Last week, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd’s newest film, Dinner for Schmucks opened across the nation, and immediately won the title of “funniest film of 2010″ by many critics. While that may be true, that title may be trumped this Friday, as Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg star in The Other Guys.

The film is sort of a mock buddy cop film, with plenty of genre satires along the way. Not only will we get the always adlibbing Ferrell, but Wahlberg, Sam Jackson, Duane Johnson, Michael Keaton, and Eva Mendes fill out the cast.

Not only is this a Ferrell comedy, but his long-term partner Adam McKay, who wrote and directed Anchorman, Step Brothers and Taladega Nights, and also co-created FunnyOrDie.com with Ferrell is stepping behind the camera once again.

If you don’t know much about the film (or even if you do) we’ve got a bit of a treat for you. After the jump, check out four brand new clips from the film, showing off some of the on-screen chemistry of the leading team.

Be sure to catch The Other Guys in theaters everywhere this Friday, August 8th.

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When Eva Mendes, Will Farrell, Adam McKay and Mark Wahlberg sit down for an interview, you can expect results to be anything but ordinary. Based on the camaraderie that was clearly present during a recent Q&A during SDCC, fans of the upcoming movie can expect a good time when the movie premiers later this summer.

Since this movie stars Will Farrell, one of the most obvious questions would be how much of the script was actually written, and how much was McKay allowing his actors to ad-lib and run with it. It turns out, McKay is so well prepared for this, he brings in a professional.

“For our bond company, we actually have to give them the exact percentages,” explained McKay. “So we brought in an actuary to break it down and this movie was 14.3789% was improvised and then the rest was scripted.”

A quick thinking Farrell noted, “that would be 86-85% scripted, if you round up.”

“It’s about 15-20% that is improvised, because we goof around in the scenes,” said McKay. “But the overall story structure obviously stays the same.”

Being a Buddy-Cop flick, comedic timing and approach are in the cards for both actors. Since Wahlberg isn’t a name that immediately springs to mind when you think summer comedy, how much did he end up learning from Farrell in the course of filming the movie?

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A few months ago, we brought you news of an innovative and visually stunning short that was making its way across the web titled The Raven from writer/director Ricardo de Montreuil. It seems that the film has turned enough heads, as both Universal and Mark Wahlberg have taken an interest in bringing the concept to the silver screen.

The short film, which follows Chris Black, a man who possesses a super power that can take down a current militant faction that has a stranglehold on a metropolitan city. Being only made for $5,000 on a RED camera, the visual effects are truly what make this one of the better web shorts in years.

According to our friends at Latino Review, Universal is currently interested in taking The Raven to a larger scale, with a bigger budget, and even Mark Wahlberg to produce and star. Genre favorite Justin Marks, who is also penning the script for Voltron and SuperMAX will be taking on the treatment of the film, with Montreuil still directing.

There was a bit of a bidding war between Universal and Warner Bros., but once Entourage co-creator Wahlberg got involved, Universal inevitably got the rights to the film. Be sure to check out the site for the film, and keep it here for more news as it develops on this deal.

In news that will most likely be met with meh by the major cable outlets, production company Relativity Media announced that it will make a deal with movie rental giant Netflix to stream its content via the service. While that may not sound impressive, the other part of this deal will see Relativity bypassing traditional home video routs and cable stations like HBO or Showtime and going directly to Neflix’s streaming movie service.

With the backing of backing larger companies like Lions Gate Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Universal Studios, Relativity will grant Netflix first rights to stream popular movies that are typically sent to premium cable channels like Starz, HBO, and Showtime following the movie’s DVD release. This arrangement is seen as a major development because it’s the first time a major movie producer has turned to online distribution for its movies and not gone the traditional route.

Could this be the start of a trend? We’ll see. It would probably seem like more of a big deal (at least to me) if the movies were a bit more impressive and if HBO and Showtime didn’t seem more concerned with creating original programming than showing movies. Still, it is an interesting development to be sure. Time will tell if it has an impact on other companies and if they join in.

The deal is set to launch with movies Skyline and The Fighter, featuring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, with more titles to follow soon.

Will Farrell and Adam McKay have been an unstoppable force in comedy for nearly a decade now. They first started getting audiences to split sides together with the 2004 film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and have been keeping us laughing ever since. In that time, they’ve also revolutionized time-wasting with their video streaming site Funny or Die, which has brought us some great internet hits, and is now a weekly HBO anthology show.

It seems like the dynamic duo of comedy is back at it again, with their upcoming film The Other Guys. The film starts off as any modern buddy cop film would, two badass detectives (played none other than Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) are taken out of the game, so it’s up to the two pencil pushers in the squad (Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) to step up and get into the action.

The trailer already looks this film is going to be worth the price of admission. The fact that actors like Jackson, The Rock, and Whalberg are able to mock their stereotypical roles means that this will be a no-holds-barred comedy.

Check out the first trailer after the jump, and catch Ferrel’s Other Guys in theaters on August 6th.

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I had a great time at Date Night. You would be hard pressed to find more likable leads than Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, who have great chemistry together as boring New Jersey couple Claire and Phil Foster. Stuck in a serious domestic rut that many of you will recognize all too well, the two decide to shake up their usual date night of frequenting the same restaurant and ordering the same dishes on the same night every week.

They get dolled up and head to Manhattan to the über trendy seafood restaurant, “Claws.”  A rude host scoffs at their hopes for getting a table, and the two head to the bar.  Just as they are getting ready to leave, another hostess goes through the bar, calling out for “Tripplehorn, party of two.”

Phil decides to seize the moment and do something spontaneous for once in his life, and he says that they are the Tripplehorns. The two enjoy a fancy dinner with wine, delight over a Will.i am celebrity sighting and make fun of stuffy restaurant patrons.

They are approached by two strange men who approach the table and tell the couple that they have something to discuss with them.  Outside the restaurant, Claire and Phil immediately discover that the real Tripplehorns are messed up with some bad people, and those bad people want a flash drive that belongs to them back.  Guns are drawn, and the Fosters try to explain that it’s a case of mistaken identity, but the thugs don’t believe them, and the Fosters have to improvise their way out of the predicament.

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2010 is in full swing and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include Gamer, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Che, Damages, the complete run of ABC’s canceled too soon Defying Gravity and the Blu-ray release of Whiteout with Kate Beckinsale (pictured above).

Check out this week’s releases:

Movies

According to Greta ~ Hilary Duff, Ellen Burstyn (DVD)

Boogie Nights ~ Mark Wahlberg, Heather Graham, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore (Blu-ray)

Bourne Supremacy (Single-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) ~ Matt Damon, Brian Cox, Karl Urban (Blu-ray)

Bourne Ultimatum (Single-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) ~ Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn (Blu-ray)

Che (Criterion Collection) ~ Benicio del Toro (Blu-ray)

Gamer ~ Gerard Butler, Amber Valetta, Michael C. Hall, Kyra Sedgwick (DVD and Blu-ray)

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Peter Jackson has made films that many have considered “instant classics”, such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, a bloated and unnecessary remake in the form of King Kong, and some little-seen but great cult classics such as Bad Taste, Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners. His newest film, The Lovely Bones, adapted from Alice Sebold’s novel of the same name, is kind of a combination of all of the above.

The story focuses on Susie Salmon, a fourteen year-old girl who lives in rural Pennsylvania with her parents and two siblings. She describes to us, via narration, what she wants to be when she grows up, her disliking of a snowglobe with a penguin in it, and even how she normally gets the “skeevies” when she sees someone looking at her weirdly. She didn’t get that last feeling soon enough, which inevitably leads to her murder and time spent in the “in-between” Heaven and Earth.

We see that the Salmons are an idyllic family as they get Susie a camera for her birthday. She is in the throes of her first unrequited love, and even has to suffer through a film club that makes her watch Othello with that guy “who has two first names. Laurence. Oliver.” It’s after this class, and a bold move from the boy that she likes, which leads her into the hands of Mr. Harvey.

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Fans of comedy and episodic TV have nothing but good thoughts come to mind when they hear the names Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Both The Office and 30 Rock have dominated comedy on network TV for quite some time now, so it would only make sense that a film showcasing both of them together would be epic, no? Probably not, after seeing the trailer for their newest film, Date Night.

The film is about a bored and boring married couple who decide to spice things up by lying to a hostess at a restaurant about their reservations, thus taking another couple’s name and table. One crazy happenstance after another then occurs, and our beloved couple is now on the run from gangsters. Add to that premise the reluctant hero from Get Smart and the neurotic lead from Baby Mama and you’ve got this 90-minute comedy.

The film is padded with a pretty big supporting cast, hoping to drag the audiences in. Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Ray Liotta, Mark Ruffalo, Mila Kunis, Leighton Meester, and even Olivia Munn are all in the film, with Shawn Levy, director of the Night At The Museum films, sitting in the director’s chair.

Check out the first theatrical trailer after the jump, Be sure to catch Date Night in theaters on April 9th, 2010.

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Initially, I never intended to read The Lovely Bones because I assumed it was a touchy-feely tearjerker about the brutal death of a child and how a family copes with their loss.  And well, who needs that if you read the newspapers or even watch the evening news?   Let’s face it, the media never seems to have a shortage of stories covering the depravity of humankind towards children.  Quite frankly, it’s depressing.  That was initially, when the book was first published, several years ago.

However, when the book came out in paperback a couple of years later, I was lured by the hype and hyperbole of glowing book reviews and Costco’s low prices. Yes, indeed, I succumbed to the pressure of mass marketing and found myself the owner of a brand new paperback edition of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

I have to admit that the first reading of the book a few years ago left me vaguely dissatisfied.  Now don’t get me wrong.  The writing was excellent.  The details and authenticity of the characters were creative and compelling.  The story line was engaging and well paced.  And the first person voice of the fourteen years old, alliteratively named, Susie Salmon, the victim, who narrates the story was pure genius.

After all, it is practically the ultimate voyeuristic experience, going inside the mind of the victim, seeing through her eyes, before, during and after her brutal rape and murder by a neighbor, and then following her to heaven and then back to earth again.  Talk about your creative license!  Isn’t that what good literature is all about?  It takes us above and beyond the ordinary, engages us in a world we would not otherwise know, and allows us to feel, think and see, through the eyes of another, from a different perspective.  It nourishes our minds and emotions and broadens our horizons.  The Lovely Bones satisfies all these criteria, and does so with a sense of quiet composure and restraint.

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