Watch the international trailer for Australia, the new Baz Luhrman film that stars Aussies Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The movie looks OK, but I still have high hopes.

Fans were already apprehensive with the casting of Seth Rogen as The Green Hornet, one of the world’s oldest superheroes, and now they have a reason to be downright upset. With the hiring of director Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), it sounds like the movie is headed back towards being more of a comedy than the serious action flick “promised” a little while back. (more…)

OK. I am going to start with a rant that has nothing specifically to do with The Incredible Hulk (2008) or its DVD. Well, maybe there is some relation. The box boasts that it is a 3-Disc Special Edition, which sounds pretty damn good by anyone’s standards. Three discs, huh? The movie is two hours long, which means that the other two discs must be reserved for special features, right? Wrong, biotch!

The studios have found their latest trick to market things that aren’t nearly as good as they sound. First there was “Collector’s Editions” and “Special Editions” when in fact they were just normal DVD packages. Then there was Unrated DVDs which rarely contained any new, “unrated” material. And now, we have the DVD that contains the digital copy. The digital copy. Who the f**k cares about a digital copy? What percent of people actually give a damn about getting The Incredible Hulk in digital format so they can watch this action movie on their three-inch iPod screen? Five percent? Three percent? Give me the damn digital copy, but don’t market to me that I’m getting three discs of goodness. The digital disc doesn’t give me anything new; it just saves me a step of ripping the movie from the normal DVD. Come on, studios, don’t go down that path!

Anyway, now that that’s out of my system, let’s take a look at The Incredible Hulk special features from its single bonus disc.  To be fair, the first disc - with the movie on it - contains a few deleted scenes and a feature commentary as well, but essentially all of the special features reside on a single disc. Here they are:

• Deleted scenes
  A pretty good amount of deleted scenes that were generally cut for pacing reasons. Some of the scenes go into a little more detail than what was seen in the movie, though there were none that stood out to me as being good enough that they should have avoided the cutting room floor.
• An alternate opening
  You can watch the original opening sequence to the movie. Let’s just say that thank God this one wasn’t used in theaters, because it really isn’t good at all.
• The Making of Incredible
  Your standard making-of featurette. Like the rest of the featurettes on the DVD, it isn’t too promotional at all; at the same time, there’s nothing new or particularly interesting here. Compared to such documentaries as the making of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, it just doesn’t offer anything original. Still, fans of the Hulk should find some tidbits of interest here.
• Becoming the Hulk
  This is an exploration of the creature design, from the models to the special effects to the involvement of Ed Norton. Norton’s insistence that he actually get to play the Hulk in his green transformation is a bit odd, and one makes me think that director Louis Letterier was quite annoyed with the actor by the end of the picture.
• Becoming the Abomination
  Slightly more interesting than “Becoming the Hulk,” this one has Tim Roth doing motion capture and making fun of the suit he has to wear, completely unaware that the guy doing motion capture with him wears that suit for a living. When all is said and done, this one has some value because you get to hear about the intentional differences between the Abomination and the Hulk; though a lot of the effects talk is, for obvious reasons, pretty ambiguous.
• Anatomy of a Hulk-Out
  I never quite figured out what these chaptered segments were for, as they seem to rehash other featurettes on the DVD. Still, for the Hulk fan, the more the merrier.
• From Comic Book to Screen
  These are the kind of featurettes I hate, where some animator is brought on to draw a bunch of semi-static comic book/storyboard friends to make a mini-movie. What a waste of time; I only sat through a couple of minutes of this one.
• Digital copy of the film
  Everything I wanted and more on its very own disc!

All in all, there are a good amount of bonus features to be had on The Incredible Hulk: 3-Disc Special Edition DVD. Of course, none of these really matter to me. The quality of the film matters to me. And it was good enough (read my The Incredible Hulk movie review).

Halloween may not boost theatrical horror releases in the way you’d expect, but DVD sales and rentals have to go up for scary movies come the end of October. Thus, it’s no surprise that the hit Liv Tyler thriller The Strangers slashes its way onto DVD this Tuesday, just in time for the spooky holiday.

The Strangers is about a couple going through relationship troubles who find themselves subjected to a night of terror when a family of masked hoodlums shows up to wreak havoc. What at first appears to be a practical joke gone bad soon reveals itself to be something much more deadly. Basically, the movie is about Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman trying to escape from a bunch of really freaky sound effects.

The movie is pretty scary at times, and the director does a good job of presenting the villains, who often stand silent in the background while the good guy looks the other way. As horror movies go, it gets the job done. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t nearly as good as the director thinks it is, and the film ends up lacking a satisfying resolution or climax. The characters - especially Liv Tyler - turn out to be just as dumb as your typical horror victim, if not dumber, and that’s not good.

Nevertheless, The Strangers is one of the scarier movies of 2008 (read my full The Strangers movie review here), so in that regards it’s worth renting. If you need bonus features to move you from the rental to purchasing stage, however, bonus features does The Strangers lack. Hell, this is a pretty sad DVD by anyone’s standards; other than a few forgettable deleted scenes and a small, rather promotional behind-the-scenes featurette, the DVD contains nothing of value. Wow.

Oh, and the cover artwork is terrible, too.

So, there you go. Decent movie, crappy DVD. You decide. I’ll vote for Obama.

This was released last week, but I’m just getting to it now, so deal with it! Here’s the movie trailer for The Uninvited, which is based on one of my all-time favorite horror movies, A Tale of Two Sisters. Needless to say, expectations are high with me… or, in other words, really, really low. After all, this Asian horror remakes seem to be getting worse and worse, and judging by The Uninvited movie trailer, this one is going to suck.

The great thing about A Tale of Two Sisters was that it was subtle, almost a drama in some ways, except that it was pretty damn freaky. The Uninvited looks like a cliche and uninteresting teen horror movie with all the typical, boring ghost elements that American directors like to use. The Uninvited is uninvited in my opinion.

Here’s the movie trailer so you can decide for yourself:

Further proof that traditional animation is by no means dead, Walt Disney recently released its acclaimed classic Sleeping Beauty to DVD and Blu-Ray in an all-new Platinum Edition… and it ended up topping the DVD sales charts for the week. Not only that, but it beat out previous #1 earner Iron Man for such a spot.

It never ceases to amaze me how much demand there is for Disney’s old cartoons; beyond the fact that this implies traditional animation is not dead as long as the story and production values are good, this sales success story also implies that even with all the big kid’s movies that come out each year, parents still scramble for anything that would be good and entertaining for their children to watch. Hollywood, pay attention.

I actually have a copy of Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition, and while laying on my death bed last week, I managed to watch most of the movie (I fell asleep near the end due to drugs and the magic potion the DVD releases into the air to make the viewer feel more involved inthe picture. Personally, I think sleep-inducing drugs is going a bit far, especially for a children’s DVD, but I guess I trust the Disney marketing executives to do what’s best for their audiences). Having not seen the movie since my childhood, I was once again pleasantly surprised at the quality of the picture. The animation, acting and music is great, the story mesmerizing.

Still, a few pieces of the production show their age; when the fairies grant Sleeping Beauty their gifts, the movie sidetracks into a rather cheesy array of special effects that really add no value and will be a bit off-putting to modern audiences. The effects look like they were added because they could be added, nothing more.

Nevertheless, these moments are rather brief and not all too distracting. All in all, Sleeping Beauty is still an effective classic; it has its outdated moments, but its rich animation and artwork make up for those shortcomings.

The DVD includes several special features I didn’t bother exploring, including a virtual tour of the castle, a dance game, an alternate opening, deleted songs, a making-of featurette and a few other thngs.

I was over at Box Office Prophets the other day and came across an article/discussion on High School Musical 3, examining the box office fortunes of the upcoming Disney film. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but the analysts at BOP - whom I consider to be right more often than not, at least when it comes to estimating revenues - raised the interesting question: just how much money will High School Musical 3 make?

The first one was a big hit on television, and the second was a downright monster, with 27 million people tuning in when it debuted. Disney, wisely, has decided to transfer the film to the big screen, where they can actually make some real money off of it. But just how much?

As BOP points out, the potential box office for High School Musical 3 is anyone’s guess, though the analysts who took the conversative route and suggested under $50 million on opening weekend were pretty much ridiculed. On the high end, one went as far to suggest it could make $100 million in its opening weekend. Thus, middle-of-the-road estimates were around $70 million. $70 million! For High School Musical 3? In its opening weekend?

God, it’s so hard to tell. BOP is right, in that there is mad demand for the franchise. They may well be right. But logically, I just can’t see $70 million worth of people going to theaters on opening weekend to see an overly cheerful, colorful, poorly written and poorly acted piece of theater. And if they do, I still won’t understand. I made the mistake of watching High School Musical 2, and it was one of the most terrible things I had seen in a long time. I understand that parents want their kids to watch something wholesome and harmless, which the High School Musical franchise is, but the songs are just so annoying and poorly choreographed that I just don’t get it.

Either way, I hope BOP is wrong, but now I am very, very nervous at the prospect that High School Musical 3 will, indeed, be a box office monster.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull rolled onto DVD on Tuesday, and with it the crushed dreams of children-past who were hoping for a flawless, action-packed adventure. Indiana Jones 4 came to theaters amidst a torrent of mixed reviews, and mixed reviews it deserved. The most highly anticipated adventure film was, as it turned out, about aliens. Aliens with big, shiny, plastic-looking skulls. Combine that plot with unnecessary supporting characters and so-so CGI and you get… the latest Steven Spielberg fine?

Frustrations aside, I’m happy Paramount sent me the 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, because I will watch this movie again, and hopefully with dampened expectations I’ll be able to enjoy the picture more. In the mean time, though, I watched the special features. With further special editions inevitably coming in the future, the 2-Disc Special Edition is not jam packed as one might expect; there are no deleted scenes, bloopers or even a commentary. However, the discs do contain some in-depth production featurettes, which take you from pre-production through post-production.

These featurettes are pretty good and rather lenthy, though I compare all of these to the best I’ve seen, those from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and they don’t really compare. While detailed, the Indiana Jones featurettes have an air of promotion to them; the interviews with the actors are very sanitized and not particularly insightful. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the exploration of some of the film’s more eleaborate sequences.

Other than that, there’s nothing but a couple of the movie’s trailers. Oh, and if you have an XBox 360, you can play a demo of LEGO Indiana Jones. However, I don’t, so I didn’t.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull has some decent DVD features, but if you aren’t sold on the movie alone and want some superstrong DVD features, you may want to wait until the next edition comes out.

For years, Robert Downey Jr. has been poison. Maybe not complete box office failure poison, but he was a name people immediately associated with drugs, career suicide and uncontrollable. Oh, how a couple of years of sobriety and a super hero can make a difference. Downey is at an all-time career high, and it isn’t too surprising that Chaplin, for which he earned an Oscar nomination fifteen long years ago, is being re-released in a - you guessed it - 15th Anniversary Edition.

I had never seen Chaplin before, nor did I know much about the famed actor other than the few short films I’ve seen of his. The movie, directed by Richard Attenborough, is pretty good, but Downey is tremendous as the British, silent-film innovator. Much of the time he is unrecognizable, and not just physically. He transforms himself into Chaplin, capturing his moves, his mannerisms, accents and behaviors with amazing sincerity. Given that this is Downey’s one and only Oscar nomination, one has to wonder what he would have done over the last fifteen years had he not been flying a kite the entire time.

Beyond his performance, Chaplin is dotted with a dizzying array of supporting actors, including Anthony Hopkins, Diane Lane, Dan Akroyd, Milla Jovovich, Marisa Tomei, Penelope Anne Miller and Kevin Kline. All turn in fine performances, but none stand out in any way or form.

The movie itself is pretty good, chronicling Charlie Chaplin’s life from childhood through his honorary Oscar acceptance in 1972. Attenborough keeps things rather biographical and subtle, avoiding dramatized moments where possible. Unfortunately, this approach leads to an understated feel and a lack of power; while good, the movie rarely captivates. It also doesn’t help that the makeup used on Downey when he’s portraying Chaplin in his later years looks pretty God-awful.

Chaplin is a worthwhile film, though not tremendous by any means. Downey, however, delivers the finest performance of his career.

Check out the latest movie trailer for Transporter 3, which once again stars Jason Statham. The movie looks like it should satisfy fans of the previous flicks, as it will contain plenty of ludicrous action. While I prefer more realistic action, I must admit that I have a small soft spot for the Transporter movies; I’ll probably wait until DVD, but am looking forward to this one. The final few moments of the trailer leave little to be desired; Statham driving a car on the top of a train is, shall we say, stupid?

Here’s the new Transporter 3 movie trailer: