Sit back and relax, becase the web is still weird. In this week’s viral video collection, K-Fed mocks himself in a clever commercial, The Office and Fight Club get recut, and Tyra Banks throws down the gauntlet with those damn World of Warcraft addicts. Also don’t miss the disturbing audio from a radio contest where a woman died trying to hold her wee for a Wii. Clearly, video games are ruining the world.

K-Fed Fast Food Commercial
The Office: The Drama
Fight Club Recut
Tyra Banks vs World of Warcraft
Kiefer Sutherland vs Christmas Tree
Hold Your Wee For A Wii Contest Audio
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in German
Sasuke Obstacle Course
Worst Hockey Shootout Attempt
Max Headroom TV Pirate Incident
News Report on Those Newfangled Weblog Thingies
Don’t Mess with Tiger Woods
Laughing Baby

Last week on the The Horror Blog’s Weekly Horror Roundtable, Steven posed the question: What deserving horror movies have not yet received a North American DVD release? Film Junk’s own Jay Cheel (and many others) responded with Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps and Monster Squad as two of the most wanted flicks. In fact, there have been some online campaigns to get both of these classic films released on DVD, but now it looks like at least one of them will finally see the light of day in 2007.

Don May Jr. of Synapse Films recently confirmed in an interview with the Deadpit.com online radio show that someone has indeed obtained the rights to Monster Squad. “The Monster Squad is coming out. We’re not releasing it but I can tell you its coming… They’re shooting for an April or May release.” An official announcement has yet to be made, but this is definitely the big news that a lot of fans have been waiting for. Unfortunately it sounds like rights issues are still preventing Night of the Creeps from being released at this time.

Wecome to episode 3 of the Film Junk Versus video podcast! On this week’s episode, we examine the pros and cons in an attempt to decide who reigns supreme, Owen Wilson or Luke Wilson! Two talented young fellas who’ve made a name for themselves for their quirky comedies and long standing memberships in the infamous Frat Pack go head to head in a battle of the ages. Will Luke Wilson’s straight man trump Owen Wilson’s Zoolander side-kickin’, Jackie Chan fish-out-of-waterin’, Wes Anderson collaberatin’ funny guy? Find out the answer in the video below!

Here’s something for the rabid Stephen King fans out there. A trailer has just arrived online for the upcoming film based on his short story 1408, which appeared in his 2000 audio book collection Blood and Smoke (and was later printed in Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales). The story is basically about a haunted hotel room, and the movie stars John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and Mary McCormack. The trailer looks sufficiently creepy, here’s my only problem with it: it reminds me a little of Identity, which also starred Cusack. I’m not convinced that he’s cut out for these kinds of movies. For me he’ll always be the romantic comedy guy (granted, usually in slightly darker such roles) defined by performances like High Fidelity, Say Anything and Better Off Dead. What do you think, is this a movie you want to see? 1408 is directed by Mikael Håfström (Derailed) and opens on July 13th. Check out the trailer now via the link below.

After yesterday’s post about Uwe Boll’s upcoming big screen adaptation of the video game Postal, I’m sure we’re all dying to see a trailer. Well, ask and you shall receive! As expected, the movie looks extremely crass, vulgar and violent, not to mention amateurish and unfunny. It’s a filmmaking disaster of epic proportions, and yet Boll himself seems to think it’s okay because he’s trying to make it bad on purpose. He’s realized at this point that he can’t win, so he might as well just push things as far as he can. But is being extreme really all that exciting anymore? We’ve all seen worse I’m sure. While this will get him plenty of ironic attention on the internet, Snakes on a Plane already proved that just because people think your movie is ridiculous, doesn’t mean they’ll actually pay money for it. But surely you’re curious by now… check out the trailer for Postal below (and prepare yourself for a little Dave Foley full frontal nudity).

Futurama fans were given cause to celebrate last year when it was announced that Matt Groening’s geek-centric animated series was on the verge of being revived. In a story that mirrors the resurrection of Family Guy, strong DVD sales convinced the Fox brass that there was still plenty of interest in Futurama, and that maybe the show deserved another shot. There was some confusion, however, over the exact nature of Futurama’s return. Some reports had indicated that 4 direct-to-DVD movies were in production (as confirmed by Billy West, the voice of Fry), but then there was a story from Reuters that said Comedy Central had picked up the show for 13 new episodes.

This week Rotten Tomatoes posted some quotes from a Matt Groening interview that should help to clarify the situation. It looks like the DVD movies are still happening, but the rumours about a whole new season were not entirely true. After the DVD movies are released, the production team will chop them up to work as separate episodes that will then air on Comedy Central. “Chopped up is an indelicate way of putting it but we are doing them as movies and then we are reconfiguring them and writing new material and narration and this that and the other so that they’ll stand on their own as episodes.” Interesting that they will write new material for them, although the mention of adding narration worries me a bit. Groening also indicated that they would be pushing the envelope a little further with more extreme humour than they would have been able to get away with if the show was still airing on Fox. Sweet, so Bender can finally shoot off his potty mouth the way it was meant to be heard!

After Ice Age: The Meltdown was left off this year’s Oscar nominees list for Best Animated Feature (which is a total burn, by the way, considering they only chose to nominate 3 films), it looks like Fox has not given up on their cash cow franchise. And really, why would they? Ice Age: The Meltdown grossed over $195 million, making it the 7th highest box office earner for 2006. Scroat… I mean Scrat, and his prehistoric friends will indeed return for Ice Age 3, according to Variety. Not much else is known about the project at the moment, but I wonder if they will get someone other than the dudes who wrote Black Knight to pen the screenplay this time around.

I have to admit, I’m a total nerd for stuff like this, so I figured some of you out there might find it interesting as well. I love it when a filmmaker layers their movie in such a way that there are hidden images and references that you don’t catch with a first viewing. For example, Eric at marathonpacks had a great write-up on Inside Man a while back where he caught a direct reference to Abu Gharaib, and recently The Da Vinci Code DVD was marketed with the promise of finding hidden symbols in the film as well.

There have been many more great examples of this over the years, and Rene Rodriguez, film critic for the Miami Herald, has a great post on his blog about hidden X’s that Martin Scorsese has cleverly inserted into The Departed. Now I will agree that in some cases these hidden images can be a fabrication of the viewer’s mind (which doesn’t necessarily make them any less valid), but in this case once you see the frame grabs from the DVD I’m sure you’ll agree that it wasn’t an accident. And before any of you fanboys go accusing Scorsese of ripping off Bryan Singer (he apparently hid a bunch of X’s in the first X-Men movie as well), Rodriguez explains that Scorsese is actually paying tribute to Howard Hawks’ original Scarface, where they were used as “a symbol of impending doom”. Pretty cool stuff.

Not really much in the way of major releases on DVD this week, as Bob Saget’s direct to video “laughfest” Farce of the Penguins hits stores, along with the box office dud Flyboys, The Marine, and new versions of both The Passion of the Christ and The Silence of the Lambs. I do have some interest in seeing Catch A Fire, the drama about terrorism in Apartheid-era South Africa starring Tim Robbins and Derek Luke (which also tanked at the box office). The one must-have title for the week, however, is clearly Half-Baked on HD-DVD.

Farce of the Penguins
Flyboys
The Passion of the Christ: The Definitive Edition
Open Season
The Silence of the Lambs: Collector’s Edition
The Marine
Lucky Louie: The Complete First Season
Catch A Fire
Dallas - The Complete Sixth Season
The Motel
Fandom
Akihabara Geeks
30 Frames A Second: WTO In Seattle
The Comedians of Comedy
Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Fifth Season
Law & Order: SVU - The Third Year
I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Third Season
The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency: Season One
Beerfest (HD-DVD / Blu-ray)
Half-Baked (HD-DVD)
The Wicker Man (2006) (HD-DVD / Blu-ray)
Open Season (Blu-ray)
Flyboys (Blu-ray)
Hart’s War (Blu-ray)

This week on the Film Junk podcast we review Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth, and count down our top 5 worst parody films EVER (sort of). We also discuss this year’s Academy Award nominations, Fox’s empty threat of delaying movie releases in Canada due to piracy, and trailers for Rush Hour 3 and King of California. Plus Jay answers some questions about his documentary, shares his acid reflux dilemmas, and we respond to some of the live discussions on Talkshoe. Grab this week’s episode now via the link below.

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