your life, you could go with something like The Hills Have Eyes II, or maybe if drama is what you desire, then go see Reign Over Me. Whatever your taste, there is definitely a movie out there for you!

We know you love contests. We also know that you are all very creative movie lovers. We also know hope that you come to our site because we are pretty damn funny. So when Universal decided to hit us up with a copy of The Good Shepherd on DVD, we thought we’d hook up our beloved readers — but that isn’t to say we won’t make you work at least a little bit for it.

In The Lookout, Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues his trend of breaking away from being that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun moving towards being a serious dramatic presence on the silver screen. It is a trend that really began back in 2004 with his stunning performance in Mysterious Skin and continued quite nicely in 2005 with Rian Johnson’s indie sensation, Brick. Levitt is quickly establishing himself as an actor with serious range and a keen eye for great roles in smaller films.

Somewhere it is happening. It is most likely occurring on a college campus somewhere and it involves that guy that we all know. Somewhere that guy is walking up to some random girl and spouting, “I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.” Why do I know this is happening? Because that is the power of a great Will Ferrell comedy, it stays with you long after you leave the theater. It stays with some longer than others, but the one liners always stick. And as much of a fan as I have been of these movies (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Elf, etc.) I have always been wondering when Will Ferrell is going to cross the line and go from dumb funny to just plain dumb. I had thought Blades of Glory would be it, but as Ron Burgundy would say “You are sadly mistaken, my friend.”

“Shooter” was one of those movies I had been hoping for all week long. It’s not that it’s any great feat in cinema. It’s just that with nine movies releasing within eight days, the screening schedule was booked. And with the exception of “The Host” (a pretty clever and exciting Korean horror flick) and “The Lookout” (a not-so-standard heist movie), pretty much everything I saw that week stunk.

After suffering through movies like “Premonition,” “Pride” and “Dead Silence,” nothing seemed more welcome than “Shooter.”

Feeling like a cross between an 80’s era Stallone or Scwarzenegger flick and Bourne Supremacy-lite, Shooter delivers a straight up action revenge film that is easy to get sucked into and hard to resist. As I sat in the theater and watched, I couldn’t help but think that this is the movie that The Marine wanted to be, but that is an entirely different issue. Shooter is based on paranoid conspiracy where they are out to get you. It is an effective film that plays cinematic shorthand with character identification and gets right down to the action, never wasting a moment on an extraneous subplot.

Anyone familiar with Richard Linklater’s work (cf. Before Sunrise/set) knows he’s just about the only living filmmaker who can make a great film about people talking about just, you know, stuff. Slacker is a de-facto documentary of early-’90s, Austin-American alienation; at the conclusion of the end credits there’s a sly spin on a familiar disclaimer: “This story was based on fact. Any similarity with fictional events or characters is entirely coincidental.”

“The Last Mimzy” is a new family film which includes elements of adventure an espionage. It tells the story of a brother and sister who discover a mysterious toy box on the beach of their summer home. When they open the box, they discover fantastic devices and a stuffed rabbit that talks to the girl. After playing with the toys, both children develop amazing powers of teleportation, precognition and sheer genius.

The film is loosely based on real life hustler Alan Conway, a sociopathic alcoholic con man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick around London during the early ’90s. What made Conway’s ability to continually get away with the ruse all the more remarkable is not only did he know very little about Kubrick, he didn’t resemble him at all. Kubrick was American while Conway was English. Kubrick had a beard while Conway was clean-shaven. Kubrick was married while Conway was gay.

In the past twenty or so years, inspirational sports movies have become a genre of their own. Like a male-oriented romantic comedy, these movies have a very specific underdog formula that, if followed well, makes an exciting film.

However, the key to making a good inspirational sports movie is the sport itself. Football works great. It was pioneered with “Remember the Titans,” but every couple years, there’s one or more good ones to hit the screens. Recent examples include “Invincible,” “Gridiron Gang” and “We Are Marshall.”

What’s up with America anyway? In the last few years, we’ve seen sponsored efforts to tear down all our heroes from Thomas Jefferson (he owned slaves, but so did everybody else of wealth back then in the dark ages) to Abe Lincoln (he must be gay because he slept in the same bed as his male friend, and because Gore Vidal said so), the Boy Scouts (shouldn’t be limited to boys. Huh? What?), the Catholic Church (molestation, gaiety, and manly nuns), cops (torturing suspects), forest rangers (setting fires), Mel Gibson (soused and scornful), even God (remove His name from our courts, our money, and our lips). Note how TV censors out the word God and leaves in the word “damn.”

Aside from being one of the coolest events you will ever attend as a member of the Press, a junket is often a place where the best interviews occur. During the junket for Paramount’s Blades of Glory, starring Will Ferrell and Jon Heder, a very unique and hilarious moment occurred — they were accosted by a Ninja and subsequently interviewed. The result is one of the funniest interviews you will ever see. Check out the video after the jump…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is a comedy in which Adam Sandler and Kevin James fake being gay and get married for domestic partner benefits. It also features a 3/4 naked Jessica Biel. The trailer shows off a bit more of the cast, including (an uncredited) Rob Schneider and Dan Aykroyd. But in reality what you want is at the end of the trailer, pictured above. The movie looks pretty damn funny — and did I mention Jessica Biel?

While I’ve been a comic book geek most of my life, I never got into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This wasn’t because it was a bad franchise, mind you. It was more that I was just a couple years too old to be in the target demographic.

By the time the first movie came out, I was graduating high school, and the sequel (featuring a then-cool Vanilla Ice) hit the screens when I was in college. If I had been five or six years younger, catching the turtles when I was still not yet a teenager, I’m sure this would have been a defining element of pop culture for me.

Now that 300 has officially become the “next big thing”, it is only a matter of time before the film becomes the catalyst of mind numbing social trends. Napoleon Dynamite is one of the worst culprits in this situation. For quite some time after the film’s DVD release, people were walking around aimlessly quoting John Heder with reckless abandon. I’m afraid that 300 has already started a trend.  A quote from the film has risen above the film’s hype, and even its criticisms. The quote is from Gerard Butler playing Leonidas, in which he exclaims “This is Sparta!”

Jason Bourne is back in action…

Even with three Oscar nominations, Children of Men was the most overlooked film of 2006. With Alfonso Cuar³n directing and Emmanuel Lubezki behind the camera, this film was both a technical masterpiece and a thought provoking thriller.

Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is convinced that the end of the world has come. Not only has the human race become incapable of reproducing, the world has long lost a reason for why one would want to have children. All hope for a future has been lost, so those living within the present have raped the planet for what it is worth. Government is in shambles, the medical community is clueless and the world’s youngest person has just died. The year is 2027 and Theo has just been handed responsibility for mankind’s last hope.

Have you ever seen a movie, and then thought "Wow! That is a true story?" Yeah, sometimes a biographical movie can both amaze us and shock us due to the reality of the story. Many biographical films are wonderful because they tell a true-life tale, and entertain us and education us at the same time.

In Hollywood and elsewhere, there’s plenty of work for unemployed actors and actresses, if they don’t mind playing Yorick and not Hamlet.

The enormous success of television shows featuring bloodied bodies (”Law and Order” and its clones, “Law and Order: SVU” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”; “Crossing Jordan”; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and its clones, “CSI: Miami”; and “CSI New York”; “Cold Case”; “Bones”; as well as the many BBC America forensic science dramas), has increased the demand for actors to play gory corpses. Not much dialogue but plenty of exposure.

The Departed is an entertaining crime drama that Martin Scorsese refers to as his “B-Movie” because it was, in part, influenced by Warner Brothers’ 1930s gangster movies. While his welcome return to America’s mean streets finally won him an Oscar, all serious film aficionados and Scorsese fans know an asterisk needs to go into the record books because the Best Director and Best Picture awards were really bestowed to give the Academy credibility for their embarrassments of not awarding those honors to his previous works Raging Bull and Goodfellas. The Departed is good, but it doesn’t rise to the level of best.

Edith Piaf was one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century; top three probably. She also was one of the most tortured souls in the glamorous show biz world of her time. Olivier Dahan gave it a go at depicting her complicated story on screen. That’s a hell of a task if you ask me but the French director pulled it with less casualties than i would predict. He created a moving film with an excellent lead performance.

There are filmmakers that will be remembered forever. Bergman, Hitchcock, Welles, Scorsese, Fassbinder, Kurosawa, Altman, the list goes on. Now you can add Alfonso Cuaron to the list. His new film Children of Men, is a masterpiece, hands down. It was easily the best film of 2006, it is the best film of the decade, and it will stand as one of the greatest motion picture experiences ever made. After seeing it in a theater, I was stunned. There hasn’t been a film released in my lifetime that had affected as much. I was afraid that my praise came too soon, I was excited, I was happy to finally see a modern movie that was truly great. I knew I had to wait until the DVD came out to properly judge the film. I received the DVD yesterday, and I am happy to see that my first instinct was right.