Screenhead

All right, folks, strap in and keep your remotes handy because today I’m going to talk about Heat, one of the longest movies you’ll ever love.

The folks out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of Heat, and you might be wondering why I’m talking about a movie this old.  Well, it’s not like some of you haven’t heard of it, but it was just released on Blu-ray, so we’ve got a responsibility to cover it.

Heat features Val Kilmer and the gigantic concentrated awesome heap that is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same movie.  It’s about a career thief who leads a team of thieves through an incredible robbery that nets the team just over a million and a half bucks in bearer bonds.  The bonds were insured, so the only real victim here is the insurance company, and we’ve all been able to agree that they could have used a kick in the slats since 1995 anyway.  Anyway, the fun really starts when the team tries to sell back the stolen bonds instead of laundering them.

Heat is a long–VERY long!–and incredibly involving tale of deceit, thievery and murder that’s actually very engrossing.  I’d actually seen this one maybe five or six times over the last (nearly) fifteen years, so it was a welcome treat.  But you will have to brace yourself adequately.  Clear your calendar, get your snacks together in advance, because this is a LONG movie.  Nearly THREE HOURS worth of long, in fact.

But the critical takeaway here is that it’s also really, REALLY exciting.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves my taste in movies and hands this a seven out of ten for being a solid actioner with a lot of twists, even if it’s a bit too long.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Seems Warner Brothers is offering up some Officially Licensed Apparel for your Halloween costuming needs, and has thus opened up the WBooShop to offer a collection of costumes for kids and adults at pretty significant discounts.

For kids, they can offer up Harry Potter gear, the vast panoply of DC superheroes and some stuff you wouldn’t expect would be a big deal for kids, like the old Hanna-Barbera costumes (seriously, when’s the last time you heard a kid say he wanted to be Fred Flintstone for Halloween?).

Meanwhile, grownups plotting costume parties of their own can also swing by and snag some gear from big-boy franchises like Friday the 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, 300 and Watchmen, as well as the other DC heroes (what, like you wouldn’t dress up like Batman if you were going out?).  Hey, why not?  You may not have the abs to pull off King Leonidas but anyone can smirk “No.” from under his Rorschach mask.

So if you’re looking for a costume this Halloween, swing by the WBooShop and grab what you need.

Popularity: unranked [?]

So I was catching up on some news and what do I spot, but Warner Brothers has officially launched DC Entertainment, an arm of Warner designed as, from the press release: ” a new company founded to fully realize the power and value of the DC Comics brand and characters across all media and platforms”, or, in normal people-speak, to pump milk out of the cash cow that is the DC lineup like no freaking tomorrow.

And it hit me.  THAT’S why Disney bought Marvel.  We all know that Disney’s stock with the boys has been suffering for some time now.  Disney’s biggest market is girls: between the various princesses and the various tween hits like Hannah Montana, Disney pretty much owns the girl market.  Warner, meanwhile, with its stake in Cartoon Network is pretty much for the boys.  With Warner now poised to run Superman and Batman and all the rest like no tomorrow, Disney pretty much realized that if they didn’t do something they’d be left in Warner dust.  And what’s the direct antithesis of DC?

Marvel.

So now, in a big flash of open-mindedness, the whole move makes sense.  Now we just see how two titans with two titanic proxies do battle.  This should be good.

Popularity: unranked [?]

So needless to say, discount video renter extraordinaire Redbox is NOT happy with Warner Brothers‘ edict that there will be a mammoth twenty eight day speed bump between the releases of their material and their availability at Redbox kiosks.

Redbox is fighting back with every tool in their arsenal–they’re not just calling in the lawyers, who already are primed and ready with nasty words like “antitrust” and variants on  “market manipulation”, but they’re also launching a bit of a charm offensive.

Redbox set up a link, savelowcostdvds.com, to show you where the many many MANY Redbox kiosks out there can be found.  And indeed there are many–I know of two of them just in the little town I live in.  And considering that both Sony and Lions Gate both just recently signed deals with Redbox to get their material in the kiosks, I think Warner is likely to knuckle under and cut out the twenty eight day wait.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Well, that’s it, folks…stick a fork in the entire concept of Hollywood because it is oh-ficially done like dinner.

Warner Brothers is now on record as planning to launch a movie about Legos.

Yeah, Legos.  You know, those little plastic blocks that pretty much everybody played with when they were kids?  And this isn’t about what people do with them or anything like that, either.  This is about something entirely different.  In fact, the studio is citing Toy Story as its model.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t as lunatic an idea as I first thought.  Let’s be honest here–in basements and bedrooms and playrooms all across the country, Lego has generated literally millions of stories.  I personally liked to arm my Legos and construct vast space fleets of mismatched vessels to go forth and destroy alien civilizations.  Fighter craft out of speedboats, bombers out of airliners, all that sort of thing.

And if I, a mere stripling, could come up with dozens of tales for my Legos to enact, imagine what actual writers could do.  Or failing that, imagine what Hollywood writers could do.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Anyone else remember that big brouhaha over Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons back in the forties?  And I’m not talking about the ones that people like to scream “racist!” about, no…I’m talking about the full-on propaganda cartoons.  Well, I found a stash of them on YouTube, not surprisingly, so I figured I’d give you guys the rundown, starting with this Donald Duck short from the deep dark depths of 1943, Der Fuehrer’s Face.

First, let me say that hearing Donald say “Heil Hitler, Heil Emperor Hirohito, Heil Mussolini” is a head trip the likes of which you don’t come back from any time soon.  And it will be an even BIGGER shock to hear him do it a DOZEN TIMES in rapid succession.  Seriously, I kept count. It was twelve. In a row.  But as a propaganda piece, you can definitely see where it would succeed, as it portrays the German state as a bankrupt, backward society where the German people are reduced to mindless automatons that salute their fuehrer on sight or at the mere mention of his name while enduring horrible privation all at the same time.

Of course, Donald’s brief foray into Nazidom won’t last long, and will actually end almost flamboyantly, but it was still the kind of trip you don’t take often.  It’s worth your eight minutes (well, almost eight minutes) and should be a great time that’ll teach you a few things too.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Ah, the Batman series.  Never has a series fallen so far so fast only to come back, seemingly from irredemptibility, to become the biggest thing since sliced bread.

We’re talking about a series that went from Arnold Schwartzenegger as the dumbest villain EVER (…well, maybe not counting Jim Carrey) to a series where the bad guy wins a Oscar…posthumously.  You have any idea how hard it is to win a posthumous Oscar? Especially for an actor?  Hollywood HATES giving these things to dead guys–there was only ONE beforehand, and that was Peter Finch in Network.

And now, Warner Brothers has done something amazing with their new offering Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology.  They’re going to show you how badly this whole concept went off the rails, and how far back they had to come in order to be the amazing conquering juggernaut it is now.

For reasons that leave me baffled, the Batman Motion Picture Anthology covers only the period from 1989, with the original Batman, and goes to 1997, with Batman and Robin.  Here are quick plot synopses of the four in the set:

Batman–Batman grapples with his legendary archnemesis, the Joker, who’s out to coat a bankrupt Gotham with Smilex gas, a chemical compound that’ll leave the city as deformed and insane as he is.

Batman Returns–Batman takes on the Penguin and Catwoman as they work together to put a corrupt local businessman into power as Mayor of Gotham.

Batman Forever–It’s the Riddler and Two-Face for Batman to contend with this time, as the duo engage a brain-draining device to render all of Gotham to drooling idiocy.  This is the point where Robin first joins after we discover, somewhat outside of canon, that Two-Face killed his circus acrobat family.

Batman and Robin–Batman and Robin together, along with, for some reason, Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, go forth to tackle Poison Ivy, Bane and Mr. Freeze, each with their own goal in mind.  Interestingly, despite the fact that the goals are contradictory you don’t see a lot of infighting with the villains.  Mr. Freeze is out to ice over Gotham while stealing suffcient cash to research a cure for a disease his wife carries, while Bane and Poison Ivy are out to turn the planet into a greenhouse.

This gives you a good idea of what’s going on here.  You’ll notice that, after the first one, it’s always multiple villains for the Batman series.  Batman Returns had two–well, more like one and a half; no one was ever too sure what the deal was with Catwoman.  Batman Forever had two, and Batman and Robin packed in three.  Also, the number of heroes grew from the lone Batman to Batman and Robin, then finally Batman and Robin and Batgirl. You’ll further notice that each progressive movie only got more outlandish and steadily worse with each passing iteration.  It’s downright amazing to have this one single box to show us, with crystalline clarity in Blu-ray, just how far down the rabbit hole a movie series can go.

The only real problem I have with the box set–which is positively LADEN with bonus features–is that it stops at 1997.  Why no Blu-ray love for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight?  I KNOW The Dark Knight is already on Blu-ray; surely they could’ve thrown IT in the box.  Unless, of course, they’re planning a big Batman Omnibus edition later on, and they’re getting us all enthused with this version in advance.

So I’m left to reserve judgment on this one–by itself, the Batman Motion Picture Anthology is a pretty good buy.  Four movies in one box?  Never a bad thing.  But considering the likelihood that a later version may include the two best Batman movies?  I’m inclined to wait for THAT one to make a solid buy recommendation.  You may, however, want to hedge your bets if you’re a sufficiently big Batman fan–you’re not likely to find all these on Blu-ray anywhere else.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Dark Knight is an amazing film and has been a global success, save for one country: China. AFP is reporting that despite the film’s tremendous popularity, Warner Brothers has opted not to release it in China.

In an official statement, the company has stated that “based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to ‘The Dark Knight’ as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forego a theatrical release of the film in China.”

China is notorious for its stingy censors through which a handful of movies pass every year. The Dark Knight has a couple of factors that denies its access to China: its plot involves Batman illegally kidnapping a Chinese fugitive from a Hong Kong skyscraper, and there’s a rather non-flattering remark about Chinese gun manufacturing.

Popularity: 1% [?]