Promised Land was swept under the enormous blockbusters’ success of December, so little has been said about the film starring Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, and John Krasinski. For a simple drama set in the heartland of America, one that was written by the dynamic talents of Gus Van Sant and Damon, it seems the film would have met bigger acclaim for its themes and entertainment value. Or at least, the film should have lived up to someone’s expectations (films usually do). Why are audiences and critics bashing Promised Land?

TJ and I are reviewing the movie this week on The MovieByte…

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon.

I may not like the current administration one little bit. Not at all. But someone over there should win an award for this.

You see, some idiots thought it would be fun to start a petition to get our government to construct a Death Star. Only it garnered enough signatures to warrant a response. This is that response. It was crafted by a nerd, or with the help of one. If you read it there can be no doubt.

This is pure, unadulterated fun. Consider:

• The…

Quentin Tarantino probably had a vastly different idea of how the months leading up to the 85th Academy Awards would transpire for him. As he began to promote Django Unchained, he no doubt expected to spend the majority of Awards Season talking about America’s legacy of slavery, about his decision to portray it as unambiguously horrific, and how the peculiar institution has historically been treated in film.

No doubt.

In the interview, which I’ll embed below, Tarantino pretty much blew up, and the interviewer kept trying to come back to it, kept trying to get him to say something…

Universal announced today that it has slated Jurassic Park IV for a June 13, 2014 release.

Right now it only looks like Steven Spielberg will produce JPIV, although as Variety notes the director’s recent postponement of Robopocalypse raises an interesting possibility: “Spielberg has not committed to another film but given that Jurassic Park 4 is now the fast track, its not out of the question that he would step back in the directors chair.”

Before filming began on the sequel to the 2009 hit Star Trek, we posted multiple articles showing Abrams’ aversion to 3D. He said he had nothing against it but it never really sold him and suggested he didn’t want to make Into Darkness in 3D. Soon after, it was revealed the film would be shot in 2D and post-converted, which gave fans a lot to worry about. The question became, “what happened?”

...

The studio said, ‘You have to make it in 3D if you’re going to make it, for economic reasons.’ But my feeling was I didn’t like 3D. So the idea of doing Star Trek in 3D was ridiculous. But…

Yet again, it looks like this isn’t particularly my kind of TV Show.

I really wish Netflix and Hulu would get original shows that I care about. Maybe I’m just dreaming, but it’s a fun dream. On-demand original content that’s good. That is the “holy grail” so to speak.

Oh, and also, whether Netflix’s doing or someone else, this trailer is available in an embeddable format from YouTube, which is nice.

Be warned this trailer does have some disturbing images in it. Nothing as bad as, say, the red band Hansel and Gretel trailer I posted a couple weeks ago, but it has the tenor of an R…

The visual effects of The Avengers were simply, outright stunning. I mean it was phenomenal work. And that work has not gone unnoticed. ILM’s work on this film has received an Oscar nomination, and it’s well deserved.

This is an effects reel from ILM about the building of the visual effects in The Avengers. It’s awesome stuff and any geek should enjoy this. I’ll assume that most of you reading this site are geeks in some fashion or another (if you are not, congrats, but you might still enjoy this video), so go ahead and dive in for almost 5 minutes of awesomeness.

If you were wondering how Whedon might be planning to make Avengers 2 bigger than the first Avengers, which was a fairly big, large scale spectacle, well the answer is, he is not planning on making it bigger. He thinks the answer is to “go deeper.”

“Don’t go bigger; go deeper.” ... “Now you can spend your time just digging in — and by digging in, I mean with a scalpel, to cause pain.”

That sounds like the Joss Whedon we know and (usually) love.

One other thing he said in the video that I thought was a very good point, very astute and well thought:

“Something I always say to…

Joe wraps up the week with a look at his review of ‘Hitchcock’ and a few thoughts about seeing the film with TJ, the announcement of who won the HD TV and Netflix giveaway as well as broadcasting the announcement live on ‘The MovieByte Podcast’ Episode #26, the trailer for the upcoming film ‘42’ about Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player, and some thoughts on whether the film will be overly preachy and whether the film will ultimately be worth checking out. Then for something much lighter in tone, Joe talks about a video TJ posted titled, If Disney Made ‘Star Wars’ which is just a lot of fun. There’s also Cory’s review of Coriolanus staring Ralph Fiennes. Coriolanus is a contemporary retelling of a Shakespearian classic and it’s worth checking out. And finally wrapping up the week with the MovieByte feature, ‘What to See’.