A funny thing happened about halfway through this movie, the Minotaur showed up, and suddenly I realized that I was watching an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journey. This is not to say I was ever a fan of Hercules, but I was just very much reminded of that series. The dimly lit sets, the goofy comic relief, the bad CG monsters, yes it had it all. And like Hercules, Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior had a simple charm to it, and I found myself starting to appreciate it.

Now let’s get this out of the way. This is NOT a good movie. It looks about as good as you would expect a direct-to-DVD movie to look. The dialogue is pretty wooden, as are a lot of the actors. I mean, you don’t even get to make fun of The Rock, or ogle Kelly Hu’s magnificent figure, which is pretty much the only reason to watch the first Scorpion King film.

My biggest problem with Scorpion King 2 is that it contains none of the fun, dumb action movie sensibilities of the Mummy movies that it is a spin-off of. This movie takes itself way too seriously, and if it had even a little of the Mummy’s tongue-in-cheek humor, I could handle it, but it’s just not there [...]

It was Disney day today and in an event held at the Kodak Theater, the company announced some of its gigantic upcoming projects including Cars 2, Alice in Wonderland, and The Lone Ranger, and what Johnny Depp has to do with most of them.

In Tim Burton’s upcoming CGI/3D/live-action (I’m not sure if anyone really knows WHAT it will actually be) take on the classic Alice in Wonderland story, Johnny Depp was long-rumored to be playing the Mad Hatter. Considering that he is now to Tim Burton what John Ratzenberger is to Pixar, we all knew this was likely and Disney confirmed today that Depp would indeed be taking on the role for his pal.

From what sounds like quite a spectacle, apparently the University of Southern California’s marching and came out, playing the Lone Ranger theme song [...]

Nothing is 100% official here yet, but DreamWorks has Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum) at the top of their short list of directors to take on their version of Blackbeard, about Edward Teach, who went on to become Blackbeard the pirate.

One thing that is known is that this is going to be a lot more violent, gritty, and real than the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, looking to get an R-rating.

The film is being produced by Barry Josephson and the script is being written by David Franzoni (Gladiator, Amistad).

Below is a plot description from Mania, who got the exclusive on Greengrass [...]

3 Eagle Eye movie wallpapers added :

Eagle Eye (production of DreamWorks SKG) is an action drama movie directed by D.J. Caruso, starring Michelle Monaghan and Shia LaBeouf

Between 1976 and 1977, David Berkowitz murdered six people and wounded seven others in a series of attacks that terrorized New York City. He was dubbed the .44 Caliber Killer by newspapers and was self-titled the Son of Sam in a letter found near one of the shooting victims. After Berkowitz was finally arrested, in part due to an unpaid parking ticket, he cited both a Satanic cult he was supposedly a member of and his next door neighbor’s dog that was possessed by a demon who commanded him to go out and kill. This is Berkowitz’s story, as recounted through the imagination of Ulli Lommel.

Lommel, who has been making movies since the early 1970s, has seemingly made his post-2000 career out of writing and directing low budget direct-to-video tales about true-life serial killers or knockoffs of Hollywood fare. One would guess that after a handful of misses he’d finally get one right, but Son of Sam is not that film. Here, Lommel takes broad strokes with the most generic information about Berkowitz to paint a clearly unnecessary fictionalized account of the Son of Sam murders. Truth is always stranger than fiction [...]

As many of the episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as I have seen, and as many of them as I have reviewed for this site, I have always enjoyed them with bated breath. They are generally pretty funny in their own right but I can’t help that little whispering voice in the back of my head warning me that the other shoe is bound to drop. For a show with no real direction that can be described as controlled chaos at best, I have complained in previous reviews that the show was beginning to rely too much on a shock and awe approach rather than creating their own mythology that could carry the show through weaker episodes. I went back and watched a handful of old episodes on DVD before I previewed the first two episodes of season four: ‘Mac & Dennis: Manhunters’ and ‘The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis’. What I found out was that in their avoidance of being stuck with a label, they have created that mythology by default. They have taken Seinfeld’s mantra — “Nobody learns, nobody hugs” — to unforeseen heights [...]

Star of 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1 and two direct-to-DVD Stargate movies, Amanda Tapping is definitely one of geekdoms greatest stars. Spending a season on base at Stargate Atlantis, Tapping decided to then move on to her next project, a project she had started first on the internet.

Set almost entirely in front of virtual sets, the show stars Amanda Tapping as Dr. Helen Magnus, as she seeks out other mysterious creatures. Magnus is the first female doctor in the Royal College, her fiancé, played by Christopher Heyerdahl — also from Stargate Atlantis — manipulates time and space, allowing him to teleport. But each teleport trip manipulates his DNA, making him display more and more homicidal tendencies. He, of course, soon becomes known as Jack the Ripper [...]

Check out Seven Pounds trailers and photos from the newly launched official site.

Seven Pounds is about a guilt-ridden man (Will Smith) who inadvertently falls in love while attempting to kill himself.  Seven Pounds hits theaters on December 19.

Many sequels fall under the pressure of their predecessors. Disney made a great attempt to try and recreate the magic of the first 101 Dalmatians live-action film by re-casting Glenn Close, whose portrayal of the villain Cruella DeVil brought the first movie great success. Unfortunately, this film proved that only her performance was worth watching.

102 Dalmatians begins with the puppy-loving Ella, who has been rehabilitated from her evil puppy-hating ways and gets out of jail on parole. In order to acclimate back into society and to serve as a classic bit of comedic irony, she decides to save a dog pound that is threatened by eviction. Unfortunately her rehabilitation trance doesn’t last for long, with the sound of Big Ben, she snaps out of sweet kind Ella and turns back into the fur-obsessed Cruella DeVil.

I must say this movie definitely tops the wardrobe department from the last film. With the theme centered around fashion, it gave the costume designers a great opportunity to push the limit on what they could create using only black and white. Cruella’s wardrobe, which changed practically every five minutes, did keep me entertained and eager to see what she would be wearing next […]

If you’re like me, you were really looking forward to yesterday’s premiere of the third season of Heroes. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t so impressed with the second season, so it was nice to go back and re-watch the first season, which still holds up as one of the best set of episodes of the last few years. Watching these episodes again has reminded me why I enjoyed this show so much when it first started.

Of course, if you’ve seen the show before, you know all about the story. Various people around the world discover that they have extraordinary powers. They quickly learn that not only are they not alone, but that there are evil people who want to use their powers for nefarious deeds. Predictably, they save the cheerleader, they stop the exploding man, and they set up the beginning of the second season. What struck me most about these episodes is how well they hold up. Sure, I didn’t get the big surprises anymore, but I found myself really enjoying the performances and how all the story bits fit together. Little touches like Linderman’s name being mentioned in the first episode, the evolution of Mr. Bennet from villain to hero, and the build up and eventual reveal of series villain Syler. You can tell in the first season that the creators of the show had a plan of how the story would go and it made for really compelling TV [...]