Everyone loves a great underdog story (Rudy! Rudy!); and the story of Canadian heavy metal band Anvil is one of the better ones we’ve seen as of late. Their documentary, Anvil! The Story of Anvil has received almost purely raving reviews (98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), and has re-entered the band into the public eye, where they surely deserve to be.

In their re-acquired fame, the band — consisting of Steve Kudlow, Robb Reiner, and Glenn Five — have found themselves playing festivals and shows again, recording a new album, and appearing on many different popular talk shows. Better yet, they’ve apparently even netted themselves another movie gig: a cameo appearance in Seth Rogen and Michel Gondry‘s The Green Hornet adaptation. As it turns out, Gondry is one of the many fans of the band and brought them in to film a brief scene where they actually explode while playing a rock club — likely to be the work of a villain that the Hornet will have to pursue and apprehend. [...]

The Gold Box deal of the day over at Amazon today is The Christopher Reeve Superman Collection DVD box set for only $26.99 (that’s 61% off the list price of $68.98).

That’s less than seven bucks per movie! A great deal, especially since the first two movies come with lots of bonus features. See details below.

The collection includes the four Superman movies which starred Christopher Reeve as the title superhero: Superman – The Movie, Superman II, Superman III, Superman IV – The Quest for Peace [...]

The sonic fury of a film’s soundtrack is integral to its lasting presence. The soundtrack to Drew Barrymore‘s Whip It is a furiously beautiful compliment to this potent and rousing coming of age film. Barrymore understands the importance of a film’s soundtrack. She understands how vital the musical component is to the film. All one has to do is read her note that she wrote for the soundtrack album:

“Music is the soundtrack to our lives, and when you put music and film together, it is a powerful combination.”

“This soundtrack is my mix tape for you.”

Drew Barrymore gets it. She understands the relationship between music and film. While watching the film, I would crack a smile as songs by The Breeders, Tilly And The Wall, The Ramones, The Chordettes, Dolly Parton, Peaches, and many others would blare out during the film’s many magical and cathartic moments. A good soundtrack is essentially an awesome mix tape. Drew Barrymore understands this all too well for her directorial debut.

The Whip It soundtrack is not the only great mix tape this year; the soundtracks for (500) Days Of Summer and Inglourious Basterds are incredible mix tapes as well. As far as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds goes, his choices of music from Ennio Morricone scores and other film scores is never to be messed with under any conditions. I doubt I will ever be able to listen Nick Perito’s “The Green Leaves Of Summer” without thinking of the opening credits of the Tarantino film. The other tracks on the album are just as powerful. It’s Tarantino’s magical energy to take another film’s music and make it his own. His soundtracks for all of his films are the perfect mix tapes for cinephiles — not only do we want to discover where the music comes from, we want to discover the actual films. Marc Webb’s (500) Days Of Summer may be the finest mix tape since Zach Braff’s Garden State and every Cameron Crowe film, especially the soundtracks to Almost Famous and Singles [...]

The Plan is the new Battlestar Galactica prequel that fills us in on some of the storylines that we’ve seen, but from the other side of the fence: the Cylons’ point of view. The movie is directed by Admiral William Adama himself (Edward James Olmos) and will feature most of your favorite stars and characters. A teaser trailer for the movie was released a while back (and has since been pulled), but now you can see the new trailer for the show right here!

Back in August, Olmos appeared on Attack of the Show and pleaded with the fans to make sure that they purchase the movie when it comes out on October 27, 2009, because if it sold around 350,000 to 500,000 copies in its first day of release, we would see “many plans” (Read: Could Big Numbers For ‘The Plan’ Mean More ‘Battlestar Galactica’?). No one knows what exactly this means, but one would assume there’s a lot more DVD movies like this to be made if the success keeps flowing. [...]

At the end of last month, the entire soundtrack for Spike Jonze‘s Where the Wild Things Are by Karen O was up to listen to free of charge (Read: New ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ Images Set To The Full Soundtrack). You can still head over there and listen if you have not yet done so (it’s very good), and now you can peek at an equally good little video showcasing the making of said soundtrack.

The feature talks about how Jonze always had Karen O in mind for the music, and how her work with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs always had a that childlike innocence to it. You’ll see the movie’s young star, Max Records, in the studio to do some small voice recordings for the tracks; a peek a what looks like a really beautiful snowy scene using a Daniel Johnston (The Devil and Daniel Johnston) cover song; as well as their use of a children’s choir in some of the recordings. [...]

Legendary Pictures has obtained the rights to turn Gravel into a feature-length film adaptation of the popular comic series from Warren Ellis and Avatar Press. Ellis himself will be credited as an executive producer on the film, and he will handle the first draft of the script so that future draft writers will have a solid template to work from.

Gravel — which began in 1999 under the name Strange Kiss — follows Sergeant Major William Gravel, a British SAS soldier who is something of a modern day Mage, with skills in the dark arts of magic. Gravel is a hired hand who makes his living job-to-job from various client contracts to take on supernatural beings using his special abilities.

Warren Ellis is one of the most popular comic book writers out there today. He’s done work for both Marvel and DC comics, among many others, and is responsible for titles like Transmetropolitan and Planetary. He’s also branched off into the world of novels, with his title Crooked Little Vein. [...]

In honor of Leif Erikson Day today, which observes the Viking explorer’s achievement of being the first to bring over Europeans to North America (and also commemorates the first immigrants to come to the United States from Norway in 1825), I thought I’d bring your attention to Neil Gaiman‘s latest U.S. release Odd and the Frost Giants, a cute little tale inspired by traditional Norse mythology.

Right now, HarperCollins has posted the first chapter of the book online for free, so which I suggest you take advantage of that by checking out the widget here below.

The novel contains illustrations by Brett Helquist, best known for this artwork in the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events books. There’s also the audio CD.

Both of these are going right on my Wish List for sure (for those of you wondering what I want for my upcoming birthday, there you go). I’ve been wanting to get my hands on this story since I heard about it early last year when Gaiman offered it up for World Book Day 2009 in the UK and Ireland [...]

The whispers around town indicate that Spider-Man 4 writer Gary Ross is currently in discussions with Sony to write, and maybe even direct their planned spin-off movie, Venom. The movie has already had multiple drafts written, including one from Zombieland writing team Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Ross plans to finish up his scrip for Spidey 4 and then move right into the Venom project. All indications so far is that all things we’ve seen from the character will be thrown away, and that this movie will start all over again — including re-casting the role once filled by Topher Grace in the forgettable Spider-Man 3.

Gary Ross hasn’t written a ton of things, but what he has done are all pretty fairly well-known and respected works. His credits include the Tom Hanks classic, Big; presidential comedy, Dave; the Tobey Maguire double-feature of Pleasantville and Seabiscuit (which will help with Spider-Man 4); and the upcoming monster movie reboot, Creature from the Black Lagoon. [...]

In honor of the fact that I’m about to go get rocked at tonight’s KISS concert at New York’s Nassau Coliseum, I thought I’d pass along the news that Mars Direct Inc has created a special KISS® Blend of their popular M&M’s candy.

All four current members of the rock band — Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer, and Eric Singer — each have their iconic KISS in make-up faces on the colorful chocolate candies.

The MY M&M’S® KISS® Blend features four customized packages and is available for a limited time only, exclusively at Walmart locations nationwide with a suggested retail price of $6.00.

KISS is pretty much known to stamp their name and faces on anything that will make them an extra buck (hence the reason why they’re still rolling in it 35 years after their musical debut). They even have a KISS Koffin! So, adding their faces to a popular candy is not so shocking [...]

Not too long ago, word came out that Danny Trejo (Con Air, Desperado) was the first name to be cast in Predators — the new reboot directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez and his Troublemaker Studios. That news was immediately followed up by a script review that filled us in on all of the dirty details, as well as the many cool and exciting characters that we would see battling to survive the vicious creatures in the movie (Read: Script Review Of Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Predators’ Reveals All Kinds Of Juicy Details; Our Dream Cast Shared!). With one swift blow, the majority of the actors who will be filling these excellent roles has now been revealed, and while they are not the part of the fantasy cast we put together, there’s not denying that it’s an interesting group.

The list of names includes Academy Award winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist, King Kong); Topher Grace (Spider-Man 3, That 70s Show) is currently in negotiations; Alice Braga (City of God, I Am Legend); Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (The 4400, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Walt Goggins (The Shield, Shanghai Noon); and former UFC star Oleg Taktarov (Bad Boys 2, 15 Minutes). [...]

Hopefully by now most of you have gotten a change to watch one-hour episode of The Office “The Wedding,” which aired last night and finally saw Jim and Pam tie the knot. But, if you haven’t, now’s your chance!

Below is the episode in full in two parts: Niagara, Part 1 and [Niagara, Part 2]. Also, there’s a clip of just the actual wedding ceremony called “Forever,” which is a MAJOR SPOILER if you haven’t seen the episode yet. My favorite parts are with Dwight (I spit my drink out and nearly choked at his part!) and the other one with Kevin.

It was a great episode all in all, hilarious in most places, heartfelt in others. It’s one of those episodes you can watch over and over again and still laugh your ass off. I can’t wait for the DVD to see the deleted scenes for this one, because I’m sure there’s much more goodness that had to be cut for airing.

More SPOILER talk [...]

When I was growing up, I just loved it when my favorite TV couple would finally get married and just couldn’t want for the “wedding episode.” (Remember when Joanie and Chachi on Happy Days finally got hitched? Loved it!)

The NBC sitcom The Office has already had one successful on-screen wedding — that of Dunder-Mifflin saleswoman Phyllis to refrigerate mogul Bob Vance [Vance Refrigeration] (see TV Recap: The Office: Phyllis’ Wedding).

There were a few other wedding misfires, but tonight, supercouple Pam and Jim are finally going to get married in tonight’s special 1-hour episode on NBC at Thursday 9/8c.

Check out here below the wedding episode promo, along with a video of behind-the-screens footage and a ton of preview clips from tonight’s episode; there’s also Pam’s video blog [...]

The soundtrack for Twilight: New Moon hits stores on October 20 featuring artists such as Muse, Death Cab For Cutie, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and The Killers.

The video for Death Cab for Cutie’s “Meet Me on the Equinox” has been released and it contains exclusive footage from New Moon. Watch the video, which shows the band performing cut with scenes from the upcoming film, here below.

Vanity Fair recently interviewed a few of the lesser-known bands on the soundtrack [well, lesser known to me at least] — Sea Wolf, OK Go, Bon Iver, and St. Vincent — asking each performer if they knew during which scene their song would appear, along with other questions about their career and their thoughts on Twilight.

Some of the musicians did know where their songs would appear; one in particular — Sea Wolf’s “The Violet Hour” — will be during a house-party scene. (We can guess which house party this is, right?) [...]

We’re now officially in October and the 30th is only right around the corner. On that day, we will finally get the sequel of the decade: Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, and there’s a buzzing excitement in the air we breathe! To fuel this excitement, Sony has released an official poster, a few new images to peek at, as well as the new Green Band trailer for all to see. The first and only trailer that we saw was of course the Red Band trailer that was released last month, so this new trailer is the first safe for work look at the movie.

The trailer is basically the same as the Red Band offering, but there are differences and there’s definitely some new shots we haven’t seen yet, making it absolutely worth watching in full oogle-eyed fashion. The poster can be seen at the upper-right (click for full size) and it’s the high quality version of the poster that we’ve seen photographed at conventions. [...]

Anyone still watching Heroes?

If so, it looks like Sweeps week is coming a bit early this Fall for the NBC drama with this Monday’s episode featuring the first kiss between Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and her roommate Gretchen (Dawn Olivieri).

If you’re not watching the show, then head’s up, lesbian kiss this Monday at 8 PM on NBC.

Isn’t the lesbian kiss so 1990′s? I guess girl on girl action never gets old, does it?

Check out here below for a sneak peek of Claire and Gretchen’s first kiss, along with the synopsis for this Monday’s episode “Hysterical Blindness.” [...]

As you might have noticed, the homemade looking ghost movie Paranormal Activity is on a mission to rule the world with ours and many others’ support (Read: Help Needed NOW! You The Fans Can Get ‘Paranormal Activity’ The Wide Release It Deserves!). That movie was Oren Peli‘s first ever movie as a director, but it has not taken him a long time to line up a second job that will run in the same circles as his first work.

The trades are reporting that Peli will make a movie called Area 51 in which a group of three teens decide to grab their video camera and head to the infamous and mysterious Nevada desert location that is so renowned for its tales of alien species crashing and being stored there. That is about all that is known of the project, but as you can assume, what these three will surely document is some unbelievable footage of alien beings that may just get out of hand in a hurry. Paranormal producer Jason Blum will return for this project, and the budget will be a massive $5 Million. That may not sound like much in the world of movies, but remembering that Paranormal only cost $11,000, you can only imagine what Peli will come up with. [...]

If you’re into entertaining podcasts and great interviews, then you need look no further than Movie Geeks United on BlogTalkRadio. One of their popular offerings is called the “Director Series” where they focus on some of the greatest directors ever to exist, their careers, and their lives. One of the recent interviews that they did is for their show will look at perhaps the most controversial director we know: Roman Polanski.

As you all know, Polanski was recently arrested in connection to infamous 1977 case which convicted him of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Because of these stunning developments, the interview — which was conducted hours before news of Polanski’s arrest was reported — looks to contain some very interesting information, and perhaps some new layers to the chaos.

Hosts Jamey DuVall and Geeks of Doom’s own Jerry Dennis spoke to a multitude of people, including Brett Ratner (Rush Hour); Bobbie O’Steen, the wife of Roman’s late editor, Sam O’Steen (Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Frantic); cinematographer William A. Fraker (Rosemary’s Baby); and critic Keith Uhlich. They will also refer back to a 2008 interview that they had with Marina Zenovich, director of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. [...]

It’s being reported that a new movie in the National Lampoon series is now on the way, but it’s not quite the mindless processed generic college movies they have been making the last few years. No, this movie actually isn’t involved with the National Lampoon name at the moment, and will bring us right back to their roots with those lovable simpletons, the Griswold family. This new movie is planning to actually focus on the son in Vacation and its sequels, Rusty, and his family now going on a road trip of their own with references to his old family adventures. Wacky hijinks are sure to ensue.

New Line Cinema is currently meeting with writers to get a script going as soon as possible, and it is noted that places will be left wide open for the main draw Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife (Beverly D’Angelo) to appear in some fashion as the now grandparents. The movie is aiming to be more like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Little Miss Sunshine instead of other road trip movie trash like and Are We There Yet? and RV. [...]

Paranormal Activity is one of those rare little indie movies that catches fire and goes on to make a legend of itself, very much like 1999′s The Blair Witch Project. Unfortunately, when a movie is this small, it’s difficult for them to acquire the funding to get a wide theatrical release, if they can get into theaters at all. The movie only cost an astoundingly minuscule $11,000 to make, and was so low-budget, that the studio was once planning to just remake it, but due to the massive reaction to it as is, it could now become something truly special. Right here and right now, we the fans of movies have the chance to help get this new film that’s terrifying audiences all over the place into theaters all over the country as it deserves, instead of just a handful of limited locations like New York and LA.

Here’s the deal: all you have to do is DEMAND the movie in your area by clicking the banner below. You’ll be transported to another site, where you simply enter your zip code, and click the button to demand it, and *poof* that’s all it takes. Ta-da! Paranormal Activity is currently creeping up toward 430,000 demands, so they’re almost half-way home, but with still a long way to go. If we all make this demand and tell all of our friends, then we can all have a little tiny hand in possible history. [...]

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil
Directed by Sacha Gervasi
Starring Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow, Robb Reiner, Chris Tsangarides
Release date: October 6, 2009

In the big hair and spandex-filled summer of 1984, a huge music tour took Japan by storm. A collection of the world’s biggest metal bands like Twisted Sister, W.A.S.P., Scorpions, Whitesnake, and Bon Jovi were on the bill. Also sharing the stage was Anvil, a young band gaining notoriety and respect thanks to their incredible musicianship and a lead singer who enjoyed playing his guitar with a dildo. After this tour the bands involved continued their ascent to rock stardom each selling millions of records and playing sell-out tours. All, that is, except Anvil. For them it didn’t work out and never again would they reach those heights.

In Anvil! The Story of Anvil metal icons like Scott Ian (Anthrax), Slash (Guns n Roses), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), and Lemmy (Motorhead) talk about how highly they rated Anvil. In the early 80s, Anvil was the band they wanted to emulate, the band that made them perform better, and afterwards the band that they couldn’t believe didn’t make it. But, as Lemmy says here, “You’ve got to be in the right place at the right time.” Anvil never was. After Japan Anvil could have given up playing, content to live off their 15 minutes of fame, ready to tell the grandkids about that brief moment in time they were rock stars. But no: In the decades since, the band has continued to play live shows, record albums and attract new fans. Anvil! The Story Of Anvil documents the band as they continue to try and ‘make it’ and record their 13th studio album, This Is Thirteen [...]