"And then people will ask why I have a picture of President Garfield on my wall, and I'll tell them it's because I like lasagna, of course!"

I've been watching all the buzz surrounding Smiley Face for some time now, following two positive reviews from both Monika (at Toronto) and Jette (at SXSW), and yet the film still couldn't find its way to theaters (with the exception of a limited run at New York's IFC Center). Part of the reason why I wanted to review the DVD was because, after all the wonderful feedback, I needed to see for myself why, in fact, Smiley Face was not worthy of a theatrical run. Aside from a great, marketable cast (including Anna Faris, Adam Brody, John Krasinski, Danny Masterson, Jane Lynch, John Cho, Danny Trejo, Brian Posehn and friggin' Carrot Top), the flick comes with a very funny script, some great edge-of-your-seat set pieces and plenty of memorable quotes (see above). So what gives? Why is this one heading straight to DVD (tomorrow), instead of enjoying some theatrical face time?

Well, the problem probably lies in the fact that it's a straight-up, unapologetic stoner comedy ... with the words 'cult following' written all over it. With its R rating (for foul language and massive amounts of drug use), Smiley Face would've been near impossible to market to a mass audience. That said, they could've cut together a "safe" trailer, and I imagine the critics would've liked this one -- so either the money wasn't there or First Look just didn't have enough faith in their product (it is a female-driven stoner comedy after all -- and those are rare). Dazed and Confused grossed only $7 million when it was first released in 1993, but the film has gone on to reach cult status among teenagers (that DVD was passed around like a joint back when I was in college). It's my belief that, while Smiley Face will probably not reach Dazed and Confused status, it will definitely find an audience on DVD and perhaps go down as the first great stoner comedy of the new millennium ... or at least give Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle a run for its money.

Name a trilogy with no weak link: OK, Star Wars, sure. Lord of the Rings, obviously. Back to the Future? Sure, I dig the third one too. But as the years go by I really hope that Universal's Bourne trilogy achieves that sort of shelf life, because after the last several hours rediscovering the movies, I'm convinced it's one of the best trilogies ever made. The first (The Bourne Identity) was damn good, the second one (The Bourne Supremacy) was even better, and this third one (The Bourne Ultimatum) is now my favorite of the bunch!

Here's some thoughts from my theatrical release review:

Keeping things brief and spoiler-free, here's the plot: We pick up mere seconds after the conclusion of Supremacy, and if you thought the treachery ended with the demise of Ward Abbott (Brian Cox), then you probably haven't seen that many spy movies. Bourne's latest pursuer is CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), who gives chase once Bourne is located trying to give a sympathetic reporter some crucial information. From there it's another supremely satisfying series of chases, escapes, brawls and betrayals. (And of course the filmmakers were smart enough to find something interesting for series regulars Joan Allen and Julia Stiles to do. Both women are quite excellent here.) For his part, Strathairn is as great as always, here displaying a Dustin Hoffman-ish weasel in authority. Other newcomers to the series (Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney) add a lot to the mix, but I don't want to give too much away here...

As you're no doubt aware by now, I'm a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. At this point, you either love the series or you're completely disinterested in the franchise, so I'm guessing this DVD review is meant for the "already fans." We'll start off with some material from my original review of the film, then some thoughts after my second third time with the flick, and then we'll finish off with a blow-by-blow on the DVD goodies. (The DVD hits the shelves on December 4 in a solo-disc or dual-platter format. This review covers the two-disc special edition, which is scheduled to go "into Disney moratorium" as of September 2008.)

Sometimes the big-time franchise makers are damned if they do and damned if they don't: Churn out a skimpy "Part 3" that just rehashes what was offered in Parts 1 & 2 and you've got something vaguely entertaining but clearly inferior like Shrek the Third. Try too hard to jam too many arbitrary plot threads and flimsy characters into your third entry and you're stuck with a lurching behemoth like Spider-Man 3. And then you have the middle ground: The sprawling, gorgeous and massive adventure epic Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which while far from a flawless film, aims to stay faithful to its predecessors while still upping the ante (a lot) with a boat-load of new plot developments, characters and surprisingly nifty subtext. Yep, this particular popcorn movie runs almost three full hours, but if producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski had produced a quick-buck 92-minute third chapter, then the complaints would be legion. You can't win. Except at the box office, obviously.

"Art challenges technology, and technology inspires the art. That's it in a nutshell the way we work at Pixar." John Lasseter

For anyone who's ever enjoyed a Pixar film, or even a cartoon for that matter, might I suggest adding the newly-released Pixar Short Films Collection Volume I to your DVD library. Aside from receiving 13 Pixar short films, there's an excellent behind-the-scenes feature that takes you through those early days at Pixar; how they went about making those first short films -- the long hours, the sleepless nights, the skimpy paychecks -- to how their entire lives changed when Disney called and requested they take a gamble on their first feature film. That film, of course, turned out to be Toy Story. And the rest is history.

And that's exactly what you get with this DVD: A Pixar history lesson. It's best if you, like I did, start out with the bonus documentary on Pixar, featuring folks like John Lasseter and his Pixar crew who take you through what it was like back in the mid-80s to be introducing a new kind of computer animation to the world. The kind of animation that talked, spoke and engaged the audience. Originally, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company that sold their Pixar Image Computer to government agencies and the medical community. Lasseter was the only animator on staff, and the entire crew would spend days, weeks, months creating these tiny short films they would preview at trade conventions to pimp their product. Problem was, the Pixar Image Computer didn't sell. These shorts made no money (even though they won Oscars), and some considered it a waste of time. Eventually, the Pixar animation department struck a deal to create some commercials for outside parties. Following the commercials, they wanted to make something small; a half hour made-for-TV movie. However, Disney called ... and they said screw the TV movie -- if you could make something 30 minutes long, you could do 90 minutes. Thus, a $26 million, three-picture deal was struck and Toy Story was born.

When it comes time to nominate the best actress performances of 2007, Angelina Jolie might be overlooked. Though the film is at times confusing as it rushes to release all the facts without much of an explanation, it's Jolie's take on the real-life widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), Mariane Pearl, that ultimately lifts A Mighty Heart up above some of the other "based on a true story" flicks that have hit screens in the past year. Featured in practically every scene of the film, it's hard to take your eyes off Jolie -- and it's hard not to lose yourself in the character, the real-life woman, who spent weeks holed up in a house awaiting word on her kidnapped husband while doing what she could to track him down herself.

By now, we all know the story and the outcome: On January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Kirachi, Pakistan while heading to what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani at the Village restaurant in Kirachi. At some point he was intercepted by a militant group calling themselves The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, and for the next month, a group of people (including Pearl's wife Mariane, his friend Asra, a Pakistani Captain, the FBI and others) use the house they were staying at as a make-shift headquarters as they attempt to hunt down the men responsible and find Danny before it's too late.

Yep, there's actually a movie called Transmorphers, and it slides into "select" video stores just in time for the theatrical release of Transformers. Some call it copy-catting at its most shameless, some opt to call it fortuitous timing ... and most people will never even hear of Transmorphers, aside from the hardcore movie geeks and the curious 14-year-olds of the world. Produced by the outfit that gave you The Da Vinci Treasure, Pirates of Treasure Island and Snakes on a Train, Leigh Scott's low-low-budget Transmorphers is (of course) unquestionably, obviously and in all ways blatantly BAD ... but here's the key question: Is it any fun?

Everyone has several different definitions of "fun" and one of mine is this: A cheap knock-off turkey that mixes the giant robots of Transformers, the sexual politics (and uniforms) of Starship Troopers, the hero of Pitch Black, the subterranean existence of The Matrix, the post-apocalyptic struggle of The Terminator, a whole bunch of arbitrary emo angst borrowed from Battlestar Galactica, and about fifteen other components from sci-fi flicks as varied as Serenity and Jason X. It's a weird and grungy little concoction, but between the florid bouts of soap opera whatnot and the special effects that fondly remind one of Land of the Lost -- there's definitely enough here to warrant an 83-minute visit, but (seriously) only if you're well-versed in the art of bad cinema. There's enough bad acting, ripe writing and chintzy production design to fill three Uwe Boll movies, but like the works of that particular master, there's something brain-twistingly amusing about the whole goofy affair.

Bob Clark was really all over the place as a director. The guy who brought us the likes of The Christmas Story, Black Christmas and Porky's is the same man who later gave us a helping of Baby Geniuses. Go figure! Today marks the bittersweet release of Porky's: The Ultimate Collection, a box set of Clark's sexy, adolescent look at the fifties. While it has been nearly two months since his death at the hands of an errant car, it has been twenty-five years since the boys brought Porky down.

The crowning glory of the set is the original Porky's -- an interesting mixture of laughs, sexiness and social consciousness. Clark wiped away the sappy, sugary sweet world that the 50's was usually painted in, and revealed an innocently risqué center that sometimes soars with goofy hilarity and sometimes seems aged and dated. On the one hand, it's hard not to laugh as you see the beginnings of Samantha in Kim Cattrall's sex shouts, eager boys sitting naked butt cheek to naked butt cheek in hopes to get a taste of Cherry Forever and Balbricker grabbing on to the penis with a mole. On the other hand, there are the tired scenes in between, many of which happen when the film dips into its namesake. I wonder how much funnier this film would've been without the whole Porky revenge scenario. In these moments, the film unfortunately flounders like an old, aged dud.

If you're a big fan of superhero movies, you better have a little extra cash to spend on certain Tuesdays, because one of the studios' favorite marketing gimmicks is this: They'll release a well-stocked DVD of, say, Spider-Man 2 a few months after its theatrical run -- but they'll leave some of the cooler "deleted scenes" back in the vault. Then a few years later when, oh I dunno, Spider-Man 3 is about to hit theaters, they'll jam those deleted scenes back into the movie, and then release a DVD with a label like "Director's Cut," "Extended Edition," or (if they're really clever) "Spider-Man 2.1." It sounds like a pretty tacky way for a movie studio to wring a few extra clams out of its loyal fans, doesn't it? Perhaps. But what if the new version actually ... makes a damn good movie even better?

You have to take these things on a movie-by-movie basis, of course, but in the case of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2.1, the eight extra minutes of "new" footage does a lot for the flick: It strengthens the relationships between Peter Parker and his two best friends, it adds a few moments of levity to the proceedings, and (yay!) it actually adds a few fresh moments of high-end mayhem! (I won't spoil the specifics, but if you liked the "train battle" and the "bank robbery brawl," then you're going to really enjoy the new extensions.)

At a little under three hours, The Good Shepherd isn't exactly the perfect film to watch in a movie theater. Aside from its running time, the pace is somewhat slow, the characters often whisper to one another, the timeline jumps back and forth -- between the late 1940's and the early 1960's -- on several occasions, and most of the dialogue consists of CIA code-speak. That said, it's definitely a fun film to figure out. And, now that it's available on DVD, folks can settle down in the comfort of their own living rooms, and pause or rewind as needed. Trust me, if you miss even the tiniest line of dialogue, there's a good chance you'll need to go back. And then back again. Yup, this one's a thinker.

Essentially, the film is a character study -- it spans twenty years in the life of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), one of the first members of a newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency (or CIA). When we begin, it's 1961 and Edward is one of the key players involved in a little plan to rid Cuba of Fidel Castro (later referred to as the Bay of Pigs invasion) -- a plan that would ultimately backfire on Edward due to a mysterious intelligence leak. When a photograph winds up underneath Edward's door, along with a taped conversation that may or may not reveal who was behind the leak, Edward and his team pick apart both picture and tape piece by piece until, eventually, it reveals a truth no one (including the audience) was ready for.