If you’re like me, you love hyperbole. You love calling things the greatest hat in the world, the greatest bowl of chili in the world, the greatest grandma in the world (love you grandma!).

If you’re like me, you also love the Muppets so much that you named your high school gang “Electric Mayhem.”

So, it’s clear that I’m excited about The Greatest Muppet Movie of All Time even though changing the title from The Cheapest sets the bar really high. Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller proved themselves as a terrific pair during Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Segel has always had a certain Muppet-quality to him in the first place.

Apparently, The Playlist has a “friend” who got a chance to read the script and goes into fairly familiar detail about it. If you’re into that sort of thing go check it out.

On the non-spoilerly side, it looks like the story will focus on the Muppet gang reuniting and coming out of show business retirement to save the original studio that birthed their iconic show. I assume it’ll be like Punch and Judy meet A Prairie Home Companion on mescaline.

With musical numbers.

And hopefully a Rec Center will be saved, too.

It’s a fairly simple premise which works best – a quick adventure that goes awry. The Muppets do their best work when unhampered by anything too complicated, and I love the idea of them getting the gang back together since, that will sort of mirror the hiatus they’ve had from the big screen since 2005 with The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz – or if you go all the way back to their last good movie, 1999’s Muppets From Space.

Which hopefully means we’ll get a Jeffrey Tambor cameo for this forthcoming flick.

What do you think?

Related Reading:

• Jason Segel’s ‘Muppets Movie’ May Be About To Take ‘Flight’
• Must-See Trailer: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• Muppet Noir and The Happytime Murders
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall Unloads Blu-ray Special Features All Over Your Face
• WTF: Junk on the Screen
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall Movie Review
• Movie Drinking Games: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• SXSW Movie Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Sometime in the early ’90s, my young adolescent existence went from nerdy and tomboyish to boy-crazy, nerdy and tomboyish. Once it happened, I started noticing cute boys everywhere and I found that my girl friends did, too. We would have sleepovers and hang outs and talk for hours about the objects of our obsessions, pick which ones were our favorites (making sure to choose diplomatically, in case two girls picked the Justins and nobody picked the Lances), and replay particularly swoon-worthy scenes in our heads (i.e. “Remember that time Jonathan pretended to be a girl to get on the soccer team!?”). Only these boys weren’t the cootie-carrying classmates we went to school with; they were the dreamy, pretty, charismatic nice boys the likes of which could only be found in fantasy land. These were our movie crushes.

To kick-off this new column celebrating our collective childhood movie crushes, I’m taking it back to the first onscreen boy that ever made my heart beat with (innocent!) romantic palpitations. (Check out Jessica Barnes’ Michael Biehn post for a much more respectably nerdy first crush.) The year was 1992, his name was Michael Treanor, and he was one of the young stars of a major motion picture that had girls the world over swooning while simultaneously asking their parents to sign up for karate lessons: 3 Ninjas.

Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment, Stars in Rewind

Continue reading My Movie Crush: Michael Treanor in ‘3 Ninjas’

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Instead of watching more movies or writing about movies I’ve seen recently (I do have a From Paris with Love review coming soon, though), I watched the Super Bowl this evening. And besides being happy for the New Orleans Saints and their underdog win, I was also pretty pleased with the commercials. These expensive advertisements have become just as popular as the game itself. There were beavers playing the violin, Danica Patrick getting a massage (hot) and even a strange pro-life thing starring Tim Tebow’s mom. But there were also spots for movies — and we cover those.

So in order to keep the site feeling fresh, I’ve decided to put together a little list of the Super Bowl commercials — all of the ones for movies, and some that are about other things. Either way, they were all pretty good. See for yourself below.

The Last Airbender: The Kid’s Got Moves

We showed you this clip last week, but it bears repeating. Little Noah Ringer is about to unleash the fury of element-bending upon us in perhaps the coolest thing M. Night Shyamalan has ever done. Period. Will there be a big twist at the end? I don’t know, but there will be ass-kicking.

Robin Hood: Badass Outlaw

Lights, camera, rock music. Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is going to be Gladiator in the forest. Russell Crowe looks intense, the action looks intense and we expect there to be blood! Will you be entertained?

The Wolfman: The Moon is Out

If you’re like me, then you probably can’t wait for Friday…

Alice in Wonderland: That Pig Joke Never Gets Old

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland looks like a weird movie, similar to every other Tim Burton movie. But with a good cast (Depp, Bohnam Carter, etc) and a story that lends to a wild vision, this should be a lot of fun.

Prince of Persia: Find That Knife!

Disney unleashes a fast-paced look at the Jake Gyllenhaal led film. Still looks like it will be on a grand scale, and it might actually be good. However.. Jake Gyllenhaal?

Coke – Hard Time (Featuring The Simpsons)

This very mopey portrait of a recession-effected Mr. Burns isn’t exactly the most energetic or funny commercial, but I’m including it because Millhouse comes in and steals the show right at the end. Tell me that’s not funny. Go ahead, do it.

Snickers: You’re Playing Like Betty White Out There

It isn’t enough to have Betty White hilariously playing pickup football and making off-handed references to sleeping with some dude’s girlfriend, but Abe Vigoda? He’s alive!

KIA: What Happens in the Sorrento

This KIA commercial is maximum cuteness, committed to video. It features Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba, which the kids will appreciate, and creativity and energy for us adults. Not bad.

Google: Parisian Love

It really isn’t fair that a company like Google, one of the biggest and most powerful corporate entities on the planet, is so damn charming. I mean really, is it possible to hate Google after seeing this commercial? Did anyone hate Google prior to seeing this commercial?

What was your favorite Super Bowl ad?

Related Reading:

• The 30 Most Anticipated Movies of 2010
• Robin Hood Demands There Be Liberty in His Superbowl Spot
• Earth, Wind and Fire: Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender Superbowl Spot
• This Week In Movie Posters – Bazooka, Bald, Besson
• New ‘Last Airbender’ Posters Turn Their Back On Us
• This Week in Movie Posters: A Hollywood Cop Out
• This Week in Blu-ray: To the Moon, Bloom!
• This Week In DVD: January 12th

A potential “Spider-Man” casting slip set the ‘Net on fire just a few days after our weekly poll asked readers who should play Peter Parker. Rumors surrounding potential “Watchmen” sequels of spin-off projects in the comics world ignited speculation over a movie sequel, and we had some fun with the possibilities. And somehow, amid all of that, we still managed to slip in review of the new “Planet Hulk” animated feature.

This is your weekly back-issue bin, so read on for The Week’s Top 10 Stories.

10. “Thor” star Chris Hemsworth is bulking up and kicking butt, his “Red Dawn” co-star told MTV News.

9. Former “Green Lantern” rumor subject Ryan Gosling explained why superhero movies aren’t really his thing.

8. Our “Planet Hulk” review gave you the highs and lows of Hulk’s latest animated smash-fest.

7. This week’s poll asked you who should play Spider-Man in the next film, and voting’s still open! What are you waiting for?

6. We asked readers for some funny suggestions for “Watchmen 2″ titles and you responded… in a big way!

5. “Percy Jackson” star Logan Lerman said he’s in talks to play Peter Parker in the “Spider-Man” movie.

4. We debuted two new covers for Lady Gaga’s comic book biography.

3. Is “Iron Man 2″ an “Incredible Hulk” prequel?

2. Zack Whedon outlined plans for more “Dr. Horrible” comics and the musical sequel

And for the week’s top story…

1. We gave you the first look at — and inside — Bluewater’s upcoming Robert Pattinson comic book biography.

That’s it, folks! Check back tomorrow for some Superbowl specials!

Four Eyed Monsters Associate Producer Mike Hedge is listed as a producer on the project. I’m guessing the teaser trailer is a test for an idea Macgregor has for a feature. I’d love to see it someday. Watch the teaser trailer embedded after the jump. I’ve also included some of Macgregor’s commercial work.

Update: /Film readers have noticed that the voiceover/score is borrowed from the trailer for the video game Prototype. I don’t believe the two projects are related. I’m guessing that the filmmaker just used the audio as a placeholder in this concept test.

Kore teaser trailer:

Macgregor’s Reel:

• No Related Post

If a title like From Paris With Love sounds as if it may be more than a familiar knockoff of say, the James Bond Russian turf classic, you’re probably not far from the truth. The usual homicidal espionage extinction outing but lacking the bold wit, icy elegance and, shall we say, relative subtlety that has characterized Bond escapades, From Paris With Love is less From Russia With Love than a cynically fashioned version of Pulp Fiction’s comical cruelty…read more [News Blaze]

Luc Besson is a movie-making maniac, an action auteur whose signature is all over the films he produces and writes, though the ones he directs haven’t measured up since The Professional, which is now 16 years ago.
Part Peckinpah, part Hong Kong, the movies Besson creates – including Pierre Morel’s From Paris With Love, which he produced and wrote the story for (and, also this week, District 13: Ultimatum) — are kinetic juggernauts, as carefully plotted with action beats as any of Jerry Bruckheimer’s or Joel Silver’s films, but with more wit and adrenaline. There’s no pretense or wasted motion in Besson’s films, and that includes little time spent trying to force sense into the script…read more [The Huffington Post]

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens in From Paris With Love

John Travolta lets entertainingly loose as a bald-headed, goateed, gonzo CIA agent with a short fuse in Pierre Morel’s “From Paris With Love,” an otherwise unsightly heap of nonsense that keeps tripping over its own swagger.
It certainly won’t be taken for “Taken,” the hit Morel guilty pleasure released a year ago in North America during Super Bowl weekend that effectively reset Liam Neeson in the image of a take-no-prisoners action movie hero…read more [THR]

Morel will inevitably be compared to John Woo, whom he trounces. He has fewer mannerisms (no damn doves) and a keener eye; his fastest, most kinetic shots flow together like frames in a flipbook. When he interrupts that flow for a snatch of slow motion, you see the lyricism of a warrior at full extension or the floppy-limbed contortions of a body flung to its doom. The beefy Travolta isn’t the first actor to spring to mind in connection with lightning reflexes, but he’s souped up and limber, elated by his own Zen prowess, and the choreography is so expert that I never detected the stuntmen substitutions…read more [NYMag]

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens and John Travolta as Charlie Wax in From Paris With Love

If Dune fans felt a knot developing in their stomachs when Taken director Pierre Morel was announced as the new shepherd of the big-screen remake of the sci-fi classic, then Morel’s newest film, From Paris With Love, is bound to drive a few of those same fans to the brink of full-fledged nausea. For if it’s a thinking-man’s Dune that they want, From Paris is about as far from such an approach as possible — it’s fast, funny, and pretty dumb…read more [IGN]

John Travolta shaved his head, dyed his goatee and gave himself and his stunt double a helluva workout in From Paris With Love, a gonzo spy shoot-em-up from the folks who gave us Taken.
But even though the action is every bit as explosive and the jokey tone is an amusing departure from Taken’s serious man “with very particular skills,” Paris is basically a bloody buddy picture that tries too hard…read more [Orlando Sentinel]

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Reece / Richard Stevens in From Paris With Love

I hasten to say this is not criticism of John Travolta. He succeeds in this movie by essentially acting in a movie of his own. The fight construction is the same with most modern action movies. In past decades, studios went so far as to run fencing classes for swordfights. Stars like Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Errol Flynn did their own stunts and made sure you could see them doing them. Most of the stunts in classic kung-fu movies, starring such stars as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, really happen. Sure, they used camera angles, trampolines and wires, but you try it and see how easy it is…read more [Roger Ebert]

John Travolta as Charlie Wax in From Paris With Love

Most filmgoers probably remember the famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction, when John Travolta, once the arbiter of cool, added to the repertoire of moves that made him a star in Saturday Night Fever nearly two decades earlier. But people tend to forget that Uma Thurman’s index fingers had it right in that movie: Travolta really was a square, a little dim and consumed by panic—about Ving Rhames, about “the Bonnie situation,” about giving Thurman “the shot.” From Paris With Love, the latest (along with this week’s District B13 sequel) from Luc Besson’s prolific Eurotrash action factory, features a callback to Pulp Fiction, but a much different Travolta, vastly more confident and aggressive in his hammy bad-assery. He’s about as cool as his suburban biker character in Wild Hogs…read more [A.V.Club]

From Paris With Love Trailer (HD Quality)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Warning: In the following article and video blog, we conduct an advanced recap and discussion of LOST: The Final Season, episode one. If you have not yet watched the episode, you should know that SPOILERS ARE ABOUND. You’ve been warned…

It’s time to clean yourselves up friends, as Lost is back. The sixth and final season of the J.J. Abrams’ produced drama — thought by many to be one of the best dramas in the history of television — got underway this evening with the opening episode, “LA X.” Broken into two parts, this two-hour premiere brought us back to the world where Jack Shepard (Matthew Fox) and friends are stuck on a mysterious time-traveling island.

But that’s not all. In its first five seasons, Lost served to confuse its audience by traveling back and forth in time. This year, the question of when doesn’t seem to be as important as what. More specifically, the “what” in the popular internet phrase WTF?! I say that because this was the suggested drinking game tonight at Reject HQ. As we assembled friends to watch the first episode, the lovely Emily Younger (@emilyofaustin on Twitter) suggested that every time someone shouted out “WTF?!” during Lost, we take a drink. Frightened for my life, I declined the opportunity to play such a game.

Would I have lost my life if I’d been taking shots every time something strange happened? Maybe not in this episode. Though there were some surprises — and some characters that we haven’t seen in a while. Overall, the opening episode was not about the quick shock of a character waking up after being pronounced dead, or the realization that someone wasn’t who we thought they were, but the slow burn of knowing that two alternate realities might exist, and that neither of these realities is a happy one for our heroes. Oceanic flight 815 landing in LA doesn’t exactly mean that everything is going to be peachy, as Kate (Evangeline Lilly) finds out.

Personally, I’m excited to see where this season of Lost will go. There are still many questions, and its clear that even though this season promises to answer said questions, there will be more. And there will be more answers. And for the rest of the season, we will be video blogging our reactions with the Reject HQ Lost Club, a group of mostly inebriated friends who gather to scream internet generation acronyms at a television set.

Here then, is our first entry. Special guests include Dr. Cole Abaius (@coleabaius), David Gunn (@phaedrus4223), the aforementioned Ms. Younger and Culture Warrior Landon Palmer (@landon_speak). The video is 30-minutes long, but it’s worth it, trust me.

What did you think of the Lost season six premiere?

Related Reading:

• Lost – The Complete Third Season
• Lost Final Season Sets a Date
• SDCC: Watch and Learn About the Final Season of Lost
• TV Review: Lost – The Incident
• TV Review: Lost – Follow The Leader
• TV Review: Lost – 316
• TV Review: Lost – This Place is Death
• TV Review: Lost 5.4 – The Little Prince

Today we have two posters for “She’s Out of My League.”

In the comedy She’s Out of My League, Kirk (Jay Baruchel), an average Joe, can’t believe his luck. Though he’s stuck in a seemingly dead-end job as an airport security agent, against all odds, Molly (Alice Eve), a successful and outrageously gorgeous babe, falls for him. Kirk is stunned. So are his friends, his family and even his ex-girlfriend. Now he has to figure out how to make the relationship work, even though he’d be the first to admit she’s totally out of his league.

The film is directed by Jim Field Smith, who is making his feature film debut. Also starring Alice Eve T.J. Miller, Nate Torrence, Krysten Ritter, Geoff Stults, and Lindsay Sloane.

“She’s Out of My League” opens March 12, 2010.

If you haven’t seen red band “She’s Out of My League” trailer, check it out now!

She’s Out of My League Poster

She’s Out of My League Poster

Just as Sundance comes to a close, my world has exploded with one of my favorite things in the world: Tony Jaa. The man himself is back with a trailer for the third film in the Ong Bak series, which has been kicking ass since 2003. The first film was set in modern time, with the second being set in ancient times. The third film has no regard for period — or so it would appear. Superman Jaa dies, comes back, blah blah blah… He kicks ass, that’s all we really need to know.

Ong Bak 3 is currently in production with Jaa in the director’s chair. It does not yet have an American distributor, but the official plot was released at the American Film Market. Here it is:

The legend of Ong Bak 3 begins after Tien (Tony Jaa) has lost his fighting skills and his beloved stepfather at the Garuda’s Wing cliff from the raid led by Jom Rachan (Saranyu Wonggrajang). Tien is brought back to life with the help from Pim (Primrata Dechudom) as well as Mhen (Petchai Wongkamlao) and the Kana Khone villagers. Deep into the meditation taught by Phra Bua (Nirutti Sirijanya), Tien finally is able to achieve ‘Nathayut’. His talents are put to the test again when his rivals including the Golden-Armored King’s Guard (Supakorn ‘Tok’ Kijusuwan), the mysterious killers in black, and Bhuti Sangkha (Dan Chupong) return for the final massive showdown.

Check out the trailer below, which was sent over to us by reader Dave C. The film is set to debut sometime in the spring of this year.

Related Reading:

• Tony Jaa Kicks Everyone’s Ass in New ‘Ong Bak 2′ Clips
• Celebrate Ong Bak 2 By Entering Our Muy Thai DVD Explosion Contest!
• Ong Bak 2 Trailer: Tony Jaa Kicks the Shit Out of Everything
• SXSW Review: Ong Bak 2
• Foreign Objects: Chocolate… aka The Ass-Kicking Autistic Girl