I haven’t yet seen Hot Tub Time Machine — an hour to go — but I may have done it a disservice by asking if it had the horses to become this year’s The Hangover. Inflating expectations doesn’t help anyone. I’ve had this notion in my head, you see, and then Jett said all his Syracuse homies were totally down for it. And so I flew by the seat of this intuition and went for it and wrote “could this happen?”. Maybe it’ll only open to $20 million, or maybe a tad less — who knows?

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as mascara-wearing Jack Sparrow-type guys operating as 2010 pirates, right? My understanding is that they’re all scurvy scumbags. Which is why I’d love to see a movie about a crew of skilled, hard-core, well-funded mercenaries who roam the seven seas on a sailboat, looking for these bastard pricks. The idea would be to pretend to be easy marks (i.e., scared tourists, know-nothing nouveau riche) so as to encourage pirate attacks, and then when the pirates come aboard they fake ’em out and shoot ’em down like dogs. I would absolutely pay to see this. If not as a feature film then as reality series. What authorities would say “no, you can’t do that — pirates have rights and the Bible says ‘thou shalt not kill'”?

I guess you could describe Movie Review Intelligence as a slightly more accessible, less nerdy-buffy movie-review casserole site for people with short attention spans who…what, find Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic too challenging? The “we don’t like sifting through ratings or numbers” crowd. The titles and numbers are nice and orderly and easy to get a fix on — I’ll check it out regularly — but MRI’s one-word characterization summaries are too generous, I think.

She’s Out of My League averaged 51.4% positive and they call that “moderate.” I call that a failing grade because it’s actually lower, of course, because the 51.4% has been propped up by easy-lay go-along critics who look for ways to be nice or kind to crap-level mainstream studio comedies. MRI is calling the 65.7% positive response to Green Zone “good.” I’m sorry but a 65% rating is moderate at best. “Good” is 70% to 75%. This suggests they’re not that tough either when it comes to assigning a number grade to a review. What’s the science behind that exactly?

Avatar will be released on DVD/Bluray on Thursday, 4.22 — i.e., the 40th anniversary of Earth Day — and Fox Home Video doesn’t have cover art yet? It’ll be in stores in 34 days! If the Digital Bits, Bluray.com and Amazon.com don’t have it, nobody does. I foresee at least a triple-dip on this title — initial release, longer director’s cut, and 3D Bluray/DVD in ’11 or ’12.

IFC.com’s Stephen Saito has posted a non-reviewing review of James Franco‘s Saturday Night, which screened yesterday at South by Southwest. Pure observation/description, and not a whit of evaluation or judgment. I begged Franco’s reps a couple of weeks ago to let me watch a screener so I could review the doc concurrently with SxSW, but they couldn’t be bothered. Thanks, guys.

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn manned up and actually reviewed the sucker, calling it “a compelling look at anachronistic media in action.” (That means the film has an issue or two, but is fairly good/satisfying overall.) HE’s Moises Chiullan says (a) “I could feel others near me shift in their seats after around the halfway point,” (b) “Things start to drag a bit in the last third” — does that mean a bit more than the halfway point problems? –and yet (c) “those who showed up because Franco’s name was attached or out of their love of the current cast (Bill Hader in particular) got plenty of what they were expecting.”

More dentistry happens today, hence the lack of activity. Somewhat less costly New Jersey dentistry, but then you need to add the rent-a-car fee plus gas. But it’s still cheaper. I’m one of the millions out there who don’t have dental insurance. And yet things are looking up — a screening of Hot Tub Time Machine this evening!

I was going to run an embed of A.O. Scott‘s latest Movie Picks video — i.e., a tribute to Peter Yates‘ beloved The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73). But of course, the Times tech guys (the very model of foot-dragging obstinacy) couldn’t be bothered to post it on YouTube. Bu then I happened on this Aliens piece, which ran last week…fine.

This high-quality clip from There Will Be Blood was sent this evening as a sampler by Movieclips co-founder Rich Raddon. The idea behind Movie Clips.com is “to give movie lovers, movie bloggers, and everyone else a place to easily find and embed licensed movie clips,” Raddon says. “I love YouTube but the quality is lacking and the search is difficult with all the UGC.

Except that you can watch YouTube clips on an iPhone, no sweat, and you can’t watch Movieclips.com on an iPhone. That’s not the whole ball game, of course, but mobility matters. Somehow and some way the Apple folks have to allow other video-viewing modes and softwares to play on their device.

“We have been working with the studios very closely over the course of 18 months to make Movieclips.com a reality,” Raddon says. “At some point we will have everything, but with the studios it is a process…the fact that we have over 12,000 clips from 6 of the 7 studios speaks to my years running the LA Film Festival (10 years) and the trust that is needed with these types of partnerships.

“Movieclips.com is not perfect. We will be closer when we reach an agreement with the Criterion Collection and the remaining studio Disney (we want that Miramax library!). But we are going about this in the best way possible, in a unique collaboration with the studios wherein we work with them on all the sensitivities with this type of content.”

A Serbian Film, an envelope-pushing (to say the very least) political allegory about Serbian repression and censorship, had a midnight showing on Sunday night/Monday morning night at South by Southwest, reports Speakeasy‘s Eric Kohn.

The film reportedly depicts rape and murder, “unspeakable” perversions, “on-camera sexual acts involving violence and young children,” “newborn porn” and “the unique magic of rigor mortis.” Delightful sounding! I’m truly sorry I missed it.

“After the movie ended, an awkward silence filled the room,” Kohn reports. “Screenwriter Srdjan Spasojevic, fielding questions during a q & a, described the movie as an angry reaction to the country’s rampant censorship laws. ‘This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government,’ he said. ‘We’re giving this back to you.’

“After the screening, some audience members wondered if Spasojevic’s dour tone was actually a ruse — that the filmmakers didn’t take the material all that seriously and the movie was simply intended as exploitation for its own sake.”

Which is precisely what some critics said in 1976 about Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom. Pasolini called it a a political allegory about Italian fascism while others suspected he simply used this as a metaphorical rationale/license to indulge his own sexual/erotic appetites and fantasies.

An official Fox Searchlight release says that principal photography on Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants begins today in Oahu and Kauai. George Clooney, Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster (hooray, Bob!). Payne is directing a screenplay adapted by himself, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

But will it come out in late 2010? No word, no hint. I called Fox Searchlight’s Manhattan publicity office — zip. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s True Grit starts shooting this week (or imminently) also, and it’s locked to open on 12.25.10. If The Descendants shoots for 12 or 14 weeks it’ll be done in June, which gives Payne three or four months to cut it together. That’s doable. Clooney‘s The American, the Italy-based assassin movie from director Control‘s Anton Corbijn, will open sometime in the early to mid fall.

Most people don’t focus or even think about the weekend films until a few days before. That would explain the not-great tracking numbers for Hot Tub Time Machine in today’s report (3.15). The trailers have been online for sometime, but MGM/UA doesn’t seem to be spending much on LA billboard advertising. Maybe it’s a “viral campaign.” Jett says that all of his Syracuse pallies are down for it, but the tracking…I don’t know. Opinions on how big?

An over-the-top ludicrous tone, but ludicrous in “quotes” — winkingly so, intelligently so. Four guys together having an outrageous and disorienting adventure in which they’re behind the eight ball for most of the duration. That’s where the Hangover analogy comes from. That’s what Jett was saying, in any case.