This week on dvd we have cancer comedy, family dysfunction, robot boxing, a brave woman doing the right thing, pretty twenty-somethings without a clue and things that go bump in the night.

Inspired by a true story, Golden Globe nominated 50/50 is a comedy centered on a 27-year-old guy who learns of his cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent struggle to beat the disease.

Directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Will Reiser who based the film on his own experiences fighting cancer, this poignant comedy stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam, a 27-year old public radio employee who discovers he has cancer. As his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) tries to help out, his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) proves to be a less than ideal life partner for this particular crisis. All the while, Adam's overprotective mother Diane (Anjelica Huston) tries to overcome her son's continued attempts to keep her out of his life. As Adam begins to discover how hard it is to deal with his situation, and to maintain various relationships in his life, he begins seeing a young counselor (Anna Kendrick) who might prove to be just as helpful personally as she is professionally. Matt Frewer and Philip Baker Hall co-star as Adam's fellow chemotherapy patients.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary

Deleted Scenes

The Story of 50/50

Another Happy Day was the first feature film from writer and director Sam Levinson, and received its world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

A wedding brings together one very dysfunctional family in this dark comedy-drama. Lynn (Ellen Barkin) was married to Paul (Thomas Haden Church), but they split up on bad terms, and Lynn took custody of their daughter Alice (Kate Bosworth) while Paul got their son Dylan (Michael Nardelli). Years later, Lynn attends Dylan's wedding at Paul's estate, with her younger sons Elliott (Ezra Miller) and Ben (Daniel Yelski) in tow; Elliott is a chronically depressed drug addict and Ben prefers to look at life through a camera than confront the world head on. Meanwhile, Alice deals with her anxieties through cutting, Dylan hasn't spoken to Lynn in years, Lynn is fearful of Paul and his wife Patty (Demi Moore), Lynn's mother (Ellen Burstyn) blames her daughter for her family's many troubles, and her father (George Kennedy) is in poor health and hardly cares what's happening around him. To the surprise of no one, all this has left Lynn an emotional wreck, and she's not sure just how she's going to get through the day.

Need a diagram? Another Happy Day is the screenplay I will forever wish I’d written. I’ve been threatening to write a tell-all about my family for years. Sam Levinson beat me to it. If you can relate you’ll howl with laughter. If not, you’ll be confused.

Real Steel is about a retired pugilist, played by a ripped Hugh Jackman, who  transitions to the business side of the ropes after human boxers are replaced by robotic ones in director Shawn Levy's feature-length adaptation of the Twilight Zone episode "Steel."  I was surprised to learn that. I don’t think I read it in any of the press prior to the film’s release.

Charlie Kenton (Jackman) was a true contender when the sport of boxing was changed forever. Now, instead of humans duking it out for the masses, huge, powerful steel robots trade blows in the ring. As a result, former gladiator Charlie has been forced into the role of two-bit promoter, piecing together cut-rate fighting bots from scrap metal as he makes the rounds on the underground boxing circuit.

Just when it seems that Charlie has sunkas low as he can go, his estranged 11 year old son, Max (Dakota Goyo), offers him the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at a comeback by constructing and training a true champion. Now the stakes are higher than ever before, and Charlie is about to get a second chance at leaving an indelible mark on the sport he once dedicated his life to. 

Cue Rocky theme. 

Real Steel costars Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie, Hope Davis and James Rebhorn.

Special Features:

Bloopers

Making of Metal Valley

Building the Bots

Audio Commentary with Director Shawn Levy

Based on English novelist David Nicholls’ book of the same name, One Day is a romantic weepie starring Anne Hathaway as Emma and Jim Sturges as Dexter.

SYNOPSIS: After one day together – July 15th, 1988, their university graduation – Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew begin a friendship that will last a lifetime. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground. For the next two decades, key moments of their relationship are experienced over several July 15ths in their lives. Together and apart, we see Dex and Em through their friendship and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Somewhere along their journey, these two people realize that what they are searching and hoping for has been there for them all along. As the true meaning of that one day back in 1988 is revealed, they come to terms with the nature of love and life itself.

Let’s see – we’ve got Emma who is smart and Dexter who is charming. After spending one night (without having sex!) after meeting at their graduation, we see them coming together every July 15th. Through the years they grow apart as their lives take very different directions. Will they eventually be together? Dun Dun Dun…. Sounds like Same Time Next Year for the new millennium with a little When Harry Met Sally thrown in for good measure.

Director Lone Scherfig caught fire with An Education, the movie that catapulted Carey Mulligan into our hearts. Hopefully this is just a sophomore slump and her next feature will return engaging storytelling.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Feature Commentary with Director Lone Scherfig

Deleted Scenes

Em and Dex: Through the Years

Anne Hathaway: Bringing Emma to Life

The Look of One Day

Inspired by real events, writer/director Larysa Kondracki's intense docudrama, The Whistleblower, tells the tale of an American policewoman (Rachel Weisz) who uncovers evidence of human trafficking while assisting a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Nebraska cop Kathy Bolkovac is caught in the middle of a vicious custody battle with her ex-husband when she seizes the opportunity to make a quick $100,000 tax-free (yeah, I get being tempted by that) by spending six months in Bosnia as a U.N. peacekeeper. Shortly after her arrival in Bosnia, Human Rights Commission head Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave in her other great performance of 2011) promotes her to the U.N.'s Gender Office, where she begins studying sexual-assault cases. But when Kathy discovers that her fellow peacekeepers are involved in a human-trafficking ring, the ensuing controversy makes her the target of some very powerful — and incredibly ruthless — people.

Costarring Benedict Cumberbatch, David Strathairn, Monica Bellucci and Nikolaj Lie Kass, The Whistleblower is an an important film that doesn’t make the misstep of seeming too “earnest”. Rachel Weisz gives another powerful performance (and in any other year would have been nominated for it, but no one saw The Whistleblower and the little bit of awards buzz she got has long sinced faded.) It’s an engrossing story all the more horrifying because it’s true. I can heartily recommend this one.

Special Feature

Cast & Crew Interviews

Paranormal Activity 3, whose tagline is “It Runs In The Family”,  is more of a prequel than a sequel. It stars Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown and  Dustin Ingram.

In 1988, young sisters Katie and Kristi befriend an invisible entity who resides in their home, the same home that will be the subject of Paranormal Activity (1). The directing duo of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) taking on the helming duties from a script by the returning team of Christopher Landon and Oren Peli.

I have to wonder if there’s anyone left who had any interest in this that hasn’t already seen it. From a budget of $5M, this thing grossed more than $200M worldwide.  (I’m sure that among those that have, there will be a lot of repeat viewers. Their target demographic will buy it and wear out their copies.)

Blu-ray Special Features

Original theatrical version of the film

Unrated version of the film

Lost Tapes

DVD Special Features

Unrated version of the Film

Digital copy of unrated version—compatible with iTunes® and Windows Media

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Actress Anne Hathaway is engaged to her actor boyfriend of three years Adam Shulman! Her rep has confirmed the news with US Weekly and can you say happy for her? She strikes me as one of those really sweet, genuinely nice people. For all I know she could be a raging lunatic, but something tells me she's not.

She started dating Adam after her previous boyfriend Raffaello Follieri was carted off to prison for defrauding people out of millions( they split up months before he pled guilty in October 2008).

No word on when the two plan to wed, but we wish these two all the best and a heartfelt congrulations!

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There was rampant speculation last week that Christopher Nolan’s production of The Dark Knight Rises was going to ‘occupy Wall Street’ right along with Occupy Wall Street, as well as an equal measure of denial. I can only imagine they sought to avoid creating chaos while they were creating their own controlled, theatrical version of chaos.

As it happens, Nolan has been shooting on Wall Street and its environs for the better part of a week, continuing into the weekend.  The only brouhaha was of the planned variety  as they filmed a  mass brawl between the minions of Tom Hardy 's Bane (ex-cons for the most part) and the Gotham City police, led by, of course, Batman (Christian Bale). You can see some fake flakes flying in some of the pics as this was a continuation or recreation of some of the scenes shot in Pittsburgh over the summer. This has been a long shoot already, having been to LA for a few weeks as well.

Check out the pics below. Without getting all spoiler-y, we’ve got more Bane, more Bruce Wayne, more John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a first look at Matthew Modine as Nixon and a quick peek at Selina Kyle (or Anne Hathaway) as well as the camouflaged Bat Tumbler.

The Dark Knight Rises opens everywhere July 20, 2012.

From comicbookmovie we get some new pics of Anne Hathaway in full "Catwoman" mode while filming Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises in Los Angeles this weekend. (All these movies filming in the streets of LA at the same time, no wonder traffic's always a mess!) Love the look of her costume. It seems to give a hint of a nod toward Yvonne Craig's look from the 60's television series, albeit updated. My question is, how is she supposed to run around kicking ass in those heels? Good thing she has that scooter/motorcycle thing to get around on.

In the pics below we see Hathaway's Catwoman along with Gary Oldman's Commissioner Jim Gordon and Christian Bale's Batman. The film also stars Tom Hardy as Bane, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and though it has yet to be confirmed, rumors are still rampant that Liam Neeson will reprise his role as Henri Ducard.

The Dark Knight Rises and takes over the world on July 20, 2012.

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Thanks to Warner Brothers, we have our first official look at Anne Hathaway as Catwoman/Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises! Woot! I’ve been waiting for this, as I know you have. We’ve been getting a lot of Bane, and don’t get me wrong, I think my position on Tom Hardy is very clear (I wish. Oh if I weren’t a lady, just what wouldn’t I say?), but if the paps are going to deluge us with set pics, let’s change it up a bit people!

Below we have a couple of pics from Hathaway on the set of The Dark Knight Rises yesterday as filming continues in and around Pittsburgh. She spent most of the time shooting interior scenes so the getup she’s wearing as she talks to crew members is street clothes. We also have a couple of pics of Marion Cotilliard as Miranda Tate. She’s supposedly Bruce Wayne’s love interest. Does that mean Catwoman will be Batman’s? Can we expect a catfight?

The Dark Knight Rises stars, of course, Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Hathaway, Cotilliard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson. Shooting continues in Pittsburgh for the next few weeks then moves lord-knows-where, probably somewhere director Christopher Nolan can get cast and crew away from the paps.

A couple of these pics may or may not be Anne Hathaway’s stunt double.

James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosted the Oscars way-back-when (and we’ve all long forgotten about it, thanks a lot James), but James Franco insists on making us relive the nightmare we can’t scrub from our retinas. If you recall, everyone thought he was stoned and that Anne Hathaway took 12 too many happy pills.

Now James is opening up about why he played it low-key and what really went on to make him the way he was (because it’s always everyone else’s fault don’tcha know). And get this, he says that Steven Spielberg allegedly told the show’s producer Bruce Cohen that it was ‘the best Oscars ever’. Bitch, please. If Steven did say that he was either being sarcastic or lying to Bruce Cohen’s face.

Despite saying talking about it is like assigning blame, and not fun, he goes on to assign blame in his Playboy interview:

“For three or four weeks we shot the promos and the little film that played in the opening. In the last week, when we really started focusing on the script for the live show and did a run-through, I said to the producer, ‘I don’t know why you hired me, because you haven’t given me anything. I just don’t think this stuff’s going to be good.’”

He particularly hated coming out dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Did he hate it more than you or I? Who knows:

“I was so pissed about that I was deliberately going to fall onstage and hopefully my dress would fall off or something — they couldn’t blame that on me; I was in high heels,” Franco says. “The plan had been that I was going to sing as Cher and then Cher was going to come out onstage; that got axed when Cher and the song from Burlesque weren’t nominated. I told them, ‘Look, this is the thing people are going to talk about, the images they will take away from the show.

“I just didn’t want to fight anymore, even when they said, ‘You’ll come out as Marilyn Monroe. It’ll be funny.’ Me in drag is not funny,” Franco continues, but he says, he “just didn’t want to argue anymore. I was going with their program; I wanted to do the material they gave me, not be one of the many cooks doing the writing. There were a lot of cooks who shouldn’t have been cooking but were allowed to. There were some cooks my manager tried to bring in, like Judd Apatow, who wrote some very funny stuff that wasn’t used.”

If Judd Apatow was involved you KNOW it would have been funny. You know, perhaps he has a point. Perhaps there were too many ‘cooks in the kitchen’ and all the wrong ones. However he’s a professional and that’s what he was paid for and he really should have at least tried. He came off not trying and it sounds like he somewhat ‘resigned’ himself to the writing, and in the sense that he lost his mojo (although I don’t know if he has a lot of mojo to begin with). He explains his demeanor:

“As far as having low energy or seeming as though I wasn’t into it or was too cool for it, I thought, ‘Okay Anne is going the enthusiastic route. I’ve been trained as an actor to respond to circumstances, to the people I’m working with, and not force anything.’ So I thought I would be the straight man and she could be the other, and that’s how I was trying to do those lines. I felt kind of trapped in that material. I felt, This is not my boat. I’m just a passenger, but I’m going down and there’s no way out.”

Good think Anne Hathaway didn’t follow his footsteps and actually rose to the challenge. Do you think he’s still passing the buck or do you think it was a bad situation that wasn’t going to get good no matter how he acted?