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Ahh, another romantic comedy to go along with the Wedding Crashers and Knocked Ups of the world. Following the same basic formula of those movies, Good Luck Chuck provided a decent, though not excellent adaptation of the popular genre. Starring Jessica Alba and Dane Cook, we delve into the relationship between a cursed [...]

Well, I told you it would be a race, and it did turn out to be a close one this weekend — and an upset. Confounding most of the prognosticators including myself, The Game Plan finished on top with 22.6 million. So it’s victory for The Rock over The Kingdom, which wound up second. We should have known.

David Cronenberg made a vast improvement from his overrated A History of Violence with Eastern Promises. Paul Haggis, on the other hand, has made only a marginal improvement from his ridiculously overrated Oscar Winning Crash with In the Valley of Elah. In the Valley of Elah is essentially a political and condensed version of Crash and while it works well sometimes and there is nothing overall that’s bad about the movie, Haggis still doesn’t seem to be covering all the bases.

Apple finally found a way to seduce me into joining iTunes. I despise their service for both practical and personal reasons, but they’ve recently joined forces with the one person who could successfully force me over to the dark side. Natalie Portman.

To a certain degree, I was dreading The Kingdom. The first reason was that I’ve never been a big fan of Peter Berg’s films. I haven’t liked his garbage movies like Very Bad Things, and I haven’t liked his critically-acclaimed films like Friday Night Lights. I was also a big leery of seeing The Kingdom because I know how Hollywood can be with politics.

For some, the war in the Middle East is enough to drive someone to drink. Soon, the glut of modern war movies are going to drive people to drink. We’re getting a jump on this trend by offering a rock-solid drinking game for the new action drama The Kingdom. So drink up, because by the time the fall is over you’ll have had a few too many “sobering” moments.

On this week’s show, we explore the topics of the entertainment industry in the comfort of a newly redesigned Magical Studio in the Sky, all while attempting to stay awake. We continue to explore the “Dane Cook Acting Experiment”, causing Kevin to launch a campaign against Cook’s involvement in feature films. We also debate the dynamic range of Rosie O’Donnell — lookout kids, she could be the next Wonder Woman.

That, my friends, is a long title. Much longer than the original “Plane Dead,” but it’s kind of snazzy. I’d personally stay away from conjuring up memories of that awful bit of excrement called Snakes on a Plane but hey, whatever.

Every time I sit down to the day’s movie news, it seems I’m getting excited over something. Maybe it’s an exciting time we’re living in for films or maybe I’m just too geeky for my own good, but when a great concept has a great director and a slew of notables for a cast, it’s a solid reason to get excited.

There seems to be a certain career path that muscle-bound heavies take. First, they come onto the scene as a villain, as Arnold Schwarzenegger did in The Terminator. Then, they step up to the action hero, as Schwarzenegger did with films like Commando. Then, they do the fish-out-of-water family comedy, as Schwarzenegger did with Kindergarten Cop.

This weekend we’ve got a genuine fight at the top to see who is the box office champ. In one corner we got The Game Plan, starring former WWE superstar The Rock. And in the other corner, we got the Jamie Foxx action thriller The Kingdom. So who’s gonna be the box office champ? We got quite a fight shaping up this weekend from the looks of it.

OK, there’s been no actual catfighting or clawing, but Moviehole is reporting that both Chlo« Sevigny and Rachel Weisz are jockeying for the part of the female lead.

While we all know it was only a matter of time before the return of Freddy and his Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, we wondered “How long?” and “What form?” And while it’s not definitive on how he’s coming back, I can tell you straight from the horses mouth that a new Nightmare on Elm Street movies is coming your way with, of course, Robert Englund as the titular slasher.

The Academy might as well hand it over now. Morgan Freeman is developing a Nelson Mandela biopic through his production company, Revelations Entertainment, the story might as well have been that Freeman was giving away free puppies and bars of gold to Academy members.

Who watches the Watchmen? No-one…….yet. But Zack Snyder is in the process of making Watchmen, so that we can all watch them on the glorious silver screen. Take a look at his first video diary direct from the set of the 2009 release.

If anyone from Dreamworks or Paramount is steaming over what appears to be the end of their relationship, they are keeping it in the boardroom and out of the public eye. So far, the press has only been able to cover rumors and complaints made privately concerning the love loss between Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and the head honchos at Paramount. Public comments on the subject have even bordered on polite.

Why do we I ask? Well that’s because MTV Movies Blogs says that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is in talks to perform as either one in the upcoming superhero movie Shazam!. Hopefully it won’t be like the last reincarnation, Shazam!, which starred Shaquille O’ Neal.

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of speculation, rumors and otherwise sketchy information coming out around the upcoming Justice League film that Warner Brothers is putting together.

One of the greatest crimes against entertainment humanity was the cancellation of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” The likes of Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Mike Nelson, best known respectively as the voices of Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and Mike Nelson, took some of the worst movies ever made that didn’t star Dane Cook and turned them into something entertaining, unlike any movie starring Dane Cook.

Does anyone remember Jarts? They were large darts with metal ends. You set a target in your yard, hurled the lawn dart in the air, and hoped it landed within the target. One of the few times Reeker tickled my imagination was in a scene where a blind man describes how he was blinded by a Jart, leading to a recall of the item.

So I know that this might not exactly be the truth, but it isn’t exactly a lie. As far as I know, Quentin Tarantino is not planning on making a third Kill Bill film. What I do know though, is that our friends over at Slashfilm have an ear for what Q does want to do. He has flexed his genre film muscles throughout his entire career, most recently on that Grindhouse thing that only the cool kids liked, and plans on exploring yet another genre: Pornography.

With the star signed, director chosen and the script review in, I think I am even more excited about Wolverine than I normally would be. The potential of the film has already made me feel like I am anticipating a prom date with the head cheerleader. However, new events have unfolded to increased the ante to a date with the prom queen and an after-prom date with that really hot twenty-something English teacher.

Paris Hilton may have done some good for fellow inmate Pamela Richardson, when they shared jail time. Gloria Allred (that irritating lawyer who always wears red to emphasize the lipstick on her teeth) filed a claim accusing officials at Century Regional Detention Facility of denying her client, Ms. Richardson, the use of her prosthetic leg.

Overall, I’d have to say the people over at Screen Gems have to be feeling pretty good. Resident Evil: Extinction made $24 million dollars weekend and was Number One, not a bad showing considering that it is still the month of September and everyone is still staying home. Really, $24 million in September is pretty good. And yes, folks, it is officially fall — summer officially ended on the weekend. Darn it.

Why is it that there are some actresses who seem to be in one good movie after another, while there are others who never seem to be in any good movies? I find it that whenever I go to a Naomi Watts movie, the movie usually turns out to be really good. Same for Charlize Theron, Penelope Cruz and plenty of others. But Jessica Alba? She sure can’t pick ‘em these days, can she?

And by shoes optional, I mean any and all clothing is optional. Duchovny is back on TV, back on Showtime, and his new show, Californication, is as wonderfully smutty as the ‘classic’ Zalman King series he starred in, Red Shoe Diaries. The differences here are legion but two stand out.

Over the years, family films released by Disney have been a mixed bag. Sometimes you get a disappointing film, sometimes a bad one, and occasionally a surprise. Well surprisingly, The Game Plan falls into the latter category. Like Disney’s earlier February release Bridge to Terabithia, there is more to this film than meets the eye.

The reason I’m writing about Camille is that the second unit was shooting near my house. It seems no matter where in Southern California you live, sooner or later, you’ll come across something going on involving the industry. This time stuntmen were cavorting in the mountains on a Harley.

Simon Pegg is single handedly providing British comedy movies with some credibility. I don’t think anyone could look at this statement and claim any fault with it. Both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz received positive reviews and healthy returns resulting in the creative team of Pegg and Frost being taken more seriously both in Hollywood and in the eyes of George Romero (which I’m sure we can all agree is the REAL benchmark).

This could be the end of a terrible friendship. In a rare showing of brass flippancy, IMDB is reporting that Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman publicly stated that Steven Spielberg’s possible departure from Dreamworks SKG would make little “financial impact”.