Month: February 2009 (Page 4 of 23)

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

“Futurama” goes out with a bang on “Into the Wild Green Yonder,” their fourth and supposedly final full-length movie. As Leo Wong begins construction on a galaxy-wide miniature golf course that will require the destruction of a dwarf star, Leela joins a group of eco-terrorists to stop him, while Fry inherits mind-reading abilities that enable him to battle the Dark Ones as they plot the star’s destruction. It’s a typical, gleefully labyrinthine “Futurama” story, but for the first time in these DVD movies, they’re more focused on having fun than being overly clever (compared to, say, “Bender’s Big Score,” where the writing staff was just showing off). They also have a great time setting up the apparent deaths of several characters, and gave the fans a happy, though open-ended, finale. Bravo, gentlemen. Oh, and the smooth crooner that sings the opening number? That would be Seth McFarlane. Yes, that Seth McFarlane.

Click to buy “Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder”

Mel Gibson prays, gets sense of humor

I’m not sure how I missed this, but Jimmy Kimmel’s post-Oscar special Sunday night featured Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise as its guests. While the latter is already waist-deep in a carefully engineered comeback headlined by his hilarious performance in “Tropic Thunder,” Gibson has yet to escape the embarrassment of last year’s Sugargate.

He does have a new movie (the Martin Campbell thriller “Edge of Darkness”) coming out at the end of the year, though, and in an attempt to repair his image in time for its release, he made his first public appearance since the incident on Kimmel’s show. Though he still refuses to admit that he ever actually said the now infamous “Sugar tits,” it was his fake trailer for a movie called “The Colonel” that was the real highlight of the night.

Well, it’s about freaking time…

After months of pissing everyone off by telling reporters that he either wasn’t interested in reprising his role of George Michael Bluth or couldn’t be bothered to sign onto an “Arrested Development” movie until he’d read the script, it looks like Michael Cera has finally caved in.

According to Kristin Dos Santos over at E! Online

Inside sources close to the negotiations of the upcoming Arrested Development movie tell me that Superbad and Juno star (and before that, hello, George-Michael Bluth!) Michael Cera has finally agreed to do the feature film project. Cera had been the lone holdout among the show’s stars for several weeks. All other Bluths, including Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Tony Hale, Jessica Walter, Jeffrey Tambor and David Cross, are already game, according to sources.

I think we all knew this was only inevitable. Either Cera was going to sign, or Mitchell Hurwitz – who’s reportedly in the midst of writing the script – would made George Michael the brunt of more jokes than…well, George Michael.

Alien Raiders

Direct-to-DVD releases are tough to gague. Are we supposed to grade them using the same criteria that one would use for a theatrical release because a movie’s a movie, or should we cut it some slack because by the very fact that it’s being issued straight to DVD. even the studio knows that it’s B-grade material at best? Either way, despite the familiarity of the material and its dreadfully generic name, “Alien Raiders” is a decent little flick for fans of monster sci-fi. Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida on “24”) leads a group of well-armed renegades into a supermarket in the middle of rural Arizona in order to stop an alien infestation, and once their “spotter” is killed, the group has to use less pleasant methods in order to determine which hostages are infected. It’s basically the plots for “The Thing,” “The Mist” and “The Negotiator” thrown into a blender, though it’s wisely but frustratingly stingy with the details on the alien species they’re battling. The acting is actually pretty decent (though a little of Rockmond Dunbar’s bluster goes a long way), but the story is rather thin, leading to the predictable “shocker” finale. Still, we’ve seen far worse movies than this at the multiplex.

Click to buy “Alien Raiders”

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