This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in his Jedi robes and grabs his lightsaber, heading to the theater to see the 3D re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. While there, he faces a sea of estrogen as ladies of all type swarm into the multiplex to see Channing Tatum’s abs multiflex. After using his lightsaber to break through the wall of pre-Valentine’s Day ladies, he faces more obstacles with twentysomething dudes heading out to see Safe House and obnoxious families to see Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Fortunately for Kevin, he is able to dispatch everyone with his Rock-inspired “pec pop of love.” It was an early Valentine’s Day massacre.

It seems there’s a pervading opinion that children’s entertainment doesn’t have to be good. Any criticism of a work of art intended for the younger members of our society is almost immediately met with cries of “oh come on, it’s just for kids.” It’s a strange form of hypocrisy given that most parents almost always want the best for their kids, except, apparently, when it comes to films. Films seem to get a pass no matter how shitty they may be. But if your kid’s sick and needs a doctor, you want the best possible doctor to treat them. It’s an unfathomable double standard. There should be no shame in demanding better films for youngsters, and, unfortunately, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is not one of those better films. The film centers on Journey to the Center of the Earth lead Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), who receives a coded message that he randomly decides must be from his long lost grandfather. Despite his hatred for his mother’s new guy, The Rock, the two team up to break the code, which says that Jules Verne’s writing about a place called The Mysterious Island was fact and not fiction. The island exists and so Sean and The Rock take off for the island of Palau to find the so-called mysterious island. They team up with helicopter pilot for hire Luiz Guzman and his pretty daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), who just happens to be about Sean’s age, crash land on the island and find Sean’s grandfather (Michael Caine), [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]

The newest development in Selena Gomez’s career is by far the most insane. According to MTV, she’s going to be working with director Harmony Korine on his next film Spring Breakers. If you don’t know who Gomez is, she’s the sugary sweet teen idol best known either for coming out of the Disney factory of loud-talking and sassy tween actors or for dating a twelve-year-old kid named Justin Bieber. If you don’t know who Harmony Korine is, he’s the certifiable weirdo who’s responsible for directing movies like Gummo and Julian Donkey Boy, films that could be described as shock fodder at best, and pure exploitation at worst. Korine is always digging into the darkest facets of the human psyche and them gleefully shining a spotlight on the sick behavior that he finds. So, you know, this is pretty much a match made in heaven. Spring Breakers is about a group of college kids who rob a restaurant to get money to go on spring break, but eventually wind up jailed and at the mercy of a skeezy drug dealer. According to Gomez, “It’s a different character than I have ever played before. It’s a different kind of vibe I think than people are used to seeing me in. What you’re going to see is more raw, I think. It’s going to be raw and more about acting.” Of course, to Gomez’s young eyes this looks like a chance at credibility, but for us more seasoned film aficionados it looks more [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]

Few upcoming productions amuse me quite like Scott Walker’s feature debut, Frozen Ground. Despite an impossibly generic title, the film is already packed with some major “wha-huh?” casting – namely in that it’s a film about a serial killer that is set to star Nicolas Cage and John Cusack, but with Cusack as the murderer. I’m so sold. Now High School Musical’s very own Vanessa Hudgens has joined the cast, set as a near-miss victim who escapes Cusack’s clutches, lives to tell the tale, get the bad guy, and so on and so forth. The film is based on the true story of Robert Hansen (Cusack), a “serial predator” who essentially launched his own version of The Most Dangerous Game in the Alaskan wilderness. A regular dude to everyone else, Hansen was a total maniac who reportedly abducted more than 24 women to serve as his own prey. Hansen’s style included hiring a prostitute and paying her, after which he would kidnap, torture, and rape her. Following that, he would tie up his prey, and fly them to his cabin in the Knik River Valley in his own airplane. After that, he’d release his victim, only to stalk her and kill her (Hansen was a very experienced hunter) with a gun and/or knife. A real gem that Robert Hansen. Hudgens will play a character based on teenage Cindy Paulson, who escaped from Hansen while she was actually hand-cuffed in his plane, just before he took off for the cabin. Cage [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]

Okay, so the “Beast” in the recently released Beastly isn’t actually a hairy creature which probably renders the title of this post moot. Or does it? Exactly. Now that you’re thoroughly confused and your blood is flowing back to your brain let’s get to the point. Beastly tells the tale of a douchey teenager who’s cursed by a spurned witch and transformed into an unattractively scarred and tattooed freak. The curse can be lifted within a year’s time but only if he can find that blind girl from Mask and make her love him. If she’s not available a former Disney star will do too. Can he break the curse or is he doomed to spend the rest of his life looking like the tool he was? Beastly hit shelves last week, and we’ve got a prize pack to giveaway that includes a brand new DVD of the movie as well as the novel by Alex Flinn that it’s based upon. How can you win? Simple… the tale of Beauty and the Beast has been told and adapted countless times in films and on television, so tell us in the comments below which version is your favorite and why.

Just because the hot girls in Zach Snyder’s visually assaulting film Sucker Punch aren’t old enough to drink, nothing is stopping you from watching the movie and playing this drinking game… unless you’re as old as the main characters of the film. While Sucker Punch has its ups and downs, it’s a visually interesting flick with plenty of fishnets, stockings, push-up bras and a bad Russian accent courtesy of Carla Gugino. What’s stopping you from watching it on DVD or Blu-ray and knocking back a couple sips of your favorite spirit? You know you want to.

Sucker Punch feels like Zack Snyder‘s response to all those awkward and sexist nerds he and his cast have to deal with in Hall-H nearly every year. You know, the ones that cant help but to shout out how “hot” the actresses are during the panel, and without actually asking any real questions or treating them respectfully. Those nerds are the sideline oppressors of Sucker Punch: the revolting-looking Chef and Mayor, the ones that love seeing their women in degrading and sexualized outfits, but don’t care about how or why they’re in said outfits. As long as they get their joy out of sexy women doing sexy things, and nothing outside the basic titillation, they’ll be happy. This is the subtext that many seem to not be getting or talking about from Sucker Punch. Snyder’s work has always been divisive, but never has one of his films been this polarizing, and he knows that. Snyder is well-aware of the response the film has been getting, and he’s the type of self-aware filmmaker who probably expected this type of reaction from day one of shooting. The fact that Sucker Punch isn’t a film for everyone surely must have caused problems along the way, and as Snyder states, the test-screening process was no help in that regard.

Right around ten years ago Zack Snyder had an idea. An idea that would come to take up about thirty seconds of Sucker Punch, but lend to the film its main character, its title, and its sex appeal. That original idea revolved around a girl named Baby Doll who escaped into the recesses of her mind while dancing for some very bad men. He then partnered with his school buddy Steve Shibuya to start working that into a script. Things were probably going pretty okay on that, but they were about to get a lot better when Snyder found himself helming Dawn of the Dead, my personal choice for best zombie movie ever. You heard that right, Romero. Sitting next to Snyder at the press junket, the man did no less than doodle an X-Wing on a pad of paper while talking, as if he needed anything more than Watchmen to solidify his nerd-cred. Before talking about the visually complex Sucker Punch, Snyder, sitting alongside wife and producing partner Debbie, the director took a moment to give us a glimpse into his filmmaking past, revealing as one might expect he was an early overachiever. One of his student films in the basic introductory film classes was a World War I epic, complete with trenches dug by a rented backhoe. Before you get antsy, I’ll tell you what he said about his upcoming Superman movie: nothing. As in, he’s not allowed to speak of it. Duh. What he did express was [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]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr felt so trapped by the weight of the world that he escaped into an amazing world inside his mind. Ironically, this world bore a striking resemblance to Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, what with all the scantily clad, kick-ass hotties running around. Once free of oppression, Kevin took his kids to check out the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie in a desperate hope for Rachel Harris’s approval.

Zack Snyder’s return to (mostly) live action hits screens today, bringing to life the fetishistic dreams of many a teenage boy as a mostly female cast in anime-inspired garb storm through mind of the troubled Babydoll, battling dragons, orcs, and samurai. On paper it sounds pretty amazing: sexy young actresses, plenty of firearms, the directing of Zack Snyder, wild nightmare action sequences, and a minimum amount of leather inspired clothing. In small doses, say in trailers and commercial spots, the film looks amazing. Fast paced action, again the sexy ladies, and amazing, lush digital sets, brimming with fireballs and bullet hits. Then some slow motion, and some fast motion and some slow motion again. By now you’re probably starting to predict where I’m going. I said it’s amazing in small doses and in paper, but how is it stretched out to two hours?

It’s unclear what sort of dance class these young women are attending, but the standard dress code seems to be whatever they can find at Frederick’s of Hollywood. Maybe it’s a stripper fitness thing. What has been clear, especially from the trailers, is that Zack Snyder wanted to send his Sucker Punch actors out into the robot and dragon-infested wastelands wearing very, very little, and these pictures want to prove that there’s even less they can wear and no fetish they can’t tackle. It’s enough to make Brad over at Rope of Silicon question the sheer amount of dirty old men that will be in the back of the theater opening night.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr gets an added dose of tiger’s blood and Adonis DNA to make it through all the movie-watching he endures. He bats about .500 in his screenings, really liking some but struggling through others. After a visit to the wild west of Rango, he finds his fate adjusted by a mysterious fleet of men with stylish hats. Then, he realizes how ugly Number Four really is before staying out all night, drinking with Topher Grace and Teresa Palmer… who looks a lot like Number Six.

The word from Comic-Con was that Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, while difficult to explain, was one of the more stunning highlights of a quality overall showing. The posters we showed you mere days ago were hot, wet and on fire. Cole Abaius’ report from the Hall H panel talked about a some of the strongest female characters we’ve seen on screen in a while. It all sounds like a wild Kill Bill-esque ride through the visually supercharged mind of director Zack Snyder. Nothing about that seems underwhelming. At least not to me. Today brings us the first bit of bonafide proof that Sucker Punch is going to be off-the-rails, both visually and conceptually. It’s a trailer that features badass ladies, burlesque musical numbers, dragons, samurais and suits of armor. As Cole said in his report, it’s breath-taking. And it awaits you after the jump.

Strong female characters are not the norm in Hollywood, but if you thought of one name that would use his directorial clout to bring a few more of them to the world, would it be Zack Snyder? The same man who was lambasted for being sexist after 300 is now being praised by his actresses for loving women and creating the best possible roles for them with his new movie. “Women are always looking for layers because women are complex creatures. For this movie, you don’t have to be just one thing. For men in action, you can be all things, but for women people see that maybe she’s dressed sexy so maybe it’s not empowering. It’s a tough line, but the truth is that women can be all of those things,” said star Carla Gugino. She got to be all of those things on Sucker Punch specifically because of Zack Snyder’s vision and appreciation for creating rounded female characters. Oh, and the footage they showed today has samurai warriors and a giant dragon. Feminism and fire-breathing. Something for everyone!

Our Comic-Con 2010 coverage is in full swing, and while the gents on the ground in San Diego continue to bring you their assessment of what’s happening in and around Hall H, I’ve got the lovely task of keeping up with all of the hot materials being released by studios. This means trailers, posters and hot breaking news. This little update is red hot — a set of character posters for Zack Snyder’s stylish, sexy actioner Sucker Punch. If you remember, we showed you the first photo last week. Now we’ve got individual looks at each of the film’s dangerous ladies — and you’ll be hard pressed to be able to take your eyes off of them. Check them out after the jump… Click here for more from Comic-Con 2010

The upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, their yearly look at Comic-Con, has drawn a lot of attention even before hitting news stands, as it is showing off some of the hot geek properties that will grace the stages of the San Diego Convention Center next week. Yesterday it was a first look at Green Lantern. Today we get a look at the cast of Zack Snyder‘s girl-power shoot ‘em up Sucker Punch. It’s got sexy and dangerous visions of Emily Browning, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung. And as an exclamation point on the whole affair, Scott Glenn as a Nazi. Check out the full image after the jump.

The intrepid folks over at MTV UK are reporting today that Vanessa Hudgens is in talks to play the titular character in Spider-Woman, a movie none of us even knew was in development.

I have a feeling that everyone reading this story did an inappropriate search for Vanessa Hudgens.

Kevin Carr breaks down the week’s releases, looking at District 9, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Bandslam, and Ponyo.

Neil is whisked away for an “emergency” surgery in the Netherlands, so Kevin welcomes guest host Emily McFadden. Together, they take a trip to District 9 and galavant with The Time Traveler’s Wife. Kevin and Emily also talk Bandslam and Vanessa Hudgens in pictures.