The Screening Room

Aside from the greatness that is The Dark Knight, I was distracted by a couple of things. Maggie Gyllenhaal is far better in the role of Rachel than Katie Holmes was. And, did you notice that a lot of the actors already have iconic characters in their pockets?

Christian Bale plays John Connor in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation; Gary Oldman played Bram Stoker's Dracula; Michael Jai White was Spawn; and Tommy Tiny Lister played "Debo" in the Friday series. (Guilty pleasure alert: He was also the wrestler "Zeus.") How's that for random?

(Spawn © 1997 New Line Cinema Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Spawn, its logo and symbol are registered trademarks of Todd McFarlane Productions. All Rights Reserved.)

One of the more intriguing movies lurking at an area theater is the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, now playing at the Magnolia. During the Watergate summer of 1973, I was interning at the Washington Post and had the pleasure of spending an entire day with Dr. Thompson. It's one I'll never forget. We met for lunch, where Hunter drank a lot of beer. A friend of his, the son of JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., dropped by, and Hunter's stories went into overdrive. I learned a lot and had an amazing time. Hunter autographed my first-edition copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with his memorable HST signature, and like an idiot, I gave it away a few years ago to a young soldier headed to Iraq for the second time. I hope he's enjoying it. I wrote a story about the long afternoon for a Dallas-based underground paper called The Iconoclast. I no longer have a copy of even that. Oh, well. The movie is really cool but doesn't drive home a key point about Hunter -- despite all the wild bravado, he was actually an incredibly kind man. That was certainly my experience and that of hundreds of other young journalists. We will never see the likes of HST again. When he was on, he was really on. His insights about Richard Nixon were unforgettable. Whenever I tell my sons about Nixon, I will tell them to read HST.

Photo: Hunter S. Thompson with his wife Anita after their wedding in 2003.

In the past two days, both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have said they are calling it quits on At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper and both have more or less said that they disagree with the direction that Disney wants to take the show. A Chicago Tribune story says that the Mouse House wanted to move the show in more of an Entertainment Tonight direction with more of a focus on Hollywood.
To which I ask: Don't we already have a ton of shows like that?
What made Ebert & Roeper (and Siskel & Ebert before it) special was that it was a simple show featuring two guys talking about the movies -- and none of the peripheral stuff surrounding them. If Disney wants to change the show's focus, that's their decision. But they should know going into it that they'll just be entering another show into an already crowded field.

*Okay, probably not. But with a synopsis like this, it's hard not to judge:

Duck (PG-13): A man and a duck struggle for survival in future L.A. (Philip Baker Hall, French Stewart, Bill Cobbs)

(Courtesy VideoETA. Scroll down to find the Duck entry)