We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but you’re gonna be busy staring at a big button, arguing with yourself about whether or not to push it. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you see The Box this weekend?” you can reply, “No, I contemplated cinematic moral conundrums of a different order.”

continue reading "November 6: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings" »

I don’t mean merely, Do you enjoy the freedom that a car can give you in getting from Point A to Point B? I mean, Do you get some sort of buzz merely from the experience of operating an automobile?

I do. I really like being behind the wheel... and I’ve never driven anything like a performance automobile (well, except for that one time my friend Gail let me take her awesome little Audi for a quick spin, but that was just a taste). I’d like to: I’d love to attend one of those fantasy driving camps where you drive race cars or learn precision driving techniques.

First, though, I want to learn how to drive a stick shift.

Do you enjoy driving a car? Do you think your answer has anything to do with when you learned to drive? (I’ve noticed that many people who don’t actually like driving tend to have learned as adults, not as teenagers. I got my permit as soon as I could, at 16, and my full license at 18.)

And for the nondrivers: Do you have any plans to learn how to drive?

(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD/QOTW, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTW sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)

Man? Or Goat?

I’m not sure if I’ve seen a more sublimely funny moment on screen this year than the one in which George Clooney, in all deep serious earnestness, tries to convince Ewan McGregor that he -- McGregor, that is -- is a Jedi warrior.

“What is a Jedi warrior?” McGregor had asked earlier, when Clooney, in all deep serious earnestness, insisted that he -- Clooney, that is -- was one.

continue reading "The Men Who Stare at Goats (review)" »

Dammit, is there anything that’s not made more funny with the application of Benny Hill music?

Christmas Nightmare

There’s something about Jim Carrey that I find highly intriguing, and it’s the something that’s very dark and bleak in him. It’s not a quality of his that often gets played to -- in fact, I first noticed this about him in the otherwise terrible psychological thriller The Number 23, a few years back, in which he portrayed a man descending into insanity, because it seemed as if the film was terrified of unleashing that aspect of Carrey. It struck me then that almost everything we’ve ever seen Carrey do -- comedy and drama alike -- has been terrified of what looks to me like rage in him, and so it gets corralled into a grinning, hyper mania that is somehow perceived as “safe” because it’s “just” “funny.”

continue reading "A Christmas Carol (review)" »

Friday fun! Here’s a screen capture from one of the DVDs in my collection (and it’s definitely from a movie, not a TV show). Guess the movie for fun and, well, fun. No prizes, just bragging rights. But hey: one guess per comment -- no fair hogging all the guesses.

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Private Lives of Pippa Lee’" »

Sure, there are a big handful of films that take place in part around Thanksgiving, but I can think of only three (and one of them is a stretch) that are really about the holiday: Home for the Holidays and Pieces of April, both of which revolve around the family dinner, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which is really about the craziness in getting home for the dinner... but since Thanksgiving traveling is especially notoriously hellish, I’ll count that one.

But that’s it.

continue reading "question of the day: Why aren’t there more movies about Thanksgiving?" »

Up is down after Michael Jackson’s arrival at multiplexes:

1. Michael Jackson’s This Is It: £4.9 million (NEW)
2. Up: £3.4 million (4th week; drops 10%)
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox: £1.5 million (2nd week; up 2%)
4. Saw VI: £.94 million (2nd week; drops 46%)
5. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant: £.54 million (2nd week; drops 32%)

(actual numbers, not estimates)

continue reading "U.K. box office: ‘This Is It’ not so huge" »

Holy crap:

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Young Victoria’" »

Fake Reality

Look: it’s all a crock of extraterrestrial doo-doo. There is no Dr. Abigail Tyler. Well, all right, with so common a name as that, there are probably lots of Dr. Abigail Tylers, but none of them is a Nome, Alaska, psychologist who has videotaped her patients experiencing hypnotic regressions in which they scream and scream through memories of being abducted by aliens.

continue reading "The Fourth Kind (review)" »

They’re not quite analogous, but a confluence of anniversaries this week resulted in dueling Google doodles on either side of the Atlantic, for the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street:

continue reading "question of the day: What’s your favorite childhood memory of ‘Sesame Street’ (or ‘Wallace and Gromit’)?" »

[spoilers]

Man, I kinda knew that ABC’s updating of V -- a dubious idea if ever there was one, except that anyone who scoffs at anyone who wants to update old sci-fi right now will get the glory that is Battlestar Galactica thrown in their face -- was gonna suck. But I never imagined it would suck this bad.

It’s sort of stunning, actually, even grading on the network-TV scale, how much of a misfire this new V is. There are no characters to care about -- no matter how hard the mostly talented cast tries -- because the first episode was crammed full of enough plot for an entire first season. Really, how do you skip from the most momentous, most paradigm-busting event in the history of humanity -- the arrival of aliens -- to “three weeks later”? How do you pass over all the many, many cultural earthquakes that would be happening in that time?

continue reading "so, how much did ABC’s ‘V’ reboot suck?" »

No, seriously: watch it. It’s beautifully weird and creepy:

Fun for Wednesdays! We look at an image from an upcoming movie -- or now, TV! -- and write snarky, witty, or otherwise entertaining captions for it. No prizes, it’s just for fun.

Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” is the third to last outing with David Tennant as the Doctor:

continue reading "caption this! image from ‘Doctor Who’: “The Waters of Mars”" »

Here it’s already Wednesday, and I’m just getting around to this now. But that’s okay, actually, because my “week” at the movies pretty much begins today.

I did see The Young Victoria (already available on DVD in the U.K.; opens in the U.S. on December 18) yesterday, and I quite liked it. But today and tomorrow are the onslaught, and a rather disturbing one. For three out of four of these movies open this Friday, and I’m just seeing them now.

Today I’ll start with The Box (opens in the U.S. on November 6, and in the U.K. on December 4), the thriller starring Cameron Diaz and -- not that you’d know it from the poster -- poor James Marsden. Then it’ll be on to The Men Who Stare at Goats (opens in the U.S. and the U.K. on November 6), which I really really hope will be as funny as the trailer suggests, but this late a screening isn’t promising.

continue reading "my week at the movies: ‘The Young Victoria,’ ‘The Box,’ ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats,’ ‘The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,’ ‘A Christmas Carol’" »

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Ninja Assassin’" »

Scott Brown at Wired magazine recently came to the defense of Doctor Who, explaining why it’s so essential these days, and why it stands out:

There’s a fix I just don’t get from mainstream American science fiction, perhaps because of its grinding obsession with the imperialistic (and its depressive sibling, the dystopic), not to mention its wearisome push for ever-shinier effects. Like its not-so-distant cousin American religion, American sci-fi is fixated on final battles, ultimate judgment (particularly on questions of control and leadership), and an up-or-down vote on the whole good/evil issue. Even the most morally restless imaginings — the Losts and Battlestars — eventually prolapse into Bruckheimer-esque excerpts from the Book of Revelation.

continue reading "question of the day: Is America ready for ‘Doctor Who’?" »

The question of the other day -- Who should host the Oscars now that Hugh Jackman has stepped down? -- has been answered: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin will cohost, according to The Los Angeles Times:

Martin, who hosted the 73rd and 75th Oscar ceremony, said in a statement: “I am happy to co-host the Oscars with my enemy Alec Baldwin.”

Alec Baldwin should worship at Tina Fey's feet for making him cool again, with 30 Rock.

Hey, why isn’t Tina Fey hosting the Oscars?!

Another example of why the U.S.’s health insurance paradigm must die:

I’d like men to think very carefully about this: Imagine you were told you could get health insurance only if you were to have a vasectomy...

(via Feministing)

Clothes Make the Woman

Oh, sure, Chanel: She freed women from the tyranny of torturous undergarments. She didn’t merely dare to wear trousers, she made them fashionable for women. You know what else she did? She introduced the idea of the skinny, boyish figure as an impossible ideal. She made clothes that look better on a hanger than they do on most women, which has now become the, pardon the pun, model for today’s high fashion.

continue reading "Coco Before Chanel (review)" »

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’" »

It’s okay -- it’s artistic:

An artistic video collection featuring Jenny, in nine revealing scenes, as she showers completely nude indoors, and out in the open, on hot summer days.

Watch Jenny as she takes her morning shower, wash mud off in her garden, scrub paint off her naked skin, cool off on a hot summer afternoon, as well as being forced to flee outside completely naked, when she hears an intruder, while showering at a friend's house.

100 minutes - Unrated - Contains artistic female nudity.

Look for the other volumes in this artistic series: Jenny Does the Dishes While a Peeping Tom Jerks Off Outside the Kitchen Window, Jenny Takes Out the Garbage and Encounters the Neighborhood Perv, and Jenny Goes Grocery Shopping and Has a Dangerous Liaison with a Cucumber. Remember, it’s art!

As of this writing, 12 movies will open wide in North America in the month of November. Which means that even if you’re an active moviegoer and see a movie each week, you’ve still gotta pick and choose (and it’s even worse if you’re in a city on the arthouse circuit, but let’s not make this too complicated).

After a jump, a list of those 12 movies to whet your appetite, or not, as the case may be:

continue reading "question of the day: What movie are you most looking forward to in November?" »

The Michael Jackson flick does well enough, but doesn’t approach the predictions:

1. Michael Jackson’s This Is It: $23.2 million (NEW)
2. Paranormal Activity: $16.4 million (3rd week in wide release; drops 22%)
3. Law Abiding Citizen: $7.4 million (3rd week; drops 40%)
4. Couples Retreat: $6.5 million (4th week; drops 39%)
5. Where the Wild Things Are: $5.9 million (3rd week; drops 58%)

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: ‘This Is It’ ain’t all that" »

I bet your Halloween costume wasn’t this cool:

(via Mobile Content Today)

There are nice touches of what makes New York uniquely New York in this should-be-charminger little film, and they’re things that rarely get acknowledged onscreen. The awkward realities of living in a walkup apartment... six flights up. The daily dance of “alternate-side parking.” The true small-town, neighborhoody feel of the city. It’s too bad that writer-director Katherine Dieckmann couldn’t imbue her portrait of the titular state in this place with as much easy, authentic panache. It’s a day in the life for Uma Thurman’s (The Producers) crazy-busy stay-at-home mom on the especially busy day when she’s getting ready for her daughter’s sixth birthday party, and it’s all juggling the million things a mom needs to do for her family while also trying to grab a few minutes for herself. In a few brief moments, Thurman’s Eliza springs to life -- a delivery from a messenger turns into an impromptu party on its own -- but it’s not Thurman’s fault that those moments are few and far between. I hadn’t quite hit on what was wrong till the end of the film, when Eliza’s husband (Anthony Edwards: Zodiac) asks her what kind of passion she wants in her life, and she cannot answer that question. And I realized that Dieckmann doesn’t have an answer for her character, either. It all feels like a lot of treading water to get to what should have been the opening moments of the film... and then it’s over.

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Blind Side’" »