An adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s story “Where the
Wild Things Are” is brought to the screen by Spike Jonze. Listen as
Mike and Jeanne provide their perspective of the film. Don’t forget
to enter the Movie Bits giveaway.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway for Movie Bits…you could be the
owner of the limited edition t-shirt. Call us at 240-MOVIE-BIT or

email us at letswatchmovies@gmail.com

Thanks for listening and hope you enjoy the show.

This week Mike and Jeanne take a look at Dreamworks animated film “How to Train Your Dragon” which follows the young character Hiccup. His name is truer to his character than you may think, he is the hiccup in the village, where he goes disasters often follow. Hiccup is not your normal Viking and he sets out to prove himself in an unconventional way. The movie is not really about training a dragon, but more of a coming of age and growth opportunities for our young warrior and his competitors. The move is also presented in 3D and IMAX where available. With voice talent of Gerard Butler as Stoick, Craig Ferguson as Gobber, America Ferrera as Astrid and Jay Baruchel as Hiccup.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway for Movie Bits…you could be the
owner of the limited edition t-shirt. Call us at 240-MOVIE-BIT or

email us at letswatchmovies@gmail.com

Thanks for listening and hope you enjoy the show.

This week we take a look “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is the man you do not want to see on the other side of the table, he is the “termination pecialist”. We follow him in his detached, I don’t carry a backpack life as he is forced into the reality of changing times. Ryan meets Alex (Farmiga) who travels for her job as well…although we never really find out exactly what she does. They develop a unique bond as the movie progresses, and to find out what happens…well you’ll have to watch, but listen for our thoughts.
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Up in the Air was written and directed by Jason Reitman, son of director Ivan Reitman, he previously directed Juno. It seems he likes his films where the characters have a growth experience. And while you are listening…I mispoke Farmiga was nominated for an Oscar, but the winner was actually Mo’nique. Also nominated for an Oscar was Clooney for his role.

Zombieland

Zombies have taken over the world, insert Woody Harrelson as the bad
to the bone Zombie Killer. Gore and endtrails required. You will laugh
even as you are totally disgusted by some of the over the top zombie
feasting.

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Couples Retreat, writeup to follow

Let’s start by saying it was Jeanne’s turn to pick the movie…so there will be no car chases or bombs exploding this week.  Instead we decided to celebrate the holiday many love to hate…and see “Valentine’s Day”.  The movie follows the interwoven lives of several couples as they experience the day of love. Some of the couples are in the brand new shiny penny version of love, others are trying to figure out where they stand, some are facing hard times, others reconnecting. And the cast of this movie is A M A Z I N G.  The main character Reed Bennett (played by Ashton Kutcher) is followed through most of the movie, all the other characters are connected through him, either directly or through friends of a direct link.  It’s like six degrees of separation to Reed.  Anyway, there are some serious names in this movie, including: Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Anne Hathaway, Kathy Bates, Shirley MacLaine, Julie Roberts, Patrick Dempsey, Topher Grace, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Jessica Biel, Queen Latifah and Hector Elizondo (who has apparently been 12 films by director Marshall) …whew my fingers are tired and that is just the surface…there are many more. The movie is directed by Garry Marshall, who brought us such favorites as Pretty Woman, A League of Their Own, The Princess Diaries and Beaches.  He had such talent to work with this movie must have been a blast to make.

Join us as we take a look at how small the world really is…and don’t forget to call the new voicemail hotline: 240-MOVIEBIT and tell us what you think, or recommend a movie…or enter the giveaway “Jeanne and Mike’s Movie Bits”.

And the winner is…Meryl Streep for the role of Julia Child in Julie and Julia (2009). So we decided to review the movie, cause we have seen almost all the other films nominated for the Golden Globes. Julie and Julie is based on the true stories of two woman, Julia Child, whom we know from her Cooking show, but this storyline follows her path to becoming the cookie legend. And the second person, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) who blogs her way through Child’s cookbook for a year. The story is interwoven between the two women’s lives. Brought to us by Nora Ephron, who directed and wrote the screenplay. She is known for her works on romantic comedies, including Sleepless in Seattle (1993) , You’ve Got Mail (1998) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). This is not the first time Streep and Ephron have collaborated on a project, they worked together in Heartburn (1986) for which Ephron wrote the book and screenplay. Join us as we review the film and don’t forget to call us with your “Movie Bits” responses.

Has it really been that long, have we really learned that little in the past 5 years or so that the movie industry once again has to show just how out of touch they are?  I stand before you today, once again in utter disbelief at what is happening yet again.  Now the world isn’t going to end, and in 100 years no one is going to care about this momentary blip of stupidity in the history of humanity.  But its because this kind of short sighted attitude seems so pervasive even after time and time again it has shown to be a bad idea, both in financial terms but also in long term goodwill that it infuriates me.

Warner Bros has made a deal with Netflix to delay the release of new movies to the rental company by 28 days (I’m sure it has no bearing on the zombie Apocalypse) in an effort to increase DVD sales.  In return they are going to provide a broader list of movies for Netflix to make available on its streaming service.  For its part, Netflix had little choice, as the future of movie rental is streaming, and I can only imagine that getting as large a catalog available as possible is critical to their current business strategy.  Warner Bros however is making the exact same kind of boneheaded decision that left the music industry scrambling for relevance a few short year ago.  How can they believe that limiting the ways in which I can give them money for a product is a good idea?

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It appears they hope that huge droves of mindless zombies (oh wait, maybe there is a reason for the 28 days) will not be able to contain their desire for Die Hardest with prejudice, or Transformers III Megatron goes to Band Camp.  So they will run huge expensive add campaigns but they try and get someone who pays $9-$18 per month to watch 4-5 movies to pay at least $16 to watch one???  Maybe my math is off, but if I consider it a value to pay $3  to rent a movie, just how do you intend on enticing me to pay FIVE TIMES that much?  Now I know that the American public is an instant gratification type of crowd, and I’m very well aware that a few people will fall for these shenanigans.  However, I can’t imagine this will help the bottom line for several  reasons.   Most people will just wait the 28 days, but a good number will have lost enthusiasm by the time it is available for rent and just never bother.  More importantly though, is that many people who really want to watch the movie will balk at the idea of having to buy the DVD, see it as corporate greed, and rightly or wrongly, they will get the movie online, and any revenue that may have been gotten from the rental are gone…more importantly, you will indoctrinate people into just how easy it is to steal movies online.

Creating a demand, then artificially limiting the supply of reasonably priced product is a recipe for disaster when it comes to infinitely copyable products.  Millions of people want to give the movie industry money to rent movies…how stupid do you have to be to say…no?

That and much more on this weeks Mike Thinks News

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Don’t forget there are people in need right now, please be generous Haiti donation//Red Cross

When I want to rent a movie, its a little annoying if its out of stock, but it really toasts my crunchies if the place I fo to get it from doesn’t stock it at all.  Redbox, the automated DVD rental kiosk has entered the very competitive industry with an aggressive roll out of locations, but has been hampered by anti-competitive (some would say illegal) business practices, and now a new policy to only attempt to st0ck top tier new releases.  Universal, Warner and Fox have all put pressure on DVD suppliers not to sell new releases to RedBox in a misguided effort to protect a failing business model. Redbox responded quickly by using alternate means to obtain new releases so they could meet customer demand…so far so good.  But as of late there have been several new movies that just didn’t appear at your local Redbox, and a new analyst report has stated that this in an intentional omission.

Apparently, Redbox doesn’t think its profitable to stock new release titles that were not big box office hits.  While its certainly true that you can’t expect any physical location to stock every single title, to ignore significant releases is one sure way to lose customers in a hurry.  People (thats you and me) are not to tolerant of being disappointed.  If you stop by a Redbox, and they stock the movie you want…and it happens again, pretty soon your not going to even bother looking.  This type of negative reinforcement will quickly erode the customer base, and at a time when physical DVD rental is nearing decline in favor of streaming media, I just don’t think this bodes well for Redbox.

Attention Redbox, if you decide to not even attempt to stock mainstream new releases, I will stop even looking.  I don’t like disappointment, and when I heard 3 major movie studios were trying to prevent you from getting new releases, I felt like supporting you to show they my middle finger…but if you can’t be bothered to try and provide me with a good selection, sorry but that’s something entirely different.

This week we review the much anticipated James Cameron film… Aliens…I mean Terminator…no no that’s not right..it was Titanic. Actually, hard to believe, but Titanic was the last Big movie directed by Cameron.  Do I have your attention now?  I meant Avatar of course!!!  Written and directed by James Cameron, with a MONSTER budget of sources say anywhere from 280 million, plus marketing (Los Angles Times) to almost 500 million (The New York Times), but we will not know the real figures for months.  Regardless to say this is one of the highest costing films of our time.  With the director putting in some major capital to develop the technology that would make his dream of Avatar into a reality.  And 161 minute timestamp, they really wanted to get their monies worth.

The movie follows our paraplegic Marine into the world of Pandora.  Where the locals are 10 feet tall and BLUE called the Na’vi.  This environment is hostile to humans but rich in unobtanium (Mike prefers to call it Plot-tonium since it moves the plot along), yeah I know, hard to believe they named it that.  The goal is to get to this rock which is worth Billions and the way there is BY FORCE or Peaceful relocation.  This is where our Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) comes in, with the help of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and Norm Spellmen (Joel Moore) they intergrate their minds with the human/Na’vi hybrid avatars.  This is a story on so many levels, listen as we tell our thoughts and take you to into the vivid imagination of James Cameron.