3.5/5 stars.

Watch my full review of She’s Out of My League here!

We all remember when Kal Penn came out of nowhere when he declared he would be temporarily secluding himself from drama House to work under Obama as an associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison last spring. That was when the rumor of a Harold and Kumar Christmas threequel could be happening as quickly as his term ended. Apparently when you’re high you can’t lie, since co-header John Cho is telling Collider.com that A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas (really, that title?) is an extremely realistic idea right now. The movie would take place a few years after the last one ended (obviously) and have something to do with the birth of Christ.

I wouldn’t say I’m a diehard for Harold and Kumar more than just I am just another fan. The original was fun, yes; but forgive me for presuming it lacked the balls of a franchise. Guantanamo Bay did some pretty hilarious things with its surroundings, and White Castle worked despite its typecast characters. Maybe A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas will do the same using a holiday circuit and not just cheap shot-jokes of bongs as tree ornaments or doing nasty things with Santa’s cookies. Periodic festivity-meets-rambunctious troublemakers hasn’t worked so well in the past, i.e. Christmas Vacation (sorry, Craig). Maybe this will play out better with an R-rating. Here’s hoping so.

Source: Flickr

I lived at home for a year after graduating college and commuted to the city everyday by train.  I enjoyed growing up and had such a great college experience, culminating it to backpacking the middle east for almost a month right after.  Then I entered the working world, began living in the same baby room I did when I was 15, did the daily grind with the rest of the zombies, and had no life.  Due to the fact that I lived at home, didn’t have that many friends in the area at the time, and because of this new working lifestyle was just downright miserable, I found myself heading straight to Blockbuster many a Friday nights after work to get a movie, and waste my night away by myself.  It costs $5 to rent a movie, am I didn’t even mind cause if I got lazy and didn’t return the movie within the week, I never had to worry about late fees anymore.

Well times have changed, so have my movie rental preferences, and so has Blockbuster’s late fee policies.

Much like myself, many users switched to Netflix, the leading movie rental service where you could be as lazy as you like, simply click a few buttons, and the movie of your choice came to your mailbox.  I love this option, said see you later Blockbuster and have never looked back.  Well because so many people have done this, Blockbuster, was forced to bring back their late fees to try to make up for some lost revenue.

Blockbuster already is in deep financial trouble and is closing down stores left and right throughout the country.  The problem with Blockbuster is ironically that in order for the store to thrive, it needs users to rent older movies, which in store Blockbusters lack the selection.  There are many reasons why Netflix is dominating, mainly because there are no brick and mortar building, because the cost of them is way too high, so they rather get a couple of warehouses in the middle of bumblefuck and ship everything out.  Blockbuster hasn’t realized this yet for reasons I have no idea.  Now they have their own mail in service but are still behind Netflix, especially since they recently made deals with all the gaming systems to stream movies online.

Blockbuster is in the dumps, and not only Netflix, they have to compete with itunes, on-demand, PPV, and of course illegal downloads.  Bringing back the late fees is a desperate attempt at the company to try to squeeze a little more money out of its customers.  This will backfire.  The ones who are loyal, will be pissed that Blockbuster now is bringing back late fees, and this will most likely cause customers to leave.

Either two things are going to happen in the near future with my predictions.

1. Blockbuster is going to file chapter 11, go completely bankrupt and just shut their doors.

2. Completely shut down all brick and mortar stores and only be a online movie rental service or some sort of downloadeable service to compete with Netflix and itunes.

Circuit City recently had tons of financial problems, shut down, and rumors are they are going to sprout back up but strictly be an online electronics store.  If Blockbuster ever wants to continue in business, they will have to use this business strategy, otherwise they will be another company we will forget ever existed.

What do you think about Blockbuster bringing back late fees?

We were saddened this morning to hear that 80’s Teen mega star, Corey Haim, suddenly passed away.  It was originally reported that the death could be drug related, but we are not here to confirm anything.

Haim, to me, is best remembered for his role in the 80’s teen hit Lucas.  Lucas is one of the most interesting and captivating characters ever to hit the teen-film world.  Haim is also well remembered for the role of Sam Emerson in The Lost Boys.

More recently, Haim was in the papers for his antics with fellow friend Corey Feldman. The two had a reality show together called “The Two Corey’s.”

Haim suffered from drug problems throughout most of his life.  When one moment we think he might be on the road to a clean life, Corey Haim gets unfortunately taken from us.  Haim will forever live as an 80’s teen all star.

RIP Corey Haim

The new Iron Man 2 trailer debuted on Sunday March 7th, the night of the Oscars. The trailer looks great. We see in this trailer Don Cheadle actually being a second Iron Man along side Tony Stark. The 2 of them take on a robot army built by the bad guys, which appear to be Sam Rockwell in addition to Mickey Rourke.

Check it out here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, as a bonus, for those that missed it, Jimmy Kimmel had a hilarious skit Sunday night after the Oscars. The skit is called the “Handsome Men’s Club.” Check out the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Would a studio rather have an Oscar winning movie or a big blockbuster?  That seems to be a big question out of Hollywood studio execs and although it may seem that studios would want the best quality movie possible, the answer is they don’t care.  Cause like anything else, it’s all about money, and big blockbusters are big money.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just won the 2009 Razzie award for Worst Movie of the Year.  Well it also was one of the top money making movies of the year, so as bad as it was, it made a ton of money, and already a 3D third movie is in talks.

But recently a ton of big blockbusters have been very bad.  Sure they have crazy CGI technology and may be entertaining, but they are terrible.  It seems the new trend over the past few years is there is always a few movies each year that goes under the radar, then suddenly blows up around Oscar time and beats out some big time movies.  Crash (2005), Slumdog Millionaire (2009), and now The Hurt Locker (2010) are three small budget movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture recently.  Event No Country For Old Men (2008) could even be considered a smaller budget movie as well.

In a time when the economy is in a recession, paying millions for big name actors and big names stunts may not be the best way for a studio to get the biggest ROI out of their product.  It may be better for studios to produce smaller budget films but those of better quality and push those.  It won’t require the big money to make, clearly it doesn’t need the big names to draw fans in, and when the positive press gains, the studio will clearly have a great money making movie, and a quality movie on top of it.  They will increase DVD/online sales, TV rights, and additional positive press for the studios.  I hope studios can learn from these smaller movies like The Hurt Locker and can produce better movies for movie fans in the future.

Would you like to see studios produce more small budget but quality movies?

The Oscars have come and gone and I can’t believe I spent about 4 hours (including the red carpet preview) watching the Oscars last night.  Wow…do I really need to find something to do on Sunday nights.  I was very happy with the winners announced and was glad to see The Hurt Locker come out on top with 6 awards.

Here are some brief observations of the Oscars.

-How the hell did they come to the decision to have Kathy Ireland do the red carpet interviews?  I feel like the guy in charge must have had a crush on her back in her Necessary Roughness model days and now this gave him the chance to meet her in person.  She is more irrelevant than pogs and was so incredibly fake and that necklace was just not necessary it was laughable.

-The hosts were very good.  You can’t go wrong with pairing Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.  They worked off of each other very well, kept it simple and the jokes were basic.  Some fell short on me since I’m not an LA person, but like the job they did and too bad as the show went on we saw less and less of them.

-Neil Patrick Harris did a good job with the preopening opening to the Oscars and it seemed like that was an audition to see if he could host the awards next year.  I’m putting my money down now that he will be looked at and possibly get it next year, I was very impressed with him.

-Star Jones had the most awkward red carpet interview with George Clooney.  She basically hit on him and acted like a 13 yr old girl whose locker was filled with Clooney pictures, right in front of his girlfriend/wife person.  If she would have punched her, it would have been youtube gold.

-Was it me or was George Clooney pissed off the entire night?  He’s usually a huge fun goofball and was on the red carpet, but during the show just seemed real pissed off.  Maybe that’s just his face, or maybe he hates the camera on him.  Maybe I missed a joke that was at his expense but it really seemed like every time the camera was on him he was so pissed off.

-Why did they waste time with dancers as they nominated the Best Score category?  I give the dancers credit, they were amazingly talented and it broke my back just looking at them, but what was the point.  The show was running long enough as it was and it was just a pointless waste of time.

-They didn’t show movie clips when presenting Best Cinematography.  Isn’t the whole point of that category to visually show how good the cinematography was?  I consider that a more important category than some others and it got no credit.  Just weird.

-What happened to Farrah Fawcet and Bea Arthur on the memorandum video montage?  Somebody messed up big time on that one.

-Tyler Perry’s little speech as he gave the Best Editing category made no sense.  He kept talking about the camera angles and how different shots could look and different angles would help make the scene look differently, except that doesn’t have to deal with editing, that has to deal with directing.  It just didn’t make any sense and he wasn’t funny like his movies.

These are just a few observations I had, what were some of yours?

Tim Burton’s trippy live-action take on Lewis Carroll’s classic novels, Alice in Wonderland, premiered at #1 with a record-breaking $116.3 million domestic, $210.3 million worldwide gross. In addition to far surpassing director Burton’s previous weekend all-time grosser, 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wonderland became the biggest opening of all time for a non-sequel movie in the States. Converted to 3D after being filmed in 2D, the movie made 70% of its killings from the red-and-blue glasses. Showing on 3,728 screens, Friday’s intake was a whopping $41 million. Nowhere near the $35 million three-day overall I was predicting. Wonderland is over halfway to making back the $200 million budget Disney gave Burton to make it. However this unsettled many critics (including yours truly) as well. The majority claimed the 2010 imagining boosted style over substance.

In a land outside of your local Alice screenings, Antoine Fuqua’s (Training Day) latest Brooklyn’s Finest, first debuting at the Sundance Film Festival over a year ago, opened to mostly dismissal reviews, earning a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. The gritty cop drama, following the lives of three New York police officers during a week-long drug affair, started off with $13.5 million. The lowest debut for a Fuqua picture, Brooklyn’s Finest may have only been placed in a bad weekend. I mean between a coked-up cop thriller and a coked-up Disney movie, which would you pick to see?

Shutter Island dropped two spots and 41.3% to third place, bringing in another $13.3 million. Martin Scorsese’s mind-bender has a total of $95.8 million in three weeks. Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, a movie no one I know has seen yet has still managed to nab a spot in the top five two weekends in a row, grossed $9.1 million, falling 49.8% from last Sunday’s tally. James Cameron’s Avatar closes us out with $7.7 million at #5, a domestic haul of $720.2 million in 12 weeks.

Out of the top five-

• Oscar-nominated animated feature The Secret of Kells debuted with $40,000 on one screen.

Here are the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday-

1. 1. Alice in Wonderland (2010)…$116.3 million
2. 2. Brooklyn’s Finest…$13.5 million
3. 3. Shutter Island…$13.3 million
4. 4. Cop Out…$9.1 million
5. 5. Avatar…$7.7 million
6. 6. The Crazies (2010)…$7 million
7. 7. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief…$5.1 million
8. 8. Valentine’s Day…$4.3 million
9. 9. Crazy Heart…$3.4 million
10. 10. Dear John…$2.9 million

Earlier today the 2009 Razzie Award Winners were announced. Sandra Bullock took home the top, or should I say worst, acting prize of the night by winning Worst Actress of the year for “All About Steve.”

Never has the same actress won the Razzie and Oscar in the same year. Bullock will be at the Oscars tonight and is the front runner for Best Actress. Her portrayal as Leigh-Ann Toughy in “The Blind Side” was one heck of a performance and is likely to get her Oscar gold. I guess all I can say is, Bullock is fairly dynamic if she can put on the best and worst acting performances. Could she make history?

If somebody else has something to say about it, it might be Gabby Sidibe in Precious.

Anyways, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen won for Worst Picture and the Jonas Brothers collectively won Worst Actor for the Jonas Brothers Movie.

3/5 stars.

Watch my full review of Alice in Wonderland here!