Zookeeper trailer, this is supposed to be funny?

This is a look at the new Kevin James "comedy", Zookeeper.  I better be careful with what I say right now. At first look, Paul Blart: Mall Cop looked ridiculous as well.  That movie went on to make a boat load of money!  Check out the trailer to Zookeeper and read my thoughts after.

Ok, wow.  Even Adam Sandler's voice as the monkey is terrible.  I mean, from a business perspective, I see what they're going for.  It's like Dr. Dolittle meets Night at the Museum sort of thing.  But step back and look at this trailer as unbiased as possible; it looks terrible!  I mean it looks really really bad!  Go figure Rosario Dawson is in ;0)

I'll absolutely be skipping this one at the theater as well as the dollar redbox; HBO on demand, you're my only friend.

redbox to start offering Blu-Ray discs for $1.50 a night, AWESOME!

There are a lot of movies that stir up controversy, same goes for actors/actress.  But rarely does the industry itself stir up controversy, until recently, with redbox.  What is redbox?  They are the popular DVD rental kiosks you see at your local department stores.  They only charge $1 (a max of $25) a night to rent movies.  Granted they don't have a wide a selection of films, or copies of each film, but a buck is a buck.

The controversy is this; is redbox diminishing DVD sales for the studios?

Some say yes.  Blockbuster is about to go bankrupt because of digital downloads and, in part, redbox.  The studios are suing redbox, and losing by the way.

Some say no.  The other argument is that the studios charge too much to purchase DVD's and Blockbuster with their late fees priced themselves out of the rental market.

My argument is the latter, the studios don't lose money, they just want to make MORE money.  I am an avid purchaser of DVD's and Blu-Ray's, literally thousands.  I don't download movies illegally and rarely do I rent from my cable provider or though my Playstation 3.  If anything redbox has encouraged me to buy MORE movies after I've rented them.

This is my logic... if I rent a movie from redbox for a dollar, and like it... I'm going to buy the movie.  This way it only cost me a dollar more than it would have, and I'm sure I like the film.  If I rent a movie from redbox for a dollar and don't like it... I just saved 15-20 dollars on buying a movie I've never seen and was not going to like.

Back to the story at hand.  redbox is now offering Blu-Ray discs for $1.50 a night, effective immediately.  I love this!  There have been movies I rented at redbox that I wish were in Blu-Ray, i.e. The Book of Eli.  That movie is visually stunning and would have been amazing in Blu-Ray's HD format.  That movie is another example of how renting the film first, encouraged me to purchase it later.

What's your opinion?  Do you have one?  Are the studios being greedy?  Or am I contributing to the devaluing of an entire industry?  Let us know.

Remember that talk about "The Last Airbender" sequels? Yeah, probably not

UPDATE: The Last Airbender opened to the tune of 40 Million dollars, second behind Eclipse. The experts are predicting a sharp drop off in business for next week.

Every once in awhile I go back to some of our older posts just for kicks. Just to re-evaluate my writing style, see if old rumors ever came true, etc. Well I stumbled across this beaut; a posting about how The Last Airbender was actually a trilogy and how the three films would NOT be filmed back to back.

Here is the quote from poducer of The Last Airbender, Frank Marshall. That post was on July 2nd, 2009, exactly a year ago today:

We’re shooting them one at a time, because they’re being written one at a time. [M. Night Shyamalan] is now working on the script for the second movie, but he hasn’t had time to write the second or third ones. He’s looking at the arc of all three. One of the things we’ll be doing is using the sets, ships and elements for each different nation in this film and incorporating them into movies two and three. We’re not waiting. There just isn’t enough time. Night will finish this movie, then the script and then we’ll prepare for the next one. I think it’ll probably happen over six years.

You might be asking yourself, "why is this so absurd"? Because of The Last Airbender's reviews and potential flop status, that's why. The movie is out to a terrible start in the early numbers. And as far as critics are concerned? 8% with over 100 critics writing into Rotten Tomatoes.

I'm not trying to be mean to M. Night Shyamalan, I'm really not. In fact, I am a big fan of his OLDER work (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs). And I hate prejudging a film before I go see it, but this one seems to be universally hated. Maybe it's because it is based on prior works, maybe it's because the story doesn't translate well from cartoon television series to film, or maybe M. Night Shyamalan's script/directing suck. I hate to be the barer of bad news, but his movies have gotten progressively worse after Signs. Oh well, I'll rent it from Redbox for a dollar and hope for the best!