“So this one’s called the ‘glass-bottom boat’…”

Howdy friends! The big DVD this week is Argo, but we’ve got plenty to discuss beyond Ben Affleck and his striking resemblance to that guy from Die Hard.  There’s also flicks starring Keira Knightley, Ethan Hawke, John Cusack and Val Kilmer. We’ve got movies about serial killers, struggling rock musicians, capitalists, and criminals.  We’ve got small apartments and special forces.  There’s a junior high spy, a sushi girl, and even a talking cat!

The DVDs:
Argo
Anna Karenina
Sinister
Fun Size
The Factory
For Ellen
Riddle
The Package
Atlas Shrugged, Part II: The Strike
Small Apartments
Special Forces
Undefeated
Sushi Girl
Junior High Spy
A Talking Cat!?!
Snow Shark

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

One of these films went undefeated at last year’s Oscars.  If you want to know which movie it is, continue reading on the next page.  Two of these flicks co-star Dolph Lundgren.  Continue reading to find out which ones.  If you’ve given up physical media for Lent, click the link above and skip right to the streaming suggestions, but if you do you’ll never know which Oscar-nominated actor gives voice to that talking cat. Read the rest of this entry »

We are contractually obligated to include this photo with every article mentioning The Descendants

 This week we’ve got an Oscar winner, a couple Oscar nominees, and a couple Oscar snubs. Additionally, we’ve got the latest usual Hollywood and indie picks, something new from The Asylum, one of Burnsy’s guilty pleasures, old German gore porn, and a movie called Coonskin.

The DVDS:
The Descendants
My Week With Marilyn
The Adventures Of Tintin
Young Adult
Melancholia
Happy Feet Two
The Three Musketeers
My Joy
Stuck Between Stations
The Dish & The Spoon
Grimm’s Snow White
American Mobster: Miami Shakedown
Coonskin
Absentia
Wound
The Burning Moon

Do click on to see the DVDs, there are some really worthwhile choices and trailers this week.  As usual, click here for your Netflix options.

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Strap in kids, this is a good story.

So a movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged has been in development since 1972. Rand originally demanded script approval, but projects fell through when no one would give it to her. She began writing a screenplay of her own later, but when she died in 1982 with it still unfinished, she left the rights to her student Leonard Piekoff.  A couple false starts with Piekoff refusing to give script approval later, he sold the rights (including full creative control) to producer John Aglialoro for a million dollars in 1992.  Various mergers and corporate reshufflings killed a series of movie and miniseries plans.  Finally, this year, Aglialoro took a script he wrote with Brian Patrick O’Toole, and decided he would make a film independently come hell or high water.  He had planned to turn the book into four films (!), with Stephen Polk, son of a former MGM chairman, making his directing debut.  At some point in the last few weeks, he lost Polk.   According to his contract, he had to begin filming by Saturday or lose his option on the novel.

So begin filming he did.  And who stepped in at the last minute to direct and star in the project?  Why Paul Johansson (above left), of course, previously known as an actor and occasional director of One Tree Hill.  A perfectly logical choice.  Five weeks of shooting are scheduled on a $5 million budget.

Johansson plays John Galt, while the Dagny Taggart role went to Taylor Schilling from Mercy, and Henry Reardon is played by Grant Bowler from Ugly Betty and Lost. Also in the cast are Edi Gathegi, Jsu Garcia, Rebecca Wisocky, Ethan Cohn, Patrick Fischer, Neill Barry, Christina Pickles and Nikki Klecha. [/Film]

Yeah, I have no idea who those people are either.  I think a couple of them are just random collections of letters.  Nonetheless, I was able to obtain some early footage of Johansson’s Ayn Rand, and I must say it’s looking pretty good:

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