First of all, this movie isn’t being remade by Roland Emmerich or someone like that. No, this is being done by the man I often refer to as “the most badass filmmaker of our time,” Werner Herzog. When this guy makes documentaries, he goes to Antarctica with just a cameraman or hangs out with freaking bears. It’s safe to say that with a history of casting ensembles for his narratives consisting entirely of dwarfs, or the famous mental institution patient Bruno S. (who supposedly needed several hours of screaming before he could do a scene), working with Nicholas Cage should not have been an issue for Herzog. Well…maybe still a little bit of a challenge, honestly.

Secondly, this movie apparently isn’t a remake of that aforementioned Abel Ferrara 1992 cop-drama. Herzog said in an interview with Defamer, “I have no idea who Abel Ferrara is.” If you don’t buy that story, why don’t you do a little side-by-side comparison of the two trailers.

They really couldn’t look more different. The Herzog version, coming out this Friday, has Cage going completely and utterly mad, which is nothing new to Herzog films. You can look forward to imaginary iguanas and a good amount of intentional comedy, both of which are elements which have no place in the original version in the slightest. It’s going to be wonderful when it comes to Angelika this Friday, and it’s been given rave reviews according to everyone’s favorite fruit-related review system, Rotten Tomatoes. Go see it. What else are you going to do with your life? Watch the new Twilight movie?

Seeing wide-release movies in Manhattan is generally a degrading and frustrating experience. Paying $12.50 to pile into the Regal Union Square, squeeze into a cramped seat, and end up with a lap covered with grease-splattered Cheezy Pretzel Bitez (I’ve been a victim. The shlemiel tripped. Nary an apology) is less than ideal. We’ve rounded up the best ways to score free passes to advance movie screenings in NYC—it’ll ease the multiplex pain, you’ll be ahead of the movie curve, and your wallet will thank you.

New York Observer: Free Reels

The Observer provides an ideal effort-to-free-stuff ratio: as soon as you sign up for the mailing list, you’re automatically notified for each upcoming screening. Fire off an email request for tickets, and you’re good to go. Free Reels caters more toward the indie-film crowd. Expect films like Away We Go, Whatever Works, or the latest Michael Moore flick.

NYCFreeMovieScreenings

Avoid signing up for the weekly newsletter—the real way for get passes is constant checking of their listings, which are updated pretty often. Films tend to be on the more mainstream/lowbrow side—I’ve snagged passes for Zombieland, Paranormal Activity, and The Fourth Kind, to name a few.

Director’s Series with Jeremiah Newton

Your Tisch film friends are your ticket to seeing fantastic free screenings at Cantor complete with director appearances. Easily my favorite was this summer, when I saw The Hangover a solid three weeks before its release. Zach Galifianakis, everyone’s favorite bearded baby-masturbator (see above), made a surprise appearance at Cantor with director and Tisch alumni Todd Phillips. To get in on this action, you can convince a Tischie to set up a filter that forwards all of Newton’s emails to you, email Newton yourself, or bookmark the calendar at the Tisch website to check the weekly offerings.

So hello, NYU. I want to play a little game. It’s high time for your innovative minds to rally together and find a use for Saw. Some experts have thought of taking the crossover route, but why not go all the way with this sick perversion of a Rube Goldberg project and make it into a reality show hosted in the dark dungeons of Bobst? I don’t know about you guys, but I’d be pretty psyched to watch America’s Next Top Horrible Mutilation.

Think of the drama that might ensue when Mike has to bite off Debbie’s arm when he’s clearly been flirting with Susan all week. Debbie cheekily announces to Susan as Debbie starts to go weak from blood-loss, “I’m not here to make FRIENDS; I’m here to..oh God, why am I here?” Then, when you’re looking at the cover of People while you’re waiting for the 6 train to arrive, you’ll easily be able to recognize Reality “stars” based solely upon which limbs they’ve had amputated.

Personally, the best option I’ve heard to far is to take the Saw series where all the best ideas go, while simultaneously tapping into a major market Saw hasn’t been able to rope in yet: small children. That’s right, we’re talking about Saw: The Animated Series. Why mess with the success of this method, which has worked so fantastically well on other movies? There’s potential for it to be educational as well. “Today’s show was brought to you by the number two!” So, fellow students, any ideas? You have two minutes until your computer automatically begins playing Creed. Make your choice.

The Avery Fisher center in Bobst Library has 68,000 music and spoken word recordings, 24,000 video recordings, and one hot, hot piece of recorded sex. That’s right: the Fisher’s got a copy of “Deep Throat” (subtitle: “How far does a girl have to go to untangle her tingle?”).

How far indeed.

I’m a little surprised as to why this audio-visual gem isn’t kept in the “Treasures of New York University” shadow gallery, but I guess it’s reassuring enough that it’s currently “On Shelf” just one floor up.

Kind of gives new meaning to those personal viewing stations, doesn’t it? I guess we’re getting our money’s worth (by the way, the call number is DVD 11344 for all of you academically curious readers). But seriously, does anyone think that this is a worthy addition to the collection of knowledge at our great University? Personally, I think it makes our Private Institution in the Public Service seem a bit more like a Public one in the Private Service.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Photo by Flickr user Uncinefilo used and modified under a Creative Commons license.

Summer is almost officially over, and with it, so are most of the blockbuster movies guaranteed to melt our brains with mindless montages of explosions and boobs. But don’t completely give up hope – summer still has one last gasp in it. Make sure you check out these awesome fall movies for one last round of laughs before Hollywood gets down to Serious Business for awards season.

The Informant (9/18/09): Finally, Matt Damon is in a movie that isn’t a variation or repetition of The Bourne Identity! Instead of being a badass former government agent, Damon plays a hapless, morally confused FBI informant in what is sure to be a hilarious success.

Where the Wild Things Are (10/16/09): If seeing a childhood classic brought to life on the silver screen isn’t enough to convince you to see this (and if it isn’t, you clearly have a heart of stone), then perhaps the awesome soundtrack, written with help from the gorgeous Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, will. Giant lovable monsters AND indie rock cred? Do you really need better reasons?

Zombieland (10/2/09): Remember Adventureland? Remember how Adventureland sucked? Well, Zombieland is Adventureland done right – mostly because movies automatically improve once zombies are added. Zombieland also comes complete with the same awkward kid (Jesse Eisenberg) from Adventureland, this time is a performance that’s actually funny.

Surrogates (9/25/09): Bruce Willis saves the world. Again. This is really the only thing you need to know about Surrogates, but if more information is necessary, watch the trailer embedded below.

Avatar (12/18/09): I’m not sure Avatar the movie will be any good – probably not; the trailer is absolutely bizarre – but the CGI is supposed to be amazing. The movie itself might make for a good laugh. James Cameron spent ten years making this thing, and yet it still looks like a freakish cartoon. Maybe you just can’t best yourself after Titanic?

Jennifer’s Body (9/18/09): The more often I see trailers for this movie, the more I am convinced it might be fun to see just for the camp. Everyone keeps telling me it’s going to be terrible, but even if it is, the world can always use more of Megan Fox’s hotness. Here’s an advance review of the film, written by Tisch film student Ryan Hamelin.

New Moon (11/20/09): I’m not a huge fan of Twilight. In fact, I kind of have a bone to pick with Stephanie Meyer about her vampires. (Sparkles? Seriously?) However, if the screaming crowd of fangirls at the Education Building last summer was any indication, the final movie installment of this book series is sure to be ridiculously popular.

As Watchmen approaches, NYU screenwriting majors put their brains in jars to buy advanced tickets for the experience (and plan hour-long pilgrimages to Sheepshead Bay for that experience to be IMAX’d). But I can only come to one conclusion about the comic series this over-hyped blockbuster was based on: I didn’t like it.

I thought I had been a fan of the comic for years, but if I feel nothing but loathing for what is essentially a panel-to-panel filmed rendering, maybe I actually just never liked the book in the first place, and my 12-year old mind was screwed up from all that mall candy. Either that, or one other simple explanation comes to mind: comic book panels aren’t fucking storyboards.

Even though they’ve been trickling down like acid rain for months, the latest clip of Watchmen (above) is the longest, and the one most fans have gotten excited about. It is 90% faithful to the comic book and unless you consider “cool” to be a genre, also 90% unwatchable.

There is something about reading a comic book, full of choppy little images awkwardly alone in your room that off-sets the overbearing dynamism of the art. It also helps that the images get strung together in your brain at your own pace, not Zak Snyder’s. Even if you’ve never read Watchmen, or any comic book, you can see the art influence in this clip as the anti-hero “Rorschach” poses mechanically from cut to cut. This is not a person in our world, or even an alternate 1980’s version of our world.

That worked fine for similarly faithful Sin City, because its main character was its setting, but it is an enormous problem for a story that was originally posed to prey seriously on your fears as an inhabitant of Earth. And as HitFix.com commended Watchmen today for having some “places” where the director added “a flourish,” I became even more exhausted at the prospect of these 200-plus minutes.

In an interview with star Patrick Wilson yesterday on io9 , he said his wife high-fived him on the set after he nailed a sex scene, and I feel like that’s the perfect way to describe this movie—the makers and fans high-fiving each other for “getting it right,” except not really getting any.

So they just released a couple seconds of the newest film from film-school-hater and overall dick, Quentin Tarantino. The film, “Inglourious Basterds,” tells the story of a small American military outfit that functions for the sole purpose of terrorizing Nazis by, as the clip explains, scalping them (I suppose in some strange reference to Native Americans fighting white oppression in this country’s past). The catch? All of the soldiers are Jews!

Well, except for Brad Pitt, who plays a guy from the South who is supposed to be the baddest mother-effer in the entire American military.

Now, I love Tarantino, his cockiness, his films, and the consistent hyperbole every one of his films elicits, but is it just me, or does this film seem to have missed the mark, at least from what I can tell from the couple of seconds Entertainment Tonight hands out?

The biggest issue I see is petty at this point (seeing as how we know so little of the film thus far) but I think it is important to note. The issue is the decidedly uncool persona Pitt seems to have put together for the film. Having compared this footage with the shot released a couple months ago (seen above) of Pitt, two very distinct characters are observed. In the clip: the redneck. In the picture: the antihero. The photo of Pitt is such an epitomical example of a warrior, such a calm and collected figure, that it’s hard not to believe that eight Jewish young men chose to follow him into Nazi camps to torture Germans. But the footage ET has provided gives us a bit of a Tyler Durden feel – the crazy guy who doesn’t give a damn at what cost his prizes are retrieved.

Is this a creation of the script Tarantino has provided or is it a natural, defense reaction from Pitt, considering this film is supposed to be one of the fastest filmed in major motion picture history?

I hope I’m wrong. I really do. Pitt needs to give America more than he has in the last couple films he’s headlined, and if Tarantino’s not careful, he’s just going to end up releasing “Valkyrie: Part Two.” And no one wants that.

After one week, you can call it a freak accident. Two weeks? Whatever, it’s January. But after three weeks and with ticket sales steadily shooting toward the 100 million dollar mark, there’s no excuse left. The obese and bluntly mustachioed title character of the third-rate comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the biggest authority figure after Barack Obama that America has collectively chosen to lead them (or at least their box office sales charts).

It seems fair to remark on the similarities between the two do-gooders, and the significance of a pasty and useless Blart essentially becoming activated as a big hero in the movie only after he getting colorized accidentally in the mall spray-tan booth. He also changes his dopey white uniform to a casual and sexy black one… finally getting down to business and really dealing with the dangerous mall terrorists—although that story turn could be frighteningly interpreted to favor Bush’s administration in some circles.

Still, Obama’s shedding of his suit jacket in the formerly dress-coded Oval Office definitely emboldened his existing action hero image to scores of Obama-as-Superman t-shirt owners this week. As such, Mall Cop seems to be an extension of our national high (it’s no coincidence the word hero is in the word heroin) weeks past the inauguration. Even for those like me, who have to justify their purchase by paying the child’s price and also sneaking into another movie afterward.

After all, initial reviews of the Blart kept strictly to punning on its “fat profits” and its story’s “empty calories.” It wasn’t until week two that journalists had to go back and make sense of the phenomenon of this little Comedy Vehicle That Could. The Washington Post even went so far as examining the stores that were featured in the on-screen mall for answers. This week, the naysayers were able to put their brains to slight rest as Mall Cop was finally topped by Liam Neeson’s new movie, Taken, but while Mall Cop may have changed positions, you can be sure its profits remained very, very fat.

You can also be sure that if Neeson hauled out a Kinsey, or anything except another moralistic action hero movie, Kevin James would still be riding that monstrously outdated Segway on Obama’s lack-of-coattails. As more lifts on stem-cell research bans and abortion gag-rules are signed, don’t Americans suddenly have little need to punish themselves with Oscar-nominated tripe? Does anyone want to watch Frost/Nixon now? Presidents don’t lie! Does anyone want to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I assume ends with a baby dying? That freak grows down, right?

It’s not just dramas that are being affected, either. Other, non-heroic, mainstream movies that were tailor-made for audience consumption are getting the shaft as well. Straight out of the romantic comedy factory, New in Town couldn’t even half catch up to Blart on its worst week, and opened with a limp 6.7 million dollars. Its premise—“Renee Zellwegger is cold in Minnesota!”—should have made the movie a surefire hit, but this insulin shot of celluloid simply did not cut it in Obama’s America. Who knew that if you threw rail-thin Zellwegger and Kevin James into the same pool, Zellwegger would be the one to sink?

What’s ironic about New in Town is that, before Hollywood interference, it was originally written by Kenneth Rance as a story about an African-American moving into an all-white area. Couldn’t that story have had a strong resonance today? Maybe it would have starred Halle Berry, and coincidentally featured a scene where she gets to work and takes off her blazer in a previously dress-coded office…the gasps of the conservative, Sarah Palin-sounding Minnesotans heard all around her…

We can dream of a world where that version of the movie happened, a world where we could have sustained our national highs with our choice of romantic comedy or action, but let’s not dwell on the past. Let’s look to the future with Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and hope by the time it rolls out, we will still have a reason to root for the dressed-down hero.

Even mega-businesses like the film world are feeling the global belt-tightening as the world economy sinks deeper into recession. Luckily, Empire comes to Hollywood’s rescue in a feature they call “Credit Crunch Casting” in which pricey movie stars are paired with their low-budget doppelgangers—or at least passable knock-offs.

For instance, if your flick is begging for a Christian Bale-type, why not settle for 300’s buff German Michael Fassbender? Not a bad idea, Empire.

The Michael Pitt instead of Leonardo DiCaprio swap seems especially easy to pull off, although I do wonder if Pitt can do anything besides brood. Elsewhere, the Angelina Jolie/Shannyn Sossamon switch is guaranteed to save a few bucks. But overall, a nod to the British film mag for their IMDB digging—I mean, who the fuck is Jeffrey Dean Morgan?

Let’s do our own. Which A-lister has a lesser counterpart? I still can’t seem to tell the difference between Amy Adams and Isla Fisher…

Stein, who first made his name as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before a minor television and movie career, hosts Expelled, which attempts to promote the theory of intelligent design and argues that, according to Ebert, “evolutionists cannot tolerate dissent.” LOL, says Ebert.

Unfortunately Ebert has not yet realized that people will not read blog entries over 100 words (who made it passed the jump, honestly?) but his all-out onslaught on Stein’s “logic” is an entertaining and compelling read, even if he drags the lede’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” metaphor on a little long.

Eventually in Expelled, and in Ebert’s review, Nazism comes front and center. (Stein reportedly wanted to call the doc From Darwin to Hitler.) Stein visits a concentration camp, and essentially blames evolutionary theory for the atrocities. Ebert in his kicker, in case you don’t make it that far:

“It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

KO.