Cloudy’s got Neil Patrick Harris as a MONKEY and Bruce Campbell as the slimy mayor?! Why didn’t someone TELL me that?

I had a bad feeling about this one as soon as I opened the package

As much as I love a good Hollywood popcorn movie, there were many times in 2009 when I wondered who the hell green-lighted so many pieces of crap and gave them $100 million budgets.

OK, let’s call a spade a spade here. If you’re the kind of crazed Rocky Balboa fan who’s buying this set, you’re not buying it for Rocky or Rocky II.

I was a big fan of Borat until it became a kind of ubiquitous Austin Powers-like source of annoying quotes for hipster douchebags everywhere.

This week Scott examines the question that has baffled movie producers since time immemorial: Are cavemen and dinosaurs funny?

No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous.

If there’s one lesson in life you need to take from Hollywood, it’s this: ALWAYS give the gypsy what she wants.

Man, just when you’re thinking that values in our great country have gone completely by the wayside, along come three releases to make you feel good about the state of our great country. By which I of course mean Canada, because apparently the US is going to hell in a handbasket now that the Democrats are in power again.

I present as evidence three new releases from Paramount.

Relationships can be tough, of course. And if you’re a budding therapist, then Hollywood no doubt has a movie that can assist you in counselling those who need it.

The plot here is rather meandering, even by the thin standards of the franchise, although there’s a nice bit of conflict when we (and Dom) discover who his beloved dead girlfriend was REALLY working for. And hey, it leads to O’Connor using a triangle choke in a real fight, something you don’t often see.

I was pretty pumped to get this one in the mail, let me tell you.

I’ll just say that if you can get over the plot ripped out of Die Hard with the villain from Speed and the Big Twist Montage from Saw and John Cena’s brutally wooden acting style, this is an enjoyable enough use of two hours that probably won’t feel like a total waste of time.

I’m sure that longtime readers already know my love affair with the world of 24 and the saga of this season, but here’s the capsule version:

The term "thriller" when it comes to movies is unfortunately a pretty meaningless distinction these days, especially since so few of them actually thrill. It’s become kind of a catch-all phrase to cover stuff that isn’t easily shoehorned into other genres, but it does make it easier to shoehorn together a pair of smaller reviews into one of my patented two-in-one DVD reviews, so there’s that.

So if you think [Family Guy] is bogged down too much with plot and would rather just watch 50 minutes of the random cutaway gags, this is the perfect DVD for you.

CBS/Paramount went through and fixed all the old special effects, replacing them with shiny new CGI effects. But hey, if that bugs you, you can change mid-episode and just watch the original as well! Now THAT’S how it should be done. Paying attention, George Lucas?

So as the cult of Apatow grows over Hollywood, we now have weird quasi-spinoff movies that technically have nothing to do with him but use the same players and develop the same themes. And make a buttload of money as well. This guy is clearly a friggin’ genius and probably should get a chunk of the grosses for Role Models on general principles.

For those who say that "they don’t make movies like they used to," I present Australia as the counterpoint. This is definitely old-fashioned film-making from the decidedly old-fashioned Baz Luhrmann, and whether that’s a good or a bad thing I leave up to the viewer. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman certainly fit the ’40s movie star image that this movie is shamelessly ripping off (specifically The African Queen, which STILL isn’t available on DVD yet for some reason) but there’s just no real movie here to back up the bombast.

So yes, thanks to the wonder of Ebay, I have finally gone over to the Blu Ray camp, because the studios are apparently more willing to send Blu review copies than regular DVD ones.

And what better place to begin my collection than with the latest James Bond movie?

I’ve always found "based on a true story" to be an odd phrase, as normally things are either true or false, whereas it is a uniquely Hollywood proposition to proclaim something as factual while still fudging details to make it more entertaining. Even stranger to do so when the true stories in question are sometimes more unlikely than anything that the overworked screenwriters could have thought of.