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What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:36:22 -0800

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue.

Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia is a lot of things: fun, sparkly, full of handsome middle-aged men, kind of a hilarious hot mess, etc. It's also now a Golden Globe nominee, which is not something I would have imagined possible for this movie but there you have it! Still, a lot of people will be excited to add this one to their Netflix queues (or to receive it as a gift) to sing along and dance to in the privacy of their own homes (I'm looking at you, Mom).

The special features are totally what you would expect to accompany this musical on DVD. They include - what else? - a sing-along that includes onscreen lyrics for 22 musical numbers, as well as a deleted musical number titled "The Name of the Game." There's also commentary from director Phyllida Lloyd, a featurette on the making of the movie, and some deleted scenes and outtakes.

Two more releases up next so read more.

The House Bunny
Anna Faris is one of the most endearing young comedic actresses these days which is why I was more or less on board for The House Bunny. The movie follows Playboy bunny Shelley (Faris) who has been kicked out of the Playboy mansion after her 27th birthday and finds herself moving in as house mother for the "misfit girls" at the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority house. The girls need to recruit more ladies to their house and they turn to Shelley to help them improve their reputation. The whole thing is super formulaic and nothing to write home about but there are moments that made me giggle and Faris is really entertaining in this role.

Special features include deleted scenes, a featurette about the love interest in the film (played by Colin Hanks) and another one titled "From Song to Set: Katherine McPhee."

Generation Kill
If you didn't catch this HBO gem when it aired this year, I highly recommend making the time to do so now that it's out on DVD (in fact, it may be easier to watch back-to-back rather than waiting a whole week to see what happens next). The seven-episode miniseries from The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns delivers everything you'd expect from a Simon/Burns project. Based on a book by journalist Evan Wright, the series is a gritty and realistic portrayal of the Iraq War. The cast is also awesome and includes Alexander Skarsgård (currently starring on True Blood), James Ransone, Stark Sands and Jon Huertas.

Special features include a featurette titled "Generation Kill: A Conversation With the 1st Recon Marines," and deleted dialogues.

Box Office: Burn After Reading Sets Box Office on Fire

BuzzSugar — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:15:20 -0700

The Coen Bros. helped give the box office a needed Autumn boost with their comedy Burn After Reading, which debuted at No. 1 with an estimated $19.4 million. It was a lucrative weekend overall, actually, with many of the week's new releases doing better than expected despite a "crowded marketplace for adult-skewing films."

In second place came Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys earning $18 million, followed by the Al Pacino-Robert De Niro reunion, Righteous Kill. And despite unflattering reviews, even The Women did alright over the weekend, coming in at No. 4 with an estimated $10 million followed by The House Bunny in fifth place.

Alan Ball's Towelhead also opened and "nabbed the best per- location average of the weekend." Finally, for those of you keeping track, The Dark Knight is up another $4 million, putting its total domestic gross so far at an estimated $517 million.

Photo courtesy of Focus Features

Nicolas Cage Tops a Slow Weekend Box Office

BuzzSugar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:45:46 -0700

Well, the Fall movie season came in with a whimper. According to Variety, "The first weekend after Labor Day is always sluggish, but this year the frame was affected by the start of the NFL football season and was particularly dreary." Bangkok Dangerous came in at No. 1, but it only earned an estimated $7.8 million and narrowly beat Tropic Thunder, which earned an estimated $7.5 million.

The House Bunny came in third place, followed by The Dark Knight in fourth and Don Cheadle's thriller Traitor in fifth place. Interestingly, Hamlet 2, which received major buzz at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is not doing too well in theaters and has only grossed an estimated $4.3 million over the two weekends it's been out.

Kind of a bummer of a weekend, but don't worry-next week The Women and Burn After Reading hit theaters! Who's excited?

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Box Office: Tropic Thunder Wins Again

BuzzSugar — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:00:50 -0700

Labor Day weekend officially signals the close of the Summer box office season, and this year's ended on, as Variety described it, "a whimper" as opposed to a bang. Tropic Thunder landed in the top spot for the third weekend in a row, pulling in an estimated $14.3 million over four days. The second spot went to Babylon A.D. which earned an estimated $12 million. The Dark Knight came in at No. 3, surpassing the $500 million mark on Sunday.

Traitor starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce opened this weekend and came in fifth place with $10 million, just behind The House Bunny, which came in No. 4 with $10.2 million.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Tropic Thunder Is No. 1 For the Second Week in a Row

BuzzSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:15:55 -0700

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder won the top spot at the box office for the second weekend in a row, earning an estimated $16.1 million. This makes Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight the only movies to have stayed at No. 1 for two consecutive weeks this Summer (so that's two major box office winners for Robert Downey Jr.!).

Following closely behind in the No. 2 spot was The House Bunny, which earned an estimated $15.1 million its first weekend out. Coming in third was the Death Race remake with about $12.3 million. In fourth place was The Dark Knight, followed by Star Wars: The Clone Wars at No. 5.

I didn't think the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker would do very well, but I'm surprised to see how badly it did. The comedy failed to crack the top 10 and only earned about $2.7 million.

Hamlet 2, which was all the rage at Sundance this year, had a limited release and brought in an estimated $435,294. The offbeat comedy will have a wider release this Wednesday.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

The House Bunny: Generic Sorority Comedy

BuzzSugar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:46:07 -0700

To be honest, I really wanted The House Bunny to be great. I didn't expect it to be, but I wished it would surprise me and turn out to be fun and hilarious. Amidst the constant comedic bombardment from the Ferrells, Stillers and Apatows of the world, I wanted there to be a totally kickass, stand-out female-led comedy. And while Anna Faris is endearingly goofy, the movie overall is just another manufactured cookie-cutter cutout of the same ol', same ol' (not unlike an actual Playboy bunny, come to think of it).

You can glean pretty much all the necessary information about the plot from the movie's trailer. Playboy bunny Shelley (Faris) learns that she's been kicked out of the Playboy mansion after her 27th birthday. She wanders around until she spots a row of houses that look like miniature Playboy mansions: frat and sorority houses. Shelley ultimately finds herself at the Zeta Alpha Zeta house, thus far led by the adorably nerdy Natalie. ZAZ is the place where the "misfit" sorority girls go (you know, ones who have piercings, or a back brace, or were raised on a farm). The girls need to get at least 30 new pledges in order to keep the ZAZ house, so Shelley appoints herself as the sorority's housemother and gets to work changing around the sorority's reputation. For more on how she goes about doing this, read more.

Changing around the girls' image consists of giving them all makeovers so they look more conventionally pretty, and schooling them in the ways of flirting. The basis for this logic is that pledges will see that these girls can get boys, and they'll want to join up with these girls. Shelley instructs the girls on how to teeter around in insanely high heels, wear extensions and use Waterbras. In a scene that made me question what decade we're in, Shelley advises Natalie against coming across as intelligent in front of boys because they "don't like girls who are too smart." Later, Natalie falls for the smart, studious Oliver (Colin Hanks) and she goes about trying to make herself into more of an intellectual in order to impress him. But because that's not who she really is, it doesn't work so well.

Many similarities could be drawn between Legally Blonde's Elle Woods and The House Bunny's Shelley (and unsurprisingly, these two movies were written by the same people). Both characters are sunny, blond, girlishly sweet and underestimated because of the way they look. But the comedy in Legally Blonde often comes from her proving to the doubters that she's actually quite clever. In House Bunny we're laughing at Shelley's mispronounced words and dazed confusion over everyday things. And though the silliness of her misunderstandings is funny, she also sometimes seems to border on brain damaged.

Toward the end there's some vague references to the idea that maybe - just maybe - Shelley doesn't actually know everything there is to know about getting boys and being popular, and that it's better to just be yourself. But the thing is, even after they all come to that conclusion, they're still the glossier versions of themselves, and I found myself longing for the "freak" girls from the beginning of the movie - the ones with some character and sense of individuality. Of course I'd like those girls to be confident and well-liked, too, I just wish that the only way to achieve that wasn't by making each of them look like Hilary Duff. The message still seems to be that you can be an individual - but only after you've reached a certain base level of acceptable prettiness. I'm not saying I'm surprised, but it's a shame that this opportunity was wasted. A more fun and more interesting storyline might have been to have the "misfit" sorority succeed without having to wear pounds of makeup, tiny dresses and push-up bras.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures

Do You Know Your Movie Makeovers?

BuzzSugar — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:37:45 -0700

Ah, the movie makeover. A gimmick that offers filmmakers a way to convey. . . stuff. Sometimes the outward makeover of a character in a movie indicates inner growth. Other times it's just to get the guy. Once in a while the makeover doesn't actually improve the character's life and she learns the hard way that changing her clothes and plucking the ol' eyebrows doesn't guarantee happiness.

I added the movie makeover scene to my list of rom-com cliches that are growing old, but I'm not convinced that they'll ever really end (see: The House Bunny). So, since there are so many of these makeovers, I figured I'd make a whole quiz out of 'em. Good luck!

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Take the quiz

Movie Preview: The House Bunny With Anna Faris

BuzzSugar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:33:43 -0700

It's like Legally Blonde meets The Hottie and the Nottie, with a dash of The Girls Next Door tossed in. The House Bunny follows Anna Faris as Shelley, a Playboy bunny who finds herself "too old" to be a bunny anymore. Thrown out of Hef's mansion, she wanders onto a college campus where she discovers a sorority of "nerdy girls" and she becomes their housemother. From the trailer, it looks like she teaches them how to put on makeup and short skirts (the keys to success, apparently?) though by the end of the trailer Shelley herself seems to have learned about the benefits of being a "smart girl."

Though aspects of this movie make me cringe already, I found myself laughing out loud a few times at the trailer, despite Faris' weirdly slurry speech (anyone else notice this?). The House Bunny opens August 22. To check out the trailer, read more.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures