Director Todd Phillips has made three films for Warner Bros. so far: The Hangover, Due Date, and The Hangover Part II. Say what you will about their varying degrees of quality, but there’s no denying the fact that they were all huge financial successes for both Phillips and the studio, so Warner Bros. is obviously very committed to being in the Todd Phillips business. To that end they’ve signed him to a new first look deal that will keep him making movies for the studio until at least the end of 2013, and will give him first crack at quite a few potential projects. Deadline Dix Hills has a rundown of four different scripts that are all being put together as potential Phillips vehicles.

Buried deep within this sentence (Doritos are delicious) is an advertisement. Did you catch it? You probably didn’t because it was so subtly subliminal, but that’s exactly how product placement has worked for a century to varying degrees of success. After all, there’s a thin line between using real-life products in a film to create a sense of verisimilitude and using them to promote the product in question. Where that line is drawn is up to each person. One person might see a kid reading “National Geographic” in It’s a Wonderful Life and think it’s quaintly appropriate while another person might find it craven and conspicuous. To the same extent, different film productions have delivered brands with means ranging from the slyness of near-imperceptibility to almost Doritos-Scorchin’-Habanero-Flavor levels of obviousness. It’s far from new, and even though sold items have sneaked their way into movies for almost one hundred years, there’s been an explosion in recent decades, seeing a new revenue stream for studios and a new annoyance for film fans.

The year was 2005 and Michael Bay was looking to try something new… Sort of. He was looking to try his hand at a genre he had never attempted before, Sci-Fi. So what did he do? Why, he surrounded himself with some of the people that do it best, of course. Some of those people being Steven Spielberg, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. And what did the combination of these four titans give us? Why, Michael Bay’s only box-office disappointment but most under rated film, The Island. I didn’t have the opportunity to catch The Island until three years later however when I was first starting to realize my passion for all things Michael Bay. But even on DVD I knew that this was a special film. It was a film that contained a little bit of everything and yet managed to make it, it’s own.

I know this one may be a hard-sell for most of you since the intro states this column is for “damn fine films and/or fantastic entertainment” but I honestly believe this movie belongs in that second category… it’s immensely entertaining, loads of fun, and a fantastic film to watch in high definition. But it’s yet to be released in the US on Blu-ray!

Is there any more exciting film staple than pirates? Pillaging, raping, kidnapping, cannon-firing, parrot-owning, Sicilian-beating, Keith Richards-loving, one leg missing, singing and dancing pirates!