This week’s pick salutes Steven Spielberg’s epic Saving Private Ryan (1998) which tells the story of an eight man rifle squad which is chosen to find and safely bring back Pvt. Ryan after it is discovered that his three older brothers have all died in combat just days apart from one another. The film stars Tom Hanks (Capt. John H. Miller, Charlie Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion), Tom Sizemore (Sgt. Mike Horvath), Ed Burns (Pfc. Richard Reiben), Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Timothy E. Upham), Barry Pepper (Pvt. Daniel Jackson), Adam Goldberg (Pvt. Stanley Mellish), Vin Diesel (Pfc. Adrian Caparzo), Giovanni Ribisi (Pvt. Irwin Wade), and Matt Damon (Pvt. James Ryan).

Saving Private Ryan is best known for its first thirty minute opening which is one of the most brutal depictions of combat ever put on film. Elements of Capt. Miller’s (Hanks) battalion prepare for the assault on Omaha Beach on the fateful morning of June 6, 1944. While the assault force approaches the Normandy coast aboard the landing craft, each man is preparing themselves for the inevitable. Many men are seasick, while many pray silently to themselves.

The operator of the boat alerts them that they will hit the beach in just thirty seconds. Miller instructs his men to move fast and to clear the “murder hole” (the opening of the craft). When the ramp hits, you are immediately plunged into the intense combat. Rows of men are cut down from German machine gun fire before they can even leave the craft. Other men are instructed to jump over the sides, only to drown due to the amount of heavy equipment many troops carried into combat.

Miller helps a fellow soldier ashore while they make their way through the maze of anti-tank traps and dead bodies at the water’s edge. The camera is submerged under the water, and then surfaces. The use of sound in this scene is fantastic. When submerged, the scene is tranquil and peaceful but when on the surface, you are subjected to the sound of machine gun fire, explosions, and bullet ricochets off of men and the tank traps that were placed to keep American armored vehicles from reaching the beach.

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The world of internet pornography is certainly a gigantic one. It’s…entertained millions, if not trillions of consumers across the globe for nearly two decades, and even helped usher in a new world of digital consumerism. Where did it all get started? Well, the newest film Middle Men gives you the answers.

From writer/director George Gallo (Bad Boys, The Whole Ten Yards) comes this near biopic about the men who brought adult entertainment to the world wide web. The film stars Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, and Gabriel Macht (The Spirit), with some pretty great cameos along the way including Kelsey Grammer, James Caan, Martin Kove, and Kevin Pollack.

Check out the newest trailer for the film, which has the brilliantly simple tagline “getting in is easy, getting out is hard”, after the jump, and be sure to keep an eye out for Middle Men when it hits theaters on August 6th.

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Well, it certainly didn’t suck. That’s me, eating a little crow.  For months I have snickered about the colossal disaster I was sure Avatar was going to become. Admit it, you thought so too. How on earth could you not be pessimistic after seeing the early trailers?

Alien creatures a hue of blue so intense it would make papa smurf puke, and waxy humans that would beat any of Robert Zemeckis’s early efforts for “most soulless rendition of a human being” did not exactly instill confidence in me. Then came the daunting news that the movie weighed in at almost 3 hours. Add the driving time in and the Avatar screening took up almost half a day. I disliked the movie before I even slipped on the  exquisite 3-D nerd-spectacles that I so love.

A funny thing happened when the movie began. I was captivated. I rarely looked at my watch, and the three hours kept me glued to my seat. I became completely immersed in the alternate reality that James Cameron (Titanic) created, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Now, I am not jumping aboard the fanboy express like 90% of the critics I know. This  is not the end-all, be-all of epic movies.  I don’t think that it will “change the way we watch movies forever”, and I hope it doesn’t quite frankly.

As a stand alone experience, I absolutely recommend Avatar, but I won’t be going to the theater for repeated viewings. Avatar is innovative and visually spectacular, but its story and woeful dialogue keep it from being a truly great movie.  However, I will give James Cameron props for once again delivering a truly ground-breaking experience.

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The first full day at San Diego’s Comic-Con featured revelations and first looks at Tron Legacy, New Moon, Alice in Wonderland and a little film called Avatar. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? James Cameron offered fans an impressive 24 minute 3-D screening of his forthcoming, highly-anticipated film, and by all accounts, especially SciFiWire’s, the material more than lives up to heavy expectations.

The footage clearly impressed the crowd, who made no secret of their appreciation of what they saw. Cameron seemed quite pleased by this and told the crowd, “Everybody always asks: So where’ve you been? Well, that’s where I’ve been. Pandora.”

Avatar’s preview centered around Jake (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic grunt who enlists for the military’s avatar program, which allows the personality of humans to be projected into clones of the Na’vi people, an indigenous race of alien creatures. Once on the surface of Pandora, Jake gets into trouble with native creatures, is reluctantly befriended by a female Na’vi native named Natiri (Zoe Saldana) and learns how to mindmeld and control a pterodactyl-like monster.

Cameron also revealed that 15 minutes of material will available for free at IMAX 3D and regular 3-D theaters across the globe on August 21.

Avatar stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana and Giovanni Ribisi and will be released on December 18, 2009.