Just for fun, here’s a quick look of the top movies of 2008, from a box-office perspective:

1. The Dark Knight: $531,001,578
2. Iron Man: $318,313,199
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: $317,023,851
4. Hancock: $227,946,274
5. Wall-E: $223,806,889
6. Kung Fu Panda: $215,434,591
7. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: $177,016,810
8. Twilight: $176,922,850
9. Quantum of Solace: $166,820,413
10. Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!: $154,529,439

continue reading "North American box office: top 10 moneymakers of 2008" »

We had another five-day weekend this past week, what with New Year’s Eve falling on a Wednesday, but the ranking remains the same whether we look at the five-day or the three-day weekend, so for sanity’s sake, I’m gonna stick with the three-day figures... that is, Friday, January 2, through Sunday, January 4:

1. Marley & Me: $24.3 million (2nd week; drops 33%)
2. Bedtime Stories: $20.5 million (2nd week; drops 25%)
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: $18.7 million (2nd week; drops 30%)
4. Valkyrie: $14.1 million (2nd week; drops 33%)
5. Yes Man: $13.9 million (3rd week; drops 17%)

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: ‘Marley & Me’ sits and stays at the top" »

And so another movie year begins, and it’s time to get back on the hamster wheel of screenings.

I was all set to say, “You know, maybe The Unborn (opens wide in the U.S. on January 9, and in the U.K. on February 27) ain’t gonna be so bad after all. Yeah, it looks rather tragically like the recent slew of PG-13 ‘horror’ flicks -- that is, not very scary at all -- but the fact is that Rogue Pictures is screening it for critics at a time when not screening horror movies for critics has become the norm.” And then I saw this poster, which is one of the most hilariously blatant panders to the hormonal-teenage-boy crowd I’ve ever seen in a movie poster. Don’t come for the scares: come for the chick in her underwear! As for the critics’ screenings... well, perhaps Rogue figures we’re tired of all those quality arthouse awards contenders we’ve been watching over the past few weeks and are ready for a change of pace.

I’ve already noted some potential objections to Bride Wars (opens wide in the U.S. and in the U.K. on January 9). I expect to renew them.

continue reading "my week at the movies: ‘The Unborn,’ ‘Bride Wars,’ ‘Hotel for Dogs,’ ‘Notorious,’ ‘Yonkers Joe’" »

Stanley Fish has, for some reason, been chosen by The New York Times to name “the 10 best American movies”... ever.

Fish is “the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago,” so I guess we’re supposed to accept that he knows what he’s talking about. Why a professor of law should be called upon to comment on film is something of a mystery to me. Why not a professor of biology? Or literature? Or politics? Why not the person who’s posted the most reviews of movies on Amazon? Or Ain’t It Cool News? Why not the person who’s rented the widest range of movies from Netflix?

continue reading "alert! ‘The New York Times’ picks the 10 bestest movies evar!" »

Oh, the fun I’m having, sending the idiots to the trash bin.

I’ve deleted more comments in the last 24 hours than I have in the entire history of this site since it moved to the blog format. I don’t know what happened to make the traffic jump as it has, but I can only imagine I got a link on a site that caters to Neanderthals, because all of a sudden, the average IQ around this place appears to have dropped dramatically.

So, just another warning: I’m not kidding about deleting comments that do not contribute to healthy, intelligent conversation. And I’ll tell you this: Baiting me with racist, sexist, and other brainlessly bigoted remarks is an excellent first step to seeing yourself shitcanned.

Another new feature, and one you can expect every day Monday through Friday.

News stories I missed? Stuff you’d like me to cover? Questions you have for me? Something movie-, TV-, DVD-, or pop culture-related you want to talk about? This is where to do it.

RULES: You’re eligible to win if 1) You have not won anything from me in 2009; 2) You have a U.S. mailing address; 3) You enter once and only once.

The Wackness -- Jonathan Levine’s nostalgic coming-of-age comedy set in early-1990s New York City -- will be released on DVD on January 6, and I’ve got a copy of the DVD plus a Wackness book give away, courtesy of Sony Pictures.

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

ENTER BY: 11:59pm Eastern time, Monday, January 19.

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.

RULES: You’re eligible to win if 1) You have not won anything from me in 2009; 2) You have a U.S. mailing address; 3) You enter once and only once.

The soundtrack to the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- featuring a score by award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat -- was released recently on CD, and I’ve got three copies to give away, courtesy of Concord Records.

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

(Visit the film’s official site.) (Watch a trailer.) (Read my review of the film.)

ENTER BY: 11:59pm Eastern time, Monday, January 19.

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.

Here’s who got stuff in recent contests. They’ve been notified -- if you didn’t hear from me, you didn’t win. But don’t worry: there’s lots more good stuff coming up for grabs.

Then She Found Me: Kathy

Frost/Nixon: Julie

Nothing Like the Holidays: Kelli

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Daniel

Monty Python: Bruce

X-Files: Julie and Stephanie

It’s kinda like a Web comic that moves:

“Tales of Mere Existence” reminds me of Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell,” only less cheery. Artist and filmmaker Lev Yilmaz, the self-styled “Ambassador to the Alienated,” mopes out online here, where you’ll find more short tidbits of depression and disaffection.

Perfect for a postholiday January Monday.

via Very Short List

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

continue reading "trailer break: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’" »

In my review of Seven Pounds I said this:

[W]hat Will Smith(TM) is doing, particularly in the cases of these two of the seven people he is handing a pound of his flesh -- either metaphorically or literally -- is wildly unethical to the point that any honest version of this movie would end with the tragic revelation of that.

And then I promised to go into more detail about what I meant, after more people have had a chance to see the film. It’s been playing for three weeks now, and it held up pretty well over the holidays, so lots of people have seen it.

Spoilers after the jump.

continue reading "why ‘Seven Pounds’ is unethical" »

Here’s a new daily feature, just a little something to jumpstart conversation. Today:

What’s the first movie you remember seeing, the one that’s really stuck with you since, the one that leaps to mind as the first movie that had an impact on you?

Depending on your age, you may have seen that movie in a theater, or you may have seen it on VHS. (If you saw it on DVD, you’re probably too young to be hanging out here.)

For me, the movie is Fantasia, which I saw at Radio City Music Hall -- back when they were still showing movies there. I would have been about five or six, so this would have been around 1974 or so. And I remember being scared shitless by the demons of Bald Mountain.

No actor has ever looked less comfortable in a Nazi uniform than Viggo Mortensen does in this tepid morality play (based on the stage play by C.P. Taylor) about ethics, wisdom, and how readily some otherwise intelligent and upright people can dispose of them. Good thing it’s thematically appropriate that Mortensen’s John Halder is uneasy wearing the swastika -- too bad the moment when the mild-mannered literature professor of 1930s Germany dons the uniform for the first time, near the end of the film, is one of the few moments of real feeling to be found here. The film lets Halder, the epitome of the “good” people who do nothing and so allow evil to thrive, travel from “Hitler is a joke, he’ll never last” to “I never thought it would come to this” with a docility that should underline the effortlessness with which men like Halder could ignore the little voice of conscience in their head telling them they were giving in to wrong, but instead it seems to suck all emotion out of the film. In aiming for subtlety and finely shaded grays, Good gets washed out. Still, Mortensen’s (Eastern Promises) performance is very fine indeed, and there are a few stinging zings: one is an ironic tribute to the fanatical recordkeeping of Nazis, and the other is the final scene of the film, when Halder at last recognizes the evil all around him, and retreats to a place inside himself that, we wonder, he may never escape.

As traffic goes up, so does the percentage of trolls and illiterates commenting...

Oversight? Accountability? Reducing the deficit? Optimism? Perserverance? Opportunity? Why does Barack Obama hate America?

Really? Matt who? I’m sorry, but when Piers Wegner, head of drama at BBC Wales, was quoted at BBC News yesterday saying this:

I just can't wait to tell everyone who it is - it has been a nail-biting Christmas trying to keep this under wraps!

that suggested to me that the name he’d been dying to spill was one that we all at least would recognize. And I don’t think it’s just because I’m American that I’m saying, Matt who? Even the British geeks at Behind the Sofa are acknowledging that he’s “an almost unknown” (which seems to make them glad).

continue reading "Matt Smith is the new Doctor Who" »

Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn

Oh my god, it’s finally happened: Someone made Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn: The Motion Picture. It’s a Moving(TM) and Poignant(TM) tale of a crotchety old man who learns the true meaning of something or other. Could be neighborliness. Could be tolerance. Could be surviving in a world in which crotchety-old-man-itude has become a cinematic cliché. It doesn’t matter. The shell of the crotchety old man -- who is, underneath, of course, a warm and genuine fella -- has been broken. Hoorah!

continue reading "Gran Torino (review)" »

Speaking of last-ditch, past-the-last-minute campaigns to save TV shows...

I watching an episode of Threshold on Universal HD in December when an ad for the late, lamented short-lived series Jericho popped up. I thought, at first, that it was a promo for a rerun of the show on UHD. Not so. Turns out it’s part of a fan-funded and fan-produced crusade to revive the show. Its online HQ, SaveJerichoAgain.com, says that the ad also aired earlier in 2008, in June and September, in Los Angeles.

Here’s the ad:

continue reading "can ‘Jericho’ be revived... again?" »

My email in-box was just bombarded with notes informing me that Ned the piemaker, the girl named Chuck, fabric arts-loving PI Emerson Cod, itty-bitty waitress Olive Snook, and dead-dog Digby are now following me on Twitter. I, of course, reciprocated, and clicked “follow” on all their Twitter pages.

It’s probably way too late to save Pushing Daisies from a fate worse than Ned, but I suppose it’s nice that someone at ABC -- or perhaps in the show’s production office -- finally took some notice of, you know, the online rabidity over this lovely show. If only someone had tried to harness it earlier.

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.

If this one is too easy... well, consider it a New Year’s gift. They’re gonna get harder in 2009.

A sweet little start to the year with this amusing look at how sometimes the simple things are all we want... and that even simple can be beautiful:

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Another from the aniBoom Awards 2008 -- this one is ranked No. 30. Look for more of these next week, too.

Take a break from not working this wasted holiday week: watch a movie trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Two Lovers’" »

I guess they weren’t kidding: David Tennant really is leaving Doctor Who after this year, and someone else really is replacing him.

Tomorrow, the BBC will announce who that replacement is in a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential to air on BBC1 at 5:35pm Greenwich Time tomorrow. Which means 12:35pm Eastern, which means I’ll be hovering over the BBC News and BBC Doctor Who sites early tomorrow afternoon. The special will reportedly include an interview with the show’s new star.

continue reading "new ‘Doctor Who’ star announcement to come on Saturday" »

Taking a break from regular posting today. Normal programming will resume tomorrow... and I have some new regular features that will be debuting next week.

All part of my plan to dominate the world with snarking.

Just an FYI: the British box office numbers for Christmas weekend don't seem to be available, so no update on those this week.

Trying to figure out how to talk about the box office at the moment is a bit of a challenge, what with Christmas Day -- always a big moviegoing day in North America -- falling on a Thursday, and all the new wide releases opening that day. And then there’s this odd week, with no new wide releases at all, and another extended weekend just ahead of us, one that arguably includes today, New Year’s Eve, a Wednesday. Or, as I suggested last week, perhaps we need to think of this as one long weekend stretching from Christmas Day to this coming Sunday, January 4.

So, for starters, these are the four-day numbers -- that is, including the tallies from Thursday, Christmas Day. But after the jump I’ll talk a little about this Monday, December 29, and yesterday, Tuesday, December 30, too, because their numbers look like weekend numbers, too.

1. Marley & Me: $50.7 million (NEW)
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: $38.7 million (NEW)
3. Bedtime Stories: $38 million (NEW)
4. Valkyrie: $29.5 million (NEW)
5. Yes Man: $22.6 million (2nd week; three-day only drop over last weekend: 9%)

actual numbers, not estimates

continue reading "North American box office: gone to the dogs with ‘Marley & Me’" »

Between the Lines

“The notion of secrecy is central to Western literature,” says a schoolteacher as this delicate and difficult film opens, so you know: Aha. Secrecy. You already might have guessed, from the title -- The Reader -- that there was literature involved. That’s tough enough to pull off: a movie about reading. People sitting around looking at books? How does that become cinematic? But this is tougher: a movie about secrets. Some of the secrets we’re privy to from the start, some we learn as the film goes on... but some are secrets we never understand, and maybe can never even hope to understand. They’re about the things people never tell one another at all.

A movie about people not talking to one another? How does that work?

continue reading "The Reader (review)" »

Another New Year’s Eve, another year that seemed to zip by:

continue reading "watch it: “One year in 40 seconds”" »

...then it must mean a Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci Fi Channel.

Sci Fi pisses me off quite frequently, but then it goes and does stuff like this, and I love it again.