Yeah, I know its just 2D.  Who cares?  I’m there.  A remarkable film in any format, my personal pick for best film of 2010, despite those who want to jump on some kind of tear it down bandwagon.   That’s the price you pay for being more successful than certain slugs think you should be.

From the LA Times:

That's the challenge presented to Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, which on Tuesday will announce some unconventional plans for the DVD and Blu-ray release of the highest-grossing film in the history of Hollywood box office.

"Avatar" will hit stores on April 22, and instead of a disc loaded with extras, it will be just the opposite --  a lean-and-mean approach with only the movie and a relatively simple menu function, a move made to exploit every bit of disc space for the top-of-the-line audio and video presentation of the film, according to the movie's producer, Jon Landau.

In fact, according to sources at Fox, "Avatar" will make history as the first Blu-ray new release from a major studio to hit stores without a single trailer or promotional content of any kind.

"We went to Fox and told them that, for this movie, we wanted to do something really special and reach for the best presentation of any film in the history of the format," Landau said. "This is a movie that has done the unexpected every step of the way. Fox agreed with us and the result is amazing. Everything that is put on a disc takes up room -- the menus, the extras, the trailers and studio promotions -- and we got rid of all of that so we could give this movie the best picture and sound possible."

Another reason to pay your taxes.  Oh wait!  This guy did pay is taxes on time.  So what the hell is going on?

From the Sacramento Bee:

Arriving at Harv's Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. "They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending," says Harv's owner, Aaron Zeff.

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff's on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was ... 4 cents.

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv's with an obligation of $202.35.

Zeff, who also owns local parking lots and is the president of the Midtown Business Association, finds the situation a bit comical.

"It's hilarious," he says, "that two people hopped in a car and came down here for just 4 cents. I think (the IRS) may have a problem with priorities."

Now he's trying to figure out how penalties and interest could climb so high on such a small debt. He says he's never been told he owes any taxes or that he's ever incurred any late-payment penalties in the four years he's owned Harv's.

Cheap Bastards Anthem Blue Cross ordered to pay up for man’s liver transplant.  From the L.A. Times:

……….the jury ordered Blue Cross to pay plaintiff Ephram Nehme's legal expenses, which could dwarf the $206,000 cost of the transplant.

Blue Cross approved Nehme's liver transplant in late 2006, and he was on the waiting list at UCLA Medical Center. But the company refused to pay when Nehme, gravely ill and fearing for his life, decided to have the operation in Indiana, where wait times are far shorter than in California.
The jury, which included at least three members with Blue Cross medical coverage, voted 10 to 2 that the company breached its contract with Nehme. It voted 9 to 3 that the health insurer acted in bad faith by refusing to pay for the out-of-state operation. The panel deliberated for less than two days.

"The message here is that you can't take people's money, promise to protect them, and then leave them to die in their time of need," said Nehme's lawyer, Scott Glovsky.

At a hearing set for next week, Glovsky said he would seek to broaden the jury's verdict under the state's unfair competition law. He will ask Superior Court Judge Kenneth Freeman to order Blue Cross to allow its California members to pursue organ transplants at hospitals nationwide that do business with its parent, Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., the nation's largest health insurer.

In a statement, Blue Cross acknowledged "the jury's determination that Mr. Nehme's transplant should have been approved by Anthem Blue Cross despite the fact that Mr. Nehme's Anthem Blue Cross contract states that transplants must be performed only at California Centers of Excellence."

Far more interesting to me these days then the Oscars, the Razzies are handed out each year to the worst films and performances of the year.  Included this year are some
awards for the worst of the decade. 

While I have not seen most of this year’s nominee’s I will attest to the complete awfulness of Transformers 2 and consider it on of the worst films I’ve ever had to endure.  Unfortunately, we were with other family members when we viewed it so my girlfriend and I were unable to walk like we should have and would have.

As for the worst of the decade, no real surprises.  Eddie Murphy won for worst actor of the decade which is no surprise as he could have won that just for Norbit.  Paris Hilton was probably too easy as well.  Anyway, here they are for you to debate over:

Worst Picture of 2009:Transformers:
Revenge Of The Fallen
(Aka Trannies, Too)
(DREAMWORKS/PARAMOUNT)

Worst Actress of 2009:
Sandra Bullock
ALL ABOUT STEVE

Worst Actor(s) of 2009:
All Three Jonas Brothers
JONAS BROTHERS: THE 3-D CONCERT EXPERIENCE

Worst Screen Couple:
Sandra Bullock & Bradley Cooper
ALL ABOUT STEVE

Worst Supporting Actress:
Sienna Miller
G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

Worst Supporting Actor:
Billy Ray Cyrus
HANNAH MONTANA: THE MOVIE

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel
(Combined Category for 2009):
Land of The Lost(UNIVERSAL PICTURES)

Worst Director:
Michael Bay
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (AKA TRANNIES, TOO)

Worst Screenplay:
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
WRITTEN BY EHREN KRUGER & ROBERTO ORCI & ALEX KURTZMAN,
BASED ON HASBRO’S TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURES

Special 30th RAZZIE®-versary Awardz

Worst Picture of the Decade:
Battlefield Earth
NOMINATED FOR 10 RAZZIES® / "WINNER" OF 8
(INCLUDING WORST DRAMA OF OUR FIRST 25 YRS)

Worst Actor of the Decade:
Eddie Murphy
NOMINATED FOR 12 "ACHIEVEMENTS" / "WINNER" OF 3 RAZZIES®
ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH, I SPY, IMAGINE THAT, MEET DAVE, NORBIT, SHOWTIME

Worst Actress of the decade
Paris Hilton
NOMINATED FOR 5 "ACHIEVEMENTS," "WINNER" OF 4 RAZZIES®
THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE, HOUSE OF WHACKS, REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA

I remember that the first time I saw the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, I thought it was not only a great horror movie, but quite an original one as well.  It’s the stuff dreams were made of.

But as the series moved on, to Nightmare on Elm Street XIV, I had long lost interest.  I barely made it halfway through number three when it was apparent the series had become nothing more than an excuse to dream up new ways to kill teenagers.  Freddy was no longer scary, and after a while even his one liners ceased to be amusing, simply because the Freddy character itself had become a joke.

I suppose the remake might breath life into the old series with this reboot in which the character of Freddy is taken over by Jackie Earle Haley.  But I’m not as optimistic as Drew McWeeny from Hitfix seems to be.  Although there is always room for improvement, especially without Ronee Blakely doing her own thing whatever that was supposed to be and nearly killing the original film in the process.

Here’s the newest trailer which goes into a lot more detail.  The trailer for the original film is below it for comparison. The film opens in April.

Anthony Weiner, health care would have already passed. But they don’t. Instead they’re a mindless bunch of wimps who have this foolish hare-brained notion that Republicans might want to actually pass some legislation, believe in bi-partisanship and that would do somthing to benefit the people of this country, a country that is still on the edge of disappearing into an abysmal morass of no health care, mortgage foreclosures, unemployment, and bankruptcy.

You know, I always thought the Republicans might be against protectionism. I was wrong. They do believe in protectionism, the kind that protects their own deep pockets and the big profits of the Insurance Companies, Wall Street, Big Corporations and Banks. So much so that they continually lie to their constituency to keep them dumbed down and in the dark, but also to make sure they can keep their campaign contributions rolling in.

Helping small businesses? That was never a real priority with the Repugs and never has been. It was nothing more than a mask to cover up the real beneficiaries of making the rich richer policies they’ve fondled, embraced, have wet dreams over, and if you don’t know that by now take your sorry ass back to the TV, turn your radio to Rush Limbaugh, tune the TV to Glenn Beck, and remain an uninformed dunce who’s been led around by the nose by a few millionaire celebrities with a silver tongue making a living off of your continually blinded ignorance. Trickle down economics and tax cuts for wealthy corporations and owners does not work and if you haven’t figured that out by now you’re in a drunken induced Fox News induced coma so overwhelming you should just as well be pronounced as dead.

And Obama? For his first year while our Senators and Congressmen sat up in Washington masturbating each other in a congressional circle jerk, he was pretty much absent. He practically begged Congress not to bother him with it while they continued their dirty back door dealing until the health care bill they came up with was nothing more than a shadow of what it should have been, and worse yet turned into another multi-billion dollar giveaways to one of their biggest contributors, the insurance lobby who practically wrote the legislation for them and for us.

It took a Senatorial defeat in Massachusetts to ignite a fire under Obama’s butt just to vocalize his disgust with Democrats and the Republican Party of just say no to anything and everything no matter how much regular citizens get screwed or die while waiting for their insurance companies to give thumbs up or thumbs down as if they were the ancient Romans deciding whether we should live or die in the Coliseum. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

But so far Obama’s rhetoric has been nothing more than chastising and bloviating a lot of hot air while putting on a big show for the TV.

Today Obama will fetch the monkeys from their capital hill cage to put on another show for the Ringling Brothers Obama & Bailey Circus, bringing along his own half assed health care plan which would require all Americans to make their own personal contributions to the insurance companies which in turn will keep their fat cat friends on capitol hill happy with those same dollars we will be required to ante up in the biggest government giveaway of our money since they bailed out the banks. Wellpoint, Aetna, and Joe Liebermann will be very pleased indeed.

I have no problem with people being required to pay for health care if they can afford it, but without a public option, you’re simply asking the citizens in this country to join in the congressional circle jerk that benefits the same old same old – insurance companies, drug companies, and politician’s treasure chests.

We are told there will be a committee that will oversee the rate hikes of the Insurance company. When was the last time any government agency turned down a rate hike from any corporation? When was the last time a Public Utility Commission actually told a Natural Gas or Electric Company to fuck off with their rate hike? When was the last time a city forced a cable company to actually do something, even though most of them have a monopoly in most cities and towns? So do you think a government agency will ever turn down a rate hike of an insurance company. They haven’t yet. The whole idea is a sham, especially when you consider the members will undoubtedly be appointed by whoever is in power at the time. It’ll be the health care version of Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts.

Oh yeah, they put on a big show about being angry and putting a stop to it just as they are doing now with WellPoint's rate hike request. But they will do nothing to stop it. They never have. Never will. Take my word for it. And guess who will be screwed again?

So why have I gone on this rant tonight? Or should I say again? That brings me back to Anthony Weiner, who actually had the fortitude to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and call the Republicans out on their crap while Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats sat wringing their hands.

From the Keith Olbermann show today, which is the only place where I can find the whole clip (plus other matters concerning health care), Anthony Weiner called the Republican Party exactly for what it is: A wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance companies.

But it just wasn’t Weiner’s speech in the House that set me on this rant. There were other thing. One was this article on Roger Ebert’s blog called The Gathering Storm (I suggest you read it in its entirety), an article in which he puts things in perspective far more eloquently then I could ever be.

He starts off by telling us that in Tracy, California it will now cost you $300 every time you have to call the fire department and there isn’t a fire? Husband having an asthma attack? $300. Kid choking on a piece of candy? $300. In it he says:

…Of course, the extra fee will be paid by your insurance company, right? Not a chance. Poor folks may have to look twice at a family member writhing on the floor and ask, "Are you really $300 worth of sick?" That's why we all consider it more or less our right to pick up the phone and dial 911. Of course since the whole community shares the cost of the emergency call, that's socialism, right?

A private company will be hired to handle the billing for the calls. Hiring a private contractor will of course be cheaper than the city taking the responsibility to hire someone to do it themselves, won’t it? Not hardly, and this idea of private contractors being cheaper to handle government services, or that they do it better is one of the biggest myths and frauds perpetrated by more government officials paid off with contributions by these same privatizing corporations who want a piece of the pie.

Ebert explains:

…..There was a time when Chicagoans grumbled about parking fees but figured, well, they're a lot less than in New York. These bandits came in and immediately quadrupled parking meter fees. In the Loop, an hour which in 2008 cost a quarter now costs $3.50.

Has this resulted in windfall income for the city? No, according to the Chicago News Cooperative. Daley got a $600 million upfront payment, and will spend that amount in two years. Chicago gets $1.15 billion over 75 years. But wait! Wait! The deal is good for Private Enterprise, right? Conservatives like Rumsfeld even wanted to privatize the U. S. military. At least stockholders can profit from our parking meters. That's good, or it would be, if 25% of the new meter company weren't owned by Abu Dhabi's Sovereign Wealth Funds, another 24% by German investors, and the rest by Morgan Stanley.

As nearly as anyone can figure out: (1) Chicago would have made more money owning the meters itself, (2) Parking Meters LLC is making money hand over fist because it quadruped the charge for a fixed-cost service, and (3) Chicago business is hurting because retail customers resist paying $3.50 an hour, or up to $29 fee in parking garages after you stay more than 15 minutes -- or one hour, or whatever. Parking garages fees have doubled. Now most retail stores offer discount parking if they stamp your ticket -- which costs them money, so they're paying Abu Dhabi too. It doesn't take Stephen Hawking to figure out that Abu Dhabi and Morgan Stanley wouldn't have come anywhere near our parking meters unless they knew they could clean up. Chicago got taken to the cleaners……..

Ebert then talks about health care:

The Senate finally got a jobs bill passed, thanks to Republican senators who broke with party ranks. They defended themselves by saying: "My state needs this." Do you live in a state that doesn't? The next step is health care. We have the most expensive health care in the world, and compared to the results of other developed nations, it's way overpriced. The free lunch for drug and insurance companies is over, too. If nothing is done to rationalize health costs, will we see sick people in tent cities in the parking lots of hospitals?

On that I disagree just a little. They won’t be in tent cities in parking lots. They’ll be in caskets and urns, or buried in a pauper’s field somewhere. How do I know this? Because many are already there. We put 45,000 of them there each year, and that number will continue to rise steadily, until we finally scream, “NO MORE.” But we’ll probably do it when it’s way too late. We usually do.

And finally, there was this special commentary today by Keith Olbermann regarding his father and Sarah Palin’s death panels. It’s called An American Cry for Help.

If you’ve read my review and retrospective of the original True Grit, the film for which John Wayne won his only Oscar, you know how much I revere the film.  It’s my personal Holy Grail of the Western genre.  When I heard the Coen Brothers were filming a remake, or as some have said, “a more faithful adaptation” of Charles Portis’s terrific book on which the original movie was based.

The cast so far has Jeff Bridges taking over the John Wayne role as Rooster Cogburn, Matt Damon taking over for Glen Campbell as La Boeuf (well, that is probably an improvement) and Josh Brolin taking over for Jeff Corey as Tom Cheney.

Now, Screen Rant, Rope of Silicon, and Deadline Hollywood, are reporting that the role has gone to 13 year old Hailee Steinfeld. 

After auditioning more than 15,000 teenage girls, Paramount and True Gritdirectors Joel and Ethan Coen have found their Mattie Ross in Hailee Steinfeld. The 13-year old will play the centerpiece of a new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin starring. Mattie Ross is the 14-year old spitfire whose father has been mowed down in cold blood by Tom Chaney (Brolin). Determined to bring the killer to justice, Mattie enlists hard-drinking U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to track the killer before a Texas Ranger (Damon) does. The Coens are producing with Scott Rudin. While most of the teens who auditioned were unknowns, Steinfeld has some credits. She has even more reps, just signing with ICM, who'll rep her along with Coast to Coast Talent Group and Protégé.

Like I said, I have no clue as to how this will all work out.  Certainly the character was meant to be a plain Jane in the novel which is the way Kim Darby played the character in 1969.  And to me, Kim  Darby IS Mattie Ross.  But I’m willing to see what the Coen Brothers have in mind.

The very idea of a Karate Kid reboot with Will Smith’s bratty little offspring, Jaden, taking over for Ralph Macchio, and Jackie Chan trying to fill the shoes of the late Pat Morita (who was nominate for an Academy Award) has not been received with open arms in most of the blogging community, including mine.  I still am extremely doubtful that this will come close to the original, although the second trailer seen below is better than the first one.

There’s a few cuts of Smith doing some Kung Fooey stunts with Chan, which are impressive.  Unfortunately, there is nothing here showing the warmth and chemistry that Macchio and Morita had in the first one.  None at all.  And if you don’t have that all the chop socky in the world won’t help. 

And apparently there is a “companionship?” story going on between Smith and some other kid, although not much of that is shown here either.  I miss Elisabeth Shue already.

But we’ll withhold our  judgment for when the final product is released.  The new trailer is below.  Focus power Daniel-san.

I’ve got nothing to say about this deleted scene from Star Wars Episode IV:  A New Hope.  Judge for yourself as to whether or not  it should have been left in.