Cop Out
Directed by Kevin Smith
Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jason Lee, Seann William Scott, Adam Brody, Fred Armisen
Rated R
Release date: February 26, 2010

Cop out — an idiom meaning to avoid taking responsibility for an action or to avoid fulfilling a duty.

Kevin Smith has probably been guilty of “copping out” many times in his life. The question is, “Was the title of his latest film a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan. I’ve seen all of his films, purchased every Evening With DVD, and salivate every time a new episode of his popular podcast (SModcast) is released. That being said I don’t think he’s without his flaws. As an actor/director he leaves much to be desired. On the flip side, as a writer/speaker he is tremendous.

Knowing this, I went into Cop Out with some reservations. This was the first film he’s directed that he hasn’t also written. It’s also the first time working without long-time collaborator/SModcast co-host/producer Scott Mosier and his presence seems to be the heart and soul of a Kevin Smith film. So it was an uphill battle from the start with this movie.

Surrogates
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames, Rosamund Pike
Disney Pictures Home Entertainment
Release date: January 26, 2010

Stick a movie in front of me that features Bruce Willis as a member of Law Enforcement and so help me I’ll watch it. From Die Hard to, um, Live Free Or Die Hard — via The Last Boy Scout and Sin City, among many others — Willis has defined the straight-talking no-nonsense no-shaving vest-wearing law-ignoring cop. Surrogates is the latest Willis movie to hit DVD/Blu-ray — a sci-fi action thriller based on the graphic novel of the same name — and this time he’s a robocop.

In the not-too-distant future most of the world’s population rarely venture outside their own homes. Instead they spend their lives as operators, connected to their stem chairs seeing life through robot surrogates. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling more than 10 years ago, over 98% of the population use surrogates in daily life; they go to work, they do the shopping. Thanks to this statistic, crime in the U.S. is down 99% and all other bad things like racism and sexism have seen a huge decline. Surrogates were initially developed to help disabled people, used only in a medical context. Then costs came down and eventually these robots became affordable to regular people and private use of surrogates became popular.

Surrogates are you, but much better in every way: flawless skin, perfect hair, they cannot be hurt, and should they be destroyed, you can just buy a new one. This is a world populated by only beautiful people. This is life”¦ only better.

Surrogates, based on the Top Shelf graphic novel The Surrogates by Robert Venditti, stars Bruce Willis as a cop in a future where people don’t leave the house. Instead, they interact through the world by using robots or “Surrogates.” But now, someone has found a way to kill the users and Willis has to track down the killer before the whole system collapses.

Surrogates arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on January 26, 2010. To prepare you for the release, we have some facts to pass along to you about Surrogates that you may not know, along with some behind-the-scenes photos from the film.

Filming has begun in for the new cinematic adaptation of the Warren Ellis graphic novel, Red. The Summit Entertainment production started principle photography in Toronto this week, and with a strong cast and crew, it looks to find some of that sought after success in the world of comic book adaptations.

The film’s impressive cast features Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Academy Award®-winners Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ernest Borgnine, John Malkovich, Karl Urban (Star Trek, Lord of the Rings), Brian Cox (Super Troopers, Troy), Julian McMahon (Fantastic Four, Nip/Tuck), James Remar (Dexter, Battlestar Galactica) and Rebecca Pidgeon (The Unit, The Shield).

Not one person was happy when A Couple of Dicks — the first Kevin Smith directed movie that wasn’t also written by him — was forced to renovate itself with the new, family-friendly Cop Out title for marketing purposes. Smith was peppered from all angles, particularly on Twitter where he tries to answer as many fan questions as he can, and repeatedly clarified that it wasn’t up to him; it was up to Warner Brothers. He had been in an epic battle not too long ago when that movie’s backers wanted to drop the “porno” from his Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which he ended up (thankfully) winning.

While speaking to Entertainment Weekly recently, Smith explained the whole ordeal in great detail and laced with sharp expletives in true Kevin Smith fashion. Said expletives were censored in the original article, but I’ve gone ahead and uncensored them, because let’s face it: it’s a lot more fun that way. That means there is a tiny language NSFW warning on this one, kiddies.

Click on over to the other side to read some of the juicy bits we’ve included from the whole dirty thing.