I can’t think of another movie that should really be the front runner for all this 3D mumbo jumbo, especially Dances With Smurfs!  And when your inner geek stops squealing, embrace the fact that Daft Punk is scoring this.  Oh yes, it shall be good if only for the reason that it will generate a thousand more of these.

My only gripe is the release date.

End of line.

I wasn’t the biggest A-Team fan but it idled away the hours. Sometimes. I’m not grinning over Murdock (which you shouldn’t be surprised I have an affinity for), but there wasn’t much of him there so the jury is still partially out. The one I feared the most though, ol’ Liam, seems to have pulled Hannibal off pretty damn well.

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Anyway, similar to District 9 and how it came about as a short film before garnering the attention to turn it into a feature length, Panic Attack is coming from the music video genre believe it or not.  The original music for a band called Snake has been replaced by the main chorus from 28 Days Later which works pretty well surprisingly.

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I’d see this long before watching Transformers 2.  Besides, we all know you’ve wanted to see just how evil The Iron Giant could really be.  And if you’re scratching your head on that one, you’re dead to me! Hear me? D-E-A-D!

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Zombies, check. Nazis, check. Indecision between horror and comedy, check and check. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, check. I’m in!

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So I’ll leave you with a short I saw a while back and found eerily interesting.  I bring it to your attention only because I have nothing else and Hollywood has gotten a hold of it and left their greasy paw prints all over it.

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And here’s the mainstream trailer for the curious:

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First up, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It’s been 19 years since the last time Indy cracked his whip and the age is definitely showing.  Lucas and Spielberg’s aim with the series was to be a polished version of the swashbuckling tales of pulp comics from their childhoods.  Crystal Skull heads for that same target and punches right through it headed for nostalgia-ville.

The movie felt like one of those times you and your friends get together and try to recreate some exciting event from the past only to learn that it fails, and miserably at that.  All the key players are there and it might even be the same location, but there’s just something keeping it from firing on all cylinders that ironically ends up causing you to yearn even more for the original event.  Lucas claims the storyline is supposed to be a nod to the campy sci-fi B movies of the 50s and to a point the film does just that but it felt like someone learning a new foreign custom and not truly grasping it while performing it.

My biggest complaints? Where was Sallah? He always had the best one liners.  Crystal Skull has one or two, but they seemed forced and I swear there’s even a wink and a nod to one of them.  Lastly, the musical score was really lacking, considering it came from John Williams.  This is the guy that created not only the original Raiders theme, but Star Wars, Close Encounters and Jaws as well.  His scores are notoriously known for becoming a main character in each film.  Here, it just seems like someone had the radio on in the background and left it in the final copy.  Very subdued and chopped up.

In the end, I think Crystal Skull will become one of those B movies instead of appreciating them and demonstrating what they could have been on a grander level.  But there will always be Raiders…”bad dates.”

In the rental queue, there’s The King of Kong, a well put together documentary about the classic arcade game Donkey Kong and the rivalry between its two top scorers.

I really only wanted to see this for the inner geek in me but it ended up being a great story.  You couldn’t have asked for a better plot and characters had it been scripted.  The filmmakers seem to be in all the right places at all the right times catching the triumphs and pratfalls of these guys while trying to best each other.

I thought the same thing you’re thinking right now, there is no way this can be anything more than just a finger pointing laugh at a couple nerds and their unhealthy love of old games.  But the way the story unfolds as they’re documenting it has to be seen to be believed.  You have the classic good guy vs. bad guy story with action, drama and a lot of comedy at the expense of others.  But most importantly you get sucked in quickly and find yourself pulling for the underdog.  It’s definitely worth the rental.

Make sure you stick through the credits, they do the usual “where are they now” summaries.  And definitely peruse through the special features on the DVD.  There’s a lot of follow up on the story that occurred after the movie came out, plus some other interesting little tidbits.