Wilnervision!

… I’m off at a screening of “Grindhouse” this morning, and then there’s this funeral that will, unfortunately, take up most of the afternoon. But oh, am I looking forward to “Grindhouse”.

Yeah, the Tarantino thing’s gonna be all kinds of self-referential fun and Edgar Wright made one of the fake trailers, but Robert Rodriguez has finally made a zombie picture, and that is going to rock, I just know it.

Anyway, that’s not a topic for discussion until next week, so let’s turn the focus back to what you can see right now. Not all reviews were online at press time, but I’ll fill in the links as they go up. UPDATE: Done!

“Blades of Glory“: Will Ferrell does another of his arrogant idiots, but pairing him with Jon Heder in a figure-skating movie is a stroke of genius; ditto for casting Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as their evil rivals. If “Dreams are when you’re asleep” doesn’t become a catch-phrase in my lifetime, well, I will have failed this movie.

“Congorama“: I was a huge fan of Philippe Falardeau’s first feature, “La Moitie Gauche du Frigo”, but he really missed the mark with this comedy-drama about two men — one Belgian, and one Canadian — who share a life-changing encounter in rural Quebec. Yes, it’s ambitious and convoluted, but it’s ambitious and convoluted in a way that does nothing but serve its own ambition and convolution. Plus, it’s kind of boring.

“The Host“: Giant monster terrorizes Seoul, and Bong Joon-ho makes the best movie of the year. It was pretty much the best movie of last year, with the possible exception of “Children of Men” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”. I’ve written about it plenty — and I write plenty more in today’s Sympatico/MSN movie column — but it all amounts to the same thing: You need to see this one as quickly as you can, with the largest crowd possible. This must have been what it felt like to see “Jaws” in the early summer of 1975.

“The Lookout“: Scott Frank’s directorial debut (after writing “Dead Again”, “Get Shorty”, “Out of Sight” and some of “Minority Report”) is an intelligent reworking of “After Dark, My Sweet” with a dash of “Memento”, and wouldn’t feel out of place alongside either one of those terrific neo-noir exercises. And this Joseph Gordon-Levitt kid? He’s the real deal.

“Meet the Robinsons“: About a third of this Disney CG adventure is a triumph of production design and character work — specifically, anything with chrome on it, and anything involving the Bowler Hat Guy. The rest of the picture is a frenetic jumble of ideas and images, some of which look like they’d be really interesting if the movie could slow down long enough to explore them. On the other hand, if it slowed down too much, we’d all realize it’s just “Back to the Future” told from Doc’s point of view. Anyway. Bowler Hat Guy is awesome.

“Radiant City“: Gary Burns and Jim Brown look at the problem of urban sprawl in this fascinating work of cinema, which I think I would have totally enjoyed even if I wasn’t inclined to agree with every one of their conclusions. (Yeah, I know, lawns are fine, but I really like living within walking distance of fourteen coffee shops.)

“Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey“: Wanna watch my video of my fantasy baseball league’s trip to Cuba with the legendary Bill Lee? Okay, this documentary about the pitcher-philosopher is a little more polished than that — they interviewed some of his contemporaries, and got a couple of journalists to provide additional context — but not by much. Lee’s going to be at the Bloor tonight for the premiere screening, if you’re a fan.

Well, that was my week, anyway. And now is the time for the zombies.

So it’s going to be like this, is it?Sony touts its Blu-ray sales numbers on “Casino Royale”, and Toshiba pops out an “oh, yeah?” press release listing 70-odd new HD-DVD titles coming in the next three months from various studio partners — including such Universal gotta-haves as “Streets of Fire”, “The Bourne Identity” and my beloved “Shaun of the Dead”.

With Toshiba slashing prices on its current players, and a budget-priced Chinese machine hovering not too far in the future, does this mean HD-DVD is rallying for a final stand? Is that even possible?

As the comments on the relevant Engadget post demonstrate, we’re way past respectable debate here, but I honestly have no idea how this will play to the partisans. Too little, too late? Or “plenty”, but still too late? There are a lot of Blu-ray players out there now, even if they do look like gaming machines.

And: Yes, I must own “Streets of Fire”. Let me have my bliss.

Let’s start with “Seven”, which is the number of reviews that are, due to various complications yesterday, still to be written.

And then let’s consider “Ten”, which is roughly the number of hours I have to finish them. Thus, this morning’s very short post.

But here’s another: “Fifty thousand”, which is the number of Blu-ray discs of “Casino Royale” sold in the title’s first two weeks of availability, requiring another fifty thousand to be shipped to stores.

As Engadget HD points out, it took eleven months after the launch of the standard DVD for its first title to ship 100,000 units (”Air Force One”, in January 1998); Blu-ray has crossed that rubicon in only nine.

I don’t have any numbers for top-selling HD-DVD titles, but I suspect that the impending “Matrix Trilogy” sets will tell us how many people remain committed to the format as of May 22nd.

Slouched out to darkest Mississauga this morning for Disney’s 3D screening of “Meet the Robinsons”, and found myself in an outtake from Gary Burns and Jim Brown’s upcoming suburbia study “Radiant City” — an almost entirely deserted cluster of big-box stores, where people (myself included) wandered through the fog towards the only things that seemed open — the movie theater, a Tim Horton’s, a Starbucks and the theater.

You know the opening reel of the “Dawn of the Dead” remake? Kind of like that, but with fewer filters.

My traveling companion on this one was friend and colleague Adam Nayman, and one of the things we talked about was Peter Bart’s recent Variety piece on how the success of “300″ and “Wild Hogs” is proof of the growing chasm between moviegoers and critics — or so Bart thinks.

The whole thing proceeds from a false premise, of course: As Jim Emerson points out in this post to his invaluable Scanners blog, the first-weekend grosses of a movie don’t actually tell you how many people enjoy a movie. They just tell you how many people went to see it. It’s an indicator of interest, not approval.

Here’s an example: Remember when “The Blair Witch Project” laid waste to the box-office in the summer of 1999? Try to find someone who admits to liking it now. (I mean, besides me.) But “The Sixth Sense”, which opened just a couple of weeks later, so thoroughly permeated popular culture that M. Night Shyamalan became a household name.

Large numbers of people saw both films. But only one attracted a return audience. I suppose you could argue that “Blair Witch” doesn’t really demand a second viewing the way “The Sixth Sense” did, but people don’t go back to see a movie they didn’t like.

Anyway, Emerson says it all quite eloquently — and make sure you check out the comments section, too — and I have seven reviews in various stages of unfinishment. Time to get on it.

I’ve written about the sado-porn thing before, and I’m sure I’ll write about it again … but as these movies go, “The Hills Have Eyes II” is a particularly unpleasant exercise in empty torture.

Here’s my Metro review.

At the risk of sounding old and farty — and I honestly believe I’m neither just yet — what’s the appeal of these movies? They’re not scary, or aesthetically interesting; they just line up the idiot victims and let the bad guys pick them off one by one. And as an extra dollop of cruelty, this one throws in the threat of monster rape … way to go, Mr. Craven.

I mean, I can’t seriously make an argument for the enduring quality of the splatter movies I watched as a teenager — including the original “Hills Have Eyes Part II”, to which this movie bears almost no resemblance — but a few of them actually worked as horror, using the aesthetics of film to create tense and suspenseful movies with characters you hoped you’d see survive.

This new wave of splatter — stuff like “Hostel” and “Turistas” and especially the “Saw” films — just exists to celebrate the mechanics of slaughter, as graphically as possible. There’s no sense of play, no sense of joy, no sense of artistry; it’s product, pure and simple.

The only recent release I can pull up as contrast is Alexandre Aja’s “Haute Tension”, an elegant and giddily stylish salute to 1970s horror films which — even if the final flourish had you curling your lip in a dismissive sneer — is undoubtedly a work of cinema. It’s alive and engaged from the first shot to the last, with a level of psychological depth and narrative momentum entirely absent from the sado-porn genre.

Aja’s reward for building a genuine thriller? He got to make last year’s “Hills Have Eyes” remake, which has neither depth nor momentum. But it established another hot horror property, which supersedes every other concern.

Score one for the machine.

Okay, that’s surprising — I’d have picked “Shooter” to win the box office this week, but nope: The top spot goes to “TMNT”, with a $25.45 million take. I guess there was something to my weekend Sympatico/MSN piece about Eighties nostalgia, after all.

Other interesting news: “300″ continues to be a monster, grossing some $20 million in its third weekend to come in at number two, and audiences would rather watch a crappy horror movie than see Adam Sandler find his smile again. Not really sure whether anybody wins on that one, though.

Not because I didn’t like “The Hills Have Eyes II” — look, mutants killing idiots is all well and good, but as mutants-killing-idiots movies go, this ain’t a good one — but because I can write stuff like this for my gig as a Sympatico/MSN movie columnist.

Side note: They’re putting my name in the URL now. I am a frackin’ brand.

Side note to side note: Is anyone else totally stoked for the “BSG” season finale tomorrow night? My money’s on Gaeta being exposed as one of the Final Five — whether he was conscious of it or not, his subversive actions on New Caprica helped the fleet get back to the search for Earth, serving the greater Cylon purpose … since it certainly seems to me that using the human race as a bloodhound to seek out the Thirteenth Colony is crucial to their vaunted Plan.

See? I know too much.

It’s insane, isn’t it? Nine movies opening, and eight of them going wide?

That’s the biggest dump we’ve seen in a while, but I’m right on top of it. The only movie I couldn’t review was “The Hills Have Eyes 2″, which Fox Atomic declined to screen in advance.

But if you want to know what I thought about the other movies …

“Air Guitar Nation“: For those about to pretend to rock, I salute you. Although there’s some question as to whether they’re only pretending to rock … after all, as Vonnegut’s “Mother Night” taught us, if one pretends to be something long enough, and well enough, does one not actually become that something? Anyway, never mind, Alexandra Lipsitz’ scruffy documentary is totally awesome, and the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.

“Amazing Grace“: In which Mr. Fantastic convinces England to abolish the slave trade. (Well, he is supposed to be fantastic.) Yes, Michael Apted’s biopic about William Wilberforce is, at its heart, just another movie that looks at the plight of black people through the eyes of their outraged white saviors … but Steven Knight’s script is a little sharper than you might expect, and the cast — which includes Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Gambon, Albert Finney, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds and Romola Garai — is in top form.

“The Last Mimzy“: Bob Shaye, moonlighting from his regular gig as the head of New Line, goes all Spielberg with this family adventure, heavily influenced by “E.T.”, about a brother and sister who discover a box of weird toys and wind up holding the future of all humankind in their hands. It throws out a lot of ideas that are never followed up — both kids getting smarter, the sister being some sort of Buddhist ideal, and so forth — and the whole thing smells like Otto’s jacket, but at least Rainn Wilson gets to play a normal person for a change.

“Pride“: Terrence Howard straps himself into the Inspirational True-Life Sports Movie machine to play Jim Ellis, who founded an African-American swim team at a crumbling Philadelphia recreational center in 1974 and became a force for change in his community. It’s a good, wholesome story … and this movie is dedicated to telling that story in the most banal and conventional way imaginable. Way to go.

“Reign Over Me“: Mike Binder is America’s answer to Roberto Benigni, once again gloms onto an unpleasant topic in order to give his hacky script the sheen of respectability. With “The Upside of Anger”, it was spousal abandonment and bereavement; here, it’s 9/11, as experienced — apparently exclusively — through Adam Sandler’s ruined widower. Nothing against Sandler, or his co-star Don Cheadle, both of whom give Binder their all. It’s just that they’re trapped in a terrible, terrible movie.

“Sharkwater“: I know Rob Stewart; he was my cameraman on a number of interviews I shot for Tribute TV a few years back. He’s a nice guy, smart and resourceful, and he really should have stuck to his original plan of building a meditative underwater documentary. The more time he spends on the adventures he had making his movie, the less time he spends on his intended subject. The underwater footage is gorgeous; there’s just not nearly enough of it.

“Shooter“: Mark Wahlberg glowers his way through all two hours and eight minutes of this slick but pointless action-thriller about a sniper framed for murder. It’s “The Fugitive” meets “The Bourne Ultimatum”, directed by an attention-deficient sadist! Seriously, somebody’s got to sit Antoine Fuqua down and explain why shooting people in the head is only an effective motif if their deaths have meaning, especially in a military context, and … nah, you know, he delights in women being brutalized and puts a dog through a glass window. F*ck him.

“TMNT”: Yep, that’s the on-screen title. (Rhymes with “mint”.) If you were wondering when someone would get around to using CGI to place the Turtles in their ideal context — running around New York, skateboarding through sewers and fighting giant monsters, with Master Splinter sitting at home trying to find “Gilmore Girls” on the Tivo — well, wonder no more. Good, dumb fun, and extra points for getting Larry Fishburne to narrate the prologue in full Morpheus mode. (No Metro link yet, apparently.)

Catching “The Hills Have Eyes 2″ this afternoon. Apparently this one’s about soldiers who run afoul of everyone’s favorite torture mutants. I shall bring candy.

Breaking news, sort of: “The Matrix” is finally coming to high-def DVD … and through a scheduling quirk, it’s format-exclusive.

As reported on The Digital Bits and Engadget HD, Warner Home Video has announced that it’ll be releasing the “Matrix” trilogy to HD-DVD on May 22nd, with a Blu-ray release to follow later in the year.

Will this provide the edge HD-DVD has been looking for? The “Matrix” films would be a stunning high-def experience … although it seems that Warner releasing them exclusively as a boxed set would work against them in any format, as I’m one of the few people who’d happily sit through the sequels again.

Paramount surely ran afoul of the same problem with their “Misson: Impossible” trilogy box last fall — seriously, who needs “MI2″? — which is why the first two films in that series are being released separately … on May 22nd.

Whoa.

Yep, there it is: Engadget reports Toshiba will be lowering the list price of its HD-DVD players as of April 1st, with the base model, the HD-A2, now sporting a suggested $399 sticker price.

This news arrives just a couple of weeks after Sony’s announcement of its $600 Blu-ray player, and exactly one week after Sony’s exclusive Blu-ray edition of “Casino Royale” became the first high-definition title to make it onto Amazon.com’s top 25 DVD sales list. (It was selling at #17, right behind the standard DVD edition at #16.)

The comments sections of various blogs are arguing over whether the price drop is a sign of desperation, with Toshiba making a last-ditch attempt to grab the cheapest end of the market, or a calculated strategy to paint Blu-ray players as needlessly expensive and exorbitant by comparison. (Even the 20GB version of Sony’s PlayStation 3 is still going for $500.)

But will it make any difference? With only a handful of A-titles being released on HD-DVD in the coming weeks — and Universal’s “Children of Men” and “The Good Shepherd” being the only ones you won’t be able to buy on Blu-ray as well — it’s looking more and more like the format war might be in its final throes.

Of course, we all know how much “final throes” predictions are worth these days. And as long as “Children of Men” is only available on HD-DVD, I’m gonna need something to on which play it …