In a move that surprises no one who has seen the massive success of the Twilight franchise, the final installment, titled Breaking Dawn, will be split into two films to further milk all the money they can out of the franchise before the stars realize they would like to eventually be taken seriously in Hollywood. Not only that, but Summit has promised two “high end” directors for each of the films, which will be shot back-to-back starting in October. Who do you, Film Junk readers, think Summit means by “high end”? Are we going to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Breaking Dawn Part 1?

Cold Souls
Written and Directed by: Sophie Barthes
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, David Strathairn, Katheryn Winnick, Lauren Ambrose

What is a soul, and how does this soul define us as human beings? That is the central question in the low-budget film Cold Souls, written and directed by Sophie Barthes. The film stars Paul Giamatti (part of the Oscar Snub Club with Sam Rockwell) as, erm, Paul Giamatti who is in the midst of rehearsals for the Chekov play Vanya. Feeling overwhelmed, overburdened, and unable to work, he is looking for any solution to help this problem.

He finds it in an article in The New Yorker, which tells of a place that removes the soul from a person. Intrigued, Paul visits the company, which is run by Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), who tells him that a person’s soul is not just an abstract idea as originally thought; it is an appendage to the body, much like a spleen or a kidney and can be removed with ease. Although uncomfortable with the idea of this procedure, Paul’s desperation causes him to have his soul removed, and he comes face to face with the notion that his soul is nothing more than the size of a chickpea. He has it stored at the facility until the run of Vanya has ended, but when he returns to retrieve it, it is gone.

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Valentine’s Day, the ensemble romantic comedy starring Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, and a whole bunch of other people, is four days away from being released, but New Line is already planning a follow-up. Titled New Years Eve, the movie will undoubtedly encompass a whole bunch of different stories set around New Year’s Eve and will probably end with the ball dropping. These are not spoilers mind you, that’s just human logic being put into place.

With the success of Love Actually, and more recently He’s Just Not That Into You, these type of ensemble films are starting to pop up more and more, in an attempt to grab at what’s left of the theater-going public. Is this a good idea? Time will tell, but let’s see just how well Valentine’s Day ends up doing/being before any of us make a snap judgment.

Avatar, which just passed Titanic as the highest money earner in film history (if you ignore inflation, of course), is already being pirated: the DVD screener for this film has been leaked online, but for what purpose I don’t know, considering everyone in the history of mankind has already seen it. The screener isn’t in 3D, nor is it in high def, nor is it on a giant movie screen, and I echo the statements of Lane Brown when I say that it is not worth even looking for or checking out.

If you want proof, click the link to the article on Vulture and check out a screen cap of this pirated version and judge for yourself. Plus, with the visual aspect gone, what’s the honest point of watching it?

With Netflix already starting to be policed by the movie companies (Warner Bros. just created a 28 day window between the release of a DVD and its availability to be rented), the new kid in town Redbox is now in the crosshairs as well. Retailers Wal Mart and Target have recently put a limit on how many copies of a DVD can be bought by a single person. The limit has been set to five, but the retailers each have a different time frame for how long this will be enforced (Wal Mart for 28 days, Target for a week). By doing this, they hope to… well, I’m unsure really.

According to /Film, in theory, it would stop someone from buying a whole bunch of DVDs to put into the Redbox system — but if three Redbox employees each buy five copies, then it doesn’t really do anything. Russ Fischer’s idea of the same employee going to several different stores on the same day also negates this limitation being put into place.

I do understand retailers fear of Redbox: at one dollar a day for a rental, it is quite cheaper than purchasing a DVD and probably slows down a person’s penchant for an impulse buy. However, in an age where people can torrent films and can buck the system however they choose, imposing a purchasing limitation is not going to help in the slightest. Plus, people who are true film nerds (this is where I raise my hand) will still buy the DVDs. If Wal Mart and Target really want to hurt the new Redbox system, they should kick them out of their stores, decreasing their visibility. Then again, I would assume they get a kickback from whatever Redbox makes, so this strikes me as something more to appease movie companies and get them to stop complaining for a little while.

Adam
Written and Directed by: Max Mayer
Starring: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving

Adam is an interesting movie, a mix of both quirky independent romantic comedy and a serious character study that helps inform people about the trials and tribulations of the form of autism known as Asperger’s Syndrome. Hugh Dancy stars as the title character, a man who faces being alone after the death of his father. Unable to connect on a social level with others, he spends his time by himself, repeating the same activities and wearing the same clothes over and over, and throws himself into both his job at a toy company and his love of space.

One day, he runs into Beth (Rose Byrne), his new neighbor at his apartment complex, and the two begin to hit it off. Beth, having just gotten out of a relationship with a horrible excuse for a human being, is drawn to Adam because he is nice and honest (and “hawt”). Adam is scared at first, because of his disorder and is afraid to tell her, but still falls for her regardless. Finally, he spills the beans and while Beth is unsure, she enters into a relationship with him anyway. As happy as they are, the hurdles of dealing with Asperger’s are still there, as well as the disapproval of Beth’s father Marty (Peter Gallagher), who is having troubles of his own that threaten to destroy Beth’s family.

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Pornography, the gift that keeps on giving, will finally be brought into 3D if Caligula director Tinto Brass has his way. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he is currently in the pre-production stages of a 3D erotic film, Italy’s first 3D film of any type, saying that the “time is right” for a film of this genre to be put into the third dimension.

To be completely honest, and alienate any female readers this website might have, this is officially the coolest idea in the history of mankind. I have never seen Caligula but I’ve heard stories and if this makes it stateside, I will definitely check this one out. I just feel bad for the ushers of whatever theater this ends up in… they are going to need a lot of paper towels. 3D porn? Are you in or out?

Conan O’Brien, who just had his last episode as host of The Tonight Show last Friday, is back in business with NBC… kind of. NBC has picked up an hour-long pilot produced by Conan’s production company, Conaco, called “Justice” (not the actual name yet, just a codename for now). The show’s premise is about a Supreme Court Justice who quits the courts to start his own legal practice.

Apparently when it comes to business, the “late night wars” do not matter and while it’s good that Conan’s company sold a pilot, I personally would have thought he would have shopped it somewhere else… possibly to a station that didn’t crush his dreams and almost ruin his career. I pose this question to you, Film Junk readers: if you were Conan, would you have sold a pilot to the network that treated you that badly, or would you have stuck it to the man and shopped it somewhere else?

Vince McMahon knows no bounds. After failing with his own football league and bodybuilding league, he has been trying to break into the mainstream entertainment industry with his own film company, WWE Studios. If you have had a chance to watch any of these movies, I apologize… unless it happened to be The Condemned which was awesome.

The latest announcement, posted on AOL earlier today, concerns an entirely new medium: television. Santino Marella, an over the top comedy act with a heavy Italian accent, is going to be the subject of a new sitcom. The show, which also stars WWE stars Beth Phoenix (who will play his girlfriend, much like she did on Monday Night Raw) and Vladamir Koslov, will first start off on WWE.com and then will be shopped to other networks.

I know wrestling isn’t “cool” anymore, but Santino Marella is one of, if not the most, entertaining parts in the WWE and provides comedy skits that are actually funny (unlike, say, everything else they try to do). I’m intrigued and so should you be! The first few episodes will be shot over the next couple of weeks and will begin broadcasting on the site probably not long after that.

If you were one of the five people to have seen Grindhouse in its entirety at the multiplex, you obviously remember the fake trailers that supplemented the film and gave it that realistic feel. One of these trailers was for a fake film called Machete, which starred Danny Trejo as a man who is out for revenge in the bloodiest way possible. Turns out Robert Rodriguez loved the idea so much that he independently financed and directed the full-length feature!

After a bidding war between six studios, 20th Century Fox has won the right to distribute the film. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, each of the studios were shown 15-30 minutes of the film and the bidding started at $9 million. Apparently Fox really liked what they saw and outbid the rest, but it could also just be a way to butter up Rodriguez who is working on the Predator relaunch for the studio. The deal also includes a production deal with Rodriguez, so if he feels like making one good movie for every two crappy kid-friendly films like he usually does, Fox will be there to profit off of it.

I won’t lie, I’m excited to see Machete; I dig gory fun films, but I would have rather had Werewolf Women of the SS get the full-length treatment instead, especially if Nicolas Cage reprised his role as Fu Manchu!

Hollywood loves its reboots, and the Mortal Kombat series is the latest to get the greenlight to reinvent itself. Warner Bros. Pictures is in talks with Oren Uziel (whose script Shimmer Lake made the 2009 Black List of great unproduced screenplays) to pen the new installment.

If you were a kid (especially a boy) growing up in the ’90s, I have no doubt that you saw both the 1995 film and its sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. While the first one was halfway decent, the second one was such a disaster both box office-wise and creatively that the third film was never produced, despite rumors over the past decade of its existence.

This new installment could in fact bring some legitimacy to the franchise and start it off on the right foot, or it could be another Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Time will tell; at the very least, let’s hope they have the hindsight to make this one R-rated and actually go forward with the violence that made the game series so popular through out the 1990’s.

Brian Taylor, one half of the action film mastermind duo Neveldine and Taylor, recently confirmed in an interview with The Film Stage that the third installment in their Crank film series has a “good chance” of being in 3D. While that is the plan, he also said not to expect that film for another year or so, as he and his partner are concentrating on different projects (the DC Comics adaptation Jonah Hex, which he and Neveldine wrote, will be released in June) and would like to make one or two films before they go back to the series that put them on the map.

Considering how well 3D films did in 2009 (Avatar should be crossing the eleventy billion dollar threshold by the time you read this), I would say that the chance of this happening is at an even higher percent now that 3D has gone from a novelty to something that is financially viable. The work of Neveldine and Taylor has set the action film bar at a height that no one in recent years has been able to jump and if anyone deserves to have their films rake in that precious 3D cash, it’s these two geniuses. Plus, if Jason Statham is popping out of the screen, there is a good chance you’ll be able to get your girlfriend to actually sit through something worth watching and that’s worth it right there.