The digital movie rental of the day over at Amazon today is The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp in this Hunter S. Thompson tale, for only $.99.

This deal is valid through today, Wednesday, April 18, 2012, until 11:59pm PST. Once you activate the rental through Amazon’s Instant Video on demand service, you’ll have access to the movie for 24 hours. If you’re interested in purchasing the digital version, the cost is $13.99.

Also, if you’d like to own a physical copy of The Rum Diary, the Blu-ray Edition is available for $17.99 while the DVD is $15.19. The Blu-ray edition is part of Amazon’s “Buy This DVD and Watch it Instantly” program — you get the film as a FREE digital rental you can watch immediately when your purchase the physical copy.

Actress and filmmaker Vera Farmiga, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in 2009’s Up in the Air as well as films like Orphan and The Departed, has signed on to play singer/songwriter Christine McVie in The Drummer, a biopic of the late musician and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, for director Randy Miller.

McVie and Wilson were in a relationship from 1979 to 1981, but McVie was forced to break things off because she couldn’t deal with his alcoholism. Wilson died from drowning two years later.

The last time I set foot in the Science Museum of Virginia’s IMAX Dome theater was sixteen years ago. It was a laser light show set to the music of Pink Floyd. That was also the first time I can recall seeing anything on an IMAX screen outside of school field trips, but those were also memorable experiences to be sure.

Last night I went with my friend Mark to see the much-talked-about prologue from next summer’s The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy. I managed to snag a pair of free passes to see it last Friday from the Operation Early Bird site that had been set up as part of the film’s viral marketing campaign. Before that happened the news was that despite the presence of several impressive IMAX screens in my hometown, the prologue would not be screened anywhere in Richmond. The IMAX Dome at the Science Theater is said to be the largest movie screen in the state. Imagine my surprise when this amazing opportunity arose and I had the foresight to not pass it up.

Battle: Los Angeles
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
Staring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, Ramon Rodriguez
Rated PG-13
Release date: March 11, 2011

As Battle: Los Angeles begins, we meet Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart). He is an older soldier, and at the start of the movie, decides that his best years are behind him, and chooses to retire. As fate would have it, he has one last mission, and he is assigned to a group of Marines led by a young Lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez). Unfortunately, that last mission involves aliens invading and the possible end of mankind. The rest of the movie deals with the Marines trying to rescue some civilians while fighting the alien menace.

Battle: Los Angeles tries to be a combination of Black Hawk Down and District 9, but unfortunately, it never reaches the levels of either. To be fair, I don’t think it was the creator’s goal to make as deep a movie as those two are. It seems like they just wanted to make a cool alien invasion movie, and in that they succeeded. The movie has a pretty fast pace, and never slows down for too long, meaning that I didn’t ever lose interest in what was going on. The CGI is decent enough; director Jonathan Liebesman and his team chose to use a lot of smoke to obscure the effects a little. You very rarely get a good look at the aliens, and they’re never really established as a threat, other than having superior firepower, but even then, the aliens can be taken down with modern human weaponry.

Sony Pictures has posted the Super Bowl TV spot for their upcoming film Battle: Los Angeles online.

Watch the commercial here below.

Battle: Los Angeles is directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and stars Aaron Eckhart, Bridget Moynahan, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena, and Adetokumboh M. Cormac. The film hits theaters on March 11, 2011.

A new trailer for the upcoming alien invasion movie, Battle: Los Angeles, has been released, and it may be even better than the one we saw back in November.

From what we’ve seen so far, this movie is setting itself up to be one of the most fun and intense movie-going experiences of 2011, and people are sure to flock to this type of cinematic thrill ride.

Battle: Los Angeles is directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and stars Aaron Eckhart, Bridget Moynahan, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena, and Adetokumboh M. Cormack.

You can read the synopsis and check out the crazy new trailer by clicking on over to the other side now!

One of the movies that was relatively unknown but grabbed a lot of attention at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con 2010 was director Jonathan Liebesman‘s (Darkness Falls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) alien invasion movie, Battle: Los Angeles.

The movie is supposedly presented in real-time, following a team of Marines as they enter into a zone of Los Angeles that is under attack by aliens. It’s been compared to movies like Independence Day and District 9 mixed with a lot of Black Hawk Down. It stars Aaron Eckhart (Thank You For Smoking, The Dark Knight), Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar, Machete), Bridget Moynahan (i, Robot, Lord of War), Michael Pena (Crash, Observe and Report), and Ne-Yo (Stomp the Yard, Red Tails).

You can make your way down below now to read the short synopsis for Battle: Los Angeles and take a peek at the new trailer. It certainly has a lot of potential, but when it comes to alien invasions they’ll really have to wow us.

If you haven’t heard about a movie called Battle: Los Angeles, fear not: not a lot of people knew much about it going into Comic Con this year. During the panel for the movie, however, many quickly became more acquainted with it.

The real-life Battle of Los Angeles took place in 1942, a few months after the surprise Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor forced the United States to enter World War II. In the late hours of February 24, a light appeared in the skies over L.A. and many thought that it might be the Japanese making another attack. It was eventually realized that no one was attacking them, but some conspiracy theorist went on to call it an encounter with a UFO spacecraft. It was later determined to all be a big case of “war nerves,” and that the “aircraft” was actually just a weather balloon…as most UFOs are dubbed.

Battle: Los Angeles is a movie that takes that situation and turns into an actual alien invasion on Los Angeles. The film will be presented in real-time from the perspectives of the Marines as the encounter and battle unfold.

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been a few months since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

We must once again declare that this list is also simply opinion. You are are without doubt going to find movies here that you hate and do not think deserve to be included. You will surely think of movies that you think should not only be on here, but that should be at the very top of the list. There will even be some that I have not seen and thus, can not add. Even at this very moment, I sit, worrying and wondering if I’ve forgotten any that I would include; that’s just the way things fly when compiling something this massive.

With all of that said, we invite you in to relax and check out Chapter IV our list, The Decade List: The 59 Best Films of the Past Ten Years!

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been a few months since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

We must once again declare that this list is also simply opinion. You are are without doubt going to find movies here that you hate and do not think deserve to be included. You will surely think of movies that you think should not only be on here, but that should be at the very top of the list. There will even be some that I have not seen and thus, can not add. Even at this very moment, I sit, worrying and wondering if I’ve forgotten any that I would include; that’s just the way things fly when compiling something this massive.

With all of that said, we invite you in to relax and check out Chapter III our list, The Decade List: The 59 Best Films of the Past Ten Years!