Holy crap. How things can change in six months. The top-rated NBC action series , which was an instant hit two years ago, has been canceled after a 25% drop in viewership with the third season’s premiere. With advertisers dropping off left and right, NBC will air the remaining seven episodes that have already been filmed and, presumably, wrap things up with a quick season finale - if fans are lucky.

No doubt, fans like me are going to protest this like crazy, as ).

Unfortunately, the second season was a bit weak at times, and the last several episodes were hurried by the writer’s strike, cutting short major season arcs and conveniently wrapping them up in overly ambitious ways. Season Two saw a ridiculously small amount of episodes, and apparently that was more than enough to kill it for audiences. Still, a 25% decrease is pretty shocking, and NBC must have passed the break-even point as I’m sure is quite pricey (despite having rather crappy special effects by today’s standards).

Anyway, while did experience a 25% drop with its season premiere, NBC of course is not really canceling one of its most popular shows. Did you really believe that? Did you?

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Holy crap. This just in from a legitimate source: is coming to theaters sometime in 2010. Word has it that Francis Ford Coppola has already penned the script, and the movie is currently in the pre-production phase. It is rumored that Al Pacino will return, though the film will focus heavily on a new character played by Nicolas Cage, who as we all know is related in some way or form, by blood or otherwise, to the famed director. This is amazing news.

However, that news is not real. What real, however, is that a new DVD set was released today called , let me tell you). The collection contains five massive discs of goodness. You can probably guess what the first three discs are used for - the last two are saved for special features, and there are a lot of them.

One of the things I find frustrating by being a movie reviewer, other than constantly receiving free DVDs and invitations to LA press screenings, is that in these renewed box sets that exist solely to make the studio just a little more money by duping die hard fans into buying the latest and greatest version when the DVD they bought five years ago is just as good, the new features and old features are rarely separated. So when I actually take the time to review bonus features - which is not that often because I think most bonus features are a waste of time - I have no clue whether these features have been available for years unless I manage to find the info on Amazon.com or something like that… but the extra ten keystrokes is just more effort than I’m willing to spend.

Thankfully, with , disc four includes special features previously available, whereas disc five is exclusively designed for new bonus featuers. In other words, for review purposes, I skipped disc four and went straight to disc five.

I didn’t make it very far, though. I was building a dresser while watching, and I tried watching the deleted scenes, of which there are many (they are broken out by the chronology of the characters, not the movies). Unfortunately, there’s no “Play All” feature that I could find, and thus it wasn’t worth my time clicking on each thumbnail to watch a deleted scene. So… I moved on to the behind-the-scenes videos, and started watching one of them. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was good. Real good. The video features interviews with practically everyone involved in the movie, and goes into thorough detail about the challenges of making the film - primarily, the fact that Coppola and Pacino were always two seconds away from getting fired. The video is extremely detailed and interesting, and one of the best I’ve seen.

There were many other special features, but that’s as far as I got. Why? Because after watching 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes action, I couldn’t resist but put in the first movie. Having never seen it before, I thought now was as good of time as any. OK, I’ve actually seen at least ten times (is that all?), but these movies - yes, even the third one - are so incredible it’s hard to believe they were made so long ago. Absolutely stunning.

trilogy consists of three of the best movies ever made. This new DVD set includes a ton of new features that are, I hate to say it, worth owning if you really like your Italian gangsters.

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, the latest Woody Allen movie that stars Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Why? Because I actually like Woody Allen movies for the most part, the cast rocks and the film has Johansson and Cruz going at it… and I don’t mean fighting. Alas, due to an extremely busy month and some so-so reviews from friends, I have yet to get around to the romantic comedy-drama, and probably won’t see it until DVD.

Thankfully, my coworker Alice Graves, who is a diehard Woody Allen fan, .

Read Alice’s !

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I just received some new Megan Fox pictures from her upcoming, R-rated movie , starring Simon Pegg. When I first saw previews for the movie, I assumed it was going to be a harmless PG-13 comedy, but with an R-rating that includes “graphic nudity,” one has to wonder exactly what’s in store.

The new Megan Fox pictures provided (which I’m sure have already circulated around the Internet a thousand times over by now, considering that I actually have to work for a living and only get to attend to this website at night when I don’t have better things to do like go on dates with beautiful women - doesn’t happen nearly enough - or watch the season premiere of ) feature Megan Fox parading around in a swimming pool, still fully dressed (sorry). But, you know what happens to clothing - espeically women’s clothing - when they get wet, right? And cold? Anyway, without further ado, here are some steaming, not-so-naked pictures of Megan Fox:

I have several more new here.

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We’re two episodes into Fox’s new sci-fi show in mind, is an interesting one, about genetic testing, mutations and some kind of conspiracy or invasion that is yet to be revealed. The season starts off with a bang, with a plane full of passengers getting subjected to some biological agent that causes the flesh to melt off their bones. From there, a crazy scientist is introduced, as well as an attractive federal agent and Joshua Jackson. I’m not a fan of Jackson and I don’t think I ever will be.

In the world of , brains can be hacked into using the electricity of brain waves, death does not mean that people are completely dead (can we really believe that the woman’s boyfriend, who was revealed to be a bad guy in the first episode, won’t return from the dead?) and women can give birth to a full-grown man who dies of old age an hour after being born. Behind it all: a company of great respect, or a government, or something else entirely. We know that Fox wants several seasons of this show, and clearly what we’re seeing here is only the beginning. It’s intriguing stuff.

Still, I’m on the fringe about , that’s for sure, no matter how hard it wants to be. For starters, the characters aren’t particularly interesting or likable, save for John Noble, who plays the senile scientist who holds many of the answers the other protagonists are seeking. Anna Torv, who plays Agent Dunham, is attractive but a bit too mannish for her own good; in this day and age, they want to make her beautiful, sensitive and tough all at the same time, but she can only switch from one mode to the next, rather than embrace all of her character’s attributes and take true advantage of them. I expect this to be fleshed out in time, but Scully she is not. And if she’s not Scully, Joshua Jackson is surely not Mulder, as he seems to be around to add a “name” to the cast, throw in some pretty bad sarcastic one-liners and prove he can have a sustainable career beyond “Dawson’s Creek.” The dynamic between the two is stale and hardly captivating.

The show has a nice, glossy feel to it, but it’s almost too glossy at times. The direction and editing is also a little sloppy, as if the crew got 95% complete and then let their kids do the rest. It’s hard to be specific, but so far the show has failed to build tension or mystery despite the story arc that makes such a thing so easily attainable. Compared to , for example, it fails to keep you curious commercial break to commercial break, and that’s a bit of a disappointment.

All in all, is decent enough that I’m going to continue watching for a while, but right now I don’t know if I’ll make it a season. I have high hopes that as I write this Fox is conducting focus groups to see what they need to do to improve over future episodes, but let’s just hope their tinkering isn’t too late.

At least it’s already better than this year’s movie.

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My contacts over at Electric Artists alerted me to this ridiculously insane event: the

Netflix Movie Watching World Championship. What is the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship, you ask? Well, it’s a laid back event where all you have to do is watch movies, and lots of ‘em.

Easy peesy, you say, while chuckling and saying this is a great way to earn ,000, a lifetime subscription to Netflix and the first-ever Popcorn Bowl. If you love movies, one can’t possibly think of a better way to make some quick cash.

But wait, there’s more! (said in the tone of voice that Matthew Lillard whines as he reveals the plot to murder teens during ) You don’t want to enter this event… at least I hope you don’t. You see… the point of the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship is to beat the world record of straight movie watching, which right now is 120 hours and 23 minutes. 120 hours and 23 fucking minutes. Are you kidding me???

I love watching movies. Absolutely love it. But I would pull my eyes out, slice them up into little pieces and then trickle the shavings back into my gaping, bloody sockets before subjecting myself to anything near that many hours. How or why anyone would want to do this to themselves is beyond me, but

Ashish Sharma of Mathura, India - who will also be competing in the event to defend his title for his country - watched for 120 hours and 23 minutes. Jesus Christ, Allah, Buddah and 1,000 Hindu gods! Let’s through in Ra and Zeus for good measure.

Netflix is also running a Facebook contests for people to submit video applications. I’m told to search for “Netflix Championship” on Facebook, but wasn’t able to find it. The World Championship runs from October 2nd to the 5th, 2008, and participants are not able to sleep or take their eyes off the screen, aside from 10-minute breaks between movies.

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What a wonderful month September has been. I say that with all the enthusiasm, exciting and sincerity I can muster.

There have been successes. At work (no, not FilmJabber, but work), I helped launch a new product and get a partnership off the ground. But the weeks leading up to it were busy. Real busy. I’m not complaining, as I love being behind on things because by being behind, I have no excuses to waste time or tinker around on the Internet. I put my head down and that’s that. At the same time, I don’t come up for air, and I just keep pushing, pushing and pushing some more.

Thank God my home computer - the computer I source my movie reviews, movie updates and everything FilmJabber related from - decided to go whacko on me months ago. Thank you, Lord, for giving man the knowledge of the computer and Internets, because only you know what animalistic monsters we would be without them. Thank you for creating devices that can work seamlessly for years and then decide one day to roll that big fat middle finger out and give their own the big “FU.” Hell, couldn’t mine have at least lasted a year?

For the record, I’m pretty good with computers, or at least I used to be. I can install my own parts and knew more than I should have about computers growing up thanks to a short-lived obsession with video games. Since I was little, I’ve never had serious computer issues. In fact, while my friends have pulled their hair out - and subsequently forced me to do the same as they turned to me for help - as their computers coughed, sputtered and clawed their way to destruction, my computers have always worked well. My latest, purchased and assembled only last year, continued that trend… until the beginning of the summer, when Vista or the hardware or something decided that karma had to come back around.

After months of on-and-off again problems that neither I nor my techie roommate could figure out, I finally gave in and made a deal with the devil: I decided to pay to get it fixed. Specifically, I took it into a store to get the battery checked. That turned into preliminary diagnostics, and then paid diagnostics. Paid diagnostics! Money! Crap. But slow down there, partner. You pay, they at least find the problem, right? Right! Wrong, biotch!

The tech guy spends two days “attempting” to find the problem, but his testing pretty much involves running a DVD and waiting for it to crash. He doesn’t see anything wrong, he tells me. Yes, I bet you do, you snarky bastard. The guy laughs about it and makes me sound like I’m some desperate idiot, and ignores my best efforts to explain that the guy who looked at initially was able to make the computer crash repeatedly within the first few minutes of looking at. Sixty dollars later and my computer is no more fixed, I’m pissed off and…

Oh, and I’m moving! In a rash decision, my roommate and I decide to upgrade apartments and move all our crap 15 miles from Bellevue to Seattle, Washington. The moving is pretty seamless, other than it taking longer than expected and us not being able to fit everything into the truck. Once all is said and done, and our friends are sitting in our apartment waiting to have some much deserved food, my roommate and I go to take the Uhaul back. The Uhaul dude, who clearly has nothing better to do than to waste our time, tells us that our attempts to refill the gas tank to its previous level was not good enough, and he sends us back out on the road to our second gas station in ten minutes. Son of a bitch.

To make matters worse, the next day, I wake up with a big, four-inch bite across my ribs and some pain to go with it. Over the course of the day, a headache develops, then a fever. By nighttime, my body aches all over, and by the time I climb into bed to sleep it off, I’m burning up real good and shaking like a supermodel in a hurricane, only a lot less pretty. When I wake up Tuesday morning, Peter Parker transformed I am not, but my alleged spider bite has spread, so now parts of my chest are pink and hard, but not in the muscular kind of way.

The brown recluse, some coworkers suggest, even though the brown recluse isn’t much around these parts. A tick, my mommy chimes in. Lyme disease, she warns, to look out for. I know it’s neither, but I go to the doctor anyway. By end of the week, things are fading, but the doctor, who barely looks at the bite and doesn’t have much of a clue about what attacked me, throws some antibiotics at it and sends me on my way.

Now I’m here, sitting on my floor because I don’t yet have a desk, watching on my laptop while I lean uncomfortably against my bed frame to work on this desktop computer that could crash at anytime, writing this blog post to tell everything that I’ve returned and should pick up the pace with this movie blog. You can now rejoice and hold hands and hug and send praise, because the one true blog is back in action.

That is, at least, until I go to Cancun in two weeks.

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In 1982 New Zealand author Morris Gees’ acclaimed book Under the Mountain became a cult TV show. Now the Kiwi classic is being made into a movie.

The story is about a pair of red head twins, with psychic powers battling evil.

The evil was the Wilberforces who hide under Rangitoto and want to take over the world.

It was a TV show that terrorised a generation of Kiwi kids.

The latest movie instalment is to feature classic Kiwi actor Sam Neil, who will play Mr Jones, the only person who stands in the way of the Wilberforces and their evil plans.

Local director Jonathan King reckons there is a good reason to be afraid, as the new movie plans to keep the scares.

Tags: aim, ins, iwi

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Robert Bell, who shares his movie reviews on FilmJabber and who is also based in Toronto, somehow was admitted into the Toronto International Film Festival (known as TIFF) despite the chaos he caused last year. OK, he actually didn’t cause any commotion last year (that I know of), but regardless, he has weighed in on the festival in general and many of the films that screened there. Without further ado…

Thanks to some amazing Canadian PR firms and studios, I have been able to catch some Pre-festival screenings of selected films to play at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival.  While no films have stood out as particularly bad, only a couple of films have stood out as great.  Hopefully, some of the films I screen during the fest will have more of a lasting impact.

Strangely enough, I spend most of my daily life in the same building where a TIFF purchasing office and the main press theatre for the festival is so the impact of the festival on our community and how annoying it is to the locals isn’t lost on me.  Endless parades of accreditation-laden press and starfu**ers mill around the bay/bloor area giving our city some much appreciated tourism dollars, despite occasionally behaving with a manner of entitlement and ignorance.

I have little interest in celebrities and networking parties.  In fact, I have ignored invitations to several of them (but am appreciative and thankful for them regardless).  While I am sure there are a couple of wonderful people at them, I much prefer the comfort of my own living room with sincere and carefully selected friends.  This is why most of the mainstream (studio backed) films I will and have seen at the fest were pre-screening invites.  Thankfully, the fine folks at TIFF have managed to match their understandable need to populate the festival with commercially viable star-centric films with an impressive number of obscure foreign and independent films, as well as documentaries.

Below is a list of the films I have seen, from best to worst, with brief impressions of each.

“The magic of is its ability to dabble in stereotype without becoming overwhelmed and its adroitness in exploring the external impact that suicide has on the living without extending naïve answers or solutions.  Categorization is thankfully eluded with skill regardless of each characters desire to simplify complex, unanswerable questions with adage.  The film is about the human desire to simplify perplexing and layered human emotions while coping with feelings of loss, guilt and isolation.  It is consistently powerful, challenging and unafraid to wear its heart on its sleeve.”

“The Coen Brothers follow-up their Oscar-Winning triumph with a decidedly kooky satire on human stupidity and exaggerated interaction with Burn After Reading, a consistently entertaining and entirely amusing, if slight, film.  Structurally similar to “Fargo” but far less reflective in its “Raising Arizona” comic sensibilities, it will likely be criticized mainly for its deliberate lack of depth.  This one suffers only from cartoonish performances from McDormand and Pitt, in addition to the folly of ostentatious hipness.”

Filming the documentary over six years whenever she had time among various editing gigs, Megan Doneman has assembled a cohesive and in-depth portrait of a complicated woman.  It is a testament more so to Doneman’s editing skills than her direction, as her point and shoot technique is not particularly visionary but given the conditions and limitations of her endeavor, the final product is rather impressive.

A sense of humour and an effort to avoid typical preaching and bias keep on just this side of television biography territory, which is much appreciated in an age of heavy-handed manipulation and self-satisfied “lefty” political hipness.”

“Reliant on single tracking shots and claustrophobic interiors—specifically to reinforce underlying anxieties that stem from external forces and evils—and passive-aggressive suggestions, Amos Gitai’s translation Jerome Clement’s novel of a man trying to make sense of his Jewish parents declarations in wartime has the appropriate gravitas but lacks the emotional complexity it strives for and has nothing particularly cinematic about it.  Everything in , outside of a WW II flashback, feels and looks like a filmed stage play.”

“Acting as a kind of erudite, art-house, zombie movie, which dumbs down potential profundity with hippie-dippy, New Age, pseudo-philosophical insights on the state of mankind, t.”

“Dealing with Mike Leigh’s trademark talking head sensibilities and class system introspection, is essentially a romantic comedy that subverts mainstream sensibilities while questioning the affability of the sincerely well-intentioned.  Everything about the film is far too obvious but the overall impact is fairly affecting if surprisingly lackluster. “

“Likely to be criticized for its structural fallibility and its overly sentimental ruminations on the nature of existence and the anxieties involved with acknowledging mortality, is a lyrical and occasionally beautiful visual poem that essentially crumbles under the weight of its own ambitions.

A lack of relationship and character development between the leads ultimately keep the film from having the emotional impact it strives for—especially in an epilogue that should, in theory, have been devastating—regardless of the occasional graphic and unexpected violence towards children and well-intentioned players.  On the upside, sincerity and a refreshingly ‘unhip’ atmosphere make these flaws substantially more palatable and forgivable.”

“This seemingly standard sports story of a young Dominican Baseball player who is brought to America to play professionally is deceptively coy in its intentions and ultimately winds up as an examination of cultural difference and Western apathy towards foreigners who are treated mainly as acquisitions and useful only when viable.  While foreshadowing is used appropriately in the film, albeit slatternly, the formula never dips into the typical pattern of assigning blame.  is interested more in making careful observations about those who are seldom considered in a wholesome and genial manner. “

“Owing a lot of its “uniquely” Scandinavian vision to the dry-humoured and deadpan work of Aki Kaurismaki and the starkly satirical, single-shot obsessed Swede Roy Andersson, is a slightly amusing satire of aging and retirement.  It is communicated in an almost somnambulistic and structurally repetitive manner that seems interested more so in being dryly quirky than truly exploring the directionless nature of retirement that the didactic implies.

The predictable nature of the formula based set-up eventually over-rides the element of surprise that each scenario relies on to create humour, but the initial impact of this structure succeeds in what it attempts to do, which is more than can be said for most intentionally sly comedies.”

“From the moment that “Sock” from television’s is out to shock the audience rather than titillate with any allusion or subtlety.  The film seems to be an investigation of sexual perversion and deviance in relation to perceived normalcy and how the desire to be socially accepted can cause repression and self-denial, however, it lacks the sort of cohesion necessary to communicate this point effectively.”

“Sure to moisten the panties of the bridge and knitting crowd, who will most certainly gasp when men of the cloth drink Imperial Tokay and other men exclaim “poppycock” during discussions about reincarnation, is the sort of film that one would expect the Queen of England to watch while acting coyly offended and hiding her inappropriately erect nipples.  It is a comedy of manners and clever” wordplay that reeks of Oscar Wilde smugness but settles for lengthy analyses of canine customs and thought processes.  Limited scope and sincere emotions give it a nudge towards copacetic regardless of being entirely forgettable and often self-righteous.”

“Feeling more like an ethnographic biography than anything particularly cinematic, tells an interesting story in a discerning, yet detached and glossed-over manner, which does little to make the film exciting or memorable.  While the story itself should theoretically make for an emotional and engaging experience, the television movie vibe and a tendency to rush through and oversimplify several serious life events that span over twenty-five-to-thirty years in the protagonists life, leave an overall feeling of expositional hollowness.”

As mentioned before, none of these films are actually bad, rather, most of them are simply “decent”, which itself is certainly not a bad thing.

This coming week I will be seeing: Appaloosa, Ghost Town, Deadgirl, Che, Revanche, Parc, Linha De Passe, White Night Wedding, Lymelife and Fear Me Not: check back for updates!

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? Written and directed by Kevin Smith, the comedy has been skirting the MPAA’s limits for quite some time. First the movie was nailed with an NC-17 rating, but who can blame the MPAA? After all, the flick is about two lifelong friends who, to pay off some debts, decide to make a porno together. Since the movie is about sex - well, fake sex - it’s only understandable that it gets pegged with a harsh rating that limits its distribution and box office potential.

Unfortunately, those liberal bastards at the MPAA gave in and changed the rating to R, which means that a whole lot of little kiddies will be subjected to such Kevin Smith filth.

The latest atrocity out of the studio is the new movie poster, which is offensive, vulgar and completely inappropriate for any American to set their eyes upon. Seriously, the studios - and vulgar master Kevin Smith - should censor their material more before subjecting such items to the American public. After all, in the day of the Internet, nothing will stay hidden for long, even if those do-gooders at the MPAA say the poster is inappropriate.

Thank God the MPAA is here to tell us how vulgar this movie poster is. I mean, look at it. Look at the sexual innuendo! The almost nudity! The passionate looks in their faces! I feel dirty for just posting this poster on my blog.

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