Fatso's Top 20 Biggest Movies of 2014

And now, without further ado, our top movie rentals of the year. Any favourites? Disappointments? Surprises? These were the films you couldn't wait to see on DVD and Blu-ray:

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1. Gravity

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 2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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3. The Wolf of Wall Street

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4. Captain Phillips

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5. Thor: The Dark World

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 6. 12 Years a Slave

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7. Lee Daniels' The Butler

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8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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9. Frozen

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10. Philomena

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11. The Railway Man

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12. American Hustle

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13. Blue Jasmine

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14. Rush

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15. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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16. Ender's Game

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17. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

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18. About Time

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19. Saving Mr. Banks

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20. Dallas Buyers Club

Fatso's Top 20 Biggest TV Shows of 2014

2014 has been a pretty amazing year for TV. There was no shortage of quality series to watch, and more often than not, it sometimes became a bit overwhelming to keep up with all the great shows being churned out. In case you missed anything, here's a list of the Top 20 most rented TV shows on Fatso in 2014 -- once again, and unsurprisingly, the mighty Game of Thrones towered above them all...

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1. Game of Thrones - Season 3

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2. True Detective - Season 1

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3. House of Cards (US) - Season 1

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4. Homeland - Season 3

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5. The Bridge - Series 2

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6. Broadchurch - Series 1

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7. Sherlock - Series 3

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8. House of Cards (US) - Season 2

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9. Orange Is the New Black - Season 1

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10. Orphan Black - Series 1

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11. Justified - Season 3

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12. Borgen - Season 3

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13. The Returned - Season 1

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14. True Blood - Season 6

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15. The Americans - Season 1

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16. Elementary - Season 1

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17. The Tunnel

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18. Sons of Anarchy - Season 5

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19. Boardwalk Empire - Season 4

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20. The Walking Dead - Season 4

Trailer: Big Hero 6

Walt Disney Animation's latest animated feature Big Hero 6 is coming to NZ theatres on Boxing Day and it looks freakin' awesome! Based on a lesser-known Marvel comic character, this superhero flick, about a young tech-geek prodigy and his cuddly inflatable robot buddy, looks to combine all the slam-bang blockbuster action we've come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Pixar's gorgeous state-of-the-art CG animation and smart, all-ages humour (the city design looks stunning). Fatso will be hosting previews in Auckland and Wellington on December 21 -- stay tuned to find out how to win tickets. In the meantime, check out this fantastic trailer below:

Trailer: Furious 7

The trailer for the SEVENTH entry in the non-stop Fast and Furious franchise -- simply entitled Furious 7 -- is out of the gate and it's a slick, action-packed beauty that fans will totally lap up. Fast and Furious 6 reached new heights of crazy for the series, what with cars pulling down a cargo jet, and it's probably safe to say that Furious 7 is going to offer plenty more physics-defying vehicular mayhem (cars falling out of the sky!) to complement its themes of family togetherness that Vin Diesel loves hammering home. I'm particularly interested in seeing how new-to-franchise director James Wan (The Conjuring), coming mostly from a horror background, will handle the big-budget action; he's got a good eye, and having done one decent action-y thriller in Death Sentence, I don't think he will blow it. Trickier perhaps, would be the work-around Paul Walker's untimely death. How will they write him out of the film? How's the doubling with his brothers going to look? It's hard to tell any of this from the trailer, but damn I'm hyped.

Stellar Buzz for Christopher Nolan's Space Travel Blockbuster

For hype and anticipation, Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar is the one to beat right now. It's about two weeks away from release and early reactions are starting to surface online, all of them positive. What can I say, if the likes of Edgar Wright ("Emotional, visually stunning"), Rian Johnson ("some of the finest space travel spectacle this side of 2001") and Brad Bird ("WOW") are bowled over, I think we're going to be in for a dazzler. It's also worth noting Interstellar is the first Hollywood blockbuster we've had in what seems to be an alarmingly long time that isn't a sequel or based on some existing franchise/toy/book. Be sure to see at IMAX on November 6!

Movie Cliché Supercut: "Let Her Go!"

Here's one of the most commonly used lines in action/thriller movies -- so common that I haven't even really thought about how often it is used -- made a lot more execrable and laughable seen in such quick succession. Highlights: Jon Lovitz in Loaded Weapon and Richard Gere's horrible Irish accent in The Jackal.

David Fincher: "And the Other Way is Wrong"

David Fincher is, without a doubt, one of the finest, most visually precise of all living American filmmakers. With his marvelously twisty -- and twisted -- new film Gone Girl just out, editor Tony Zhou -- who's previously broken down the style of other directors like Edgar Wright and Michael Bay -- has put together this terrific, illuminating look at Fincher and what he does (or more so, doesn't do) in his work. If you haven't seen the bulk of Fincher's films, spoilers follow, so approach at your own peril.

Teaser Trailer: Inside Out

Oh Pixar, you tease!! Just so no one out there gets TOO excited, the first trailer for the next film, Inside Out, contains about 30 seconds of footage, and the rest is made up of clips from their previous films. Still, it feels like it's been way too long since we've had an original Pixar movie, and this one definitely looks promising (it's more appealing to me than say, Brave, anyway). Being partially set inside the mind of a 11-year-old girl, and with Monsters Inc. and Up director Pete Docter at the helm, there's plenty of potential for going wild with the premise. June 2015 couldn't come sooner...

Keanu Avenges Dog's Death and Wows Fantastic Fest

If anyone needs a career resuscitation, it's Keanu Reeves. Although he did praise-worthy work with his underseen-and-appreciated 2013 directorial debut Man of Tai Chi, the gargantuan calamity that was 47 Ronin proved to be a large nail-in-the-coffin for the star. Enter his forthcoming hitman action-thriller John Wick, seemingly out of nowhere. After premiering at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, twitter lit up with raves about the film, which is apparently directed by his Point Break stunt double! The trailer makes it out to be a throwback to the bullet-ridden action flicks of the '90s, which is fine by me; any film that has Keanu uttering the line, "That dog was a final gift from my dying wife" must be kinda fun, right? Read more tweets here, and watch the trailer below:

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #34

What do you get when you strip John Williams' score from the Throne Room scene in Star Wars? Sublime, hilarious awkwardness...

Friday Clips #10

We're long overdue for a Friday Clips post! Below: a supercut of Wes Anderson's POV-vehicle shots; an Honest Trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is actually one of their more positive efforts but still points out, deservingly, lapses in the movie's narrative logic; a LEGO short film that spoofs Guardian of the Galaxy's mix tape; a video showing Pixar's beautiful colour script at work...

Trailer: Grand Piano

Grand Piano looks and sounds pretty absurd, but potentially absurd in that hugely entertaining way that sometimes Brian DePalma's films can be. Also I'm a sucker for a good limited-location thriller, so this looks like it'll be right up my alley. Elijah Wood stars as a stage-fright-stricken concert pianist who's targeted during his comeback performance by a psycho who tells him he will die if he plays one wrong note. Pinnacle Films will be releasing this film from Spanish director Eugenio Mira -- who interestingly, did the score to the great sci-fi indie Timecrimes! --  on October 1 on DVD and Blu-ray. Reserve it here. Watch Elijah plonk on some keys anxiously in the trailer below:

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #33

It was only a matter of time before the viral fundraising phenomenon known as the "ice bucket challenge" reached the Star Wars galaxy, and behold, here we have Luke Skywalker,  Han Solo and assorted Episode VII cast members dousing themselves with ice cold water for the ALS Association. Enjoy!

Trailer: Birdman

Wow, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman is shaping up to be a pretty awesome return-to-form  for Michael Keaton. Though I haven't been too taken by the director's work of late (not since Amores Perros anyway), it's especially heartening to see the underrated Keaton back in a meaty-looking lead role. Of course, the premise, focusing on the comeback of a washed-up actor known for playing a superhero, is intriguingly meta stuff that Keaton can definitely sink his teeth into. Adding to the exciting promise of this project is the news that it was apparently shot to look like it was all filmed in one long take by celebrated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity, Children of Men). Check out the trailer below for some Keaton magic....

Trailer: Mad Max: Fury Road

The web's been abuzz this morning with film writers/bloggers going gaga over the Comic-Con trailer for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road -- I have to count myself in. Though there have been some massive announcements at the entertainment/pop culture convention over the weekend -- including a King Kong spin-off movie from Legendary, and confirmation of Tarantino's next film straight from the horse's mouth -- the long-gestating Miller reboot-cum-sequel of his classic Mad Max trilogy was definitely the one that grabbed my interest the most. Conceived as one long chase sequence, or as Miller has also described, "a western on wheels", the film won't be out until May 2015, but this blistering trailer should get you all jazzed up for it.... (more info on the film here)