It’s Thursday, so it’s time to remake an 80s classic TV show or movie with an all-new cast. This week: Star Trek: The Next Generation, the 1987-1994 syndication science fiction show. Hey, if J.J. Abrams can do it with the old Trek, we can do it with the new.

(If you have a suggestion for an 80s TV show or movie we should play with, feel free to email me.)

continue reading "dream cast: hypothetical ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ movie" »

Great -- the world’s gonna end in a few years. I think I’m justified in being depressed by this:

Oh, Glastonbury? I’ve been there. Those people are weird...

Looks like Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are mightier than James Bond on both sides of the Atlantic:

1. Four Christmases: £2.3 million (NEW)
2. Quantum of Solace: £1.5 million
3. Changeling: £1.2 million (NEW)
4. Body of Lies: £.5 million (2nd week; drops 48%)
5. My Best Friend’s Girl: £.3 million (2nd week; drops 64%)

(actual numbers, not estimates)

continue reading "U.K. box office: ‘Four Christmases’ whips Bond’s butt (but ‘Madagascar 2’ whips them all)" »

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

So Kate from Lost is the newspaper reporter who outed Valerie Plame? And now Hawkeye Pierce is defending her? Interesting... But how is Dr. John Carter involved? And legendary Western lawman Matt Dillon -- what’s his connection?

I’m so confused.

Nothing But the Truth opens limited in the U.S. on December 19; no U.K. release has been announced yet.

(previous: Episode 7: “Robbing Hood”)

Do you smell pie? I smell pie. Mmmmm, pie...

[spoilers after the jump!]

continue reading "‘Pushing Daisies’ blogging: “Comfort Food”" »

Late this week. This is what I get for deciding I’d rather be right than first with the box office numbers -- which means waiting till Monday afternoon when the actual numbers come in rather than jumping in as soon as the weekend estimates appear on Sunday. Which means if I’m totally otherwise occupied with non-movie stuff on a Monday, like I was this week, I can’t even prepare this in advance. Which means that then half the week has gotten away from me before I can get around to it. *sigh*

Anyway, these are the actual five-day numbers, from Wednesday (Thanksgiving Eve) through Sunday. As the numbers bear out, this is a big weekend for moviegoing, which apparently got a bit of a boost as people killed time at mall multiplexes on Thursday night while waiting out early-Friday-morning store openings:

1. Four Christmases: $46 million (NEW)
2. Twilight: $39.5 million (2nd week; drops 43%)
3. Bolt: $36 million (2nd week; up 37%)
4. Quantum of Solace: $27.5 million (3rd week; up 3%)
5. Australia: $20 million (NEW)

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: ‘Four Christmases’ kicks off the holiday season" »

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ #2" »

More depressing web video: man’s inhumanity to women.

This one’s not embeddable -- watch it at The New York Times’ Video subsite.

I’ve had a screener of Bruce Campbell’s new movie, My Name Is Bruce, sitting here for a bit, and I really, really hope to get around to watching it and reviewing it soon. In the meantime, here’s a few words from Campbell about the movie, snipped from the Burn Notice phone press conference I participated in at the beginning of this past summer:

Campbell: I have an actual movie called My Name Is Bruce coming out this fall.

Q: You directed that one, right?

Campbell: Yes, I’m even in it, too, in more than a cameo.

Q: Oh cool. How do you like directing?

Campbell: I have to prove to the world that I can memorize more than seven lines of dialogue at a time.

Q: Can you give us a little preview of that and how you like directing?

Campbell: Well it was very difficult directing myself because I got in raging arguments with myself all day long. As you know, I’m very difficult. So that’s really the biggest trouble. Next time I’m going to do the sequel without Bruce.

(If the movie has that kind of Bruce Campbell snark to it, it should be a lot of fun.)

I’ve written several times recently about how LiveUniverse was weaselling out of paying me what it owed me for my participation in the Peerflix ad network, which LiveUniverse bought over the summer. (For the background, see the posts “Peerflix/Live Universe is a deadbeat” and “Peerflix/LiveUniverse: still a deadbeat”.)

I’m delighted to report that LiveUniverse has now paid me the $912.50 it owed me. I received a check last week, though not after quite a bit additional hassle and more weaselly behavior on LiveUniverse’s part. There’s no need to go into the details of the hoops LiveUniverse made me jump through in order to be paid money I was already owed, because my film critic colleague Eric Snider, who was in the same boat as I was, has already done so, here: “Shaming Live Universe into paying what they owe you actually works!” I encourage you to check out Eric’s post, because it’s hilarious. My experience was virtually identical to Eric’s -- and when we compared notes while this nonsense was in progress and after it was over, it turned out that our responses to LiveUniverse’s, er, requests were almost identical, too.

I’v already thanked Eric privately, and now I want to thank him publicly, too, because it appears that it’s only because he launched a LiveUniverse-shaming blog at Live-Universe-owes-me-money.com -- to which I contributed my story -- that we got the company’s notice at all. The posts about the situation on our respective individual blogs did not have the same affect. So thanks again, Eric.

And to all those Netizens whom LiveUniverse still owes money, this seems to be the lesson of my and Eric’s experience: Make as big and as public a stink as you can about it, and don’t shut up until they pay up.

Dark-and-Weird-and-Creepy-and-Disturbing Week continues:

Ah, the futility of life, the emptiness of our rituals, and the paralysis that comes with the yanking away of them. Jesus, I’m depressed.

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

Oh, fantastic: creatures with corpselike plasticine faces, imagery stolen directly from the Star Wars prequel trilogy, thunderous belching, and injuries to alien crotches*. What more do you need from a movie?

(*Because, despite James T. Kirk’s discoveries to the contrary, everyone throughout the universe keeps their genitalia between their legs.)

Delgo opens in the U.S. on December 12; no U.K. release date has been announced yet.

Not in Color!

I kept expecting to hear, with every episode of M Squad I watched, the voiceover guy saying, “M Squad! In Color!” over the opening credits. It’s not in color, this classic 1957-to-1960 NBC cop drama -- it’s in very dramatic and noirish black-and-white -- but here’s what I never realized: Police Squad!, the extremely short-lived (six episodes) 1982 cop comedy was a direct spoof of M Squad. I understood, even as the kid I was then, that Police Squad! -- with its opening credits, of course, featuring an announcement that the show was “in color” -- was generally spoofing serious cop dramas of an earlier era, but I never knew that it had a specific cop drama in mind when it did so.

continue reading "M Squad: The Complete Series (review)" »

The description of this just gets better the longer it goes on:

Loyal to the Family. Devoted to her own. Alyssa Milano stars as Patty Montanari, a tough Brooklyn widow and mother who takes a job working for a local crime family and soon becomes romantically involved with a married mob captain (Jason Gedrick of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES). But as Patty rises in the organization’s ranks, she finds herself sinking deeper into an underworld of paranoia, betrayal and murder. Caught between the Feds, the Family and the man she loves, can she pull the trigger on the decision that may cost her everything? Academy Award® nominee James Caan (THE GODFATHER) co-stars in this acclaimed Lifetime movie inspired by the incredible true story of the woman who dared to defy New York City’s most infamous Mafia empire. From executive producer Joe Pistone - the real life Donnie Brasco.

I’m not sure which is the best part: that it’s based on a true story, or that there are Lifetime movies that are “acclaimed.” Although “Loyal to the Family. Devoted to her own” is pretty brilliant in a demented way, too.

Last week was an exercise in frustration in getting to actually see all the movies I need to see this crazy awards season. Not only did I not get to see Gran Torino as I expected I would, I also ended up postponing my screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I’ll see both this week... at least, that’s the plan at the moment. It feels like everything’s getting squeezed into a few days this week -- yesterday I was tied up with non-movie stuff, so I’m still catching up on email and stuff I should have done yesterday (like this post!), so... it’s just insanity.

The Wrestler (opens limited in the U.S. on December 31; opens in the U.K. on January 16, 2009) is the new film from Darren Aronofsky, he of Pi and Requiem for a Dream fame. Mickey Rourke plays a washed-up pro wrestler from the 1980s who has a chance to go up against his old “enemy,” the Ayatollah. Yes, it’s at least partly a comedy.

continue reading "my week at the movies: ‘The Wrestler,’ ‘Seven Pounds,’ ‘Nothing But the Truth,’ ‘Cadillac Records’ (plus ‘Gran Torino’ and ‘Benjamin Button’)" »

Dark and weird and creepy and disturbing:

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

You know what Beyoncé singing Etta James makes me think? It makes me think, Why does Beyoncé’s music kinda suck if she can sing like that? It makes me think, How come the music was so much better half a century ago than it is today? I can’t blame nostalgia for feeling that way, because I wasn’t even alive then to hear the music -- I can just tell from listening to the crap that’s around today... and from not wanting to listen to it.

Cadillac Records open limited in the U.S. on December 5; no U.K. release date has been announced yet.

Ordinary People

It opens with archival footage of police raids on gay bars, grainy black-and-white stuff that’s like a grim glimpse into a distant dreadful past, like the 1950s and 60s were another planet, and you think, Geez, people really worried that much about who was sleeping with whom? Or, no: People worried that much about people just thinking about sex, people lonely enough to sneak into a secret bar in search of some company? People worried that much that they needed to bring the police into it?

continue reading "Milk (review)" »

If He Were a Rich Man

Well! Talk about the vagaries and the mysteries of fate: now we know why the world has been overrun by idiotic game shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- it’s been so that now, a decade after this particular brand of insidiousness and avarice began infecting us, Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, The Beach) could give us this enchanting movie about love and destiny and honor and perseverance and how a shitload of money cannot ever hope to measure up to them.

continue reading "Slumdog Millionaire (review)" »

Torchwood blogging is back! Haul out your Season 2 DVDs and get watchin’. (Before commenting, please read the intro to my Doctor Who blogging; the same caveats apply to Torchwood.)

(previous: Episode 3: “To the Last Man”)

Ah, great loaves and little fishes, but this is one of the most horrific inventions of science fiction I’ve come across. I’m an unrepentent carnivore, but hacking away at a sentient creature while it’s still alive, for its meat? That is simply barbarous.

“Imprisoned, chained, and drugged -- welcome to planet Earth,” Jack says with disgust, and he’s right: this time it’s the humans who are the nightmarish villains. Even Tosh’s suggestion that this being, with its apparent capacity for regenerating its own flesh even as it’s being carved up, could feed the starving millions of Earth leaves me feeling a little queasy, as much as her heart is in the right place -- how could that be any better than what the guys in the warehouse were doing?

continue reading "‘Torchwood’ blogging: “Meat”" »

Oh, for shame! How Christian is theft? Not very -- isn’t one of their Big Rules against it? But what do I, a heathen atheist, know about these things? All I do know is that this direct-to-DVD flick is a bald-faced attempt to latch onto the phenom that is High School Musical and water it down even more for everyone who frets that the Muskeeteerish, white-bread mildness of the couldn’t-be-more-Disney Disney franchise is somehow racy and immoral and indicative of the downfall of humanity. It’s tough to decide which is the most outrageously offensive aspect of this cheap knockoff: the insipid and obvious songs, the almost conflict-free plot (it involves rival “gangs” of religious choirs who immediately team up for mutual betterment and cookies and because that’s what Jesus would do), the depiction of Christian education as consisting almost entirely of home ec and Bible studies, or the endless deployment of self-help New Testament clichés seemingly meant to undercut what teeny bit of drama is left, or the ideas that “family” entertainment must entirely toothless and “wholesome” means bland. Extras are reputed to include a making-of featurette, cast and crew commentary, a gag reel, and more, but were not available for review.

For shame:

It’s a few years after the events of Ruby in the Smoke, the first of novelist Philip Pullman’s stories of the spunky Victorian girl detective [Amazon U.S.] [Amazon U.K.], and star Billie Piper (Doctor Who) is even more spectacularly confident in her second outing as the young woman now daring enough to set herself up in the City, London’s financial center, as a consultant. If her fiscal consultancy happens to leads her into mysteries that must be solved, so be it. What do a nasty shipping magnate, a stage magician, a drawing-room medium, and other colorful characters of the era have to do with a shady corporate bankruptcy and rumors of a terrifying new weapon? Just the slightest bit redolent of the modern Victorian subgenre known as steampunk, this is a wickedly sneaky mystery wrapped in romantic intrigue -- Sally’s old friend and detecting partner Fred Garland (JJ Feild: Northanger Abbey) is more sweet on her than ever, while her social boldness leaves her open to threats of blackmail from those shocked at the idea of a woman at work in the City. A BBC production, it aired on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery! in the U.S.; this DVD features the PBS host segment with Alan Cumming but no additional bonus features beyond some downloadable reading guides.

If this is meant to be representative of “modern relationships,” count me out. The title is a shy abbrevation for Young People Fucking, and the film is as blunt as that, giving us four pairs -- the best friends, the couple, the first-daters, the exes -- and one threesome as they go about their lovemaking of an evening. Frank but tiresome in their mechanical flayings of sexual gameplaying, dishonesty, and other crimes of the bedroom, the cast of young unknown Canadian actors is not up to a task that demands a great deal more sensitivity than they can muster: these tedious characters might as well be dissecting their dining habits, or discussing in which order they don their shoes in the morning. They’re not very naked, in other words, for all the nudity onscreen, and no one brings much insight beyond the zingy one-liners of the Seinfeldian script. (“Isn’t it funny,” I can almost hear Jerry saying, “when you’re fucking a girl, and she asks you to get up in the middle and get her some ice cream? What’s up with that?”) Everyone gets laid, and we’re left feeling as empty as they all are by the experience -- even the married couple barely seems to like each other, never mind evoking any sense of true intimacy. For such a boldly titled film, it’s remarkable circumspect about baring it all. A theatrical trailer is the only “bonus.”

continue reading "watch it: the weekly address from President-elect Barack Obama" »

BUMPED UP: still got 13 8 copies left. makes a nice stocking stuffer...

So, I’m back from my quick excursion up to the Boston area for a showing of The Princess Bride. Ten hours alone in a rental car over the course of 24 hours ain’t exactly the most fun way to spend a day -- even if the brand-spanking-new 2009 Chevy Malibu (260 miles on the odometer when I picked it up) I got to drive was pretty nice. But on the whole, I think the trip was worth it. The crowd at the Cape Ann Community Cinema in Gloucester was, um, intimate, but it was really nice to see the movie with an audience and on a big screen -- I’ve only ever seen it on VHS and DVD -- and we had a nice chat about the movie afterward. And I sold a couple of copies of my book, The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride.

But I’ve still got 17 copies of the book left, and I want to get rid of them. The book will continue to be available on Amazon U.S. and Amazon U.K., but when these 17 copies are gone, I won’t be ordering any more for me to sell and autograph on my own (as I’ve been doing at sci-fi conventions and other appearances like the one last night).

So this is your last call for autographed copies. If you’d like one (or more), here’s how to get one (or them):

continue reading "last call for autographed copies of ‘The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride’" »

RULES: You’re eligible to win if 1) You have not won anything from me in 2008; 2) You have a U.S. mailing address; 3) You enter once and only once.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe -- in which Mulder and Scully reteam to unravel a bizarre case about an abducted FBI agent that defies the boundaries of science, the supernatural, and the terrifying spaces in between -- will be released on DVD and blu-ray on December 2, and I’ve got a copy of each to give away, courtesy of Fox Home Entertainment.

If you would like to enter to win the DVD, use this link to send your name and U.S. mailing address.

If you would like to enter to win the blu-ray, use this link to send your name and U.S. mailing address.

(Read my review of the film.)

ENTER BY: 11:59pm Eastern time, Saturday, December 13.

Winners are chosen at random from all eligible entries received.

NOTE: Your email address and mailing address will be used ONLY for contest purposes. You will not be added to any mailing lists; you will not be spammed as a result of entering. All contest entries are discarded at the end of the contest period.

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

It’s Mad Men meets Titanic! It’s what would have happened to Jack and Rose if they’d gotten off that ship together in New York! Leo turns into the man in the gray flannel suit! Kate turns into a suburban mom running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper! It’s the American nightmare: stifling, conformist, shackled to a mortgage, and never ever visiting Paris! Oh, the humanity.

Revolutionary Road opens limited in the U.S. on December 26, and in the U.K. on January 30, 2009.

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.

(previous: Episode 6: “Oh Oh Oh... It's Magic”)

Do you smell pie? I smell pie. Mmmmm, pie...

[spoilers after the jump!]

continue reading "‘Pushing Daisies’ blogging: “Robbing Hood”" »

Don’t shop on “Black Friday” -- that’s what they want you to do to:

continue reading "watch it: “Shopping Can Be Fun (1957)”" »