Iz LOLcats, but iz YooToob? Mi hed iz splodin.

Iz cat video Friday iz wut it iz.

And runs all week.

Rumor had it that it was going to air almost simulanteously in the U.S., but clearly, this is not happening: it debuts on BBC America on July 20th.

I shan’t be waiting that long to check it out, of course. Not that my stupid cable company carries BBC America anyway. And I’ve already preordered my DVD... from the U.K., where it’ll be out two weeks earlier, too. (The Region 2 DVD will be released on July 13; the Region 1 DVD will be released on July 28.)

The first teaser trailer is here; the second longer preview trailer is here.)

“Whatever criticism is, it is not a democracy.”

--Jonathan Jones, Guardian art critic

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Orphan’" »

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.

Isn’t this like having Quincy Jones review music? Or Catherine de Medici review fine arts?

Harvey Weinstein is reviewing movies, at Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast (that’s like Huffington Post, a refuge for all those poor celebrities with no other outlets for their voices, except the Beast does pay, as long as you sign away a kidney). Previously, he’d posted just a few brief comments about movies, such as Monsters vs. Aliens:

I recently watched Monsters vs. Aliens with my three daughters. And I have to say that it was just as entertaining for me as it was for them! I thought it was a lot of fun and a great story.

and The Hangover:

continue reading "question of the day: Why the hell is Harvey Weinstein reviewing movies?" »

That's the little settop box that lets you stream stuff from Netflix and Amazon Unbox.

I'm streaming old episodes of All Creatures Great and Small from Netflix as we speak.

Oh my god, Peter Davison was adorable when he was 12...

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for another Dream Cast, and this week we’re doing something special in honor of the American holiday Fourth of July. I’ve always wondered why we haven’t gotten a big, juicy, emotional, dramatic, epic movie about the revolt of the British colonies in the New World, especially considering how many spectacular personalities made up the “Founding Fathers.” So now we’re gonna cast my dream movie about that sticky Philadelphia summer of 1776.

(If you have a suggestion for a classic TV show or movie we could play Dream Cast with, feel free to email me.)

continue reading "dream cast: imaginary movie about the American Revolution" »

Oh, man: $345? You can buy a kickass iPod Touch for that these days...

We all know how it is. You'd like to get out to see a new movie this weekend, but all those fireworks aren’t gonna shoot themselves off, and there’s too many hot dogs to be eaten, anyway. But you can have something close to that blockbuster experience on the road with the proper application of DVDs. In fact, you might even be able to one-up everyone else at the watercooler come Monday, because while they're saying, "Hey, did you check out Public Enemies?" you can respond, "No, I saw some of the movies that inspired it."

continue reading "July 1-3: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings" »

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Julie & Julia’" »

It’s been my dream for ages: everything online. Old TV shows, every movie ever made, everything on demand all time. I don’t want to flip over to Turner Classic Movies and watch whatever old movie it’s deigning to air at that moment -- I want to tune my Internet-ready HDTV to TCM’s Web site and stream any movie in its catalogue whenever I want. I want to surf that TV over to the BBC’s Web site and watch any episode of Doctor Who or Blake’s 7 or Starcops at 3am.

We got a teeny weeny bit closer to that day yesterday, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge by a slew of media companies to a new plan by cable company Cablevision to offer remote DVR -- that is, instead of needing a special DVR cable box to record shows, Cablevision would store your recorded shows on its own servers and you would just watch them remotely. By refusing to even consider overturning a lower-court ruling that put a legal stamp of approval on Cablevision’s idea, the Supreme Court said it’s okay for the plan to go ahead.

continue reading "question of the day: Cablevision’s remote DVR: harbinger of the everything-on-demand future?" »

green light (definitely check it out):

Two Lovers: Gwyneth Paltrow has two boyfriends. [Amazon U.S.] [preorder at Amazon U.K.]

Tokyo!: Funky trio of short films about the Japanese metropolis. [Amazon U.S.] [now available at Amazon U.K.]

Eureka: Season 3.0: Cute show about geeks. [Amazon U.S.]

continue reading "new DVD releases in Region 1, June 30" »

I'm really tired of talking about Transformers and Michael Bay...

Punk-ass Decepticons...

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: £4.4 million (2nd week; drops 48%)
2. The Hangover: £1.9 million (3rd week; drops 1%)
3. Year One: £.98 million (NEW)
4. My Sister’s Keeper: £.92 million (NEW)
5. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: £.49 million

(actual numbers, not estimates)

continue reading "U.K. box office: ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ keeps blowing stuff up" »

I had no idea chickens were so tenacious:

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at Aniboom

green light (definitely check it out):

Revolutionary Road: Suburbia is nasty. [Amazon U.K.] [now available at Amazon U.S.]

Che: Viva la revolution. [Amazon U.K.]

Rachel Getting Married: Anne Hathaway as a cranky bitch, and we like her. [Amazon U.K.] [now available at Amazon U.S.]

Wendy and Lucy: A girl and her dog. [Amazon U.K.] [now available at Amazon U.S.]

continue reading "new DVD releases in Region 2, June 29" »

And Michael Bay buys another fourteen mansions in the Caribbean:

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $109 million (NEW)
2. The Proposal: $18.6 million (2nd week; drops 45%)
3. The Hangover: $17 million (4th week; drops 36%)
4. Up: $13 million
5. My Sister’s Keeper: $12.4 million (NEW)

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: robots go smash" »

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

So here’s an early peek at Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, scheduled for release in March 2010:

continue reading "caption this! first image from Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’" »

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘G-Force’" »

Here’s something else we can blame Michael Bay for: making film critics the most hated people in America, at least for the moment. This is not at all ironic, because Bay’s movie panders (as all his movies do) to the most unthinking, uncritical, unself-aware reflexes of lowest-common-denominator audiences. I am not saying that everyone who likes Bay’s movies is stupid, or even that Bay is stupid -- in fact, whether it’s conscious or not, there’s a kind of genius to Bay, in how he can tap into the zeitgeist with such laser precision that audiences seem irresistibly drawn to his movies.

Fact: His Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is raking in dough like Lehman Brothers on a subprime mortgage binge. Fact: Most critics have excoriated the movie -- it’s currently at 20 percent Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. The sheer number of people who appear to think that these two facts have anything to do with each other is astonishing. And it’s perfectly encapsulated by a truly bizarre post by Robin Lawlor, the “Virginia Beach Movie Examiner,” which begins like this:

continue reading "question of the day: How come so many people don’t understand the purpose of film criticism?" »

Slushy Mess

It’s kinda like how The Flinstones was really The Honeymooners, except as a prehistoric cartoon. The Ice Age movies are sitcoms, except instead of a homely doofus as the goofy guy married to the impossibly attractive, impossibly forgiving, and yet still endlessly nagging wife, it’s a couple of mammoths with a bachelor sabertooth tiger and a dimbulb ground sloth as the wacky neighbors.

This is how far cartoons have descended in the last decade and a half: The Lion King was Shakespearean. Ice Age is Everybody Loves Raymondean.

continue reading "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (review)" »

Get ready for a hilarious and heartwarming royal reality check in Princess Protection Program, the new smash-hit Disney Channel Original Movie starring Selena Gomez, Wizards Of Waverly Place, and Demi Lovato, Sonny With A Chance. Plus, this Royal B.F.F. Extended Edition DVD features an insider’s look at the realities and responsibilities of being a real-life princess and lets you listen in as real-life best friends Selena and Demi dish about their lives on and off the set!

I can’t decide which makes my pink tutu quiver more: the prospect of having a real-life princess in my living room (on DVD), or the heartwarming adorableness of the coincidence that two real-life BFFs got the chance to star in a movie together. I bet that’s awesome!

The worlds of royalty and roughing-it collide when the lovely Rosalinda, Lovato enters the Princess Protection Program and moves in with her new cousin Carter, Gomez, a total tomboy. In an unexpected role reversal, Rosie learns how to act like an everyday girl and Carter finds her own inner princess. Once they discover what they have in common, they prove that best friends really are forever.

Oh, don’t they know? All girls have an inner princess!

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’ second trailer" »

Criminal Intimacy

I’ve never been the kind of cineaste who cares much about the technical side of cinema: aspect ratios and film stocks and whether something was shot in 35mm or 70mm or whatever. I just don’t care. Maybe that makes me no kind of cineaste at all, and just a poor pathetic mere girl who doesn’t really understand movies the way they’re supposed to be understood. All I know is that story and character have tended to be way more important to me than what kind of camera the cinematographer used.

continue reading "Public Enemies (review)" »

Is this real life?

Break the law, go to jail, make a ton of money?

My jaw dropped when I saw this at Gamespot:

The Pirate Bay, seen by many as the bane of the world's entertainment industries, is to be purchased by Swedish firm Global Gaming Factory, according to both entities. GGF primarily provides "digital distribution of advertising, software and services to the large groups of tourists at Internet cafes and the gamer community at gaming venues," via software installed on PCs at cybercafes across to world. According to GGF, the deal is scheduled to be closed in August 2009, subject to the firm obtaining financial backing, the approval of the deal at a general meeting of existing shareholders, "and that GGF and the Board of Directors consider that the acquired assets can be used in a legally and appropriate way."

Hans Pandeya, chief executive of GGF explained the deal today, saying: "As a result of the acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and Peerialism, GGF will have a strategic position in the international digital distribution market. File sharing traffic is estimated to account for more than half of today's global Internet traffic. The Pirate Bay has a global brand and holds a key position with over 20 million visitors and over one billion page views per month." The deal is valued at a total of 60 million Swedish Kronor ($7.8m, £4.7m).

continue reading "question of the day: Isn’t the multimillion-dollar sale of the Pirate Bay a stamp of approval on piracy?" »

There’s something very creepy about this, mostly because I suspect it wasn’t meant to be creepy at all, but Important and Meaningful:

One of the saddest days in a long time? Do people really feel that way about celebrities? Or are people’s lives really that devoid of real emotion that the death of someone they didn’t even know has the power to move them that much? Isn’t that taking fandom too far?

Slow screening week, as holiday weeks tend to be...

Kevin Spacey is a Hollywood psychiatrist in Shrink (opens in the U.S. on July 24; no U.K. release date has been announced yet). I hope he goes all American Beauty on the asses of all his celebrity clients and tells them to shove their problems while he’s totally stoned. I mean, why else would you make a movie about a Hollywood shrink and cast Kevin Spacey in the lead?

British political wonks go to Washington DC in In the Loop (opened in the U.K. in April; it opens in the U.S. on July 24). It’s a comedy, see, from the British perspective, and it’s about going to war, or not going to war, or going or not going to a PR war, or something. It’s clearly a not-so-veiled smack at the whole Iraq debacle, but hey, we may have been stuck with Bush for a while, but they were stuck with Blair, Bush’s poodle. So we’re not the only ones to blame. Or something. Oh, but it’s got Steve Coogan in it, so that’s all right then.

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Amelia’" »