• While at the Dubai International Film Festival over the weekend, Terminator Salvation director McG “announced” that a fifth installment of the Terminator franchise is definitely in the works, although The Halcyon Co. revealed over a year ago their plans for a trilogy. That McG is back to helm the installment must mean Halcyon is happier with the way Salvation looks than some of us are.
• As rumored, Chris Weitz will indeed take over the Twilight franchise from exited director Catherine Hardwicke. And yes, for those who agreed the job was only appropriate for another woman, Chris is short for Christopher.
• F/X artist-turned-director Stephen Norrington is finally following up The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with the remake of The Crow that’s been talked about in Hollywood for awhile. I wonder if Jason Statham is still interested in playing the lead.
• The Dark Knight seems to be for Blu-Ray what The Matrix was for DVD a decade ago.
• Oh yeah, the weekend’s box office results: well, The Day the Earth Stood Still managed to just barely edge out The Happening to be the higher grossing of the year’s lame eco-sci-fi films. The animated film you never heard of, Delgo, couldn’t make a million bucks on more than 2,000 screens, while the Bollywood film you never heard of, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, cracked a million bucks on about 100 screens. And a ton of limited specialty films, including new releases Gran Torino, Wendy and Lucy, The Reader, Doubt and Che, all had better per-screen-averages than did the #1 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

• The cat is out of the bag for Paper Hearts, a new movie starring Michael Cera about his real-life relationship with actress Charlyne Yi (Knocked Up). The part-doc, part-scripted comedy was apparently hoping to slip into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival completely under the radar in order to keep expectations in check. Now we’re all talking about it, and it’s sure to be one of the hottest tickets in Park City (as long as it’s indeed selected for the fest). Other titles expected to be named next week for the Sundance slate include the Ashton Kutcher starrer Spread, the Nick Hornby-scripted An Education and Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest.
• Following in his sister’s footsteps, Madonna bro Christopher Ciccone will make his feature directorial debut with a teen thriller titled Twist.
• The Dardenne brothers have accepted the position as heads of Europa Distribution, a two-year-old collective of independent film distributors that acts as a lobby, think-tank and network for the European film industry.
• In other European cinema news, due to the current economy, both the San Sebastian and CineKid film festivals are on the verge of going out of business.
• This should have been the year everyone got a Blu-ray player for Christmas, but despite lowered prices, the current recession will likely still keep consumers from adopting the format.

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for all things science fiction-related, and when it involves robots of any kind (the odd exception being the actual movie Robots, which I avoided like the plague) then I’m in like Flynn. The more non-human looking the robot, the more I’ll love it. (Which is probably why Disney’s own The Black Hole has some of the coolest movie robots in it. V.I.N.C.E.N.T.? Maximillian? Great stuff. Where’s my Blu-ray, Disney?) One of the movies this past year that actually got me into the theaters more than once was Disney/Pixar’s WALL•E, which comes out on DVD today. They’ve added a ton of special features to the film, especially (of course) if you buy the three-disc special edition, which includes a digital copy of the movie that you can toss on your iPhone, laptop, digital watch, toaster oven, or shaving mirror.

Despite the fact that director Andrew Stanton says WALL•E has “no environmental message” whatsoever, it’s a bit ironic that on the commentary track he starts out by explaining that in the development process they wondered what would happen if so much trash piled up that humans had to leave the earth in order to clean it up. Sounds environmental enough to me. Luckily, the fact that Stanton continues to insist there’s no underlying meaning, and that he never made the connection between WALL•E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit hasn’t detracted from my enjoyment of the film.

Pixar decided to revisit the WALL•E universe by creating a short film using new animation and some recycled footage. The idea was that it would be a nifty little special feature for the DVD, which it is, but it makes me yearn for a sequel to WALL•E — which is a sign of Disney’s marketing magic at work. The short film is BURN•E, and I got the chance to see a little early and to talk with the director of the short, Angus MacLean. The DVD also includes the short magician vs. rabbit film Presto, and these two shorts alone are worth the price you’ll pay for this robotic wonder. Check out our interview with MacLean below the jump.

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Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale might eschew gadgets in lieu of a hard punch to the nose, but it’s hard to argue that the best Bond gadget in recent years isn’t the invention of the Blu-ray DVD. Now the classic Bond films have started appearing in the format with upgraded images, sound, and a slew of special features. Casino Royale was previously released on DVD as one of Sony’s first “must have” discs to show off your Blu-ray player (which was probably a Sony PlayStation3), but now they’re visiting a smattering of different Bonds in this first release.

As I’ve learned in my adult life, there are sometimes those moments that you realize you’re probably unhealthily obsessed with something. For me, that moment came when I was seriously considering purchasing a $2,999 framed collage featuring signatures of all the actors who had played James Bond in the “official” movies, along with various playing cards, casino chips, photos and what not. I ultimately had to pass on it, and my wallet was grateful after the fact.

Thankfully there are much more affordable ways to feed this obsession, some of which can be documented in the series of Bondcasts that I used to host with Athena Stamos at Cinematical. One of those ways has been collecting the James Bond movies on DVD. There have been not one, nor two, but now three different collections of Bond issued on DVD, and while I really miss the menu screens from the first set, (”Please activate your remote control to activate the Goldfinger Special Edition DVD” — complete with an extremely Bondian gadgetlike interface), you can’t argue that Blu-ray is definitely giving the previous James Bond films a shot in the arm.

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• Scheduling the first major presidential debate on a Friday initially seemed like a mistake to me, as I figured most Americans would rather go out tonight than spend the eve of their weekend thinking about politics. Yet now I’m hearing about debate-watching parties, and Variety expects the event to curb moviegoing tonight — that is if the debate even happens. But even if it wasn’t going to be only teens populating the multiplex tonight, Eagle Eye would still rule the weekend, as is currently predicted.
• Continuing the studio’s push of The Dark Knight for Oscar, Warner Bros. is giving Academy members the option of being shipped a Blu-Ray screener, which will showcase the film’s Imax-friendly ratio changes, in order for voters to have “the best possible chance to see what we did technically.” Or members could actually go see films as they’re meant to be seen on the big screen. Fortunately, TDK is also being rereleased in January.
• Helen Mirren will star as a retired Mossad agent who must return to the job in John Madden’s The Debt, a remake of the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov. Though it’s probably more Munich than 007, as long as Mirren’s playing a role reminding me of Daniel Craig, I’m hoping there’ll be a gratuitous scene featuring a bikini-clad Mirren ascending from the sea.
• Nick Nolte will guide a pair of newly orphaned vacationing children in the indie Arcadia Lost, which sounds to me like a Greek-set Walkabout meets The Earthling, a film that most made me cry as a child due to the way Ricky Shroder’s parents die in a terrible Winnebago accident.

• Jumper only managed to clear $38.1 million at the box office over the five day weekend, which may be enough for sequel talks, but doesn’t seem like such a victory against the news that Step Up 2 made $28 million over the same frame. Meanwhile, The Band’s Visit, which is not a new release, managed the highest per-screen average of any film over the holiday weekend with $12,295 at each of its 13 locations.
• With Blu-Ray declaring “Mission Accomplished!” in the costly, confusing and totally pointless HD DVD format war, technology companies are expected to turn their focus towards creating consoles to handle digital downloads.
• Oscar ballots were due yesterday. Also, did you know we’re having a party?

If you’re not up to date on the current status of the HD DVD format war, trust me — you’re not alone. In 2005, when Engadget’s Ryan Block wrote this definitive side-by-side comparison of the two formats, it seemed like I might actually have to pick a side. But now that I have an AppleTV, the whole idea of a DVD format war seems completely meaningless. With more studios and filmmakers embracing online distribution every day, I seems like the HD DVD is destined to become the laserdisc of the late 00s. If you don’t believe me, compare Block’s piece from two years ago with this Engadget story from this weekend, through which we learn that customers are complaining that Sony’s high definition Blu-Ray disks have a tendency to grow some kind of mold which ultimately renders them useless.

So imagine my surprise when, moments after reading the rotting disk story, I scrolled down on my RSS reader and learned that Blockbuster–and, I swear, I’m not making this up–has announced that they will exclusively support Blu-Ray over Toshiba’s competing HD-DVD format in most of its stores. And yes, I triple-checked the date on the story–this decision was announced today. Tack on your own joke about the decaying state of brick-and-mortar, tangible product movie rental right … about … here.

Image of happy family enjoying a surely rot-free home entertainment experience courtesy of Blockbuster.com.