I wasn’t a fan of the TV show. I was hardly looking forward to the movie when it was announced.

But a funny thing happened: The Colbert Report. I began to really get an respect him, and went looking in his history and sure enough, Colbert was on the old Comedy Central series “Exit 57” with Strangers with Candy co-creators Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris. I thought I’d take a look with a more open mind this time.

Now, the movie was getting mixed reviews, so I was still a little skeptical. Even the trailer wasn’t entirely impressive.

Thankfully, I enjoyed myself. In fact, I really loved this movie. I haven’t laughed this hard since Anchorman (and I still giggle like a moron at the mention of Dorothy Mantooth). Strangers With Candy the movie drops the afterschool special conventions the show had, but it gains better pacing as a result. Voiceovers and monologs are gone, instead giving way to more screwball convict talk, racism, and homoeroticism. Its a real family movie.

Now like I said, I wasn’t a fan of the show, so if this is mostly recycled jokes I wouldn’t know. Still I found Sedaris to be positively astounding as Jerri Blank, bouncing between a moronic child to streetwise hustler at the drop of a hat. Colbert and Dinello return as teachers Mr. Noblet and Mr. Jellineck, though their screen time is diminished to more supporting roles. Cameos from famous fans like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Mathew Broderick add little, as their scenes are stolen in every instance by Greg Holliman’s Principal Onyx Blackman.

So I’m going to make this appeal to you, dear reader. If you missed the show the first time around or maybe just didn’t think it was funny, try the movie. It doesn’t quite push the limit like South Park or Chappelle, but the final line of dialouge left my mouth agape in shock and I was laughing well after I’d left the theater.

Of course, this review won’t change your mind now, but maybe you’ll watch it on cable in 6 months anyway.

This was originally posted on Don Murphy’s board here.

Let me get this right out of the way:

It looks like Fox will announce on Friday that X-Men: The Last Stand will be coming to DVD on October 3rd in two different forms. One will be a standard release special edition with 10 deleted scenes. The special special edition will feature 3 alternate endings to the movie. A box set of all 3 X-Men movies will also be made available.

In other X3 news, FX has picked up the rights for the movie to air on television along with a whole mess of other recent and current high profile movies. You can expect to be seeing X3 10 times a day on FX soon enough. At least it won’t be as compelling to sit down every time its on and watch like X2 was.

Car bloggers Jalopnik have snapped several shots of Transformers in LA this week.
To the left you’ll see the big honkin’ pickup purported to be Ironhide. Its a GMC Sierra, which is a big truck to start, but its been tricked out with a lift kit and some heavy duty after market tires. The photographer also mentions the front end has some cool changes too and points out the added smoke stacks. Oh yeah, and the metal embossed Autobot logo on the back bay door. Perfect.

They also saw a Crane, but who knows what that has to do with anything.

At the behest of Warner Bros., original Superman II director Richard Donner has been putting together a Director’s Cut of the movie, expected to be out later this year. Here are a few of the restored clips.

For those not familiar with the story of the film’s creation: Donner, along with story writer Mario Puzo, was responsible for creating the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve. He envisioned the story as a two-parter, and did most of the principal shooting for Superman II at the same time.

Before he could wrap up the project, he was ousted thanks to the producers, Ilya and Alexander Salkind. The new director, Richard Lester, had the job of piecing together a movie from existing footage and filming (or, in some cases, re-filming) the rest of the scenes.

Gene Hackman refused to come back after Donner was unceremoniously canned, so for every scene that Lester shot which required Luthor, they had to use a stand-in who you would only see from the back. Any unrecorded dialogue required a soundalike looped into the film.

We’ll finally get to see Superman II (mostly) as Donner intended it — he still has to use some of Lester’s scenes with Bizarro-Luthor (et al) because no other footage exists, but he’ll certainly be able to get the film most of the way there. I look forward to it.

~Sean

Mattel is obviously aware by now that the toy line to Superman Returns is little more than a couple thousand variations of Superman himself and 1 Luthor figure. I don’t blame them for not rushing to make plastic representations of Parker Posey and Kal Penn, but some variation is needed to keep the line from becoming worth of an ET/Atari2600-style landfill burial.

Thankfully, new toys are on the way!

Allegedly based off EA’s video game of Superman Returns, new figures include Mongul, Metallo, a NEW Luthor, and an even SHINIER Superman! Wow!

Thanks to Joey O.

Update: No longer requires quicktime.