OpenSeason Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sad news arrived Thursday afternoon for fans of colorful actors. John Phillip Law, who appeared in dozens of movies over a career that spanned more than four decades, died on Tuesday from undisclosed causes, according to the Associated Press. He was 70 years old.

As noted at his official site, Law took on roles both big and small, in epic blockbusters and tiny independents, all over the world. He began his acting career on Broadway before getting nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer for playing an endearingly sweet Russian seaman in Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming in 1965. He swiftly moved on to meatier parts in films that later became enduring cult favorites -- Giulio Petroni's Death Rides a Horse, Mario Bava's Diabolik, and, especially, Roger Vadim's Barbarella, in which he played a blind angel.

As his career continued, the overall quality of his films varied wildly, but he could be counted upon for level-headed performances, always looking like a proper dignified gentleman no matter his surroundings. I think my first exposure to him was when he played the title role in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad; he looked very heroic to me as he battled mythical creatures, but I also loved him in Open Season, snapping off words as the nastiest kind of all-American villain. Demonstrating his versatility, both films came out the same year (1974).

We're a few hours late with this report -- and when I say "we" I actually mean "me, Scott" -- but Sundance saps a whole lot of strength from even the most ardent movie freak. With apologies we I now offer you this week's big fat DVD titles ... and a few old-school pieces of ultra-cheese.

Catch a Fire -- Philip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence) goes political again and delivers a fast-paced and very efficient thriller that focuses on the ways in which governments often create the very enemies they're trying to thwart. (Governments are ironic that way.) Tim Robbins and Derek Luke contribute some very fine work. Extras include a multi-filmmaker commentary and a few deleted scenes.

Farce of the Penguins -- From what I've been hearing from reliable sources, this simplistic spoof is way too little way too late. But if you simply must see a movie in which Bob Saget, Samuel L. Jackson, Dane Cook, Jim Belushi, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Lovitz and the rest of the Friar's Club provide raunchy voice-over dialogue for a bunch of innocent penguins, hey, here's your dream come true. Extras include a Saget-track, deleted scenes, featurettes and a bunch of other penguin-related silliness.

Flyboys -- Big-budget derring-do war flick ... that dropped absolutely dead at the box office. (Budget: $60 million / Domestic Gross: $13 million) I've yet to see the movie myself, but I do look forward to giving it a fair shake -- even if that "running across the blimp" sequence looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic anime story. Extras include a Tony Bill / Dean Devlin audio commentary, more than a half-dozen featurettes and some deleted scenes.

Gymkata -- Yes! Mid-'80s kung fu wackiness combined with hardcore Mitch Gaylord gymnastical stuff! I swear this movie's funnier by accident than most comedies are on purpose. Extras include the knowledge that you now on Gymkata on DVD.

Now here's a weird Oscar rule that you probably never knew (I sure didn't): In order for there to be five Best Animated Feature nominees, there have to be at least sixteen eligible titles. The last time this happened was in 2002, when Miyazaki's Spirited Away proved to be the year's best ieffort n animation. (According the The Academy, anyway.)

Warner's Happy Feet, Weinstein's Arthur and the Invisibles and Sony's Paprika have yet to "officially" open, but once they do it means we'll get five nominees in one of Oscars' more colorful categories. (Last year we only had three, and that wasn't as much fun.) In addition to the three mentioned above, the other eligibles are The Ant Bully, Barnyard, Cars, Curious George, Everyone's Hero, Flushed Away, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Monster House, Open Season, Over the Hedge, Renaissance, A Scanner Darkly and The Wild. (What, no Ultraviolet?)

So if you had to pick only five of those flicks (aside from the three we haven't seen yet, of course), what would be your picks as "Oscar material?" If I'm predicting the field, my five picks would be Cars, Monster House, Over the Hedge, Renaissance and A Scanner Darkly. If I'm casting a vote for my favorite: Over the Hedge. Flick made me giggle.

From looking at this weekend's box office numbers, it's quite obvious parents were desperate to get the kids out of the house and into a nice, comfy darkened theater. The animated flick Open Season (starring Ashton Kutcher and Martin Lawrence) topped all with $23 million, while Kutcher's live-action pic The Guardian sank into second place taking home a decent $17.7 million.

Both Kutcher films proved to be a bit too much for Johnny Knoxville and friends, as Jackass: Number Two (last week's number one) slid all the way down to third place with a crisp $14 million. However, I'm sure they're not complaining about a sweet 10-day total of $51.5 million. Not a whole lot of folks were interested in yet another dorky Jon Heder performance ( I know I wasn't), as School for Scoundrels opened in fourth with $9.1 million, and Jet Li's Fearless rounded out the top five with $4.7 million. It's also important to note that The Queen (which debuted Saturday on three screens in NYC) took home a ridiculous $123,000 in just two days, while The Last Kind of Scotland (four theaters in NYC and LA) nabbed $143,252.

Full numbers after the jump.

If the most entertaining thing about your animated kiddie flick is the cool 3-D effects, that's probably not a promising sign. That's the thought that popped in my mind about a third of the way into Open Season, the latest studio offering targeted toward young kids (and their parents' wallets) in a year way over-flooded with animated fare. The one big thing working in Columbia/Sony's favor on this one is that they're releasing the film at a time when there isn't a lot of other competition, and that's probably a good thing for the film and its ultimate box office take.

The film has a basic storyline that a lot of kids will no doubt find appealing: A bear who has been raised by a park ranger with all the comforts of modern life meets a wild-and-crazy deer rejected by his herd, who induces him to party all night on a sugar high, tearing up a store. Because of this, he must be released into the wild, where he will first dislike but eventually bond with the deer, mingle with assorted wild critters (all also cleverly personified) and eventually, work together with them to take down The Man, aka the hunters who have just descended upon their domain because it's, well, open season. Get it?