Short list of new DVDs this week, but despite immediate impressions they all seem to be pretty interesting in their own way. Tina Fey, Jackie Chan and Jet Li head up the list of new releases this week, but there’s a new Indian film that looks far more fascinating than anything we usually see these days. And I might add that Special Editions of The Big Lebowski and Cool Hand Luke are also out.  Here are the rest of the details -

BABY MAMA (2008), Romantic Comedy, PG-13, 99 mins.

Baby Mama is an immediate turn-off to me at first glance, although I’m not sure exactly why. It could be that I’m just not into baby comedies anymore, if I ever was. But it should be noted that this is a Saturday Night Live comedy with an outstanding cast, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler (with the Big Gulp), Sigourney Weaver, Greg Kinnear, and Steve Martin (who we also have to thank for Traitor).

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a professional woman who has for years neglected her personal life in pursuit of a successful career. Now, at age 37, she suddenly determines herself to have a baby, only to discover that she has an infinitely small possibility of conceiving. Undaunted, she embarks on a mission to find the kookiest blonde imaginable to be her surrogate mother.

Middle-aged, ultra-organized Kate begins an intense self-preparation program for motherhood, reading books about pregnancy and infant care, preparing her home for a new baby, and researching quality schools in her area. Angie (Poehler), however, soon shows up without a place to live, and in classic sit-com mode, the movie combines the super-successful with the super-unsuccessful, and their competing methods of preparing for a baby create all manner of havoc.

Don’t expect a cognitive workout, but it’s actually a pretty heartwarming family comedy.

THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM (2008), Action/Adventure/Comedy/Romance, PG-13, 113 mins.

The long-awaited pairing of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, China’s most prominent ass-kicking movie stars, arrives this week on DVD with The Forbidden Kingdom. I’m going to go ahead and admit that at the time of this writing I have yet to see the movie, but I have to say that the premise gives me a deep feeling of unease at the future of the international kung-fu movie scene.

Jet Li plays the part of The Monkey King, while Jackie Chan plays an old pawn shop owner in Chinatown. One day an American teenager who is obsessed with Chinese martial arts cinema is in the pawn shop and discovers the legendary weapon of the Monkey King which soon sends him to ancient China where he teams up with some Chinese warriors from old lore on a mission to rescue the imprisoned king.

I have heard good things about the movie, but I also know that one of the most effective ways to ridicule any topic, genre, idea, or culture is to add cinematic versions of American teenagers. That just never goes well. Nevertheless, Jackie Chan has been pretty reliable with the cool combinations of action and comedy, and teaming up with Jet Li is reason enough by itself to check it out.

THE FALL (2006), Adventure/Drama/Fantasy, R, 113 mins.

This is going to be my recommendation for the week. It’s the story of Hollywood stuntman in 1920s Los Angeles who lands himself in the hospital while trying to perform a stunt to impress his girlfriend. While in the hospital, he becomes severely depressed and suicidal after his girlfriend leaves her, and he befriends his bedridden roommate, a young girl named Alexandria.

He entertains and enchants Alexandria with vivid, heroic stories about five people uniting to fight a common enemy, setting the stage for fact and fiction to blend together in the drug-ridden hospital environment. He has real affection for Alexandria, but is also gaining her friendship for the purpose of using her to get extra morphine so he can commit suicide.

Definitely a weird premise, but I’ve also noticed that weird premises are generally where the most interesting movies come from. Stories based on stories within stories allow for the most memorable and fascinating experiences, and Indian director Tarsem Singh’s The Fall presents a story that allows a total break from reality and an entrance into a complete fantasy world, reminding me of some classics like The Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, and even The Cell. See this one.

The second Mummy sequel isn’t going to win any Academy Awards in the writing department, that much becomes almost immediately clear. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of the other preceding films, although that doesn’t matter so much. The third installment in the Mummy franchise starts out with an extensive back story of the Chinese Emperor Qin (pronounced “cheen”), the “dragon emperor,” and how he came to be fossilized along with thousands of his soldiers. Obviously, wild liberties are taken with the story in order to turn it into a Hollywood film, although for an introduction into a half-assed movie, it’s not a bad dramatization.

Our friends Rick and Evelyn, now married (and now Maria Bello), have retired from the action adventure life and are trying to be boring middle aged parents in the English countryside, until they find themselves faced with the opportunity to deliver a priceless artifact to China, where their son Alex is secretly excavating an ancient Tomb. Soon, of course, the Tomb turns out to be cursed and the artifact that they are delivering turns out to be more than meets the eye.

It seems that the despotic Dragon Emperor has been awoken and now wants to come back and turn China into a unified nation under his rule. China was in the middle of a civil war at that time, between the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Tse-tung. There had been widespread battling between warlords throughout China since the Mongols were overthrown in 1911, so the nation was in bad need of order.

Of course, the Dragon Emperor had no intention of creating a benevolent government, he planned a vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Of course, in reality, less than two years after the movie takes place, Chairman Mao took over, proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China with himself as Emperor, and began his vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Ouch!

The movie puts all of it’s stock into it’s special effect and climactic battle sequences, but unfortunately the special effects, like in the two movies before it, are interesting but not convincing for a second, and the battle sequences are exactly the same thing we’ve seen dozens of times before. Even the army of the dead has been done before, and using far more primitive but much more effective cinematic trickery, in Army of Darkness, a much better movie than this one.

Unfortunately, Jet Li turns out to be nothing more than a marketing ploy for the movie, since he literally only appears in it for a few minutes. The vast majority of his screen time is as a special effect, a bizarre living statue that occasionally hurls pieces of his regenerating face in anger and talks through a throat full of gravel. At one point he morphs into a three-headed dragon and, while the morphing is not unimpressive, Jet Li fans are sure to be disappointed that they have to spend the entire movie waiting for him to show up.

Just in case you forgot for a minute that this is an American movie, some CGI yeti show up late in the movie (to which O-Conell responds, “Aboninable snowmen?!” Yeah I had the same response, just with more question marks) and turn into stupid, stupid comic relief. They literally act exactly like frat boys, kicking bad guys through field goals and puking and whatnot. What a joke.

There are several movies this summer that have been more impressive than I expected, but sadly The Mummy 3 is just not one of them. GI suggest going to see Pineapple Express instead…

This is me kicking it with the real Dragon Emperor back in May '07. We go way back.

Oh and just so you all know, I auditioned for a role in the movie but they said I didn't look Chinese enough. Sometimes I just don't get those people.