my week at the movies: ‘The Jane Austen Book Club,’ ‘Into the Wild,’ ‘The Brave One,’ ‘In the Valley of Elah,’ ‘Feast of Love’

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I loved Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book Into the Wild, about a privileged young American man who was precisely the wrong combination of book-smart and real-world-naive who pulled a Thoreau and withdrew from the modern world in remote mountain Alaska. Now, Sean Penn has made Into the Wild, the movie [opens wide September 21], starring the … more…

hilarious: MySpacer hates me, won’t say why

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Gotta love the MySpace generation. A 21-year-old male who goes by the unlikely nom de MySpace of “thedeadlyrhythm” doesn’t like my review of the new Kevin Bacon revenge wet dream Death Sentence. Thedeadlyrhythm won’t say what’s wrong with it. Apparently, it’s just bad. He writes: Apologies to my friends for not going with them today … more…

‘Doctor Who’: “The Girl in the Fireplace” wins Hugo

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I’m hardly surprised: “The Girl in the Fireplace,” from last season’s Doctor Who, won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) at Worldcon in Japan last night. It was up against two other Whos: “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday” and “School Reunion” (as well as episodes of something called Battlestar Galactica and some other series, Stargate … more…

Death Sentence (review)

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Kevin Bacon’s got one of each — scythe and machete — in his garage in *Death Sentence.* He’s a white-shirt-wearing, window-office-occupying corporate cog at an insurance company. Surely the biggest danger he is in would be from, you know, paper cuts on the risk-analysis reports he handles on a daily basis. Right? How did he know to have such deadly tools at the ready?

a record summer for the box office — be afraid

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It’s Labor Day weekend, which means summer is officially unofficially over, although the only people who care are those for whom the unofficial change of seasons is really important. Like kids, who have to shuffle back to school. And people obsessed with movies, because now we move from the season of Big Stupid Blockbusters into … more…

‘Burn Notice’ finally gets my notice

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I couldn’t tell you what night USA Networks’ Burn Notice airs. I’d had no plans whatsoever to watch it at all, but I was channel surfing one day soon after it debuted earlier this summer and came across an episode, and something I saw — which I’ll get to in a moment — made me … more…

Balls of Fury (review)

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Funnily enough, though — and it’s the only thing funny about this dreadful excuse for a comedy — the movie itself has tiny balls. It’s got no nerve, no guts, no daring… no balls.