(Well, everyone except Mundane Dolphin, who in a rare fumble guessed Priscilla Queen of the Desert. To be fair, Mr. Dolphin did say he’d had a long day, and who among us doesn’t see a glimpse of a bus and think “Australian drag queens”?)

It was in fact one of my favorite films of the ’00s and one of the most recent movies I’ve used for the Close-Up Poster Quiz. As to why I chose it, even the usually on-the-case Sparky couldn’t figure out the connection. I chose 2007′s Into the Wild because Hal Holbrook, who earned his first-ever Oscar nomination for his supporting work in Sean Penn’s film, stars in That Evening Sun, available this week from redbox.

Into the Wild was adapted from Jon Krakauer’s 1996 non-fiction book about Christopher McCandless, a young man who set out across America in search of a more honest existence, but who was also naively and selfishly running away from some hard truths about his family and himself. Penn’s direction is deeply moving, Hirsch is fantastic as McCandless, and the rest of the cast is full of solid performances from William Hurt, Vince Vaughn, Zach Galifianakis, Katherine Keener, and Kristen Stewart.

And for those who may have dismissed Into the Wild as some goofy, navel-gazing tale about a neo-hippie whose idealism led him astray, Penn goes to great and effective lengths to present the deeper flaws in McCandless’s cross-country quest. Holbrook is heartbreakingly good as the lonely widower who takes in McCandless, and his character embodies the film’s counter-argument of human connection and family to McCandless’s radical (and in some ways cynical) philosophy of self-sufficiency.

Rarely, this fate will befall a truly good movie. But most of the time, space in Distribution Hell is reserved for real stinkers. So since the thriller Case 39 (starring Renée Zellweger, Ian McShane and Bradley Cooper) was shot in 2006 (yep, four years ago) and its release has been pushed back too many times to mention, I can’t say that bodes well for anyone who is going to pay to see it when it finally comes out on October 1.

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While you’re deciding about Case 39, don’t forget that Bradley Cooper is currently in two redbox movies! Check him out in:

• New York, I Love You, and
• Valentine’s Day

I won’t post any of your guesses until I put the answer up and announce the winners on Thursday.

What movie’s poster is this image from?

It was indeed 2004′s Collateral, starring Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise. Aside from being a pretty sharp thriller (at least until the kinda cliche action ending), Collateral was also one of the first mainstream feature films to be shot primarily in digital. (At very opposite ends of the budgetary spectrum, in 2002 Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and 28 Days Later were both shot on digital.) Since then, Collateral director Michael Mann has shot most of his films in digital, including Miami Vice and Public Enemies.

I happen to really love Mann’s digital aesthetic, epecially how night skies, cityscapes, clouds, lightning, and streetlights look in digital–that grainy, somewhat washed-out night look gives Collateral a lot of its moodiness. Plus shooting with lightweight digital equipment frees up the camera movement, minimizes the camera’s obtrusive on-set presence, allows more takes, and lets a director like Mann coax even better performances from his actors.

Ruffalo played the cop trying to help Foxx’s cab driver out, and Bardem was the club owner who hired Cruise’s hit man character. The tricky part of the quiz was Statham, who was already a fairly well-known action actor by 2004, but only has a very small cameo appearance in Collateral as the man at the train station who hands Cruise the briefcase full of his “hit” assignments.

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More Ruffalo from redbox:

• Reserve a copy of Date Night on DVD or Blu-ray
• Reserve a copy of Shutter Island
• Reserve a copy of Where the Wild Things Are

More Foxx from redbox:

• Reserve a copy of Valentine’s Day
• Reserve a copy of Law Abiding Citizen

Then cinema owners realized people were already busting out of their seats by that time and therefore not paying attention to the promotions, and so shortly thereafter, trailers began rolling before the film everyone had paid to see. About a decade later in 1922, the organization we now know as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was formed by the major Hollywood studios, and eventually started requiring the green ratings screen we’ve become so familiar with at the beginning of every trailer.

Until the late 1950s, trailers were often in slideshow format with lots of overlaid text, generic music and voice-overs… then Stanley Kubrick burst onto the scene and started spicing things up a bit. The 1962 preview for Lolita is a good example of one of his “montage” trailers. Nowadays, of course, trailers are much different — and some of us might complain that they give away all of the best parts of the movie they’re meant to promote. That’s certainly one of my pet peeves! But we’ll continue our walk through the evolution of film trailers at another time — for now let me leave you with a 1964 spot for The Night of the Iguana.  Yep, that’s Sue Lyon, who was also in Lolita.  And yep, that’s a very young James Earl Jones lending his distinct voice at the beginning and the end.  This trailer was so successful that its producers, Andrew Kuehn and Dan Davis, formed a company around the craft — Kaleidoscope Films — which reigned in the industry until very recently.

In third place was last weekend‘s victor, Takers, with $13.5 million. Also holding over well from the end of August, The Last Exorcism continued to spook people senseless to the tune of $8.8 million. Rounding out the top five with $8.6 million was Friday’s other new release, the raunchy Drew Barrymore/Justin Long rom-com Going the Distance.

We’ve got another boring weekend at cineplexes coming up on Friday — the only wide release is Resident Evil: Afterlife. D’oh. But good news!  It’s in 3D!  Now you’re all really excited about it, right?

A few players figured that I chose the common link, Michael Douglas, because he’s got Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps coming out on the 24th. And you KNOW how much I’m looking forward to that one — not only because of my love for the original, but also because of my love for Shia LaBeouf. In addition to Tammy, I’m hereby declaring that Matt in Dallas, God send, Sparky, and Tennille can all make a Pin o’ Pride for sending in Michael’s name as the link.

The real reason I focused the game around him, however, wasn’t because of WS2, but rather because I was truly moved by his interview with David Letterman last week. As you probably heard, Douglas has been diagnosed with Stage 4 of a type of throat cancer and has begun chemotherapy and radiation treatments.  His positive attitude was very inspiring.  If you missed that interview, you can catch it here.

Further, over the weekend I watched Solitary Man, in which Douglas stars as a guy who is a complete and utter jerk. The kind of character you keep thinking is going to come around and see himself for what he is and attempt to change… but then doesn’t.  Douglas has had an absolutely stellar career and has enjoyed many interesting roles, but I dare say his turn as “Ben,” the sexaholic, egomaniac ex-car dealer in Solitary Man is one of his best.  So yes, you can take this as a rental recommendation — it just hit redbox kiosks today.

Congrats again to all of our winners, and thanks for playing!

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Solitary Man is available on DVD and Blu-ray at redbox kiosks.

DVD Review: For a yuk-fest about being forced outside your comfort zone, Date Night is careful to never leave its own.  It’s a Nerf-ball comedy that vaguely amuses without leaving a mark. You may laugh a little or a lot (results vary according to taste), but you’ll barely remember any of it by the time it’s over.

The following is a reprint of the redblog review of Date Night on its theatrical release last spring. Date Night is now available from redbox on DVD and Blu-ray.

As we know, comedy tastes are one of the more personal, idiosyncratic differences between folks. So take everything I say–and didn’t really care for–about Date Night with a grain of ha-ha salt. After all, it involves two people I consider to be some of the funniest working on TV these days: 30 Rock creator, writer and star Tina Fey and The Office’s Steve Carell. At the same time, I found Date Night sporadically funny, but ultimately forgettable–if not regrettable.

Here we have the all-too common practice of taking very creative talents, plopping them into a film together, selling that product based on their fine reputations… and then carefully stripping away everything that made them entertaining (and a marketable draw) in the first place. To be fair, thanks to Fey and Carell’s considerable, seemingly irrepressible comedic skills, the movie does steadily stumble into “vaguely amusing.” Date Night doesn’t so much fail as not bother to try. So, um… yay?

Even the premise has big, easy potential. A buttoned-down, bored suburban couple take the bridge (or tunnel) out of their safe haven of book clubs and middling steak houses into the Big Scary City for a night out, get caught up in mistaken-identity hi-jinks involving mobsters and corrupt cops, and soft-boiled hilarity ensues as the pair races all over town. You know how it goes: wacky car chases, wacky “erotic” dancing, wacky panicked running and yelling “What are we gonna do?!?”, then cue the requisite upbeat R&B ditty at the end and roll the wacky blooper reel over the credits. It’s After Hours for the Everyone Loves Raymond crowd from the director of the Night at the Museum movies.

Fey is normally the more acerbic, subversive, and sharper wit, so Date Night seems to pain her the most. Her character here is much less socially inept than 30 Rock‘s Liz Lemon, and that seems to tie Fey’s funny hands. She comes off sleepy, maybe even ashamed—like someone forced to do the Chicken Dance at a wedding reception. But at least she gets do a spot-on Parker Posey impersonation for one scene.

Mark Wahlberg Has More Funny in His Left Pec than…

Carell, meanwhile, can always fall back on his go-to Michael Scott shtick: the nervous know-nothing trying to mask his confused terror with false bluster. Occasionally you feel Fey and Carell slipping free of the tepid script and having a little nutso ad-lib fun, and you appreciate just how good the stars (and their supporting cast) are to be able to make something funny out of such middle-of-the-road material.

And Carell does wake up and flexes his comedic muscles during slappy, silly scenes with James Franco and Mark Wahlberg’s deadpan pecs. In fact, casting Wahlberg and Franco in comedic himbo roles is one Date Night’s best moves–perfectly able to pretend like they don’t get the joke, they walk off with their scenes. Ray Liotta and William Finchter also play nicely off their tough-guy images.

Many folks are going to like (or forgive) Date Night more than I did. It’s not hard to tolerate, perhaps even enjoy the flick for short stretches. But for the most part I watched the comic neutering of these two brilliant performers and just hoped they were well paid.

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Date Night is available on DVD and Blu-ray from redbox.

Redbox hit 1 BILLION RENTALS over the holiday weekend, and it’s because of movie lovers like you!  (And as movie lovers, you definitely thought of Dr. Evil when you just read ’1 billllliiion‘ in that last sentence, didn’t you?)

What’s more, this here blog is now two years old.  Redblog’s second birthday… redbox’s 1 billionth rental… you decide what’s a bigger deal, m’kay?

Anywhoooo, as a way of saying thanks, redbox is giving away lots of prizes, including a free one-night DVD rental for everyone who rents in September. Yes, you read that correctly, folks.

Jump over to the Thanks a Billion web site for more details, and then stay tuned for a heck of a lot of celebrating across redblog, the redbox Facebook fan page, and the redbox Twitter feed for the rest of September!