The Summer Of '80s Movies: 'Ghostbusters' And 'Gremlins'

by Linda Holmes

Today's big question is this: As between mid-'80s special-effects monsters and mid-'80s puppet monsters, which are more menacing?

Ghostbusters, of course, has more of the former. While you get some "real" monsters as well (mostly in the "Okay, so she's a dog" depictions of the gargoyle-ish creatures), you get a lot more of the straight-up drawn-on-the-screen guys, like the one Bill Murray encounters around the five-minute mark here.

Gremlins, on the other hand, has primarily puppets. And they're very puppety-looking puppets, too. About half the time that Zach Galligan, who plays Billy (a weirdly ageless character who has a job as a bank teller but still lives at home and acts like he's fourteen), is carrying around little Gizmo, they look quite a bit like a ventriloquism act from Star Search.

It also must be said that the gremlins in Gremlins are a lot meaner than the ghosts in Ghostbusters. In spite of all the damage done to a perfectly nice Central Park West apartment building when the (to put it generously) perplexing plot of Ghostbusters leads to the opening of the pathway between Sigourney Weaver's refrigerator and the Temple Of The Demonic Aerobics Instructor, the ghosts aren't really that malevolent. In fact, it's kind of quaint, the way their opening gambit consists of, "I am a GHOOOOOST! I will go to the library and PULL ALL THE DRAWERS OUT OF THE CARD CATALOG BOOGEDA-BOOGEDA! I will EAT ALL YOUR HOT DOGS NOM NOM NOM!"

The gremlins are worse.

Puppet-on-human violence, a Santa tragedy, giant men made from marshmallows, dogs and cats living together, self-defense with a canister-vac, and more, after the jump...

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11:03 AM ET | 07- 3-2009 | permalink

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The Summer Of '80s Movies: A Possibly Terrifying Look Back

Ghostbusters: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis will be welcoming us (and you) to The Summer Of '80s Movies. Courtesy of Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

One of the advantages of living in the D.C. area is access to the AFI Silver Theatre And Cultural Center in downtown Silver Spring. They run current movies, but also old movies, and this summer, they're running a series called "Totally Awesome 3: More Films Of The '80s," which I'm taking advantage of for a summer-long nostalgia explosion called The Summer Of '80s Movies: A Possibly Terrifying Look Back.

Interestingly, this third installment is the first one I'm in town for, but it's also the one I'm happiest to get to see, having looked at the previous lineups. They've now sort of burned through the most overexposed and overdiscussed movies (This Is Spinal Tap, The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc., all of which many of us have discussed to death) and are moving along to ones that, in some cases, haven't been so ubiquitous on cable.

Tonight, I'll be seeing a double-shot of adorable monsters: Ghostbusters and Gremlins. Over the rest of the summer, I intend to revisit River's Edge, Footloose, Edward Scissorhands, Heathers, Some Kind Of Wonderful, and others.

(I withhold comment on Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, for the sake of my dignity. I mean, even if I were going to do that, you wouldn't want to know now, would you? It might keep you from taking me seriously.)

So come back tomorrow, when I will tell you all about cute monsters and Bill Murray, and will undoubtedly make some seriously ridiculous jokes involving the question, "Who you gonna call?" Because I'm pretty sure that's the law.

11:46 AM ET | 07- 2-2009 | permalink

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'My Dinner with Andre': The Antidote to Summer Movie Overdose

My Dinner With Andre: Are you finding it a little loud at the multiplex? A good conversation might be just the thing. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

 

by Glenn McDonald

If the world were at all fair, or even moderately discerning, Michael Bay would not be a movie director at all. Instead, he would be where he belongs, as technical supervisor of an industrial demolitions crew, blowing stuff up for a living. As is stands, however, Mike is still making "movies" such as the new Transformers sequel, which if I have my notes right, is actually titled Transformers: Assaulting Your Senses for 147 Minutes.

Summer action blockbusters, with their aggressive FX and frantic editing, are migraines waiting to happen. If you're looking to go the other way for an evening, may I suggest the new Criterion edition of My Dinner with Andre, director Louis Malle's 1981 indie triumph. Here's a movie that more or less does the impossible: It consists entirely of two friends having a quiet conversation over dinner, and it's riveting.

What the new release can give you, and what's been in the movie all along, after the jump...

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11:11 AM ET | 06-30-2009 | permalink

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A Taxonomy Of Cinematic Crying, Blubbering, And Weeping

by Linda Holmes

Having just seen My Sister's Keeper, I feel I am perfectly situated at the moment to work on the development of a taxonomy of crying in the movies. This movie -- and if this is a spoiler for you, then I cannot help you -- contains a great deal of crying.

My Sister's Keeper: If you want to study movie crying, you could do a lot worse. New Line Cinema

 

Not all crying is the same, of course. Some crying is pitiful, while some crying is angry. Also, some crying is well-acted, while some crying is Luke Skywalker saying, "That's not true...that's impossible!" with all the authentic, raw emotion you would get if you were to cast Ryan Seacrest in a production of King Lear.

So let us review. We will look at examples where available.

The Brave Lip Quiver Of The Apparently Doomed

There's actually a lot of this one in My Sister's Keeper. This is how you cry when you are very sick, but you don't want anyone to worry about you. It involves quite a bit of tearing up and a break in your voice, but no sobbing. For you are brave. Very often, the effect is to make the other person burst into wet, sloppy tears through the sheer force of your noble bravery. At which point: you win.

The Masculine Welling-Up That Doesn't Make You Any Less Of A Dude, Man

Think of John McClane in the bathroom in Die Hard. Sure, he's picking glass out of his feet. But the real reason he's weepy is that he's begun to realize that he truly loves his estranged wife and regrets that he may be massacred at Christmas by a colorful band of international terrorists before he gets a chance to confess that he shouldn't have been such a jerk about her taking a new job. The worst thing about dying at the hands of a colorful band of international terrorists: unfinished conversations.

The Soft Whimper Of True Love

I apologize for reminding you of "You had me at hello," which we are so close to being entirely finished with, now that it has had its full run of regular overexposure followed by its full run of ironic overexposure, but this is the form of crying you get right when Renee Zellweger says, "You had me at hello." Earlier in the movie, she cried the Happy Tears Of Hooray, Hooray, I Am Glad You Proposed, but only true love makes her whimper. (Note: she is responding to a Masculine Welling-Up, see above. You can tell that's what it is because he cries while saying "tough competitors.")

Major breakdowns, Meg Ryan, human biology, and much more, after the jump...

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10:55 AM ET | 06-29-2009 | permalink

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'Transformers' Opens Big: Does That Mean Critics Are Clueless?

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: Is there a gap between audiences and critics, or do they just have different jobs? Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

An AP article argues today that Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen "sets a new standard for the gulf between what reviewers and mass audiences like."

The film is on its way to make insane amounts of money, while critics have mostly hated it. Rob Moore, vice-chairman of Paramount (the movie's distributor), offers the smug claim that audiences "kind of roll their eyes at the critics and say, 'You have no idea what you're talking about.'"

But is that right? That audiences read reviews of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and think, "You don't know what you're talking about"?

Or do audiences understand what critics mean by "good," and simply think that's not the kind of "good" they're looking for on a Friday night?

Imagine a restaurant review of McDonalds. Now think about how much money McDonalds makes. It seems like a stretch to assume that the disparity means that people who eat at McDonalds are rolling their eyes at restaurant critics and thinking they don't know what they're talking about.

That's because not every purchase is conceived as an attempt to buy quality, either with burgers or with movie tickets. Sometimes you just want what you want.

Moore insists that critics "forget what the goal of the movie was. The goal of the movie is to entertain and have fun." This is a common argument leveled against movie critics — awfully common, for one that's so easy to prove false.

Some counterexamples, after the jump...

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8:05 AM ET | 06-29-2009 | permalink

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'The Proposal,' The Rom-Com Formula, And Transferring Power

by Mark Blankenship

Look, I'll level with you: I enjoyed The Proposal, that Sandra Bullock-starring, Betty-White-and-naked-Ryan-Reynolds-featuring romantic comedy that opened as a box-office winner.

I laughed several times. I got manipulated into tears, thanks partially to Peter Chiarelli's script and partially to the indestructible charms of Bullock herself. In fact, Bullock is the reason I was excited to see the movie. When she opens the refrigerator door to my heart, the light always comes on.

That said, The Proposal troubled me. Underneath all the superficial laughs and charmy-charm-charm reaction shots, the film suggests that a woman will be much happier if she cedes her power to a man.

After the jump, our heroine's journey into total, blissful passivity. There will be many spoilers.

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11:22 AM ET | 06-26-2009 | permalink

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Cameron Diaz Makes The Leap

Cameron Diaz: It's been a long road, and now it runs through mom roles. Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Cameron Diaz first showed up in the movies in 1994, in The Mask, with Jim Carrey. At the time, her reviews came in somewhere around "surprisingly good, for a model."

She went on to appear in a series of hits -- My Best Friend's Wedding, There's Something About Mary, Charlie's Angels, and Shrek, to name four -- as well as the usual allotment of bombs. Most recently, she had another hit last summer with What Happens In Vegas.

But this weekend, she shows up in My Sister's Keeper, a tear-jerking drama about a child with cancer (one that's so enamored of its cancer-centered imagery that its trailer alone features more lingering shots of bald heads than you will find in publicity packages for the NBA). Diaz has tried her share of Real Acting; she was in Gangs Of New York and Vanilla Sky, and very early on, she was in the very small independent film The Last Supper.

But, as is being exhaustively noted, this is her Mom Leap.

What the Leap does and doesn't mean, after the jump...

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11:28 AM ET | 06-25-2009 | permalink

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The Remedy For The Not-Long-Enough Oscar Telecast Is Here!

The Oscars: If the ceremony isn't long enough for you, it's about to get a little longer. David Livingston/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Great news for people who want to stay up even later on Oscar night: this year, there will be ten nominees for Best Picture instead of five.

It's hard to figure out what this is supposed to accomplish, other than perpetuating the "more of everything" attitude that seems to be prevalent nearly everywhere. To some people, it's going to devalue being nominated -- which is kind of silly, unless you presume there to be something magical about five movies rather than ten.

The most obvious beneficiary is Up. Animated movies are historically the subjects of much speculation about their nomination-worthiness anyway. And while it might have been plausible to find five movies better than Up, but they're going to have a tough time finding ten.

It will also be interesting to see whether this allows one or two giant crowd-pleasers that got great reviews but would normally never make it to an awards ceremony -- maybe even something like The Hangover, for instance -- to get nominations they could never have gotten in the past. (It seems like it would almost certainly have had this effect for The Dark Knight last year.)

What it will do for sure is inflate the hoopla surrounding the Best Picture race, and unless they're going to ignore some of the nominees, it's going to make the show even more endless than it already is.

And what of the annual events where they show all the nominees in one day? What about the people who try to see every Best Picture nominee, but may give up if the list doubles in length? How, precisely, this will play out remains to be seen, but the rationale for it is not immediately obvious.

2:54 PM ET | 06-24-2009 | permalink

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Six Tragically Misguided Attempts To Name The Next Johnny Depp

by Linda Holmes

If we assume the existence of Johnny Depp, we can assume that there will be a resulting desire to locate a next Johnny Depp.

This is partly because Johnny Depp doesn't do just any old thing. On his resumé, alongside the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and Edward Scissorhands and so forth, you will find the odd Secret Window and other flukey bad ideas.

But it would certainly be nice if there were, say, two of him, which is part of the reason there has long been a booming industry in anointing The Next Johnny Depp. So far, it is an industry with a zero percent record of success.

Steven Lovekin/Getty Images

 

Joe Jonas
Who said it: People
Accuracy: People kind of makes it sound like Joe Jonas (one of the Brothers) considers himself the next Johnny Depp, but in fact, all he says in the piece is that he likes Depp's work. Considering that his first big "acting" project was The Disney Channel's Camp Rock, and that he's following it up with Camp Rock 2, it's safe to say he has a way to go.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

 

Megan Fox
Who said it: USAWeekend.com
Accuracy: This really happened. As I understand it, the suggestion is that because Megan Fox has only been in silly movies and is mostly talked about in terms of being hot, she is just like Johnny Depp was when he was on 21 Jump Street. I have absolutely no idea how, under the formulation used here, every good-looking actor from bad movies is not "the next Johnny Depp."

More non-contenders, after the jump...

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12:41 PM ET | 06-24-2009 | permalink

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Roger Ebert Tramples The Transformers With Delicious Glee

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: See how mad this guy looks? He's not going to get any happier when he sees what Roger Ebert said about his movie. Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

What's a good way to start the day? With a joyfully terrible review from Roger Ebert, who is an absolute champ when it comes to annihilating a movie without seeming nasty so much as happily provoked by the challenge of trying to quantify its awfulness.

This time, what's ricocheting around the Internet is his takedown of Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Here's how it starts:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.

Aside from the fact that A Horrible Experience Of Unbearable Length should absolutely, positively be the title of Dave Eggers' next book, it's an admirably meaty, straightforward, and yet scrupulously fair opening.

He goes on to say, among other things:

There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines.

It's all just genius. There's a good reason this is the guy who has, probably more than anyone, popularized thoughtful, reliably accessible, condescension-free film criticism -- and, I think you can argue, the entire idea that even if your interests run largely to popular entertainment, you can and should read criticism and think about what you're watching.

(And when you're done, be sure to compare it to Nathan Lee's review here at NPR.org, which notes, "Never have such quantities of money, hardware, technology and fathomlessly complicated logistics been marshaled to produce and experience so fleeting and ephemeral." Hmm, I don't think he liked it either.)

8:43 AM ET | 06-24-2009 | permalink

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Dear Hollywood: We Demand More Movies About Renegade Toys

Mr. Potato Head: It's about time he had his own movie, isn't it? Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

This weekend, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen makes its way to theaters, and once again, it raises the question, Where are the other action movies based on the potential menace presented by famous toys? The tagline for this one is "Revenge is coming," so it's not like a particularly high bar of creativity has been set.

Once again, this is a "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" situation. And so we humbly offer the following:

The movie: Baby Alive
The tagline: She eats, she drinks...she kills.

The movie: Spirograph
The tagline: What goes around comes around.

The movie: Dream House
The tagline: When your knees don't bend, there's nowhere to run.

The list continues, after the jump...

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2:45 PM ET | 06-22-2009 | permalink

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Weekend Box Office: Score One For Ancient Creaky Bones!

Sandra Bullock: Or is that Betty White? No, whew! that's Sandra Bullock. Kerry Hayes/Touchstone Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

A while back, we had some fun (and created some massive confusion) over the fact that Julia Roberts, at 41, put out her first big movie in a while (the middling performer Duplicity) and found herself accused of being "Hollywood ancient" -- possibly too old to open a movie anymore.

Well, back it up, old-lady-haters, because Sandra Bullock just had the most successful opening of her entire career as her romantic comedy, The Proposal, roared to a $34 million weekend. She's almost 45 years old! She's even older than Julia Roberts!

That thoroughly thumped the very, very bad Year One, which did all right with about $20 million, but came in fourth behind The Proposal, the long legs of Up and the continuing strength of The Hangover.

One noteworthy fact? The Proposal drew an audience that was 63 percent women and 86 percent (!) 18 and over. What might make that noteworthy? It sometimes seems to be a forgotten reality that it's really okay to make movies that have no appeal to teenage boys. They can still make money. In fact, they might even beat out movies that are most cynically targeted to teenage boys.

Of course, it might just prove, once again, that every movie should have Betty White in it.

12:28 PM ET | 06-22-2009 | permalink

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'Year One': A Movie That Makes You Wonder What Happened

Year One: How do you put Jack Black and a bunch of other reasonably funny people together and wind up with...this? Sony/Columbia Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

I almost walked out of Year One about five minutes into it. Five minutes, no kidding. It wasn't something I had to see, and its lifelessness was so aggressive that it was very hard to believe it was going to get better.

It didn't. And it raises a question, which we'll come back to.

Later, walking out at the actual end of the movie, these are the two comments I overheard: (1) "Those were the longest 97 minutes of my life." (2) "I would have been so much madder if I had paid to see that." (It was a preview audience.) Note that these are not your average "That stunk" comments.

You can tell a lot from its very few "positive" reviews. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, who made this a "Critic's Pick," quotes two lines from the movie: "Everything is weird" and "You want some of that?" ...Hilarious? She spends significantly more time quoting Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.

(Incidentally, Dargis' use of the word "highbrow" to describe a movie that relies this heavily upon poop jokes and unceasing gay-panic humor is an instant classic.)

Or here, David Hiltbrand of the Philadelphia Inquirer describes a representative scene:

The itinerants are constantly being forced into bondage. At one point Zed, explaining his reluctance to trust Cain, says to him, "You did sell us into bondage." "Hold a grudge much?" responds the king of fratricide. "That was like a fortnight ago."

Yes. Yes, that is exactly what the movie is like. The movie is like that, for an hour and a half. You see, David Cross is playing Cain, who's from Biblical times, but he says stuff like "Hold a grudge much?" This is where you're supposed to laugh hysterically.

Wondering why, after the jump...

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8:32 AM ET | 06-19-2009 | permalink

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Monkey See Presents: 'Bruno,' The Annotated Trailer

by Trey Graham

We're just a couple of weeks away from the big-screen debut of Bruno, the outré Austrian fashion reporter who sprang, swishing, from the mind of satirist Sacha Baron Cohen.

And like his similarly fictional Kazakh cousin Borat, Bruno can pretty much be counted on to annoy, offend, and otherwise outrage any number of constituencies — starting of course with The Gays, one group of whom have already taken the studio to task.

Meeow: Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) has catlike instincts ... for saying (and wearing) the wrong things. Universal Pictures

But just what percentage of the planet's inhabitants might reasonably take umbrage once the movie, like Bruno, finally comes out? Neda Ulaby and Linda Holmes had a look at the trailer to see if they could come up with a solid guess.

You're cordially invited to click the Play button and count along — hat-tip to multimedia intern Caryn Grant for getting those annotations onscreen — as we I.D. the soon-to-be-steam-eared populations. (Be sure to click the player's full-screen button, lower right.) And then, of course, we'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments.

7:16 PM ET | 06-18-2009 | permalink

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'The Hangover': The Curious Case Of The Domesticated Raunchfest

Wedded bliss: The Hangover concerns a bachelor party gone awry. But what does it ultimately say about tying the knot? iStockphoto.com

 

by Marc Hirsh

As mentioned the other day, The Hangover is still going strong after two weekends in theaters.

After the ostentatious expressions of surprise that a movie without any "stars" could make so much money so quickly, it seems that the main topic of conversation is the closing credit sequence. (Caution: discussion of content that is seriously not suitable for mixed company.)

What's interesting is how little people are talking about the other noteworthy way that the movie ends, and how it fits snugly into a trend that seems to have gone unnoticed over the past few years. And on the whole, it may say more about The Hangover's sensibilities than whether that was really a you-know-what being what'd-you-say?ed.

What's so interesting about the ending of The Hangover...so obviously don't proceed if you aren't okay with knowing the basics of the ending of The Hangover, after the jump...

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10:59 AM ET | 06-17-2009 | permalink

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Betty White: What Movie Doesn't Need A Hilarious Grandma?

Betty White: Seen here in a much-previewed scene with Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, she hasn't slowed down a bit, and it's a very good thing. Kerry Hayes/Touchstone Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

While watching The Proposal, I thought to myself, "It's nice that we seem to be having a little Betty White moment." She's been doing a lot of press for the movie, including this lovely clip from the folks at Hitfix:

It wasn't until I looked up her credits that I realized the degree to which the lady (now 87) has not slowed down.

A long and glorious career full of dirty jokes directed at Gene Rayburn, and what she's signed on for next, after the jump...

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8:13 AM ET | 06-16-2009 | permalink

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Weekend Box Office: Poor Eddie Murphy, Happy 'Hangover'

The Hangover: We could make a horrible joke about how it's hanging over at the box office, but we won't. At all. Really! Warner Brothers Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

So the way the summer box office is supposed to work is that each weekend, new great big movies take over from the previous great big movies.

This weekend, specifically, The Taking Of Pelham 123 was supposed to take over the adults, and Imagine That was supposed to take over the children. (It's a slight oversimplification, but...just slight.)

Didn't so much turn out that way.

What happened, who had a good weekend, who had a bad weekend, and what to do with your long-term investments in Eddie Murphy, after the jump...

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11:22 AM ET | 06-15-2009 | permalink

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Let Us Allow The Word 'Cougar' To Die Instantly And Painfully

Mythical species: If seeing what's attractive about Adam Lambert is what it takes to be a cougar, then cougars don't exist. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It was this Newsweek piece, entitled "Why Cougars Crave 'Idol' Runner-Up Adam Lambert," that finally broke me.

It is time for the word "cougar" to go, preferably instantly.

The Newsweek writer, Joan Raymond, spends paragraph upon paragraph explaining why she and her "cougar court" spent an American Idol season sweating over the heavily hyped, extremely popular, out-without-having-ever-been-in Lambert. How could this be? How could it possibly be that they, as non-teenagers, could be interested in an American Idol who, at 27 years old, was young enough to be ... their nephew, if they had a significantly older sister?

When I first heard it, "cougar" was a crude slam; I think I first noticed it on the "Aldrin Justice" episode of How I Met Your Mother, which aired in October 2006, though this ABC story was chatting it up in 2005, and it surely is much older than that.

But interestingly, as the ABC story notes, it began as a putdown — a term of ridicule for older women who went home from bars with "whoever was left."

We could go through the sexual politics, the cultural baggage that comes with older men and younger women vs. younger men and older women. We could explain why seeing women gleefully referring to themselves the same way Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) did on How I Met Your Mother is kind of disheartening.

But really, it's not necessary. The term "cougar" can be easily retired, simply on the grounds that it's so stupid.

Crazy fans, too many sex therapists, and never calling yourself "punk rock," after the jump...

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9:08 AM ET | 06-12-2009 | permalink

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Can 'Imagine That' Hit Every Sweet Spot Of Unwatchability?

by Linda Holmes

Update: I originally blamed Disney for this movie; my mind was completely playing tricks on me based on a trailer I had just watched, and it's actually Paramount. Apologies.

I am not here to tell you that Imagine That is bad, because I haven't seen it. But whoever is promoting it isn't doing it any favors. It has a serious case of Trailer Unwatchability.

It appears that the premise is that Eddie Murphy is a boring dad who works as some kind of insignificant cog in a giant corporate machine, and he discovers that his daughter's imagination can make him better at his job, because his daughter's imaginary companions are passing on information about upcoming mergers.

Okay. Let us pause for a moment.

Pardon the overused construction, but: Worst imaginary companions ever. Princesses and fairies are there to make your life more fun, not facilitate insider trading. What kind of an imaginary princess suckers a kid into passing along subliminal messages through her drawings in order to further her father's career?

I hope these imaginary companions have malpractice insurance. I would happily watch a movie called I Sued My Imaginary Friend For Breach Of Fiduciary Duty. That would be a movie, people.

But no. This just looks so...terrible, from top to bottom.

Continue reading "Can 'Imagine That' Hit Every Sweet Spot Of Unwatchability?" »

10:29 AM ET | 06-11-2009 | permalink

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'The Taking Of Pelham 123' And The Lamentably Noisy Bad Guy

The Taking Of Pelham 123: Can you pick out the bad guy in this picture? Yeah, we thought so. Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

If you watch the original 1974 film, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (and you can, and you should), one of the things you'll notice is how Robert Shaw, as the train-hijacking villain, plays everything with the energy down, not up and out. In his general persona, he's not cackling like a loon, and he's not shrieking like a bully.

He is just explaining the situation and what's going to happen. He is telling you about your possible death dispassionately.

This was very much the era of Evil Wears A Fedora And Thick-Framed Glasses; it came out the same year as The Conversation, with Gene Hackman. That movie also features lots of terrifying guys who look like bureaucrats. For the most part, they speak softly and carry big, big evil.

What evil unfortunately looks like now, after the jump...

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12:12 PM ET | 06-10-2009 | permalink

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Five Excellent Ideas For Replacing Mr. T In The 'A-Team' Movie

by Linda Holmes

Okay, so Bradley Cooper (fresh off The Hangover and right on the edge of becoming a giant movie star) is maybe going to take the Dirk Benedict part in the upcoming The A-Team movie. And Liam Neeson is in talks to replace George Peppard.

And then the Variety piece throws in the fact that, you know, they haven't quite figured out who's going to replace Mr. T as B.A. Baracus.

Now, it occurs to me that this is a fairly serious problem. In a baby-name book I saw once, it was argued that you can't give your baby certain names if they are overly strongly associated with one famous person. The chapter was called, "There's Only One Arsenio."

They could very easily have called it "There's Only One Mr. T." (Well, they could have if there were more of a threat of anyone, ever, actually naming a baby "Mr. T.")

So where do you begin looking for Mr. T replacements? Nobody is kind of like Mr. T. Nobody is the new Mr. T. Nobody captures the spirit of Mr. T. It becomes increasingly apparent that Mr. T is Mr. T, and he's the only Mr. T there's ever going to be.

Nevertheless, I am prepared to step forward with several ideas. You are welcome, Hollywood.

1. Mickey Rourke.

Based on that clip, you can see that B.A. is physically powerful, he dresses badly, and he doesn't make any sense. It's a perfect fit. Mickey Rourke is vaguely nutsy, he's aggressively unique, and he certainly has the requisite experience with bombs. (Hotcha!)

More ideas I am generously prepared to share, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Excellent Ideas For Replacing Mr. T In The 'A-Team' Movie" »

11:53 AM ET | 06- 9-2009 | permalink

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It's Probably A Little Early For The Will Ferrell Eulogy Parade

Will Ferrell: Don't start writing his career obituary just yet. Jason Merritt/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

As you may have heard, the Will Ferrell vehicle Land Of The Lost got spanked at the box office this weekend by both the second weekend of Up and the opening weekend of The Hangover.

Reporting in with $18.8 million for its first weekend, the movie has already become the inspiration for the new Will Ferrell's career bereavement industry.

Putting aside the fact that the typical "Here's why it was always obvious that this movie would never do well" piece would be more convincing if it came out before, rather than after, the opening weekend, it seems a little early for all this.

Down, but not out, after the jump...

Continue reading "It's Probably A Little Early For The Will Ferrell Eulogy Parade" »

10:13 AM ET | 06- 9-2009 | permalink

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The Needle In The Haystack Of Stupid At The MTV Movie Awards

by Linda Holmes

One of the things I don't have to do in this job is subject myself to the entire MTV Movie Awards, partly because anything that's worth seeing will show up online the next day anyway.

To wit: This digital short featuring Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell, and...well, J.J. Abrams in an awfully unexpected context. The language is only intermittently salty, and the subject is: "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions." It's rather wonderful.

12:46 PM ET | 06- 1-2009 | permalink

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Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees

A plea to Pixar: Up is so good; can you turn your attention to a different kind of hero? Walt Disney Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Dear Pixar,

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

I'm counting on you, after the jump...

Continue reading "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees" »

9:14 AM ET | 06- 1-2009 | permalink

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Very Bad Ideas: Making A Whedon-Free 'Buffy' Reboot

Joss Whedon: You might think you couldn't remake Buffy without him, but somebody thinks you can. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

If you've ever thought to yourself, "I would love to hear what Pete Best would have done with the rest of the Beatles catalogue, you'll be thrilled to hear that Fran Rubel Kuzui, the director of the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie, is pondering a reboot with no involvement by Joss Whedon, who wrote the movie and.created the long-running TV show.

Okay, the comparison to Pete Best may be unfair. But the idea of a Buffy movie without Whedon but with the director of the 1992 original movie that had nowhere near the cultural impact of the TV show does seem more than a little bizarre.

It's one thing to use a high-powered guy like J.J. Abrams to reboot Star Trek more than 40 years after the original show debuted on television, almost 18 years after Gene Roddenberry's death in 1991.

It's entirely another to try to do a Whedon-less Buffy movie only 17 years after the original Buffy movie and only six years after the end of the beloved TV series, while Whedon is still not only alive, and not only still making wildly popular projects like 2008's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but still quite possibly the most cultishly revered showrunner in television.

The natural audience for a new Buffy movie is the existing Buffy fandom, which remains wildly loyal to Whedon to the point where its collective reaction to the reboot news this morning seems to revolve around words like "travesty."

Reboots often look unnecessary to begin with, but a reboot by the person who did the less successful version of something in an effort to take advantage of the appeal of the more successful version of it seems even worse.

11:59 AM ET | 05-26-2009 | permalink

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Question: Who's the Longest-Running Fictional Character Ever?

Long-running fictional characters: Sure, there are a lot of candidates, but who takes the prize? iStockphoto.com

 

by Glen Weldon

"Longest running" is open to interpretation, so let's define our terms:

In any medium, what character has been consistently featured in continuous new adventures over the longest stretch of time?

Got that? Just the three criteria, here:

Consistent:

Makes regularly scheduled appearances — no yawning gaps between adventures.

Continuous:

The character's adventures form a central narrative that builds on what has gone before. (Read: Katzenjammer Kids, I know you've been around a long time, but you're a gag strip, not an ongoing narrative. Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts.)

New:

The constant churning out of fresh content, not simply adaptations, retellings or reprints.

So: Guesses?

After the jump: We review the top contenders, provide The Answer, and explain why The Neverending Story should really have been a horror film.

Continue reading "Question: Who's the Longest-Running Fictional Character Ever?" »

11:59 AM ET | 05-20-2009 | permalink

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Which Weekend Movie Would You Least Want To Be Trapped In?

The weekend is coming: Is Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian the movie you'd most carefully avoid, or would you go another way? Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

I apologize for ending the titular question with a preposition.

But really. The upcoming weekend's wide releases are:

• Terminator Salvation, which I used to think was Terminator: Salvation, but it turns out that it does not contain the colon, meaning that it is about the salvation of terminators or possibly salvation by terminators, as opposed to just being the next movie in the Terminator franchise and also named Salvation. (This may seem like a small point, until you realize that, for instance, Batman Returns would be a very different movie if it were called Batman: Returns, which would almost certainly make it about whether you can write off your cape as a business expense if you are self-employed as a late-night doer of good deeds.)

• Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian, which boasts a remarkable triumvirate of guys who are sometimes funny but also really annoying: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, and Hank Azaria. Just the commercials make me tired.

• Dance Flick, the latest parody of other films from the various Wayanses who brought you Scary Movie and its sequels. Based on the ads, a good part of it seems to be taking shots at Save the Last Dance, a reasonably popular, but hardly iconic, movie from eight years ago. (It also takes on the more recent Step Up films.)

Some of you are undoubtedly eager to see at least one of these movies, and I'm not criticizing if that's the case. But of the ones you are not planning to see voluntarily, if you were going to be trapped in one of them, which would you dread the most?

If you didn't come to see Terminator Salvation, that's going to be a lot of explosions. If you didn't come to see Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian, that's going to be a lot of Robin Williams. If you didn't come to see Dance Flick, that's going to be a lot of...that kind of joke.

So I put the question to you: If you could only avoid one, which would you avoid?

1:25 PM ET | 05-19-2009 | permalink

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Bogus Movie Credentials Other Than 'Harvard Symbologist'

by Linda Holmes

While watching the above clip of Tom Hanks on The Daily Show, I was appalled -- appalled -- to hear Hanks admit that there is no such thing as a Harvard professor of symbology, the credential boasted by his character, Robert Langdon, in Angels And Demons.

This was very disillusioning, and forced me to abandon my twenty-year plan to become a Harvard symbologist, which I believed was on track when I correctly figured out that on Survivor, fire represents life.

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon: Not actually a Harvard symbologist. Sony/Columbia

 

But as I considered the matter further, I realized that giving a character a credential of some kind is a good way to make him believable and worth listening to. Perhaps the problem with some characters who are not taken seriously is that their resumés have not been fleshed out.

I am, as always, here to help. Thus, the following movie characters are hereby granted completely bogus credentials that will make it easier for them to get the respect they deserve.

M'lynn Eatenton (Sally Field), Steel Magnolias: Bh.D (Boo Hoo Doctor)

John McClane (Bruce Willis), Die Hard: International Punch To The Baccalaureate

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), Fast & Furious: Bachelor's, vroom-vroom-vroom-a cum laude

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Scream: Distinguished Lecturer, BOO!logy

Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage), National Treasure: Professor Of Abuse Of Actual Background In Cryptology

Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg), The Happening: Susurrarborologist (Tree Whisperer)

Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey), Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past: [took all classes pass/fail]

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Sex And The City: Visiting Professor Of Tutu Thermodynamics

Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), Twilight: Master's Degree, Pale-ontology (alternate title: Pallid-ictorian)

Jack Travin (Keanu Reeves), Speed: Adjunct Professor, Department Of Relief, Division Of There Was No Baby, It Was Full Of Cans

3:00 PM ET | 05-14-2009 | permalink

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IMAX: You Pay Your Money, But Do You Take Your Chances?

Aziz Ansari: If this man tells you he has 25,000 Twitter followers, you should believe him. Michael Buckner/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Comedian Aziz Ansari (who plays the odious Tom on NBC's Parks And Recreation) went to see Star Trek at an advertised IMAX theater this weekend. When he discovered that it wasn't the giant screen that he (and, I dare say, many people if not most people) associate with the term "IMAX," but merely a regular-sized screen that was "IMAX" only in that it had improved digital sound and picture quality, he got angry.

According to his account of the incident (which is filled with profanity from the title forward, so be warned), Ansari went to customer service after the movie and asked for his five dollars back -- not the entire price of his ticket, but the premium he paid to see it in IMAX, on the basis that he didn't get what he thought he was getting. He was refused.

He says he even warned the manager that he had 25,000 Twitter followers, and that if the theater wasn't willing to refund his five bucks, he'd explain his side of the story to them. Which he did, on Monday evening.

And by late Tuesday, the CEO of IMAX had been prodded to defend the smaller IMAX screens in a statement in which he claimed, in effect, that nobody except Aziz Ansari cares how big an IMAX screen is, and that nobody is paying those five dollars because they necessarily assume that IMAX means a large screen.

If that's the case, it's a bad break for them that the only guy in the country to feel ripped off happens to have an extremely popular Twitter stream.

How not to respond to a social media firestorm, after the jump...

Continue reading "IMAX: You Pay Your Money, But Do You Take Your Chances?" »

10:20 AM ET | 05-13-2009 | permalink

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How Have We Survived Without An 'American Gladiators' Movie?

American Gladiators: It's clear that you can't make the movie without the padded jousting weapons, right? NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

Movie adaptations of TV shows aren't notoriously reliable sources of money at the box office. In fact, they're often sources of spectacularly memorable bad ideas. Remember 1994's Car 54, Where Are You?, starring David Johansen, a.k.a. Buster Poindexter, of "Hot Hot Hot" fame?

But then, of course, they occasionally do a little better.

Still, I suspect that even the Brendan Fraser Dudley Do-Right movie may have been a better idea than the just-announced film version of American Gladiators.

In case you are (tragically) not familiar with the Gladiators format, it's basically a game show where the contestants face off against the show's resident "Gladiators," giant in-house bruisers with names like "Nitro."

Less than one minute into this video, which is the first-ever episode of the show in full, you will see two people jousting with what appear to be giant Q-Tips. And then there's some wrestling, and a guy kicking another guy off a pedestal.

Now...what, exactly, is a movie version going to entail? According to Variety, the idea is "an action story that takes place inside the world [show creator Johnny] Ferraro has created."

My guess is that the "world" at issue is the "world" of giant muscular dudes fighting wiry pharmaceutical salespeople, meaning that the movie will go something like this.

The plot, predicted, after the jump...

Continue reading "How Have We Survived Without An 'American Gladiators' Movie?" »

10:11 AM ET | 05-12-2009 | permalink

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Weekend Box Office: 'Beams' Leads 'Star Trek' Headline Puns

Star Trek beams into theaters!

Or beams itself to top of weekend box office!

Or maybe beams to top of chart!

Or possibly beams up $72.5 million in first weekend!

Sure, the word "galactic" put up a fight, with the Associated Press and New York Daily News on board. (Get it? ON BOARD!)

UPI went with the idea that the movie boldly goes to $76.5 million, which was picked up by AFP, which noted that it boldly goes to number one. MTV went the same way. Hilarious!

(I must give an honorable mention to my favorite Star Trek headline so far, in which the New York Times made clear that grammar is more important than actually making the correct pop-culture reference and called its review "A Franchise Goes Boldly Backward.")

In the end, however, my unofficial tally suggests that the tightly contested weekend race for most widely used Star Trek pun went to "beams up." Congratulations, "beams up"!

8:20 AM ET | 05-11-2009 | permalink

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The Appeal Of Origin Stories: Of Kirk, Locke, And Wolverine

Star Trek: The new J.J. Abrams film is only one of a recent spate of successful origin stories that advance the story by retreating. Paramount Pictures

 

by Mark Blankenship

These days, whether at the movies or on television, you can't swing a cat without hitting an origin story.

The current season of Lost has focused on how the Dharma Initiative and Ben Linus began, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine reveals its point of view right there in the title.

And of course, half the allure of J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek film, opening today, is its promise to show us how Kirk and Spock met, how Uhura got her job, and so forth.

But these are more than just origin stories. All three properties are interrupting the chronology of long-running narratives to tell us how things began. And since none of them started their stories at square one to begin with, many of us are learning the early histories of popular characters for the very first time.

That's especially true for people like me, who rely on movies to get their X-Men information, and who aren't so deep into Star Trek lore that they'll read a novelization about Kirk and Spock's teenage years.

So why is this type of origin tale so satisfying? Why is it interesting to begin a narrative in medias res, then suddenly bounce back to the beginning?

(SPOILERS AHEAD!) (For Lost thus far and for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that is. We won't spoil Star Trek.)

Why origin stories are so appealing, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Appeal Of Origin Stories: Of Kirk, Locke, And Wolverine" »

8:02 AM ET | 05- 8-2009 | permalink

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Culturetopia: Must-Listen Arts & Entertainment (Princess Edition)

by Linda Holmes

If it's Wednesday, this must be Culturetopia we're in. Yup, it's time for NPR's weekly arts-etcetera podcast, a roundup of our favorite NPR arts and entertainment stories from last week.

In this week's installment, arts reporter (and jazz enthusiast) Felix Contreras and I talked about:

• the Hunt For Gollum fan video released this past weekend;

• Anika Noni Rose's upcoming gig as a Disney princess;

• Terry Gross's Fresh Air interview with Gabriel Byrne of HBO's In Treatment;

• author Colm Toibin's new novel Brooklyn, about a journey from Ireland to ... well, Brooklyn;

• a recent installment of the NPR Music jazz-sampler series Take Five, in which NPR editor Tom Cole talks about the recordings that introduced him to the genre;

• a commemorative ride on New York City's fabled A train, to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of "Take The A Train" composer Duke Ellington; and

• from right here at Monkey See, the amazing kids of the PS 22 chorus, with their performance of "Eye Of The Tiger."

Sound good? Have a listen right here, if you like:

Or if automation is your thing, subscribe to Culturetopia from its podcast home page.

If you have reactions to the new podcast, please let us know below. What works for you, what doesn't?

2:20 PM ET | 05- 6-2009 | permalink

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Tights, Camera, Action: We Note Notable Superhero Fan Films

by Glen Weldon

Last Sunday's launch of an ambitious, technically impressive Tolkien-geek fan film shows how far the medium has come.

Where once uberfans were content to tromp out into the backyard to videotape themselves lightsabering the snot out of one another, new technologies have rendered the days of rough in-camera edits and hand-puppet dianogas obsolete. And even though any Fett with a Flip camera can turn out a respectable product, many fan films represent sizable investments of time, resources and effort.

Take, for example, the genre of comic book fan film.

Batman: Dead End (above) is perhaps the most famous example of the form. The 8-minute film went live on the Web right around Comic-Con 2003, setting off a nerdsplosion of interest in director Sandy Collora, who's gone on to helm an actual, you know, movie.

To my way of thinking, Dead End is notable for two reasons:

Dispelling the Memory of Adam West's Bat-Belly
Dead End proved that simple, true-to-the-comics circus tights can look great — as long as the guy who's sporting them has 4 percent body fat and biceps the size of your head.

Okay, Did NOT See That Coming
Right around the three minute mark — after Batman and one very aggressively eyebrowed Joker trade blows and bon mots, events take a turn. A silly, silly turn.

After the jump: We scour the tubes for the best and the brightest superhero fan films. Also the weirdest.

Continue reading "Tights, Camera, Action: We Note Notable Superhero Fan Films" »

10:18 AM ET | 05- 6-2009 | permalink

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Weekend Box Office: A Little Piracy Never Hurt Anyone, Right?

Do leaks matter?: This weekend's release of Wolverine provides at least one data point. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

This weekend's box office was worth watching for a few reasons.

First, it's the first official weekend of the summer movie season, with X-Men Origins: Wolverine acting as the first big summer release. Second, that very same film suffered a highly publicized leak of an unfinished work print that many feared could spell disaster. Third, it's been a big spring for movies, with box office up substantially over last year, and this might be our first opportunity to see whether that's going to carry over to summer. If all that weren't enough, you might even wonder whether fear of the flu could keep people at home.

So what happened? Wolverine made $87 million, and made it in spite of some truly dismal reviews: a Metacritic score of 44 and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 37.

As HitFix notes here, the movie's opening isn't in line with the bow of Iron Man last year at nearly $100 million, but it's a perfectly respectable superhero kick-off nonetheless.

It's hard to know what the effects of the leaked print were without visiting the hypothetical universe in which it doesn't take place, but when you consider that Watchmen, which was even more relentlessly hyped than Wolverine, made a little less than $56 million in its opening weekend, it's hard to feel persuaded that the unauthorized copy that made its way onto the Internet was particularly devastating.

What happened elsewhere? The only other big release of the weekend was Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, which made an estimated $15.3 million, which isn't dreadful but did represent, as Box Office Mojo notes, "the least-attended start of all Matthew McConaughey romantic comedies." Ouch.

7:30 AM ET | 05- 4-2009 | permalink

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Gollum! We Hates Nasssty Copyright Lawyerss! Gollum!

by Glen Weldon

This Sunday, a fan-made prequel to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy will go live on the web. Two years in the making, The Hunt for Gollum was a labor of profoundly nerdy love for its British creators, who spent a reported $4,500 (£3,000) making the thing — and don't intend to make a single copper piece off of it. (Check Laura Sydell's report on the flick from last night's ATC.)

If the trailer's anything to go by, it'll be, at the very least, pretty to look at. The makeup and costuming seem mightily impressive. (The filmmakers saved on costs by sharing wardrobe with another Tolkien fan film called Born of Hope, which is still in the works).

Fan films, like fan fiction, have been around a long time, and most savvy filmmakers see them for what they are: potent emblems of the devotion their creations have inspired in a passionate few, not to mention a conveniently low-maintenance way to keep those creations alive in the public consciousness.

George Lucas, for example, now encourages fans to come play in his filmic sandbox by sponsoring a yearly fan film award.

But the Tolkien estate — and New Line, the studio behind the Peter Jackson films — have historically been quick on the draw with cease-and-desist letters. And there's a couple of things about this particular fan film that might draw the Eye of Sauron.

After the jump: A tale of two prequels ...

Continue reading "Gollum! We Hates Nasssty Copyright Lawyerss! Gollum!" »

8:42 AM ET | 05- 1-2009 | permalink

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Ten Jobs Not Right For Wolverine

Wolverine: He may be powerful, but he is not the man for every job. Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

1. Balloon-animal artist

2. High-voltage electrician

3. Prop comic/juggler

4. Obstetrician

5. Deep-tissue masseur

6. Dental hygienist

7. Ship-in-a-bottle assembler

8. TSA screener

9. Attendant in library rare-books room

10. Quality assurance inspector, gossamer scarves

Your career-counseling advice for Mr. Personality? Hit the comments ....

8:03 PM ET | 04-30-2009 | permalink

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You Can Tell Me: Too Early To Be Tired Of 'Sex And The City 2'?

by Linda Holmes

Disclosures: I was not a fan of Sex And The City when it was on TV. I thought the women were shallow, dumb, and much more similar to each other in temperament and personality than the "She's the craaaazy one! She's the sweet one!" lineup recognized. (Running the gamut from A to B, as to steal from Dorothy Parker.) I did not see anything relatable in any of them, ever, at any time.

Caveats to disclosures: During its TV lifetime, I wasn't a person who cared about clothes, or a person who had ever lived in New York, or a person who would ever kick John Corbett to the curb.

I did eventually watch a good part of the show's run, and I enjoyed it...occasionally, I guess? It was diverting enough, though I still never liked any of the women, and I still didn't care about clothes. Once I had lived in New York, though, I did find rather hilarious the way that in their world, living in the dreaded "Brooklyn" is the rough equivalent of living at the bottom of a vat of industrial waste and everyone in the entire city of New York thinks so.

I saw the movie, and it was...about what I expected. Absurd, breezy, full of women making very bad choices about relationships that are presented as freeing.

Now that casting news is rolling in about the sequel, is it too early to dread it?

Is it too early to dread the endless insistence that it resonated with every woman, that we all sat around for years discussing with our friends whether we were a Charlotte or a Miranda, and that we all rooted for Carrie to get together with the unreliable, emotionally unavailable, infantile Mr. Big? Is it too early to be sick of hearing the words "Mr. Big"?

I always kind of thought the best thing that could happen to Carrie would be the disappearance of that guy into witness protection. But then, I didn't want Ross and Rachel to end up together, either.

Most of all, is it too early to declare my entire brain a Jimmy-Choo-free zone? Because we've got a long way to go yet, and we need to pace ourselves.

1:57 PM ET | 04-29-2009 | permalink

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Jason Robards, James Cagney And Metallica, Together At Last

by Marc Hirsh

If you're of a certain age and musical temperament, this week's DVD release of Dalton Trumbo's 1971 anti-war movie Johnny Got His Gun makes you think of one thing in particular, and that's Metallica's "One."

The film, which stars Timothy Bottoms and Jason Robards, is about a wounded World War I soldier whose mind is alive even as his injuries have turned him into a blind and deaf quadruple amputee with no way of communicating with the outside world.

The song, as metalheads and even the more pedestrian brand of rock nerds know, was inspired by the 1939 novel (also written by Trumbo), so much so that the band included scenes and dialogue from the film in the video.

Maybe "included" isn't the right word there: let's try "supersaturated." Even by the standards of the clip-heavy soundtrack videos of the 1980s (such as the Bangles' "Hazy Shade Of Winter" from Less Than Zero or Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" from Pretty Woman), "One" was pretty extreme in its disregard for the boundaries between the video and the movie. So much so, in fact, that the casual MTV viewer of the time might have assumed that Johnny Got His Gun was in multiplexes right then.

Then again, of course it was extreme. It was freakin' Metallica. Even with Guns n' Roses having recently left most of the hair-metal pack in its wake the year before, there was nothing on standard-rotation MTV remotely as fast and heavy as this song.

I certainly hadn't heard anything like it before, even though I was familiar with the name Metallica through my metalhead friends. What's funny is that after I bought the cassette single (thus being on both the losing end of technological history and the winning end of musical history, as "One" became, amazingly enough, a top 40 hit), I always liked to pretend that it was the quote-unquote "folk" portions at the beginning of the song (yes, that's actually how I referred to them) that I loved.

But that was a lie.

The bond between movie and band, after the jump...

Continue reading "Jason Robards, James Cagney And Metallica, Together At Last" »

11:36 AM ET | 04-29-2009 | permalink

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Matthew McConaughey: Shirtless Pop-Culture Punching Bag

by Linda Holmes

Remember the way people talked about Matthew McConaughey when he was in the 1996 film adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller A Time To Kill? He was good in that movie. He got solid reviews in that movie.

That was the same summer he was in John Sayles' Lone Star. And he'd already been in the much-loved Dazed And Confused. It's not like he was racking up Oscar nominations, but the idea was certainly supposed to be: Handsome Man Who Is Also A Real Actor.

I mean ... he was in Amistad, for crying out loud.

But slowly, something changed. And not only because he unfortunately popped up in an arrest warrant in which he was credited as the "nude, white male dancing and playing bongo drums."

After the bongos, after the jump...

Continue reading "Matthew McConaughey: Shirtless Pop-Culture Punching Bag" »

8:37 PM ET | 04-28-2009 | permalink

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Weekend Box Office: Behold The Great Power Of Beyoncé

The power of Beyoncé: Obsessed made a lot of money this weekend, so if you're following the fortunes of badly-reviewed movies, add it to your list. Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Remember our chart from last week, showing Rotten Tomatoes scores against box office for the first four months of the year? Technically speaking, there was one weekend left to go at that point, and now that we're through it, we can see that there's going to be one more dot (of the Paul Blart: Mall Cop variety) showing a very low critics' score paired with very strong box office.

The Beyoncé Knowles thriller Obsessed, also starring Idris Elba and Ali Larter, took in about $28.5 million this weekend. Its RT score? A not-so-blistering 30 out of 100.

In second place was the fighting movie Fighting at $11.4 million, and The Soloist, with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. (RT score: 61) made less than $10 million.

This one weekend doesn't mean the hypothesis is accurate that all the well-reviewed movies are tanking and all the badly-reviewed movies are thriving, but it doesn't hurt.

11:07 AM ET | 04-27-2009 | permalink

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Caution Signs Endangered Movie Characters Really Need

by Linda Holmes

If you've seen the trailer for the new movie Obsessed, you know that it seems to show Idris Elba wandering into quite a thicket, because he fails to identify early enough that he has an obsessed coworker. We have concluded that all he needed was this sign.

 

In fact, many movie characters would fare better if they only had access to better caution signs, because movie characters tend to face hazards that are different from the ones the rest of us face. Consider how many fictional lives could be saved by this one:

 

Oh, we've got more.

How to save everyone from the nuclear bunny, after the jump...

Continue reading "Caution Signs Endangered Movie Characters Really Need" »

2:40 PM ET | 04-23-2009 | permalink

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'Fighting': A Movie About Fighting

by Linda Holmes

I'm not going to lie to you: I haven't seen Fighting, which opens tomorrow. But based on the trailer, it's this story about a guy, and he's part of "New York's underground," and what he really likes is fighting.

Frankly, that's a relief. I mean, if I go to a movie called Fighting, I want to see some fighting. Without spoiling anything for you, not much happened in The Happening. And nothing at all changeled in Changeling.

Did you know there wasn't a single shot fired in Bride Wars? Total rip-off. And Iron Man isn't about a guy who makes irons, either, the way it seemed like it was going to be. It's just about a guy who wears an iron suit. He's not an iron man at all! The president of Sunbeam; that's an iron man.

Twilight is equally misleading; that movie is about vampires. Now, if somebody actually makes a movie about the approach of dusk, the perfect title will already be taken. Why didn't they call it Biting? Hey, Biting is a great name for a movie. It's like Fighting, but with teeth.

I, for one, endorse this move toward greater candor. This has been bugging me ever since The Shining.

11:01 AM ET | 04-23-2009 | permalink

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This Year's Movies And Last Year's Movies: Is Escapism King?

Box-office numbers: Are we really walking away from good movies? We take a look at the evidence. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

The high-profile sputtering of some well-regarded recent movies, including State of Play, Duplicity and Adventureland, has led to some hand-wringing over whether we've all turned our backs on good movies in favor of escapist movies. From that Hollywood Reporter link comes this lament: "Telling stat: The average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners so far this year is a dismal 42%."

What they didn't mention? According to my calculations, based on information from Box Office Mojo, the average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners of last year that were released between January and April -- not the time of year when studios traditionally release either their great summer blockbusters or their award bait -- was... 41.5.

So I thought I'd take a look at the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2009 and the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2008 and see where we stand. Let's go to... THE CHARTS!

Deciphering the dots, after the jump...

Continue reading "This Year's Movies And Last Year's Movies: Is Escapism King?" »

10:51 AM ET | 04-22-2009 | permalink

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The Parental 'Star Wars' Panic

by Linda Holmes

While I recognize the danger of pronouncing two things a trend, I couldn't help noticing that the "Mommy Files" blog at SFGate.com last week featured the second public fretting I have seen this month (the first was in Slate, here) over whether it's okay to let your kids watch Star Wars.

The "Mommy Files" entry now has 148 comments attached to it. For every point of view, there is a representative: You're crazy if you let your 4-year-old watch Star Wars. You're crazy if you don't let your 4-year-old watch Star Wars. Letting your kid watch Star Wars will warp his brain. Not letting your kid watch Star Wars will make him sheltered. Kids who watch Star Wars are ruining society. Kids whose parents coddle them are ruining society.

The same thing, essentially, happened when Emily Bazelon wrote about Star Wars in Slate. It seems to be an awfully emotional issue for people, this business of little children and Star Wars.

A few relevant dates, after the jump...

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1:17 PM ET | 04-21-2009 | permalink

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Movie Fates That Sound A Lot More Appealing Than '17 Again'

17 Again: Maybe it's just us, but that actually doesn't sound that whimsical. Warner Brothers Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

17 Again is the biggest movie in the country right now, thanks to an audience that was -- at least on opening weekend -- reportedly almost half people under 18. In other words, this movie about being 17 years old again is disproportionately appealing to people who are 17 years old right now, or haven't been 17 years old yet.

And it's no wonder, because for many of us, 17 Again is not a title that screams "whimsical fantasy." It is a title that screams...well, a title that screams screaming. Something like: "Seventeen? You mean seventeen years old? Again?"

Because here are ten movies in which I would rather find myself stranded than 17 Again.

1. Once More To The Oral Surgeon

2. It's A Year-Round Mall Of America Christmas

3. Fly-Fishing With Angry Talk-Radio Callers

4. Six Hours On The Tarmac

5. The Cubicle-Mate Of A Thousand Ironic Ringtones

6. The Longest Puppet Show

7. Car Alarm!

8. I Wore New Shoes To A Six-Hour Wedding

9. Phantom Of The Ice Capades

10. Faceful Of Pollen

Feel free to add your own in the comments, because I'm pretty sure there are many more.

10:39 AM ET | 04-21-2009 | permalink

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Is Russell Crowe So Ancient He Can't Make Movies Anymore?

by Linda Holmes

Remember when Julia Roberts was about to show up in Duplicity? Remember how we discussed the discussion of whether she was "Hollywood ancient," and how she may have lost her ability to open a movie as a result of her extraordinarily advanced age of 41?

Duplicity went on to earn roughly $14 million in its opening weekend. Explanations abounded, as did discussions of whether Roberts should conclude that she is thoroughly washed up, or whether there was any hope that she might recover.

This weekend, the Russell Crowe vehicle State of Play earned roughly $14 million in its opening weekend (even with help from the whew-he's-under-40 Ben Affleck), and was well and thoroughly spanked by 17 Again, a body-swapping comedy starring Zac Efron. This despite, according to Variety, "a hefty payout for Crowe."

This can mean only one thing: At 45, Russell Crowe is too old to make movies. Particularly after the so-so performance of Body of Lies, doesn't this prove that Russell Crowe is "Hollywood ancient"?

The conversations we are surely about to see, after the jump...

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11:47 AM ET | 04-20-2009 | permalink

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Real, No-Fooling Snake News

Snake news, from us to you: We have a few concerns about a news story you need to hear before you travel again. iStockphoto.com

 

by Marc Hirsh

Of all the ways that life could imitate art, this is not what any of us had in mind.

Samuel L. Jackson could not be reached for comment, but we're pretty sure we know what he'd have to say. (Clip contains profanity, if you couldn't guess.)

While we are concerned about this development, at least the trees are still on our side. FOR NOW.

3:44 PM ET | 04-17-2009 | permalink

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Can Quentin Tarantino Bring Weird Brad Pitt Home Again?

by Linda Holmes

The best thing about this brief preview of Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film Inglourious Basterds is that it promises the return of Weird Brad Pitt, whose appearance I always welcome after exposure to Very Important Brad Pitt.

Why W. Brad Pitt beats V.I. Brad Pitt, after the jump...

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2:46 PM ET | 04-16-2009 | permalink

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Exclusive Clip: Marvin Hamlisch Details The Grim Sacrifice That Made 'A Chorus Line' Possible

So no, we don't necessarily expect modesty from Marvin Hamlisch. He is, as his Wikipedia entry notes, one of "the only two individuals to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama."

(Don't you just love Wikipedia entries, and the opportunities they offer for ego-driven factoids?)

Still, the anecdote in the clip above — taken from the documentary Every Little Step, opening Friday — is a real eye-roller.

'Cause what I hear him saying is, "Isn't it droll, the way I left Hollywood glamour behind and took a chance on this odd Broadway project about the little people, which went on to win me a Pulitzer and make me exceedingly rich?"

Check it out, and tell me if I'm wrong here — but for a composer, Maestro Hamlisch strikes me as amusingly tone-deaf.

— Trey Graham

1:31 PM ET | 04-15-2009 | permalink

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The Sinister Hidden Messages Of 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'

Hannah Montana: The Movie: Be yourself! Well, maybe. Or possibly not. Who's to know, when you're Miley Cyrus either way? Walt Disney Pictures

 

by Mark Blankenship

Hello, my name is Mark, and I saw Hannah Montana: The Movie on its opening day. What choice did I have? I crave pop cultural literacy, so I'm practically required to experience this Miley Cyrus-fronted phenomenon that's dominating box office receipts, music charts, and the hearts of children worldwide.

But as a childless adult, Planet Hannah unsettles me. There among the super-cute outfits and fun choreography, I keep noticing shoddy filmmaking and a sinister sociological message, and it's making me paranoid. Am I the only one who sees the wicked signs?

Wicked signs and many spoilers regarding the undoubtedly shocking plot, after the jump...

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11:26 AM ET | 04-14-2009 | permalink

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Come Back, O Taboo Against The Viewing Of Stomach Contents

Adventureland: It's a lovely movie, but it follows a most unfortunate trend. Miramax

 

by Linda Holmes

Look, there's no polite way to say this, but it's important.

It used to be that in a movie, if you were sick to your stomach to the point where you needed to empty its contents, you would do so discreetly, which is to say off-screen.

The retching sound was adequate to convey what had occurred. There was no need to actually watch the event in progress. "Cough cough," or sometimes, "Cough cough, flush," and everybody understood.

Oh, how things have changed.

Current examples, blaming Leslie Mann, and a plaintive plea for mercy, after the jump...

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9:20 AM ET | 04-14-2009 | permalink

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Potential Movie-Sequel Titles As Lazy As 'Fast & Furious' Was

Fast & Furious: They didn't spend too much time coming up with that title, did they? Perhaps it will become a trend. Universal Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Now that The People have spoken with their enormous wads of cash, it's clear that making a sequel to The Fast And The Furious — and calling it something really inventive, like, um, Fast & Furious — is no barrier to success.

Before this, of course, there had already been two follow-ups to The Fast And The Furious: 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast And the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Neither of those is a particularly snappy title, but for sheer lack of effort, they cannot match the approach of, "What if we take out the small words and leave just the important words? That's a different title, right?"

And that got us thinking that in some cases, removing the little words might not only be workable; it might support the development of entirely new sequel concepts.

The Original: The Sting
The Sequel: Sting

In this follow-up to the Newman-Redford Best Picture winner, the popular ex-frontman of The Police conceives a scheme in which it turns out that his new "Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting" beard hides a map to the location of a stash of diamonds.

Classics and a special theatrical bonus, after the jump...

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9:53 AM ET | 04-10-2009 | permalink

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'Doubt' And The Appeal Of Questionable Choices Explained

Doubt: The opportunity to hear the directing choices explained makes the film worth another look. Buena Vista Studios Home Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

Doubt was an apparently Oscar-hungry film, as its December 25 release date suggested.

Starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, and dealing with the issue of child abuse in the Catholic church, it was hard to imagine a film more naturally geared to an awards audience.

When it came Oscar time, though, all four major actors in the film -- Hoffman and Streep, along with Amy Adams and Viola Davis -- were nominated for their work, and John Patrick Shanley was nominated for the screenplay he adapted from his own play.

But the movie wasn't nominated for Best Picture. Your four big performances are all nominated, and your script is nominated, and you don't get a Best Picture nomination? That makes suspicion fall on the direction -- which Shanley also handled, and which was indeed one of the more widely criticized aspects of the film. (Bob Mondello, for instance, mentioned Shanley's "fussy directorial notions.")

That's why it's so wonderful that Shanley alone provides the audio commentary on the just-released DVD. You will hear him explain or at least acknowledge some of the very choices that were criticized, including his use of unusual angles, attention-grabbing lighting, and endless weather metaphors.

What John Patrick Shanley has to say in his own defense, after the jump...

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2:49 PM ET | 04- 8-2009 | permalink

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Public-Sector Jobs For More Of The 'Harold And Kumar' Corps

by Linda Holmes

You know by now that Kal Penn is headed to the White House. Great news for him; bad news for everyone hoping for the next Harold And Kumar movie.

Now that we know another sequel is not in the works, it's time to place some of the other fine cast members of the Harold And Kumar movies in government positions. He is doing his part; they should do theirs.

John Cho Noel Vasquez/Getty Images

 

John Cho: Strange Beings Liaison, NASA

Since his days as Harold, Cho has made a number of TV appearances -- including one on House -- and popped up in a few movies. But the biggest things are right around the corner, because he's playing Sulu in the new Star Trek movie that arrives on May 8.

Surely, all that he has learned about talking to the pointy-eared would make him useful to the space program. How different can fictional outer space be than real outer space? Unfortunately, he would spend his first month on the job telling NASA guys they don't need to do the "live long and prosper" thing every time.

Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Corddry, and more, after the jump...

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9:18 AM ET | 04- 8-2009 | permalink

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The Seth Rogenaissance

Seth Rogen: Things are looking up, even as he portrays a blue blob. Kristian Dowling/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

There's a lot going on with Seth Rogen right now. His new movie, Observe And Report, starts Friday -- probably at many, many theaters near you packed with many, many members of coveted demographics.

He hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, where the fact that he's lost a bunch of weight became one of the primary jokes.

While he's enjoying this svelte victory lap, he's also in theaters as one of the voices in Monsters vs. Aliens, in which he expertly portrays a blue gelatinous blob. (That may qualify as irony.)

Rogen has already made a lot of big movies -- The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Superbad -- the list is lengthy for a guy who's 26 years old (who, incidentally, was a writer on the celebrated Freaks & Geeks when he was 19).

But we may only now be entering the Rogenaissance.

Slimming down and smartening up, after the jump...

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10:58 AM ET | 04- 7-2009 | permalink

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The Wonderful 'Star Wars' Swag That Shouldn't Be A Hoax

The Tauntaun sleeping bag: Sadly, it's only a joke. For now. ThinkGeek.com

 

by Glenn McDonald

Among the avalanche of April Fool's jokes last week was an interesting development from the nerd merchandising supersite ThinkGeek.com. As an April Fool's joke, the site put up for sale the ingenious and rather appealing Tauntaun sleeping bag pictured above.

Star Wars fans will recall the famous scene on remote ice planet Hoth, in which Han Solo slices open a warm Tauntaun carcass and inserts the typically hapless Luke Skywalker to keep the young Jedi from freezing to death.

Thus was born the Tauntaun sleeping bag. From the ThinkGeek product description: "This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and LED Luke Skywalker Lightsaber zipper pull. Use the lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate to your wee ones how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the Tauntaun belly!"

Genius. Hundreds of eager buyers were prepared to click over $39.95 for the sleeping bag, only to discover it was all a hoax. As the news made its way around the Internets, ThinkGeek quickly realized it had a phenomenon on its hands. The Tauntaun sleeping bag wasn't just a great idea for a fake product -- it was a great idea, period.

What ThinkGeek.com did next, more ideas for great gifts, and an invitation to do your worst, after the jump...

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9:59 AM ET | 04- 7-2009 | permalink

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Chick Movie/Dude Movie: 'Adventureland'

by Linda Holmes

Hollywood marketers believe in Chick Movies and Dude Movies. The rest of us believe in...well, movies, in the best of all possible worlds. But when you are making a trailer, you are expected to identify Chick Movie elements and Dude Movie elements. Because we all know that Chicks and Dudes are very different.

(They like cars and beer! We like ponies and flowers!)

Thus, any movie -- well, any movie trailer, really -- can be sorted into Chick Movie elements and Dude Movie elements, resulting in a final reading on the Chick/Dude scale. Note that, for a single movie, the scale may change by trailer, depending on whether it is airing before He's Just Not That Into You or Knowing.

Let us take a look at this trailer for Adventureland, which opens today.

How to count Ryan Reynolds and expired food, after the jump...

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11:38 AM ET | 04- 3-2009 | permalink

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The Plastic Glasses Rebellion

Seeing in three dimensions...or not: A major studio and a major theater chain play a game of "I'm not paying for the glasses; I thought you were paying for the glasses." iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

So. Monsters vs. Aliens has a huge opening weekend, Dreamworks is all set to keep rolling with 3D releases, and a few thousand screens have apparently already been converted to show 3D at a reported cost of up to $100,000 per screen.

But what about the plastic glasses? You may have thought that the $5 premium you paid for that 3D ticket was adequate to cover a pair of polarized plastic shades, but don't you believe it -- there's a whole new battle over who's going to pay for the glasses. Specifically, Ice Age 3 looks to be facing some difficulties getting theaters to put it on their new 3D-ready screens if Twentieth Century Fox keeps insisting it's not paying.

This sounds a little like the urban legend that exists at every college about how the library is sinking because the architects didn't account for the weight of the books. Millions of dollars to make the movie, millions of dollars to outfit the theaters, and now we're going to be hung up on the $1 million-per-movie cost of plastic-glasses manufacturing.

10:14 AM ET | 04- 2-2009 | permalink

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'Wolverine': Enormous Security Hole Or Big Stroke Of 'Luck'?

Wolverine: A version of Hugh Jackman's new film has leaked online; what happens now? Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

The X-Men follow-up X-Men Origins: Wolverine, one of Twentieth Century Fox's most anticipated movie releases of the summer, leaked on the Internet yesterday.

Well, the movie wasn't leaked, exactly. It's reportedly an unpolished, incomplete version of the movie, and surprisingly, it has no watermark that might help identify the culprit.

Are full-length leaks the wave of the future? We consider the possibility, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Wolverine': Enormous Security Hole Or Big Stroke Of 'Luck'?" »

2:03 PM ET | 04- 1-2009 | permalink

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James Franco And Danny McBride, But Not The Way You're Thinking

James Franco: Seen here on MTV's Total Request Live last fall, he's teaming up again with Pineapple Express's Danny McBride. Scott Gries/Getty Images Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

Maybe it's just me, but when I read that James Franco and Danny McBride -- who worked together in Pineapple Express -- were teaming up for a new movie called Your Highness, I thought, entirely seriously, "I do not need to see another movie from this same crowd of guys about how hilarious it is to watch them smoke pot for two hours. It wasn't that funny in Knocked Up, it went on too long in Pineapple Express, and I don't understand why they won't just let James Franco make a comedy in which he is not stoned."

It turns out, though, that this is the more time-worn interpretation of the words "Your Highness," and Franco and McBride will play "spoiled and arrogant princes." Or so the story claims. The movie will apparently be directed by David Gordon Green, their Pineapple director. It might actually be a good movie, even with everyone substance-free.

My mistake, guys. Carry on.

1:15 PM ET | 04- 1-2009 | permalink

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Is Drew Barrymore The Ben Affleck Of Romantic Comedies?

Drew Barrymore: Is her romantic-comedy reputation greater than her track record? Gabriel Bouys, AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Quick, name the last Ben Affleck movie that (1) you really liked; or (2) you really liked him in; or (3) both.

Take a look at the evidence. It's pretty dismal. The Affleckian lean years, it is safe to say, have far outnumbered ... the year in which Good Will Hunting was released.

I've had this discussion with several friends over the last five years or so: Aside from his ability to be remarkably charming on talk shows, how is Ben Affleck a movie star?

(In fairness to Affleck, he also directed 2007's Gone Baby Gone, which was quite good, and he has at times shown some self-awareness about the possibility that acting may not be his particular gift.)

Comes now the news that Drew Barrymore will be teaming up with Justin Long in a romantic comedy called Going The Distance.

This might seem like welcome news to date-movie fans, who haven't had a great year so far. But is it, really?

The Barrymorian lean years, after the jump ...

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11:59 AM ET | 03-31-2009 | permalink

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Open Questions: What Opens Your Moviegoing Wallet?

The movie ticket: Still an alluring purchase, even for a cash-strapped public iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

Everybody feels broke, everybody feels pinched, but U.S. box-office receipts are up, not down.

If you stop to think too hard about spending $10 for less than two hours of entertainment, it doesn't hold up all that well, compared to what Netflix costs, or what cable costs, or what books cost. (And those are just the standard options — obviously, you can use your local library or watch free stuff online or whatever.) Also, 10 bucks assumes you don't buy a four-dollar drink.

Are you going to the movies at the same clip you were, say, a year ago? What movies have you chosen to see in theaters since, say, the first of the year?

And if you're still going, what is it about the theater experience that makes it worth the money? Would you go more often if there were more movies to your liking? Do you still prefer to see big, lavishly produced movies in a theater?

Or is it the crowd itself? It strikes me that movies are one of the only things the public still does in large numbers that involves placing yourself in a crowd where everyone is paying attention to the same thing at once. Are we paying to immerse ourselves in a sea of humanity, despite the seat-kicking and cough-drop-unwrapping and aisle-running?

Update: In a not-very-surprising side note, ticket sales may be up, but concessions are down, so theaters aren't as happy as you might think.

10:30 AM ET | 03-30-2009 | permalink

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'Monsters,' Flying Directly Into Your Face At Great Speed

Monsters vs. Aliens: DreamWorks Animation has reason to believe audiences are at least interested in 3D technology; how long will their interest last? Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Monsters vs. Aliens made enough money this weekend to keep DreamWorks throwing things directly at you for years to come.

(I, for one, would like to see DreamWorks return to live-action films and produce them in 3D also, because I doubt anyone could resist A Beautiful Mind 2 in 3D, in which Russell Crowe could seem to be drawing math problems in grease pencil directly on your forehead.)

At any rate, Monsters vs. Aliens made a plush $58 million according to current estimates, and a little more than half of that came from 3D tickets, which cost about five bucks extra.

(The surcharge covers the rad plastic glasses, which I learned this weekend make small boys look like Tom Cruise and small blonde girls look a little like the Old Navy lady, even though they're flat on top rather than round.)

The 3D receipts will certainly be good news for the DreamWorks animation outfit, which has committed to releasing everything in 3D from now on. At the same time, we are still in the very early stages of widely released 3D animated films. Coraline wasn't as mass-market as this, and both it and Bolt opened in substantially fewer 3D theaters than this.

Of the two kids with whom I saw Monsters vs. Aliens, one announced that the 3D was only okay and it gave him a headache, and the other got frustrated with her "uncomfortable" glasses halfway through and ditched them. This is one of the first hugely nonthreatening 3D kids' movies to punch the 12-and-under zeitgeist right in the breadbasket. The numbers certainly show audiences want to try it; whether they'll continue to pay a $5-per-ticket surcharge (which is pretty hefty when you're hauling a family) once the novelty lessens remains to be seen.

Speaking for myself, I'd pay an extra dollar; maybe two. But five? Not regularly. Not until they add Smell-O-Vision.

7:48 PM ET | 03-29-2009 | permalink

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Explaining Without Spoiling: Julia Roberts As A Case Study

Duplicity: It's a better movie than you might think; is that saying too much? Universal Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Duplicity was a better movie than I thought it was going to be, and less predictable than I thought it was going to be.

And with that, some people would conclude I have said too much.

"You can easily guess what the 'predictable' elements are," they would reason, "so you have revealed that at least one of those predictable elements will be upended in some way, which gives away something about the ending, and you should not give away anything about the ending, at least not without spoiler warnings, because now I know that of the three or four basic things I expect from this movie, one of them won't happen, so I know something about what will happen, so you have ruined it for me."

"Well, have you seen it?" I might ask them.

"Are you kidding?" they might well respond. "No way. I assumed it was going to be totally predictable."

Therein lies the puzzle.

After the jump: Let us use an older movie as an example of a very current problem...

Continue reading "Explaining Without Spoiling: Julia Roberts As A Case Study" »

12:01 PM ET | 03-27-2009 | permalink

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A 'Let The Right One In' Subtitle Update, Or: What Blogs Do Well

by Linda Holmes

We told you yesterday about the controversy surrounding the subtitles for the Swedish film Let The Right One In, which underwent some kind of bizarre bowdlerization between theatrical release and DVD release. Over the course of about a day, this became a very big deal for those of us who see RSS feeds of blogs all day, and it became increasingly clear that some kind of response or explanation would be required.

Now, Magnet Releasing (which is handling the DVD) has responded to the controversy by agreeing to change the subtitles and use the theatrical subtitles for copies manufactured from this point on -- but, they are not offering exchanges for people who purchased the "bad" version. Or they're not...yet. Let's see if that holds up.

(You have to admire Magnet's pluck in referring to the cacophony of Internet outrage as "several fans.")

This is a great example of the power of blogs used for good: at their best, they can weaponize the short but intense bursts of attention that a story like this can draw and multiply it across popular sites to apply pressure that very quickly becomes overwhelming. If that sounds like a double-edged sword, it is: the same thing can happen whether the story is right or wrong.

But in this case, speed appears to have been on the side of the angels, and there was no way the wave of wretched publicity could be allowed to continue without a response. DVD sales are immensely important to acclaimed films that many people don't get an opportunity to see in theaters, and film purists make up a good chunk of the crowd; it's hard to imagine a movie that could less afford to have this happen to it.

12:00 PM ET | 03-25-2009 | permalink

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'Variety' Grinds An Axe And Starts A Healthy Discussion

The blog debate: Variety may be responsible for a debate better than it entirely deserves. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

I see the Variety newsfeed every day, and I was surprised to see three separate pieces about how much they hate entertainment-industry bloggers.

It isn't really aimed at commentary blogs, but at "breaking news" blogs, and specifically at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily, which was the target of most of the vitriol.

Obviously, some of the points about accuracy and speed sometimes pulling against each other are completely valid, and the distaste for blogs spending their time whining about each other instead of talking about...what they're supposed to be talking about is something most blog-followers are familiar with. At the same time, the generalizations are so broad that it's hard to know where to go next. Blogs vary in value just as much as print media does, and they're not all alike, any more than The Economist is the same as People just because they're both issued on paper.

Of many responses that have followed, I was most heartened by this excellent essay at Film School Rejects. FSR is more of a commentary blog and not really in the Variety line of fire, but the calmness and lack of defensiveness in the piece makes it much more substantive than, in fact, the pieces that started the conversation in the first place.

1:55 PM ET | 03-24-2009 | permalink

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'Dig!' And The Art Of Self-Absorption

by Linda Holmes

One of the documentaries newly available on Hulu is Dig!, a little-seen but much-discussed and award-winning 2004 film about the...rivalry? Friendship? Mutually assured destruction? At any rate, the relationship between two late-'90s bands: The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Notice how they both have quasi-playful, ironic, punny, wordplay-based, fundamentally annoying names? It's not a coincidence.

Two unlikable bands, two unlikable guys, one very likable movie, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Dig!' And The Art Of Self-Absorption" »

11:40 AM ET | 03-23-2009 | permalink

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Julia Roberts: Can You Hear Her Ancient Bones Creaking?

by Linda Holmes

Julia Roberts is 41 years old, and here's a look at her new movie.

On March 6, Newsweek asked, in anticipation of the opening of Duplicity, "Is Julia Roberts' Box-Office Reign Over?", and declared her "Hollywood ancient."

And so, again, we find ourselves embroiled in a debate about age and women, money and Hollywood, and -- oh, yes -- jokes about support hose, because really, what's fresher than that?

Of course, Newsweek didn't say they think she's too old; it simply said Hollywood thinks she's too old. It's the "some people say" brand of little dig: "We're not saying anything; we're just saying." Traditionally, of course, there's plenty of truth in the bruising realities faced by actresses over 40. But there are other questions about that piece that need asking.

Being on a first-name basis, the irrelevance of Ashley Judd, and much more, after the jump...

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10:09 AM ET | 03-20-2009 | permalink

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Sam Mendes Takes A Turn In 'Away We Go'

by Linda Holmes

Sam Mendes didn't get quite the critical or awards response he might have expected for Revolutionary Road based on the response to American Beauty. But the trailer for his new film, Away We Go, suggests that he's stocked it with powerful weapons. Even though there are shots that look a bit self-conscious and insufferable, like that moment on the moving sidewalk, there's something about the trailer overall that appeals.

Mendes is working from a script by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and he's lined up an awfully interesting cast. John Krasinski of The Office and Maya Rudolph of Saturday Night Live both seem to be working outside their usual arenas, Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels are both delightful as a rule, and nothing with Allison Janney in it has ever entirely let me down. (That's the underappreciated comedian Jim Gaffigan with her, by the way.)

It's hard to tell with this kind of "Look at me, I'm quirky!" marketing whether it's going to be quirky like the first half of Juno (bad) or quirky like the second half of Juno (good). But at least it's not another dull assault on the perfection of suburbia, and that in itself is a relief.

11:20 AM ET | 03-17-2009 | permalink

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Celebrate St. Patrick's Day With Ten Disastrous Irish Accents

by Linda Holmes

Today is March 17th, and if you're not wearing green, drinking green beer, wearing a headband with shamrock diddlybobs attached to it with springs, or pretending to be Irish, you may be unsure exactly how to mark St. Patrick's Day.

Fear not! Simply enjoy the Ten Worst Irish Accents On Film, including my personal favorite, Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own, above. Not that Tom Cruise, who spends all of Far And Away seemingly chastising all of those who have stolen his Lucky Charms, isn't also a good choice.

8:05 AM ET | 03-17-2009 | permalink

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'Watchmen' And The Myth Of The Movie As The Ultimate Form Of Storytelling

Watchmen: Does there always have to be a movie? Warner Brothers Pictures

 

by Marc Hirsh

There's a movie opening today called Watchmen. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's gotten a bit of press lately, most of which has involved some variation of the headline "Who watches Watchmen?," because headline writers are just that clever.

Most of the coverage has also fixated on the long, roadblock-studded path from the original 1986-1987 run of the comic book to the silver screen. To hear the media tell it, those of us who love Watchmen have been waiting for this day eagerly for over 20 years.

The thing is, I don't think we have.

The comic as its own fully realized form, after the jump...

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9:09 AM ET | 03- 6-2009 | permalink

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Ten Songs I Hope Will Appear In The 'Sleepless In Seattle' Musical

by Linda Holmes

That's right: they're bringing Sleepless In Seattle to the stage. For a musical. With songs. And maybe dancing. I, for one, happily look forward to the pas de deux featuring Sam and his deceased wife as he ponders whether to go to the Empire State Building. But what else might we expect? I don't want to be pushy, but I am hoping the following ten songs are already being written.

1. "I Want A Stranger For A Mom"

2. "Take It From Your Sassy Friend"

3. "This Pea-Soup Fog Of Grief"

4. "I'm Somewhat Sorry I Called You A Brat (A Father's Apology)"

5. "The Unaccompanied-Minor Negligence Lawsuit Blues"

6. "Marry That Mope, Annie"

7. "The First And Only Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

8. "Am I Looking Too Hard For A Sign In The Form Of The Lights In The Shape Of A Heart?"

9. "It's Tiramisu, Buddy!"

10. "You Can't Spell 'Kismet' Without Me"

10:41 AM ET | 03- 3-2009 | permalink

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Open Questions: Books Into Movies, For Better Or Worse

You Mustn't Read This: Linda didn't much like Benjamin Button, but there are those who argue the movie's still better than the book.photocredit

By Linton Weeks

The literati can't stand to hear it, but sometimes a movie is better than the book it's based on. Even when the book is pretty good: Jaws comes to mind. And, arguably, Forrest Gump.

This year theaters are teeming with movies based on books. And some reviewers who've had a look at both are saying that the movies are better.

Take The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The tale, about a man who ages in reverse, is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"Having seen the movie and read the story," writes Fritz Lanham in the Houston Chronicle, "I'd say there's no comparison. As a book guy it pains me to admit it, but the movie is better. A lot better."

The film critic for the Montreal Gazette, meanwhile, avers that the movie Slumdog Millionaire is better than the Vikas Swarup book it's based on.

When it's the other way around, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Open Questions: Books Into Movies, For Better Or Worse" »

11:17 AM ET | 02-25-2009 | permalink

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A Very Strange Discussion Of Viola Davis

Viola Davis: Her dress doesn't seem controversial enough to spark such a strange discussion. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

One of the little rituals I tend to indulge in after the Oscars is the E! Fashion Police special. It used to be Joan and Melissa Rivers, of course, but they're long gone -- this year's special was handled by Debbie Matenopoulos, Project Runway champ Christian Siriano, America's Next Top Model stylist Jay Manuel, and stylist Peter Ishkahns.

This year, the four went through a pretty predictable discussion of Sarah Jessica Parker and Miley Cyrus and so forth, until they arrived at Best Supporting Actress nominee Viola Davis. Davis' gold gown, by Reem Acra, generally got very good reviews -- the Times Online called it one of the best dresses of the evening, the Fug Girls loved it, the Chicago Sun-Times praised it, and so forth.

Not so the E! panel.

What went down, and why it went down uncomfortably, after the jump...

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12:29 PM ET | 02-24-2009 | permalink

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'Funny People' Unites The Renowned Subtleties Of Sandler, Apatow, And Rogen

by Linda Holmes

The trailer for Judd Apatow's upcoming Funny People has started to circulate in earnest, and the first warning is -- as explained at Low Resolution -- that the trailer is lengthy and appears to give away most of the plot. This is a baffling and frustrating affliction of the modern trailer, where there's been a collapse of the idea that you can sell a movie without encapsulating it.

What the trailer actually portends, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Funny People' Unites The Renowned Subtleties Of Sandler, Apatow, And Rogen" »

11:04 AM ET | 02-24-2009 | permalink

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NPR's Oscars Post-Mortem, with Linda Holmes And Bob Mondello

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger — is that how the saying goes? With that in mind, we returned to the Oscar well one last time this morning for a live chat with our favorite film critic.

And now that it's over, no kidding, it's time for us to have a little nap. So enjoy the chat (you can replay it in the widget below), and we'll be back soon. Maybe tomorrow, but soon.

11:45 PM ET | 02-22-2009 | permalink

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Armchair Oscar Party: Live-Blogging The Academy Awards

The live-blogging is done, But you can relive all 4 hours of it by clicking 'Replay' below, and add your thoughts in the comments. And don't forget: More NPR Oscar goodness is collected for your convenience at NPR.org/oscars.

8:00 PM ET | 02-22-2009 | permalink

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A Marathon Of Movies, Not A Sprint

by Linda Holmes

Update: The day has come. I am doing jumping jacks with my mind. In a mere couple of hours, I will begin the long day ahead, which will feature, in order: Milk, The Reader, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, and Frost/Nixon. Will I bail and spend the afternoon at Starbucks? I don't think we know. But now, we're going to find out. The suspense is killing me, and soon, I suspect that my spine will be also.

I've always been kind of fascinated by the AMC Best Picture Showcase. That's the special deal where, for $30, you can watch all the Best Picture nominees...in a row. It's happening today (Saturday), and they may be doing it at a theater near you -- check the site to find out.

This year, I'm actually going. I've already seen four out of five of the movies (sorry, The Reader!), but I don't mind a refresher before the big ceremony on Sunday night, and I'm kind of curious about what that much exposure will do to me -- I mean, for me.

To follow my adventures, follow me on Twitter at monkeyseeblog, or if you're not a Twitter person yourself, watch it roll by here.

What I think will happen, after the jump...

Continue reading "A Marathon Of Movies, Not A Sprint" »

10:09 AM ET | 02-21-2009 | permalink

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Preparing To Unveil Oscar Weekend

Oscar: This statue is waiting for Sunday night's ceremony and not, as it might appear, waiting to get married. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

 

So you've been here all week, right? We talked about whether the Oscar show is doomed, and we questioned the wisdom of trying to tone down the glamour out of sympathy for the broke.

We talked about some of the movies up for major awards -- we compared two very different movies with very different endings, and we got more specific about what ails the most-nominated movie of the year.

We even looked back with pity and pleasure at Oscar fashion with the Fug Girls. And now we're ready for our very big weekend. To pull it all together, here's what's on tap for the next few days.

• Follow us on Twitter to see whether I survive the all-day Best Picture marathon tomorrow, or come back and watch the updates go by right here.

• On Sunday night, we'll be liveblogging the Oscars starting at 8 p.m. -- that will be me and two of my favorite speed-talking writer pals, Stephen Thompson and John Ramos. You can also check in with the rest of NPR's Oscar coverage Sunday night for backstage tweets, red-carpet photos, and all of the rest of the awards-ceremonial goodness you need.

• Come back Monday morning at 10 a.m., where NPR's Bob Mondello and I will chat and take your questions and comments about the ceremony, the winners and losers, and whatever else you dream up during the awards show and its many commercial breaks.

We'll see you then.

5:17 PM ET | 02-20-2009 | permalink

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What's So Curiously Wrong With 'Benjamin Button'?

Benjamin Button: The rarely active, usually acted-upon central character is only one of his story's major problems. Paramount Pictures

 

by Marc Hirsh

Ever since 1996 -- when I'd seen Apollo 13, Babe, Sense And Sensibility and, yes, even Il Postino only to watch Braveheart win the Oscar -- I've seen every Best Picture nominee before the ceremony. Since I can't go to AMC's brilliant/horrifying all-day Best Picture marathon tomorrow [Ed. Note: HEY!] I've been catching up slowly. And so, on a full night's sleep, I somewhat reluctantly saw The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

I found myself baffled by Button's massive nomination haul. Here before me, on the verge of being festooned with highest honors, was a genuinely bad movie.

How bad? Allow me to count the ways. [Warning: the spoilers will fly fast and furious.]

The framing device. Button unfolds as Daisy's daughter, Caroline, reads Benjamin's journal to her on her New Orleans deathbed, with Hurricane Katrina looming. That's two entirely unnecessary elements added to the story. The dying woman looking back on her life is cheap sentimentality, while the Katrina aspect is rife with symbolic weight, but symbolizing what? It's a storytelling gimmick that Means Something, without the slightest indication of what that Something might be.

Moreover, the device invites pointless exchanges that stall the movie. My personal favorite: an agitated Caroline steps out into the hospital hallway for a smoke, where she's promptly told, "You can't smoke here." Thank you, Oscar-nominated, three-hour screenplay!

Much more that went wrong, after the jump...

Continue reading "What's So Curiously Wrong With 'Benjamin Button'?" »

2:35 PM ET | 02-20-2009 | permalink

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The Fug Girls: The Ghosts Of Oscar Fashion Past (And Future)

The All-Time Classic: Bjork swans her way into the 2001 Oscars. Lucy Nicholson, AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

The fashion blog Go Fug Yourself is one of the sharpest and funniest destinations on the Internet, and your hands-down best bet for red-carpet fashion critiques.

It's won a boatload of awards, and it's been written up in Time and Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly, and there's just not time to list the accolades — but they are all deserved. There's even a book, The Fug Awards, perfect for the analog fashion critic in you.

So we're glad to report that The Fug Girls, Heather and Jessica, were kind enough to take time out of one of their busiest weeks — they're covering New York's Fashion Week for NYMag.com — to answer some Oscars 101 questions, and to warmly (?) recall the terrifying ghosts of red carpets past.

Be sure to explore the photo gallery above to see most of the outfits Jessica and Heather mention here — you may have blocked out the memory of the Demi Moore bike shorts, and it's just not the same if you can't see them for yourself.

What's your favorite Oscars outfit of all time? What made it successful?

JESSICA: I think mine would be Bjork's swan dress. I would not say it was successful, but that dress has given people comedic fodder — not to mention Halloween costumes — for literally years, and there's something to be said for that. On the other side of the coin, it's very hard to say what I think is the all-time most beautiful gown, as there have been so many, but I loved Marion Cotillard's white Gaultier from last year. I am looking forward to seeing what she wears this year.

HEATHER: I'm lousy at remembering this stuff year-to-year. Half the time I can't even remember stuff I fugged a week ago. My mind is a lousy archive. I do remember thinking Penelope Cruz's pink strapless dress with that feathered train — she wore it the year she was nominated for Volver, and I think it was Versace — was stunning. It was exactly the kind of dress I feel like a girl ought to wear to the Oscars, because when else can you go that big, that dreamy? The gown wouldn't really be possible at any old movie premiere, so I admired her for living the kind of red-carpet princess fantasy I feel like all little girls have when they dream of being actresses. You know, before they learn the business is all about rejection and sadness and pills.

Disasters, up-and-comers, and why Freida Pinto may be luckier than Jennifer Hudson, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Fug Girls: The Ghosts Of Oscar Fashion Past (And Future)" »

12:07 PM ET | 02-20-2009 | permalink

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'Slumdog Milk-ionaire'

Milk: Might this man have a more uplifting story than even an instant millionaire? Focus Features

 

by John Ramos

Note: John Ramos is a film producer and a longtime writer at Television Without Pity. Happily, he will be joining me and Stephen Thompson (NPR Music Editor and the creator of The Onion A.V. Club) for our live Oscar coverage on Sunday night, beginning at 8 p.m.

-- Linda Holmes

Okay, I'll admit that portmanteau in the title doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Superficially, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk are similar in that they deal with utter unknowns who become beloved figures. But beyond that, they're radically different. They're almost polar opposites in many ways, including the emotional states they left me in -- and not in the way their apparent happy-ending/sad-ending alignment might suggest.

As told in Sean Penn's (if you'll excuse the expression) Oscar-worthy performance, Harvey Milk's journey began with a simple desire to be seen, to stand up and be counted. He thrived on both the satisfaction he got from fighting for the rights of his gay constituents and on the attendant attention. The famous message he recorded to be played in the event of his assassination is featured prominently in the film as both a storytelling device and a reminder to the audience not to get too comfortable.

Furthermore, even if you go in not knowing the story, the film opens with Dianne Feinstein announcing his murder (and Mayor George Moscone's) at the hands of Dan White, so the viewer is intimately aware that Milk's story is going to come to a tragic end.

Why both sad endings and happy endings are often not as they appear, after the jump...

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8:20 AM ET | 02-20-2009 | permalink

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The Pan-Cultural Pleasures Of 'Rachel Getting Married'

by Linda Holmes

We continue the run-up to Oscar, Oscar, Oscar! Remember that my tired, exhausted, probably embittered self will be Twittering the AMC Theaters Best Picture Showcase this Saturday, and that I will be joined on Sunday night by a couple of Super-Magical Guests to chat about the Oscar ceremony As! It! Happens! So stay tuned.

My favorite movie of 2008 was Rachel Getting Married. There, I said it. I've gone back and forth between it and some others, but it's the one I keep coming back to, and it's the one I was most disheartened and baffled to see shut out of most of the major awards categories, with the exception of Anne Hathaway's (well-deserved) Best Actress nomination.

The "good sister"/"bad sister" movie has been done quite a bit, where one is a free spirit who gets away with murder, and the other is a dutiful rock who feels overshadowed and resentful. It's been done with a lighter heart in In Her Shoes, with great sadness in Georgia, and even with total froth in 27 Dresses. This is a very, very old story.

But the fact that it employs a storytelling staple in an interesting way is a great example of its best quality, which is the deft deployment of a beautifully broad range of talents. The credits include people who come from pop culture and high culture; from television and theater and music; people who are young and hot and people who are making comebacks. Creatively, it is a powerful endorsement of the idea that you often make great projects by opening your mind a little.

Why Anne Hathaway is a brave choice, and where the poppiest of pop-culture phenomena enters the mix, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Pan-Cultural Pleasures Of 'Rachel Getting Married'" »

11:23 AM ET | 02-18-2009 | permalink

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The Very Young Brad Pitt

by Linda Holmes

While checking out today's piece about the construction of Old Man Brad Pitt in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, I was reminded that I was more impressed in the movie by whatever they did at the end that legitimately made him look very young than I was by the flashier business with his shriveled old-man head.

Because -- I swear -- my thought at the time was, "He looks exactly like he looked when he was on Growing Pains playing a high-school student." (I am a fount of knowledge that way.) And so, for reference, about a minute and a half into in the clip above: Brad Pitt as a high-school student. Or possibly a very old Benjamin Button.

4:05 PM ET | 02-17-2009 | permalink

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The Great Oscar Panic Of 2009

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button: Who cares? (Sorry, too blunt?) Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

We're getting into the swing of Oscar season here, so look for coverage to continue this week. On Saturday, I will be sacrificing my posture and possibly my sanity to perform selfless acts of live Twittering from the all-day, multi-hour, good-for-your-soul AMC Theaters Best Picture Showcase, and on Oscar night, we'll be having live commentary on the show, which we'll discuss in more detail very soon.

Generally speaking, Oscar night is a frothy cocktail of pretty dresses and teary speeches, and it's unusual for the occasion to feel quite as fraught with tension as it does this year.

First, you have the pressure created by the failure to nominate The Dark Knight for major awards outside of Heath Ledger's Best Supporting Actor nomination. There was immediate disdain for that decision, particularly in combination with the failure to nominate WALL*E, another very popular movie that was very well reviewed and also didn't snag a Best Picture nomination.

More generally, the five films that were nominated for Best Picture had, as of the beginning of this week, grossed a little less than $275 million between them. While that's a large amount of money for a randomly selected group of five films, it's not a lot for a crop of five Best Picture nominees, and as Variety points out, it's in the neighborhood of $40 million less than last year, which already wasn't about nominating blockbusters.

Not only that, but the movies that did get nominations didn't get as much of a post-nomination boost as might have been expected, with the exception of Slumdog Millionaire, word-of-mouth about which had already boomed before the nominations came out. So on top of the fact that smaller films were nominated, it doesn't even seem to have done those small films very much good.

Furthermore, it's my sense that not only are people not excited about the Oscar nominees because they haven't made a lot of money; they're not excited about them because with at least a couple of them, even many people who have seen them don't think they're all that good and will tell you so.

Does seeing Benjamin Button mean you care whether it wins awards? After the jump...

Continue reading "The Great Oscar Panic Of 2009" »

8:08 AM ET | 02-17-2009 | permalink

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Valentine's Day Un-Romances

by Linda Holmes

I have a long history with romantic movies of all kinds. Goopy musicals, kicky-girl rom-coms, masterpieces of banter -- you name it, and I've probably fallen for it at one time or another. Unfortunately, the older one gets, the more some of these fall apart, and the more others don't work at all. I give you five (of many) Un-Romances. Be warned: all descriptions contain spoilers.

1. Jerry Maguire

This really pains me, because I thought this was a terribly touching story the first time I saw it. As much as "you complete me" and "you had me at hello" are now as dessicated as "Show me the money!" there was a time when they seemed like sort of nifty things for people to say to each other. Of course...I was 25.

Why it's an Un-Romance: What's frustrating is that for the first three-quarters or so, this movie demonstrates all kinds of incredibly valid points. Don't perform dramatic stunts (like quitting your job) to impress guys with good teeth. Don't have drunks over to your house. Don't introduce your kid to guys he'll fall in love with unless you're pretty sure about them. Don't date your boss. Don't try to save disasters. Don't ignore your sister when she warns you about guys who are "hanging onto the bottom rung." Don't get married as an alternative to the nightmare of driving a U-Haul.

And then in the closing moments: BOOM! It turns out that the guy who clearly was not in love with you can suddenly discover he's in love with you, and that all your bad decisions are now irrelevant. If only real life worked...anything like that.

More, after the jump...

Continue reading "Valentine's Day Un-Romances" »

9:29 AM ET | 02-13-2009 | permalink

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Valentine's Day Movie Blurb Game

Movie romances: Mash them up; watch them spin. iStockphoto.com

 

by Glenn McDonald

The object:

The blurbs below combine the titles of two or more well-known movies. Can you guess the new mash-up movie title?

Example:

Michael J. Fox stars as a time-traveling teenager in this second installment of George Lucas' original space opera trilogy.
Answer: The Empire Strikes Back to the Future

NOTE:
At least one of the movies in each blurb is a famous cinematic love story. Remember that films can be mashed up phonetically as well, e.g. "Nosferatu Kill a Mockingbird"

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. Smug as you may rightly feel if you know them all, please post one answer per comment, just to make sure the most skilled among you doesn't grab all the glory. Feel free to elaborate in the comments, also, about details of the resulting mashed-up movie. How would it end? What would be the crucial plot points?

Official mashup answers will be posted shortly, so check back.

1. You can see the tragedy coming a mile away when Gary Oldman falls for Emma Roberts' plucky teen sleuth.
2. Kevin Spacey won the Oscar for this role, in which his middle-aged suburban Dad scandalously pursues the animated but provincial Belle.
3. Director Spike Lee vents his rage over Katrina with a story of gay cowboys, for some reason.
4. Roger Moore's 007 meets his match when he tries to seduce the beguiling Lucy Honeychurch.
5. Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, John Cusack and Ione Skye form a bizarre love rectangle in this 1936 classic.

7:09 AM ET | 02-13-2009 | permalink

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Watching Watchmen, or: No, But I Read the Comic Book

Watchmen: There are plenty of good reasons to read it before you see the movie. DC Comics

 

by Glen Weldon

So: Watchmen. Heard of it?

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's 1986 graphic novel? Blah blah postmodern masterpiece, blah blah deconstruction of superhero tropes, blahdee blah changed comics forever?

And (now that the lawyers have finished thumping one another about the head and neck) coming soon to a theater near you? March 6, in fact?

Sound familiar?

I know: As a rule, brainy NPR types like y'all prefer to read a given book before seeing the film made from it. That way, when you meet up with other brainy NPR types, you can discuss the sundry alterations that were made to the plot for the sake of budget, running time, narrative cohesion or monumental directorial stupidheadery.

But what about those brainy NPR types who haven't read Watchmen but have seen the trailer, which promises the kind of desultory superhero stuff (slow-mo fight scenes, big 'splosions) that one expects from comics-to-film projects?

They might well think: Why bother? It's just more masked dudes in fetish gear running around beating up on folk, no?

No.

After the jump: Reading Watchmen before watching Watchmen -- the case for.

Continue reading "Watching Watchmen, or: No, But I Read the Comic Book" »

3:11 PM ET | 02-11-2009 | permalink

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The Art Of The Audio Commentary

by Linda Holmes

The first time I ever heard what would now be a DVD commentary (my recollection is that I later learned it came from the Laserdisc edition), it was a showing of Clerks on cable, and I could hear Kevin Smith and whoever else chatting about the making of the film, and it was sort of fascinating, even though it wasn't a movie of which I was a big fan.

Now, of course, commentaries are everywhere. Not only do they have them for high-end movies where everything has been thought out to the last detail and there is much to say about every camera angle, but they also slap them on ordinary movies, and even very bad movies -- the audio commentary on the 1999 trash-classic Cruel Intentions is one of the funniest commentaries I've ever heard, because of the entirely serious way in which they explain how terribly French and sophisticated the whole thing is.

Somewhere along the line, the actual point of a commentary has become blurred. Many of them are fun but impart very little actual information -- witness the rollicking cast/crew commentaries on shows like The Office and How I Met Your Mother. Some are startlingly lame -- I find the 30 Rock commentaries excruciating, because the people involved are all so obviously of the "it's bad to explain comedy" school of thought, so they don't want to be there, and they seem miserable to a person.

But the best use I've seen recently of a commentary as it was originally adored by film buffs, where actual light is shed on the process of making something good, came with the track attached to the first episode of Season 2 of This American Life -- the Showtime TV version, that is. (That's a clip from the show above.)

What makes a commentary good, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Art Of The Audio Commentary" »

8:23 AM ET | 02-11-2009 | permalink

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True Confessions: I'm Kinda Into 'He's Just Not That Into You'

Seven-year itch? Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston in He's Just Not That Into You. Warner Bros./New Line

 

By Alison Bryce

He's Just Not Into You opened in movie theaters this weekend, to scorn from critics and a box-office take of $27.5 million. The critics' dismissals were probably to be expected. But I'd say the cash haul that made the movie No. 1 this weekend was, too.

See, I was living in Montana about four years ago, and I was totally into a guy that wasn't into me. He called all the time to hang out, but just wanted to be my friend. I wanted more.

Then one day I got a package in the mail from my mother. You can guess which book it was: He's Just Not That Into You. I opened it, sobbing.

But here's the thing: Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. Seriously: As lame as it may sound, that book changed my life.

The how and why, after the jump ...

Continue reading "True Confessions: I'm Kinda Into 'He's Just Not That Into You'" »

12:37 PM ET | 02- 9-2009 | permalink

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New York Comic-Con: Where Were All The Comics?

Don't be a Helo: Tahmoh Penikett was at a loss to explain why the Dollhouse crew was at NY Comic-Con. Fox

By Laurel Maury

I walked something like 200 feet into New York Comic-Con without seeing a single comic book.

Booths for video games, regular books, Dungeons and Dragons, sure. Toys, everywhere. But this year, the four-year-old NY Comic-Con seemed to be about everything but comic books.

What did go on? Well, Joss Whedon's new TV show, Dollhouse, premiered its first episode on Sunday. Japanese pop idol Sho Sakurai turned up to promote a movie; British It Girl Peaches Geldof wandered the convention floor with a film crew, courtesy of Nylon magazine.

The panel for the British sci-fi show Torchwood was mobbed. Booths sold T-shirts, corsets, vinyl dolls, messenger bags (really cool ones from Gamma-Go), even doorbells.

But it was increasingly clear that big "cons," as comic book conventions are called, are no longer the comic book geek's natural habitat -- they're places to see and be seen, where Hollywood and the gaming industry try to get products into the hands of early adopters.

Joss Whedon, Tahmoh Penikett, and The New York Times on pimping it Comic-Con style, after the jump ...

Continue reading "New York Comic-Con: Where Were All The Comics?" »

11:55 AM ET | 02- 9-2009 | permalink

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NPR's Oscars Past And Present Polls: Best Supporting Actor

By Trey Graham

There's been no shortage of experts handicapping the Oscars horse-race — in fact it started at roughly 8:31 a.m. on Jan. 22.

But even the most wonkish insider analysis focuses on the outcome of this year's Oscars. We say: Why limit yourself to whether Heath will trounce Hoffman, or whether The Reader will come from behind to skunk Slumdog Millionaire?

And so we offer you the first of five Oscars Past and Present polls, in which this year's nominees are forced, completely arbitrarily, to compete for your affections with Oscar winners from the past five decades — specifically the winners in their categories from 1999, 1989, 1979, 1969 and 1959.

We'll start with the roundup for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The poll's below — pick your favorite, whether he's from this year or from a classic.

And yes, we know, you've probably forgotten what part the Welsh-born actor Hugh Griffith played in Ben-Hur.

(Why, it was Sheik Ilderim, the Arab horse-racing fanatic, of course! 'Cause it was Old Skool Hollywood, and that was how ... oh, wait, that's still how they roll. )

God bless the Internets.

4:45 PM ET | 02- 4-2009 | permalink

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Can Netflix Buck The Recession?

Netflix: Is it a recession-proof marriage of cheap DVD-by-mail and cheap online streaming? iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

It may look like every company in America is currently wearing a barrel and shaking a can of loose change, but interestingly, Netflix seems to be flourishing. Their total subscriber count is up more than 25 percent over the same time last year, even though belt-tightening on entertainment expenses is on the lips of almost everyone I know.

Furthermore, their cancellation numbers have gone up only a smidge, meaning that in addition to perhaps picking up some people who consider Netflix more affordable than whatever else they were doing, they don't seem to be losing a lot of existing customers who are deciding that their Netflix subscriptions are among the luxuries that can be dropped. In addition to their better-known DVD-by-mail service, they're also getting more aggressive with video streaming. The selection of movies subscribers could view on demand was pretty weak when the service started, but it's definitely been improving -- in fact, that's where I originally saw the fantastic documentary The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters.

2:26 PM ET | 01-27-2009 | permalink

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Don't Expect That Bond-Bourne Crossover Movie Anytime Soon

Matt Damon: So, not an Octopussy guy, then? Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It turns out Matt Damon is not a big fan of James Bond. Speaking to the Miami Herald, Damon -- who clearly has strong opinions about many, many things -- talked about the similarities and differences between Jason Bourne and James Bond. Let's let the Herald article set it up:

Damon has acted in several spy movies, including three as discarded CIA superassassin Jason Bourne, and he has developed some very strong opinions on the subject. Do not, for instance, compare that unctuous James Bond fellow to the misguided but moral Bourne.

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. ``Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive.

``Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon's spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he'd do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they're doing, and they're going to keep doing it.''

Hear that, James Bond? You are an imperialist, misogynist sociopath! Also repulsive. If James Bond were a real guy and not a fictional character, this would be a pretty spectacular smackdown, quite possibly setting up the greatest red-carpet fistfight of all time.

Hat-tip to Defamer.

1:38 PM ET | 01-27-2009 | permalink

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Open Questions: The Tricky Business Of Poverty Cinema

The "poverty porn" problem: A man in actual India walks by a poster depicting movie India. Is there a problem here? Pal Pillai/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

As the Slumdog Millionaire awards train speeds along, with a (well-deserved) Screen Actors Guild Award bestowed on the whole cast on Sunday night, what might normally be a backlash against the movie itself (as almost always happens when acclamation begins to pile up) is taking the form of a lot of questions about whether the movie is, in the words you'll see most often, "poverty porn."

If you haven't followed this debate, you can start with this L.A. Times piece, in which an Indian film professor says that the movie is "a white man's imagined India." For a stronger negative view, try this.

It's not just the movie itself, either. Even before the film, you could take a so-called "poverty tour" of Mumbai's actual slums -- and the "slum tourism" industry has seen a big boost since the release of the film, in case what you saw on screen didn't make enough of an impression.

Interestingly, I've had this debate with people before, because before I saw intense images of Mumbai poverty in the high-culture context of an Oscar-nominated movie, I saw them in the thoroughly pop-culture context of The Amazing Race, which has filmed wrenching episodes in India in more than one of its world-traveling seasons. And when those episodes aired, there was inevitably a message-board debate about staring at poverty; filming disabled children panhandling from passing cars. The line between exploitation and the shedding of light on things the audience might otherwise never see is a tough one to draw.

I'm very interested in opinions on this question. Real poverty as part of a not-very-real story; an unsolved crisis as an element of fantasy. On the one hand, people are more aware than before of poverty in India in a way that may be more vivid; on the other..."slum tourism" sounds grotesque and creepy to my ear. What do you think?

10:13 AM ET | 01-26-2009 | permalink

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The 'Gump' Connection

by Linda Holmes

When I first heard a fairly superficial list of similarities between Forrest Gump and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, it didn't strike me as particularly compelling. I don't really care that they both worked on boats or they both went to war: such are the realities of Guy Recounts His Long Life movies.

It's the tone and the self-important pronouncements about life -- many of which, in Button's case, make absolutely no sense given the actual details of the movie's conceit -- that make them feel like the same movie. (And they are, as many have already pointed out, from the same screenwriter.) The above video from FunnyOrDie.com makes a pretty good jab at this issue, although without hearing Brad Pitt's syrupy "Well ah guess ah wuz just special"-style narration, you really can't grasp how similar they feel from a theater seat.

10:27 AM ET | 01-23-2009 | permalink

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Our Hectic Oscar Day Comes To A Close

by Linda Holmes

Sorry about the sporadic blogging today, folks -- hope we can make up for it by offering the live chat from this morning, as well as my chat with Neal Conan on today's Talk Of The Nation, where we covered Oscar matters, violent wrestling, and the relevance of being raised Catholic to your experience of watching Doubt. Had a lot of fun over there; the audio of the segment is now available.

Back to our regular schedule tomorrow!

6:14 PM ET | 01-22-2009 | permalink

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Join Us: Oscars Live Chat With NPR Film Critic Bob Mondello

UPDATE: The live chat has ended -- but you can play it back to see what Linda thinks about Angelina Jolie's lips. And your Oscar-noms observations (questions, frustrations, etc.) are still more than welcome in the comments.

5:11 PM ET | 01-21-2009 | permalink

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Live Oscar Chat With Bob Mondello Thursday: We Are Excited!

Live chat: This is not the preferred way of participating in our live chat with NPR's Bob Mondello tomorrow. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

UPDATE: The complete list of nominees is here. As promised, I have a lot of questions. Hint: Several of mine involve Best Actress. Ugh.

I'm tickled to announce a whole new deal for Monkey See. It's the first time we've done this, but if it goes well, perhaps it won't be the last.

We're hosting a live online chat with NPR film critic Bob Mondello tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m., where we'll take your questions and thoughts — most likely about Oscar nominations that did or did not materialize.

Lots (and lots) of you read Bob's piece last week on Neglected Films Of 2008 (if you didn't, you should), but you can also check out his Top Ten (Plus Twelve Bonus Picks), as well as oodles of other reviews.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing tomorrow's nominations, and no matter what they are, I will have lots of questions.

Is there any possibility that whatever recognition The Dark Knight receives will pacify its partisans, who have greater hunger for mainstream affirmation than you'd expect from dystopia aficionados?

Will The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button receive too many nominations? (Prediction not requiring clairvoyance: Too many for me, yes.)

Can the Slumdog Millionaire train possibly pick up any more speed than it already has? Will Wall-E get that Best Picture nomination, and if it does, what non-animated movie will it seem to have bumped?

And are Mickey Rourke's dogs destined to become the Most Recognized Pets in awards history?

Come right back here at 10:00 a.m. Thursday (that's Eastern time), and bring your questions and comments about movies, awards, oversights, what you hope to see actually grabbing a statue, and whatever else is on your mind.

3:24 PM ET | 01-21-2009 | permalink

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Ten Movies Less Desirable Based On Their Titles Than 'Hotel For Dogs'

Hotel For Dogs: Hotels good. Dogs good. And yet? Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

I like hotels. I also like dogs. But somehow, when you put them together with "For" in the middle, it becomes a movie I have no inclination to see at all.

It occurs to me, though, that this is true of many things. That I can think of many "[Item A] For [Item B]" movie titles that wouldn't draw me in, even though I like both Item A and Item B. Allow me to demonstrate.

1. Sassy Haircuts For The Wii
2. Mustard For Bunny Slippers
3. Dove Shampoo For Neil Patrick Harris
4. Margaritas For My Elementary-School-Aged Nephews
5. Alec Baldwin For Congress
6. Swimming For Minnesota
7. Fancy Makeup For Cats
8. Mopey Guitar-Dude Songs For Tap Dancers
9. Comfortable Shoes For My Camera
10. Love Poems For Awkward Nerds

11:39 AM ET | 01-16-2009 | permalink

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'Star Wars,' As Explained By Someone Who Hasn't Seen It

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

by Linda Holmes

If you spend much time kicking around the Internet, someone has already sent this to you, but in case you spent Thursday preparing for President Bush's farewell address or getting all excited about the premiere of Celebrity Rehab Presents: Sober House, here's a marvelous video presentation in which the audio consists of an explanation of the Star Wars trilogy by a person who's never seen any of the movies. It seems like a pretty pedestrian idea, but it's carried off with a great deal of panache.

8:30 PM ET | 01-15-2009 | permalink

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Criticism As A Democracy...For What It's Worth

The Wrestler: One of a few films about which the Golden Tomatoes have something to say. Fox Searchlight

 

by Linda Holmes

If you're familiar with the site Rotten Tomatoes, you know that it aggregates the opinions of many, many critics in order to present a general sense of a film's critical response. These are critics who have at least some credentials; they're not rounding up everybody with a blog and a ticket to the cineplex.

What emerges is an imperfect system in which every registered critic's opinion is counted, meaning that some people you wouldn't trust with your cable remote are weighted equally with people you've been reading for 25 years. It's absolutely, emphatically not a substitute for reading real reviews, and it's not a substitute for thinking for yourself, and it would be a grave mistake to suggest that the quality of a film is reliably reflected in its ability to appeal to the largest number of critics.

Nevertheless, what they call "Tomatometer" rankings do make for an interesting data set, and they've now released the "Golden Tomato Awards," in which they determine which movies were, overall, the best-reviewed of the year.

In the past, this hasn't correlated reliably with awards performance. I was intrigued by the fact that the top-rated dramas of 2007 were, in order, Away From Her, Gone Baby Gone, The Savages, There Will Be Blood, and This Is England -- only one of which got a Best Picture nomination. (I noted with some satisfaction the very high placement of Gone Baby Gone, which I thought was outstanding and very unfairly left out of almost all awards consideration last year in favor of more bombastic movies.)

So what happened this year? We investigate, after the jump...

Continue reading "Criticism As A Democracy...For What It's Worth" »

10:25 AM ET | 01-15-2009 | permalink

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Open Questions: Your Biggest Trailer-To-Movie Enthusiasm Dropoff

by Linda Holmes

While watching the Golden Globes and the tribute to Steven Spielberg, I got talking to a friend about Twister. Not a movie I think about very often -- not a movie anyone thinks about very often. Except maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman, who thinks, "Wait, I was in Twister?" (Yes. Yes, you were. And also Patch Adams. The Robin Williams silly-doctor movie. We won't tell the Academy.)

But what's amazing, in retrospect, is how terrifying and fabulous the Twister trailers were, particularly compared to how flat the movie is. Sure, the trailer has the advantage of skipping over the boring bickering-exes business between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, but it also suggests far more movement and genuine suspense than the movie comes anywhere close to delivering. Even more than the trailer above -- which is a corker -- I remember a trailer I can't find online now, which featured an almost entirely dark screen as the sounds of the tornado approached, rattling the...root cellar, or wherever we were meant to be hiding. I don't think any of the movie was even shown; just the sounds in the dark theater. And I came home thinking, "I cannot wait to see that movie."

And then that movie turned out to be Twister.

Has this happened to you? I'm not talking about ordinary situations where the clips make the movie look better than it is. (And some other time, we will discuss the trailer that tells the entire story and thereby ruins the movie, which is a separate pet peeve.) I'm talking about sitting in the theater sounding your internal "WOOOO!" only to find, a few weeks later, that you have been wooed falsely, as it were. You have hooted in vain. Tell your tale. We care about your wasted hoots.

11:30 AM ET | 01-13-2009 | permalink

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The Wonderfully Awkward 'American Teen' Extras

American Teen: It's worth seeing the DVD, just for the terrible performances the documentary subjects (including "popular girl" Megan Krizmanich) give in an artificial environment. Paramount Vantage

 

by Linda Holmes

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival opens this Thursday, January 15. If you hark back to Sundance 2008, one of the big splashes was the documentary American Teen, a crafty little movie that was marketed as a reality-show Breakfast Club but was actually much less about classic arcs (basketball stud going for the scholarship; Montague-Capulet romance between outcast and pretty boy) than about tiny moments of truth plucked from piles and piles of footage. Appallingly bad breakup etiquette from seemingly sane individuals, battles between queen bees and queen wanna-bes, and the fine line between a genuine free spirit and a self-pitying drama queen: these things, I remember so well.

The film is also a great conversation-starter: Is Hannah, who's so sure she doesn't fit in, the biggest cliché in the group? Is Megan, the cruel girl at the top of the social structure, getting what she deserves when her friends start to turn on her, or does it just mean they're worse than she is? Why did that freshman girl agree to date Jake the band geek when she clearly can't stand him?

The unexpected way a bad interview makes for a great DVD, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Wonderfully Awkward 'American Teen' Extras" »

2:11 PM ET | 01-12-2009 | permalink

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The Year In Film

Before you get too down in the mouth over the state of popular entertainment, check out this lovely retrospective of 2008 movies, created by a guy named Matt Shapiro. It takes a lot of care to put something like this together so that it works, and this one is a great success. There truly were a healthy number of very, very good movies this year, and if you don't say to yourself, "Oh, right, that too!" at least once, I'll be surprised. Kudos to Matt.

Via Slashfilm (naturally) and Low Resolution.

2:43 PM ET | 01- 2-2009 | permalink

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'The Times Of Harvey Milk,' Yours For The Asking

If the attention that went to Sean Penn's performance in Milk made you curious about the real Harvey Milk, you'll be glad to see that Hulu has gotten hold of The Times Of Harvey Milk, the 1985 documentary that not only won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, but also won a Special Jury Prize at the very first Sundance Film Festival.

Hulu has moved slowly into acquiring worthwhile theatrical films, compared to its early strength with television, but they're getting serious now.

2:31 PM ET | 12-30-2008 | permalink

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What The Success Of 'Marley & Me' May Mean For Our Collective Moviegoing Future

Is this our future?: If you're looking for a hint about recession-era movies, you may find it in Marley & Me.Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

You may have heard there are a few problems with the economy.

Because many people's lives have only begun to be directly affected in the last couple of months, it's been difficult to tell what effect, if any, the grim national mood would have on popular entertainment. It's a Hollywood article of faith that movies are "recession-proof," in part because people seek out escapist entertainment when they're troubled -- an belief arising primarily from the eagerness with which Americans continued to go to the movies during the Great Depression.

But the Great Depression didn't have Netflix, Blockbuster, HBO, movies on demand, or digital thievery, all of which are highly convenient and wildly less expensive ways to enjoy a movie than going to the theater. (I am not advocating digital thievery, you understand; only acknowledging that it exists.)

As a matter of fact, the Great Depression didn't have television, and if your desire is for escapism and you have cable, you probably have a hundred channels of it already. For a variety of reasons, making predictions based on what happened during the Great Depression seems like a dicey proposition. Still, whatever effect the economic situation has on how much we go to the movies, the increasing sense that the news consists of a series of stories about how much dread it is appropriate to feel today may well affect which movies do well.

Enter Marley & Me.

Why this may be the dawning of the age of the inoffensive, after the jump...

Continue reading "What The Success Of 'Marley & Me' May Mean For Our Collective Moviegoing Future" »

9:16 AM ET | 12-30-2008 | permalink

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Top Ten Lists: Slashfilm Asks Why

Top Ten lists: Why do readers like them? Why do critics bother with them? iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

There's an intriguing post up at Slashfilm in which David Chen wonders -- and asks readers to explain -- why people read critics' Top Ten lists. Jumping off from a couple of notable internet-based incidents in which critics have found torch-carrying mobs at their doors -- including David Edelstein's remarkable experience as the first high-profile critic to pan The Dark Knight and Salon's Stephanie Zacharek being attacked by commenters for her unusual choices for the best movies of the year -- Chen wonders what draws people to Top Ten lists in the first place.

He's been getting some interesting responses: people admitting they just read lists to have their own opinions validated, people saying they hope to hear about movies they haven't seen yet, and people who still want to keep arguing about why they hate Stephanie Zacharek and don't think it's possible for anyone to have valid reasons for not enjoying The Dark Knight.

There's something very down-the-rabbit-hole about asking commenters to comment on the comment culture, but it's interesting to ask, not so much why people read Top Ten lists, but why they read criticism at all. Zacharek's list of honorable mentions, in particular, certainly struck me as ridiculous (High School Musical 3? You Don't Mess With The Zohan?), but in fairness to her, these are movies she gave good reviews when they were released. There is suspicion in the Slashfilm comments that her list intentionally includes terrible movies because controversy drives readership, but if that's the case, then it's a conspiracy beyond the year-end list.

For the record, one of the reasons I really enjoy Slashfilm, on the whole, is that the writers do such a good job of walking the line between enthusiasm and criticism -- they get all "WOO-HOO!" excited about trailers and on-set photos and so forth, but they also know a lot about movies and put a lot of thought into what they write. It makes that site really the ideal place to conduct a discussion with fans about why they read critics. Definitely a blog worth adding to your daily reads if you like to follow movie news.

8:36 AM ET | 12-26-2008 | permalink

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How 'Wonderful' Is It, Really?

Do they look wonderful?: Sure, the movie is called It's A Wonderful Life, but for George Bailey (James Stewart, right, with Thomas Mitchell), is it, really? AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It's nothing entirely new to see It's A Wonderful Life as dark rather than warm and happy, despite its position as a holiday classic. But today's New York Times brings one of the better dissections I've seen of precisely why. Wendell Jamieson sees little to celebrate in George Bailey's childhood, marriage, career, family life, or prospects for avoiding jail.

My reaction to the film has always been a little more mixed; I think when you come to realize how dark and scary it is (and to focus more on the rest of the movie and less on the gimmicky "seeing how the world would be without you" segment), the parts of it that are heartwarming become more effective -- which is sort of what Jamieson is getting at, I think.

10:33 AM ET | 12-19-2008 | permalink

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Clint Eastwood In 'The Growler'

Sometimes, a goof doesn't need to be sophisticated; it just needs to be spot-on. Here, from FunnyOrDie.com, Clint Eastwood in The Growler.

Hat-tip to Slashfilm.

9:20 AM ET | 12-16-2008 | permalink

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Motivational Overload

by Linda Holmes

This fantastic video, in which a whole bunch of motivational speeches are cut together, may be just what you need if the world's been getting you down a little. Whether you're a football player, high-school student, warrior, or player of pee-wee hockey, you can't help but be encouraged.

Hat-tip to Best Week Ever.

8:19 AM ET | 12-11-2008 | permalink

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Early Award Rumblings: Good For 'Milk,' Or Good For Nothing?

Milk: It's coming on strong in early awards, but does that mean anything? Focus Features

 

by Linda Holmes

We're a bit more than ten weeks away from the presentation of the Oscars on February 22, 2009. There are no nominees yet, and some movies expected to have significant showings haven't even opened yet (The Wrestler, Gran Torino, and Revolutionary Road, to name just three). But we have now entered the hinting season, where you will begin to hear that certain other awards build momentum toward the Oscars. But is it true?

Understandably, the prognosticating about awards and nominations yet to come relies on awards and nominations already given. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded Best Picture, somewhat surprisingly, to WALL-E, with The Dark Knight as runner-up. Then Wednesday, the New York Film Critics Circle followed, naming Milk Best Picture.

Not unlike in politics, sometimes what's most instructive is looking at the downticket races. Not only did the NYFCC give Best Picture to Milk, it also gave Best Actor to Sean Penn, as did the LAFCA, giving Penn two big victories in what's widely believed to be a two-man race between him and Mickey Rourke of The Wrestler.

More surprisingly, perhaps, the NYFCC gave Best Supporting Actor to Josh Brolin, also for Milk, passing over Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, who won over at the LAFCA. The New York critics also handed their Best Director prize to Happy-Go-Lucky director Mike Leigh, rather than Nolan or Van Sant, or Danny Boyle, who won with the L.A. critics for Slumdog Millionaire.

An examination of the size of the grain of salt with which early awards should be taken, after the jump...

Continue reading "Early Award Rumblings: Good For 'Milk,' Or Good For Nothing?" »

4:19 PM ET | 12-10-2008 | permalink

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'The Proposal' And The 'Art' Of The Trailer

by Linda Holmes

Let us take a moment and digest the sheer number of movie and movie-trailer clichés present in this one trailer, for the summer release The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock (who hasn't been in a standard-issue romantic comedy in the six years since 2002's Two Weeks' Notice, believe it or not) and Ryan Reynolds (whose misadventure in the weak-performing Definitely, Maybe didn't cool him off too much).

• She is a businesswoman; she therefore is ice-cold with no personal life.

• Being from Canada is hilarious.

• The trailer music cuts out for the punchline "Every single day," which is supposed to make it seem like a more effective punchline than it really is, which is to say: not very much.

The rest of the little show, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Proposal' And The 'Art' Of The Trailer" »

10:47 AM ET | 12-10-2008 | permalink

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Monkey See Introduces: The Movie Blurb Game

by Glenn McDonald

Back in the halcyon days of the early 1990s, before broadband Internet and IMDb.com, my friends and I -- a small group of disturbed, minutiae-obsessed film geeks -- often killed time with something called The Movie Blurb Game. The idea was to think of a phrase that combined the titles of two or more films, then improvise a blurb for the movie that might appear in the newspaper. The other guy then had to piece together the title of the movie from the blurb.

I sense an example is in order:

In this cross-genre fairy tale musical from maverick director Terry Gilliam, Matt Damon and Heath Ledger star as 18th-century Chicago musicians on a mission from God to write timeless children's stories featuring the music of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.

Answer: The Blues Brothers Grimm

The only rules were that you could not use the actual words of the movie name in the blurb, you had to use theatrically released films, and you had to stick to that dopey style of breezy entertainment journalism. In this game, it's all about style. For instance, bonus points are awarded for:

- incorporating admirable brevity ("M. Night Shyamalan adapts Jane Austen" = The Sixth Sense and Sensibility)

- incorporating inspired lack of brevity ("Robert Altman directs this Jimmy Cliff reggae classic starring Cher and Sandy Dennis as devotees of a tragically deceased screen star of yesteryear" = The Harder They Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean)

- incorporating Cher

Remember that films can be mashed up phonetically (Nosferatu Kill a
Mockingbird) and definite articles can be dropped (The Maltese Falcon and the Snowman).

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. (First-time players, be forewarned that answers may, indeed, be posted below -- don't scroll down unless you want to cheat.)

+++

1. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker star in Charlie Chaplin's classic silent comedy.

2. The Gotham franchise takes a dubious turn when Batman (Ben Stiller) moonlights as a security guard.

3. Michelle Rodriguez spars with Ed Norton.

4. In Robert Zemeckis' original time-travel classic, Angela Bassett enjoys a steamy, passionate affair with Michael J. Fox.

5. This strangest of chick flicks finds Christina Ricci, Rosie O'Donnell, Thora Birch and Melanie Griffith journeying upriver to assassinate a rogue colonel.

6.) Kurt Russell and Steve McQueen escape a German POW camp in Manhattan.

7.) Mike Judge's animated cult comedy stars Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston as primates shot into orbit.

8.) In this poorly received sequel, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns from the future to fight zombies, Robin Williams and painfully earnest prep school boys. (3 films)

9. In the quintessential heavy metal Elvis picture, the King teams with Jim Varney and Mark Wahlberg to join the Rebel Alliance. (4 films)

10.) Based on the Alice Walker novel, Steven Spielberg directs Prince in this touching tale of an autistic man and his brother, featuring Jim Carrey as comedian Andy Kaufmann, with Nicholas Cage and Cher as star-crossed lovers. (5 films)

Watch this space for future installments. (Next up: The Movie Blurb Game, Holiday Films Edition.)

Answers are after the jump, so don't spoil it for yourself!

Continue reading "Monkey See Introduces: The Movie Blurb Game" »

10:26 AM ET | 11-28-2008 | permalink

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'Twilight' Becomes The Second Vampire-Adjacent Frontlash Victim Of 2008

The view from the cheap seats: Robert Pattinson of Twilight wore his good shoes for this appearance, most likely. Kevin Winter/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Robert Pattinson is a huge, huge star, capable of showing up at a Hot Topic store and drawing a crowd -- a crowd of teenage girls -- that was apparently menacing enough to get the event canceled by the police.

Most of these girls are fans of his work in a movie they have not seen yet.

Pattinson is the male lead in Twilight, the teen-novel adaptation opening this weekend after a period of anticipation so alternatively fascinating and irritating that it's creating just as much hostility among people who have never seen it as adoration among people who have never seen it. For every crowd of Pattinson fans who can't get enough Twilight, there is an equal and opposite crowd of people who have already had way too much Twilight, and who got there months ago. (For example, look at the comments to a recent Slashfilm post about the film.)

Call it frontlash: when speculative cultural saturation, either top-down or fans-up, builds a wave of anticipation that, in turn, causes a wave of equally ill-informed hostility.

Robert Pattinson's toes, an odd connection to a prior frontlash victim, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Twilight' Becomes The Second Vampire-Adjacent Frontlash Victim Of 2008" »

8:49 AM ET | 11-21-2008 | permalink

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TCM Looks At 'Leading Couples'

A Quick "Set Your DVR" Alert: TCM is running two nights of "Leading Couples" films, tonight and next Tuesday. The lineup tonight: To Have And Have Not (starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall) at 8:00 p.m., Adam's Rib (starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) at 9:45 p.m., Top Hat (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) at 11:30 p.m., and A Night At The Opera (starring the Marx Brothers) at 1:15 a.m. A darn fine schedule.

Next Tuesday: Cleopatra (starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) at 8:00 p.m., Rio Grande (starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara) at 12:15 a.m., They Died With Their Boots On (starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland) at 2:15 a.m., and Viva Las Vegas (starring Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley) at 4:45 a.m.

8:12 AM ET | 11-18-2008 | permalink

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Roger Ebert Has Gone Nuts. Please, Nobody Stop Him.

Roger Ebert: Despite some hard times, the guy (seen here with his wife Chaz) has been trying out a more mischievous, free-form sort of writing, and this time, he wants to tell you about rice cookers -- and it's pretty great. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

 

by Marc Hirsh

Roger Ebert's blog isn't exactly breaking news -- it was recently named the second-best-written blog on the Internet by this site -- but if you haven't checked out "The Pot And How To Use It," then you're in for a treat. (Literally, perhaps, if you're a read-along-and-do kind of person.)

More about the many things Roger Ebert can teach you, after the jump...

Continue reading "Roger Ebert Has Gone Nuts. Please, Nobody Stop Him." »

10:49 AM ET | 11-14-2008 | permalink

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Free Movie: 'Gandy Dancers'

That's a one-minute trailer for a remarkable thirty-minute film available through Folkstreams.net. The movie is called Gandy Dancers, and you can stream it live on your computer. (Another great thing to do instead of getting work done.) Gandy Dancers were railroad workers, almost exclusively African-American, who used music -- including spiritual, nonsensical, and raunchy songs -- to coordinate their track work. Long-retired workers not only explain how the whole thing worked to both practically synchronize movements and inspire very tired guys, but they demonstrate, as old men, what they did as young workers. It's about a half-hour long; watch it if you get the chance.

Hat-tip to Metafilter.

7:12 AM ET | 11-13-2008 | permalink

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That Movie You Got From Netflix That You Haven't Watched? It's Really Angry.

This video is extremely silly, but it poses an interesting question. What movies have sat the longest in your home after arriving from Netflix? Come on. We've all done it. Is it a classic? Is it episodes of a TV show you never got around to starting? You can tell us.

7:40 AM ET | 11-12-2008 | permalink

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As Buzz Builds for Penn and 'Milk,' It Feels a Little Like Old 'Times'

The Mayor of Castro Street: Gus Van Sant's upcoming movie Milk has people talking Academy Awards. But did you know that the story of Harvey Milk (left) has earned Oscar love once before? GLBT Historical Society

 

by Matthew Forke

With the growing Oscar talk about Sean Penn's performance in the upcoming movie biography Milk, it's worth noting that this extraordinary story has been told once already -- nearly a quarter-century ago -- and to great acclaim.

In 1985, The Times of Harvey Milk won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and deservedly so, for its adept assemblage of news footage, archival photos and then-current interviews chronicling one of the most chaotic periods in San Francisco history: the '70s gay rights movement.

Why it's still a classic, after the jump ...

Continue reading "As Buzz Builds for Penn and 'Milk,' It Feels a Little Like Old 'Times'" »

5:47 PM ET | 11-11-2008 |