How do you follow films like The Transporter and Transporter 2? Um, you hire non-stop bad-ass Jason Statham to star in Transporter 3? (Yep.) The third entry in the hyper-kinetic action series comes from Lionsgate (whereas the first two came from Fox) and of course the producers found a way to get Mr. Statham back for Part 3 -- AND they found a way for him to fight with his shirt off. (Marketing class tells us this brings females to the theater.)

The first film dealt with an oddly superhuman courier who is forced to kick much ass when he's double-crossed by some villains. The second film ... pretty much the same, although the action bits were upgraded from slightly absurd to full-on Looney Tunes. Part 3? Yeah, our favorite "package" deliverer is forced to go on a mission, only if he wanders too far from his car, a giant wrist-bomb will go off. Apologies to my film professors, but that's just enough of a plot to get me interested in an action movie.

Transporter 3 opens on November 26, and LG has just released the final trailer. Here it is, and thanks to TrailerAddict.com for hooking us up with the embeddables:

Oliver Stone's W. has screened for the more important among us, and I am pleasantly surprised to report that people are not openly laughing at it. Some seem downright impressed. Here, for example is David Poland on The Hot Blog:

"[Josh] Brolin should be nominated for the Oscar. We'll see whether the crowd around Best Actor is too big for him to crack, but it is a letter perfect performance that looks much, much easier than most critics and audiences, I think, will understand . . . . The only downside is that the movie doesn't offer the massive supporting cast a lot of big awards-style moments. They are just really, really good. And that really should be enough."

Variety's Todd McCarthy is a bit more mixed than Poland, but concedes that W. "offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive's psychological makeup and, considering Stone's reputation and Bush's vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics." And Kirk Honeycutt over at The Hollywood Reporter says that though the film is more bold than it is good, "Stone goes out of his way to give Bush a fair hearing."

Over the summer, I guffawed at the notion that Stone was going to be fair and sympathetic to Bush in W., but it looks like I may be eating those words before too long. Apparently the problem people are having with the film isn't its politics but its lack of formal audacity, which is the opposite what I expected to hear. But it's certainly good to learn that Stone at least attempts a serious treatment of the subject -- those script pages that Slate "leaked" a while back could have fooled me.

There's actually a lot of noteworthy geek news today -- but alas, none of it is amazing enough to really warrant an entire post. Believe me, it makes me a sad panda not getting to devote an entire post to Wolverine. So, let's just get right down to it:

• Producer Lauren Shuler Donner talked up X-Men Origins: Wolverine over on Superhero Hype: "It's closer to the first X-Men in tone because it's a little darker, but there's a lot of action. It's his origin story. It's really good. I've been in the editing room the last couple of weeks and I think that it's good and that audiences are going to like it. But it's a little darker ... You haven't seen this side of him. It's darker and sadder and it's kick-ass. There's a ton of action. It's really kick-ass." She also suggested the film borrows from Wolverine's Victorian youth in one of my least favorite series, Wolverine: Origins.

• The troubled Punisher: War Zone has launched its official site, and it's got all kinds of things to click on. The multiplayer game jammed up my computer so I don't know what that's all about. And IGN has the new poster, which will arrive in your local theaters framed in "real" guns. I must say, that is a pretty impressive piece of marketing.

• David S. Goyer, scribe of The Dark Knight, tried his best to end all these Batman 3 rumors. "It's all B.S.," he told MTV News. "ALL of it. Chris and I haven't even talked about it. He quite understandably is taking a long, long vacation and wants to purge himself." This will dampen the "Guess who's playing Catwoman" rumors for approximately 3.5 days.

• Superhero Hype has 5 videos of Kick-Ass filming in Toronto. Mostly people standing around, and cars being driven on platform trucks. And /film has photos up of Dave "Kick Ass" Lizewski's costume, filled out nicely by his stunt double.

Since they like to release eight indie-style or foreign horror films on one specific day each year, I'm always a little bit fascinated by the latest goings-on at After Dark. The fact that I don't actually like the majority of their films is sort of beside the point. Being a hardcore fan gives you the right to be critical, of course, but it also means you should always give a new flick a fair break. And the AD gang has given us access to some half-decent titles, and so I opt to focus on the good (Borderland, The Gravedancers, Frontier(s)) instead of the bad -- which is just about everything else. Although your mileage may vary.

And even though the next infusion of After Darkness won't arrive until January, I'm happy to note that they're putting together a rather solid slate. They'd already snagged a cool British chiller called The Broken (which I saw at Sundance ... and enjoyed) and a low-key occult thriller called From Within (which I saw at Tribeca ... and didn't), but now comes word on two new additions: The first one is also a Tribeca title, and it's an Aussie horror tale called Dying Breed. (Here's my review. I nagged Tim to play it at Fantastic Fest, but it ended up in the "very close but no cigar" bin.) The second is an American flick called Autopsy, which comes from screenwriter / first-time director Adam Gierasch (Toolbox Murders, Mother of Tears), and while I haven't seen this one yet, I've heard some quiet-yet-positive rumblings from my sources in the L.A. horror-geek scene.

The Broken, From Within, Dying Breed, and Autopsy will join Slaughter (aka Faithless), Perkins' 14, and The Butterfly Effect: Revelation when After Dark kick-starts on January 9. The eighth title has yet to be announced. Could it be this movie?

[Thanks to BD.com]

Just about a year ago, Comcast's FEARnet video-on-demand service dug into the Lionsgate vault and pulled out Catacombs, which they offered at no charge on their VOD network. Turns out the flick wasn't all that hot, but hey, horror fans love to see stuff for free ... especially if it hasn't been released on video just yet.

So this year FEARnet is doing it again -- only this time it's a movie that did have a (rather insultingly) limited theatrical release. Like, VERY limited. Yes, gore-fans, Ryuhei Kitamura's adaptation of Clive Barker's The Midnight Meat Train may very well be viewable in your own living room -- at this very moment! (If you get FEARnet on your cable box, that is...) Last year Catacombs was also made available on the FN website prior to its DVD release, but we don't know if that will be the case on Meat Train. Lionsgate has yet to announce a DVD date for the film, so anything could happen.

Best of all, unlike Catacombs, I've already seen and have strongly recommended this particular horror movie -- and I certainly wouldn't sneeze at the source material either. For our earlier reports on this strangely controversial little horror flick, check here, here and here.

(from left to right) Fantastic Fest programmer Zack Carlson, Fantastic Feud co-hosts Devin Steuerwald and Scott Weinberg, and Not Quite Hollywood director Mark Hartley

With the weekend came no sure rest for Fantastic Fest attendees. Saturday kicked off with, among other things: a screening of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes shown from an HD master of a cut unseen in over thirty-five years; initial screenings of the very popular Tiffany stalker doc I Think We're Alone Now and the very anticipated Swedish vampire drama Let the Right One In (which can now fall firmly in the former category); and a boat party held in honor of Donkey Punch, in which several youthful types face some serious consequences after their high behavior on the high seas. Did life end up imitating art on that front...?

You know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of romantic comedies about people who have special, magical relationship "skills" that they use to make money. You had Hitch, where Will Smith knew everything about women and could sell you his expertise. Then Failure to Launch had Sarah Jessica Parker being hired by exasperated parents to date their loser sons, boost their self-esteem, and get them out of the house. And just last fall there was Dane Cook as Good Luck Chuck, whom women would sleep with because they knew it would lead them to their soulmates. These movies aren't all bad, but their cutesy premises have created a new cliché in a genre that already had plenty of them.

The latest is another Dane Cook offering, My Best Friend's Girl, and it's a misguided blend of frat-boy raunchiness (which is why they hired Cook) and the usual rom-com tropes (which is why they hired Kate Hudson as his co-star). Yes, chick-flick fans, all your favorite plot points are here -- meeting under false pretenses, feeling betrayed when the truth comes out, declaring your love in the rain, and reconciling in a highly public place -- but they're mixed with testicle jokes and vomiting!

Cook plays Tank Turner, a first-class douchebag who, like Cook himself, takes pride in his douchebagginess. When he wants to sleep with a woman, he just treats her like dirt. Of course, this only attracts the type of women who enjoy being treated like dirt, but I guess everyone has a specialty. In his spare time, Tank accepts money from love-struck guys who want him to date their ex-girlfriends, show the women a miserable time, and drive them back into the arms of the guys they dumped. There is a certain logic to it: If you want a girl to think you're terrific by comparison, set her up with Tank Turner.

To state that The Family That Preys is Tyler Perry's most accomplished screen effort to date doesn't change the fact that it's still exactly the kind of preachy, pandering, tone-shifting, gospel-laced soap opera that he's served up time and time again to his dedicated audience. However, in the grand scheme of things, his skills as a writer-director have been honed just well enough to make one wish that Perry would trust someone else to polish his rough spots at the script stage, so that his cast might play at something a bit more substantial than petty drama and broad sermons, and so that his critical reputation as a filmmaker might grow (well, recover) from the shrill likes of his trademark Madea character.

Even after debuting Religulous, his new docu-comedy about faith in the modern world directed by Larry Charles (Borat), Bill Maher still has plenty of questions of his own: "I was saying to Larry in the car on the way over here: I suddenly realized that I don't know the relationship between the Devil and the Antichrist. Do you? I mean, we both know those terms, but they're not the same guy, I don't think. I'm not sure if the Devil works for the Antichrist? Or the Antichrist for the Devil? Or is it like the Joker and the Riddler -- neither of them work for each other, but they gang up on Batman ...?" Maher spoke with Cinematical in Toronto about the difference between 'changing your mind' and 'flip-flopping,' what wound up on the cutting-room floor, getting in harm's way for the sake of a great scene, why it's doubtful he'll follow Religulous with another feature film and much more.

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I contend we are both atheists; I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F. Roberts

In Religulous, stand-up social commentator Bill Maher doesn't just assert how he believes in one less god than many of us, and he doesn't just craft bold, bizarre and hilarious moments of comedy and discussion with the help of director Larry Charles (Borat). More importantly, and more intriguingly, Maher states the film's thesis in an introduction filmed at Megiddo, the prophesied location of the final battle of Armageddon as written in Revelation; Maher, much like author Sam Harris does in his excellent (if dry) book The End of Faith, proposes that religious belief, in an age of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, actively endangers humanity through encouraging conflict, promising rewards for irrational behavior, justifying artificial divisions and enabling other unfounded and unkind forms of thinking. Or, as Maher succinctly puts it early on, "When Revelations was written, only God had the power to destroy the world. ..."

And then the opening titles kick in, a montage of Maher globe-trotting in search of people to talk to, and as the guitar riffs of The Who's "The Seeker" ring out, we recognize that we're going to get plenty of sizzle along with the steak in Religulous, lots of showbusiness to liven up the soul-searching. Like most documentaries dealing with weighty matters, though, the concern in Religulous isn't that there'll be no sizzle with the steak but rather if there'll be steak to go with the sizzle; does Religulous have the right ratio of factual points to funny punch lines, a balanced mix of context and comedy?