This Tuesday, April 3^rd We Bought a Zoo will be available on BluRay/DVD. Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) directs a story based on a memoir by British journalist, Benjamin Mee, and stars Matt Damon (Contagion), Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2) and Thomas Haden Church (Sideways). The movie focuses on a single dad, Benjamin Mee (portrayed by Damon), struggling to raise his two children after the loss of his wife. Hoping that a fresh start will restore their family spirit, Mee quits his job and buys an old rural house, but there’s a catch: the house is part of a zoo named the Rosemoor Animal Park, where dozens of animals reside under the care of head zookeeper Kelly Foster (Johansson) and her dedicated team. With no experience and a very tight budget, Mee sets out with the support of his family and his devoted staff to reopen the zoo. 

Featuring an incredible musical score composed by Jónsi of the band Sigur Rós, the We Bought a Zoo Blu-ray is loaded with over 2½ hours of special features including a 28-minute featurette called “The Real Mee” about the real life Benjamin Mee, giving some background on his life and the zoo.

The movie does an excellent job portraying Benjamin Mee’s experiences but his actual story is a bit more harrowing than the movie let’s on. I recently had a chance to speak with Benjamin Mee about We Bought a Zoo. He discusses how hard it really was to buy a zoo, what it was like to have Matt Damon play him on-screen, Do-It-Yourself skills, his animal wish list, close brushes with death, and about how some parts of his life were so dismal that they didn’t make it into the film.

Universal Pictures has just released the first official teaser trailer and poster for The Bourne Legacy, the franchise continuation bearing the Bourne name but replacing Matt Damon's titular ass-kicker with another government-trained badass, this time played by two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner.

Before Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity came about a decade ago, the idea of Matt Damon as an unstoppably badass amnesiac assassin was sort of laughable.  How times change.  After the Bourne franchise got bigger with two subsequent installments under director Paul Greengrass, Damon and the helmer opted not to return for a fourth go-around.  Looking to capitalize on the franchise even without the central figures, Universal Pictures has gone ahead with The Bourne Legacy, which does not, in fact, feature Jason Bourne.

Instead, Jeremy Renner is taking over as a new, Bournesque character who goes by the name Aaron Cross.  As part of the end of the week image-palooza, we now have our first official look at Cross in The Bourne Legacy.  How does he look?  Almost exactly like you'd expect.  The one-time star of National Lampoon's Senior Trip* is mean-mugging with the conviction of a two-time Oscar nominee, and he's wearing a pretty cool jacket too.

Synopsis:  This holiday season, acclaimed filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) directs an amazing and true story about a single dad who decides his family needs a fresh start, so he and his two children move to the most unlikely of places: a zoo. With the help of an eclectic staff, and with many misadventures along the way, the family works to return the dilapidated zoo to its former wonder and glory.

Cast:  Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Elle Fanning, Patrick Fugit, Thomas Haden Church, Angus Macfadyen

Director: Cameron Crowe

Genre:  Family, Drama

Release Date: December 23, 2011

Just how much does the movie industry like awards?  So much so that lists must be compiled of favorite movies that don't actually exist.  That's not exactly true, but we're talking about the Black List, an annual compilation of the finest unproduced screenplays of the year (not a McCarthyist list of suspected Communists whose lives are now ruined).  To put it in perspective, the 2008 list included both 50/50 and The Descendants.  The seventh list was released today by Black List founder Franklin Leonard, and it's topped by The Imitation Game, a biopic of Alan Turing, the mathematician who developing the Turing Test and had a strange, strange existence.  That film will probably get made at Warner Bros, possibly with David Yates directing.

Jeremy Renner is not an actor who fears a big franchise.  Since becoming a bona fide big deal with his Oscar-nominated turn in The Hurt Locker, the erstwhile star of National Lampoon's Senior Trip has signed on to become the new lead in the Mission: Impossible series, with next month's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol serving as the baton-passing from Tom Cruise to Renner, and he's also slinging arrows as Hawkeye in next summer's superhero team up The Avengers.  Then there's also the would-be franchise starter Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  Of the franchises he's involved in, though, the biggest question mark is his leading role in the The Bourne Legacy, a spinoff from the Bourne Identity films starring Matt Damon.  Renner has revealed a little bit of vague information on the quasi-sequel, which remains quite mysterious.

Fox Searchlight Pictures along with Camelot Pictures are set to release Margaret on Friday, September 30^th to limited platform release.  With a stellar cast that includes Anna Paquin (True Blood), Allison Janney (The Help), Matthew Broderick (Tower Heist), Matt Damon (Contagion), Kieran Culkin (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), the film centers on a seventeen year-old New York City high school student, Lisa Cohen (played by Paquin), who is convinced that she has inadvertently played a role in a bus accident in Manhattan’s Upper West Side that caused a woman’s horrific death.

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me, which was nominated for two Academy Awards), and produced by the late director Sydney Pollack (Three Days of the Condor), Gary Gilbert and Scott Rudin with the late director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) as executive producer, the film takes the audience along on the tumultuous journey as she tries to make things right.  Met with opposition at every turn as she takes legal action against the bus driver (Ruffalo), she is torn apart with guilt as revelations about telling the truth in the real world prove frustrating and disappointing.

Synopsis: This holiday season, acclaimed filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) directs an amazing and true story about a single dad who decides his family needs a fresh start, so he and his two children move to the most unlikely of places: a zoo. With the help of an eclectic staff, and with many misadventures along the way, the family works to return the dilapidated zoo to its former wonder and glory.

Year after year, the first weekend following Labor Day is consistently far from what someone somewhere almost certainly calls "boffo box office."  That is to say, it's not generally a busy weekend at the movies.  This year, Sunday was the tenth anniversary of a truly horrific national trauma, as well as, less importantly, the first Sunday of the NFL season.  To provide escapism at their local multiplexes, Americans by and large chose to go see a methodical and disturbingly plausible movie about an unstoppable viral pandemic.  With its all-star cast and effective marketing, Contagion debuted in the number one spot, grossing more than expected, while Warrior opened in third and two other new releases failed rather spectacularly.

On the surface, Contagion might just seem like your average action thriller about a deadly pandemic, but in actuality it is a an exciting motion picture roller coaster ride with some serious award-winning pedigree. The film, which opens in theaters on September 9^th, was not only directed by an Oscar winner, but it also stars four Oscar winners, four Oscar nominees, and a three time Emmy winner. No matter which way you slice it, that’s a whole lot of Hollywood gold for one movie.

The film was directed by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), based on a script by Scott Z. Burns (An Bourne Ultimatum), and stars Academy Award winners Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting), Kate Winslet (The Reader), Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose), and Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love), Academy Award nominees Laurence Fishburne (What’s Love Got To Do With It), Jude Law (Cold Mountain), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), and Elliot Gould (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), as well as three time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston (TV’s Breaking Bad). Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving pandemic gets worse, the medical community races to find the cure and control the panic that ensues around the world. As the disease spreads, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society that is coming apart. The movie plays like Outbreak done Traffic style.