Two Clips From Stephen Chow's CJ7

Stephen Chow might be a big star across the rest of the world, but it appears as if Sony Classics are still unsure of his appeal Stateside, with the slight rollout they seem to be giving his latest film CJ7. The film is only opening on 12 screens in New York City and Los Angeles tomorrow and unless you are in easy commuting distance of either metropolis, you’ll find yourself waiting for the film to slowly go wider. Then again, this is a similar strategy to the one ised two years ago for Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which netted the studio $17 million, so maybe they know what they're doing.

In any case, to tide you over on that wait, JoBlo managed to score two clips from the film, which we share with you below. Enjoy!

I AM LEGEND's Original (Better) Ending

Making its way around the internet today is a clip of the original ending to last year's I Am Legend starring Will Smith. If anything, this clip serves to illustrate the absolute danger that the test audience process can be to a film.

Legend, as seen in theaters, ended with Will Smith suicidally sacrificing himself so that two other people uninfected with the plague that has killed nearly all of humanity and turned the remainder into crazed, rabid creatures can escape. It was a rediculous action on his character's part, entirely unmotivated by what had gone before.

Well, it turns out that the original ending below, was rejected by test audience, forcing the filmmakers to go back and create the ending we saw in theaters. Why didn't they like it? Who can say? But the fact that the new version has explosions and the original version tried to go for a more emtional and contemplative ending may say something about the people in the test group.

I personally find this ending much more interesting, and while it wouldn't have totally redeemed all of the film's problems - the third act would still have felt rushed - it at least would have won more goodwill with this moviegoer than the stupid ending the studio and its audience research did.

RUN, FAT BOY, RUN Clips

Simon Pegg has built a reputation as a comicsomeone else actor with his work on the British television series Spaced and the films Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz. Of course, these were all done in collaboration with director Edgar Wright. Can Pegg deliver the funny with another director at the helm?

That's the question that the romantic comedy Run Fat Boy Run will try and answer when it is released later this month. The first comedy that Pegg has headlined without Wright in the director's chair finds the British comic working with actor David Schwimmer making his directorial debut.

Pegg stars an aimless guy who left his pregnant fiancee (Thandie Newton) at the alter five years earlier. When he finds out that she is about to marry someone else, he decides to run a marathon to show her that he is capable of finishing something that he's started.

The production seems like an interesting blending of comic talents from both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to Schwimmer, America contributes former member of The State, Michael Ian Black, as Pegg's co-writer on the script and the always versitile Hank Azaria as Pegg's romantic rival. From England, Pegg is joined by his Shaun Of The Dead co-star, and very funny guy in his own right, Dylan Moran.

Will the movie deliver the laughs? Perhaps, if the two clips we've been sent are any indication.

The first featuring Pegg and Newton is a slighly more serious scene while Pegg and Azaria are featured in the second with a more comedic scene that ends with a pretty great line.

Run Fat Boy Run opens March 28th.

Countdown To CLOVERFIELD

We are now just eight days away to the release of the first highly-anticipated film of 2008- Cloverfield. Since its trailer sprang out of nowhere to leave audiences wondering what they had just seen the weekend Transformers opened, speculation, most of it inaccurate, has run rampant as to what the film could actually be about. Slowly, we've learned that it is about a giant monster attack on New York City told from the point of view of a group of 20-somethings who leave their video camera on to document their flight from Manhattan. I'm guessing that the pitchmeeting went something like, "Think Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project!"

Producer J J Abrams has been keeping the movie's cards pretty close to his vest, with only the few snippets of footage seen in the trailers and a few non-descript photos being released. Folks were kept entertained with tantalizing clues that lead to viral marketing games that caused us to wonder what does the mysterious drink Slusho have to do with any of this.

But now, as the film's release looms, about two dozen publicity photos have been released by Paramount Studios. You can view them all over at Coming Soon. While there still haven't been any released photos showing what the Cloverfield monster actually looks like, they still contain what might be considered some minor spoilers.

Also recently released is a fake news report, showing a mid-Atlantic oil rig being mysteriously destroyed, further adding to the metatextuality of the film's marketing.



Of course, when such a movie is so highly anticipated, it can not possibly live up to every one's expectations, leading to an inevitable backlash. This guy, who blogs for the Guardian in Great Britain, however, seems to be jumping the gun with the Cloverfield hate, already bashing the film even though he has a month or so wait before the film reaches England's shores.

KING OF KONG Clip

If you're a regular moviegoer like me, at this point in the summer you're probably suffering from a bit of what I like to call ''blockbuster bloat'' and are probably looking for something a little different. Normally, I'd recommend something like the documentary King Of Kong, which opens today. In fact, when I saw the film - which tells the struggle of a laid-off Boeing engineer attempting to break the world's Donkey Kong record high score and discovering himself suddenly entrenched in the surprisingly internecine world of competitive video gaming - this past spring at the Philadelphia International Film Festival, I gave the film a positive review.

Unfortunately, Picturehouse is only opening the film on a total of five screens, so unless you live in New York City, Seattle, Austin or Los Angeles, you're out of luck. However, according to the film's website, it will be making its way to at least 25 more markets within the next couple of weeks.

To whet your appetite, though, Picturehouse has supplied us with a clip from the movie featuring an explanation from some of the folks in the video game world about the degree of difficulty to be found in Donkey Kong-




And if that's not enough- here's the film's trailer-