Level Orange

While it’s starting to look like Slumdog Millionaire is the favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars this year after snagging top honors at the Critics’ Choice, Golden Globes and SAG Awards, there’s also growing unrest over the nominations as a whole.  Would you rather have seen others on the list like The Wrestler, WALL•E or even The Dark Knight?

Are there any films that you think were overlooked or are these the right choices out of last year’s crop?

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Nominations for Best Picture include The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire. Despite campaigns to land nominations, The Dark Knight and WALL•E were shut out, although WALL•E seems to be a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature. Also of note, Heath Ledger nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role of the Joker in The Dark Knight. Also also, Tropic Thunder’s Robert Downey Jr./Kirk Lazarus nabbed a nom too.

Personally, this will mark the first year that I haven’t seen a single one of the nominees for Best Picture. I’m not exactly in a hurry to see any of them, although I’ll probably catch Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire on DVD someday. However, I’m excited to see Ledger, undoubtedly the best part of the year’s biggest film, receive some even-higher-profile recognition for his performance. 

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Erika Olsen from Redbox’s Redblog shares photos from her trips around the world to find and document locations from movies like Jurassic Park, Godzilla, Master and Commander and The Lord of the Rings. There’s also the bonus photos from the set of LOST. Fun stuff!

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Every year, the US Library of Congress selects films of importance for its National Film Registry film preservation project. This year, classic films like The Asphalt Jungle, In Cold Blood, Deliverance, Sergeant York, and others from the early 20th century were added to the list, guaranteeing their physical preservation and a place in national history as significant contributions to our national culture. 

Perhaps the most intriguing of the selections, was James Cameron’s The Terminator from 1984. It’s the only film of this year’s selections that still has an active following, including a third sequel due next year and a great (albeit-struggling) TV series airing on broadcast TV. While most sci-fi fans would easily consider the low-budget, visionary flick a classic, it says a lot that the federal government considers it a national treasure worth preserving for all time. I mean, that’s, like, forever.

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With all the deals to be had on Black Friday this past November, I couldn’t help but be tempted to finally jump into the Blu-ray format. Ever since HD DVD fell by the wayside earlier this year, I had been resigned to simply watching movies on DVD as I had been for the past decade. I had placed my bet on a fledgling technology and simply lost out, so in a fit of disappointment, I found that I was fine with kicking it old school for the foreseeable future.

There was the matter of the investment I had already made into HD DVD, including the add-on for my Xbox 360 (which at the time was the cheapest way to get into the format) and a growing collection that stopped at 35 titles. Maybe more importantly, there were the underlying principles behind the rival HD formats and their backers–Toshiba and the HD DVD Consortium versus Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association. In my mind, these corporate giants were slugging it out for different reasons and ultimately, I think the interests of Hollywood and Silicon Valley won out over that of consumers and end-users.

While that aspect of it all is probably the hardest pill to swallow, I’ve been able to look past it and consider what’s really the heart of the matter–being able to enjoy movies in high definition again. There was simply no other choice for building an “ultimate” collection of movies that didn’t revolve around (or at least involve) Blu-ray.

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Today Disney announced a new high-profile promotion for their Blu-ray titles, marking a big end of year push for new adopters of the high-def format. The price-dropping promotion, which lasts from December 26, 2008 until January 10, 2009, includes some of the studio’s biggest hits like Cars, The Chronicles of Narnia series, the Pirates Of The Caribbean series, Ratatouille, Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition, The Nightmare Before Christmas: Special Edition and Wall·E.

I know I’ll be looking for some of these, especially The Nightmare Before Christmas and Wall·E, which have apparently been deemed to of the best Blu-ray releases of 2008.

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According to Variety, Relativity Media is working to get its hands on rights to The Crow license, with plans to bring self-exiled director Stephen Norrington (Blade, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) to reboot the franchise.

Boo that that shit, I say. While I can understand that the death of Brandon Lee was tragic and unfortunate, I honestly think it made The Crow stronger and far more poignant, to the point where I don’t see why anyone would ever want to remake the film. Sure, Lee wasn’t exactly a star like The Dark Knight’s Heath Ledger, but just like with Ledger, there’s something to be said for leaving a man’s legacy–the one truly excellent film he made in his career–intact. Don’t let his death be in vain, Hollywood.  How about just putting together another sequel, but this time like you give a damn?

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For years, anyone who wanted solid recommendations on movies usually took the question up with a local video store clerk. I should know. I used to be one.  When you’re around so many movies and hear so many customers’ feedback, it’s easy to know what people really look for in their purchases. These days, as people buy and watch movies online, it becomes a one-way street, making it sometimes difficult to get a real human-based recommendation on what else is out there.

Created by Reel.com founder Stuart Skorman, Clerk Dogs is looking to fit that bill and do it with an unprecedented amount of human input, including hand-picked recommendations by thousands of video store clerks themselves. Even the site’s Mash It tool relies on real connections as suggested by people, not some collaborative, taxonomy-based algorithm. Check out this video of how the service works or just give it a spin and see what you think.

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After Universal Studios decided to put a leash on what DVD rental kiosk vendors can do with their titles, Redbox not only filed suit back in October, but has now stocked over 100,000 copies of Universal’s big upcoming DVD release Wanted.

Even with Universal’s new attempts to regulate how its titles are handled now in effect, Redbox has done its customers a solid and found alternative (albeit costly) ways to stock the DVD on release day. And since Redbox is sticking to its $1/day rental fee, that means they’re doing it on their own dime. How’s that for putting the customer first?

Last week, Paramount held a screening of the upcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button using a new 2K digital cinema system when problems with the presentation caused the show to come to a dead stop.

There was a problem with the digital server — which had been rented for the screening — that resulted in the absence of the color red from the projected image, giving the film a washed-out look.

With other silmilar incidents happening during recent screenings of Quantom of Solace and Soderberg’s Che, the theater industry is raising concerns over just how reliable the new digital rollout across the country will be, and studios are wondering how incidents like this could affect box office take and audiences alike

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