This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes rogue and infiltrates his local IMAX theater. First, he scales the wall of the plus-sized building and slides in undetected through the air vents. He slowly lowers himself into a theater seat to enjoy an early screening of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a wild crowd of six-year-old kids for the early screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. To deal with the psychological damage, Kevin then stumbles into the Sherlock Holmes sequel and later finds an extra seat in Young Adult, where he can imagine that his chubby caboose could land a hottie like Charlize Theron.

Guy Ritchie was far from the most obvious choice to direct a big budget, period action comedy that hoped to turn the Sherlock Holmes name into a 21st century franchise. But half a billion dollars (worldwide) later he found himself the man behind a monster hit… and its inevitable sequel. Two years later, that sequel is now a reality, and the question becomes can Ritchie strike gold twice in a row with another entertaining blockbuster? Or has he delivered the Victorian equivalent of Speed 2: Cruise Control… Depending on how you look at it the answer sits somewhere in between. A Game of Shadows brings back the two major players in Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), but instead of a generic villain with mysterious motivations we get Arthur Conan Doyle’s most notorious and evil mastermind pulling the strings and doling out the pain. Ritchie’s sequel tries to stick with the first film’s mix of stylish camera work, exciting set pieces, and witty banter between its leads, but unfortunately it falters almost as often as it succeeds.

The Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows junket included a massive press conference that featured so much talent from the sequel to Guy Ritchie‘s 2009 film that they needed to be arranged in stadium seating, including stars Robert Downey Jr., Noomi Rapace, and Jared Harris, director Ritchie, producers Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram, and Susan Downey, screenwriters Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney, and composer Hans Zimmer. Jude Law couldn’t make it because, as RDJ put it, “his son had a soccer game.” For forty-five minutes, the group fielded questions from the Los Angeles press (let’s be honest, Downey fielded questions from the press, frequently begging for someone to toss a query at one of the nine other people sitting around and behind him), and all the microphone-grabbing and cracks at banter did yield some interesting tidbits. Mainly, a story about Hans Zimmer essentially kidnapping thirteen gypsies, but that’s for later. After the break, break out your steampunk-inspired magnifying glasses and try to follow along, Watson, as we investigate the case of the eleven things we learned at the Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows press conference.

Well, this is certainly going to make my piece about the Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows (coming next week! only here at Film School Rejects!) press conference a touch more interesting. Deadline Ratcliff reports that Warner Bros. is currently “making a deal” with director Guy Ritchie and his new partner Lionel Wigram to “come aboard” their The Man From U.N.C.L.E. feature that was recently vacated by director Steven Soderbergh. That’s really just sort of vague – Deadline has really buried the lede on this one, finally getting to it – “the intention is for Ritchie to direct the film.” A ha! Elementary! Ritchie and Wigram recently formed their own production company after making two Sherlock Holmes films together. Wigram wrote and produced the first Sherlock Holmes film, and serves as executive producer on the next installment, opening next week. Wigram has a bevy of other titles under his producer belt, including four Harry Potter films, August Rush, and the upcoming films The Seventh Son and Arthur & Lancelot. Also – the dude was the second unit director on Cool as Ice, so you know what that makes him? Cool as ice. The film still comes complete with a script by Scott Z. Burns, but Soderbergh’s reasons for leaving – including budget struggles and trouble casting the lead – don’t just disappear with Ritchie and Wigram getting on board. Wait, what am I saying? We might as well cast Robert Downey, Jr. in this right now.

Enjoy playing Count The Explosions in the next trailer for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. While there’s still a subdued kind of excitement to the proceedings, it’s not short on very quick chemical reactions. Hopefully the film will be an improvement on the first. At any rate, Guy Ritchie is raising the stakes by including Moriarty, Holmes’s greatest foe, played by Jared Harris. Of course Robert Downey, Jr. is back alongside Jude Law, and while they’ll be joined by Noomi Rapace, we’ll also apparently see the return of Rachel McAdams to the series. Check it out for yourself:

What is Movie News After Dark? The more appropriate question would be: what isn’t Movie News After Dark? We open tonight with a look at The Avengers, or at least the version that will appear in the comic book prequel Marvel will release leading up to the release of the film. It’s a bit of art that we missed last week, so what better way to begin this week than with some good old hero money shots. In other Avengers news, production in Cleveland is done. Sadly, this means that my lovely home town will no longer be interesting, even to the people that live there. Hi mom!

Sherlock Holmes has always been a character steeped in a rich tradition of intellectual wit and gamesmanship. He’s a thinker, a strategist and an insane tactician fit to do battle with all the world’s most devious antagonists. But to hell with that, as Guy Ritchie is giving us the more explosive, action hero Sherlock Holmes. And while its not a thinking man’s game, it sure looks like a hell of a lot of fun. With the first trailer for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the sequel to the fun, stylish, slow-motiony 2009 Robert Downey Jr. led film, Ritchie and crew lay it all on the line: in this round, Sherlock will be dashing and daring in equal measure, while Watson will continue to be frustrated. The boys are back and I’m betting on fun, so lets take a look at the tape. Also, Robert Downey Jr. in drag…

It was a big day on the Internet for Guy Ritchie. Vulture reports that the sequel to the hugely successful sword and sandals film 300 has been taken out of its original director Zack Snyder’s hands and placed into Ritchie’s. The film is called Xerxes and is another adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel. Snyder was developing the sequel already, but now Ritchie will have the opportunity to put his own stamp on the project. I guess that means all of the fight scenes are going to go from being slowed down to sped up? Regardless, if they are able to cut a trailer with enough macho posturing to lure all of the fans of 300 back into the theater, then this could be a real coup for the director. But that’s not all. Ritchie also has a sequel to his successful 2009 film Sherlock Holmes coming out in December. E Online reports that this film has gone from being known as Untitled Sherlock Holmes Sequel to the slightly more fetching Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Eh, I don’t know; it kind of sounds like a role-playing game. Untitled Sherlock Holmes Sequel might have been the thing to go with after all. It lets the people know what they’re getting. All of my snickering and sniping aside, this is pretty big news for a filmmaker I went about nine years without thinking about. It was like, he made Lock, Stock and Snatch and then he totally disappeared until [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Zack Snyder has been a busy beaver ever since he made 300. That film, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller, was able to cross over and hit both the comic book nerd and the frat boy demographics in a way that nothing else ever has, thus creating a perfect storm of young male disposable income going into studio pockets. Execs were so pleased with what Snyder did on the project that his follow up film Watchmen was heavily billed in its advertisements as coming “from visionary director Zack Snyder”. That’s right, three films in and the man had not only hit director’s name in the voice over status, he also got a really cool adjective attached to his name. But today it seems like the upward trajectory of Snyder’s career might have hit a momentary snag. Vulture claims to have inside knowledge that the upcoming sequel to 300, Xerxes has been taken out of Snyder’s hands. This is largely because they need him to focus on his upcoming Superman film. You see, due to a historically long lawsuit between the people currently schlepping Superman product and the estates of Superman’s creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Warner Bros. only has until 2013 to get a Superman movie out before they lose the rights to key elements of the franchise. Rumors abound that Snyder’s upcoming film is suffering from some serious script problems; more specifically that it doesn’t have much of a third act. Speculation is that the [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

For whatever reason, Sherlock Holmes has seen something of an unexpected cultural resurgence recently. Of course, one could argue that the pipe-smoking gumshoe is ubiquitously present in some form or another as his image resonates well beyond the pages in which Arthur Conan Doyle originally encapsulated and explored his identity decade in and decade out; it seems merely a matter, instead, of how present he is in mainstream forms of popular culture at any given moment. That Sherlock Holmes is an object of the public domain only provides greater opportunities for his likeness to arise in myriad ways across media. But what’s unique about the recent incarnations of Holmes is the great variety of forms he takes within a variety of representational modes: the various Holmses we’ve seen recently are not only very different, but distinct in a way that function in conversation, and even in conflict, with each other. The only certainty that arises out of this variety of Holmes characters is that there is no one certain, dominant interpretation of the character, but rather many that audiences can choose from. That several incarnations of Holmes have arisen in popular media almost simultaneously does not point to a broad need in our culture relating to some intrinsic notion of who Holmes is “supposed to be.” Instead these examples are, to varying degrees, different niche versions of the character, each interpretation responding to some specific need.

There are few things that demand to be as celebrated as grown men wearing lipstick and dresses for public entertainment. Fortunately, Robert Downey Jr also knows that, happens to be a fan of Some Like It Hot, and came up with the idea of Sherlock Holmes going under cover under some ladies’ undergarments. Even more revelations came to light about the production when Entertainment Tonight went on the set, and they’ve delivered unto the world a video of their exploits. Try not to let the last comments seem too much like Downey Jr claiming he and Jude Law could beat up Noomi Rapace. Even though that’s what he says. Plus, if you stay through the video, ET teases some hot pics of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at the Golden Globes, plus pictures of Jennifer Aniston with her shirt unbuttoned. Both promise to be hard-hitting.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law no longer feel anything like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. If you have been privy to the world of Sherlock, as seen through the eyes of Steven Moffat and his team at the BBC, you know exactly what I’m talking about. With the release of the first official image from Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes 2 (seen above), we are reminded that there’s another Holmes out there in the world who is not played by Benedict Cumberbatch. It feels off, to say the least.

Consider this a rumor until either Warner Bros. officially confirms it or Edward Norton lays claim to the role, but it looks like Guy Ritchie has filled the Brad Pitt-sized shoes of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Word has been for months that the role would be going to a big name star like Pitt or Daniel Day Lewis, but according to the folks over at Latino Review (who are right a hell of a lot more often than not) the evil mastermind will be played by… that guy in the picture! Jared Harris, son of the late Professor Dumbledore, can currently be found on AMC’s Madmen. He also has upcoming roles in John Carpenter’s The Ward and Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And yes, he is suitably British. Sherlock Holmes 2 will see the return of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, and Harris will be joining other recently announced cast members Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry. The sequel opens in December of next year.

This past weekend saw the cinematic glory of Resident Evil: Afterlife pushing past security to get into your local theater even though it was moving slower than an instant replay in a curling match. The absolute atrocity of this film raises a lot of questions, but one of the first and foremost is whether or not directors should work with their spouses in a leading role. Paul W.S. Anderson, who thinks Milla Jovovich is as big an action star as Sigourney Weaver, is also married to Milla Jovovich, and while we can’t prove causation for the low marks in her performance here – we can certainly point to correlation. We can also point to 9 more husband and wife teams in order to find out if working with your legally bound significant other is really such a great idea.

Guy Ritchie is still finishing up his rewrites on Sherlock Holmes 2, a film that Warner Bros. has already given a (rapidly approaching) release date of December 16, 2011. But even though the new script is not done, he’s been thinking about who he’d like to take over as the villain Moriarty. Just as it was in the first film — it doesn’t appear to be Brad Pitt.

Hero Complex is reporting this week that the inevitable sequel to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes could be in 3D. We follow up on that report by scouring the globe in search of someone who is surprised by this news…

Merry Christmas from the Fat Guys! Kevin got Neil the gift of respect for just one episode, and Neil got Kevin the gift of seeing only one movie. The Fat Guys rip through the next Christmas movies, including Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, It’s Complicated and Sherlock Holmes.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Sherlock Holmes and It’s Complicated can make the grade.

2009 comes to a close at the movies not with a whimper, but with a bang. And while you may think it’s due to a blockbuster movie featuring beautifully animated CGI characters that leap off the screen and impress with their stunningly life-like appearances, Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel actually has nothing to do with it.