Two "and" movies in the same week

So today the DVD (and Blu-Ray) for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Zack and Miri Make a Porno was released. It's somewhat interesting that both movies share a similar naming scheme, and are released on the same day...

It was to me, anyway. And as I happen to be interested in both movies, I picked them up. I actually didn't plan on getting the Blu-Ray version of either movie, but the store I went to didn't get the standard DVD version of Zack and Miri in yet, while they did have the Blu-Ray version, so I picked that up, rather than drive elsewhere or wait.

Sneak previews on cable

When it was released on DVD last year, I remember reading the plot summary for Blood and Chocolate, and realizing that I've already watched it before. The strange thing for me, at the time, was that I don't ever recall going to the theaters to watch it--The movie hadn't piqued my interest enough for me to want to spent money to watch it in the theaters. Nor did it garner enough interest for me to look for a way to watch it online.

What's more, I remember being able to watch a crystal clear picture version of it. I still remember very specific scenes, too. But no recollection of watching it in the theaters.

Then it hit me--I must have watched it as a sneak peak on a cable HD channel. It makes sense. They do sometimes show full-length movies that are only just getting to be released to theaters. Like the recent sneak peak of Quid Pro Quo. Which, coincidently, stars yet more people I recognize, but almost couldn't place.

There's Vera Farmiga from The Departed, and Nick Stahl from Terminator 3.

Warning: Profanity

Lots of bad language in this one, kids. You've been warned.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

When I picked up my copy of Superman Returns this week, I noticed that they also had some other Superman-related DVDs, including a "Richard Donner cut" of Superman II, and a new Superman boxset called the "Christopher Reeve collection." Since I already bought the "complete Superman collection" a few years back, I didn't feel the need to pick either of those up.

However, after I got home, I became more curious, and looked up more info. Apparently, when Richard Donner was shooting Superman: The Movie, he also shot most of the sequel. The studio halted production on the second movie to get Donner to finish the first one, and also because he was over-budget. At this point, 70-75% of the sequel had already been filmed.

When the second movie went back into production, several things happened, all of Marlon Brando's scenes as Jor-El were removed, and Richard Donner was replaced by Richard Lester as director. In order for Lester to be billed as director, he'll have to film at least 51% of the movie, meaning much of what Donner shot had to be removed or re-shot.

So, this "new" version is quite a bit different from the theatrical version, and fills in some of the gaps in it. Overall, I think it's a better movie, I'm just not too keen on the scientific aspects in the way they ended the movie. But then, this is Superman we're talking about. "Scientific aspects" of the story pretty much went out the window a long time ago.

A more detailed review of the Richard Donner cut can be seen below.

Pan's Labyrinth

I found out about this from a YTMND site, which is also quite well done. In any case, Pan's Labyrinth looks like it could be a very good movie.

High Definition versions of the trailer and teaser are available on Apple's website.

X3 in a nutshell

I could've sworn that I made a post about this when the movie was first released in the theaters, but I can't seem to find any entries about it.

Anyway, when I re-watched X-Men: The Last Stand on DVD, this was one of the things that kept coming back to me, aside from how much they butchered the original story.

[Russian accent]Here is link


I also love the theme music from the cartoon series.

New DVDs

This week, I picked up Lucky Number Slevin and The Wild. Lucky Number Slevin is an interesting crime drama/thriller/dark comedy. It's not on par with other dark comedies like Pulp Fiction, but it's still a fun ride, nontheless. The very basic gist of the movie, without giving too much away, is summed up by Lucy Liu's character in the clip above.

The Wild is one of the few computer-animated movies released by Disney, but was not done by Pixar. It has been described by some critics as "Madagascar meets Finding Nemo with The Lion King thrown in for effect." This is not untrue, as the story involves animals from the New York Zoo "escaping" captivity, roaming the city with the lion, Samson, looking for his son, who is practicing his roar, but still sounds like a little cat. Surface similarities aside, it's actually quite a different movie from Madagascar. I personally think the animation quality is much better than Madagascar, but while the story is fine, it lacks the humor in the other movies being compared to. That's not the say that the movie is completely devoid of humor--only that these moments of comedy are few, while at times it seems they're trying too hard.