Whoever wrote, "Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan," obviously lived before the Internet was created. Nowadays, we're all too eager to find a fall guy -- either an individual or a group -- on whom failure can be blamed. The most recent example is Terminator Salvation. Our own Jessica Barnes suggested several culprits, including the Internet itself: "Terminator could be a good example of how filmmaking at 'gunpoint' never ends well. It's possible that the leaked ending forced WB's hand to create something different when in fact we should have just let McG do his thing with the original script."

Lane Brown at New York Magazine's Vulture blog takes that idea further, giving odds on four "massively anticipated" movies that will 'have their failure blamed on a director listening to people on the Internet.' Lane lists Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, and Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables as the most likely suspects.

We're on a slippery slope here, because as a dedicated movie site written by hard-core film buffs, Cinematical is inclined to obsess over every little item on upcoming movies, freely offering our strong opinions way in advance, often prompting dozens of different opinions from readers. Personally, I see nothing wrong with filmmakers paying attention to what fans are saying. And if they choose to change their movies based on the opinions of an unruly mob of fanboys, that says more about them than it does about the Internet. What do you think? Should Internet fanboys continue to have their say? Or should we all shut up and wait for the movie to come out before saying anything?

Valkyrie
Tom Cruise wants to kill Hitler. "Worth seeing for its irresistible ensemble of character actors, a handful of really well-crafted sequences, and a truth-based story that simply deserves to be repeated," wrote Scott Weinberg. Directed by Bryan Singer. Available in single-disc and double-disc editions, and also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Kevin James as a plus-sized man in uniform. "Harmlessly humorless, Paul Blart tepidly goes through its motions, but that doesn't mean you have to," opined Nick Schager. Directed by Steve Carr. Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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My Bloody Valentine 3D

Remake of 1981 slasher flick. "Cheesy, corny, gimmicky, gory fun ... low-brow entertainment with high-tech execution," declared William Goss, and I concur. Consider this movie a love letter to horror fans. With Jensen Ackles and Kerr Smith. Directed by Patrick Lussier. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

True Blood: The Complete First Season

Southern Gothic vampire weirdness translated remarkably well to television, despite some wonky faux-Louisiana accents. Not every episode works, yet even the imperfections and blemishes are fascinating to watch. With Anna Paquin. Also on Blu-ray. Buy it.

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After the jump: Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray picks, and Collector's Corner!

Okay, whatever, so the Fanboys premiere is, like, soooo last week, but a friend just pointed me toward this pretty cool video from the evening and I thought you folks might want to check it out. Very rarely do I wish to be in Los Angeles (as someone who grew up in NYC, I'm afraid I'd literally melt if I spent too much time over there), but this premiere -- with its stormtroopers, Jedi knights and good vibes -- looked like a whole lotta fun. And as someone who's followed the uncomfortable three-or-so-year journey this film has taken on its way to the big screen, watching video of the actual premiere was pretty neat.

Our peeps over at Gen Art hosted the premiere, post-screening Q&A and after party, and you'll be able to check out brief snippets of it all below. On hand were Fanboys director Kyle Newman, his lovely wife Jaime King, Sam Huntington, Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell and Chris Marquette. And since you're probably wondering when Fanboys will be arriving in a city near you (it's currently screening in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin), then I'm happy to say that on February 20 the film will be expanding to Boston, Washington DC, Detroit, Atlanta, Denver, New Haven, Orlando, Phoenix, Columbus, OH and Raleigh , NC. So keep and eye out, fanboys (and girls).


Fanboys premiere hosted by Gen Art & The Weinstein Company from Gen Art Film on Vimeo.

I am anything but a rom-com fan (there's maybe one good one a year, by my reckoning), but even I was charmed by the lovely, funny trailer for He's Just Not That Into You. A bunch of genuinely funny people -- Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Long, Drew Barrymore -- in what appeared to be a breezy, clever rumination on romance (that voicemail Goodwin leaves, starting out as a practiced, casual come-on and deteriorating into a panicked digression about how "more women are admitted to law school now than men," made me laugh every time): I wanted to see it. I haven't yet -- the unversally bad reviews dampened my enthusiasm -- but apparently the rest of the country wanted to see it too. The two-hour-plus film won a busy weekend with $27.5 million dollars, beating out a sci-fi thriller, a broad comedy with Steve Martin, and a 3-D animated wonder.

The latter, Henry Selick's Coraline, settled for third with $16.3 million. That may not seem like much, but consider that the film had no brand (with the possible exception of the "from the makers of A Nightmare Before Christmas label) and that the marketing did little to hide its deep-seated creepiness. On the other hand, Push, the gorgeous-but-incoherent sci-fi thriller only managed $10.2 million, a disappointing opening for what could have been at least a minor event film. Blame a crowded weekend and the fact that Summit Entertainment is still a relative newcomer to this whole wide distribution thing.

(We're reposting our SDCC review of Fanboys to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend)

By: Scott Weinberg

Considering how much trouble Kyle Newman's Fanboys has withstood in its travels to the multiplexes, I pretty much expected the flick to be an amiable mess. It's been widely reported that the comedy was plagued by multiple reshoots, numerous release date changes, and a producer who (at least temporarily) wanted to suck the heart and soul right out of the flick. So as I walked into an early preview of Fanboys at San Diego Comic-Con, I was hopeful -- but frankly I wasn't expecting a big winner. But hey, aside from a few flat stretches here and there, Fanboys actually has a lot to offer: Strong chemistry among four funny young actors, a "road trip" conceit that flows along quite smoothly, and more Star Wars references than you hardcore geeks will know what to do with. So what I expected to be a big fat mess of a movie turned out to be pretty dang fun -- quadruply so if you happen to be a Star Wars fanatic.

With the R-rated comedy becoming one of the hottest trends of the past couple years (thanks, in part, to a dude named Judd Apatow), we're starting to see a bunch more creative, down-to-earth (albeit foul-mouthed) comedies hit theaters -- with some, like Tropic Thunder, Burn After Reading and Knocked Up, fighting for awards consideration. But what will 2009 bring? Are we on a similar path as both 2007 and 2008, or will the new year bring back the boring, familiar plot threads and idiotic characters? Here's what we're looking at:

*Film(s) to watch that month
++Apatow involvement
# Best comedy of the year

January: Bride Wars, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, New in Town (Grade: C-)
February: *++Fanboys, He's Just Not That Into You, Pink Panther 2, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss February, Fired Up, *Youth in Revolt (Grade: B)
March: All About Steve, *I Love You, Man, This Side of the Truth, The Accidental Husband, Adventureland, The Janky Promoters, *Monsters vs. Aliens (Grade: A-)
April: The Ugly Truth, *Observe and Report, 17 Again (Grade: B+)
May: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, My Life in Ruins, Next Day Air, *Bruno, Night at the Museum 2, *Up (Grade: B)
June: Land of the Lost, The Hangover, *++Year One (Grade: B+)
July: Ice Age 3, *I Love You Beth Cooper, 500 Days of Summer, G-Force, *++#Funny People, *They Came from Upstairs (Grade: A)
August: Julie & Julia, *Shorts, Dance Flick, Post Grad, Max's Mardi Gras (Grade: C)
September: *Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Grade: B)
October: *Toy Story (3-D), Zombieland (Grade: B)
November: Tooth Fairy, *The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Three Stooges, Old Dogs (Grade: B)
December: Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, *The Princess and the Frog (Grade: B)

So based on early buzz, trailers and so forth, I'd say the best months for comedy in 2009 will be March and July. What do you think about the upcoming slate, and which comedies are you looking forward to the most?

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

Today is a day for celebration, since it seems director Kyle Newman has finally washed the Weinstein stench off him and landed another gig! The Hollywood Reporter tells us Newman will direct an adaptation of the cult comic book Emo Boy, which is described (in tone) as being like Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Maude and Zoolander. From the Amazon description: "Poor Emo Boy- he's unpopular. Unloved. He has no family. Not only does he need to deal with things like pondering suicide and questioning his sexual identity, but on top of that he's got these emo super powers that only seem to bring destruction and disaster, causing everyone to hate him more than they already do. His first love suffers a head explosion, the football team wants him dead, and he got an F in English. No wonder he's so depressed!'

Sounds perfect for Newman, who previously helmed the geek-tastic comedy Fanboys (which is finally set to arrive in theaters on February 6), and almost directed a Revenge of the Nerds remake before that sucker was shut down. I had the pleasure of hanging with Newman and his totally hottie wife Jaime King at Comic Con this past July, and they're both incredibly geeky and very much dedicated to churning out fun flicks. King plays a pretty funny part in Fanboys, and I'm sure she'll show up in some capacity for Emo Boy. No word on production or release date, though hopefully we won't have to wait five years to see it.

We've got another bushel or so of trailers for films just over the horizon. How promising are they? You tell us.

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Dreamworks latest animated feature has a group of terrestrial monsters (a blob, a fish man, a giant bug, a human-sized cockroach/mad scientist and a very tall woman named Susan) fighting off an alien attack. This homage to 1950s sci fi features the voices of Seth Rogen, Will Arnet, Paul Rudd, Hugh Laurie, Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert and looks flat out awesome. It opens on March 27 but I really want to see it NOW.

Pink Panther 2
While it's hard for me to work up much enthusiasm for a sequel to a remake I didn't see which was based on a series that had pretty much run out of steam by the end, Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau does have an endearing charm and I found myself hoping the damn fool doesn't get himself killed falling down stairs, impersonating the pope and brawling with eight year old karate students. Also, this time Inspector Dreyfus is played by John Cleese who I think is one of the funniest guys on the planet. Pink Panther 2 hits theaters on February 6.

Cadillac Records
Set in 1950s Chicago, this one follows the lives of musical legends such as Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf and Elvis Presley, with a cast that includes Beyonce Knowles, Adrien Brody and Mos Def. Cadillac Records comes out on December 5.