Mars Attacks!
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring Jack Nicholson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Natalie Portman, Jack Black, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening, Glenn Close
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Release Date September 7, 2010

If anything can be learned from Tim Burton‘s Mars Attacks!, I believe it is this: Any movie that is based off a card game is not headed to anywhere good.

You can pretty much gather the plotline of the movie just by reading the title, but just for sake of the review, let’s go through the basics. When UFOs are discovered flying toward planet Earth, The President and Washington’s top scientists debate on what their next course of action should be. Believing that the visitors are a friendly bunch, the President sends our military to greet them as they land. With the whole world watching, aliens show their true colors and they don’t appear to be in the mood to give hugs. Now, as Mars attacks, it will take an unlikely hero to step up and defend the Earth from being destroyed.

Well, the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards were just handed out, and the winners and losers are now here for us to talk about.

The popularity and integrity of the Globes has consistently declined over the years as it became apparent that those who were voting were typically voting based on popularity and not so much on those who are deserving (a trend among awards shows, it would seem). Still, these are the awards that set the table for the big one, the Academy Awards, and what we can start to expect when those are handed out.

The show was actually better than it usually is. Ricky Gervais was a brilliant host, and even though he likely pissed a lot of people off with his edgy humor, it will be impossible to ignore the positive feedback you will hear from his job this evening. The awards played out as expected with a few pleasant surprises and the typical sickening winner from time-to-time.

For those of you who missed the Golden Globes or just didn’t watch them, click on over to the other side to see a rundown of highlights to seek out on YouTube and low points to avoid. Also to be found below is the entire list of nominees, with the winner in each category in bold if you don’t care and just want to peek at who won.

The list of nominees for the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards were announced earlier today, and you can check out the whole list below.

The Globes aren’t the most respected of all awards ceremonies (not that many…if ANY are these days), but they are good for one important thing: Academy Awards potentials. Many of the nominees and winners of Golden Globes will go on to land Oscar nominations as well, so movie fans watch with sharp eyes.

Just a glance over the list of nominees, you can see why so many people have trouble taking awards like this seriously. There’s a select group of movies that feel like they’re given these nods just because of their status and not due to their quality. These movies could in fact be the very best of the best this year — I do not know for sure — but when you see films like Nine which hasn’t even been released yet getting so many nominations, you scratch your head, especially knowing how much love musicals get JUST for being musicals. Or maybe even Avatar grabbing a massively unexpected nod in the Best Motion Picture Dramas category. Hopefully the majority of these are indeed the most deserving of the honor, and may the best films win.

Head on over to the other side to see the entire rundown of Golden Globe nominees and please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

By Stephanie G

102 Dalmatians
(2000)
Directed by Kevin Lima
Starring Glenn Close, Ioan Gruffudd, Tim McInnerny, Eric Idle, Alice Evans
Walt Disney Pictures Home Entertainment
Release Date: September 16, 2008

Many sequels fall under the pressure of their predecessors. Disney made a great attempt to try and recreate the magic of the first 101 Dalmatians live-action film by re-casting Glenn Close, whose portrayal of the villain Cruella DeVil brought the first movie great success. Unfortunately, this film proved that only her performance was worth watching.

102 Dalmatians begins with the puppy-loving Ella, who has been rehabilitated from her evil puppy-hating ways and gets out of jail on parole. In order to acclimate back into society and to serve as a classic bit of comedic irony, she decides to save a dog pound that is threatened by eviction. Unfortunately her rehabilitation trance doesn’t last for long, with the sound of Big Ben, she snaps out of sweet kind Ella and turns back into the fur-obsessed Cruella DeVil.

I must say this movie definitely tops the wardrobe department from the last film. With the theme centered around fashion, it gave the costume designers a great opportunity to push the limit on what they could create using only black and white. Cruella’s wardrobe, which changed practically every five minutes, did keep me entertained and eager to see what she would be wearing next.

101 Dalmatians
(1996)
Directed by Stephen Herek
Starring Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Joan Plowright, Hugh Laurie, Mark Williams
Walt Disney Pictures Home Entertainment
Release Date: September 16, 2008

In this 1996 Disney offering, the studio dug into their animated back catalog to make a live-action version that was very faithful to their 1961 hit 101 Dalmatians.

As with the original, Roger (Jeff Daniels) and Anita (Joely Richardson) are thrown together when their dalmatians Pongo and Perdy fall in love and then play matchmaker with their owners. The foursome soon become a happy family living in their cozy London flat, with Perdy expecting puppies. Unfortunately, the evil, eccentric Cruella DeVil (Glenn Close) wants the puppies for herself so she can make a fur coat out of them. When Roger and Anita refuse to give her the puppies, Cruella resorts to getting her henchmen to abduct them.