Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Sullivan's Travels" (1942)

A confession, since this is my third Preston Sturges pick and I'll probably end up recommending every movie he ever made at some point, since his run in the 1940's as a director was relatively short, and he only has about five or six films in his filmography- but what a run it was! Just about every one of those films is a full on classic, with this one topping them all for most movie buffs (I prefer The Lady Eve, but just by a hair). Sullivan's Travels is a Hollywood satire, a screwball comedy, a road movie and a meaningful treatise on the power of comedy to affect people's lives- it's perfect in nearly every way. Joel McCrea stars as a big time director of comedies out to make an epic drama and be taken "seriously," but of course he's got to learn his lesson and team up with a beautiful blonde (1940's bombshell Veronica Lake, one of cinema's biggest sex symbols) along the way. Every line is clever, witty and fast- no one put together words and dialogue quite like Sturges, and it's a joy just to listen to it and hear the words roll off the actor's tongues in a way you never could now. See this movie as soon as you can- as TCM would say, it's an essential.

Original 1942 Trailer:

Old Arnold Battles Young Arnold in 'Terminator Genisys' Trailer

That's the most notable part of this new trailer, although something about it looks a little bit off. I'm thinking not so great CG. I also haven't seen all the Terminator movies (just the first two), so I have no idea what's going on with the new timeline, or why young Sarah Connor now knows everything about her future son, and has fixed up the new Arnold model, etc. I have a feeling I'll be totally lost while watching this movie. It opens July 1st.

Paul Rudd is a Pint-Sized Superhero in Marvel's 'Ant-Man'

So, this movie still looks like it's not sure what it wants to be exactly- is it a comedy or a generic action flick? There's hints of both in here, yet it's hard to see how we can take a tiny little ant-sized man beating up regular sized men seriously. That train at the end made me laugh though. It's out July 17th.

'Fault in Our Stars' Tops the MTV Movie Awards

Ha! Remember when I said these nominations were fixed, because these are the same awards who picked the Twilight movies to win every single year in every category they were nominated in? Well now, this is more like it- at least we know they couldn't do anything about the winners. Hello, Twilight people- you've now migrated to The Fault in Our Stars for stupid, corny, ridiculous pre-teen fodder you can spend every night wetting yourselves to. It's more suited to this embarrassing joke of an awards show anyway.

Best Film: The Fault in our Stars
Best Actor: Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Best Actress: Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars
Best Scared Ass Shit Performance: Jennifer Lopez, The Girl Next Door
Best On-Screen Duo: Zac Efron and Dave Franco, Neighbors
Best Shirtless Performance: Zac Efron, Neighbors
Best Fight: Dylan O'Brien vs. Will Poutler, The Maze Runner
Best Kiss: Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars
Best #WTF Moment: Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, Neighbors
Best Villain: Meryl Streep, Into the Woods
Best Musical Moment: Jennifer Lawrence, Mockingjay Part 1
Best Comedic Performance: Channing Tatum, 22 Jump Street
Best Onscreen Transformation: Elizabeth Banks, Mockingjay Part 1

BOX OFFICE 4/10-4/12: 'Furious 7' Stays on Top in its 2nd Week

Furious 7 dropped 60% this week as expected, but still stayed on top for a strong first place finish, coming in with $60 million for a new total of $252 million, which coincidentally is already more than any other F&F movie ever earned here at home in its entire run. Overseas it's a different story entirely, as the movie has already ratcheted up more than $800 million globally- pretty astonishing, as you realize it's going to be up there with the Avengers and Star Wars movies by year's end. As always, I remain at a loss to explain the appeal of this franchise.

DreamWorks' Home held pretty well in its third week, falling just 30%, likely due to its being the most family-friendly of the recent releases in theaters, while the weekend's only new wide release, The Longest Ride, or Scott Eastwood's (son of Clint) bid for movie stardom, opened in third with $13.5 million, on the lower end of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. Get Hard and Cnderella rounded out the top five, but expect both to fall out of that group when Paul Blart 2 opens next week (yeah, that's another inexplicable family audience hit that I will never, ever catch up with).

Top 5:

Furious 7- $60.6 million
Home- $19 million
The Longest Ride- $13.5 million
Get Hard- $8.6 million
Cinderella- $7.2 million

In limited release this week, the sci-fi flick Ex Machina had the biggest bow of the year so far, opening on just 4 screens to $250k, or a $62k per theater average. While We're Young continues to hold nicely as it expands, and both that and Ex Machina are the two specialty releases to have success at the box office so far this year, while Clouds of Sils Maria (a movie from last year's Cannes film festival starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart) had a much smaller debut, opening with just $70k on three screens. Next week, like I said, it's the long awaited (?) Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and the horror movie Unfriended- both will probably be terrible, as we wait for the Avengers earthquake to shake things up on May 1st. Until then everyone!

Hillary Announces for 2016

So I know this isn't movies, but so what? It's big news. As expected, Hillary Clinton announced her second bid for the White House in 2016 via a video message- what do you think, guys? 2nd times the charm? I think so- I mean, seriously, who wants to vote for another Bush, right? I'm in. Go Hillary!

Movie of the Day: "Field of Dreams" (1989)

Kevin Costner kicked off and he returns to finish out baseball movie week with this fantasy love letter to the game and the literal magic it can inspire. Costner owns a farm he's not sure what to do with until he starts hearing voices telling him that if he builds it, they will come. What he builds turns out to be a baseball field and who they are turn out to be the ghosts of legendary and long dead ball players who come out to play the game for all eternity. Now if that's not a story that absolutely reveres the sport itself I don't know what does. The movie works though, as an old-fashioned fable and an emotional tribute to American's pastime as the stuff dreams are made of. A perfect cap to our week of baseball films.

Original 1989 Trailer:

Reese and Sofia On the Run in New Trailer for 'Hot Pursuit'

I really hope this isn't as dumb as it looks, because you can kinda tell that these two might have some decent comedic chemistry together- but Reese's track record for comedies since Legally Blonde is pretty awful. Lots of sitcom-y schtick here. Comes out May 8th.

'Live From New York' Documentary to Open Tribeca Film Festival

In case you're still not tired of all the celebratory SNL activities this year, this new documentary is based on the oral history of Saturday Night Live, which was compiled by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, and documents the show's 40 year history through various interviews. It's set top open the Tribeca Film Festival on April 15th, and for SNL junkies, it's probably going to be as essential as the 40th anniversary show itself.

Movie of the Day: "The Bad News Bears" (1976)

Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal make quite a pair in this 70's classic, one of the best movies about kids you could ever see. He's the prickly alcoholic loser who takes the job of coaching a god awful Little League team because he needs the money, and she's the daughter of one his ex-girlfriends, whom he taught to pitch better than any of the boys. The best thing about this movie is how utterly frank and unsentimental it is. This is the '70's, so there's a complete lack of political correctness- Matthau is never without a beer can in his hand and manages to triumph without once softening any edges to his personality, and the kids are a bunch of rude, shit talking little twerps who actually resemble real kids and not precocious "movie kids" that you see so often in other films. O'Neal is at the peak of her child star glory and steals all her scenes as the tough girl pitcher who can take any challenge thrown at her, and the barbed rapport between her and Matthau is terrific. The fact that you could never make this movie today was seen in the awful 2005 remake, that was forced to dumb down so much of what people loved about the original. It makes this a time capsule for the ages.

Original 1976 Trailer:

Disney to Remake 'Pinocchio'

Is this set to become a weekly announcement? Now Disney has hired Peter Hedges (who wrote and directed Pieces of April and Dan in Real Life) to write a new live-action version of Pinocchio, which will of course be loosely based on the 1940 movie, and has been done before in many other versions as well (remember the horrifying Roberto Benigni 90's one starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas?). Guillermo del Toro is also in the midst of adapting a stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie that's currently seeking foreign financing. The 1940 Pinocchio is really one of the darkest Disney movies ever, maybe the one that comes closest of all their fairy tale adaptations to capturing the true, kind of twisted nature of those stories to begin with. It's also of course one of the most dazzling pieces of pure animation ever made, and every bit of it can still take your breath away when you watch a restored version. As one of the best from Disney's Golden Age, it can't be topped in any way, really.

Just to freak you out all over again, here's the scene where Pinocchio and Lampwick are turned into donkeys because of their bad behavior. This is seriously freaky stuff you'd never see in a kids movie today:

New Poster for Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Maggie'

I have to admit, I'm kind of curious about this movie, even though it's scheduled to come out on Video on Demand (not necessarily a good sign) alongside its theatrical release in May. The trailer made it look like a slightly different kind of movie for both Schwarzenegger and the zombie genre, so we'll see if it's any good soon enough.