Romance, romance? Not quite. The upcoming Avatar may be the FX extravaganza of the season, but as Bob Mondello explains, Tom Ford's A Single Man (with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore) is giving James Cameron a run for his visual-trickery money. (The Weinstein Co.)

Every year around this time, NPR's Bob Mondello looks ahead at the movies, big and small, that'll be jostling for box-office bucks and Oscar attention in the last few weeks of the year. Here are some observations to add to his preview piece from Thursday's All Things Considered:

Vampires and werewolves? Sooooo last weekend. Now the effects-movie faithful are waiting for the blue-tailed Na'vi — those 15-foot-tall dragon-riders who're defending their planet from invasion by ... um ... us, in James Cameron's Avatar.

Me, not so much. Not after the underwhelming 15 minutes of clips the studio released a while back. I mean, hope springs eternal, but the hype's getting exhausting.

Ditto for Nine: I've been salivating over that trailer — with Sophia Loren upstaging upstart divas Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz in a frenzy of quick-cuts — for so long that I'm starting to entertain the idea that it can't possibly be as gorgeous as it looks.

So the quieter stuff's sounding more and more interesting — in particular, two smaller pictures with not much in the way of production numbers or special-effects budgets:

• Crazy Heart, with Jeff Bridges as a boozy, down-on-his-luck country singer. With an opening announced just a week ago, it's suddenly this year's The Wrestler, a late entry in the Oscar sweepstakes (and, presumably, a kick-ass soundtrack). Of course almost no one has seen it yet, so the buzz may be just much well-orchestrated ado over nothing.

• A Single Man, the debut film from fashion designer Tom Ford, is also freshly on my radar screen, though for a different reason. An adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's landmark novel about a college professor mourning the death of his longtime lover in 1962 L.A., it stars Colin Firth as the bereaved academic, Matthew Goode as the late lover (in flashbacks, presumably), Julianne Moore as the Firth character's best friend, and Nicholas Hoult as a student who looks much like the lover.

What's got some folks exercised is a brewing brouhaha about the film's don't-ask-don't-tell-ized ads.

The Weinstein Company picked up the film just hours after it screened at the Toronto Film Festival, then recut its wordless original trailer (that's the one above) to substitute laudatory review quotes where Ford's version had featured shots of a male-male kiss, or of men eyeing each other meaningfully. The rest was left more or less intact — so in the new trailer (it's at the bottom of this post), it looks as if the central relationship is between Firth and Moore, not Firth and his male co-stars.

Of course, a similar approach didn't hurt Brokeback Mountain — half that trailer was shots of the men with their wives. A Single Man would doubtless be happy to follow in its box-office bootsteps.

-- Bob Mondello

by Marc Hirsh

Like a lot of people, I've been watching ABC's Modern Family with a constant (maybe even increasing) sense of delight over the past two months. It's been a nice reminder that formulas can indeed work (which is why they're formulas, duh) as long as somebody actually puts something into them and doesn't just present the audience with the naked formula, with its variables hanging out for all the world to see.

Better still, it's picking up at exactly the right time, when a lot of promising new shows start fumbling under the pressure of settling in for the long haul. In the case of last week's episode, "Great Expectations," a crucial character issue was finally addressed, in exactly the right way.

We finally got to see what Claire (Julie Bowen) sees in her oddball husband, Phil (Ty Burrell).

The problem with Phil up to now has been that he's been all problem. Ty Burrell described his character to Entertainment Weekly as "basically a dog that can talk," as evidenced by his constant determination to be his children's pal instead of their father and his complete lack of a poker face when confronted with attractive women who may be his neighbor or his stepmother-in-law but who are most definitely not his wife.

As funny as his antics have been, there was no indication whatsoever as to why Claire would ever have married this golden retriever of a man. And that was beginning to play out in a weary sitcom dynamic: the put-upon, overburdened wife and the idiot man-child husband.

Thank goodness for "Great Expectations."

What went right, after the jump.

Continue reading "A Lesson In Situation Comedy: ABC's 'Modern Family' Takes A Step Forward" >

(iStockphoto.com)

by Glen Weldon

Last year at this time, we offered suggestions for books ideally suited to long, gray Friday-after-Thanksgiving afternoons when the relatives have gone, the house is quiet and the loginess caused by the tryptophanic residue in your bloodstream hurls you inexorably couchward.*

Such afternoons are meant for books, we said; great, thick, yak-stunning slabs of booky goodness. The ones we highlighted were rich, fully imagined and deeply immersive works. What's more, you could polish any of 'em off before 5:00 rolled around.

Which is to say: They were graphic novels. Mail Order Bride, From Hell, Blankets, Box Office Poison, and Bone. Those recommendations stand. (Again, you can read about them here.)

Here's some more suggestions for books to take with you to the sofa.

After the jump: Math, seizures, rootlessness, bearded ladies and more.

Continue reading "Five MORE Tomes With Which to Tough Out Your Turkey Coma" >

(iStockphoto.com)

by Linda Holmes

It's a little bit of a slow morning as the holiday weekend approaches and things begin to grind to a four-day halt, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to report.

• The New Yorker has this lengthy, ponderous essay about why people like to read cookbooks, in which it is argued that ... okay, I don't even know what it's arguing, in spite of having read the whole thing. I did notice that apparently, men like cookbooks with directions and women like cookbooks about the romance of generations or something.

• The timing of things yesterday prevented me from posting in a timely fashion the video of the Muppets covering "Bohemian Rhapsody," which you have probably now seen in every Twitter feed you follow. But if, by chance, you have not yet seen it, I assure you that it is well worth it.

• What are the top ten movie flops of the 2000s? The Hollywood Reporter has made its picks. I'll warn you right now: some of these, I didn't even remember.

Burn Notice, forgetting you're on television, and a surprise win for Fox, after the jump.

Continue reading "Morning Shots: Flops Of The Decade, A Fox Surge, And 'Burn Notice'" >

by Linda Holmes

You know, you can hear all day that Jimmy Fallon did a really funny impression of Neil Young singing the theme song from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, and you can keep thinking, "I have to go watch that at some point." But when you actually hear it and it sounds really weirdly like Neil Young, you suddenly understand why you've been hearing about it all day.

Jimmy Fallon, people. I'm telling you.

Hat-tip, among other places, to Sling.com.

If you're not ready to see Up a lot of times, you'd better not buy the rather fantastic home video version. (Walt Disney Pictures)

by Linda Holmes

When I got my copy of the Blu-ray combo pack that includes Up on Blu-ray and on DVD -- and includes a digital copy for your computer or whatever other sort of device to boot -- I happened to be hanging out with the same five-year-old and eight-year-old I saw it with in theaters, so we popped it into the player. The five-year-old even abandoned Spongebob to come watch it, and that is a big, big deal. This, I figured, was a great test. They'd loved it the first time, but would it hold up?

Up has completely stopped being good, after the jump. Just kidding.

Continue reading "'Up' Again ... So Worth It" >

by Linda Holmes

This week in What We're Reading, we return to popular fiction, check out some short stories, and run with the space nerds.

If you're traveling this holiday season, you're likely to spot a few copies of Michael Crichton's final completed novel, Pirate Latitudes, which really does contain the line "Warm day for a hanging," and we have some thoughts on that. There are short stories from award-winners Ha Jin and Alice Munro, commented upon by familiar NPR voices Jacki Lyden and Lynn Neary. Finally, we'll peek at the latest installment of an intensely researched series on the Russian and U.S. space programs -- this one looks at the history of U.S. attempts at unmanned systems.

Kelly Osbourne, along with singer Mya and Donny Osmond, is among the final three on tonight's finale of Dancing With The Stars. (Adam Larkey / ABC)

by Linda Holmes

The best reason to watch Dancing With The Stars is that every now and then, something profoundly bizarre happens. It's not a mean show. It's not even American Idol mean, where dreams are crushed or anything like that. It's mostly just very, very silly, and fortunately, as the ninth season (yes, ninth season) closes tonight, you can appreciate an entire season's worth of weirdness in one blog post. We're willing to throw ourselves on the grenade for you. That's how much we care.

1. The Robot Paso Doble

In the eighth week of competition, each couple was assigned a dance to do in the spirit of a particular decade. Singer Mya, for instance, did a samba in the style of the '70s. But apparently, with five couples left, they felt that there were really only four decades to work with that audiences would recognize as markedly retro: the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, and the '90s. (The effort at an '80s routine is how we wound up with Donny Osmond dressing like Adam Ant, as discussed here.)

But when they ran out of decades, they gave the fifth couple ... the future. This resulted in the following extremely literal interpretation of what a paso doble -- the dance inspired by bullfighting -- would look like in the future. When danced by robots. As robots are conceived in inexpensive robot movies. Made by elementary-school students. This is model Joanna Krupa, performing with her professional dance partner, Derek Hough. (Okay, if you'd rather watch Donny Osmond as Adam Ant, which is also extremely weird, you can find that here.)

Ultimate fighting meets dancing, the Muppets show up, and what the heck is with Donny Osmond? After the jump.

Continue reading "Five Things That Really Happened On This Season Of 'Dancing With The Stars'" >

by Linda Holmes

If you missed The Big Bang Theory last night, then you didn't see Sheldon's appearance on Science Friday, where he discussed magnetic monopoles as part of a scheme to boost ratings.

Perhaps this clip will help clarify. It's always a hoot to see a good show like this make mention of National Public Wadio -- er, "Radio."

by Linda Holmes

Last night marked one of my holiday-season milestones: I saw the Hershey Kisses handbells commercial for the first time this year. As I mentioned last year, it is my favorite.

(iStockphoto.com)

And while I officially disapprove of holiday advertising before Thanksgiving, I have chosen to allow it, since heaven knows they've already leaped right into the whole thing this year, what with that genuinely atrocious Gap ad that has crawled into my ear like a mite. You know the one.

The one -- and a plea for help, after the jump.

Continue reading "Ding-A-Ling-A-Ling: In Middling Praise Of Warmly Tolerable Holiday Advertising" >