Ignore the dates, ya dangus! They're both out on DVD today!

We’ve got an extra-large batch of movies hitting DVD this week, so there’s something for everyone.  Besides the two Oscar winners in the banner pic, there’s another Oscar nominated flick, a movie Vince hated, Asian kids killing each other, Rip Torn, one lucky elephant, Salma Hayek’s American movie debut, Edward Furlong, a fake Bruce Lee, naked Nazis, some clowns, and a few other gems to whet your appetite.

The DVDs:
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Muppets
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Carnage
The Sitter
Battle Royale
From Time To Time
A Lonely Place To Die
Telstar
National Lampoon’s The Legend Of Awesomest Maximus
Roadie
One Lucky Elephant
Roadracers
Pimp
Snow White: A Deadly Summer
This Is Not A Movie
Creature
The Dragon Lives Again
Frauleins In Uniform
Clown Hunt

Read on to find out about these new releases.  If you’re impatient, click here for some picks streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of this entry »

Having only grossed $55 million domestically so far (on a $90 million budget), David Fincher’s English-language Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been perceived as something of a box office disappointment. But don’t box up your stun gun and dildo just yet, because Sony says Dragon Tattoo‘s sort-of soft box office won’t effect their plans for a sequel. YAY! Strawberry merkins for everyone!

“[Dragon Tattoo] continues to do strong business and nothing has changed with respect to development of the next book,” a Sony rep tells EW. In November, Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal told us that The Girl Who Played With Fire was definitely a go, with a targeted late-2013 release date. [EW]

Despite the crappy ending, I thought Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was pretty good, and I guarantee you it would’ve made a lot more money had they released it sometime between January and April when it would’ve had zero competition instead of throwing it in the late-December Oscar bait pile. In any case, I’m down for the next two. Ooh, you think there’ll be violence against women?

So far, there’s just one sticking point, and it’s kind of a big one. Fincher isn’t signed on yet.

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UPDATE: According to the just-released updated numbers, Dragon Tattoo beat Chipmunks by $100K. Still too close to call.

There were three new releases over the Christmas holiday, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Tintin, and We Bought a Zoo, and all three got out-earned by last week’s top three, Mission Impossible IV, Sherlock Holmes 2, and Alvin and the Chipmunks 3. Dragon Tattoo earned an estimated $13 million for the weekend, which isn’t terrible — BoxOfficeMojo compares it to True Grit‘s $16 million on the same weekend last year — but was still below expectations.

Now, there are a few ways to read this. Obviously, one is that it’s a precursor to locusts and zombies on horseback as a harbinger of the apocalypse. Another way to read it is as a validation of Mission Impossible‘s platform-release strategy, where it came out in IMAX a week early, and by Christmas time, everyone had heard of it (I get the sense people just didn’t know some of these movies were out yet). And of course, there’s always the possibility that people were with their families on Christmas, and didn’t want to drag grandma to a film featuring graphic rape and gratuitous merkins. Not me though. My grandma practically invented the merkin. She even weaved one for the German Chancellor, Angela Merkin.

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Subtle, right?

“Rooney Mara’s Merkin” — it sounds like the best illustrated children’s book that’s never been written, doesn’t it? That was the subject of a recent interview with Dragon Tattoo star Mara in Metro, the nation’s leading source of pube-based crotch journalism. Actual headline: “Rooney Mara: The girl with the strawberry merkin.” They make it sound so delicious, don’t the? Which is impressive considering we’re talking about something that was originally designed to conceal venereal disease amongst Victorian prostitutes.

Metro: What’s the one part of Lisbeth that’s depicted in the movie that might get overlooked, a detail that you hope people catch?
Rooney Mara: I can’t think of a serious answer to that question, but I can think of a ridiculous answer to that question.

Ridiculous answers work, too.
Well, her merkin. There was a lot of discussion that went into my merkin for the movie, because I was naked quite a lot. And I don’t think a lot of people will notice all of the attention that went into that. But there was a lot of discussions around that.

What sort of discussions are we talking about?
Well, you know, in the book she’s meant to have strawberry-blonde hair originally and she dyes it, so we had a special merkin made that was, you know, strawberry-blonde so that it would fit. [laughs] [Metro via CinemaBlend]

So this chick shaves her eyebrows but grows her muff long a poofy? Talk about having your priorities out of whack. I sure hope Daniel Craig straightens her out. He looks like he knows a thing or two about proper grooming.

FINCHERBOMB'D

Yesterday I told you about the email fight (sort of) between New Yorker critic/scarf enthusiast David Denby (left), and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer/chocolate enthusiast Scott Rudin (right), over Denby’s decision to run his Dragon Tattoo review a week ahead of the “embargo” date he’d agreed to. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald asked David Fincher what he thought about it, and that seems important because Fincher directed the thing. As an aside, Rodriguez also points out that Denby once wrote a thoroughly scathing review of Fight Club, which is about what you’d expect from a dude in a fancy scarf who gets excited about Stephen Daldry movies.

Fincher didn’t remember Denby’s Fight Club review when I mentioned it to him (“Have you read Alexander Walker’s review?” he asked.) But he did have something to say about the [embargo kerfuffle].

Another aside here, you should totally check out that Alexander Walker review. It makes that Fox News segment about The Muppets being liberal brainwashing seem logical and carefully reasoned by comparison.

“I think Scott [Rudin]‘s response was totally correct. It’s a hard thing for people outside our business to understand. It is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But as silly as this may all look from the outside – privileged people bickering – I think it’s important. Film critics are part of the business of getting movies made. You swim in the same water we swim in. And there is a business to letting people know your movie is coming out. It is not a charity business. It is a business-business.

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