Written by Mitch Cyrus

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Friday night means it's Crystal Ball time here at The Cleveland Fan, and Mitch has plenty to talk about with the nominations for Best Picture as well as all the other Oscar contenders released. And as always, Mitch hits on the weekend theater releases (Rambo, Meet The Spartans, Untraceable), the latest DVD releases (The Comebacks, Daddy Day Camp), and the latest news and rumors from Hollywood and the film industry.

The Oscar nominations are out. Which means I have something to talk about during this dead time when there isn’t much going on with the Browns.

Can’t really complain too much on the Best Picture nominations. Although I might later if I end up thinking that “Atonement” or “There Will Be Blood” are not worthy. I’m disappointed that “Sweeney Todd” wasn’t nominated, but not really that surprised. On the other hand, I think it was great that “Juno” did get a nomination, although any comparisons to “Little Miss Sunshine” are inaccurate…as “Little Miss Sunshine” sucked, and “Juno” is a great movie.

Some great selections in the acting categories as well…and I’ll get a lot more into that with my Oscar pieces that will be running the week before the Big Show: A show that is starting to look more likely to occur, as there are a lot of stories about how progress is being made in the writers strike, and it may be settled soon.

One interesting comment on nominations; have you ever seen a movie fall as fast from grace as “American Gangster”? With all the stories coming out from the real people involved with the tale of Frank Lucas, all of them stating that the movie is 90% or more fabricated, it has really lost its luster. I would have thought that at the least, Denzel Washington would receive a best actor nomination, but that’s not the case, and I think it all has to do with people being fed up with movies that are purported to be “true”, and end up being mostly fiction (“A Beautiful Mind”, anyone?)

News and Rumors

~ Josh Brolin’s been on a bit of a roll, lately. Now Oliver Stone wants to cast him as George W. Bush in a biography called, of all things, “Bush”. Oliver promises it won’t be a hatchet job. He also promises that his check is in the mail.

~ The next Bond film starring Daniel Craig will be entitled “Quantum of Silence”…which means absolutely nothing to me. The good news I did learn was that it will pretty much pick right up where “Casino Royale” left off, with James still in a really pissy mood after the betrayal and death of his love, Vespa.

~ Gotta love the Razzies. Eddie Murphy gets eight nominations for the horrible abomination that was “Norbit”…including “Worst Couple”. But that wasn’t even the top nominated film…as Lindsay Lohan’s god-awful “I Know Who Killed Me” garnered nine. “Winners” are announced the day before the Oscars.

~ In the wake of Heath Ledger’s death, look for Warner Brothers to completely redo their marketing strategy for “The Dark Knight”. Early posters and teaser trailers have been focusing on The Joker, played by Ledger. I doubt they’ll change anything in the film, set for release in July, but look for the marketing to re-focus on Christian Bale as Batman.

This week’s new movie releases:

Hold your nose, as this is a real stink-fest for the new releases.

On the positive side, look for many more theaters to be showing Oscar nominated films “Michael Clayton”, “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood”.

Any of the nominated movies, plus about 15 – 20 more I could think of would be better than any of these.

Rambo

Starring: Sylvester Stallone and his illegal batch of Human Growth Hormone

Plot: A 70 year old ‘roid phreak kills a lot of Asians, because other Asians treated him bad 40 years earlier.

View Trailer,

The BeerBuzz: The most hilarious comments I saw on this movie was that in its TV trailer, it was being touted as “The Best Action Movie” by some obscure website called “gorymovie.com” or something to that effect. This movie is awful…unless you’re the type that loves stupid plots, bad acting, and non-stop gore. Every ounce of goodwill Sly built up last year with his classy ending to the “Rocky” saga has been burned away by this mess.

My Estimated Rating: Spergon Wynn (0 footballs)

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Meet the Spartans

Starring: Sean Maguire, Kevin Sorbo

Plot: Send up of “300” and a lot of other recent movies and Hollywood gosip.

View Trailer

The BeerBuzz: From the same people who made “Epic Movie”…and it’s really the exact same movie, just poking fun at different films than the last time. As I stated before: Once upon a time, great comic minds like Mel Brooks, Jim Abrahams, and the Zucker Brothers made cutting edge satire like “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein”, “Airplane” and “Kentucky Fried Movie”. Now you get this garbage.

My Estimated Rating: Mike Phipps (1/2 football).

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Untraceable

Starring: Diane Lane, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross

Plot: An FBI agent tries to identify and capture a killer who flaunts his crimes on the internet

View Trailer

The BeerBuzz: I so wanted this one to be good, because Diane Lane is one of my favorite actresses. Alas, it appears to be a muddled mess of a film, hence the January release. I’m not sure what’s up with director Gregory Hoblit. After cutting his chops on two of the greatest TV shows ever; “Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue, he directed some great movies like “Primal Fear”, “Fallen” and “Frequency”. Now he gives us this after flops “Hart’s War” and “Fracture”?

My Estimated Rating: Tim Couch (1½ football).

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How She Move

Starring: Rutina Wesley, Tre Armstrong, Brennan Gademans

Plot: A family tragedy forces a young student to drop out of private school and return to her old neighborhood, where she rediscovers step dancing.

View Trailer

The BeerBuzz: How many of these cookie cutter urban dance movies do they have to make? Or maybe they’re like old Xerox copies. After you make a copy from a copy from a copy, etc…what you have is a smudged mess.

My Estimated Rating: Mike Phipps ( ½ football).

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New DVD Releases for Tuesday, January 29^th

Think the new theatrical releases suck? Well, the new DVD releases are just as bad.

The Comebacks – Just read everything I wrote about “Meet the Spartans”, and apply it here to this stupid send up of sports movies.

Daddy Day Camp – A sequel of a bad movie, that is so bad that not even the King of Crap, Eddie Murphy, could be paid enough to star in another one. So they get the one man who has no shame whatsoever, Cuba Gooding, Jr., to take the lead role.

Feel the Noise – A South Bronx wannabee rapper flees local thugs and hides in Puerto Rico with a father he never knew. And it comes with Salsa Music!

Calendar Watch

Next week: The Eye, Over Her Dead Body, Strange Wilderness, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour

Upcoming Biggies (click on the hyperlink to view the available trailers).

Vantage Point – February 22^nd – Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, and Matthew Fox in a political thriller/mystery showing five different points of view to an attempted assassination of the President.

The Other Boleyn Girl – February 29^th – Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Scarlett Johansson as her sister Mary, and Eric Bana as King Henry VIII. I expect this to blow the tepid Showtime series “The Tudors” out of the English Channel…but since it’s gotten pushed back to the waste-land of February releases, I don’t have a good feeling about it.

10,000 B.C. – March 7^th – Roland Emmerich, he of “The Day After Tomorrow”, gets to unleash his big-budget vision of mammoth hunters in this film that is NOT a remake of “One Million Years B.C.” Bummer. I was hoping of a really good visual update to Rachel Welch in that fur bikini.

Horton Hears a Who – March 14^th – Not content to have made Dr. Suess spin in his grave with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, Jim Carrey now takes on the voice of Horton the Elephant in this animated tale.

Pride and Glory – March 14^th – Ed Norton and Colin Farrell in a tale of a multi-generational family of NYPD officers and an investigation of corruption that could tear the family apart.

21. – March 28^th – Swerb’s favorite upcoming movie, the true tale of six MIT students that are trained by one of their professors (Kevin Spacey) in the art of card counting. They later take down Vegas casinos for millions.

Leatherheads – April 4^th – George Clooney and Renee Zellweger in an old fashioned screwball comedy set in 1925 about an aging football legend and the college hotshot he’s drafted for his pro team both fighting for the heart of an intrepid up-and-coming journalist.

Iron Man – May 2^nd – The latest mega-budgeted superhero flick. Looks very promising, and the casting of Robert Downey, Jr. as the alcoholic billionaire who designs a supersuit.

Speed Racer – May 9^th – Emile Hirch, Matthew Fox, and Christina Ricci as Speed, Racer X, and Trixie in the Wachowski Brothers’ (“The Matrix” trilogy) adaptation of the campy 1960s Japanese anime.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – May 16^th – The same four kids from the first movie return to Narnia…1300 years after their last visit in that enchanted land’s time frame, to help restore the throne to the rightful heir.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – May 23^rd – Spielberg and Ford team up one more time, with Cate Blanchett as the romantic interest, and Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers”) as Indy’s son.

Sex and the City – May 30^th – The movie version of the HBO series hits the big screen. Can we guys get our share of this pie and have a movie version of “Deadwood”?

The Incredible Hulk – June 13^th – Looks to be much, much better than the Ang Lee stink-fest, with Edward Norton taking on the role of Bruce Banner.

Get Smart – June 20^th – Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Arkin take on the roles of Maxwell Smart, Agent 99 and The Chief. As much as I hate movie adaptations of television shows, this one has potential.

Wall-E – June 27^th – Pixar’s next masterpiece, about a garbage cleaning robot who dreams of the stars.

Wanted – June 27^th – Look for this to make a star out of James McAvoy (“The Last King of Scotland”) as he plays a young man brought into a secret society of assassins by a hot, hot looking Angelina Jolie. Morgan Freeman plays their boss.

The Dark Knight – July 19^th – Batman is back, and this time he’s tracking the Joker, played by Heath Ledger. Most likely the box office champion of 2008.