...and by SEs I mean big, fat, loaded mega-special editions of the studio's most popular stuff. And when WB delivers a Special Edition, they generally don't mess around. (Unlike some home video distributors *koff Universal* who throw the SE term around willy-nilly.) Just a quick scan through my mega-awesome DVD collection reveals WB SEs like Goodfellas, Dirty Harry, Amadeus, The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner, Superman, and a whole bunch more. If there's a catalog title you love, you should pray it gets the WB 2-disc SE treatment.

And a bunch more are on the way! According to Video Business, WB plans to double its SE output moving forward, and while we don't have any specs just yet, we do know that the following titles will be available (in fancy form) later this year: 300 (yes already, even though I thought the first 2-discer was pretty damn excellent), Casablanca (also again, but if any film deserves it...), A Christmas Story (cool!), JFK (a movie I need to see again), and I Am Legend. Come to think of it, all five of these movies already have Special Edition releases! These new discs better be pretty dang impressive.

Also on the way: The Peanuts Complete Holiday Collection. Which I definitely will own.

After a long, hard-fought battle, the second official trailer for The Dark Knight took home top honors at this year's Golden Trailer Awards (with a margin of victory of 44%). The contest, held over at USA Today, tallied votes on films from several different categories -- all of which were chosen as this year's Golden Trailer winners earlier in the month. Among the top trailers users had a chance to vote on were Enchanted (Best Animation/Family), Tropic Thunder (Best Comedy), Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? (Best Documentary), No Country for Old Men (Best Drama), I am Legend (Best Horror) and Iron Man (Summer 2008 Blockbuster), among others. While there are certainly other trailers I would've picked to win their respective category (Pineapple Express, for one), I think we can probably all agree that The Dark Knight trailer is definitely tops.

Check out the trailer one more time above, then head on over to USA Today to see what else was nominated (as well as the official site for The Golden Trailer Awards). In your opinion, does anything beat The Dark Knight?

Are films political? Do they fall into left-wing and right-wing camps? I would imagine that not all films have an agenda. Some films can be considered "great uniters," in that they bring together agreeing audiences from all over, films like the $200 million hits I Am Legend (264 screens) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (177 screens) or a critical favorite like There Will Be Blood (339 screens) that has pleased nearly everyone who has seen it. Of course, There Will Be Blood is about a snaky, sinister, blustery oil baron willing to sacrifice his family, country and humanity for the allure of black gold, which may or may not have a little something to do with current events. (Not to mention that director Paul Thomas Anderson dropped the word "Oil" from the title of the source novel and replaced it with the word "Blood.")

In recent years it has been determined that film critics are a liberal bunch, educated, well-read men and women of letters, who can see and comprehend the human condition in films from different cultures all over the world. Or, they're sometimes known as pompous, ponderous, pretentious, conceited, snooty know-it-alls, lacking in good old-fashioned horse sense. "Why can't you just enjoy the movie," is a question very often asked of critics. Rambo (201 screens) is a fascinating case. It's impressively violent, but very grim and not much fun. Rambo debuted and reigned during the Reagan era (Rambo: First Blood Part II grossed three times the amount of the new film, even with 1985 ticket prices). Bringing him back in a decidedly different political atmosphere didn't seem to work, though the film was screened for the press and earned a few good reviews. It's now starting a downslide, and it's still shy of breaking even on its $50 million budget.

Enchanted
The yester-year of Disney animation is long in the past, and while you probably won't be getting any epic, artistically-driven Sleeping Beauty-type features any time soon, Enchanted offers those old classic scenes with characters ripped out of the cartoon world and delivered to a crazy and manic Manhattan. Amy Adams' Giselle becomes the victim of her soon-to-be stepmother-in-law's evilness and gets transported to the real world, where life isn't animated and the world is very, very different. From there, we've got cartoon Prince Charmings with James Marsden, who comes to save her, and real life beaus with McDreamy Patrick Dempsey. Oh yes, and of course -- Susan Sarandon as evil mommie dearest doing her best reincarnation of Maleficent.

This is your normal Disney DVD -- there are deleted scenes, bloopers, behind-the-scenes featurettes about the film's "cinematic wizardry," and a pop-up adventure with Pip, Giselle's little friend.

Check out Kim's Review | Buy the DVD

I don't think I'm alone when I say that I Am Legend was a little bit of a disappointment. Although there were a lot of good things going on (mainly in the performance of Will Smith), it wasn't a great film, and something was missing. Based on Richard Matheson's sci-fi classic, Smith stars as Dr. Robert Neville, a scientist who is immune to a "vampiric plague" that has wiped out humanity. Now an alternate ending to the film has been leaked to the net (thanks to Slash Film for the heads up), which you can check out above, and it gives you the chance to play 'What If?' If you haven't already seen the film, you might want to stop reading now, because I am about to give you one heck of a spoiler.

A friend of mine pointed me toward this YouTube video over on Hollywood Elsewhere which was cut together by a guy named Matt Shapiro using clips from a bunch of 2007's great dramas, all set to the wonderful tune Falling Slowly, performed by Glen Hasard and Markéta Irglová from Once. Though there's a bit too much I Am Legend in there, as well as comedy-dramas like Juno, Knocked Up and Ratatouille, I must say the video itself is pretty damn well done. I feel like every year around this time, as awards are being handed out, you get comments from people along the lines of, "Man, last year sucked in terms of movies." Well it's videos like this one that show just how great 2007 was in terms of high-quality entertainment, even if the bulk of it didn't arrive until those last few months. Check out the video up top, then let us know which films you would've liked to see get a mention. Oh, and then you can head over to iTunes and download Falling Slowly. Trust me, if you haven't heard this song yet, you're guaranteed to be swept away in its beauty. It's that f**king good.

Most people have a favorite place to sit when going to the movies. Some people like the back row; some people like the centermost spot (middle seat, middle row); some people like to sit near the front so that they can stare up at the screen and let the picture fill the limits of their peripheral vision.

I figure that last preference made more sense fifty years ago, when Cinerama and CinemaScope presented vast, expansively shot epics and westerns that were made to surround our senses and engulf our whole eye-span. Nowadays, most movies are too fast-cut and often the camerawork is too shaky to really work for close viewing. Have you ever been forced to sit in the first few rows when a movie is sold out? Wasn't it hard to tell what was going on most of the time?

Personally, I like watching movies close up, when it's appropriate. Unfortunately, it rarely is. But movie theaters can't just start removing those front rows because they aren't good for the moviegoer's eyes. No, that would mean a lot fewer tickets sold, a lot fewer popcorns sold, and a lot less money going to both the theater owners and the movie distributors. So, moviemakers should go back to making movies that are more accommodating to the theatrical audience, right? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Our own Scott Weinberg recently told you about the canning of quote whore Pete Hammond from the pages of Maxim Magazine, and brought you many of Hammond's incredible quotes, culled all year long by the indefatigable Erik Childress at efilmcritic.com. Now Childress has announced his annual Criticwatch "Whores of the Year" list, saving his "2007 Michael Medved Bag of Douche Memorial Award" for Hammond. Jeffrey Lyons and Earl Dittman made the top ten this year, along with young E! Online critic Ben Lyons -- son of Jeffrey -- for calling I Am Legend "one of the greatest films ever made." Says Childress: "If he were 12 and had only seen 50 movies in his lifetime it would STILL be one of the dumbest god damn statements ever made by a human being named Lyons."

Apparently Childress has taken on the superhuman effort of combing through every blurb on every movie ad for the entire year and cataloging them in such a way as to reveal their hidden hypocrisies. How many films in 2007 were called "masterpiece"? At least 20, and that's including Dittman's assessment of Halloween. Even more films were called "spellbinding" and "a must-see!" I personally escaped this year, but several of my critic friends did not. Even Cinematical's James Rocchi is mentioned, for having used the phrase "raw sexuality and fever-pitched emotion" in his review of Red Road. A big thanks to Erik for keeping score.

The Golden Globes and the Oscars may be in trouble due to telecasts, strikes, and all of that turmoil, but the other award presentations are trucking on as planned. Variety reports that the Visual Effects Society has picked their nominees for their 6th awards ceremony. Thinking back on the year...who would you pick? The Academy, they picked a pretty solid 13-film shortlist that they have to somehow whittle down into 3 picks -- a list that includes the likes of Rataouille, Beowulf, and Spider-Man 3. This society is pretty in-line with that.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End unsurprisingly leads the pack with six nominations, and they're closely followed by Transformers and I Am Legend -- both of which follow with 5 nominations each. You just can't refuse a screen full of Johnny Depps. Continuing on, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on the other hand, has to hold court with Spider-Man 3 with three nods each -- and according to Variety, both of them have fallen off the Academy list. Of course, as with the Oscars, animated films are also present with Ratatouille neck and neck in nominations with Surf's Up (both have 4 each).

Who will come away with the big, special prizes? I imagine the leading three will probably have a pretty successful sweep when the awards are held on February 10 in Hollywood. In the meantime, you can check out the full list of nominees for film after the jump.

What sounds like the more highbrow date? Going to see the artsy film I'm Not There while sitting on a couch, eating a pizza and drinking a cold beer, or going to see the mainstream blockbuster National Treasure: Book of Secrets while sitting in a VIP section with reserved, "luxury seating," eating a "sophisticated entree" and drinking an "elegant martini creation?" Both options feature wait service, great picture quality and the benefit of not having any youths around. In their own way, each is equally lowbrow and highbrow, but depending on your definition of those terms (dumb vs. intelligent; cheap vs. expensive), you might have said one or the other. To me, highbrow is intelligent and intelligent is cheap; so I pick the former, which will cost a whole lot less.

The first option was what you might have experienced this weekend at Oakland, California's Parkway Speakeasy (other movie choices were Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and American Gangster). Your movie ticket would have been a mere $6, your personal cheese pizza a fair $8.50 and your pint of Sierra Nevada only $4.50. The second choice was one of this weekend's offerings at the new Lux Level of Randolph, Massachussetts' Showcase Cinema (the other available movie was I Am Legend). The movie ticket cost $21.25 (you definitely bought it online and paid that $1 service charge), the personal cheese pizza about $8 (I don't see anything on the theater's online menu appropriately considered to be "sophisticated entrée", though other Showcase Cinema menus feature items such as "Bourbon Street Steak Medallions") and your Raspberry Mocha Tini was about $9.