What Will you Be Watching This Weekend? Django Unchained, Les Miserables, The Well-Digger's Daughter, The Words and Football!

Finally! The work week is over and you’ll have some free time to relax, crack a cold one, pop that corn and nuke some ‘chos all in the noble pursuit of cinematic entertainment! Every Friday we’d like to hear what everyone will be watching over the weekend, whether it be on TV, DVD and Blu-ray or in theaters.

So let us know what’s on your movie agenda this weekend! Here’s what I’m thinking about watching…

IN THEATERS…

It’s like Christmas for me everytime a new Quentin Tarantino flick is released so just try to imagine my excitement when his latest opus of gratuitous filmmaking DJANGO UNCHAINED was unleashed on Christmas Day! I’m actually still surprised my head didn’t explode out of excitement SCANNERS-stye. Everything I’ve heard so far about this “Southern” has me pumped, I have always had a fondness for Spaghetti Westerns (for my money nothing will ever beat a one-two punch of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone) and this seems to be another love letter to genre cinema from one of the biggest fanboys making movies today. The cast is mindblowingly awesome with some Tarantino stalwarts like Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz but I’m especially interested to see Leonardo DiCaprio chew some scenery as a despicable slave owning villain and nemesis of Jamie Foxx‘s titular Django.

It’s been a couple of excruciatingly long days of patience waiting for an opportunity saddle up and sneak away from my extended family in town for the holidays to catch DJANGO UNCHAINED. Luckily it looks like I won’t have to wait much longer, which is good because just reading Chris Bumbray’s glowing 10/10 review has me jonesing hard for this flick, I honestly think the only thing that has gotten me through the passed couple days has been groovin’ to the DJANGO UNCHAINED soundtrack at every chance possible, specifically the boss James Brown/2Pac mashup from the trailer.

Just a heads up; you can actually listen to the full DJANGO UNCHAINED soundtrack with commentary from Tarantino online right here:

Now I have never covered up the fact that I’m a sucker for a good musical, when done well I don’t think there is a purer form of cinematic entertainment, and while reviews for the new LES MISERABLES have been devisive, although our own JimmyO really liked it in his review, the thing that is almost universally agreed upon is many of the performances are astounding and in the case of Anne Hathaway brutal and tear-jerking. Her rendition of “I Dreamed A Dream” is well, just listen for yourself. It’s also worth noting the unique way this version of LES MIS was shot has me excited as well as all of the singing was shot on set and not pre-recorded and lip-synced later which while pretty ballsy gives a lot freedom for everyone involved to experiment with the music.

Check out all the THEATRICAL RELEASES right here

ON TELEVISION…

Much like last weekend this one is pretty dead on the TV front with reruns and football being pretty much my only options. Except for one perennial holiday classic and some idle channel surfing I don’t think I’ll spend too much time in front of the TV as I still have some Christmas goodies that need to be broken into.

But just because Christmas if over doesn’t mean the holiday movies aren’t still airing, there just happen to be a whole lot fewer flicks that involve New Year festivities. But there is at least one, however, that will get my attention since I can’t remember the last time I watched it and I’m a huge sucker for nostalgia. I’m of course referring to the 1976 stop-motion sequel RUDOLPH’S SHINY NEW YEAR. Rankin/Bass Studios had it’s heyday in the mid-60’s well into the 1970’s but there was definitely a decline in both output and quality. RUDOLPH’S SHINY NEW YEAR is one of the last solid entries for the studio and it will be airing on ABC this Sunday at 4pm local time.

As the regular season for the NFL ends the mad playoff dash for Super Bowl XLVII begins. While I’m partial to the Seattle Seahawks (Sorry 49er fans, that was brutal) and will definitely root for them this Sunday in their last regualr season game I’m always more interested in the tradition of the Super Bowl rather than the game itself and can’t wait to see what trailers will premiere on February 3rd, 2013. Well, movie trailers and beer. Lots of beer …

ON DVD & BLU-RAY…

Bradley Cooper is growing on me and his agent must be working overtime with the amount of movies he’s been showing up in the past couple of years and while his roles are hit and miss I’m willing to give THE WORDS, which hit shelves this week, a shot. It’s something of a story, within a story wrapped in blanket narrative that involve an aspiring novelist’s (Cooper) plagiarism of an unsigned and mysterious WWII era manuscript.

At some point this weekend I’ll have to dive into my Christmas Blu-ray haul. To pre-func for LES MISERABLES I plan on watching WEST SIDE STORY, one of my favorite musicals, which got a special restored anniversary Blu-ray release earlier this year. Then after LES MIS get a bit more contemporary with DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-A-LONG BLOG for a bit more whimsical, yet still kinda sad, tragi-musical.

I’m always keeping my eye out for foreign films hitting DVD and Bu-ray shelves, usually it’s my first chance to see these movies outside of a film festival and I have only heard amazing things about a French flick called THE WELL-DIGGER’S DAUGHTER. Hell, it currently holds a 90% fresh rating over on Rotten Tomatoes! The film follows the tribulations of a family in early WWII France specifically a father who is “torn between his sense of honor and his deep love for his saintly daughter when she gets in trouble with the wealthy son of a shopkeeper.” The film descriptor “melodrama” kind of gets a bad rap these days as being laughably old-fashioned but some of my favorite classic Hollywood flicks are melodramas and amazing works of film, that’s exactly the vibe I’m getting from the trailer for THE WELL-DIGGER’S DAUGHTER: