Pop Whore

Snap Judgment

2010-08-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm bored and this week's releases look reasonably rip-able. Let's get it on!

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (directed by Jean-Francois Richet, written by Jean-Francois Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri, based on the book by Jacques Mesrine)

Ah, that poster gives me fond memories of asking for directions in Paris -- especially if you throw in a little smoke-blown-in-face. Now, I don't know Vincent Cassel from all those fancy artistic French rape movies he's starred in (okay, fine, just the one), because frankly I've done enough permanent damage to my psyche for one lifetime, thank you very much. (You think I'm kidding? I once ordered an old-fashioned without remembering to specify the bourbon. My soul is fractured beyond repair.) I do know Vincent Cassel from Ocean's 12, which is just like those in-jokey YouTube videos college kids make with their friends that they know no one else will understand, except that "OMG Stevie Cheats At Lawn Dice EPIC FAIL" probably didn't cost $110 million to make.

Fun coincidence: "Killer instinct" is actually one of the known side effects of Mesrine, the newly FDA-approved migraine reliever. Is Mesrine right for you? Talk to your local Landmark theater. (And while you're at it, ask them why there's no "T" in "Yogurberry.")

Takers (directed by John Luessenhop, written by Peter Allen & Gabriel Casseus and John Luessenhop & Avery Duff)

Wow, that's an impressive roster there -- Idris Elba, Matt Dillon, Gaius Charles (the guy who played Smash Williams on Friday Night Lights), Chris Brown (the guy who played an obnoxious abuser in a little-boy sweater on Larry King Live), and... Hayden Christensen? Really? Front and center on the poster, there? I only have one guess as to how this happened. The producers said, "Hey, we've got some really talented African American actors in this movie; can we round it out with James Earl Jones?" Then the casting guys turned to their assistants and said, "Get me the guy who played Darth Vader!" and everything went downhill from there and nobody noticed until the movie was in the can. How tragic.

Centurion (written and directed by Neil Marshall)

Apparently this is what the industry papers call a "sword and sandal epic." As in:

HUSBAND: Okay, honey, I'm off to fight some guy to the death.

WIFE: How come?

HUSBAND: Can't remember. Think he stole my goat or something.

WIFE: Well, pick up some milk on the way back. The stuff I bought yesterday already went sour.

HUSBAND: Someone really needs to invent refrigeration.

WIFE: I feel like that's a long way off. (pauses, looks down) You're wearing THOSE?!

HUSBAND: My sandals? Yeah.

WIFE: I thought we talked about those being strictly at-home footwear.

HUSBAND: I only have one pair of clean socks left, and this battle will probably only take like twenty minutes but I'll still get them all sweaty and not want to wear them again and I don't know when we're doing laundry next.

WIFE: Be that as it may. The world at large does not need to see your toenails.

HUSBAND: (sighs) I guess I don't really need to kill this guy.

WIFE: I didn't want to contradict you, but I'm pretty sure we've never owned a goat.

HUSBAND (roots through cabinets) Do we have beer in this century?

WIFE: Yeah, but it's really grainy.

The Last Exorcism (directed by Daniel Stamm, written by Huck Botko & Andrew Gurland)

Your guess is as good as mine. Seems to be some kind of movie about yoga.

Snap Judgment

2009-11-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

Consistency? Reliability? Snap Judgment craves not these things. It wasn't here last week and it might not be here next, so enjoy it while you can.

2012 (rated PG-13, directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich & Harald Kloser)

Remember how when you were a kid, if your mom bought you a great new toy and you broke it, she'd just buy you a new one that was twice as expensive? No? Well, that's apparently the parenting technique that the Sony Pictures executives were raised with, since they're always giving Roland Emmerich more and more money to make big-ass disaster movies regardless of how badly the last one performed. If 2012 flops, we'll have to steel ourselves for a $600 million mega-epic in which the entire galaxy gets magnificently destroyed -- and in case they're already taking pitches for that, I think it would be pretty awesome if Neptune broke loose from its orbit, strapped on a bunch of rocket-boosters, and started ramming into all the other planets. (But in the third act twist -- lo and behold -- Pluto, that underdog of underdogs, rides to the rescue and saves the day and is rewarded with the reinstatement of its planetary status. We'll figure out the rest later. I see Taylor Lautner as Halley's Comet.) Anyway, I know that a lot of people are pointing to how ridiculous 2012 is going to seem once that year passes apocalypse-free; but I'm forced to look on the more-pessimistic side and worry that, if all this Mayan death shit really does come true, the movie that pre-emptively chronicled it all wasn't made by someone cool like Spielberg or that District 9 guy, but by the dude who brought us 10,000 B.C. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (rated PG, directed by Wes Anderson, screenplay by Anderson & Noah Baumbach, based on the book by Roald Dahl)

George Clooney stars in yet another heist movie! This is really a bummer for Steven Soderbergh, who I've heard had planned a fourth Ocean's movie but was going to do it all stop-motion with cutesy animals, just to keep things fresh. Now he'll have to come up with a different approach. Maybe Ocean's 14: Ocean's On Ice? Or a "reimagining" of Ocean's 11 with Lady Gaga in the lead and Carrie Prejean as the loathsome casino owner? There are a lot of ways to go with this, is what I'm saying. Don't let that damn hipster and his furry menagerie get you down, Sodes.

Pirate Radio (rated R, written and directed by Richard Curtis)

So. This movie is rated R, while 2012 is rated PG-13. 2012 is about the entire fucking world getting blown to pieces and every single fucking human being on Earth dying a horrible death (except for a few past-their-prime movie stars and Chiwetel "gonna need to do lots of experimental stage work to make up for this" Ejiofor). Pirate Radio is about a boat that broadcast some rock music in England in the 60s.

Do we need any further evidence that our ratings/moral decency standards are a little screwed up in America? I mean, for crying out loud. 2012 should clearly have gotten a "G". Everything in that movie is true! All that stuff's going to happen eventually! It's just highly realistic depictions of natural phenomena. Whereas Pirate Radio has (a) sex and (b) loud music about sex. That's NC-17 for sure. When will the MPAA learn? I ask you.

Snap Judgment

2009-10-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of pre-empting this whole thing for more Balloon Boy coverage, because at any moment that lovable kid could toss a giant paper airplane into the air and then duck into a kitchen cupboard, thus provoking rampant cable news speculation that he may be headed into either hostile foreign airspace or Utah, depending on his particular coefficient of drag.

But this is the biggest movie weekend in a while and I don't want anyone to miss out on my snap-judging. So I'll adhere to my fake-journalistic responsibility, though I may need to make a few late-breaking asides to check in on Balloon Boy.

Law Abiding Citizen (rated R, directed by F. Gary Gray, written by Kurt Wimmer)

Well... sheesh. I mean, I understand that Hollywood is entering a new era of "socially responsible" filmmaking, trying to keep impressionable youths from being exposed to onscreen evils like smoking, racism, and casual nudity -- but this may be taking it too far. "Law Abiding Citizen"? It sounds like a filmstrip that they'd show in a Wisconsin elementary school in 1952. "Meet Jimmy Johnson. He looks both ways before crossing, he signals when making a left turn, and he doesn't urinate in public without a permit." Seriously, they should have just called it "Guy Who Pays For All The Music He Downloads," because-- BALLOON BOY ALERT! We're being told that Falcon has just taken a nap on the couch. While the couch is not airborne at the moment, our scientific panel has concluded that, given sufficient upward propulsion and helium reserves, it very well could reach the upper atmosphere within a matter of hours. --and who doesn't like a good rumination on the merits of good citizenship?

The Stepfather (rated PG-13, directed by Nelson McCormick, screenplay by J.S. Cardone, based on an earlier screenplay by Donald Westlake, Carolyn Starin, and Brian Garfield)

The hands on the poster above are demonstrating a very particular kind of knot -- the "double Dahmer," as I believe it's known in some circles. Though slightly more labor-intensive than the more traditional single Windsor, it pairs quite well with both three-button suits and strangulation. So, if you're a high-ranking Wall Street executive dressing to impress for an important meeting (the kind where you might need to kill someone) (but I repeat myself), you really ought to consider this often-overlooked method. Sure, it lacks the pizazz of the triple Gacy, but subtlety is the name of the game in the post-recession era. OK, now that that's out of the way, let's see how Balloon Boy is doing. OH NO! This time he's either rummaging through the closet, or strapped to a nuclear warhead bound for the moon. Let us know how the water tastes there, Balloon Boy! I hear Evian and Fiji are already competing for the bottling contract.

Where the Wild Things Are (rated PG, directed by Spike Jonze, screenplay by Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers, based on the book by Maurice Sendak)

Naturally, as a member of either late-Gen X or early-Gen Y (I've never been able to figure out which), I was a huge fan of this book as a child. Proudly taking its place on my toddler-height bookshelf alongside dog-eared copies of The Lorax and Atlas Shrugged, it taught me of the wonders of imagination, the horrors of being denied dinner, and the surprising dearth of wolf costumes in the real world. Will it survive being co-opted into a high-budget work of mass entertainment, however offbeat and fueled-by-hipster-genius that work may be? Well, why don't we ask Balloon Boy to weigh in here. Perhaps he can provide the kind of guileless, spiritually pure insight of which a sarcastic burnout like me is no longer capable. I'll just ask the iguana in the checkered scarf who heads up my IT department if we can link him in through Skype or iChat or something. In the meantime -- wait. What's that? Oh. My. God. Balloon Boy just found his way into the prop department at Paramount and climbed into the Iron Man suit. And the thing really works! He's breaking mach-3 over the Atlantic right now. Watch out for supervillains, Balloon Boy! They always seem to possess intimate knowledge of your every weakness, and they can't be defeated until you've realized an important life lesson about using your powers for good.

Snap Judgment

2009-09-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

My triumphant return to the judgment-snapping fold a couple of weeks ago was not met with the dramatic uptick in movie quality I was hoping for. May this week finally change all that. Well, may it? I... er... let's see.

Surrogates (directed by Jonathan Mostow, screenplay by Michael Ferris & John D. Brancato, based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele)

Ah, I'm sure this one seemed like a slam dunk. Bruce Willis scored mad bank ten years ago playing a father figure to that kid who saw deceased Philadelphians, so why not put him in another movie where he plays a surrogate dad? Except, the title is Surrogates, implying that he'll be in competition with other middle-aged dudes who are out to steal his paternal thunder. Highjinks ensue, one guy falls into a pool fully clothed, another one gets projectile-puked on by a baby, we build to a hilarious finale where they're all trying to out-do each other's 4th of July barbecues, end on a sweet little "it's all about the children" life lesson, and wait for the checks to come in! Well done, studio honchos. There'll be an extra hooker in your jacuzzi when you get home tonight.

Wait! It seems I may have been slightly mistaken. The team of well-trained border collies who handle my research have just informed me that this movie is actually about a future world of hyper-technology where people are "plugged in" to a nefarious supercomputer network that controls the whole world. Hmmm. Sound a little too much like a landmark Keanu Reeves movie from the 90s? I think so too. Get it straight, you stupid execs -- that kind of lightning only strikes once, and it was called Johnny Mnemonic. So disappointing. You're paying that hooker out-of-pocket.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (directed by Bob Gosse, screenplay by Tucker Max based on his book)

I'm stumped. How do you make fun of a guy whose very existence is a joke? This may be the greatest challenge I've ever faced on SJ. And I've riffed on United 93, for crying out loud. Sure, I could play the "alternate titles" game and toss out A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Douchebaggery, or Eternal Dickwad with a Worthless Mind, or maybe I Hope They Serve Beer At Your Public Castration Ceremony, And I Mean Actual Beer, Not The Mass-Produced Shitwater That You Pride Yourself For Drinking Because You Think It Makes You More "Real" Or Whatthefuckever -- you know, the usual stuff. But I'm not really in the mood for that.

Fame (directed by Kevin Tancharoen, screenplay by Allison Burnett, based on a screenplay by Christopher Gore)

This would have been a great opportunity to put a bunch of those High School Musical kids together with some American Idol favorites from past years and have them all sing and dance together and stuff. Sadly, given the ironclad nature of these performers' existing contracts, they'd be lucky to get away with singing in the shower, let alone appearing in a competing production. The makers of Fame have attempted to overcome this unfortunate hurdle by casting such up-to-the-minute teen icons as Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullally, and Charles S. Dutton -- an incredibly shrewd move given the vast numbers of middle-schoolers that stay up all night bit-torrenting old episodes of Cheers and Roc. (Remember when Roc started airing all its shows live? Those were some heady days. You kids think you have it pretty good with The Office and 30 Rock, but Roc Live! was a zenith of television comedy that may never again be reached. Imagine your favorite episode of Arrested Development, and then imagine how much funnier it would be if Jason Bateman had to break character occasionally to remember his lines, and you'll have some idea.)

Now where were we?

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (directed by John Krasinski, screenplay by John Krasinski, based on the book by David Foster Wallace)

Oh, this would have been a much better alternate title for that Tucker Max thing.

Snap Judgment: The Reckoning

2009-09-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

I've been prepping for over a year to make this the best Snap Judgment ever. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) Let's do this.

9 (rated PG-13, directed by Shane Acker, screenplay by Pamela Pettler, story by Acker)

So this one's apparently about a little guy made of cloth (but who still needs glasses) who wakes up from a coma just in time to stop the impending machine-made apocalypse. I know what you're thinking -- another Young Einstein already? Oh, that we should be so lucky. Sadly, Yahoo Serious's unfortunate copyright lawsuit against Yahoo! in 2000 likely means we won't be seeing his body of work stateside any time soon. Will the voice talents of Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly be enough to tide us over until the winds of forgiveness blow that incredible Australian back to our shores? It's hard to tell; most reviews say that it looks gorgeous but is thin on substance. Sounds like Friday afternoon at The Ivy, which I can walk past for free. Next!

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (rated PG-13, written/directed by Tyler Perry, based on his play)

Fun fact: The word "Bad" in German means "bath" or "bathe," so if you sort of semi-translate the title into German, you get Tyler Perry's I Can Bathe Myself, which I'm told the man himself is already planning for a 2053 release. He's got his mind on the future, that Tyler.

Whiteout (rated R, directed by Dominic Sena, screenplay by Jon Hoeber & Eric Hoeber and Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka)

Ah, white-out. Boy, have I had some crazy times with that particular brand of correction fluid. Back in '81, I found a bottle of it in my parents' study and poured it all over everything I could find: furniture, books, one of those "portable" tape recorders that weighed more than a cat, and -- speaking of which -- possibly one of the cats. If only they'd had YouTube back then! I would have ridden that train straight to my own "outrageous" reality show. And -- uh oh. Bad news. The bespectacled turtle who does my proofreading has just pointed out that the movie is Whiteout, whereas the substance that blondes allegedly use on their computer screens is Wite-Out. Why, one wonders, would the filmmakers fail to capitalize on such a brilliant opportunity for synergy between scary Kate Beckinsale shower scenes and nearly 60 years of dominance in the chemical typo-negation business? Those morons left billions on the table. Billions.

Sorority Row (rated R, directed by Stewart Hendler, written by Josh Stolberg & Pete Goldfinger, based on a screenplay by Mark Rosman)

Hey, here's a great idea for a horror flick: someone makes me go see this. OH ZING! No, no, I'm just kidding. Movies like this are the bread and butter of a snap-judgmenter like myself, since it's so astonishingly easy to predict every single scene in the movie just by looking at the poster. For example, I know that at some point, one of the girls will think the killer is hiding in the closet, and she opens it, and it turns out it's just a cat. And then later on, another girl will think she's being chased down the stairs by the killer, and she turns around at the last second... and it turns out it's just the cat. In the next scene, a girl is driving home from a bar late at night, and there's no one on the road but her and this other car -- with its headlights turned off. She keeps turning onto side streets, but the car stays on her tail. Finally the car corners her in an abandoned alley and the door opens and... it was just a cat driving. And the headlights weren't on because, duh, you need opposable thumbs to turn the knob. But at the end of the movie -- IT TURNS OUT THE CAT WAS THE KILLER AFTER ALL! Holy crap, you didn't see that one coming! It's like That Darn Cat meets I Know What You Did Last Summer, or, translated into cat language, Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow Can Opener.

Snap Judgment

2008-09-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am, over a day late. (A few months and a day, actually, but who's counting?)

(No, seriously, I hear someone counting back there and I want to know who the hell it is. You think time and witty ripostes grow on trees in the Nickverse?)

(Sheesh.)

Anyway! Let's see what we got.

Bangkok Dangerous (rated R, directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, written by Jason Richman)

This one sure looks like a slam-dunk, humorwise. Good thing; I'm kind of out of practice on the whole snap-judgmenting thing and I'm not going to turn down an easy softball pitch for my grand reopening. So would you look at those direc-- aw, CRAP, I already made a joke about Oxide Pang's hilariously chemical suffixy name. Damn you, PopWhore archive! Well, thank goodness the title is even sillier. What is that, exactly? Is that how verb-averse mothers warn their children about the perils of visiting Thailand? "Bangkok dangerous! Hotels overpriced! Hookers likely transvestite!" (I know, I know. Reeeallly didn't compare to a good Oxide joke. I'll try another.) The upside to all this is that it's now fairly clear that Nic Cage will sign on to absolutely any script that features him holding some kind of weapon, riding a motorcycle, having long hair, walking around, or breathing. I mean, does he actually have an agent anymore, or does his business contact number just ring a random line somewhere in Bangladesh where a guy named ~~Fakhruddin~~ Bill picks up the phone and says "How may I offer you excellent service in committing Nicolas Cage to appear in whatever crappy film you have in mind?" and maybe throws in a little "While I access this information, may I share with you some advantages of upgrading to Nicolas Cage Gold Service?"

Everybody Wants To Be Italian (rated R, written/directed by Jason Todd Ipson)

So, the movie's title and credits are supposed to be the Leaning Tower of Pisa and some of the cast are trying to hold it up. They're going with that, huh. Tell me, is this minor touch of marketing brilliance supposed to distract me from the fact that DAN CORTESE is in this movie? Because I am a man who holds pop-culture grudges, and if the bulk of Mr. Cortese's screentime isn't devoted to apologizing for those Burger King commercials and the popularization of "extreme" sports (in addition to the word "extreme" in general), then I ain't buying a ticket. Also: this guy's first movie was called The First Vampire: Don't Fall For The Devil's Illusions. Also: everyone does not want to be Italian. Some people want to be French, or Russian, or Thousand Island.

Snap Judgment

2008-05-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Iron Man (rated PG-13, directed by Jon Favreau, screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Otsby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, based on the comic book created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby)

Man, Jon Favreau has come a long way since playing that billionaire Ultimate Fighting Champion contestant on Friends, huh? Makes you wonder if that show imparted some kind of magic pixie dust to its guest stars. Perhaps next year we'll see the gala premiere at Cannes of un film de Ugly Naked Guy. Anyway, Iron Man also features Gwyneth Paltrow, who has apparently banged out enough oddly-named children to resume her acting career -- just in time, too, because if those mortgage payments were held up any longer, her husband was going to have to resort to making cameos in Kanye West videos. (Oops, too late.) The movie's getting all kinds of crazy buzz and positive reviews, but that scene in the trailer where Iron Man outruns a couple of fighter jets has to be making the airlines nervous -- it's bad enough that they're crippled by a sinking economy and stratospheric gas prices, and now they have to worry about the inevitable market competition from dudes in red metal suits who can fly you from LAX to JFK in two hours without that annoying $25 extra baggage fee. Sure, you might laugh about it now, but when Iron Man appears on Delta's inflight entertainment, let's see which scenes they cut.

Made of Honor (rated PG-13, directed by Paul Weiland, screenplay by Adam Sztykiel and Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont, story by Adam Sztykiel)

Ahem. Producers? Studio dudes? Marketing department? C'mon over and let's have a little chat. I'll need your full attention, so leave your BlackBerries and iPhones with your assistants. (It'll be okay; they can thumb-type "NOT UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES" just as well as you can, and probably with better spelling.) Ready? Okay. We need to discuss the concept of movie titles. Because you people clearly aren't getting it. Now, I'll grant you, lame wordplay in titles is a necessary evil. Puns, double entendres, creative misspellings, all par for the course. Done well, they can be cute and even kind of clever. Legally Blonde, for example. Made of Honor, on the other hand, makes no freaking sense. It just sounds like a low-budget, direct-to-video film about a selfless Roman soldier (probably played by Kevin Sorbo) who's forced to slay a bunch of burly extras in order to rescue his kidnapped fiancee. How does changing Maid to Made signify the fact that the maid of honor is a dude? It doesn't. It's that rare nonsensical pun, formed in such desperation that it doesn't actually mean anything. Like making a movie about a traveling pharmaceutical rep and calling it Breath of a Salesman, even though it has nothing to do with halitosis or lung disease or anything of that sort. See, ordinarily a blunder like this wouldn't be that big a deal. But you've been so shrewd about everything else with this movie so far that it's really a shame. I mean, on the weekend that Iron Man opens, you present the female filmgoing populace with Patrick Dempsey in a wedding movie. That's genius on the same level as putting a little high-tech gadgets section into Anthropologie or Sephora. And you even dowded up Michelle Monaghan enough so that women, rather than being demoralized by her freakishly unachievable beauty and physique, will walk out of the theater thinking something along the lines of, "Y'know, if she and Dempsey were in a bar together and I walked in, that bitch would crying into her cosmo within five minutes while McDreamy and I made the beast with two backs in the coatroom. Can I get a hell yeah?" Seriously, to blow the title after all that is just unforgivable. That is all. You may now get back to your busy day of yelling at the maitre'd of Craft while surreptitiously surfing porn.

Redbelt (rated R, written and directed by David Mamet)

Is there anything David Mamet can't do? Of course not. Plays, books, essays, screenplays, TV, jujitsu, whatever. If he wanted to become the world's top snail racer, he could do that. And then someone would interview him about it, and he'd say something like "The secret is, you must always remember that a snail is a snail; it's not a stapler, or a deck of playing cards, or a fifth of bourbon."

Snap Judgment

2008-04-25T09:39:00.001-07:00

Now on a semi-regular schedule! Really gives you a reason for living, doesn't it?

Baby Mama (rated PG-13, written and directed by Michael McCullers)

First of all, I ask you: Has anything good ever come from a movie poster where the less wacky character is looking sideways at the more wacky character? Hold on and let me scan the roughly 2,736 posters to which I have instantaneous memory recall access... yeah, it's looking like the answer is "No." I would also like to point out that Tina Fey, while awesome in every conceivable way (in fact, based on an ongoing informal survey of females I know, she seems to have easily wrested the "#1 Girl Crush" title from Angelina Jolie among both the "straight" and "otherwise" populations) -- anyway, I would like to point out that, yes, despite all that, she did not write this movie. If she had, do you think she would have called it Baby Mama? Of course not; she would have come up with something much more clever. Me, I would have given it the same title I'd give any movie I wanted to be successful: Die Hard 5: The Loneliest Girl at the Wedding, because just imagine the ticket sales.

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (rated R, written and directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

[Editor's note: OK, seriously, what's with all the comedies this week? Making fun of comedies is generally a losing battle, as the producers of all those (Genre) Movie movies should have learned by now but clearly haven't. Nevertheless, I shall try.] So, are they still supposed to be in college four years after the first movie? I didn't see it, but I thought they were smart. Hey, did you know John Cho is 36 years old? That's kind of getting on in years to play a... college... oh, for god's sake, there's nothing funny to say. Let's move on.

Rogue (rated R, written and directed by Greg McLean)

Finally! This is the kind of movie with which Snap Judgment butters its proverbial bread (or, if Snap Judgment is vegan, Earth-Balances its proverbial sprouted grain loaf). Now, one could choose this occasion to ruminate on why there are so many man-eating crocodile movies out there. A quick IMDb search for the keyword "crocodile" turns up a solid 142, although the scientific accuracy of that could be called into question given that one of them is The Chipmunk Adventure. Never mind, though, because I'm more interested in why there aren't more man-eating crocodile (or alligator; let's give them their due) films. Seems to me that they're a pretty easy sell -- tropical locations, lots of people in skimpy clothing, tons of gory death, satisfying finale in which the giant creature buys the farm in some kind of imaginitive way. All that stuff equals guaranteed box office, right? So I'm thinking that the fact that we only get maybe one a year means that a lot of the writers are screwing up their pitches. Hypothetical example: "So, it's Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas... tons of nubile girls and six-packed guys partying like there's no tomorrow. And guess what, for a lot of them there really is no tomorrow -- because a giant prehistoric alligator storms the beach and starts devouring these dudes and coeds by the dozen. The only man who can stop this horrific beast is a highly trained ex-Navy SEAL who's been tracking the alligator for years but could never get close enough to kill it. Can he finally do it this time, before the creature gets his daughter? The answer is yes -- actually, he kills it in the first five minutes, but it drains him emotionally and he spends the remainder of the film in a small cabin in Minnesota, pondering the troubling mysteries of the world as he stares into a dying fire." Must be something like that.

Snap Judgment

2008-04-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

No time to waste! Some of these movies really suck!

Street Kings (rated R, directed by David Ayer, screenplay by James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss, story by James Ellroy)

Well, maybe not this one. The filmmakers seem to have averted disaster by throwing in a few reputable actors (plus Keanu Reeves) and coughing up enough cash for a script by James Ellroy (actually, forget cash; he probably insisted on being paid in vintage 1940s snuff films). Because, can't we all imagine a film of this very same title, featuring a much smaller budget and starring only Common and The Game, without any of those other people? Of course we can. Those movies are everywhere! Directed by a three-time Video Music Award winner, featuring an original orchestral score by Smakk Foozee, and edited by somebody's nephew who got a fancy laptop for Christmas. This film might be better than those, but its poster certainly isn't... I mean, what is that, a giant inkblot? Did they have to cut costs at the last minute and re-use marketing materials from Rorschach: The Man Behind The Test?

Prom Night (rated PG-13, directed by Nelson McCormick, written by J.S. Cardone)

I think it's fair to say that this movie is a perfect demonstration of the absolute incompetence of the studio executives involved. Seriously. Do they think flocks of teenagers will just show up at any old film that has multiple gory deaths and occasional dry humping? No, they most certainly will not. They have standards. They have criteria. They are not going to shell out $10 of their parents' hard-earned money to see some thrown-together crapfest unless it stars at least one cast member from The Hills. It really is remarkable how out of touch the people behind those studio gates can be.

Smart People (rated R, directed by Noam Murro, written by Mark Poirier)

Here's what happen when you call a movie "Smart People."

1. Dumb people won't want to see it. There goes 63% of your box office.

2. Smart people who do see it will quickly realize that it's mistitled, and that the Scrabble(TM) reference on the poster is just a ruse.

3. Thomas Haden Church will whip it out at some point during filming. (Though, apparently, that happens often with him.)

Snap Judgment: Still Not Dead

2008-03-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Let's get right to it, shall we? Not only do I have no introductory comments; I don't even have a witty line referring to the fact that I have no introductory comments.

Never Back Down (rated PG-13, directed by Jeff Wadlow, written by Chris Hauty)

I see... so, it's Karate Kid but with Djimon Hounsou in the Pat Morita role, with a little Fight Club thrown in. You can make fun of this one all you want, but I think it's doing a tremendous social service. No, hear me out! By taking a movie that should clearly be direct-to-video and putting it exclusively in theaters (at least for the first few ~~months~~ ~~weeks~~ days), the producers will very likely draw out huge quantities of shut-ins who can normally only see films like this at home.

Anyway, I'm told that if the movie is successful, the branding experts have already planned a variety of spin-offs in completely different genres but with similar nomenclature. To wit: A cautionary tale about Trader Joe's parking lots at rush hour (Never Back Out); an IT orientation film demonstrating the importance of critical data redundancy (Always Back Up); and a fascinating character-based piece about a man searching for the right chiropractor (Sometimes Back Hurts).

Doomsday (rated R, written/directed by Neil Marshall)

The poster tells us that "Mankind has an expiration date" but apparently, the cyberpunk genre does not. How fortunate for us! It saves a trip to 1983 in the time machine -- and with gas prices what they are these days, that's starting to be an expensive jaunt... sure, carpooling can help, but there's always one person who wants to stop off in '88 to catch a Soul II Soul concert, and then before you know it you're a decade behind schedule and the car is loaded up with Crystal Pepsi bottles and Go-bots and whatnot.

Horton Hears a Who! (rated G, directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, based on the book by Dr. Seuss)

So, Dr. Seuss's widow Audrey Geisel gave permission to do this movie to the company responsible for both Ice Age movies. I'm sure she had her reasons (possibly as many as a couple million of them), but... y'know, come on. Blue Sky Studios are the very embodiment of what the kids these days call a try-hard. They're like, "Look at us, look at how great we can render icy landscapes and squirrel-fur and all that! And we have all these big-time actors graciously willing to accept seven-figure salaries to come in for 20 minutes to record their parts! Please, look at us? This time we got Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, just to be on the safe side." Meanwhile Pixar is off in the corner tapping its foot on the ground, mumbling "Um, yeah, could you make it kinda snappy over there on account of we're waiting for you to leave so we can break another box office record. Also, quick memo, bragging about your technology is so freakin' 1997."

What? Snap Judgment is BACK??

2008-03-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

Well, that's a fine kettle of fish! I suppose after hearing this news, you'll be expecting me to start dumping on this week's releases. Okay, fine, I think I'm up for that.

Yeah. I can totally do this.

Um... LonelyGirl15 jokes are still totally hip, right?

Oh boy. Here goes.

College Road Trip (rated G, directed by Roger Kumble, written by Emi Mochizuki, Carrie Evans, Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio)

[Note: With this edition of Snap Judgment, I am pleased to announce the arrival of the Wikipedia ReferenceXplainer 9000, an artificially intelligent device that should pull those previously over-your-head jokes right back down to eye level.]

Okay, fess up, Disney. Whose bright idea was it to put Martin Lawrence back in a car? Did you forget so soon what happened the last time he was out on the road?

While filming A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Lawrence had a violent outburst on the set and began taking drugs. He became increasingly erratic and was arrested after he reportedly brandished a pistol and screamed at tourists on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Hey, thanks, ReferenceXplainer 9000 (hereafter referred to as RX9K)! You're already making my job a whole lot easier. Anyway, let's get back to this ridiculous film.

Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.

That's... uh... thanks, RX9K, but I think most people already know what film is. So, this movie co-stars Raven Symone, famous not only for her pivotal role in the Full-House-ization of The Cosby Show (c'mon, she had to be as adorably cloying as both Olsen twins put together!) but also for lending her considerable talent to the pop culture phenomenon That's So Raven, which I think we can all agree was--

Raven is the common name given to the largest species of passerine birds in the genus Corvus. Corvids are also commonly referred to as crows and other species in the same genus include jackdaws and rooks.

[Note: The Wikipedia ReferenceXplainer 9000 has been disabled until further notice.]

[Additional note: Jackdaws? Who knew?]

10,000 B.C. (rated PG-13, directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Roland Emmerich & Harold Kloser)

"The first hero"? Really? Recent NASA estimates have pegged the age of the universe at 13.73 billion years, give or take a hundred million. Are you telling me that for the first 13.729999 of those 13.73 billion years, there was not a single hero anywhere? No renegade Cro-Magnon who stood up against his Neanderthal oppressors (or vice versa) to bring freedom to his countrymen, William Wallace-style? No ass-kicking australopithecine who assembled a ragtag band of fellow missing links to steal from the stingy rich for the benefit of the lower classes? No fishy mammal who used his newfound legs to climb up onto shore and claim the dry land bounty for his people? No strong-willed protozoa who refused at any cost to surrender his share of the primordial ooze? C'mon.

The Bank Job (rated R, directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais)

I love a good heist movie as much as the next guy, but with the good/suck ratio of this genre running at about 1 to 8 trillion these days, I have to admit I'm skeptical. And that skepticism leads, as it inevitably does, to speculation (since the two words are kind of similar if you don't think about it too much). Such as: what if the movie really were about a bank job? You'd have your same memorable team of misfits, each member with his or her unique specialty, except instead of robbing the bank, their goal would be to provide top quality customer service at an efficiency rate that enables long-term financial growth and market competitiveness. In the first 15-20 minutes of the movie you'd see the group being recruited, one by one, until they get to the last guy whom they desperately need but refuses to join. And then instead of convincing him to come along by revealing that the bank manager was responsible for putting his brother in jail, they'd bust out a well-oiled Powerpoint presentation detailing his highly competitive salary package (including his choice of PPO/HMO plans and tax-deferred 401(k) with matching employer contributions up to a ceiling of $20,000/year). The climax would take place at 4:59 P.M. on a Friday, when everyone's ready to clock out and enjoy the weekend but an irate customer holds things up by demanding an immediate cash withdrawal that exceeds his daily limit. What does the team do? Have security escort the guy out, thus betraying their unflappable commitment to 100% consumer satisfaction? Or stay long enough to resolve the situation, putting their sought-after dinner reservations in jeopardy? Luckily, just when all hope seems lost, the Asperger's-afflicted hacker who avoids human contact at all costs manages to break out of his shell and come forward with a two-stage payment compromise that appeases the customer and gets our heroes out of the office with plenty of time to go home and shower before dinner. You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!

New Year's Resolutions for Hollywood

2008-01-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

No, I don't think any of these will stick. But wouldn't it be nice if they did? Here we go.

1. Put the writers back to work.

And that means cave, you stupid studios, cave cave cave cave cave. Surrender, like the French military at a fireworks show. Fold, like the rusty accordion you'd sell your mothers for if it had the rights to The Hobbit inside. I understand y'all have massive egos, but it seems like you don't have much trouble swallowing your pride long enough to suck Will Smith's toes as you beg him to let you write him a $30 million check, so I sort of think it wouldn't be that big a blow to your collective bravado to make a few small concessions and allow the writers to come back in and type up the full slate of blockbusters and hit shows that will save all your asses from a shareholder revolt later in the year. Good? Good. Now pick up the phone and I won't tell anyone the story I heard from the pharmacist at the Brentwood Rite Aid about the cream you've been using ever since that "acquisitions" trip to Bangkok last fall.

I put this resolution first not because I'm some crazed pro-writer propagandist (well, OK, I kind of am, but that's not the main reason) but rather because everything else is irrelevant unless and until this particular issue gets settled.

2. Release the occasional movie that isn't a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, franchise-starter, spin-off, knock-off, or... you get the point.

Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering what would happen if every single non-original movie from now on were an utter failure at the box office. If the only successful movies were interesting, unique one-time-only films that didn't end with a "To Be Continued..." and the concept poster for the next installment staring you in the face as you walked back into the lobby.

Yeah, it's a nice thought, but I know it's not realistic. And I'm aware that there are some pretty great sequels and prequels and threequels and so forth; at their best, they're the movies we get the most excited about seeing. I'll freely admit to my unrestrained glee at the fact that this year holds the promise of new James Bond, Batman, and Indiana Jones films. I just wish the well-manicured men and women in charge would take a look at the accounting books once in a while (helpful note: the non-doctored ones are on the lower shelf) and realize that it's possible to make a lot of money on individual movies and even more possible to lose a lot of money on franchises and sequels and all that.

The more the universe gets bloated with films with numbers in the title, or cross-dressing comedians who aren't Eddie Izzard, or an unusually techno-savvy Nicolas Cage, or mysterious killers who target former WB starlets, or beautiful quirky anorexic twentysomethings who can't get dates, or enormous suburban families whose dads are always falling off the roof, or teenage hackers in Ed Hardy shirts who stumble onto government secrets, or magical prophecies involving Dakota Fanning lookalikes, or adorably plucky pets who save the world, or bad-ass white guy ninjas who make Crystal Method songs magically play when they walk into a room, or million dollar Manhattan weddings where everything's going wrong, gosh darn it, or loosely interpreted historical battles with extra carnage and/or nudity helpfully thrown in, or superfast cars much more interesting than the people driving them, or black sports teams who just need a white coach to teach them to win, or any combination or permutation of any of the above -- the more all that becomes the inescapable reality of moviedom, the more people like me will prefer to stay home and watch something better via Netflix or the DVR.

Good, original movies can make money. It's happened before and it'll happen again. Please let it. Thank you.

3. Settle the goddamn high-definition format war.

2006 was not a great year for movies overall, but these two were pretty awesome. Do me a solid, Hollywood, and let me watch them both on the same kind of disc.

4. Help me destroy MTV.

Remember this logo and slogan? The last time it was remotely applicable, Michael Jackson still appeared mostly normal, Madonna was a Catholic, and Tom Cruise was just a movie star. And yet, all three of them have done a much better job of retaining their identities in the years since than MTV has. Once upon a time, MTV propelled artists to stardom while reporting on what was cool and happening in America. Now... well, I'm not sure what they do now because I can't go near the channel. I think they pay teenagers to videotape their parents having sex in Run DMC's pool, or something like that. Oh, and a girl pretending to be bisexual tries to find a date while reading from a bad script (but a script nonetheless, people) about how hard the decision is. That one I knew about. And as for the music, they leave it to MySpace to find the bands and then make them embarrass themselves with horribly uninteresting videos shot by film school freshman. (Not movie film school, mind you; I'm talking about the school you go to to learn how to make the disgusting film that forms on the top of weeks-old coffee.) Bottom line: MTV must be decimated. Quickly, and permanently. I don't even know why this is a topic for debate; if we'd done this ten years ago we could have headed off Carson Daly's rise to power.

And that's all. Now get that gym membership and diet book, Hollywood, and go to work.

Bionic Woman revisited: the actual pilot

2007-09-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

Now that I've seen the actual pilot of Bionic Woman, I can compare it to the early cut I reviewed last month and offer some final-er thoughts on it.

So. Like I said, the deaf sister originally played by Ann from Arrested Development was 86'ed in favor of the fresh-faced, flyover-state-friendly, could-easily-be-in-High-School-Musical Lucy Hale, who with her non-deafness and generic movie kid looks imbues the character with about 42 percent of the original pathos. We still get introduced to her as she's blasting rock music in the early morning, but when not-yet-bionic Jamie comes in to turn it down, instead of the original dripping-with-sad-irony line "Afraid I'll go deaf?", she just says something like "Bloody well right I'm playing loud music! What of it?", or perhaps a sentence that sounds less like a British teenager circa 1962. The point being: sister character = no longer interesting... for the time being, anyway. Maybe later in the season she'll reveal an even more shocking impediment, like a lack of proper thumb dexterity that greatly reduces her texting speed.

Other changes. The Jamie-waking-up-in-the-hospital-bed scene is half as good now, since they completely neutered the surprise shot of her not-yet-finished bionic legs. In the rough cut they were pretty freaky looking, all neon-y and mechanical, but now they basically look like normal legs except a little more translucent than yours or mine. Doesn't quite make sense that she still screams the same amount when she sees them.

They even screwed the babysitter scene! There's this part where Jamie has to go away and leave her sister with a babysitter, and in the rough cut the babysitter was this gruff Russian lady who got the best line in the entire show: "I am not babysitter. Think of me as prison guard. (Pause) I brought Parcheesi." But no, now when the sister-care help shows up it's in the form of two of Jamie's friends, both of whom looked like they just ducked out of line at Ritual. What a gyp.

And let's talk about the music. In the rough cut, it was good. On air, it sucked. It would have been better if they'd just had an announcer come on the soundtrack with a recorded message about which demographics the network was hoping to snag. "Breathe Me"? During a roof-jumping scene? To quote Ari Gold, "Really? REALLY?!"

Anyhoo, the net result is that I'm much more sure that this is definitively not a good pilot, and I also have even less faith that the show will be good in the long term. I still reserve the right to have my mind changed by future episodes, but I don't think that's likely.

Snap Judgment TV, Part 2: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

2007-08-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

So, here it is. The entirely unnecessary TV prequel to the already entirely unnecessary Terminator 3. Like that movie, it has zero involvement from James Cameron; and also like that movie, it's about ten times more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Let's start with the credits. The pilot was written by Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, The Black Dahlia) and directed by David Nutter (Smallville, Without a Trace, and roughly every other major TV pilot in the last eight years) under the supervision of fellow executive producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, who founded the legendarily money-hemorrhaging studio Carolco in the 80s and, upon its collapse, held onto their Terminator rights with an Ultimate Fighting Champion-esque vice grip.

The choice of Lena Headey in the title role heralds the advent of a younger, prettier, and more British Sarah Connor than we've seen before. She certainly looks nothing like Linda Hamilton, but then again, neither does Thomas Dekker (the new John Connor) look remotely like an accurate representation of the developmental stage between Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl, so I guess it's safe to say that we're kind of throwing the movies out the window at this point. Which is fine with me, since, as I already said, the show is entirely unnecessary -- and, let's face it, potentially harmful -- to the continuity of the films. Essentially what the creators said here is, screw whatever happens before or after this timeline and let's just make a big-budget show about a bazooka-toting paranoiac mom and her maladjusted kid laying low in suburban America for a few minutes at a time until another killer cyborg blows their house up and they just barely escape; then let's do that again the next week but see if we can get, say, Luke Wilson to do a guest spot.

That's what they appear to be doing, anyway, for the first 15-20 minutes of the show. And then... But soft! What Summer Glau in yonder window breaks! And by "breaks," I mean "turns out to be a good-guy female Terminator masquerading as a high school student." (This, of course, is where that "abandoning all notions of continuity" thing really helps, since you'd think Nick Stahl might have mentioned this little anecdote at some point in Terminator 3 while he was cooped up in the back of a truck with Claire Danes for about a decade with nothing to talk about. But anyway.) So the SummerNator, naturally, kicks all manner of evil cyborg ass and helps our fresh-faced mother and son* escape; and by this point we're comfortably ensconced in the narrative structure employed by all three movies.

Except, wait! In the timeline of the show, it's still the late 90's! That means no iPhones, Priuses, or Fall Out Boy! Whence the product placement opportunities? Whence, goddamit?!

Oh, they've got that taken care of. You think anything is going to get between a big network and its chance to feature the Wii in a prominent scene? Please.

So, unsarcastically, how good is the show, really? It's good. At least for the time being, it's good enough to make me forget that it's telling the same exact story as three movies I've already seen, the last two of which had bigger budgets than an entire season of this show. On the other hand, speaking of entire seasons, I must admit I have a lot of trouble understanding how they're going to drag this out for the promised twelve episodes. Will Sarah turn out to be evil? Will John and the SummerNator attempt to defy the taboo against human-cyborg love? Will any of them find out who killed Laura Palmer? Recycling the usual Bad-Terminator-vs.-Good-Terminator-plus-humans action on a TV budget (even a big one) was a pretty impressive feat -- and yet a small one compared with sustaining a running time equivalent to five more movies. We'll just have to wait and see what the producers have in store for us as (or, well, if) the show goes on. My guess? Violence!

*In this case, mother and son are only fourteen years apart in real life. This is a calculated risk on behalf of the network: on one side of the scale there's the marketing advantage of providing nubile eye candy to both sexes; on the other side, the danger of a verisimilitude-killing offscreen romance.

Snap Judgment TV, Part 1: Bionic Woman

2007-08-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

(Big disclaimer here. The pilot I watched will most assuredly not be the one that hits the airwaves in the fall; in fact, except for one thing, I have zero idea how much will be changed in the meantime. Here are my thoughts nonetheless.)

In a post-Buffy/Alias/Heroes TV landscape, remaking Bionic Woman with today's special effects and mass-marketing technology seems like at least as safe a bet as any other show that gets millions poured into it before being yanked from the schedule by Thanksgiving. And yet, when I was a lowly staffer at USA back in 2003-04 (they owned the rights back then), this property just sat on the shelf as producer after producer came in to pitch his or her take on it -- none of them able to fashion an idea exciting enough to get funding. (Rob Thomas was actually one of the closest to making it happen; I'm not sure why his deal fell through, but clearly it was a boon to the future fans of a tiny wisecracking detective.) In case you're curious, the team that ended up bringing it to fruition is comprised of:

David Eick, co-developer of Battlestar Galactica;
Jason Smilovic and Michael Dinner, writer/director team behind notable NBC cancellations Karen Sisco and Kidnapped; and
Laeta Kalogridis, screenwriter of Pathfinder and Alexander but also -- more importantly -- also of the many who took a stab at Wonder Woman. Plus, she did that totally awesome (in a finger-quotey way) WB show Birds of Prey, about crime-fighting Batgirls.

So, let's see. High-priced producers? Check. Fancy network effects budget? Check. Unknown British actress in title role, ripe for exploitive long-term contract? Check! So how, pray tell, do these elements manifest themselves on the smallish screen?

The answer: not terribly! (And really, "terribly" was a definite possibility. "Worse than Dark Angel*" was a possibility.)

Anyway, here's the deal on the plot. There's this bartender chick whose boyfriend is a super-smart professor and surgeon. They get into a horrible car accident one night in which the bartender chick is almost killed but the surgeon boyfriend walks away with injuries minor enough to allow him to perform surgery on her that same night. The surgery he performs on her is somewhat outside the scope of your typical Addison Montgomery or Rocket Romano-type TV sawbones, since by the time he finishes, the bartender chick has the combined powers of Trinity, most of the Incredibles, and Mad-Eye Moody.

Also, instead of Seattle Grace or Cook County, the procedure is done in the bowels of a super-secret facility in beautiful foresty Vancouver which is run by Miguel Ferrer and an Eastern European woman vaguely reminiscent of Frau Farbissina from Austin Powers. The super-secret facility people are like, "Um, boyfriend dude? Who gave you permission to turn your girlfriend into She-Ra?" And he's like, "She was totally going to die [from that same car crash that I needed about two band-aids from] and obviously the only option was to shoot her full of experimental nanobots, so lay off!"

Super-surgeon boyfriend helps her escape the facility, and the stage is set for all kinds of mayhem, some of it involving another Bionic Woman whose intense need for love leads her to maladaptive coping mechanisms like killing people and destroying stuff. There's also a lot of plotty stuff about the shady scientific Vancouver-forest club and what they're all about. And the bartender has a deaf sister played by Ann from Arrested Development, except she's now been replaced by a girl who was a finalist on American Juniors (a.k.a. American Idol II: Electric Tween-A-Loo), so at least that part of the show will have been re-shot by the time it airs.

* * * *

The upshot is this: Bionic Woman tries really hard to be fun and believable and succeeds occasionally in both areas. In and of itself, the pilot's not a life-changer. Mostly it's there to lay the groundwork, introduce us to the players, tell us what's at stake. Yes, generally speaking, if a pilot can do all that and still be remotely watchable, it's an impressive achievement. (It's also why almost every pilot you see is either written or rewritten by one of a dozen or so people.)

But I gotta say, I can't ignore the bar that the Alias pilot set for the whole "ass-kicking girl involved in some pseudo-government conspiracy type deal" genre, even though that bar was so high that Alias itself stopped being able to clear it after the first couple seasons. I was hoping Bionic Woman would knock me on my ass to at least half that degree, and it didn't. It's too all over the place to be a real nail-biter; the exciting parts keep getting interrupted so the show can remind us how many other characters we're supposed to be paying attention to. Which, again, is excusable since a pilot's most important goal is to demonstrate that there's potential for a series.

And yeah, I think there is. The acting and writing is up to par, the action and effects are good and even occasionally stellar, and there's enough intrigue and unanswered questions to provide hope for some interesting twists down the road. In other words, it'll be good as long as it keeps getting better. I'm reasonably confident that NBC is motivated not to screw this up in the wake of Heroes being such a cash/publicity cow (not that any Hollywood entity ever really learns from experience, ever); but the next few episodes will, obviously, be the real evidence of that. And all I know about what happens next is that Isaiah Washington is coming on for a several-episode guest stint. Hey, maybe they'll finally let him be gay.

---------------------
*Dark Angel was a James Cameron-produced crap-tacle on Fox, circa 2000, that committed three of the most grievous sins in TV history: sucking, really sucking, and launching Jessica Alba's career.)

Snap Judgment: Slightly Less Dead Than Disco

2007-04-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

People everywhere are trying to write off Snap Judgment as defunct, gone, a relic. I mean, the #1 nonfiction best-seller on the New York Times list is Snap Judgment: An Epitaph by Walter Isaacson. (In some places it's being sold under the strange and misleading alternate title, Einstein.)

Which is why, at every turn, I must fight to prove them wrong. And by "every turn," of course, I mean "hopefully at least once a month." So here goes.

The Invisible (thriller, rated PG-13, directed by David S. Goyer, written by Mick Davis and Christine Roum, based on the novel by Mats Wahl)

I was looking at a different version of this poster the other night, and the tagline on it said "How do you solve a murder.... when the victim is you?" I don't know about you, but I tend to think that it would be very, very easy. Seriously, if someone really thought that line made a good marketing hook (and clearly, someone did) then I really hope that they never discover the entire rest of the mystery/detective genre because they may very well spontaneously combust when they find out that there are movies about people solving murders of victims they NEVER EVEN MET. And some of them are even TRUE! STORIES! To get back to the point, though, if someone really does have trouble solving their own murder then I suppose that could make for a semi-interesting movie if the victim were, say, blind or deaf or Lindsay Lohan. Ooh, wait. Looks like I'm in luck on that last one.

Next (action, rated PG-13, directed by Lee Tamahori, written by Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh, and Paul Bernbaum, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick)

Let's do a quick recap on Lee Tamahori. He was responsible for the (thankfully short-lived) Bruckheimer-ization of the Bond series; then he cashed in those precious blow-shit-up points to direct XXX 2: Yes They Actually Made A Freaking Sequel And Oh My God Will Ice Cube Ever Appear In Another Good Movie I Guess Not But I Just Hope He Doesn't Do A Follow-Up to "Are We There Yet?" Oh Shit There's The Poster For It Excuse Me I Need Several Drinks. Then he was arrested for prostitution -- selling it, not buying it. I desperately hope he didn't snag any customers, but then again, if you pulled over and let this guy into your car dressed as a woman, you kind of had to know what you were getting. Anyway, with all that mess behind him you'd think he'd want to leap back into the cinematic world with the strongest directorial work he could muster. And, as it turns out, that work consisted of telling Nic Cage how much to furrow his brow while things behind him are exploding. But we should be supportive. Lee's been through a lot. It's like when you applaud a friend at an AA meeting when he announces that he landed the night manager gig at 7-11: sure, it doesn't sound like much, but he's trying.

Sorry, movie, you don't even get credits or IMDB links. Frankly I'm not even sure I want people to know your title, lest it gets into their heads and they accidentally blurt it out at the ticket booth when they're trying to see that Dutch Nazi movie. I only mention it in the first place to indicate just how much I want it to go away. And I better not hear ANYONE say something like "Oh, it's so bad it's good." That's like saying cyanide is so bad it's good. Maybe it is, but if it kills you before you realize its benefits then everyone loses. I will also mention that the movie stars Jamie Kennedy, only because I really want his name in the same paragraph as "Nazi" and "cyanide."

Snap Judgment: Special Cesar Chavez Day Edition

2007-03-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

At home today, recovering from a serious case of not-having-to-go-to-work-thanks to a-famous-commie-farmer-itis.

Yeah, Cesar Chavez Day. Across the state, scores of high school students are trying to walk out so they can honor the heroic labor leader in their own private ceremonies -- ceremonies which may or may not involve getting baked and playing Guitar Hero.

But anyway. Movies.

Meet the Robinsons (animated comedy, rated G, directed by Stephen J. Anderson, written by a bunch of people, based on the book by William Joyce)

From what I've seen so far, this film looks like it will easily compete with the best of the computer-animated Saturday afternoon Nickelodeon shows produced for pennies on the dollar in South Asian graphics sweatshops and cast with the finest voice actors that a third-tier talent agency in Woodland Hills could provide on short notice. But don't listen to me. My journalistic integrity with Disney has been somewhat in question ever since they got rid of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Not that, you know, that was like a big deal or anything. Can I have a minute to get a tissue? I think there's, um, some dust in my eye or something.

The Lookout (thriller, rated R, written/directed by Scott Frank)

This movie does have an interesting set of actors, but it strikes me as having resulted from the most ADD, possibly-meth-addled casting meeting ever. "Okay, this is kind of a noir so let's get the kid from that high school noir. He was great on 3rd Rock From The Sun, too. Damn, that show was funny. You know what else was funny? Wedding Crashers. Ooh, the crazy chick from Wedding Crashers! We HAVE to get the crazy chick from Wedding Crashers! You know she's married to Sacha Baron Cohen? Man, Borat made me laugh even harder than The Big Lebowski. OH! Can we get The Dude? PLEASE, can we get The Dude? Yeah, Jeff Bridges. Or was it Jeff Daniels? I don't know. Daniels is probably cheaper. We'll get him. Hey, wait a second, now I'm confused. Is the Wedding Crashers chick Isla Fisher or Jenna Fischer? Which is the one from The Office? No, the American one, not the British one. Yeah, I know the British one is better. It never works when Americans try to pull off British stuff. Like Match Point. The dialogue in that was so... oh, except that one guy in Match Point. No, not Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, he's too expensive. The other guy. The friend. Do we have a role for him? We do? Okay then. Let's go home, I'm about to crash."

Blades of Glory (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Will Speck & Josh Gordon, written by Busy Phillips, Jeff Cox, Craig Cox, John Altschuler, David Krinsky)

I've never seen Napoleon Dynamite and I've generally been immune to Will Ferrell's post-SNL career, but I will say that I'm pretty fascinated by the fact that Busy Phillips has a writing credit on this movie. This is quite a follow-up to a storied acting career that has included ER, Dawson's Creek, Freaks & Geeks, and the oft-repeated line, "No, not Bijou Phillips." Being a big fan of F&G and having greatly enjoyed her performance as misunderstood mean girl Kim Kelly on that tragically brilliant show, I hope that this initial outing as screenwriter will be but a first step on a great path towards even greater greatness, a path that -- dare I hope-- will include movies comfortably outside the ice-skates-to-the-crotch genre.

Snap Judgment: The Endless Cycle of Sex and Violence

2007-03-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

About time, huh? Well, let's not waste any more precious seconds on the preliminaries -- I might change my mind and go to Starbucks instead. Oops, too late. Be right back.

Okay. Much better. Let's get started.

Wild Hogs (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Walt Becker, written by Brad Copeland)

Like you, I had suspicions about this film's level of quality. Had. I'm happy to say that all my fears are allayed now that I've looked up Walt Becker's (the director) filmography on IMDB. Yes, he was responsible for Van Wilder, but that was his first big studio film and we all know that young filmmakers can get eaten alive doing those things. So let's put that one aside and breathe a deep sigh of relief as we take a look at the other film he released the same year, an obviously overlooked gem entitled Buying the Cow. The IMDB has recently updated its movie classification system to a much more specific methodology, and it has helpfully placed Buying the Cow into the following categories (which I am not making up):

Teen Movie / Independent Film / Hit In Crotch / Wedding / Bare Butt

See? Now look at me with a straight face and tell me that this guy wouldn't be your very first choice to lead the Pillsbury Scientologyboy, the 405 Gun-waving Fat Suiter, the "Remember when Middle America peed itself every time I waved tools around and made primate sounds" guy, and the Lone Reputable Actor Roped Into The Proceedings By Way Of An Extra-Fat Paycheck And/Or An Ether-Soaked Rag. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Zodiac (true crime thriller, rated R, directed by David Fincher, written by James Vanderbilt, based on the book by Robert Graysmith)

Sure, 70's period movies have been a wet dream for just about every filmmaker in America ever since P.T. Anderson put a naked Heather Graham on roller skates, but can you blame them? I mean, how else does one get the opportunity to adorn today's A-list beautiful people with mutton chops and feathered bangs before raiding Uncle Jack's eight-track library to find the perfect forgotten glam rock gem to begin the soundtrack? And that's just the tip of the iceberg! The cars, my god, the cars! Big boxy Cadillacs, Camaros with eighty-foot hoods, and K-Cars, K-Cars, K-Cars as far as the eye can see! Let's not forget about the technology stuff, either; I mean, nothing's sexier on film than an office full of 13" green-screen terminals with command-line interfaces. Hell, once you have all that in your movie it doesn't much matter what the story is about. What's important is that you've done your part in reminding the world that there was a time in American history when all the straight-laced intelligent people wore jackets with leather elbow patches and all the goofy free-spirited people wore paisley bell-bottoms.

Black Snake Moan (drama, rated R, written/directed by Craig Brewer)

Finally another entry in the burgeoning "It's okay if Samuel L. Jackson does it" genre of American cinema. Really, I'm not even kidding. Can you imagine anyone else getting away with chaining Christina Ricci to a radiator? If it were, say, Aaron Eckhart, I think most average moviegoers would cringe themselves to death within twenty minutes. SLJ, on the other hand, is completely immune. If there's a scene where he stands up and yells "I don't care if you have to piss on the goddamned floor, I ain't takin' off that fuckin' chain!", it will probably garner a standing ovation. Which actually worries me a little bit, because, you know, cloning technology keeps getting closer and closer to reality. And there could come a day when some evil would-be dictator takes over our TV airwaves and presents us with a perfect Sam Jackson replica who asks us "Are you all going to bow down and worship the Great Swufitova as your lord and master, or am I going to have to come down there and put my foot up your sorry ass?" and we all look at our televisions and say "Hell yeah! Sign me up for some of that indentured servitude stuff!" Because let's face it; it's only a matter of time.

Snap Judgment: Because I Snapped So

2007-02-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

Historically, this is a weekend in which the studios are hesitant to put out any aggressively guy-oriented movies. The Super Bowl itself may only be airing on Sunday, but your average "YEAHHHHH! FIRST DOWN!!!" guy needs Saturday to shop for Bud Light and nacho supplies and Friday night to find the bottle opener; and it's unlikely that all that will allow for enough time to catch the latest "Vin Diesel kills a bunch of guys and sleeps with some hot woman who digs baldness and speech impediments" thriller. In its place we have a chick flick aimed at middle-aged book club attendees (but the kind who don't really read the books and just go for the divine sun-dried tomato hummus that Shelly makes); and a horror flick aimed at the kids who think the Super Bowl is lame and know they can catch the good commercials on YouTube within an hour anyway.

Because I Said So (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Michael Lehmann, written by Karen Leigh Hopkins & Jesse Nelson)

I don't really know what to say about this, to be perfectly honest. All I can really do is point out that Diane Keaton played Zach Braff's mother in Manhattan Murder Mystery and now plays Mandy Moore's mother in this movie. Which explains why they broke up, because EWWW! They're brother and sister! Perhaps that's the context of the scene depicted on the poster. "Didn't I tell you not to hook up with your own flesh and blood? Just imagine what this'll do to your singing career when the press finds out you have a secret love child running around with funny-looking teeth and an uncanny talent for playing 'Dueling Banjos!'" "But MOM! He's so cute and funny and his directorial style fuses a blistering pop culture sensibility with haunting moments of raw emotion!" "Don't talk to me like that, young lady! I aborted a kid in Godfather II and so help me, if you keep working my nerves like this I'll chain you to the couch and put The Other Sister in the DVD player on perpetual repeat. Do you want to end up like your oldest sister, trapped on a once-great TV show with an incompetent new executive producer? Because that's where your life is heading!" "Oh, whatever, mom. Why don't you go do another CBS Movie of the Week?"

The Messengers (horror, rated PG-13, directed by Oxide Pang Chun & Danny Pang, written by Mark Wheaton and Todd Farmer)

It's not often that I get truly wacky director's names to pick on in this column. Well, okay, it's kind of often. But that doesn't make it any less worthwhile. Oxide? OXIDE??? I know there are plenty of embarrassed kids out there whose parents named them after the song that was playing when they were conceived or something like that, but believe me, it's got to be worse to be named after the cleaning product they used to remove pizza stains from the shag carpeting later that night. Anyway, I'm thrilled that this movie has given Penelope Ann Miller another chance to return to her early 90's A-list status. She's always been one of those people whose name sounds way familiar but then you can't name anything she's been in. (Up until a minute ago I thought she was in Wishmaster, but it was actually The Relic. In my defense, both those movies were released in 1997, featured scores of gruesome deaths, and sucked.) I have faith, though; if anyone can get a stellar performance out of her, it's Oxide.

Snap Judgment: Hitch a ride on nostalgia

2007-01-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

Hey studios! I've got three documentaries from Netflix at home, and two of them are about architecture! Got anything more exciting?

Please?

Eh... didn't think so.

The Hitcher (horror, rated R, directed by Dave Meyers, written by Jake Wade Wall and Eric Bernt, based on an earlier screenplay by Eric Red)

First of all, what's with the movie's website (www.neverpickupstrangers.com)? Is this the new synergy between big-budget schlock and the Ad Council? When they get around to making another Nightmare on Elm Street, is the URL going to be something like http://www.SnoringCanBeASignOfSleepApneaCallYourDoctor.com? Anyway, the better news is that the film was directed by music video veteran Dave Meyers, meaning that it will likely combine the subtly effective camera placement from "Gossip Folks" with the mis en scene of "Get the Party Started" and perhaps a touch of the neo-Tarkovskyan imagery so well illustrated in "Bawitdaba." Plus it has Sean Bean. Sean Bean! How the hell did they get him in the movie? you might ask. The answer is simple: 3:30 A.M. bathroom ambush. Because when you wake up in the middle of the night with that intense bladder-draining urge, and you just want to finish the task and get back in bed, well then, you might just sign a contract if that's what it takes to get the studio lawyer away from your porcelain mecca.

The Good German (drama, rated R, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Paul Attanasio, based on the book by Joseph Kanon)

Soderbergh, as we all know, views a lot of his movies as experiments -- whether it's the experiment of making a super-low-budget, mostly improvisational film with a lot of famous actors, the experiment of releasing a movie in theaters, on DVD, and on TV at the same time, or the experiment of making possibly the worst sequel of all time and still getting people to show up. Here he's tried to carefully replicate every aspect of a 1940s studio film, using only equipment that was available back then (i.e., no zoom lenses, no wireless microphones) and no modern special effects or sophisticated location shooting. My guess is it went even further, such that he forced Paul Attanasio to write the script on a rusty Underwood typewriter, instructed his assistants to distribute old-fashioned cocaine-laced tonics to anyone feeling "a little tuckered out" on set, and relaxed at the end of a long shooting day with a visit to an opium den. (The one area of concession to modernity came, of course, in the area of acting -- it may have been verboten to use any cameras not found in Frank Capra's basement, but Soderbergh certainly wasn't going to prevent Clooney from dropping a few f-bombs or keep Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire from engaging in some nudity-laden bedroom hijinks.) And the results, as most people agree, suck. It's probably for the best, because if this had been a huge critical and box-office success it would doubtless have inspired the studio heads to begin a mass exhumation of all the directors in the Hollywood Forever cemetery (along with their former agents, who would positively pee themselves at offers of $2,000 a week salary for their clients, blissfully unaware that that amount was roughly half of the film's Red Bull budget).

Snap Judgment: So this is the New Year, and I don't see any difference...

2007-01-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Happy belated 2007, people. Rest assured, the Judgment is alive and well and continues to thrive on the dreck spewed forth by our massive entertainment conglomerate neighbors.

Shall we begin?

Primeval (thriller, rated R, directed by Michael Katleman, written by John Brancato & Michael Ferris)

Ah, we return to the "Inspired by the true story" school of poster-making. In this case, the writers were inspired by a twenty-five foot man-eating crocodile. And really, who wouldn't be inspired by one of those? I bet that crocodile sells out his "Maximize Your Potential" conferences at the Staples Center every six months, pacing back and forth on the stage and yelling into his headset mic about how "only you have the power to change you!" And at the end of his talk he points to a woman in the front row of the audience and tells everyone that just one year ago, she was 4,500 pounds overweight with a credit score of negative 2 billion and now she's a size four and owns her own ten million dollar Pilates business! "Do you have anything to add?" he asks her, motioning to one of his assistants to hand her a microphone. "Giant killer crocodile changed my life!" the woman answers with tears of joy.

Alpha Dog (true crime, rated R, written/directed by Nick Cassavetes)

Yeah, so I really don't know anything about that Jesse James Hollywood guy. But a quick trip to Wikipedia should take care of that, so please excuse me for just a moment. Okay, I'm back. I'm actually going to go ahead and not read that Wikipedia entry, because before I even got to the text of it, Wikipedia was already warning me that the article "may be confusing or unclear for some readers," "appears to contradict itself," and "does not cite its references or sources." That's what I like about Wikipedia, though. They're upfront about their faults. I wish everyone was. Just once I'd like to hear a State of the Union address begin, "My fellow Americans, I have no evidence to back up any of this, and frankly I really have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about." But, um... tangent! This movie has such a huge cast that I could spend about six years talking about all of them, plus it's directed by the guy responsible for The Notebook (yeah, I know, OMG! and *SWOON* and everything, but it really wasn't that big of a coup for him to get Gena Rowlands in the film because, you know, SHE'S HIS MOTHER), but I think instead I'll focus specifically on one Justin Timberlake, He Who Shalt Retrieveth Sexy From Whence It Dwells, and admit that based on everything I've heard, he displays some genuine acting talent in the film. Not that his amazing puppet-dancing abilities in that one video wouldn't have enabled you to predict that, but you know, I just thought I'd mention it. On the plus side, no need to bother watching the 2008 Oscars, because if the sky turns red and the Throne of Satan rises up through the ground to rule over us all, then you'll know JT just won Best Actor.

Stomp the Yard (drama/musical, rated PG-13, directed by Sylvain White, written by Robert Adetuyi and Gregory Ramon Anderson)

I guess this is supposed to be about a lot of college kids doing competitive street dancing, but the title sounds like either a football movie or an odd acoustic choice by that group of guys who turn trash cans into instruments (as in, "Stomp: The Yard!"). It stars Meagan Good, a veteran of other angry dance-off flicks like Roll Bounce and You Got Served as well as last year's most debated Pop Whore film of the year: the mostly dance-less Brick. Going by the poster, it appears to takes place at Truth University, which some quick Googling revealed to be fictional unless you're talking about this place, which I imagine tends to discourage the idea of settling arguments through krumping.

America's Next Top Basketball Game

2006-12-21T23:13:00.000-08:00

We all know Cycle 7 of America’s Next Top Model left much to be desired. I lasted two whole blog posts before giving up, never to be heard from again...until now! Of course, then I wondered why we stopped being invited to the conference calls. The horror!

No offense to Caridee and all, because she seems like a totally fun and nice girl who battled skin disease to come out on top, but it was definitely one of the most boring, shark-jumping finales in the history of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the girls in any way. I am, however, totally blaming Tyra, her fucking insane mammoth god-complex and the absence of writers. And what was the deal with the below the waist juices and underwear smearing. This show has a very long way to go before they achieve Silence of the Lambs status! But, whatever, Tyra...go hand out more Vaseline or something.

My pick for this cycle was definitely twin Michelle, which of course meant that she didn’t stand a chance. All hope that I’d actually pick the winner vanished after Cycle 4, when Naima was chosen over Kahlen (yeah, don’t get me started!), and it’s been a downhill luge race from there. In my defense, I will say that the fact that none of my favorite girls have ever won is definitely a blessing in disguise because they don’t get locked into crappy contracts, doomed to do stupid Cover Girl ads and kiss Tyra’s ass for the next calendar year. So, go Elyse, Shandi, Ann, Kahlen, Kyle, Mollie Sue/Joanie and Michelle. Shut up! If guys can spend countless hours playing fantasy football, then I’m entitled to my Top Model All Stars. But, I digress.

Michelle was very wrongly booted in Episode 11, when it came down to Twin vs. Twin, which I was hoping would happen in the finale, but fuck you, Tyra. Clearly, this meant that we needed more Michelle and living in LA, you’re definitely afforded some wonderfully cult-ish/stalkerish opportunities...like, say, schlepping out to Pasadena City College on a Wednesday night with your best friend to catch the Pasadena-Cypress game.

After scarfing down some falafels in record time, we hopped on the 134 and headed east. Traffic wasn’t too bad, especially once we passed the Explorer that was completely engulfed in flames like something out of a movie. We knew it was sure to be a kick ass night after that...and it was!

Parking at the college was a buck...learn, UCLA, learn! Tickets for the game were five bucks and we got floor seats because we’re awesome...and because there were maybe like 20 spectators total. But, for the sake of argument, we’ll go with the former. We even managed to get there in time to do our annual Pop Whore/BFF gift exchange.

The game went something like this...Cypress struggled out of the gates, eventually tying up the game and then falling behind again 35-32 at the half. But late in the second half, Pasadena blew the game wide open and Cypress lost 93-71. Here's the official recap.

At any rate, I think I was obviously much more into the event than Nick was, because he had sort of given up on Top Model this season. Well, that, and the fact that he hadn’t written GO TWIN! on his chest with a black Sharpie like I had, waiting for the just right moment to flash my own twins.

One definite highlight was when the ball went flying right into my foot and I got to throw it back to the ref. Yep, I touched the ball...and haven't washed my hand since. If that's not hot, I don't know what is. (If you would like to touch my unwashed hand, stalk me over at MySpace to make arrangements.)

And before I get too graphic, here are some pictures...

Please keep in mind that gym lighting and my tiny Canon with limited zoom are not exactly ideal for sports photography. As always, click to enlarge...

This one is my favorite -

Towards the end of the game, Michelle definitely looked my way. She was either thinking, “hey, who’s the cute girl in the black sweater with the camera?” or “who the fuck is that crazy stalker chick who won’t stop taking pictures of me? Does she plan on making a fucking flipbook or something?"

Yeah, I think we’ll go with the latter on this one.

So, Michelle, in the really off chance you’re reading this, please know it was strictly out of love and for the blog. Then again, “it’s for the blog” is the 2006 equivalent of “her mouth was saying ‘no,’ but her eyes were saying ‘yes.'"

Good thing the year is almost over.

Snap Judgment: Some Pig! Some Banker! Some Dragon!

2006-12-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

This weekend almost got away from me, but with material like this I really couldn't let that happen.

Eragon (fantasy, rated PG, directed by Stefen Fangmeier, written by Peter Buchman, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini)

Remember how the first Harry Potter book got all that extra hype when it came out because it was written by an unemployed single mom on legal pads at her local coffee shop? (No, of course you don't remember that. Like most kids, you were probably born during that grueling 3-year interval between the 4th and 5th books, when millions of Americans turned to procreation as a brief distraction from obsessing over what Voldemort was up to next.) Well, the British welfare mother thing had its cachet for a while, but it's now been overthrown completely, and the brave author to pull that particular sword from its stone was a 15-year old home schooled kid from Montana. Yes, this is completely true; I may make a lot of jokes about home schooling (and believe me, I'm about to) but I'd never invent a fact like that. Okay, I probably would, but in this case I'm not. Seriously, Christopher Paolini was schooled by his parents in Paradise Valley, Montana and "graduated" by the time he was fifteen. Not sure who he went to the prom with, but I'd like to think he had the good sense to sit it out. Anyway, after digging a little further into his life I realized I was coming up a little short on quality material: shockingly, I've been unable to find any interview quotes along the lines of "I'm really just writing these books to honor our Lord Jesus, and gosh, I sure hope that the kids who read them really believe in dragons and elves before they believe humans descended from apes." No, it sounds more like his mom and dad kept him out of school to prevent him from being immersed in red-state propaganda. Which, I guess I have to admit, is a decent excuse in this particular instance. And while he doesn't necessarily seem like the most well-adjusted kid in the world, at least he was spending his sexually frustrated teenage years cranking out best-selling (if ultra-derivative) novels instead of hacking the NetNanny firewall and borrowing dad's credit card to access the Club Jenna website.

Oh yeah, the movie? It pretty much looks like a piece of crap. And what's Sienna Guillory doing in it? She must have woken up one day thinking she was actually Sienna Miller and, therefore, that it was her job to embarrass herself.

The Pursuit of Happyness (drama, rated PG-13, directed by Gabriele Muccino, written by Steve Conrad)

So, I forgot that Will Smith actually has two sons. That would explain why this kid is named Jaden, that super-hip kid celebrity kid name of the moment (etymology: "We had no ideas so we just added an N to something else"). The older one is Trey, whose name is nowhere to be seen. Was there perhaps some squabbling over who got this lucrative, Kid's-Choice-Awards-baiting role? Because I can completely imagine Jaden and Trey going at it, Godfather II style, on premiere night.

"I'm your older brother, Jaden, and I was stepped over!"
"It's the way pop wanted it!"
"It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! I can find lens and cry on cue! I'm smart and I want respect!"

Or, maybe Trey just passed up the role outright because he wasn't quite ready for the intensity of a Dakota Fanning-esque existence. Speaking of which, wouldn't it be great if there was also a Dakota Fanning movie on which to hold forth? Wait a second...

Charlotte's Web (heartwarming, rated G, directed by Gary Winick, written by Susannah Grant, Karey Kirkpatrick, and Earl Hamner, based on the novel by E.B. White)

There she is. Sure, Dakota's already Spielberg's go-to girl for the moppet-in-danger roles; she's even showing a really disturbing amount of precociousness by already playing a rape victim (and this time I am really not kidding)... but it's good to know that she still has time for a good, meaty role in a film catering to the training pants crowd (i.e., the age bracket whose MySpace profiles mostly consist of random keystrokes and parent-approved links to Dora the Explorer fansites). The filmmakers also managed to nab Julia Roberts as the voice of Charlotte, probably reeling her in with the truthful but misleading pitch that it was "another project from the writer of Erin Brockovich." Actually, looking over the entire voice-cast list, I'm thinking it's more likely that they just fired a mind-control ray at every actor who happened to be on the Paramount lot that morning. That would explain how Cedric the Entertainer "just happened" to walk out of his meeting with studio executives (topic: how many films he'd have to wear a mumuu in before they'd finance his pet producing project about Miles Davis) and straight into the ADR stage for Charlotte's Web without even stopping for so much as a Jamba Juice in between.

Snap Judgment: Orphaned airport kids will be sacrificed to the Mayan gods

2006-12-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Gosh, it's almost Christmas, which means it's almost time for good (i.e., highly budgeted and/or Oscar-baiting) movies to come out.

But not quite.

Unaccompanied Minors (comedy, rated PG, directed by Paul Feig, written by Jacob Meszaros & Mya Stark)

Oh sure, most people were affixing this movie with the "generic holiday crap" label as soon as they saw the poster -- but that's just because they didn't realize the hipness of its pedigree. First of all, it's based on a story from the super-awesome radio show This American Life (which finally has free podcasts). Second of all, it's directed by Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks (and co-star of Ski Patrol, a movie I probably rented about 47 times between my tenth and twelfth years) (don't judge me). Third of all, it has Lewis Black. But, alas, it seems like the before-the-fact naysayers were probably right and ultimately the geek points listed above don't add up to much. Sometimes when a movie studio buys the rights to a This American Life story, it's just because their idea well is so dry that they can't even come up with 83 or so minutes of kid-friendly holiday hijinks. And sometimes when they hire the one guy from Freaks and Geeks it's just because they heard how well that other guy from the show has been doing. And as awesome as he is on The Daily Show and in stand-up, Lewis Black doesn't always choose the best film roles.

The Holiday (romantic comedy, rated PG-13, written/directed by Nancy Meyers)

Also known as Closer: The Cuter, Sweeter Version With More Box Office Potential. Nancy Meyers is one of those people who insisted on calling things "A Film by Nancy Meyers" about two movies before she really should have. She also should be a wee bit wary of trumpeting her name too much, since fully 25% of her directorial filmography is made up by The Parent Trap, the movie that launched a certain red-haired actress to stardom, Page Six-dom, months-long bender at the Chateau Marmont-dom, and of course, brilliant Blackberry-composed mission statement-dom. Or maybe Meyers is fully aware of this and takes great pride in the many fascinating life choices made by her protege. She was probably the first one to see it all coming; it's possible that even at the tender age of twelve Lindsay was showing up to set several hours late with apple juice stains on her shirt and cookie crumbs on her face, the unmistakable signs of an all-night Malibu Barbie Dream House tea party that got out of hand.

Apocalypto (history/action, rated R, directed by Mel Gibson, written by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia)

Dear Mel,

I give up. Nothing on this earth is going to stop you from busting out crazy violent historical flicks every few years and promoting the hell out of them. You're the teflon celebrity. Next month you could be videotaped catapulting kittens and puppies into an active volcano, but by March or April you'd already have a trailer out for your 4-hour World War I epic, filmed in black and white with a cast of 3 million. Even if you're actually sent to prison at some point, I have no doubt that you'll laugh it off with a few publicist-approved self-deprecating jokes and then explain how your time in the joint was really a blessing in disguise because it allowed you to complete your 2,800 page script for your French and Indian War masterpiece which will only be able to be properly displayed on a 3-mile wide screen with 7,000 speakers. In a nutshell, nobody will ever be able to spend much time ridiculing you for any one thing because you are just too many kinds of crazy to keep up with. And quite frankly, that pretty much means you're a genius. So, congratulations. You've gone so far over the line that you made us forget there was one.

Hallelujah, A Snap Judgment Is Born Unto Us

2006-12-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's much delayed, but there's at least one movie from this past weekend that needed some kind of judgment applied, even if it wasn't as snappy as I would have liked.

The Nativity Story (Sunday School field trip, rated PG, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, written by Mike Rich)

Jesus is the reason for the season, and if half the bumper stickers in the flyover states aren't sufficient to remind us of that, then I guess it's a good thing we have a movie to bolster their efforts. And good lord (no pun intended), look at the credentials of the talent involved!

Mike Rich, writer of Finding Forrester. Who better to adapt the Bible than the dude who put "You're the man now, dog!" into Sean Connery's mouth? Oh wait, he also wrote Radio. My bad. He's going to totally nail the part where a young, mentally challenged Jesus tries to get on the Nazareth High football team.
Catherine Hardwicke, director of Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. She's, you know, edgy! I bet she'll really bring that gritty realism the source material demands. Lots of handheld, you-are-there camerawork in the manger scene, real frankincense and myrrh for the Wise Men, and, hell, even...
...Keisha Castle-Hughes, actual pregnant 17-year old, as Mary. Wow, I'd say that's commitment to a project. I mean, they gave an Oscar to George Clooney for Syriana, and all he did was eat enough Krispy Kremes to build up a quality spare tire. Charlize Theron just had the hair and makeup people ugly her up a little, and she too ended up with the fanciest of doorstops. A mere prosthetic nosepiece sealed the deal for Nicole Kidman. Carrying a baby to term pretty much leaves all those in the dust, but doesn't anyone fear the future repercussions here? What are we going to see next year, Adrien Brody getting an actual lobotomy for the final scene of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest remake?

In conclusion, I am freaking stoked for this like you have no idea. I hope the megachurches haven't bought up all the tickets just yet. And I was assuming that this movie was one of the initial offerings from the newly formed Fox Faith (seriously, that's a real thing) but no, it's actually distributed by New Line, a normal, non-religious (sometimes even sort of maverick) studio. Just wait until the really religious movies start hitting theaters! Cute little only-sort-of-Anglicized baby Jesus will be a drop in the bucket compared to the inevitably more hardcore stuff like Suzie Went To Planned Parenthood And Now She's Going to Hell, or even the seemingly innocuous but actually message-ridden romantic comedies like Steve and Shirley: A Romantic Comedy About A Married Husband and Wife. Gosh! An Actual Marriage Between One Man And One Woman! Does That Even Happen Anymore In This Sick, Perverse World Of Ours? But, uh, I digress.

Happy Monday.

Judgment. Snap Judgment.

2006-11-17T13:57:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's once again been a while since I've been able to do this allegedly weekly feature, but I couldn't abandon it today given the significance of one of today's releases.

You know the movie I'm talking about. I've been on pins and needles close to 4 years waiting for this one. The early news about it was mixed, but now that it's out everyone and their sister is falling all over themselves talking about how great it is. Frankly, it's pretty much the only movie of the year, as far as I'm concerned. Don't even try to stop me from seeing it tonight. Or tomorrow. Or probably another dozen times or so.

I am referring, of course, to the film featuring perhaps the greatest tuxedoed character in cinematic history. So here we go...

Happy Feet (animation, rated PG, directed by George Miller, written by Warren Coleman, John Collee, Judy Morris and George Miller)

YEAH!!! Seriously, you have NO IDEA how stoked I am to see some CGI dancing penguins under the expert supervision of the director of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Those are some bad-ass flightless fuzzy birds, let me tell you. Did you see March of the Penguins? Remember how they busted out that penguin-fu when that bird comes and tries to steal the baby penguin? Well, okay, in that context "penguin-fu" sort of meant "making some noise and running away." But with the benefit of artistic license, I have no doubt that the dude who made Mel Gibson a household name can really turn these guys into the superstars they were always destined to be.

Anyway, on to the movie I sort of might see if I have a lot of extra time and am really, really bored and somehow stumble onto a free ticket.

Casino Royale (rated PG-13, directed by Martin Campbell, written by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis)

Oh, I kid. Frankly I don't even know how to make fun of this, unless "I'm seeing it in 5 hours and I feel like that's way too long to wait" counts as a joke. (Well, that might count as a joke on, say, Best Week Ever, but that's also why you won't find that show on my Tivo.) Anyhoo, yes, your eyes deceiveth you not; that is Paul Haggis's name on the film. Yes, the Crash and Million Dollar Baby Haggis. Will the film now end with M administering a merciful euthanasia on Bond and telling her that 007 means "my darling, my blood"? Or will Bond be forced to confront the roots of his racism after rescuing someone from a near-fatal collision with his Aston Martin? Or maybe the breathtaking opening sequence will feature [note to self: insert joke drawn from the fact that Haggis was once a writer on Facts of Life. Perhaps borrow DVDs from Eti.]. In any case, I'm just happy that the producers seem to have refrained, in this installment, from putting any esteemed British stage actors in bionic suits or, well, doing anything involving the words "Halle" or "Berry." Those are some promising steps forward, right there.

Snap Judgment: Special Friday Edition

2006-10-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's meant to be sarcastic (at myself) because I know the posting of SJ has been at best sporadic lately. It's all my fault; I'm trying a sociological experiment to induce just enough fear of abandonment in my readers to keep them fiercely loyal while throwing them a bone often enough to prevent them from losing hope entirely. Is it working? Are you reading this right now? I thought so.

(By the way -- I don't normally interrupt this section for special news bulletins, but It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is airing tonight on ABC at 8 PM. I forgot to set my Tivo, but it's not too late for everyone else. Is that one of the ones where they all dance?)

(And to interrupt this section again, it appears that Blogger's image upload thingy is on the fritz. So no pretty posters today. Just boring, boring text.)

Saw III (horror sequel to a sequel, rated R, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, written by James Wan and Leigh Whannell)

Oh, good. I was starting to worry there that an ENTIRE YEAR would go by without another one of these. You can't have too much space in between; a cinematic saga like this one is akin to a sprawling work of literature whose rich, textured story evolves before your eyes and continually draws you further and further into its gripping narrative. We've had 12 months to reflect on the relationships and feelings that evolved in the first two films; where will this latest installment find our beloved characters? Perhaps that Jigsaw fellow has decided he's had enough of staging elaborate games of death and dismemberment and is now moving on to, say, the equestrian arena. He purchases a couple of costly thoroughbreds and rents out the finest stable space available, aiming to take the world of horseracing by storm. But the horses don't perform as expected, and poor Jigsaw is a laughing stock at the country club.... that is, until he finds a fetching young heiress who's always dreamt of breaking away from her stifling family and becoming the world's foremost female jockey. Together they find love, adventure, and incredible success... but Jigsaw, unfamiliar with traditional courtship customs, thinks that his greatest gift to her will be to lock her in a padded room with a cage full of hungry rats and two combination-locked safes, one containing a key to the exit and the other containing a cyanide pill. Watch their incredible story unfold and find out if true love can overcome the misunderstandings of the heart!

Catch a Fire (historical drama, rated R, directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Shawn Slovo)

You have to love Phillip Noyce because he's always such a stickler for accuracy. When he made The Quiet American, he actually filmed in Vietnam and used many Vietnamese actors. Rabbit-Proof Fence, the actual Australian Outback and real aborigines. Now with his latest film, I see he's shot all over South Africa and for his lead villain, cast the notable South African thespian... Tim Robbins! That's right! The guy's had us hornswaggled for decades with his cleverly put-on Southern California accent and all those appearances in famous American films. Turns out he's just another lekker Surfrikan bru! (Nice South African guy, or so Wikipedia tells me.) It must have been a thrill to be back on his native soil of Johannesburg, performing the shit out of a meaty bad-guy role that probably brought to mind all the divisive political turmoil he grew up with. And while I'm sure no filmmaking experience of any kind could supersede the memory of being on the set of Nothing But Trouble when Martin Lawrence ran out onto the 405 waving a loaded gun, shooting this movie had to run a close second.

Snap Judgment: The Day Before Saturday and After The 12th

2006-10-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't think anyone would actually want to release a movie on Friday the 13th unless it was, well, Friday the 13th. (And what are we up to in that series, anyway? Friday the 13th Part XIVLSCVNAIE: Jason Goes To Starbucks And Orders Six Shots In His Tall Latte But Then Claims He Wanted Decaf?) So, yeah, there are a few new ones out this week, but the studio might as well just go ahead and release them on YouTube because I'm sure there's still a sizeable chunk of the country that believes going to the theater this weekend will result in some kind of crazy Final Destination-type mayhem.

Man of the Year (comedy, rated PG-13, written/directed by Barry Levinson)

Well, here's a fine example of what I was just talking about, since everyone knows that when you could actually say "Robin Williams equals big box office" with a straight face, you could probably follow it up with "Check out my new pogo ball!" Meanwhile, the interceding decade and a half hasn't proven so kind to the financial prospects of his particular brand of charming annoyance, and if that feat of comedic brilliance entitled R.V. (*) didn't put him back on track, then I'm not sure this will help much either. I have to wonder, though, how Barry Levinson can be dumb enough to be behind all this. Here's my best guess:

Barry Levinson: I want to make a really smart satire about the presidency, and I only want half a million to direct it.
Studio Exec: Um... make it a dumb satire and we'll give you ten million.
Barry Levinson: Well, gosh, I really... okay, fine, deal. (Shakes hands)
Studio Exec: And it has to star Robin Williams. We owe him from the other thing.
Barry Levinson: Whoa, whoa... hold on there.
Studio Exec: Already shook hands! No take backs! (Gives self an everlasting cootie shot to be on the safe side)

(*) Yes, Snap Judgment remembers all.

The Marine (action, rated PG-13, directed by John Bonito, written by Michelle Gallagher and Alan McElroy)

Sadly, I think that those of us who scratched our heads and asked ourselves "Who the hell is that guy and what's his name doing in big yellow letters?" are simply not the target market for this movie. Do a little research and you'll find he's a way huge star in that exciting world of professional wrestling (oh, which they now call "sports entertainment," in much the same way that "herpes" is referred to as "no big deal, I swear it'll clear up.") In fact, there's like a ton of information available on him on his IMDB page alone. Did you know that one of his many finishing moves is called the You Can't See Me Stalling Suplex? I wonder if he does that in the movie! I mean, damn, a buff Marine with a kick-ass suplex would just be unstoppable. That's a real screenwriter's challenge, actually, since you generally have to give your protagonist a weakness or two to ensure that his quest isn't too easy. Maybe in the movie, he temporarily loses his ability to do the suplex and has to make do with only that gun he's holding. That would be totally dramatic.

The Grudge 2 (horror, rated R, directed by Takashi Shimizu, written by Stephen Susco)

Aha, here's our scary movie. Two scary movies in one, really -- the superficially creepy story of the murdering ghost, and the much more frightening true-life tale in which karma exacts revenge upon Sarah Michelle Gellar for repeatedly bragging about the stellar film career she was going to have once she was unshackled from "Buffy." Fight that karma, Sarah! Do some edgy independent films to showcase your true range of talent! Or... uh... hmm, guess you're not quite planning that.

Snap Judgment: So you're back, from outer space...

2006-10-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry, folks. I know that "Snap Judgment" and "two-week hiatus" go about as well together as "Kelly Osbourne" and "talent", but circumstances are circumstances and thus did I see the column slip away from my grasp on one Friday and then another. I'll do my best to ensure that doesn't happen again, so you don't have to be sitting under your desks holding your knees to your chest and rocking yourself back and forth for 14 straight days. Anyway, without further ado...

The Departed (crime thriller, rated R, directed by Martin Scorsese, written by William Monahan, based on the film Infernal Affairs)

This is the kind of movie with a budget big enough to hire Mark Wahlberg just as a dialect coach, but no, they actually gave him a real part in it! I'm guessing Scorsese's people insisted that he include his Boston accent-advising as part of his fee, though. Wait, what am I thinking? He's got the real-life Ari for an agent! I'm sure the services were separately negotiated. And if life imitates art imitating life, perhaps he also threw a hissy fit about being commandeered to come back for The Departed 2, thus setting off a chain reaction of events ultimately leading him to fire Ari. Meanwhile, it's looking more and more like Leo has a Scorsese-signed plaque on his wall inscribed with "Don't Forget, You're Here Forever." Either that, or he managed to implant a chip in Marty's brain enabling him to feed the director his story ideas. If we start seeing billboards for What's Eating Gilbert Grape Now?: A Martin Scorsese Picture, I think that'll more or less prove it. Jack Nicholson was likely much easier to lure into the film, seeing as (a) it gave him a chance to engage in scenery-chewing of a type he normally only enjoys at the Staples Center, and (b) the press junkets provided ample time away from home to allow his Brando-home-sized garden to grow.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (horror, rated R, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, written by Sheldon Turner & David J. Schow)

Hollywood looooves their prequels (and by "Hollywood," of course, I mean "ex-industry magnate shareholders of the 2 or 3 non-entertainment companies that control 90% of what we see in the theaters"), and god forbid if this one makes money, because it'll only lead to a prequel to the prequel. By film number 10 we'll be up to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Story Of The One Dude Who Worked At The Steel Mill That Produced The Metal For The Chainsaw," probably starring, oh, I don't know, Rachel Leigh Cook's nephew's second cousin. But the kicker is that PEOPLE WILL STILL GO SEE IT! These days they don't even need nudity in these things to get the teenage boys to line up. Ugh. Aren't they supposed to be downloading them instead? So, like, the movies don't make any money?

Employee of the Month (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Greg Coolidge, written by Don Calame, Chris Conroy, and Greg Coolidge)

Didn't we already have a comedy about people working in a Target-type store? No, I know it was Career Opportunities and it was 15 years ago. (15 years ago! Way to go, Jennifer Connelly's prettiness-retention department. She seems to have things under control on her own, though, so do you think you guys could pay a visit to Lohan?) But still, there's a certain span of time during which it's not okay to have more than one comedy like this, and that span of time is generally referred to as "ever." Plus, when one person's already run into the lion's den of department store comedies and then been tossed out with his limbs barely intact -- and that person was JOHN HUGHES -- you're probably wisest to mosey on over to, say, the petting zoo of high school gross-out flicks. Not as rewarding, but much less chance of reaching in and then pulling back a bloody stump. Oh, and Dane Cook? You're funny, you're from Boston, girls seem to think you're way hot, and you've got more buzz right now than a bumblebee on meth. And THIS is the film you chose as your vehicle for bursting through into cinema? If I were Jerry Remy, I wouldn't even let you into the Red Sox broadcasting booth after this.

Top Model Makeover Episode: The Boring Continues

2006-10-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

Okay Top Model, you’re officially starting to bore me. Isn’t it bad enough that Nick’s already jumped ship? Why do you want to validate his decision?

The make-over episode was less than spectacular. Actually, it was sort of a snore-fest. Anyway, to make things more interesting, I'm going to reference awesome movies to ease the pain of reliving it. I’ll keep it brief.

As usual, there was too much Tyra, the usual hair-cutting induced crying, a lame photo shoot and a super stupid challenge featuring Queen Latifah, which took place at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown L.A.. Not surprisingly, I had my prom there about ten years ago. Thus, one can easily conclude that really boring things tend to happen there...unless, of course, you’re John Malkovich trying to assassinate the president of the United States or Clint Eastwood trying to stop that from happening.

Boring, blah, blah...here are some make-over pictures...

The actual photo shoot/concept was boring too...

Um, yeah?

Brooke totally channeled some Drop Dead Gorgeous (one of the best movies ever)...

By her own admission, Michelle channeled Toucan Sam. That's why we love Michelle. She calls them as she sees them.

Monique was a total cunt and I really hope that someday soon Anchal hobbles the crap out of her. The crazy ho even went so far as to pull some sort of nasty ass Miggs type body fluid flinging. Sadly, there was no Hannibal Lecter to talk her into swallowing her own tongue.

Also, seriously Top Model, this is not the cycle to be shying away from lesbians or anything remotely interesting at this point. I guess that's why the twins have to win. Anyway, they never actually mentioned the Megan/Michelle lesbian thing, but they’ve been subtly hinting. The show is supposed to eventually get around to it within the next few episodes. Seriously, the whole one straight/one gay twin thing is like the coolest pscho-sociological experiment. The man who marries Amanda will be very lucky indeed.

At any rate, in the end, Megan was booted over Jaeda, thus leaving Michelle to pick up the slack of corrupting the other girls.

That Meddling Girl Is Back!

2006-10-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

Oh, to be young and in college and solving mysteries. Those were the days, I tell you. And what better way to vicariously relive that magical time in our lives, when the day began at 11 and ended when we ran out of Mountain Dew, when we were unfettered by such piddling matters as paying bills or ironing, than by watching our very favorite detective start her university career?

Yes, at long last, tomorrow night Veronica Mars enters college on the awesome new CW, the genius merger between the WB and UPN that we were, like, totally hoping would happen because we couldn't imagine a world where 7th Heaven and Girlfriends were prevented from doing crossover episodes.

Anyway, 9 PM on the CW. Check your local listings! Which, you know, is what they used to say before you could just pick up your cute peanut-shaped TiVo remote and punch in the name and hear that pleasant little "ding."

But wait, there's more! Last week Eti and I had the honor of being invited to participate with other Pulitzer-winning bloggers on a conference call with Rob Thomas and Tina Majorino. (Rob Thomas created the freaking show and Tina Majorino plays Mac. Which is cool, because Mac is kind of awesome, but Rob Thomas!)

So here are the highlights. These aren't Rob's words verbatim but rather my attempt at summarizing what he said (thanks to Eti's extensive notes) in a reasonably snappy way.

Is Butters going to college with Veronica and co.? Nope, he's still in high school.

What about Dick? Of course he'll be back. Could we live a single day without his entitled rich kid stoner humor? I think not. Then again, he'll have to deal with, you know, that small matter of his little brother turning out to be a mass-murdering rapist and killing himself.

It's college. It's Southern California. We'll see some gay people, right? Yes, but they won't be in any after-school-special type storylines. They'll just be around.

(This was my question) A lot of high-school based shows tend to suck when they move into college. Any plans for avoiding the suck? The show's never been specifically about high school; it's been about a wise-beyond-her-years girl solving mysteries in a wacky corrupt world. She can do that just as easily in college, and the less-kiddy atmosphere will allow for some more adult, noir-ish storylines [to which I say, hell yeah].

Will we see more bands performing on the show now that we're in college? Hopefully.

More Karaoke? Probably not.

What's the story structure for this year? Another big mystery? No, it'll be 3 smaller ones. The first one involves the college rapist (which was already set up when Veronica visited the college last season). It'll go for 8-9 episodes, after which a new mystery will begin. This one will be a completely different kind than Veronica has dealt with before, and we'll also see the crime unfold gradually instead of just starting with the aftermath like we did with Lilly and the bus crash.

Keeping the same opening titles? Nope, they're totally different now.

What's ahead for Logan? He'll mature, but not too much. He's got to stay kind of messed up to be interesting, after all.

Generally speaking, are the first couple episodes going to rock, or what? The first one will be a little slower and low-key because they need to introduce the characters and format to new viewers and the new setting to the rest of us. However, the second episode is one of the best they've ever done [and it's written by Diane Ruggiero, who's responsible for some of the most awesomely fucked-up episodes in the first two seasons, like, say, A Trip to the Dentist].

* * * * *

So, that's that. I skipped over some of the more boring questions, but I think you get the idea that it's going to be a fairly interesting season. And even if it's not, then... well, we'll probably have to retreat into a dirt hole and rock ourselves back and forth until the black spots vanish from behind our eyes because this is the best freaking show on TV and anything less than another stellar year will pretty much cause us to lose all faith in humankind.

But hey, no pressure, show! Just go out there and do your best!

Top Model Cycle 7

2006-09-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hate to say it kids, but the ANTM Cycle 7 premiere was pretty uneventful.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’ve recently aged, the show’s new CW limey green sold-their-soul-to-Herbal Essences tutelage, the writer’s strike, or the fact that the show has seriously become the most disgustingly blatant “HEY, LOOK AT TYRA!!! LOOK AT TYRA!!! TYYYYYYYYYRA!!!” show, but metaphorically, there was no soggy $100 dollar bill to speak of.

Seriously, what the fuck was that "where's my wind" thing? Ugggh!!!!

I’m not exactly thrilled and there’s really not much to say as yet, but here’s how I’m going to roll...

The twins are the hotness. Not sure why, but there’s definitely something interesting about them.

I like Michelle. She’s clearly the “edgy” twin. How do I know this? Well, she’s the one who wore the shirt with the skull in her promo shot. Amanda is the “homely”one because she wore the dark blue polka dots with the pearls. No, Top Model, you’re not going to use this “let’s pit the twins against each other and then call one twin way before the other one, letting them eat their heart out” as a gimmick at all! But hey, their pictures rocked...

Brooke is fun. She’s definitely got spunk and of course, bares a striking resemblance to what the love child of Elizabeth Perkins and Evan Rachel Wood would look like. And since we at Pop Whore love all things Evan Rachel Wood, we must love Brooke, if only by default.

Seriously...

I think the whole Megan “my mom died on me in a plane crash” thing was totally sad and I definitely can’t hate on that sort of tragedy. In her defense, Megan channeled some hardcore Kathleen Robertson tinged with a touch of Charlize Theron in her shot.

Lastly, every time I saw Meg, the “Blossom” theme song started up in my head and thought how awesome it would be if Six was on the show too.

So Meg, “Don’t fight the feeling. You know you want to have a good time. And in my opinionation, the sun is gonna surely shine.”

Here's to hoping for a good cycle.

Snap Judgment: Football, Murder, and Infidelity: Three Great American Pastimes

2006-09-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

Technically speaking, these are the last films to be released this summer, since fall officially starts on the 22nd. But did you need to know that? Of course you did. Otherwise you'd end up wandering around the office saying things like "I can't believe it's already fall!" and "Seems like just yesterday it was still summer!" and "This rash on my inner thigh totally looks like it's spreading!" And I'd just as soon spare you the embarrassment.

The Black Dahlia (mystery/historical, rated R, directed by Brian De Palma, written by Josh Friedman from the novel by James Ellroy)

James Ellroy wrote the novel L.A. Confidential, which, you know, was made into one of the better movies of all time. But success did not come easy to him. When he was several years younger than I, he was completely destitute and basically living on the streets, and one night passed out on a park bench next to a much older woman and woke up the next morning with an extra $50 in his wallet. (Not kidding.) The Black Dahlia, unfortunately, looks like it will have more in common with that little encounter than with L.A. Confidential, and the TV ads keep telling me it's "from the director of Scarface" which, to me, is about as enticing as saying "from the director of the 2-hour informercial on that magic grease remover." But you know, to each his/her own. When I was in college everyone who thought they were cool had a Scarface poster on the wall right next to the Reservoir Dogs poster with the Harvey Keitel quote. I can only assume that's because in college, there's nothing cooler than blood, which also explains why everyone was glued to their TVs when E.R. came on at 10 PM on Thursdays. Now Brian De Palma appears to have honed his exploitation of this fetish even further by throwing in Josh Hartnett so that collegiate girlfriends will only have to pretend they're being dragged to see this.

Gridiron Gang (drama, rated PG-13, directed by Phil Joanou, written by Jeff Maguire, based on the documentary of the same name)

Taking an actual documentary and turning it into an "Inspired by a true story"-type film might seem kind of "lame" to all those Hollywood naysayers who stand ready to poke as many holes as possible in a movie before it even sees the light of day (some of us hold our tongues until the premiere date, thank you very much); but the best way to silence all those inveterate jackholes is to put someone like THE ROCK in your movie, because nothing affords you as much cinematic credibility as the former executor of what I believe they referred to as "the most electrifying move in sports entertainment." Did you realize the Oscar-baiting movie releases were starting this early now? Me neither. Just getting those "GRID" and "IRON" temporary tattoos on his fingers should be enough to secure him some gold.

The Last Kiss (romantic dramedy, rated R, directed by Tony Goldwyn, written by Paul Haggis, based on the film L'ultimo baco)

Uh, Zach Braff? If it turns out you're leaving Scrubs after this season to make a lot more movies like this one, I think we'll all be making the face you're making on the poster. And staying home and not seeing them. And eventually, burning you in effigy.

Snap Judgment: Death by ghosts! Death by fame! Death by kicking!

2006-09-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

AHHHH! I started this Friday but it got away from me and now I fear some of you may have already ventured into theaters without the proper preconceived notions that the movies therein will suck. Partially that's your own fault, because I've been doing this column going on 8 months now and have you learned nothing?

* * *

Are we shocked that this isn't quite a banner week for new releases? If we were a filmmaker and/or movie star (and really, who's to say we aren't, since we maintain relative anonymity here), would we be peeing ourselves with glee upon being told that our movie was coming out on SEPTEMBER EIGHTH? Would it, perhaps, be more or less like being told we were getting a replacement car air vent for Christmas? Have we jumped the shark on talking about ourselves in the plural and using the subjunctive hypothetical tense at the same time? Probably. Let's slam some films.

The Covenant (horror, I guess, rated R, directed by Renny Harlin, written by J.S. Cardone)

There he goes again, Mr. Renny "Geena Davis and I split up, and it totally looked like I had the last laugh careerwise, until it turned out that she did" Harlin. Because these days she's playing the President on a super-popular TV show, and he's shooting a movie best described as "The Craft, except without anyone famous in it" that would probably have gone direct-to-Netflix if he weren't attached to it. Is there still a chance for them to reconcile? Could he convince Geena to let him direct a few episodes of Commander in Chief, or at least nab that guest starring role of a pyromaniac Scandinavian dude obsessed with product-placing Finlandia vodka into everything he shoots? Let's hope so, because at the rate he's going, by next year he'll be lucky if he's even allowed to post a video comment on MySpace.

Hollywoodland (drama, rated R, directed by Allen Coulter, written by Paul Berenbaum)

Good lord, for the first time in about 8 years it looks like "Ben Affleck" and "real movie" can live together in the same sentence without fighting over who does the dishes and which shows get Tivo priority. It's a glorious day. Too bad there's also Adrien Brody, who (to me) more and more looks like he's auditioning to be in the live-action version of Nightmare Before Christmas.

* * *

And there's this movie called The Protector too. I think people fight with honor in that one, or something.

Snap Judgment: Afternoon Edition #2

2006-09-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm late again. So sue me! (Ever notice how nobody uses that expression anymore? I think it's a sign of the times. You don't want to give people ideas these days. I just sued the guy at Peet's for taking 5 minutes longer to make an iced latte than the Starbucks chick does. I got all his stock in Staples and 3 of his wives! (Sorry, Mormon joke.))

And off we go...

The Wicker Man (thriller, rated PG-13, written/directed by Neil Labute, based on the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer)

Well, I'm kind of torn on this one, because I love any movie that gives me a chance to cultivate my Nic Cage impersonation (it tends to be very similar to my Keanu, but more halting), but on the other hand I'm annoyed that they dumbed down the title so much from what it used to be (The Dude Who Bought A Lot Of Furniture At Pier One In The Early 90's). And I'm a big Neil Labute supporter, but I'm not a big needless-PG-13-remake supporter. I guess I'll have to see what my other options are...

Crank (action, rated R, written/directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor)

Again, quite the dilemma. According to the official synopsis, Jason Statham has a poison injected into his blood that will kill him if his heart rate drops below a certain number. THAT'S AWESOME! It couldn't happen to a better person, either, because you'd pretty much have to be a suave shaved-headed British dude to turn that situation into a pickup line. ("'Fraid I've not even got time to buy you a drink, love... we'd best hire a taxi back to my flat straightaway.") But alas, the other shoe is dropping, and printed on the back of that shoe is the name of Statham's character in this film: Chev Chelios. No, I'm not even kidding, it's on the freaking poster. And while ex-Tasty Coma Wife Amy Smart makes a valuable addition to the cast, the fact that she'll be yelling either "Chev!" or "Chelios!" or some combination thereof whenever she is forced to address Statham (which I'm guessing is often, because let's face it, this isn't the kind of movie where her character is going to have an elaborate individual subplot wherein she transforms the lives of inner-city youth by teaching them about biology and Shakespeare) kind of puts a damper on the whole deal.

Crossover (drama, rated PG-13, written/directed by Preston A. Whitmore, II)

No, I swear I didn't make up that director's name -- although, now that I examine the poster, it seems more appropriate than it did at first glance. See, those basketball dudes might appear to be totally rockin' the angry walk, but I think they're actually about to burst into song and dance. "Play by your own rules," indeed. You go, Preston! Don't be afraid to throw some elaborate choreography and lamp pole-swinging into your hip urban b-ball flick. I hope there's a nice, heartfelt rooftop ballad about improving scoring percentage from behind the three-point line. You can't have enough of those.

Not-so-Snap Judgment: STOP! WAIT! THERE'S STILL TIME!

2006-08-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well, this is the first time today I've been able to get into Blogger to post, and I know there's not much time to warn the populace before they go out and spend hard-earned, -borrowed, or -stolen money on any of these films. So here I go.

Invincible (football, rated PG, directed by Ericson Core, written by Brad Gann)

Gah! Not another one of those movies about a giant football-playing former rapper terrorizing a small town. Spread the word, kid-running-through-the-streets! Before that monster subjects the entire village to his bizarre cover of "Walk on the Wild Side"!

Also: you can't call a movie "Invincible" and not put the seminal Pat Benatar song "Invincible (Theme from The Legend of Billy Jean)" on the soundtrack. It's in the rules. Seriously. You can check.

Idlewild (musical, I guess; rated R, written/directed by Bryan Barber)

INT. HBO FILMS OFFICES - DAY

An uncertain receptionist cautiously enters Executive's office.

Receptionist: Um, the guy who directed the "Hey Ya!" video is here to see you. I don't believe he has an appointment.
Executive: No way! I freaking love that video! Send that dude in. Have you offered him a drink?
Receptionist: Yeah, he asked for an old-fashioned Coca-Cola in a glass bottle with that 1940's sepia-toned look to it. I checked the fridge but I don't think we have that.
Executive: Well, find it.
Receptionist: I don't know where--
Executive: FIND THAT MOTHERFUCKING SEPIA TONED COCA-COLA BOTTLE OR IT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB!
Receptionist: Of... of course.
Executive: And tell him he can have $15 million to make his movie.
Receptionist: Do you want to see him?
Executive: Nah, I don't really have time. I'm already 53 hours late for my lunch with what's-his-name. Take the $15 million from petty cash.
Receptionist: Um, okay.

The receptionist walks back out.

Receptionist: Mr. Barber, I've been told to tell you you can have $15 million to make your movie.
Bryan Barber: Are you shitting me? I just came in here to ask for a copy of last week's Entourage. My Tivo's been out of whack.
Receptionist: Hold on and I'll get you your money.
Bryan Barber: Goddamn! I can make whatever the hell kind of movie I want! Like when Eddie Murphy got to do Harlem Nights! In fact, shit, I'll make something just like that! Now where's my Jazz Age fuckin' Coca-Cola bottle already?

* * * * * * * * * * *

And that's all I have time for. I doubt the rest are anything to write home about either, but I guess bring a pre-stamped postcard along just in case they are.

Snap Judgment: What? On a what???

2006-08-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

At long last, the Friday we've been waiting for all summer is here. Yes, of course, I'm talking about the day that I finally make an appointment with my podiatrist about that little toenail issue. (Just kidding. I don't actually have a podiatrist. In fact, I don't even have feet! Long story on that one -- let me just tell you, if you drop your iPod into an industrial trash compactor, and climb in to try to fish it out, and you manage to retrieve it, and then your shoe falls off on the way out, just leave it. An extra trip to the Skechers on 3rd Street is a lot more pleasant of a proposition than a lifetime spent trying to find other uses for your now-extraneous socks.)

Snakes on a Plane (thriller, rated R, directed by David Ellis, written by John Heffernan, Sebastian Gutierrez, and David Dalessandro)

Well, as the literally interpreted poster helpfully demonstrates to us, it's actually Snakes IN a Plane. If the snakes were just on the plane, they'd be kind of creepy and annoying but most likely would just fall off the fuselage at some point in the initial ascent and/or get sucked into the engine. Good thing that's not the case! Those snakes deserve safe air travel as much as the rest of us, especially since as far as I know, they're not trying to carry on any hair gel or nail clippers.

Anyway, we all know this is supposed to be a big hit, and "we all" obviously includes rival studios and even rival movie-producing countries who will no doubt take the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. Our team of devoted Pop Whore interns, working long hours for nothing more than college credit and the occasional bottle of Dasani, has scoured the globe to see what sort of shameless knock-offs are in the works.

England: Hedgehogs on a Surrey

1800s period piece starring Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, and Alan Rickman. Based on the lesser-known Jane Austen novel. Guaranteed to bring down the house when Firth's character delivers the memorable line, "Do give pardon to my plebeian utterances, but I must say I have had quite enough of these blasted hedghehogs on this blasted surrey!"

India: Mongooses on a Rickshaw

It's a nail-biting thriller, of course, but it's also a romantic comedy of manners and arranged marriages. Also features a 35-minute musical interlude with dancing mongooses. Rumor has it Will Smith already wants to adapt this one for America.

Mexico: Los Gorgojos de Cápsula en un Burro (Boll Weevils on a Donkey)

A more traditional tale of a struggling family's hopes and dreams amid the specter of poverty, oppression, and yes, those damn boll weevils.

Australia: Koalas on a Range Rover

Finally, a suitable comeback vehicle for Paul Hogan! I hear they're throwing a lot of money at Heath Ledger to join him.

The Illusionist (drama, rated PG-13, written/directed by Neil Burger, from the short story by Steven Millhauser)

Wait, there are other movies this week? Really? Wow. Someone must not like this one very much to put it out at the same time as that reptile flick. Imagine how the filmmakers must feel, going around to all their usual social functions and attempting to toss off a cool line like, "Hey, I've got a movie opening this weekend," only to be met with the response "OH SHIT, THE ONE WITH THE SNAKES?" and being forced to reply, "No, it's actually a provocative period--" "HEY EVERYONE, THIS DUDE WORKED ON THE SNAKE MOVIE! LET'S ASK HIM TO DO THE 'MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON THE MOTHERFUCKING PLANE' LINE! C'MON, IT'LL BE FUN! DRINKS ARE ON HIM! THAT MOVIE'S GOING TO BE HUGE!" And so it goes.

Material Girls (comedy, rated PG, directed by Martha Coolidge, written by John Quaintance, Jessica O'Toole, Amy Rardin)

Those lovable Duff sisters, deprived of the easy Lohanesque publicity that goes along with regular drunkenness, slackerness, and almost-being-fired-from-movieness, have been forced to actually appear in a film and do their best to be amusing and funny. Yes, apparently there are still a few actresses who follow this almost charmingly old-fashioned route to continued fame. I just wonder if such an outdated approach can possibly compete with today's advanced techniques of public vomiting, kinkajou injuries, and accidental exposure of frighteningly grotesque plastic surgery enhancements. We'll just have to wait and see.

Snap Judgment: Um, I actually think we're kind of ready for those snakes by now

2006-08-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this looks like another "exciting" "weekend" to "go" to "the" movies.

Let's get this over with.

World Trade Center (docudrama, rated PG-13, directed by Oliver Stone, written by Andrea Berloff)

"Too soon," some people say. And they're right! By all accounts, this is as factual and exact a retelling of the true story as you can get. Which is fine and great for, like, the History Channel or A&E, but this is OLIVER FREAKING STONE. We don't see his movies for accuracy; we see them because of his uncanny ability to make up the craziest shit imaginable and convince us it's true. And he needed to wait another 20 years or so to make this film so he really could have done himself justice. There's a reason he did JFK in 1991 instead of, like, 1968. A couple decades buys you the artistic license to throw in some psychadelia, eerie John Williams music, and a scenery-chewing Tommy Lee Jones. I don't think you'll find any of those elements in this movie. Sigh. I hope there's at least a little clip after the end credits where Stone comes running out yelling "THE CIA DID IT! THOSE WEREN'T EVEN REAL PLANES! AND I THINK KIM JONG IL WAS IN ON IT TOO!" Because there's no way he can hold his conspiracy theory tongue for this long.

Pulse (horror, rated R, directed by Jim Sonzero, written by Wes Craven and Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

That poster looks like the nightmare you might have after sitting through some Japanese horror flick and then trying to calm yourself by watching the videos for "Oops I Did It Again" and "I'm A Slave 4 U." Anyway, even the presence of Veronica Mars still probably won't be enough to get me into the theater for this, because as Eti can tell you, I am a huge wuss who can't handle scary movies. The other thing I'm a little iffy about with this film is the fact that, according to the synopsis, the freaky evil whatevers get into our world via a wireless signal. I mean, we've barely had 3 years to enjoy the miracle of WiFi and it's already bringing in demons! Is this some kind of scare tactic on behalf of the studios to make us think twice before BitTorrenting their entire film libraries? We'll have to ask Eti after she sees it -- and yes she will, because it stars Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder, which basically equals her favorite game of Spin the Bottle ever.

Step Up (dance movie, rated PG-13, directed by Anne Fletcher, written by Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg)

For a second there I thought they finally made a movie out of the drinking game Rossanna and I created for The Apprentice, wherein you drink every time someone says "Step up." (This happens approximately 4,396 times per episode, so it's best to do it with sips instead of shots if you want to avoid having to pause the Tivo for a trip to the ER.) Sadly, it's just another movie about a couple of people doing a bunch of fancy (and, I assume, extremely well-edited) dance moves with a few scenes of laughter and, like, SOOOOO much drama interspersed throughout. Fun fact: Jenna Dewan (i.e., the one getting spun) toured as a dancer on P. Diddy's "We Invented The Remix" tour and Janet Jackson's "All For You" tour. But lest you think her acting chops aren't up to snuff, she also did guest spots on "Joey" and "Quintuplets" and played the title role (!) in the movie Tamara, which pretty much has the best tagline ever ("Revenge has a killer body"). Is someone going to Netflix that? Anyone? Please? Do I have to? Just look at the refreshingly grammar-free IMDB summary: Tamara, an unattractive girl, who is picked on by her peers returns after her death as a sexy seductress to exact revenge. "Unattractive girl", they say! I bet that means in the beginning of the movie she has glasses and, like, minimal foundation! So, uh, back to this dance movie business. I'm guessing the soundtrack probably has Sean Paul and Kelis. Or maybe that's because I just looked it up on Amazon. More importantly, it has a track by Clipse featuring Re-Up Gang and Roscoe P. Goldchain! Don't you wish that level of collaboration whoredom would spread to, say, novelists? Like instead of just buying the new Dave Eggers book, you could get the new Dave Eggers book featuring Sarah Vowell, Michael Chabon and Jeffrey Eugenides? Or Stephen King could put out a claustrophobic horror novel with a little Maya Angelou poetry breakdown on page 102? There's some untapped potential there, methinks.

Zoom (action/comedy, rated PG, directed by Peter Hew.... forget it, that's enough for one day, and P.S., they ALREADY MADE SPY KIDS LIKE THREE TIMES.)

Snap Judgment: Do they still, like, make movies anymore?

2006-08-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Because I'm not 100% sure at this point. Isn't Snakes on a Plane the only movie coming out this year? It sort of seems to be. And until they finally come out with MYSPACE: THE MOVIE, I kind of doubt there will be much else for the moviegoing (i.e., 14-17 year old) crowd to talk about.

But let's just take a look at what the studios are passing off as releases, you know, for the hell of it.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Adam McKay, written by Adam McKay & Will Ferrell)

Finally, a comedy to really skewer that NASCAR crowd. Except, you know, I'm guessing the NASCAR crowd are going to be the first ones in line. And I can imagine the post-film conversations at middle American Starbucks that are likely to arise. "Now, ya see there, Clem, that Anchorman guy there was doin' what's known as an ironic re-pre-sen-ta-tion of a real NASCAR driver, on account of all of us here know that in real life they's all serious athletes. But now, what makes it funny is the cognitive dissonance betwixt the reality we's all seein' on our Fox Sports Network and the al-ter-na-tive reality what's bein' represented to us via this here movin' picture." "Well, ah see yer point there, Trey, but ah still find mahself disturbed by the crass commercialization that -- WHAT THE CONSARN HELL YA CALL THIS THING, YA INBRED BASTARD, AH ASKED FOR A ONE PUMP MOCHA! ARE YA HOPIN' TA DEVELOP REAL ESTATE ON MAH THIGHS OR WHAT? JESUS MARY AND THA OTHER ONE, AH'VE A MIND TO KEY YER F-150!" You know, before the inevitable Truffaut vs. Fellini debate starts up.

The Descent (horror, rated R, written/directed by Neil Marshall)

Sure, it's about caves and darkness and being buried alive and devoured by deformed humanoid cannibal monsters, but it's also a chick flick! They're going to make money hand over fist with this one. Except they forgot to work the word "Wedding" into the title. Oops. Well, you know, the British aren't as marketing-savvy as we are. I'm sure that can be corrected in the inevitable American remake, Creatures Devouring People in a Cave Wedding With Pirates And, Uh, Also Some Snakes On Planes Because We Hear That's The Big Thing These Days And Let's Make Sure We Get At Least One Sean Paul Song On The Soundtrack.

The Night Listener (drama, rated R, directed by Patrick Stettner, written by Armistead Maupin, Terry Anderson & Patrick Stettner, from the book by Armistead Maupin)

I don't think I heard of this movie before today, but it's not surprising because it was just about time for Robin Williams's contractually obligated Take Me Seriously As A Dramatic Actor movie. I'm not sure if David Duchovny's House of D counted toward that total or not, since I think there's some kind of penalty or half-credit involved when Williams plays mentally challenged and/or prematurely aged roles. Anyway. It appears they tossed Rory Culkin into this one too, which gives us a nice opportunity to reflect on the fact that he's totally surpassed his older sibling what's-his-name in pretty much every arena except dating Mila Kunis. And since Rory is only a year away from turning 18, I'm sure it won't be long before some other fetishized TV actress scoops him up and whisks him off to the tabloids with her. Amanda Bynes, perhaps?

Snap Judgment: Wooden Farrell, Animated Cage

2006-07-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday, wallabies! (That's probably what they say in Australia.) (To the wallabies, not the people. I assume people are addressed the same way they are here.)

Yeah, that southern hemisphere humor just doesn't play north of the equator. Anyway.

John Tucker Must Die (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Betty Thomas, written by Jeff Lowell)

Ah, we finally have this year's high school murder comedy. It's about time. I wonder how they'll kill this Tucker fellow. May I refer them to the list of ten deadliest poisons recently published by Wired? Lots of good choices there. Can you believe cyanide is only #6? Didn't you always have the impression that that was like by far the deadliest thing in the world, and you could die just by thinking about it, or even just by thinking about the color cyan and then mentioning the Ides of March in the next sentence? No, turns out botulinum is the most lethal of them all! Which, of course, is what they use in botox. Why, that's perfect. Just have one of these "high-school aged" girls get John Tucker to kiss them on their foreheads, and voila! Rapid death via nervous system failure!

Scoop (comedy/mystery, rated R, written/directed by Woody Allen)

ScarJo's back, and this time she's neurotic! But it's not that surprising; I'm sure after Match Point, Woody could only hold out for so long before his typewriter burst forth with scene after scene of people fretting hilariously about hors d'ouevres and being late for the opera. Oh, I kid, but we know I'll probably still Netflix it; if I could endure Curse of the Jade Scorpion (though just barely, and mainly because I was on a plane), then I should be able to put up with anything else (except, of course, the actual movie Anything Else, which I'm quite sure I'll never see). Moving on...

The Ant Bully (animated, rated PG, written/directed by John A. Davis, from the book by John Nickle)

Eek. The picture of a scantily clad boy under a creepy-looking guy with his arms out didn't raise any red flags, Social Services-wise? No, the MPAA was probably too busy censoring boobs to notice. Meanwhile, the star-studded cast list at the bottom is a comforting indicator of the fact that no matter how much artistry and effort an animation studio can put into one of its films, it'll still never sell without a bunch of famous people doing the voices. Remember when the biggest star in Beauty and the Beast was Angela Lansbury, and she had to do her own singing too? Me too, sort of. Then again, I can't argue with using Nic Cage in a cartoon, seeing as his voice already sounds like it's coming out of an animated zebra.

Miami Vice (action, rated R, written/directed by Michael Mann, based on the series created by Anthony Yerkovich)

Well, this just seems wrong to begin with. Sure, it's a movie based on a 20-year old TV drama that mainly retains camp value, but where's McG? More to the point, WHERE THE HELL IS OWEN WILSON? Has the man not proven his worth already? Was the 1-2 punch of I Spy and Starsky & Hutch not enough to cement his standing as the go-to actor for this type of film? Plus, Colin Farrell isn't from Miami. He's not even American! He's from Castleknock, Dublin! Was I in the bathroom when they changed the movie to Castleknock Vice? This is all just very, very wrong. Owen Wilson and Will Smith. That's the cast for this movie. (And all sarcasm aside, I'll eat both of my socks if none of the Universal executives suggested that in earnest.)

M. Night Shyamalan's Snap Judgment

2006-07-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well, the studios have finally popped their heads out from under their blankets to see if the scary Pirate's still there, and that means a whopping four actual movies with which I must dispense. So let's get the dispensing started, shall we?

Lady in the Water (fantasy, sort of, I guess, rated PG-13, written/directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

Yeah, I had to use this poster, even though it's an older one, because of the sheer awesomeness of "A BEDTIME STORY WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN." You know why it's awesome? Because I totally bet this poster is not the first time he's used that. I bet when M. Night sits down on his kids' beds to tell them stories every night, he uses the exact same phrasing ("Hey Saleka, are you tucked in with your teeth brushed yet? Want to hear a bedtime story WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN?"). I bet his bedtime stories have digital surround sound, murky opening credits, and surgically precise ad campaigns. And before the kids can even hear them, they have to sit through crazy schizophrenic Sprite ads and trailers for John Tucker Must Die. Also, if Saleka walks down the hall and reveals to her sister the shocking twist ending to the bedtime story ("...and they all lived happily ever after!"), then that kid is OUT OF THE FUCKING FAMILY! But come to think of it, I do wonder what kind of bedtime stories Ron Howard told his daughter when she was of a young impressionable age. I would've thought he'd told her the one where the up-and-coming actress hitches her star to the hottest up-and-coming director so the two of them can share in the joy of killer box office and stupendous paychecks, but instead he seems to have told her the story about the up-and-coming actress signing on to the first really shitty movie by said up-and-coming director, then being lured into an even shittier one with the promise of top billing and a permanent space in the hearts of all mermaid fetishists. Oh, and Paul Giamatti? Well, I'm guessing his excuse is that he saw The Sixth Sense, fell into a 6-year long coma, and was finally awoken by a call from his agent offering him the lead in the new Shyamalan movie. "Holy shit, the I-see-dead-people dude? I'm so fucking there!" Apparently his stupor lasted long enough to film the entire movie and do publicity for it, but I have to assume that if nothing else, this story should alert him to the fact that it's a long time since 1999.

Clerks II (comedy, rated R, written/directed by Kevin Smith)

I kind of have nothing to say about this, except that I do remember a time when you had to be fairly hip to even know who Kevin Smith was. But it's not like I was one of the first people to see Clerks at Sundance or anything, so I can't really play the in-on-the-ground-floor card here. I saw it on video, in a friend's dorm room, sometime in late 1996. Naturally, I thought it was genius. By now I'm more of the mind that Kevin Smith's career is genius, since he's been able to elevate himself to the status of a sort of dick-joke Hitchcock, wherein his personality alone sells the movies. Really, he's got the status that Indian-Pennsylvanian fellow we were talking about before wishes he had and probably could have if he didn't keep shooting himself in the foot.

Monster House (animated, rated PG, directed by Gil Kenan, written by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, Pamela Pettler)

Oddly enough, I hear this is really good. And I say "oddly enough" because right smack dab in the middle of the poster are the words "Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis present...", and in this day and age that's bound to make anyone a bit suspicious. Sure, in the 80's, if Spielberg made a movie it was E.T. or Indiana Jones and if he "presented" a movie it was Goonies or Back to the Future. These days, he's fighting an uphill battle to throw enough Minority Reports and Munichs out there so no one notices that (seriously) he's a producer on Transformers. And Zemeckis? Well, he was last seen basking in his coup of making Harrison Ford into a psycho killer (and SHOWING THAT TWIST IN THE FREAKING TRAILER), then moving on to turn one of my beloved childhood books into some kind of bizarre digitized robot freakshow. So, to sum up, if this movie came out 20 years ago, the words "Spielberg and Zemeckis Present" would be enough to sell out the opening weekend even if it turned out to be a documentary on pink highlighter ink. Today it's a harder sell. However, no matter who's attached to it (or who's putting their names on it in return for being owed a lifetime of favors up to and including a kidney), it is a movie about a living house terrorizing some kids. And that sounds kind of cool.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Ivan Reitman, written by Don Payne)

Yeah, I don't blame Uma for smashing that car with her foot. I'm guessing she was promised Owen Wilson, then showed up to set to find the inferior one waiting for her with a copy of her binding contract. He's just lucky she didn't have any leftover Hattori Hanzo swords handy. Could've gotten ugly.

Snap Judgment: Arrrrrr the studios scared to release anything good now?

2006-07-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Well, since that Pirate movie is still doing killer business (even beating out made-up James Cameron movies), this isn't exactly a weekend of major new releases. But I'll do my best to deflect what there is so you can feel good about going back and seeing a barnacle-clad Stellen Skarsgård again.

You, Me and Dupree (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Anthony & Joe Russo, written by Mike LeSieur)

How does the Owen Wilson who co-wrote Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums reconcile himself with the Owen Wilson who does stuff like this? Does he have a spiked whip in his linen closet that he uses to self-flagellate after cashing his 8-figure checks (perhaps donating a reasonable portion thereof to, say, Cure Autism Now or another equivalently chic and non-Scientology-based charity)? Does he IMDB his kid brother to remind himself that at least he's steered clear of any McG-tainted enterprises thus far? Does he schedule a night out with Vince Vaughn so he can go to sleep satisified in his continued evasion of The Bloat? Does he give his cook the day off and make his own grilled cheese sandwich just to feel like a regular guy? I don't know, but somehow he does it.

The Groomsmen (comedy, rated R, written/directed by Ed Burns)

Sure, 10 years ago Ed Burns didn't mind when his movies flew under the radar and only got noticed by the hip, urban Hefeweizen-drinking crowd; but now that he's put in his time acting in big studio flicks to pay the bills and get noticed, I'd think he'd be a little put off that even a relatively star-studded affair like this one is still being marginalized into an LA/NY-only release. Or maybe not! Maybe he wants this level of cachet. Perhaps he fancies the directing career of, say, John Sayles, except without the occasional uncredited rewrites of Schwarzenegger movies. Although it remains to be seen if Sayles would ever work with Matthew "Always brings his own script" Lillard or John "Oh crap, I left my subtlety in the car" Leguizamo.

Little Man ("comedy", rated PG-13, directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, written by Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Marlon Wayans)

You might think this is the kind of movie for which I started Snap Judgment in the first place. You might think I anticipate the release of movies like this with bated breath for weeks in advance, drooling over the trashing potential they're destined to have. You would be horribly, horribly wrong. I take no more pleasure in the release (not just the release, the existence) of this film than I do in biting my tongue hard enough to draw blood while I'm eating a zucchini walnut muffin. Sure, I might make some kind of joke about that after the fact, but do I in any way hope that it will happen before it does? N. O. So all I will say about this, before I turn away from it and do my best to forget about it forever, is that HE DOESN'T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE A FUCKING BABY!

Snap Judgment: Arrrrrrr, junkies!

2006-07-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Can a double espresso counteract my post-awesome-Hollywood-Bowl-show tiredness enough to do a decent whaling on this week's movies? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

A Scanner Darkly (sci-fi, rated R, written/directed by Richard Linklater, from the novel by Philip K. Dick)

So this movie uses the rotoscope animation process, previously used by Linklater a few years ago in Waking Life. Except nobody saw that (including me, though Eti has the DVD I think), so let me rephrase the statement slightly: This movie uses the rotoscope animation process, previously used in the totally awesome video for "Take On Me." Yeah! Now we're making progress. Unfortunately, I must now break the news that, as far as I know, a-ha is featured nowhere in this particular film. In fact, I think it's unlikely that the movie contains any Norwegians at all: it was all filmed in Texas over the summer, and that kind of weather just isn't friendly to anyone with Scandinavian-derived skin. Too bad. Because quite frankly, a drugged-out Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. don't even come close to the entertainment value of a bunch of freaky-looking mechanic guys with goggles and wrenches. Also, the music in Scanner was apparently composed by some guy named Graham Reynolds, who probably has all kinds of pretentious artistic-music-guy aspirations and would never even dream of using, say, a slightly fuzzy drum machine layered over a dozen or so keyboard tracks. Anyway, to close on a more interesting note, I'll paste in a helpful passage from the Wikipedia entry on a-ha. "The origin of the name a-ha comes from the title of an early song (The Juicyfruit Song). After checking dictionaries in several languages, they found out that "a-ha" was an international way of expressing recognition, with positive connotations. It was short, easy to say and unusual."

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (big-budget scurvy, rated PG-13, directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio)

I want to know whose idea it was to put Keira Knightley in a pirate outfit. Because, while I adore this person, I also fear that he or she might have enough other ideas like that to slowly relieve me of all the money I have. Sure, this one's only $10, but like a good drug dealer they'll charge me more and more as their confidence in my repeat business increases. By the time they come out with the "Evan Rachel Wood in an all-girls prep school in the winter" product, I'll be forced to pawn my computer, TV, and probably a kidney or two to afford the $1500 ticket. But that's a long way off, so in the meantime I'll do my best to enjoy this movie, even as I continue to stand in disbelief over how giving Jerry Bruckheimer even more money than usual could ever result in something remotely watchable.

That's it! Sorry, I can't really say anything about Strangers With Candy, except that I'm sure it's very funny if you're into that sort of thing.

Snap Judgment: Who will save the world from fashion and fuel efficiency?

2006-06-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

On the eve of 4th of July weekend, which of these fine films will you choose to spend your hard-earned entertainment dollar on? None of them? You'd rather sit five feet away from your brother-in-law's grill breathing charcoal fumes and spraying your other family members with that decade-old Super Soaker that probably has eight generations of spider eggs in the tank? Well, vaya con Dios, then! Otherwise, here's the selection.

The Devil Wears Prada (comedy with trendy shoes, rated PG-13, directed by David Frankel, written by Aline Brosh McKenna from the novel by Lauren Weisberger)

I'm glad that Meryl Streep still gets her name above Anne Hathaway's. Because sometimes these days, you find people on the same line who really don't belong on the same line. But I'm getting sidetracked. (And I'm not trying to diss Ms. Hathaway here; I even saw Ella Enchanted... I mean, I knew someone who saw it and said it was pretty good.) This movie also features Emily Blunt as the British chick. Eti and I know her from the disappointing girl-crush movie My Summer of Love, in which she also played the British chick, although referring to her that way in a British movie could get confusing. I guess that's why when British actresses achieve any measure of success in British films, they must immediately move to L.A. so they can coast on the "British chick" thing for as long as possible before someone else moves in. (Right, Keira?)

Superman Returns (rated PG-13, directed by Bryan Singer, written by Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris)

Did you ever used to get "Superman" by Five for Fighting confused with "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down? I sure did. Both of the bands even have numbers in their name, for god's sake! Why did they do that to us? Anyway, this film and Devil Wears Prada are really the only two movies competing for box office money this weekend (yeah, there's the electric car one, but, like, only smart people will see that, so it doesn't really count), and that's referred to as "counterprogramming," wherein you have two movies coming out at the same time that are completely different and appeal to totally separate audiences. Except, that's not really the case. I'd say they're more or less the same movie. Indulge me, if you will?

SETTING

Superman: Metropolis (essentially, New York City)
Devil Wears Prada: New York City

MAIN CHARACTER

Superman: "Chosen one" who attempts to fight evil and also pursue journalism
DWP: Jewish girl (which, Eti will be happy to tell you, means one of the Chosen People) who attempts to fight an evil editor and also pursue journalism

VILLAIN

Superman: Crazy megalomaniac with a crystal fetish
DWP: Crazy megalomaniac with a shoe fetish

VILLAIN'S MAIN FLUNKY PLAYED BY...

Superman: Indie-queen Parker Posey
DWP: Indie-king Stanley Tucci

FEMALE EYE CANDY PROVIDED BY...

Superman: Blandly good-looking James Marsden
DWP: Blandly good-looking Adrian Grenier

SUSPICIOUSLY VAGUE CONNECTION WHICH PROVES I'M RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS AND SHOULD END THIS LIST NOW:

Superman: Brandon Routh appeared on MTV's "Undressed"
DWP: Anne Hathaway appeared in Havoc, in which she "got undressed"

Who Killed The Electric Car? (documentary, rated PG, written/directed by Chris Paine)

Ah, another one of these classic "whodunit" films! I was just going to say that it's been far too long since we've had a good one. Of course, in constructing a movie like this, a filmmaker walks a very fine line because in hundreds of years of mysteries we've seen pretty much every imaginable plot twist and surprise ending. Then again, that can also work to your advantage: an audience today might assume you'd never make the butler be the killer, so they'll still be surprised when you reveal that he is. Still, just to make sure the audience isn't a step ahead, you want to put some kind of twist on the twist -- you know, like they did in Clue. (Best singing telegram scene ever, by the way.)

Oh, wait a minute. This is a documentary? That means the guy didn't even know in advance who was going to kill the car! Wow, that's gutsy. Because if it turned out to be the most obvious suspect, that really would have sucked cinematically. Or if the car had an identical twin, and it was really the twin who was murdered, and then the car shows up like 10 minutes before the end? Yeah, we've seen that one way too many times. Well, I guess I'll be cautiously optimistic about this one. All I'm saying is, it better not be another Blair Witch Project.

Snap Judgment: "...but that won't change your situation"

2006-06-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, sort of a light weekend, seeing as we're only five days away from Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot Superman remake... er, I mean, Bryan Singer's brand new creative vision of Superman. (We'll get to that one next week.)

Anyway.

Click (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Frank Coraci, written by Steve Koren & Adam O'Keefe)

All kidding aside, you know what keeps me from ever being willing to see any Adam Sandler movie ever? No, not the fact that they were filming this in Westwood last summer and using up about 1/2 the UCLA lot I park in and making it a bitch for normal employees to find a space. That's just the reality of living in L.A., because if the movie gods want to claim eminent domain on your life they can pretty much do so at any time. (True story: a couple years ago I had to lend Jerry Bruckheimer my liver for a particularly gruesome action scene in Bad Boys 2. It was cut from the movie, and my liver never even got its SAG card.) No, the reason I will never venture into the Cinema de Sandler is because the trailers are constantly telling me that his movies have a heart. Sandler sings wacky 80s songs in crazy outfits, but he JUST WANTS LOVE! Sandler adopts a moppet and teaches him to spit, but he really JUST WANTS THE KID TO LOVE HIM! And now, Sandler fast forwards his life but MISSES HIS KID'S CHILDHOOD AND FEELS WIWWY WIWWY BAAAD ABOUT IT! And frankly, all that repulses me a lot more than whatever poop/fart/snot jokes the guy can come up with. Because I really don't think the emotional crap is just a concession to the studio to make more money. No, it's an extension of Adam's ego: we can't just laugh at him; we also have to loooove him. I plan to do neither. Yes, my heart is one of coal. Deal with it.

Wassup Rockers (indie comedy/drama, rated R, written by Larry Clark and Matthew Frost)

Let me ask you, Larry Clark, is it really the best idea to be saying "It's been 10 years since Kids" right smack dab on the middle of your poster? Because frankly, you might as well be saying "It's been 10 years since Kids and I still find myself waking up in cold sweats during the night, unable to suppress my obsession with filming pubescent boys and girls engaged in risque behaviors." And what's the deal with throwing Janice Dickinson in there as 'Beverly Hills Actress'? Was there a shortage of heroin and tantrums on set?

Waist Deep (crime drama, rated R, directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall, written by Vondie Curtis-Hall, Darin Scott, Michael Mahern)

Once upon a time, Vondie Curtis-Hall had a pretty cool role in Die Hard 2, even though I can't remember exactly which role it was since it's been over a year since I popped in that particular DVD. Oh, and he was the voice print analyst in Clear and Present Danger, a movie I prefer to think of as the last one of Harrison Ford's career before he took the high road and retired on an up note. A bit part, sure, but I remember that scene like the back of my hand (possibly because I've seen C&PD about 15 times) and let me tell you, Vondie played the hell out of it. But it troubles me to think that while he was telling Harrison that the Columbian drug lord played by Joaquim de Almeida had to have been educated in the eastern United States, in the back of his mind Vondie was already planning out a future directing career that included both Gridlock'd and... yes... Glitter. And maybe he also had the idea that he'd rebound from those masterpieces to put Tyrese and The Game in a pretty average-looking crime thriller type thing (even though, in 1994, the only game The Game was playing was, like, freeze tag)... but nonetheless, I wish someone could have read his mind at the time and staged some sort of intervention. Okay, yeah, I've heard that Glitter is legitimately one of those "so horrendous it's entertaining" kind of exercises, though I haven't tested that theory yet. Anyway, Vondie, why don't you quit the behind-the-camera stuff and go talk to Harrison Ford. Tell him if he ever wants to get back into the good movie business, you'll be right there waiting to analyze a voice print. It just might get both your lives back on track.

Snap Judgment: Gah! Too many movies!

2006-06-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

No time for the usual opening sarcastic bit! Do you KNOW how many movies need to be summarily dismissed this morning? I don't think you do!

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (comedy, rated PG, directed by Tim Hill, written by Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow, based on the almost-funny comic strip by Jim Davis)

This is usually the kind of sequel that goes direct to video and/or has a different lead actor than the original. But that's not the case in this case; it's theatrical and with the same cast. So there goes my brilliantly crafted joke about how "even Breckin Meyer was too busy to do this one." Seriously, would that not have been comedy gold? Now I'm stuck trying to get a laugh out of whoever else is in the cast, like -- dear god, is that Sharon Osbourne voice-acting in this movie? All right, I give up already.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (car thingy, rated PG-13, directed by Justin Lin, written by Chris Morgan, Alfredo Botello, Kario Salem)

Speed needs no translation. Amen to that. I really like how pitches from junior studio execs can now be turned into advertising lingo with zero filtering in between. Why did they stop there? They should have just had the poster say, This film will play very well in the increasingly competitive foreign markets because it has very little intelligible dialogue but lots of fast cars, some of which will probably blow up. However, we haven't spent all that much money on either the movie or the marketing, because we're aware that it's geared toward the part of the world where film piracy is by far the most rampant. Seriously, I think you can already get the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie on DVD over there for like two dollars. Michelle, remind me to pick that up on my next trip to Tokyo. And make sure I don't forget my fucking Blackberry this time, unless you want me calling you collect at 3 in the morning from the payphone outside the Most Excellent Happiness massage parlor to find out if the Dreamworks deal went through.

But I guess if they actually wrote all that, they wouldn't have room for that swell future-property-of-Frankie-Muniz car.

Nacho Libre (comedy, rated PG, directed by Jared Hess, written by Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess, and Mike White)

I didn't see Napoleon Dynamite. Thought about seeing it. Had people tell me I absolutely had to see it. Then had other people tell me I wasn't missing anything. Sided with the latter. New movie comes out from Napoleon Dynamite dude, this time with Jack Black. I like Jack Black. Sometimes (i.e., School of Rock). I like Mike White sometimes too, especially since he used to write for Freaks & Geeks, which really is pretty much the best show ever. And the movie was shot entirely in Mexico, the country which famously provides 1/4 of my heritage. But still... that fear of commitment vibe creeps in every time the words "studio" and "comedy" are in a sentence together. Sure, they want you to think it's not like that, that it's just fucking dripping with indie credibility and subtle humor. But is it really? It's clearly got a huge marketing budget, judging by the number of buses I've seen it on, so I guess Paramount expects it to do big money. And comedies that do big money usually have "Meet The _____" in the title. So, should I give this a chance? Might it be good in spite of the fact that Paramount wants us to think it's good? I don't know; these philosophical questions are too heavy for me to ponder when I still have other films to trash.

The Lake House (romance/fantasy, rated R, directed by Alejandro Agresti, written by David Auburn, based on a screenplay by Eun-Jeong Kim and Ji-na Yeo)

"Uh... Sandra?" "Yeah?" "Dude... why am I in, like, black and white?" "It's supposed to represent the theme of the movie." "Oh. [pause] What's the theme?" "We're joined at the heart but separated by time." "Oh. Hey, that's wild. So we're like, uh, Simonese twins?" "No, I mean like spiritually." "Oh. Oh. Yeah, I dig that." "You don't know what I mean, do you?" "Sure I do. You're talking about Jesus. I dig that. I used to be into that but I'm, like, Buddhist now. I think. I have to check with my manager." "So, Keanu?" "Yeah, dude?" "You can let go of me now. The photo shoot ended about twenty minutes ago."

Snap Judgment: Cars talk, Lohan acts

2006-06-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's almost my birthday! What spectacular films shall the studios reward me with in return for smearing everything they've put out in the last six months?

A Prairie Home Companion (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Robert Altman, written by Garrison Keillor)

I had the good fortune to grow up in a household where Garrison Keillor's brilliantly subtly humorous radio show was being played pretty much on a weekly basis. (Sometimes it was also played in the car.) I say "good fortune" not because I ever once laughed at or otherwise enjoyed it, but rather because it provided my parents with a reliable distraction and enabled me to spend time on my plot for world domination via Starbucks market saturation. Then again, someone kind of beat me to that plan, so I guess I wasn't all that fortunate after all. The other thing that comes to mind when I think of Garrison Keillor is, of course, the Simpsons episode where [DISCLAIMER: I am aware that quoting Simpsons does not qualify as actual humor, but tough shit, I'm going to do it anyway] Homer is watching Prairie Home Companion and everyone in the studio audience is laughing their asses off, and Homer frowns and walks up to the TV and bangs on it and says "Come on, TV! Be more funny!" Which was always exactly how I felt about it.

But that's all kind of beside the point, because I'm supposed to be talking about the movie. So first off, there's Lindsay Lohan, who wasn't even a twinkle in her jailbird father's eye when the radio show began. Lindsay Lohan! In a Robert Altman film! No, that's really not that big of a deal, actually, when you consider he already used Ryan Phillippe in Gosford Park, Tara Reid in Dr. T and the Women, and Pearl Coffey Chason in Brewster McCloud. That's right! Pearl Coffey Chason! No, I don't know who the hell she is either. Anyway, that's the extent to which I'm going to list off the cast, because everyone knows Altman = approximately 287 starring roles and 5,279 cameos, and if you thought this column was mediocre so far, imagine how desperate I'd sound when I got to number 5,119. ("Wow, watching [actor 5,119] in this movie is destined to be about as exciting as watching Ashlee Simpson analyze the religious subtext of Teen Wolf Too.") So that's why I'm going to stop here and move on.

Cars (obligatory Pixar blockbuster, rated G, directed by John Lasseter)

After The Omen took advantage of the sorta-ominous date on Tuesday, I had to wonder if Pixar didn't miss their chance to do the same thing.... like, a whole "TAKE A RIDE ON ROUTE 666!" campaign with smiling devil cars and exhaust pipes spraying demon blood on a landscape of painstakingly CG-animated carnage. Alas, that appears not to be the case, and I guess the fact that they picked Randy Newman to do the score instead of Rob Zombie is a pretty clear indication that they're serious about staying on the family-friendly tip. That's a real shame, because seriously, imagine what Pixar could do if they really set out to brutally scar the childhood of every kid who watched their films. I mean, you just know there's a guy in every one of their pitch meetings who says, "Hey, this time what if we have Buzz Lightyear go all Chucky and massacre the whole neighborhood?" And sure, he gets shot down, but I bet you all the rest of them are thinking "You know, that would be pretty awesome."

Chup Chup Ke (your guess is as good as mine, unrated, directed by Priyadarshan, written by Priyadarshan and Neeraj Vora)

Obligatory foreign film time! I can't quite read whatever that tagline is on top of the poster, so let's come up with some better alternatives based on (a) the title and (b) the fact that they're all giving the international "Shhhh" symbol.

What's the secret? FIND OUT on June 9th. (Okay, the secret is that THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO BLOW UP!)

Because just ONE Chup wasn't wacky enough!

Chup Chup Ke... the DEADLIEST game of "duck, duck goose" you've ever played!

Singing! Dancing! Fancy outfits! (*)

(*) Also a suitable tagline for every other Bollywood film ever made

Snap Judgment Special Edition: June 6, 2006 -- I mean, 6-6-06!

2006-06-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

The Omen (bloody apocalypse thingy, rated R, directed by John Moore, written by David Seltzer)

Nice try, 20th Century Fox... thought you could evade a Snap Judgment by sneaking your movie in on a Tuesday? Try again. I do have to admire the boldness of your marketing campaign, though. I can only imagine how that came about.

INT. FOX BOARDROOM - DAY

A couple of FOX EXECUTIVES sip their soy chai lattes and furtively eye the boxes of Krispy Kremes scattered throughout the table.

SENIOR EXEC: So what's the script again?

JUNIOR EXEC: It's called The Omen, it's a remake of the classic 1976 apocalyptic thriller that starred--

SENIOR EXEC [to assistant]: Netflix that for me. [to Junior Exec] So who can we get? Tom? Brad? [silence] Lohan?

JUNIOR EXEC: They're not available.

[Awkward silence. One of the Senior Execs cracks open a Krispy Kreme box.]

JUNIOR EXEC: We've tracked down a couple of possibilities, though.

SENIOR EXEC [with mouth full of Original Glazed]: I've got lunch at Geisha House in twenty-two seconds. Let's hear it.

JUNIOR EXEC: Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles.

SENIOR EXEC: Oy. How the fuck do we sell them?

JUNIOR EXEC: Well, I think the strength of the material really supersedes any fancy marketing gimmicks. The director has some exciting ideas for how to incorporate recent world events into the fabric of the narrative, and furthermore--

SENIOR EXEC: Six Six Zero Six.

JUNIOR EXEC: I'm sorry?

SENIOR EXEC: That's the plan. June 6, 2006. Scary. We'll blanket the town in billboards. Everyone'll think they're gonna die. Don't mention the cast.

JUNIOR EXEC [checks watch]: That's twelve weeks away. We were planning this for first quarter 2007.

SENIOR EXEC [slowly]: Six. Six. Zero Six.

JUNIOR EXEC: Also, that's a Tuesday.

SENIOR EXEC [grabbing another donut and leaving]: Get some custard-filled ones next time.

Snap Judgment: If I Count To Ten Will You Disappear?

2006-06-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

Always the zen master of good timing, Nick just so happened to pick this particular craptastical new release Friday to blow town and entrust me with Snap Judgment. What you may not know is that I self diagnosed myself with ADD last week. But I digr-- hey, shiny obj-- that's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane, IMDB is not afraid.

The Break Up (rated PG-13, directed by Peyton Reed, written by Jeremy Garelick & Jay Lavender)

English Translation: Diet War of the Roses / War of the Roses Lite

So there’s this couple who break up and fight over a condo. Mind you, the trailer (which starts off with a pianoesque “Heart and Soul” then switches over to Social D’s “Ball and Chain?!”) is utterly condo-reference free and I’m pretty sure Vince and Jennifer don’t fall to their deaths at the end. So, like, whatever.

I bet there’s not even any good angry ass-kicking punch-out sex like in War of the Roses. I’m sure Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had better kung fu sex in Mr. and Mrs.-- oooh, did I just go there?!

Banlieue 13 (rated R, directed by Pierre Morel, written by Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri. Limited release - as if you care.)

English Translation: District B13

Plot summary: “Set in the ghettos of Paris in 2010, an undercover cop and ex-thug try to infiltrate a gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.”

Oy.

So here’s the plan. I’m just going to put all the parts of the movie that I don’t want to see in bold type.

“Set in the ghettos of Paris in 2010, an undercover cop and ex-thug try to infiltrate a gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.”

Voila, pure genius! “Set in the of in an and try to infiltrate a in order to a” is going to seriously rock! If that plot summary doesn't just scream "SEE THIS MOVIE," then I don't know what does!

Wait! I changed my mind. I want the plot summary of this movie to be “Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!”

Taepung (rated R, directed by Kyung-Taek Kwak, written by Kyung-Taek Kwak. Limited release - as if you care.)

English Translation: Typhoon

“A modern-day pirate plans a massive attack on North and South Korea.”

Remember how a few months ago Nick forced me to watch “The Rock” where fricking Ed Harris thinks he’s a non-balding bad-ass, so he holds San Francisco hostage with nukes or something and then Sean Connery talks about winners fucking the prom queen? And remember how I wanted to jab ice picks into my nipples just to make the pain go away?

Call me crazy, but I have an inkling that this movie will be way more torturous.

I mean, "modern-day pirate" is the sickest, most twisted oxymoron that I've heard of in a while. And where does the typhoon come in? I think they just called it Taepung because the working title was Taepungie Tang.

I think this film would be much more interesting if it were about “North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.”

Peaceful Warrior (rated PG-13, directed by Victor Salva, written by Kevin Bernhardt and adapted from Dan Millman's novel. Limited release - as if you care.)

Translation: The director is an admitted and convicted child molester.

You’re probably thinking “Why does Nick always give Eti these weird-ass sexually questionable topics to deal with? Is it because she’s just totally kinky like that?” Hmmm, good question!

In spite of my masochistic tendencies, just the fact that this guy directed Mary Steenburgen in a movie is enough to put me off him for life. Shit, even I don't like pain that much.

Snap Judgment: Memorial, but probably not memorable

2006-05-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

In about 30 hours I'm off to New York for the weekend, so that I might have a chance to balance out the usual pop-cultural surfeits of L.A. with such high-cultural touchstones as the Met, Guggenheim, and public urination. But before all that, I must leave our devoted readership (all six of you) with some thoughtful words on this weekend's release slate.

Now, without further ado (the existing ado notwithstanding)...

X-Men 3: The Last Stand (rated PG-13, directed by Brett Ratner, written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn)

So, as I understand it, in this one there's some kind of a vaccine that you can take to stop being a mutant. Personally, if I were a mutant (and really, who's to say I'm not?), my decision whether or not to take "The Cure" would probably hinge upon how cool my mutant costume was. Because, you know, some of the costumes are pretty awesome, and I assume that the lease on them expires as soon as you're de-mutantized. Sure, you get your $50 refundable deposit back, but that's not going to be much comfort. (By the way, yes, the vaccine really is just called "The Cure" even though, as far as I know, it has little or nothing to do with goth-pop or Robert Smith.)

But what I'm really wondering is what the prime-time commercials for The Cure would be like. If it comes from a big pharmaceutical company, you know they'd have them.

Are you frequently tired or distracted in your job or your home life, unable to focus on the things that matter to you? Do you get angry when there's no reason to? Do you find that lately, you can't even hug or comfort a loved one without sucking their life energy? When you forget to wear sunglasses, do high-intensity laser beams shoot out of your eyes? If you said "yes" to one or more of these questions, you're not alone. Like millions of other Americans, you may be suffering from a congenital medical condition known as "mutantness." Last year, mutantness alone accounted for 61% of all steel-claw-related deaths, 45% of unwanted mind-readings, and at least a hundred instances of running through walls.

But thanks to The Cure, there is hope.

Depending on your medical history, you may be eligible to begin treatment immediately and put an end to the unnecessary sleepless nights, panic attacks, and inadvertent control of magnetic fields. Talk to your doctor about The Cure. You may begin to feel better quickly; however, in order to make sure that all mutant genes are killed, you should complete the course of medication. The Cure is not for everyone. Side effects may include drowsiness, headache, and dry mouth, and typically occur in less than 10% of patients. If you are planning to destroy the entire world's supply of vaccines in order to create a tyrannical new world order in which evil mutants are dominant, or if you are pregnant or may become pregnant, then The Cure may not be for you.

An Inconvenient Truth (documentary, rated PG, directed by Davis Guggenheim)

Okay, so Al Gore may be one of my favorite people ever (bolstered by the fact that one of my other favorite people ever, Sarah Vowell, wrote a brilliant essay about his geekiness)... but this is Snap Judgment and no one is immune. That being said, I'm very glad he invented the internet so I could talk to everyone about his movie. Which is, well, as far as I can tell, 100 or so minutes of him lecturing. That doesn't mean I'm not going to see it, but it also doesn't mean I'm going to stay awake for the whole thing without some chemical assistance courtesy of Starbucks. I mean, even Syriana put me right out, and that was all fictionalized and had explosions and Amanda Peet. I wonder what I'd do in a movie where I was lecturing for 100 minutes. Sure, I could talk about something as important and tragically overlooked as the demise of the natural world as we know it, but let's face it, I'd probably be more likely to use the time to talk about the relative merits of the first two seasons of Alias vs. the first two seasons of Buffy and how Alias was a lot more consistent on a week-to-week basis and delivered a more coherent overall plotline whereas Buffy was more imaginative and ambitious with some of its individual episodes and ultimately made you care more about its characters. Then I might segue into explaining why Gilmore Girls and 24, despite being polar opposites in every conceivable way, are absolutely equally important to me and why I could never be forced to choose one over the other. Ultimately, I'm guessing my movie would be outdone financially by even the destined-to-be-modest grosses of Al's movie. But you know? I think I'd have better slideshows.

Bizarro

2006-05-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

Joan Collins and Adrianne Curry...

Uncanny.

Marissa Cooper Graduates, Dies

2006-05-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

Marissa Cooper is dead! Dead!

We’ve prayed for this moment for so long, but now that it’s finally come (and thankfully, gone rather quickly), I wish I could tell you that I’m thrilled...but oddly enough, I’m a little sad.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m going to miss Mischa Barton’s spectacular displays of awkward screaming and pool-furniture throwing. But I really am.

Mischa Barton’s craptastic “acting” was the only reason to even entertain watching the show each week. Well, that and the Television Without Pity recaps; but they sort of go hand in hand.

Those of you who have followed this blog and podcast for long enough know that Nick and I turned mocking Mischa Barton / Marissa Cooper into an art-form. But this past season of The OC sucked so hard, that I was barely able to bring myself to watch more than a handful of episodes to perfect my craft. However, if you followed season two, you’d realize that the ultimate downfall and suck was inevitable.

Personally, I blame the demise of the show strictly on the fact that the producers made the fatal mistake of getting rid of Alex. (Not to mention that they totally blew the whole Marissa/Summer step-sister stuff this year.)

Alex was Marissa’s only saving grace. With the (usual) exception of (Pop Whore favorite) Evan Rachel Wood (on Once and Again), Olivia Wilde should’ve been given the Nobel Peace Prize for making Mischa Barton tolerable and dare I say, even likable. Granted, Mischa Barton was still able to reach her quota of maximum suckage through her horrible kissing and ultimate alienation of Alex, but at least it was fun while it lasted.

Watching Mischa Barton on The OC is like watching the first half season of Lost. Both suck hard and are completely laughable. Yet both are commended in article upon article and review upon review as being oh-so great. Personally, I like to refer to them as an allegory of The Emperor’s New Clothes. I’m still waiting for someone to call Lost out for what it really is...a completely asinine show with no point whatsoever. It’s the greatest scam on TV. I despise the fucking show and I feel it is my duty to scream from the rooftops, “People, don’t buy into it!!!”

Anyway, once Lost got rid of Boone and Shannon and started going in circles (and circles and circles) with no fucking point whatsoever and no end in sight, there was really no sense in wasting any more time on the worthless, putrid show.

Similarly with The OC, once they got rid of Alex and Marissa was able to reclaim her throne as the reigning Queen of Suck with no intention of being likable ever again, there was no incentive to keep watching.

Then again, at least The OC is able to be fluffy and entertaining. Believe me when I say that I’d rather watch the worst episode of The OC than the best episode of Lost any day. But whatever.

Anyway...

So long Marissa. I’ll sort of miss you. I hope the tide turns a lot in heaven.

Snap Judgment: All shall bow before the Lord! Except cartoon animals!

2006-05-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ah, it's looking to be one hell of an exciting weekend at the movies, and by "at the movies," I mean "in my living room watching Coal Miner's Daughter from Netflix," because, well... let's take a look.

Oracle of the IMDb Now Playing, what sayeth you?

The Da Vinci Code (twisty Jesus thriller, rated PG-13, directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by Akiva Goldsman from the novel by Dan Brown)

Some of the super-religious folks among us don't want people to see this because it's full of lies." Or they want some kind of disclaimer before the movie starts that says "This is a work of fiction." To those people I say: there already is such a disclaimer, and it's Tom Hanks's hair. Seriously. No, no, seriously. If anybody walks out of this movie believing that Tom has a long, flowing, jet-black mane like that in real life, then I don't think there's much point in trying to convince them of anything else. But while I'm on the topic, why the hair, anyway? I read the book, and while it was way back in '03, I still don't recall the character description being that specific. Hang on, let me ask one of the PopWhore interns for a copy. Okay, here we go. Well, look at that: I was mistaken. Here it is, right on page 46:

"The mark on the painting was annoyingly familiar, yet its significance remained elusive. Langdon swept aside his thick black mop of hair, a relic of his glory days as the lead guitarist of Warrant, and began combing the archives for the clue he so desperately sought. THEN SOMEONE PULLED A KNIFE ON HIM!" (Next chapter) "He ran!" (Next chapter) "And ran!" (Next chapter) "And got in a car!" (And so on.)

Over The Hedge (more digitized hijinks, rated PG, written and directed by Roman Polanski... nah, just kidding, but I don't feel like listing out all the actual contributors)

Did you guys see the last Apprentice, where the winners of the task got flown out to DreamWorks studios and had their voices put into the movie? Man, that was awesome. You know the quality of this film has to be exceedingly high for the filmmakers to be so selective in their casting of voice actors. My only issue is that none of the rest of the cast appears to have gone through the same rigorous selection process. Did Bruce Willis have to design a kick-ass WalMart kiosk promoting the new Xbox 360 before he got called into the recording booth? I think not. And that really points to one of the reasons why Hollywood is falling apart these days. Talent is no longer rewarded! It's all about favoritism! Well, I, personally, will not stand for it. Let it be known that this the day on which I begin my vow to refuse to see any film starring so-called "actors" who never even cut their teeth on a megalomaniacal NBC reality show. Yeah, I know it's a controversial move. But deep down, you know I'm right.

See No Evil (horror, rated R, directed by Gregory Dark, written by Dan Madigan)

Some movies I need to make fun of on here because they have a lot more credibility than they deserve. This really isn't one of them. I'm kind of out of ideas, so I'm just going to list the results of the research I did on this film in the past 30 seconds:

The movie was shot in Queensland, Australia on a budget of $8 million dollars.
The script is by Dan Madigan, whose sole previous credit is a writer on WWE Smackdown.
The director, Gregory Dark, has a resume that includes New Wave Hookers 4, Hootermania, and Deep Inside Vanessa Del Rio.
He also directed a video for Britney Spears ("From the Bottom of My Broken Heart").
Ew.

Ifs And Thens

2006-05-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

If the Cycle 4 finale of America's Next Top Model was about as heartbreaking as the cancellation of Dead Like Me...

And the finale of Cycle 5 was about as exciting as trying to decide if you prefer a lobotomy to hobbling...

Then last night's finale was like the Sophie's Choice of America's Next Top Model.

The Pipettes

2006-05-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

You may or may not have heard about The Pipettes.

They're an adorable trio from the UK, comprised of Becki, Gwenno and Rose, with a sound heavily influenced by the girl bands of the 50's and 60s. And they're awesome.

Some of their mp3s have been floating around the internet since last summer...and they've finally picked up speed again in anticipation of their debut album scheduled for release July 17, 2006 on the Memphis Industries label.

I, for one, am extremely excited for this!

Do a little digging around the internet and I'm sure you're sure to hit paydirt. Or if you want to just listen/be their BFF forever, like us, check out their MySpace.

Their latest single, Pull Shapes, is totally neat.

My Favorite Movies For Summer

2006-05-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

No summer in my life, and now yours, would be complete without these two movies:

North Shore

and

Summer School

Incidentally, they just both happen to be from 1987; thus one can conclude that 1987 was a truly *rad year.

*Not that Rad, because that's from 1986. Otherwise known as Year of the BMX.

NORTH SHORE

North Shore tells the story of Rick Kane (Matt Adler), a small time kid from Arizona, who wins a wave tank surf competition and heads to Hawaii's North Shore to surf the big waves, where he's surely destined for a big reality check. After several run-ins with unwelcoming locals, Rick befriends a guy named Turtle (John Philbin) and is eventually taken in by legendary has-been board shaper, Chandler (Gregory Harrison).

Rick falls in love with a local Hawaiian girl (Nia Peoples), makes an enemy in his idol, Lance Burkhart (Laird Hamilton), learns to big-wave surf and of course, enters a competition.

When I was a kid, I used to vacation in Israel every summer. This basically meant that I would spend two months each year trekking back and forth to and from the beach without a care in the world. Of course, I managed to squeeze in a viewing of this movie practically every day. I can't seem to ever get tired of this movie.

I was also in love with Turtle.

John Philbin was the love of my life back in the day, and rightly so. Maybe I'll e-mail him for an interview.

Anyway, another interesting thing about this movie (and this really pertains more to me than you guys), is there's this great Gary Wright song that plays while Rick learns to big wave surf called "Am I The One." Believe me when I say that I've been looking for this song for years and now it's finally up on iTunes! Sweet!

If you've never seen this movie, I highly recommend. If you have seen this movie, then you know what I'm talking about.

SUMMER SCHOOL

God knows Paramount has its moments.

This gem is about a very hot gym teacher, Freddy Shoop (Mark Harmon), who's blackmailed by the evil vice principal into teaching a summer school remedial English course after the regular teacher wins the lottery and bails. Freddy tackles the joys befriending a bunch of miscreants, learns to teach and falls in love with fellow teacher, Robin Bishop (Kirstie Alley).

Seriously, this movie's got classic written all over it. It has it all. 80s hair, 80s clothes, 80s music (Danny Elfman!), foreign exchange students, Texas Chainsaw Massacre themes and great lines. I can quote from this movie until the cows come home...well, actually, I can recite it to you from start to finish.

Another thing this movie does is that it begs the question: Is it really too much to ask that all teachers look like this?

Ahhh, I knew that if I couldn't have Turtle, Mr. Shoop was next on the list. Can't blame Courtney Thorne-Smith for trying.

Okay, now this is where you guys come in...

The wonderful soundtrack for this movie is not available on CD anymore and isn't on iTunes. I have it on tape, but that's not exactly iPod friendly.

So, if anyone out there has a copy, or more specifically has the song "Jackie" by Elisa Fiorillo, please, please, please e-mail me. I will love and spoon you forever.

To sum up...North Shore and Summer School. Watch them. Love them. Your summer is not complete without them.

Snap Judgment: Lindsay, your ship has come in

2006-05-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

What not-quite-good-enough-to-be-summer-releases await us on this fair morn? I'm just as excited to find out as you are.

Poseidon (cruise ship and/or box-office disaster, rated PG-13, directed by Wolfgang Peterson, written by Mark Protosevich)

Okay, first of all, I've been forced to look upon this poster (or a similar version thereof) every single morning on my way back from Starbucks when I pass by the Metro bus stop that it adorns. And every day that I've seen it, I've had the same angry thought: MAY DAY IS MAY FIRST, YOU IDIOTS! "But Nick," you say, "they're talking about mayday the maritime distress code, not May Day the labor holiday that commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Riots in Chicago." And I must say you're surprisingly well-informed, since even I didn't know the last half of that sentence until I checked Wikipedia. But never mind. Isn't it needlessly confusing to put "MAYDAY" in big letters above a date which is not, in fact, May Day? I'm going to offer my services here and suggest some alternate copy for the poster which I feel would be much more appropriate:
_______________
MAY DAY
May 1st

OUR MOVIE
May 12th

Stay home for both.
_______________

Just My Luck (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Donald Petrie, written by like 5 people who probably acted all snarky and offended when Lindsay Lohan was cast but secretly celebrated because it meant more money for them)

INT. FOX STUDIO EXEC'S OFFICE - DAY

A beautiful young woman enters. Playful yet determined, she is the very picture of a rising movie star.

STUDIO EXEC: Wrong office. Casting is down the hall.

The young woman exits.

A haggard, strung-out, barely conscious woman with 40-year-old skin and a hacking cough enters.

STUDIO EXEC: Lindsay! Come on in.

LINDSAY: Mind if I smoke?

STUDIO EXEC: Go right ahead.

She lights up. Seconds later, the fire alarm begins blaring. The studio exec's phone rings.

STUDIO EXEC (into phone): No, no, don't evacuate. It's just Lohan. (He hangs up.)

LINDSAY: Okay, talk to me.

STUDIO EXEC: Oh, you're going to love this one. It's right up your alley and it shoots next month in MANHATTAN!

LINDSAY: For fuck's sake, would you take it down a decibel? I've got a fucking hangover that could kill a fucking walrus.

STUDIO EXEC: Sorry, sorry. We're really excited about this. You play this charming, beautiful woman who--

LINDSAY: Yeah, whatever. Talk money.

STUDIO EXEC: Seven point five million.

LINDSAY: Meal allowance?

STUDIO EXEC: Five hundred a day.

LINDSAY: Crack allowance?

STUDIO EXEC: Two thousand a day.

LINDSAY: Penalty for setting stuff on fire accidentally?

STUDIO EXEC: Absolutely none.

LINDSAY: What about on purpose?

STUDIO EXEC: Don't worry about it.

LINDSAY: All right, let's do it. Send the paperwork over when it's ready. I gotta go pretend to eat a hamburger for my Elle Girl interview.

Down In The Valley (drama, rated R, written/directed by David Jacobson)

Oh sure, it's a movie about a cowboy in the city, which brings to mind the term "urban cowboy," which brings to mind the movie Urban Cowboy, which brings to mind John Travolta trying to look cool riding a mechanical bull. But despite all that, it has something else going for it, something that can only be described with a certain three words that have become sacred to this blog: Evan. Rachel. Wood. Therefore, it's a safe bet we'll be seeing it at some point.

Okay...Wow!

2006-05-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

Wow is me. Wow is us. Just fucking wow.

Thank you, Rob Thomas...thank you!

Is It Tuesday Yet?!

2006-05-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Okay kiddies, I've been slacking...but here's a UPN quickie if you're into that sort of thing.

America's Next Top Model

Shaving! Elephants! Thai Dancing! Hospitalizations! What doesn't this show cover?!!

Let's start by introducing some new vernacular for the week:

"Sara" - Noun, Adjective - Someone who tries to copy/copies someone else.

Scene: Friday night at Healthy Wok

Eti: I'll have kung pao tofu.
Nick: I'll have the same.
Eti: Why are you trying to Sara me?!

Okay, so this week the girls learned how to Thai dance, Joanie and Jade had some words over lunch, Danielle read the Bible, got sick, went to the hospital and discharged herself AMA, then joined the rest of the girl in the forest to shave (anyone else find this very odd?!!) and pose on an elephant. Joanie had some nice moments with an elephant, only to be jocked by Sara. But it was Furonda who ended up going home again and NOT Jade. WTF?!!

If you want to know how we at Pop Whore feel about Jade, watch the episode again and pay attention to the part where Joanie says that Jade just wafts bitch when she's near. But whatever. If Jade wins, she'll be the most hated winner in Top Model history, which is saying A LOT! Anyway, let's look at pictures...

Sara did have a pretty good picture, though:

But my heart belongs to Danielle and Joanie:

"Strangely" enough, they didn't use any of Joanie's really cool posed photos, but whatever. And Nick pointed out that Joanie now has a slight lisp due to her new Chiclets, hence endearing her to us more so than ever!

I also felt that it was time for Jade to get the boot, but of course she didn't. I don't even want to talk about it. I'm too excited for Veronica Mars tomorrow to even think.

Speaking of, on Thursday, we had a little chat with Furonda.

Furonda was super cool and chatty. She plugged, plugged, plugged away at her website. But props to her for being so pluggy. That and the fact that she's still doing work with KnowHiv and stuff. So we'll help her out; here it is: Furonda.com.

I asked her about her experience on the set of VM. She said that the entire cast and crew were awesome and treated her very warmly. Hence, making me really, really, really want to go down to San Diego to visit the set.

Nick asked her if she had any good tiara stories. Furonda said that one of the most memorable was the one they showed, when Jade was making fun of her. Remember the whole, 'those are not even real diamonds with your broke ass crown?" Furonda was like, "yeah, silly me thinking they were real diamonds."

The conference call ended before I got a chance to ask her about her special one-fingered Thai massage. Ok, I'm lying. I was just too embarrassed to ask.

Anyway, Top Model...Wednesday. Oh and if you guys are interested, there's also this on Thursday. God, I love UPN promos!

I also want an elephant.

Veronica Mars

Okay...HOW EXCITED IS EVERYONE?!!

At this point, who the fuck knows what's going on with the 80 mysteries to even guess at a theory...but it's the best not-knowing what's going with the 80 mysteries to even guess at a theory EVER! But we do know that Clarence Wiedman and Lianne are back! Sweetness!

Here are some cute pictures to wet your already wet appetites:

I wish my graduation pictures were that cute! Seriously, stupid me didn't realize that you were supposed to iron your gown! Thus, all my graduation pictures feature me wearing the most wrinkled blue gown in the history of wrinkled graduation gowns. Good times.

Seriously though, tomorrow night...best night of TV ever!

If you're not watching Veronica Mars by choice tomorrow night, YOU HAVE NO SOUL AND YOU EAT YOUR YOUNG! In other words, you're a fucking meter maid! Live with that!

Okkervil River: Black

2006-05-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

Forgive me Pop Whore, for I have sinned. I didn't do the TV Roundup this weekend because I was too busy listening to this song over and over again.

But, totally worth it.

Snap Judgment: Only Xenu can save you from the ghosts and protect the owls

2006-05-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

And yes, that will be the only Scientology joke that appears today, because honestly, that stuff is a little played.... I mean, isn't it pretty clear to everyone else by now that the entire religion was set up for the sole purpose of being made fun of? Besides, we don't want to shortchange Mormons or Kabbalists. They're wacky too.

Anyway! On with the Judgment that doth Snap. Don't forget to check out, from last night, Eti's ode to Jellyfish or our latest podcast. And now, let's see what the weekend brings us.

Hoot (comedy, I guess, rated PG, written/directed by Wil Shriner, from the novel by Carl Hiassen)

Uh... yeah. I know I'm supposed to be the pop culture guru here, but I have no better idea of what the hell this is than you do. Apparently these days you can throw a few good-looking people in front of a bulldozer, then slap an owl in front of them and you've got a movie. Oh, you can laugh, but I guarantee you there were meetings about what that owl should look like.

Mission: Impossible III (action, rated PG-13, directed by J.J. Abrams, written by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci)

J.J. Abrams dreamed up Alias to be "Felicity in the CIA," but when the show actually happened, Jennifer Garner was the one who got to kick the ass while Keri Russell had to sit around and be lovelorn for another season, then try to parlay her critically acclaimed performance in The Curve into some sort of film career. Not exactly fair; I mean, she didn't even get to do a guest spot on Alias as, say, a fetching young counteragent who seduces Sydney for information. (Memo to JJ: WHY THE HELL NOT?) But now that the powers that be (i.e., that Cruise guy) have given JJ $150 million to play with, Keri finally has her shot at the big time. Based on the trailer, it looks like she at least gets to fire some guns and jump out of buildings, so that's a good start. Side note: Eti and I saw Keri out at breakfast one morning back in January. She wound up sitting at a table near us, and as I carried my latte back from the counter I mused that if I spilled the drink on her, I'd end up with a great "I spilled a latte on Keri Russell" story, whereas if I had spilled it on anyone else I would have pretty much zero anecdotal potential. And then I moved on to another topic, as I shall do now.

An American Haunting (horror, rated PG-13, written/directed by Courtney Solomon, from the book by Brent Monahan)

You guys, it's based on a true story! I guess that's kind of scary, but it's also good news -- because if ghosts are real, then I don't need to go to a movie from the director of Dungeons and Dragons to see them. Everybody wins! Including Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek, who I'm sure took on the lead roles out of sheer respect for the artistic integrity of the script. Seriously, though... the 2 of them on the top of the poster? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 1979?

Are we still podcasting here?

2006-05-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, I guess we are!

Download Season 2, Episode 6 right here.

We talked mostly about TV. And a little bit about -- no, pretty much all TV. But isn't that what we do best?

I guess you'll find out soon enough.

Anyway, once you're done you can use the comments link below to tell us either how much you missed us or how much you missed not having to listen to us.

You Better Catch Me When I Fall, I'm On My Roller Skates

2006-05-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Back in 1993, a small San Francisco based band named "Jellyfish” followed up their debut album, “Bellybutton,” with what can quite possibly be the best CD you’ve never heard, aptly entitled “Spilt Milk.”

I actually owned “Spilt Milt” on tape before I even knew “Bellybutton” existed. The musical arrangements are brilliant, the sound is phenomenal, the lyrics are great and the entire album is comprised of one amazing song after another. In fact, I was so blown away by Spilt Milk , I never gave “Bellybutton” much of a chance. Seriously, it’s been sitting on my shelf for years, but I have no desire to listen to it.

The best physical attribute of that tape, other than the chubby tiara wearing freckled girl on the cover, was that it was pink. Yes, the actual tape was this Pepto-pink color, meaning that in the off chance it actually left my tape player, I could spot it on the bedroom floor from a mile away. Call me sentimental, but I actually still have the tape. It would’ve been sacrilegious to get rid of it just because I upgraded to CD.

Unfortunately, after touring to promote Spilt Milk, the band broke up supposedly due to artistic differences. Perhaps it is, as the saying goes, “better to burn out than fade away.”

If you’re feeling adventurous or just flat out smart, I strongly, highly, really, really, really recommend that you give Spilt Milk a shot. My favorite tracks are New Mistake, The Glutton Of Sympathy, The Ghost At Number One and Bye, Bye, Bye.

Silent, But Deadly

2006-04-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Nick informs me that we received an e-mail from some girl at a PR firm that handles America’s Next Top Model and that they have special inside stuff for bloggers and asking if were we interested. My reaction: Are you serious? Is this some sort of delayed April Fools joke?

Apparently, Nick wasn’t kidding. We really did get an email from a girl named Chelsea over at mPRm Public Relations, who was nice enough to contact us and bring us into the semi-exclusive bloggers club. This included special sneak peaks of the week’s episode, photo links, information on upcoming episodes AND a conference call with the week’s Eliminee.

I should say that we now refer to all correspondence from Chelsea as CHELSEA MAIL! So, much thanks Chelsea and here we go.

America's Next Top Model

On America’s Next Top Model this week, the girls were given a “lesson” on how to behave and handle themselves in interviews by some Vanity Fair jackass named George Wayne. Ugh, George was so hateful. And boy, did he uncover some shocking truths. The revelation that Danielle might have had trouble spelling “cantankerous” is bound to set the world of journalism on its ears. Just give him the goddamn Pulitzer right now.

They didn’t even need coaching. All they had to do was remember Janice’s golden words of wisdom, “We don’t rat out our bitches!”

Jade’s mom’s fluffing apparently made Jade kind of psychic. Jade was doing this little mock-judging, with her playing the role of Tyra, of course. Nnenna and Furonda were “acting” as if they were the girls in the bottom two. When Jade flipped over what I can only imagine is her poetry notebook, it was Furonda’s picture. That’s sort of beyond foreshadowing, I’d say...even if it was editing.

Danielle got her gap fixed. But they didn’t really close it completely. If you people out there love Danielle and Joanie like we do, then your thought process was like, “Where was Joanie? Danielle sat with Joanie at Dr. Falcon’s office until three in the morning! Why wasn’t Joanie with Danielle?” However, upon subsequent viewing of the episode, I have to say that Joanie was there, because you can kind of see the elbow of her little reddish/pinking hoodie on the desk when Danielle and Falcon were looking at the before and after pictures of the gap on the computer screen. Damn you, editing. Either way, I had nightmares about being at the dentist after the episode aired.

As always, Danielle rocks. But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree because Danielle’s momma rocks too. And I quote, “Uh-huh, remember the girl from Texas...did not want her hair cut because she loved her hair.” Shout out to self-admitted sociopath Cassandra!

Sara is talking to her boyfriend, something about commitment, blah, blah. But check it out, Sara is wearing her blue “I jogged with Chip and Pepper” t-shirt. The first Tyra mail in Thailand was read by Sara: “I know it’s tough being around so many girls....so get some tail.” Sara finishes reading it and says, “I wish.” And when the girls show up to the floating market to do the mermaid shoot, Joanie is wearing Sara’s t-shirt. Hmmm.

Let’s take a minute and flash back to season 2 of the OC:

Marissa: So, what do you want to do today?

Alex: Well, are you ready for that surf lesson?

Marissa: Yes! Awesome! Oh wait, do you have another shirt I can borrow? ‘Cause this one kind
of smells like cigarettes?

And...scene!

Anyway, the girls went to Thailand. Let’s take some time for some Joanie love:

When they found out they’re going to Thailand, Joanie said, “I’ve only been to Canada.”

Joanie using duct tape to pack her stuff.

Joanie massaging Jade. Okay, not so awesome, but for the first time ever, being Jade wouldn’t have been so bad.

“My boobs were falling out. I would’ve been extremely embarrassed if the boobs fell out.”

And this one’s for Nick...as always, Joanie in glasses.

I did enjoy Furonda saying that the harness was hurting her “womanly space.”

Let's enjoy some more Danielle and Joanie:

As predicted by Jade, Furonda and Nnenna were in the bottom two and Nnenna was sent a’ packing.

On Thursday, Nick and I phoned into the conference call. Not much to say about Nnenna, except that she seemed to be a lot like she was on the show; sort of monotone, but maybe that’s just the way she is. I was a little pissed that everyone was sort of kissing her ass. A few too many people were drinking the “I was so shocked you were eliminated” Kool-Aid, if you ask us.

Nick asked her if there was anything filmed that didn’t make it to air that she wished would have. (Props to Rossanna for coming up with the question.) She said that she was a person who was “easily amused,” that her work nickname is “Smiley,” and that a lot of times when she was laughing at Brooke it was because of something the Jays said. Basically, she was saying that the editing sort of made it look worse than it really was. Which, is completely and totally plausible.

When asked who she was rooting for from the remaining girls, Nnenna said that she was rooting for everyone and that they were all great girls. Yes, a very nice and coached answer indeed. At least Nnenna did not rat out her bitches.

It was an interesting experience and we can’t wait to see what happens next.

The Apprentice

Finally, a worthy episode! Moreover, a worthy episode with incestuous undertones. Well, okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but Donald Jr. and Ivanka were Trump’s eyes and ears this week and when Trump asked Ivanka how things were this week, she gave a big smile and said “it was fun with my brother this time, as well.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Carolyn, but Ivanka is totally likeable.

The task this week was to create a souvenir limited edition tourist program/brochure for the Ellis Island national park. I really hope The Apprentice’s float design days are over.

In the end, Andrea was sent home because she can’t play well with others. I’m happy she got the boot because she’s sort of obnoxious and the way she says her S-es pierce my ears like no other. On the other hand, I think her team totally shot themselves in the foot. Plus, she cried.

Scrubs

I don’t normally talk about Scrubs because there’s not much to say about a show that’s already awesome, but this week’s episode was totally great.

The return of Nicole Sullivan is always worthwhile. Besides them killing her off, I was a bit miffed that they didn’t give her any scenes with Elliot, because watching the deluge of neuroticism play out is always brilliant.

And rabies?!! No one’s even mentioned rabies since The Goonies in 1985! Remember, when they move the rock and the bats attack? Martha Plimpton screams, “Rabies! Rabies!”

Nick tells me that TiVo tells him that Cox hits the bottle next week.

The Sopranos

Sort of boring. Nothing happening. Do I really care if Lauren Bacall gets punched in the face? Wasn’t it bad enough watching her struggle through the Oscars?

After the Sopranos ends, I have to quickly change the channel before I can watch one of the best songs in the world being butchered by the opening credits of Big Love, so I changed the channel and ended up watching Intervention.

DOWNER.

Think you’ve got it bad? Maybe you should watch a chick binge, stick her toothbrush down her throat, puke into a Ziploc bag, hide it in her closet for a week so her husband doesn’t find out, repeat this for every meal over the week, then collect an assortment of puke-filled Ziplocs at the end of the week in one big garbage bag and then find a bin down the road to throw it in.

Veronica Mars

Maybe the narrator last year didn’t have enough fun with “WHO RAPED VERONICA MARS?” and this year wants to up the stakes with “WHO GAVE VERONICA MARS CHLAMYDIA?”

In case you weren’t confused enough with the 80 questions floating around this season, you can now add another.

Like I said last week, let’s keep an eye out on this Lucky dude, because he’s obviously in the know about some important stuff. Okay, and can I just say that I really, really don’t like seeing the post-plastic surgery Steve Guttenberg in a wife beater.

How sad was the stuff between Logan and Veronica? But I must not dwell, so let's discus how much I want this jacket.

Snap Judgment: Terror in all its forms

2006-04-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

Pretty interesting assortment this week, and by the end of this post I just might be going to hell. Tune in later to find out! For now, let's see what IMDB has to offer.

RV (comedy, rated PG, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, written by Geoff Rodkey)

Well, shit. Now I kind of want to see this to find out how the van got up there. Does it have some kind of super 4-wheel-drive traction thingy? Was it airlifted? Did the manufacturer just choose a really inopportune location for their assembly plant? All kidding aside, I checked out the brochure for the Winnebago Sightseer and found that the rear portion of the vehicle carries about 64% of the weight. That means that the RV is about a half-second away from plunging backwards down the face of the mountain. And while the passengers might not enjoy getting banged around on the genuine Portsmouth Oak cabinetry on the way down, the explosion of the 60-gallon fuel tank should ensure a mercifully quick demise for all involved. The only downside I can see is that Robin Williams will probably use a stunt double, thus enabling him to come back for such long-awaited sequels as Even Better Will Hunting, Exhumed Poets Society and, of course, House of E.

Akeelah and the Bee (drama, rated PG, written/directed by Doug Atchison)

Wasn't it nice of Starbucks to promote the hell out of this movie with all those catchy green coasters and hanging placards and stuff? They really did a good deed, there. Helped out a charming little movie and taught people some difficult words at the same time. This is the kind of thing that really makes me believe in the human-- what??? The movie was produced by STARBUCKS ENTERTAINMENT? No, I will not stand for that. There is no such phrase as Starbucks Entertainment. Sure, there's plenty of examples of Starbucks (small e) entertainment, like trying to predict how many times a cashier girl can repeat to an old lady that her latte costs THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTEEN CENTS, MA'AM before the girl's simmering internal rage causes the entire cafe to collapse in a spectacular Carrie-esque fashion complete with shaky camera and scenery-chewing Piper Laurie. But not with a capital E. Not even if their stated goal is to take uplifting documentaries from a few years back and make them even more audience-friendly by throwing in Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett. Tangential note: check it out, Wolfgang Bodison (aka Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson III of A Few Good Men) plays the dad.

United 93 (docudrama, rated R, written/directed by Paul Greengrass)

INT. UNIVERSAL EXEC'S OFFICE - DAY
DATE: September 12, 2001

A BIG-TIME PRODUCER enters.

PRODUCER: Is this the right room for pitching, uh, you know, movies about, uh...
EXEC: Yeah.
PRODUCER: Okay, I figured, what with the line of 20 people outside the door...
EXEC: Yeah, we're fielding a lot of ideas.
PRODUCER: I don't want to be insensitive about this. I mean, I waited a full hour after the news before calling you guys yesterday, but I think the studio was closed.
EXEC: Right, it was just security stuff.
PRODUCER: Gotcha.
EXEC: So what's your take on it?
PRODUCER: Well, it's going to be tricky. I was over at Disney earlier and they're already going with the "talking dog foils terrorists" angle, so that's out, and Paramount's working on something with Tom Cruise going up against Bin Laden.
EXEC: No kidding. Hold on a sec. [speaks into intercom] Christy, cancel all the voice-actor auditions for the talking dogs.
PRODUCER: I think the only thing left is to play it straight.
EXEC: Really.
PRODUCER: But to be on the safe side, I think I can get you the dude who shot Bourne Supremacy.
EXEC: Sold.

Stick It (gymnastic comedy, rated PG-13, written/directed by Jessica Bendinger)

As the poster reminds us (as if it weren't already fairly obvious), this piece of high-energy entertainment comes straight from the pen of Jessica Bendinger of Bring It On fame and/or infamy. If you're like me, maybe you saw Bring It On because you were in love with Eliza Dushku and would have seen absolutely anything she was in, right up to and including a documentary on paper clip manufacturing or even the detestable City By the Sea. But then Bring It On turned out to be actually pretty entertaining, so maybe you bought the DVD when it came out. And maybe you watched it several times. Including once with the commentary. Hey, who am I to judge you? It's your life. And if you see this one too on the off chance that it's at least 60% as enjoyable (unlike Bring It On Again, which you might once have watched about twenty minutes of before turning it off in disgust), then I won't judge you for that either. Even though that girl on the poster isn't anywhere near as hot as Eliza.

Brick: The First Pop Whore Movie Debate

2006-04-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, also known as "Saturday," your beloved editors saw Brick, which you may remember was already hyped in Snap Judgment a few weeks prior. It turned out to be a movie neither to collectively gush over nor collectively slam. Rather, we were a bit divided on the issue. So we figured the best way to present our respective thoughts would be in a debate/interview format, conducted over e-mail and offered for your enjoyment below.

(Key: Eti = regular type; Nick = bold type)

* * * * *

So Nick, you recently schlepped a bunch of us out to the Sherman Oaks Galleria to spend $10.50 on "Brick." If I didn't actually live in Sherman Oaks, I'd be sort of offended. What do you have to say for yourself?

Oh, I'm sorry, would you really rather have stood in line the extra 40 minutes at Universal Studios to get the so-called "free tickets" promised to you and me by the good people of Cingular? Anyway, putting aside the fact that I technically schlepped farther than anyone else, I'll simply say that all I did was instigate a group viewing of a really great movie.

Since I actually got nothing out of Brick other than a few chuckles, but not even the good kind, but rather, the I'm-shaking-my-head-beacuse-this-is-sort-of-kind-of-really-stupid chuckles... which I could've gotten standing in line at Universal Studios making fun of the tourists who are there in a totally non-sarcastic "I just shelled out $70 bucks for this" manner. So, to answer your question, yes, perhaps I would've rather stood in line at Universal Studios.

Shall we begin to explore our dueling positions on this movie or do you want to talk about my favorite color?

Is your bra size a matter of national security? Okay, that's probably enough of the oblique A Few Good Men references that only you and I will ever get. So I'll get to the point. Rare phenomenon though it may be, Brick is exactly what it was pitched as. It's a genuine film noir throwback, populated with exactly the kinds of personalities you'd see in anything from The Maltese Falcon to L.A. Confidential, except with high school kids playing the roles. Do they talk anything like actual high school kids talk? No. Does anyone in any film noir ever talk the way normal people talk? Of course not. Is that why noir is probably the best genre ever? Yes. Am I done answering my own questions? Almost. Does Brick absolutely rock? I thought so.

[Over IM, Eti calls Nick out for failing to end the last e-mail with a question]

Eti (3:05:44 PM): thanks for setting me up with a question, biatch
Nick (3:06:07 PM): oh right
Nick (3:06:16 PM): ok make the last line
Nick (3:07:03 PM): And I know you enjoy a lot of pseudo-realistic noir films yourself, so what gives?
Eti (3:07:06 PM): nah, i'm responding as is
Eti (3:07:18 PM): or i can slip in this IM
Eti (3:07:20 PM): which i will
Nick (3:07:25 PM): ok
Eti (3:07:29 PM): meta!

[Debate continues.]

To answer your faux-question, yes, my boobs are a matter of national security. These babies can kill. Haven't you ever seen the 1991 movie about them starring Richard Grieco called "If Boobs Could Kill?" Thought so.

Anyway, I like noir type movies. I really do. But I had a really hard time liking Brick.

I had a hard time believing anything about it; even the aspects that were tongue-in-cheek seemed completely staged like a bad high school play. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's babbling seemed like he was doing an (incorrectly) un-ironic imitation of a hard-ass detective who's been walking the mean streets for 20 years. It just didn't work for me. Like do I actually see Joseph Gordon-Levitt beating up a kid who is three times his body weight because he's "smarter?" No.

In addition to all the inane lingo (which drove me completely up the wall), all the characters were totally unlikeable and pathetic. It was like a portrayal of stupid kids with drugs and guns, who have a totally skewed elitist view of themselves and their self-worth. I have a hard enough time watching that when it happens in real life.

But that's really besides the point, because I just didn't like the "mystery." It just seemed like a big mish-mosh of 10 other movie plots and so when the case was solved in the end, I really didnt' care.

Why did you find it to be that spectacular?

Well, I'll never understand why "If Looks Could Kill" didn't usher in an entire era of Cinema de Grieco; I mean, when I was 13 I thought it was pretty much the awesome-est movie ever and watched the tape at least three times before returning it to the video store. No joke: it's easily the best project Darren Star was ever associated with.

Now, what were we talking about? Oh, right.

I'd understand someone being more dismissive of Brick if it had really just been a film-school exercise in transposing a 1940's detective plot and dialogue into a 2005 high school (though I probably still would have enjoyed it). But I really felt it was more than that. At its core it was a pretty accurate representation of teenage life: the feelings of isolation and extreme cynicism, not quite having the resources to get things done yourself but also not wanting anyone else's help. And it conveyed these feelings under the guise of a hard-boiled mystery plot, which to me is a lot more interesting than conveying them by having people sit around talking. I'll concede that none of the characters is very likable, even the hero, but that's pretty much par for the course in noir. Match Point didn't exactly give you anyone to root for, either; you just stuck with it to find out how messed up things could get by the end... which is pretty much exactly what I was invested in with this movie.

So what disappointed you so much? Were you expecting a big-screen Veronica Mars?

Even prior to my seeing the trailer, you sold it to me as exactly that. And you know from first-hand experience that I wasn't too turned on by the trailer to begin with. I thought it looked kind of weird; like they were selling it to us as one of those weird mind fuck movies where you feel like you're in a dream you don't understand. But I figured I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

Basically, I was hoping for a better plot than just drugs, guns and manipulative kids. For some reason, it just seemed really out of place to me. Maybe I would've believed it a little more if the dialogue wasn't so "check us out, we're speaking in our cool-kid code" or at the very least, if the kids were in their twenties, but definitely not in high school. And if you're hell bent on setting the movie in high school, then for god's sake, be a little less pretentious. I couldn't take any of these kids seriously.

And I beg to differ, but in Match Point, you did have some people to root for. At the very least, you had Chloe and her family, to more or less of an extent, which did a good job of making Chris and Nola unlikeable for a reason.

Even still, you were given enough of an interesting psychological aspect to think about such as social climbers and haves vs. have nots. Match Point gave the audience a tiny little shred of sympathy for both the Chris and Nola characters, as hateful as they were. By the end, you were like, Nola's fucked up, but Chris is even more fucked up, so who do I hate more and why do I hate one less than the other?

Brick made me feel absolutely nothing for anyone and I really didn't care enough about any of them to want to see anything happen with them; good or bad. I just wanted the stupid story to end.

The worst part is that the "hard-boiled mystery plot" that you speak of wasn't even that intricate or fucked up. I thought it was very basic and they just kept throwing in new characters and artsy fartsy bullshit and dialogue to make it seem complex. I felt that throwing in Emily's pregnancy was about the stupidest thing they could've done because it was a total cop-out.

Brick was nowhere near as psychologically interesting as Match Point. In fact, it wasn't psychologically interesting period, because it never gave you any background or motivation.

No, there's not any kind of exact parallel between the two movies; I was mainly pointing out that you don't really have to like a character to be interested in seeing what happens to him or her. Still, Brick did get under my skin similar to the way Match Point did, and not many movies can do that for me. You can call it pretentious, but just about every good movie risks being pretentious when it believes completely in its own internal logic without copping out by giving a wink to the audience. It only seems pretentious when you don't end up going along with it.

I'm surprised that the dialogue was such an issue for you. The kids on Buffy, Veronica Mars, and The OC don't exactly talk like real American high schoolers either, but (in general) they behave like them, and that's the important part. The culture, subculture, and sub-sub-subculture were all painted pretty accurately except, like I said, they were represented in a sort of heightened reality. The language was crucial in drawing you into that reality, just like it is in Tarantino's films or on The Sopranos or any number of other things.

Yeah, at essence the plot was pretty basic. Except in a few cases (like The Big Sleep), a good film noir isn't about a lot of twists and turns; it's about sending a character down a dark path that they more or less know the end of but can't turn back from. In Brendan's case, he knew from the beginning that nothing good was going to come of anything he did, but he had to see it through because he had to know. That made him not only interesting, but also believable on a certain level because you can imagine a high school kid having that kind of stubborn determination. The background and motivation were there; they weren't spelled out, but I could understand well enough what kinds of people the characters were and what made them vulnerable. And as far as I can remember, all the important characters were introduced within the first 20 minutes if not sooner.

That's exactly the thing I didn't like. I felt like the kids didn't talk or act like high schoolers. The plot was completely unbelievable because it kept teetering between the "real" reality and the one made up for the movie. Seriously, in what alternate universe does a vice principal in a wealthy upper-class southern California community know about a missing girl from the very high school that he works at and something bad about to go down involving drugs AND gives a kid room to operate without calling the cops or getting authorities involved?

Tarantino's films tend to have a completely made-up world within the real world, but they never teeter back and forth and are therefore very easy to buy into and accept at face value. Whereas, I felt Brick completely went back and forth between the two worlds whenever and wherever it was convenient for them.

I felt the movie stuck to its own reality exclusively. Within a few minutes, and as each of the main characters was introduced, I got absorbed enough in Brick's world to accept whatever else happened within it. It's kind of learning a foreign language -- and I'm not talking specifically about the nature of the dialogue (though, of course, that's part of it) but how at a certain point, your brain can process the information organically without having to translate it into something it understands. It's also like Dance Dance Revolution: you eventually get used to looking at the arrows, and your brain can just tell your feet what to do.

Yes, I concur. However, I get a lot more pleasure from embarrassing myself at the arcade trying to "dance" on a metal pad than I ever did sitting on my ass being bored to death.

To think that I blew 21 games of DDR on Brick is sad.

Hey, you still had plenty of time to play DDR afterwards. We owned that part of the Sherman Oaks Castle Park arcade for a solid half hour. And seeing Brick gave us a new vocabulary word.

Brick (n): Something that Nick and Eti completely disagree on.

"Eti thinks Beaches is the greatest movie ever, but I wanted to chew my hand off to distract me from Bette Midler. It's a total Brick."

"The Rock was such a complete Brick." Hey that's a clever play on words, Eti. Thanks, yo. Word.

Well, I can see you don't even need me to ask questions anymore. This interview is over!

Not Without My Snaggle

2006-04-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Let’s get right to the good stuff.

America's Next Top Model

Joanie bid au revoir to the snaggle while Danielle rocked the gap.

Joanie saying that she considered herself lucky if she was able to see a dentist once a year for a check up made me flash to Joanie living in the Ozarks, wearing overalls and not being able to afford shoes. Yeah, you guys know what I’m talking about.

I’ve loved Danielle since she made me cry in her first interview when she talked about having to take care of her mother who suffers from really bad arthritis, but why not fix the gap?

The rest of the episode featured Furonda and Sara just laying low and doing their things. Nnenna was sociopathic as usual and wasn’t happy to see her boyfriend. Jade’s mom “fluffed” her down (insert collective “ew” here). And Tyra jabbed glycerine into the girls’ eyes to make them cry...but beautifully.

For the photoshoot, the girls had to be dolls. Joanie was a ventriloquist’s dummy, Danielle was a marionette, Sara was a teen doll, Brooke was a glam doll, Nnenna was a baby doll and Jade was a man..nequin. Trust me, this is better in pictures.

As usual, and obviously, Joanie and Danielle’s pictures were by far the best.

Ever since this episode aired, I’ve been listening to the Chicago soundtrack, particularly, “We Both Reached For the Gun” picturing Joanie as Renee Zellweger (only much more likeable), Danielle as Christine Boranski and that Alexander Rankovic (ie, the hot male model) as Richard Gere. Only then will I ever be able to justify Chicago winning any sort of best picture award.

Nnenna’s baby doll pictures were so creepy, that I totally flashed to “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.” Seriously, Nnenna needs to play up the crazy more. Less stuffed animals and more invalid sisters:

I really liked Joanie and Sara’s black and white pictures.

But in the end, Brooke was sent home over Jade. Nigel is really fucking getting on my nerves with his stupid comments and creepy leering. But at least the judges are getting tired of Jade’s shit.

It would be SO great if Joanie and Danielle made it to the final two and then both won. Here’s to hoping.

For much better ANTM recaps go to the Four-Four blog.

The Apprentice

No Apprentice this week because of Celebrity Cooking Showdown, but last week we got two.

Episode 7 was called “It’s More Than Decor” but it totally should’ve been called “The Blimp Stops Here.” There was some good stuff in there, including many great Lenny-isms, numerous attempts at the shutting up of Charmaine and of course, more jackass-ness from Tarek, who is single-handedly bringing down Mensa...to which I say, amen!

But in the end, Lenny was sent home; or as Trump would call it, “back to Syberia.” Then again, Lenny lives in Jersey, so I guess there’s no real difference.

Moreover, I deeply regret having to inform you that episode 8 was called “A Slice Of Heaven.” Okay, that’s just wrong. You see, there’s this great movie called “Mystic Pizza” and when I think “a slice of heaven,” I think of a sweet coming of age story in which Lily Taylor, Annabeth Gish and Julia Roberts wearing “A Slice of Heaven” t-shirts...not some shitty 7-11 cold cuts on pizza travesty.

Anyway, it came down to Lee and Leslie, wherein Leslie got the boot on her birthday, but not before Trump could almost make an anti-semitic quip and then a weird whooshing noise post-firing. I guess that’s his new cobra. Not quite the slice of heaven Leslie was hoping for.

The L Word

I know, I know. The show ended like three weeks ago, but I never posted about it. So, I’ll keep it brief.

(Surprisingly?!!) the show was able to reach all new levels of suck. It went a little something like this:

Alice and Lara! Fast forward, boring, fast forward, boring...“Hey, Alice and Lara! Sweet!” Fast forward, boring, boring. “What was Lara going to tell Alice?!!” Boring, snore, the end.

I don’t even care what happened. If it weren’t for Alice and Lara pooling their collective grief over Dana’s death into smoldering hotness, this show would be absolutely dead to me. I imagine next year will be watched in a similar fashion, that is, if Chaiken and Co. don’t fuck this up too.

See you next Tuesday...or in nine months.

Veronica Mars

Tres dark! Similar to last year, Rob Thomas is doing that thing where he’s making everyone a suspect. Unfortunately, I can’t get into all my theories right now because that would require both of us to sit here for hours. So let’s just quickly discuss this week’s episode.

Kendall’s been watching herself some “Body Heat.” But would Rob Thomas really hand us such an easy scenario? I’m thinking not quite. As usual, something is bound to be revealed next week. I think we need to keep an eye out on that Lucky guy. After all, he was in Iraq...and what better place to learn to make bombs?

Also, if Liam Fitzpatrick looks familiar to you, it’s because he’s played by Rodney Rowland, who you may remember from the talking tattoo episode of “The X-Files” called “Never Again,” which featured Jodie Foster as the voice of the tattoo. This too is old news, I just never got around to it.

And in even older news, after the show was filmed, Gillian Anderson and Rodney Rowland dated for about a year. Can’t say I blame her.

Snap Judgment: Which is safer, the White House or a creepy demon world?

2006-04-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

Eti has passed the SJ hat back to me, so let's see what's being inflicted on our feeble minds this weekend. IMDB, would you like to do the honors?

Silent Hill (horror/videogame adaptation, rated R, directed by Christophe Gans, written by Christophe Gans, Roger Avary, and Nicolas Boukhrief)

It's a sad commentary on the state of childcare in America that a mother can't keep an eye on her daughter long enough to prevent her from slipping into a hell-dimension underworld place. I mean, when I was this girl's age, a kid couldn't even slip into the Atari aisle at Toys R Us without an eagle-eyed parent hot on his or her trail. But the only babysitters children have these days are MySpace, iPod Nanos, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Where's the accountability there? I once had a babysitter who made popcorn on the stove without permission (because, yes, this was before microwave popcorn existed) and was summarily dismissed from any future babysitting duties when my parents returned home. So you can imagine how pissed they would have been if the girl had taken me into a torch-lit dungeon and tried to transfer my soul into some demon spawn. I'll tell you one thing, there sure wouldn't have been any offers of take-home Chips Ahoy in a ziploc bag.

The Sentinel (thriller, rated PG-13, directed by Clark Johnson, screenplay by George Nolfi from the novel by Gerald Petievich)

So, we all heard about Kiefer Sutherland signing with Fox for another 3 years of 24 and becoming, technically, the highest-paid TV actor in history. Naturally, that kind of job security doesn't come cheap. He's probably got that "Don't Forget, You're Here Forever" plaque up in his trailer, except it's from Rupert Murdoch instead of Mr. Burns. So, if Fox wants him to star in a movie that's essentially a special 2-hour 24 with slightly better guest actors, he can throw all the tantrums he wants but he better show up at his call time. Speaking of which, here are some Kiefer stories, courtesy of Defamer, that are likely to be more interesting than this movie. This one. Or this one. Or even this one. Of course, it's no coincidence that Michael Douglas was in on this film. No doubt he's achieved legendary crazy-ego-handling status in the years since The Ghost and the Darkness, wherein he successfully kept Val Kilmer's Kilmer-ness to a dull roar. But the real winner here is Eva Longoria, who somehow managed to make the jump from a Touchstone-produced show to a serious big-screen movie without being forced into a role in some kind of Disney movie involving either wacky Christmas antics or human beings turning into animals.

American Dreamz (comedy/satire, rated PG-13, written/directed by Paul Weitz)

Movies that aggressively promote themselves as wicked satires, how do I love thee? Let me watch Death to Smoochy and count the ways. On the plus side: Paul Weitz's next movie is called "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City." Even if that one's lame too, the Snap Judgment practically writes itself.

Remember To Spit

2006-04-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago, a creepy UPN voice-over hyped the Veronica Mars episode “A Trip To The Dentist” by asserting in a strange and totally inappropriate way “WHO RAPED VERONICA MARS?”

Last night, a similar UPN type voice-over not-so-creepily hyped America’s Next Top Model by saying “and the girls get a trip to the dentist.”

I'm sorry, but that’s the best unintentional cross-promotion ever!

More on the greatness of Veronica and Joanie (now sans snaggletooth) this weekend in the TV Roundup.