JABOOTU the bad movie dimension

Taylor Lautner, who I think is the guy who plays the werewolf in the Twilight movies, has been signed to play Stretch Armstrong in an upcoming summer blockbuster. There’s bad news with the good, though, since the film won’t come out for two more years. Rest assured, though, there are strong reasons for this: “Stretch Armstrong is moving to 2012 to allot time to shape the project into a 3-D superhero adventure and to accommodate Lautner’s existing commitments.” Wow, that sounds awesome!

Still, it’s hard to have to wait until 2012. I know. I’m all on pins and needles, too! Even worse, the previously announced film based on the board game Battleship, previously announced for 2011, has also been moved to 2012.

“Universal has put all the elements in place to successfully launch two of our classic Hasbro brands on the big screen,” said Brian Goldner, President and CEO of Hasbro, Inc. “The addition of Taylor Lautner and the 3-D twist to Stretch Armstrong, in addition to giving Pete Berg and the filmmakers the extra time and resources to make Battleship an even bigger summer blockbuster, is sure to pay dividends when the film is released in 2012.”

Truly, we live in a golden age of cinema.

Got a ten spot in your pocket and want to spend it wisely? On Saturday, Feb 27th at Chicago’s historic Portage Theater, the Time Tunnel Toys guys will be presenting an incredible five Universal classics for ten bucks:

Dracula
Frankenstein
The Wolf Man
The Creature From the Black Lagoon
The Mummy’s Hand

That’s pretty sweet. The show starts at 4:00 and should run until around midnight.

If you couldn’t make the 2010 B-Fest (see my report in the Nuggets section), remember that aside from our annual summer T-Fest down in Dallas, we’ll be doing an extra Fest on March 13th. Details can be had by e-mailing me at ken@jabootu.com. The event is free and open to all. We hope to see you there.

The 2000s was a golden age of television, but I thought the best show of the lot–even better than The Shield or Battlestar Galactica–was this extraordinary revisionist (and HIGHLY vulgar) western. Just amazingly good. Amazon offers the complete three years of the show today for $75, which is 58% percent off the MSRP. Still pricey, but worth it. In any case, if you haven’t seen the show, and don’t want to buy it, get it through Netflix or your local library.

Quite a lot of good stuff this week. Get your wallets out or pull up your Netflix queue:

The top TV pick is Doctor Who: The Specials, featuring the five TV movies that ended David Tennant’s run as the renegade Time Lord. The specials are also available separately, and the set is available as well in Blu-Ray.

Camp fans may wish to check out the jokier syndicated horror / comedy / romance show She-Wolf of London. It comes with “ten dollars of movie cash,” by which I think it features a voucher for a movie ticket to The Wolf Man, out this week. There’s also a re-release of the classic The Wolf Man this week that offers the same thing.

Also out: Dragonball Z S3; Dynasty S4, Mr. Ed S2. There are also a bunch of sets of classics game show compilations coming out, including sets for Password, Matchgame, Family Feud (with Richard Dawson) and others.

Delightful Forest and Heroes Shed No Tears: The two latest Shaw Brothers martial arts releases.

Horror Collector’s Set, Vol 6: Echo Bridge’s latest set features Prom Night (Jamie Lee Curtis), The Nurse, Skeleton Man, The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe, and Ghoulies IV.

House of the Devil: This lively recreation of an ’80s style horror flick was much beloved by the horror sites last year. (A cute gag is that, because it’s such a throwback to the ’80s, the film also comes in a DVD / VHS copy bundle.)

Ice Castles: The most prominent of the string of late ’70s / early ’80s ‘damaged women’ tearjerkers hits DVD. Still no release of The Promise yet, though.

On Bak 2: The Beginning–An apparent prequel to the earlier martial arts hit.

Planet Hulk is the latest DTV Marvel animated movie. These seem to be getting a bit better lately, or at least the nifty double bill Hulk Vs. disc was. This one animates one of the major Marvel storylines of recent vintage, in which a Hulk secretly shot into space by some of the most bigwig superheroes returns seeking some extremely destructive revenge.

TCM is putting out more of their extremely useful ‘four classics’ sets. This week’s best is their Marx Brothers set with A Day at the Races, Room Service, At the Circus and A Night in Casablanca. Only Races is among their best work, but still essential stuff for any old movie fan.

Another TCM set is Sci-Fi Adventures, featuring Them! and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, along with World Without End and Satellite in the Sky. Those last two are hardly essential, but if you don’t already own the first two, shame on you.

Universal Solider: Reanimation somehow raised the gigantic sums required to bring back both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren to the series. It’s also, like most every new movies, available as well in Blu-Ray.

Zombieland: I’m not the biggest zombie fan in the world, but it’s amazing how many really good zombie movies have been made in the last decade or so. This reportedly belongs on that list.

Lots of older films are hitting Blu-Ray this week, including An American in Paris, Casablanca, The Godfather (I and II) Unforgiven, March of the Penguins and Live and Die in LA.

As noted earlier, the Academy Awards are making themselves even more farcical by expanding the Best Picture nominees to ten movies. Here’re the titles:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Bastards
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Nice, actually, to see a (serious) sci-fi film in District 9 getting a nod. It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, so that’s nice.

Up should legitimately be a REAL contender for Best Picture, but its nomination for Best Picture is a sop. It should win the separate best animated movie award, though.

Have at it…

IT HAS BEGUN!!!!

Leaving for the airport soon to pick up Joe “Opposable Thumb Video” Robin. From there it’s airport runs; hanging out; fine dining (Chicago style); 24 hours o’ B-Fest; post-Fest party, more hang-out; more airport runs; and then blessed, blessed oblivion. That takes me from now to about Tuesday.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Man, I can’t catch a break. The first (comparatively) decent looking film in the Mills Creek Chilling Classics set I’m wading through, and I’m hosed about ten minutes in by a defective disc. Actually, I knew the disc was messed up, as I had to start Memorial Valley Massacre like five times before it played. (If that’s not the very definition of masochism…) In other words, the films on the outside of the disc–Death Rage and Medusa–were fine, but the interior films were messed up. And this one was really messed up, so it’s no go.

Too bad. Grading on a curve, Deadtime Stories looked like it would have a modicum of wit and some actually affection for the genre. In lieu of a brief review, then, here’s the catchy title song:

After that, on to the four films on disc two. Hopefully all of the remaining discs will work. That’s for after B-Fest, though.

So I’m tossing a bunch of my hundreds and hundreds of incredibly useless VHS tapes (I don’t even have a working VCR anymore). I have to make room for some B-Fest attendees, you see.

So I have a tape for a DTV ’80s actioner called Dark Rider, which not only features Joe Estevez by name and image on the cover art, but under his named notes “(Star Of Soultaker)” Yes, the parentheses are on the box.

I mean, really, they expected people to be more likely to rent the film not just because it starred Joe Estevez, but because it was the Estevez who starred in Soultaker.

…(which, admittedly, would be REALLY slow), it’s because B-Fest is this weekend, and I’m trying to buy all the supplies, borrow through the disgusting heaps of crap I owe to create sleeping spots for three people, pickup up said people from the airport, actually attend the Fest, attend the traditional post-Fest party afterward, return people to the airport, go into a coma for 24 hours…and that will be that. So starting Tuesday I should be writing up my B-Fest report, and then the rest of the week I can actually get some writing done. From here to then, though, not so much.

Thanks much, then, to Sandy for not just supplying another terrific review (the recently posted She-Devils on Wheels), but for supplying one I could post during this lull.

Everyone else have a great week. Remember, we’ll be having T(ween) Fest in Dallas in March should you not be able to make B-Fest this weekend or the regular T-Fest this summer.