Kevin James in 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop' Paul Blart: Mall Cop: You may not like it, but you're going to live with it. Sony Pictures
 

by Linda Holmes

Read:

• I must admit that I wasn't terribly familiar with the existence of an enormous Nigerian moviemaking industry until I read this CBC piece on the movie Nollywood Babylon, which showed up last week at the Sundance Film Festival.

• Speaking of Sundance, last week's Manohla Dargis piece in the New York Times was only the beginning of the dissection of this year's quieter festival and sluggish market for films. The next Times piece puts it pretty bluntly: "Buyers proved fussy."

• Interesting Wall Street Journal discussion of why movies shouldn't necessarily get star ratings or letter grades. This piece also bleeds over into the "Are review aggregators killing criticism?" question, which is one to which I hope we'll be returning in the next couple of weeks.

Note:

• Doubt Kevin James at your peril. The former King Of Queens star's film Paul Blart: Mall Cop has spent its second week as America's favorite movie. The other big winner this weekend? Slumdog Millionaire. I must say, when I imagine the American moviegoing public as a person, I see us as quite an unpredictable little minx.

• While the on-stage presentations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night carefully sidestepped the ongoing tension among various factions and union leaders, actors' red-carpet and backstage comments...didn't. Want the dirt? Variety has it, naturally.

• Bravo to Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch for calling out this ridiculous red-carpet interview of James Franco by former N'Sync member Joey Fatone as the insulting, hopelessly dated mess it was. I was about to say "James Franco deserves better," but the fact is, we all do. Every now and then, using a celebrity instead of a journalist to do your interviewing creates problems even in situations as apparently substance-free as "So you're nominated for this movie; whose suit are you wearing?"

Ignore:

• My guess is that if you have $2.85 million to spare these days, you have something better to do with it than purchasing Benjamin Button's house.

• Don't get me wrong; I'm crazy about James Earl Jones. But when he says he used to try to convince people it was the Un-Cola guy and not him as Darth Vader's voice? Well, you've got to look back long enough to ignore that.

categories: Read/Note/Ignore

10:29 - January 25, 2009

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