Not Pictured: His Frankenweenie. Sorry. I guess that headline’s a little misleading.

It’s a new year, and there’s plenty of new DVDs to discuss. Yes there’s Dredd and Frankenweenie, but there’s so much more. Almost all of this week’s offerings are movies you’ve never heard of starring people you have -assuming you’ve heard of people like Michael Weston and David Morse. Even if you don’t know those names, there’s films with Nicolas Cage, Gary Oldman, Kurt Russell, Anne Heche, Martin Sheen, Dakota Fanning, and Melissa Leo. We’ve got flicks about football players and priests, terminal cancer patients and musicians, lesbians and fast-food workers.  There’s ghouls and witches, and WWII soldiers.  There’s even a movie all about guns, girls, and gambling!

The DVDs:
Dredd
Frankenweenie
House At The End Of The Street
Hit & Run
Stolen
Guns, Girls, And Gambling
Touchback
That’s What She Said
Stella Days
Now Is Good
Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best
Collaborator
Compliance
Excuse Me For Living
Jack & Diane
Ghoul
Hansel & Gretel
Pathfinders: In The Company Of Strangers
The Wise Kids
A Dangerous Place

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

Want to know which flick’s all about guns, girls, and gambling?  Continue reading.  At least one of these films features time travel.  The only way to know which one (or ones) is to continue reading. Of course you can skip straight to the Netflix streaming suggestions by clicking the link above, but then you’d be breaking that New Year’s resolution you made about reading more things more often, and nobody wants to give up on their resolutions yet. Read the rest of this entry »

Laremy rolls through Toronto in his fly sports car!

I was sitting around the other day, licking my Taco Bell loco taco fingers while thumbing through the “missed connections” portion of the paper when a call came through on the land line. It was Vince, the guy who runs the jam you’re currently reading.

“LEGEL!” he grumbled, his voice still throaty from the scotch and cigar party he’d hosted the night prior.

“Yes, sir?” I said, trying to put my pants back on (for optimal professionalism).

“You were just in Toronto, weren’t cha, kid?”

It was true. I’d hitchhiked to the airport, stowed away in first class, and tipped and sipped my way through the skies. Because I’m a big-time “cream of the crop” critic I was met at the airport by half a dozen ladies, only two of whom were desperately unattractive. After a limo ride into downtown, I was asked to throw out the first pitch for the Orioles-Jays game. Perfect strike. Get drunk, high hat. Then I went to 15 movies in four days, crushing ‘dem reviews like an OG. Then I came home, then I answered the phone, then I used a highly questionable* intro technique to a “Best and Worst of The Toronto Film Festival” column.

*Still, you should be grateful, because the column originally started like this: “The Toronto International Film Festival is a veritable proving ground for potential Best Picture nominees.” Yeeps. That’s terrible.

So here you go, 12 semi-cogent thoughts on TIFF 2012, all for you!

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Let the inevitable, merciless ridicule commence in 5... 4... 3...

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Listen on the player above, or download this week’s episode as an mp3 here (right-click, “save as.”)

Well, well, well, it’s time for everyone’s favorite post of the week, the Frotcast (right? right? …guys?). This week on the Frotcast, we brought back comedian/former Frotcast guest Alison Stevenson (@JustAboutGlad). Alison joins us live in the Frotquarters to add an eyedropper of estrogen to our testosterone stew. We open the show talking about the Dredd 3D press screening I very nearly got banned from, and then I tell the story of the wino at Subway who fed my dog a dollar bill. From there we get into the 10 things overheard at Techcrunch, and all of the nonsensical corporate tech-speak that entails (disrupting the disruptors, anyone?).

Our movie topic of the week is things you always see in movies but never in real life – like taking out bad guys by swiftly, easily breaking their neck with your hand, or workaholics getting their Blackberries smashed by Aaron Sorkin or stolen by Sandra Bullock’s eagle. “MY WHOLE LIFE WAS IN THERE!” I also like the pillow smother (does that even work?). What’s your favorite?

Additionally, we’re still coming to Chicago for a LIVE FROTCAST and SCREENING OF THE RUNNING MAN November 3rd and 4th (Laremy will be there too!). The only difference is, we’re funding it ourselves now, so we worked up a little Kickstarter page, complete with a video starring us – hence the banner image. Yay! Oh, and I’ll have that Mads Brügger interview up on iTunes today, sorry for the lag on that.

So Kickstart our Kickstarter page. Subscribe on iTunes. Email us at frotcast@gmail.com. Voicemail us at 415.275.0030. Follow me on Twitter. Follow Ben on Twitter. Follow Bret on Twitter. Follow Alison on Twitter. Download the Stitcher App and stream the Frotcast to your iPhone or Android device. Fan us on Facebook.

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After a few week hiatus, This Week in Posters and Stills is back! Did you miss it? I hope so, because these posts take damn forever. Don’t stop at the first slide, because this week, we’ve got new stills from the long-delayed Red Dawn remake, Cloud Atlas, Brad Pitt in Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor, and more dogs in sunglasses and unnecessary diagonals than you can shake your wiener (or labes) at.

Up top, you’re looking at Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his gay buddy, Scott Thorson in Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra. I’ve been pretty open about my love of Magic Mike, so I hope this is more like Magic Mike Soderbergh than Haywire Soderbergh. Soderbergh’s output is impressive, but, much like Woody Allen, it might be more impressive if he made half as many and fewer of the crappy ones.

[via Buzzfeed]
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SPACE LAW!

Before it was a crappy Sly Stallone movie, Judge Dredd was a British comic that began in the seventies, about a futuristic, Dirty Harry-style cop who combined the powers of cop, judge, jury, executioner, meter maid, animal control officer, and colostomy-bag emptier. Well now it’s also a movie from director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), starring Karl Urban (who already has a better action-hero name than Judge Dredd), the oddly-cast Olivia Thirlby, and Lena Headey, aka Cersei Lannister. As many have already pointed out, it bears a striking resemblance to Gareth Evans’ The Raid, which also concerns law officers fighting their way through a high rise against a gang of drug lords. However, I’m more interested in the idea that when British dudes were creating their idea of the ultimate law enforcement apparatus, their first step was to give him a big crazy helmet. It’s like all authority over there is headgear-based. “But sir, you cahn’t practice law, your wig isn’t even powdered!” (*thunderous chortling, derisive handkerchief waving*)

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