The highly anticipated Angelina Jolie movie directed by “Night Watch” director Timur Bekmambetov is available at British film magazine website EMPIRE.

It’s a pretty tight look at one scene as well as the un-realistic ‘Matrix’ franchise inspired visual effects and theme.

Can’t wait to check this baby out…

Once upon a time there was a very funny movie called “The Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977) - it was made for peanuts and made tons of cash because stoner kids loved the sketches in the film. Later on the success of “Kentucky Fried” spawned “Amazon Women on the Moon” (1987) - these were classic films that helped informed my sense of humor from a young age with short comedic parodies and the like.

Later on, one Weird Al Yankovic made a superb film called “UHF” which flopped tremendously at the box office and with that the age of sketch movies was dead, or rather had transtitioned to television in the form of shows like “In Living Color” (1990-1995), “The Ben Stiller Show” (1992-1993) and “Mad TV” (1995-).

One day some execs at New Regency and Fox must have woken up still stoned from a weekend party at Arnon Milchan’s Malibu house and decided to team up with “The Onion” (a satiric newspaper) to create a sketch comedy movie for the 21st Century. This project loomed in development hell for ages and ages and must have cost the studio substantially more than “Kentucky Fried Movie’s” $150 budget. (I’m guessing more in the neighborhood of $10-$15 million.) And ultimately the studio execs were so not confident with thier stoned decision that they decided not to release the movie theatrically.

So after much debate and hesitation, “The Onion Movie” comes to DVD on June 3rd.

To my surprise, what’s been cut together for the trailer looks appealling. I’d watch it if I were stoned at home. The question is - even with the safer business model of direct-to-DVD (only a $2-$3 million marketing spend instead of $30 million + if the film would be released wide theatrically) is there any chance a film this expensive can recoup for the studios?

Who cares what the answer to that is….

Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” is a 268 minute (if you aren’t a math expert that’s 4 hours and 28 minutes long) historical opus celebrating the life of one of the most interesting men to have lived in the 20th century  - Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  The Argentinia born Guevarra was a medical doctor who happened to meet up with the Castro brothers (Raul and Fidel) in Mexico as they planned to overtthrow the Cuban regime of Fulgencio Bautista in the late 1950’s.

Guevara joined up with the Castros and a handful of other Cuban revolutionaries and embarked on a boat called the Granma towards Cuba’s eastern coast.  From there, in the jungles the revolutionary movement grew and Guevarra, a doctor turned revolutionary became instrumental in the revolutionary success. 

Guevara was unhappy as a beurocrat running various Cuban government agencies under the early rule of Fidel Castro and thirsted to continue the revolutionary process in countries like the Congo and in Bolivia.  It is in Bolivia where Guevara was finally killed.  And from that moment the legend of Che has grown and become an inspiration to others who aim for revolution in thought and action.

The fact that Soderbergh was brave enough to undertake the challenge of putting this film together is credit enough for him.  Benecio Del Toro as ‘Che’ is ideal casting of the Argentine turned Cuban revolutionary martyr.  The Puerto Rican born Del Toro looks and embodies the feel of Guevarra well.  And Soderbergh (who previously won the Palmes D’Or in Cannes for “sex, lies and videotape” as well as an Oscar for “Traffic” and “Erin Brokovich”) is back to making serious movies after wasting time and energy with the Oceans 11 movies.

 Soderbergh was gravitated to Guevara because:

“He had one of the most fascinating lives of the last century.  I’m compelled by the fact he twice gave up everything to put his life on the line for someone else. He even gave up his family. That was fascinating to me.”

 The $60 million budgeted film is currently the talkin of Cannes because of the running length and the inability to find a distributor brave enough to take it on.  There is talk from financing sales company Wild Bunch that the film will be distributed in 2 parts.  The first being called “The Argentine” and the second “Guerilla.”  The length is one draw-back as are the conditions that Soderbergh is reportedly mandating.  At the critics screening, there was an intermission between the two parts and critics were given sandwhiches and KitKats to help keep them happy and awake.

The first part shows Guevara and Castro sailing to Cuba in 1956 and the second begins in 1966 seven years after the guerrilla victory on New Years Eve 1959.

The first part is unanimously being called the more interesting of the two and the second is seen as anti-climactic by Cannes audiences as it shows Guevara’s demise in Bolivia.  In other words, the best moments of Che’s life were leading up to the victory and his untimely execution in Part 2 is a downer.  No wonder Soderbergh wants people to see the entire film in one go - because otherwise a separate release of 2 movies would have people ignoring his second part after they got their fill in part 1.

Here’s a brief clip of the film:

A pretty good looking mock-up of George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) and wife Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) on the cover of the latest Entertainment Weekly magazine which sports the two stars in full make-up and wardrobe in Oliver Stone’s upcoming film “W”

When I first heard that Josh Brolin was going to play Bush, I was excited. Because I thought that there was a lot of resemblance. And who had a better 2007 than Brolin?

I think Elizabeth Banks makes a slightly sexier Laura Bush than the real-thing. But this is the movies people and sexier is better I tell ya.

Ellen Burstyn plays Barbara Bush and James Cromwell (who I saw at Hugo’s in West Hollywood last week) is playing George H. W. Bush and funnyman Rob Corddry locked in another supporting role as Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (who is also bald, but not as funny as Corddry incidentally.)

“W.” began lensing in April in Shreveport, Louisiana (borders Marshall, Texas where my Dad produced a film in the 1980’s for HBO) and the studio is hoping to get this film ready in time for an end of November 2008 release (they’ll have to hurry…. but it not, they can release it in time for the inaguaration of Barack Obama in January, 2009.)