Mass Distraction

Spoiler alert! Jason Bourne does not find the WMDs in Iraq. Sorry to ruin Green Zone for you, but surely reality already did that years ago.

Also: There is no Santa Claus. But it would be hilarious to see Jason Bourne invade the North Pole in search of him.

It’s an odd duck, this not-Jason Bourne movie in which star Matt “Jason Bourne” Damon and director Paul “Bourne Ultimatum” Greengrass go to Iraq in order to pursue truth, justice, and the American way that We the Little People are supposed to live up to but from which our leaders are, apparently, exempt. It’s 2003, a month after the U.S. invasion, Baghdad is a looter’s paradise, Saddam is on the run, and Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller is getting frustrated. He’s leading up a special army team, see, a band of brothers tasked with swooping into WMD sites -- we know they’re WMD sites because Our Secret Iraqi Source told us so -- and bringing out the smoking guns so they can be paraded before the world press. Small problem: No WMDs. Not anywhere. Miller smells a rat.

continue reading "Green Zone (review)" »

Everything’s gonna be 3D from now on:

1. Alice in Wonderland: £10.6 million (NEW)
2. Avatar: £.91 million
3. The Crazies: £.67 million (2nd week; drops 44%)
4. The Lovely Bones: £.66 million (3rd week; drops 45%)
5. The Princess and the Frog: £.38 million

(actual numbers, not estimates)

continue reading "U.K. box office: ‘Alice’ pummels ‘Avatar’" »

Holy crap:

continue reading "watch it: 1960s IHOP commercial" »

For a while many years ago I was geekishly collecting Star Trek Barbies and X-Files Barbies, so I squee’d when I saw this:

March 10, 2010 — New York, NY — Mattel, Inc., Lionsgate® (NYSE: LGF), and AMC announced today the launch of four Barbie® Collector “Mad Men” dolls available to consumers July 2010. Designed by Barbie designer Robert Best, the “Mad Men” Barbie doll line features key players from the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency: creative director and leading man Don Draper; his wife Betty Draper; Sterling Cooper partner Roger Sterling; and bombshell office manager Joan Holloway. Today’s announcement marks the first licensed doll line in the Barbie Fashion Model Collection, a signature silkstone collection within the Barbie brand known for featuring couture quality fashions and accessories.

continue reading "but would Joan Holloway see herself in Barbie?" »

RULES: You’re eligible to win if 1) You have not won anything from me in 2010; 2) You have a U.S. mailing address (no PO boxes); 3) You enter once and only once.

The Runaways, the new drama about Joan Jett and Cherie Currie from director Floria Sigismondi and starring Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, and Michael Shannon -- opens in limited release in the U.S. and Canada on March 19, and wide on April 9. To celebrate, I’ve got a prize pack to give away, courtesy of Apparition. The pack contains a “Cherry Bomb” T-shirt and poster, a Runaways button pin and guitar pick, and a soundtrack CD.

Enter by using this link to send your name and U.S. mailing address.

(Watch the trailer.) (Visit the film’s official site.) (Become a Facebook fan of the film.) (Follow the film on Twitter.)

ENTER BY: 11:59pm Eastern time, Sunday, March 21.

Winners are chosen at random from all eligible entries received.

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

...by how many men seem to think that a woman -- a mere girl! -- simply couldn’t possibly like science fiction, and how many men express utter amazement when a woman indicates such an interest.

These guys need to meet more interesting women...

Finally! A movie than combines all the gender bashing of terrible TV commercials and awful sitcoms -- in which manipulative women must crack the whip on their manchild husbands -- with the repulsive wedding porn of every other romantic comedy of recent years. It’s all your cheap, easy “entertainment” needs in one movie. When Hispanic America Ferrera (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2) and black Lance Gross (Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns) drop a bomb on their parents -- surprise! they’re getting married! in two weeks! and no caterer, dressmaker, or clergyman laughs in their faces at such a fantastical timeline! -- all juvenile hell breaks loose as their dads (respectively, Carlos Mencia [The Heartbreak Kid] and Forest Whitaker [Where the Wild Things Are]) take up a sort of warfare in crosscultural dick measuring: who can be the most bigoted, the most insulting, the most childishly repulsive before the movie must shift gears and insist that the audience suddenly actually care about these obnoxious people in time for the big ceremony? In case all that isn’t enough to make you howl in despair, there’s also an allegedly hilarious bit with a goat hopped up on Viagra and a violent Mexican granny who goes ballistic on a wedding cake she disapproves of... on the day of the wedding (and after the nice baker presumably didn’t laugh in their faces, though “You need it when?!” was surely the baker’s reaction). Because everyone should put their own petty desires above those of the people they supposedly love, especially on that loved one’s wedding day.

Apparently my QOTD yesterday about the state of film criticism caused a few ripples around the Web. I found a long post at a blog called Conversation | Film in response to it, a few points in which I feel merit a response in return.

(The blog’s author appears to be one Matt Schneider, though it takes a bit of digging around to discover that. I’m always astonished at how many bloggers who clearly aren’t attempting to remain anonymous nevertheless do not byline their posts or otherwise readily identify themselves at their blogs.)

I wrote:

I don’t think this is the kind of job that can be done well if it’s not done full time… at least, I cannot imagine doing this if I were seeing only one movie a week and reviewing just that one movie. A film critic needs to be immersed in film… and since my overarching thesis is looking at why these movies now, I need to see as many new movies as possible in order to even try to put it all into some context.

continue reading "more about criticism as a full-time job" »

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Greenberg’" »

Radio idiot Howard Stern engaged in some vile fatbashing of Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe the other day -- I won’t repeat it, but you can listen here, if you must -- the upshot of which is that she’s kidding herself in thinking she’s ever gonna get another role after Precious. She already has gotten more work, of course.

A piece at ABC News about Stern’s comments and Sidibe’s Hollywood prospects includes some comments from industry professionals that are far more insidious and revealing about Hollywood’s predjudices, under the guise of concern:

continue reading "question of the day: Why can’t Gabourey Sidibe play any role that a thin white actress might play?" »

Unvarnished Romance

I was resigned to dragging out some lazy, easy Twilight dissing in response to Remember Me, maybe something about it “sucking,” or perhaps I could have called it “vampirically pallid.” Because that’s certainly how it was looking, from the outside. I wouldn’t have enjoyed that, honestly, because while sometimes it’s fun to rag on bad actors and the bad movies they make, I had been steadfastly clinging to a notion that, despite most evidence till that moment to the contrary (and yes, I’ve seen nearly everything he’s done), Robert Pattinson holds some promise. And it was making me angry to see his nominal success with those terrible teen vampire movies seeming to lead him away from opportunities to prove this notion to me. Leading him to, it seemed, a crassly opportunistic attempt to further cash in on Pattison’s status as go-to dreamboat for attracting the squealing-hormonal-adolescent audience.

continue reading "Remember Me (review)" »

Wherein we see that FX have been a part of cinema from the very beginning. Too bad the film is so damaged:

continue reading "watch it: “Alice in Wonderland (1903)”" »

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

“No, Miss Jett, I expect you to play”:

continue reading "caption this! image from ‘The Runaways’" »

...when I’m asked by a publicist to hold my review of a film till opening day, and I agree to do so, and then I see that lots of other critics have already posted their reviews.

Look for my review of Green Zone at 12:01am on Friday.

(previous: “Sundown”)

There’s no way to “review” or “analyze” or even “discuss” this show on an episode-by-episode basis -- it’s more like you just have to react and try to guess what the hell is going on. So I’m not even gonna try to impose any sense or reason upon it: I’m just going to react. Maybe when it’s all said and done there will be something cohesive to say. Till then...

Perhaps needless to say, Lost doesn’t make much sense while you’re watching it. My ramblings will surely make even less sense if you haven’t seen the episode... and something may get spoiled for you that you don’t want spoiled. You have been warned.

So, here are the thoughts I jotted down, pretty much in order as they occurred to me as I watched:

continue reading "‘Lost’ blogging: “Dr. Linus”" »

I have discovered the weirdest, the most inexplicable Doctor Who-related thing ever on the Internet... and that’s saying something, considering the stuff that can be found on the Internet.

John Odum, writing at The Huffington Post, is very excited about the prospect of a Doctor Who movie. He links to a report about this that dates from September 2006, so you’d think his excitement might have been tempered by time and the lack, so far, of a Doctor Who movie... but that’s not the weird thing. Odum loves the idea “that the project is being pursued with an eye towards turning more Americans on to the wildly popular British sci-fi series” -- I direct him toward the Fox TV movie starring Paul McGann as a remedy for this excitement... but that’s not the weird thing.

The weird is this: He wants to cast the Doctor in this movie not from among American actors:

continue reading "because the boundaries of fandom are truly infinite" »

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’" »

I’ve been feeling very, very depressed lately about the prospects of ever making anything like a reasonable living at this film criticism game. And this shocking news did not help: On Monday, Variety, the legendary Hollywood trade publication, laid off its chief film critic, Todd McCarthy. Editor Tim Gray, in a memo to Variety staffers, said:

It doesn't make economic sense to have full-time reviewers.

If Variety doesn’t believe that film criticism makes economic sense, maybe that is the case. Maybe film criticism doesn’t make economic sense. In his piece on the McCarthy layoff, Patrick Goldstein at The Big Picture writes:

continue reading "question of the day: If ‘Variety’ doesn’t see any future in film criticism, is there any hope for it?" »

This isn’t a joke or a parody. Victoria Jackson, Crazy Person, is totally serious here:

(via Jezebel)

Impossible things:

1. Alice in Wonderland: $116.1 million (NEW)
2. Brooklyn’s Finest: $13.4 million (NEW)
3. Shutter Island: $13.2 million (3rd week; drops 42%)
4. Cop Out: $9.3 million (2nd week; drops 49%)
5. Avatar: $8.1 million

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: go ask ‘Alice,’ cuz she’s 10 feet tall" »

Cinema is rife with portraits of angry young people. What makes this one so compulsively watchable is that here it is not the typical boy but a teenage girl who is so full of rage and so ready to lash out at everyone around her... and not without good reason, too. Some viewers may be turned off by the raw fury of 15-year-old Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis), but they’re probably the ones who need to see this marvelously disturbing film most: for the reminder that life doesn’t have to be Precious-awful for a girl for growing up for it to be a nightmare, that mere ordinary adolescence can be brutal enough. Mia is just about enduring life in dreary council housing in working-class, industrial Dagenham, Essex, a remote eastern suburb of London, but things get infinitely worse and intriguingly more interesting when her hard-partying mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), brings home a new boyfriend, the evilly charming Connor (Michael Fassbender: Inglourious Basterds). Writer-director Andrea Arnold -- who made the riveting Red Road a few years back -- meanders through the confusion that Mia doesn’t even understand she’s experiencing and the naivete she doesn’t realize is being stripped away from her as she learns how to cope with the simultaneous attraction and repulsion she feels for Connor, as she struggles to assert herself the only way she knows how, through the dancing she’s not very good at. There is nothing but unrefined authenticity on display here, in yet another astonishing example of the new British cinematic realism, as we watch the train wreck of Mia’s mother, who can hardly have been older than Mia now when the teen was born, and wonder whether Mia herself is heading in that sad direction, or if she will find another way for herself. (available in the U.S. on IFC on Demand)

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Harry Brown’" »

It says so right there on the box: “Scarier than Wall-E!”

After years of living in a utopian alien society where they both amassed tremendous power, two feuding groups of human astronauts briefly return to Earth and begin duking it out to determine who will ultimately govern their perfect planet. Blending tongue-in-cheek humor with spirited battle scenes, this low-budget sci-fi flick stars Steven George, Lamont Chambers, Michael Bassett and Stephanie Lim.

The phrase “spirited battle scenes” scares me a little: what it promises, I don’t like to think about.

Turns out, though, that I needed have worried. A quick Google ‘round for more info didn’t get me much other than a review by Adam Tyner at DVD Talk, in which he reassures me that it’s nothing more than

[e]ight actors running around some sleepy, Starbucksless suburban town for a hundred minutes and change straight.

Whew.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed, in the wake of the Oscar tribute to John Hughes on Sunday night, that there exists, in that ghostly nethworld of Unproduced Scripts, one last story from the filmmaker waiting for its moment on the screen... or not.

The script, titled Grisbys Go Broke, is apparently about “a wealthy Chicago family that loses everything and is forced to move to the sticks,” says THR. What’s more:

Word crept out Friday that Paramount, which has a long history with Hughes, was picking up the script with hope of turning it into a family comedy with Joe Roth ("Alice in Wonderland") producing.

However, the studio told THR that it is not negotiating to purchase the screenplay...

John Hughes’ unproduced script: produce it, or not? Good idea, or bad? As THR notes, the most recent produced script credited (albeit pseudonymously) to Hughes though rewritten by others was Drillbit Taylor, which was not a hit. But could a new old Hughes script work today? Or is it better to leave Hughes in the 1980s?

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

They sent a big-ass camera into space, and now we get to see some pretty pictures in IMAX: Hubble 3D (opens in the U.S. and Canada on March 19; no U.K. release date has been announced). Apparently the astronauts also fixed the Hubble Space Telescope while they were up there -- they didn’t just goof around with that IMAX camera. Leonardo DiCaprio narrates. Will we hear him shout, “I’m king of the world”? Cuz that works even better from orbit, I bet.

Matt Damon hunts down Saddam Hussein or something in Green Zone (opens in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. on March 12). I predict he’s all conflicted and shit while he’s being badass for America.

Is it ironic that Robert Pattinson has to ask, Remember Me (opens in the U.S. and Canada on March 12, and in the U.K. on April 2)? He may wish many of us -- like the squealing 12-year-olds -- would forget him. If so, he should probably stop making movies that make him look all adorably adolescently angsty.

I’ll probably want to forget She’s Out of My League (opens in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. on March 12). If you can’t wait to start ripping, there’s an interesting discussion already going on in response to the offensive trailer.

...the joke of enlightened sexism, and more.

Yup, it’s The Week in Women -- so late that it’s last week’s edition -- my regular column over at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Enjoy.

No. No no no. No.

continue reading "watch it: American ‘Spaced’ pilot clips" »

(previous: “There Is Another Sky”)

(lots of spoilers! assumes you’ve seen the episode!)

continue reading "‘Caprica’ blogging: “Know Thy Enemy”" »

obsession: Canadian TV (and film) (because I’m hungry for something new and good)

boyfriend: Esai Morales in Caprica (not so much his character, though: he’s sorta sad and scary)

psyched: nothing (it feels like we’re in a movie dead zone)

girl crush: no one

dreading: She’s Out of My League (for perpetuating obnoxious stereotypes)

enemy: ABC and Cablevision (because they care more about their profits than the customers who give them those profits)

Didja notice the MPAA rating on Alice in Wonderland?

rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar

Not just for smoking, which is a warning we see often enough these days. Alice doesn’t bother the MPAA merely for the fact that it contains smoking. It bothers the MPAA because it features a smoking caterpillar. Because there’s something especially insidious and depraved and offensive about a cartoon bug smoking. Because, perhaps, every time your third-grader sees a caterpillar from now on, she will be gripped with the irresistible urge to light up.

This has been your WTF Thought for the Day.