The Screening Room

The movie about the lovable robot takes home the Oscar best animated film. Holly, you saw Wall-E. Deserving or no?

As the Morning News writer who reviewed both The Reader and Frozen River, I was thrilled to see that Kate Winslet and Melissa Leo both earned nominations for Best Actress. And believe me, "earned" is the operative verb. I don't envy Academy voters having to choose between those two. Initially, I was surprised to see that Clint Eastwood was shut out for Gran Torino (a fine film), but I, for one, can't think of anyone more deserving of Best Actor nominations than the five who earned them. I was surprised Bruce Springsteen didn't get a nod for Best Song (for The Wrestler). My biggest objection came in the documentary category, involving snubs for two films with Texas connections. (Please click below to read on!)

Photo: David Kross and Kate Winslet in The Reader

Okay, for those who saw Bolt this weekend -- is it just me, or is Bolt the Buzz Lightyear story redux? Remember how Buzz in Toy Story thought he was the real-life action hero as portrayed on television, until he finally learns that he's just a toy? And now we have Bolt, who thinks he's a real-life action dog, until he finds out he's just a dog? What do you think? Is it just the monosyllabic name beginning with a B that's throwing me off?

Kevin Smith won an R rating from the MPAA appeals board today for his movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The film, which comes out Oct. 31, centers on two friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) who decide to make a homemade sex tape to sell in an effort to dig themselves out of debt.
Had the film been saddled with the kiss-of-death NC-17, as it was originally rated, it would have to have been edited, because it's doubtful distributor The Weinstein Co. would want to lower the film's potential earnings with the rating. Most major movie chains won't even bother with NC-17 movies.
And while we're on the subject of Zack and Miri, it seems worth pointing out that Elizabeth Banks will play both an amateur porn star and First Lady Laura Bush in the same month as Oliver Stone's W. will also be released in October. Now THAT's range.

According to MTV.com:

While Bernie Mac remains in the hospital under treament for pneumonia, his rep slammed widespread media reports that the comedian is in very critical condition.

Read more.

Three films this summer have made a big deal of keeping their plots tightly under wraps. The first, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, featured a storyline about aliens that left many wondering why Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford couldn't take better control of George Lucas. Next up was The Happening, the next installment in the M. Night Shyamalan spook-by-numbers series. It, too, opened solidly with $30.5 million, but the reviews were pretty harsh and its gross has fallen more than 60 percent each week that is has been out.
And now we have The X-Files: I Want to Believe. All most fans knew about the film before this week was that Mulder and Scully were in it. But once the reviews started to pour in, they learned a little more -- it stinks. (Need proof? It got only 28 percent positive reviews over at rottentomatoes.com.)
The common thread running through all of these movies is that the studios relied on the brand to sell the movie rather than informing the audience as to why they may want to come back for the next edition. So a word to the wise the next time a plot is "closely guarded" -- it's probably just code for "we'd tell you more about the plot, but even we don't think it sounds that good."

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.

From Movie Critic Chris Vognar:

I will be studying at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship until June 2009. I still have a few stories filed, which will run in the coming month, but The Dark Knight is my last movie review for a while. As that cuddly Terminator fella once said, I'll be back.

Dallas Morning News Movie Critic Chris Vognar will talk about the summer movie season so far with Christopher Kelly of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Think starts at 1 p.m., and you can listen live on KERA's Web site.

The July 30 opening of The Rocker will begin a three-week run of movies opening on Wednesday, a trend in movie exhibition that is starting to get on my nerves. In the past, the non-Friday opening was reserved for a couple of special occasions, namely for movies opening around holidays (Christmas, Fourth of July, etc.) that didn't fall on a Friday. But now it seems as if any ol' movie can move up its opening by a few days and give the impression that it is somehow "important."

With Hancock out this week, it got me thinking about who are the top performers when it comes to having both recording and acting careers. Admittedly, it's pretty subjective, but I think Will Smith may be the top dual threat performer of all time. His movies have grossed more than a billion dollars and he's been nominated for two Oscars; on the music side, he was awarded the first-ever rap Grammy and he's had several No. 1 hit singles.
That being said, I don't think it's a slam dunk. Here are the other four performers who I would consider to be in the top five. I'm sure that I am forgetting someone, so I am relying on you all to serve me up good
-- Frank Sinatra: The music side needs no discussion as he's maybe the most famous and loved crooner in American history. But he was no slouch on the big screen either, as he was nominated for best Oscar for The Man With the Golden Arm and he won the supporting actor award for From Here to Eternity.
-- Barbra Streisand: She may be Sinatra's female counterpart when it comes to music. On the movies front, she has been nominated for five Oscars, winning the best actress award for Funny Girl and for a song in the film A Star is Born. She also gave memorable performances in The Prince of Tides and The Way We Were.
-- Cher: Between her solo career and her duo with Sonny Bono, she's sold more than 275 million records worldwide and is resposible for the biggest selling dance single ever, "Believe". She won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Moonstruck and she picked up another GG for Silkwood, for which she was also Oscar-nominated.
-- Bette Midler: She's got a pair of Oscar nominations (For the Boys and The Rose) and four Grammies to show for her storried career (and a Tony to boot).
So there's the list. I also considered Elvis, but his movies were really more vehicles for him designed to sell more records. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson also crossed my mind, but they all still have a ways to go to match this bunch. So, again I ask, who am I missing?

It's time to explain my recent spotty performance in the blogosphere, and perhaps hope that anyone noticed. You see, Ive come down with a bad case of what the kids used to call Senioritis. Except I'm not about to leave school. I'm going back.

I can't say much about the strange and wonderful Wall-E before the movie opens Friday or the Disney people will hunt me down and take my first born. But I can recommend catching up on a couple of sci-fi classics to get you in the mood (and perhaps help things make a little more sense).

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which Hal, the ship's computer brain, decides to take things into his own hands (and shows a remarkable grasp of lipreading). Stupid humans. What do they know?

2. Metropolis (1927), the silent slice of dystopia in which the masses are all-too-easily placated - until they decide not to be.

Sorry. That's all I got for now. (Except that the photo is courtesy of Disney/Pixar).

We like lists. We must like lists; magazines and organizations keep pumping them out and the hunger still isn't satiated. So, as part of a 1,000th issue stunt called The New Classics, Entertainment Weekly has worked up a list of the 100 best movies of the past 25 years (including a Pulpy No. 1, at right).

Should you care? Not really, but the random, arbitrary nature of such beasts is always good for a few arguments. Anyway, where else would you discover that Titanic is ten notches better than GoodFellas, or that Schindler's List eats Jerry Maguire's dust?

Check the list and share your beef. (Photo courtesy of Miramax).

I've heard from a number of readers unhappy with the fact that my review of The Happening gives away a crucial plot point, including one guy who thought I wrote the headline. (For future reference, that's the copy editor's job). They say I have violated the unwritten spoiler code of conduct. Here's why I disagree. Just in case, stop reading here if you don't want to know something that's revealed about 30 minutes into the movie. (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox)

Both The Love Guru and Get Smart have been savaged by critics far and wide. Yet you'll find that both movies got the same not-so-bad B- grades in today's paper. (I did Love Guru, while Tom Maurstad handled up on Get Smart).

What gives? I can't speak for Tom, but the most important thing I can say about The Love Guru is that it made me laugh. It made me feel slightly ashamed for laughing. It sometimes made me wonder why I was laughing. But laugh I did. I can blame my inner eighth grader, but I can also admit that I went in with very low expectations, knowing that Mike Myers specializes in a sort of juvenile carpet-bombing humor. I got a slightly better version of what I anticipated - better than the last Austin Powers movie. Yes, I groaned through many of the gags, but plenty of them tickled me, and there's something to be said for a film that knows its limitations (The Love Guru barely bothers to tell a story). Plus it only lasts 88 minutes. Nothing makes a critic's heart sing like a movie that checks in at under 90 minutes. (Love Guru photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The Love Guru and Get Smart will face off in a comedy smackdown this weekend, but this also shapes up as a battle between Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show over which is the better comedic farm team these days. In one corner, Love Guru is the brainchild of ex-SNLer Mike Meyers. In the other is former Daily Show coresponant (and current Office star) Steve Carell. Over the long haul, this is of course comparing apples and oranges as SNL has a much longer history and a wider cast of characters to chose from. But in terms of recent production, I'm going to have to go with The Daily Show on this one. In the last few years, it has spun out Stephen Colbert and Carell, two of television's biggest stars. And it has provided reliable side men like Rob Corddry and Ed Helms.
Which is not to say that SNL has performed poorly of late. Tina Fey has become the funniest woman on television with 30 Rock while boosting the profiles of fellow SNLers Tracy Morgan and Chris Parnell on the show. And Kristen Wiig is really making a name for herself with small but juicy roles in films like Knocked Up and Walk Hard. But the show has had its share of misses, too. Andy Samburg flooped big with last summer's Hot Rod while fellow graduates (Horatio Sanz, for one) have just drifted off into the ether. If there's a tie to be broken here, looking again at this weekend's movies provides the breaker. When Meyers needed to fill a couple of key roles in Love Guru, he didn't dredge the usual SNL pond for the Rob Schneiders and David Spades of the world. Instead, he picked current Daily Show corespondant John Oliver and the previously mentioned Stephen Colbert. That's a pretty strong indication of where the top talent resides.

Watching the Celtics take care of business against the Lakers over the last week got me thinking about He Got Game, the Spike Lee movie featuring the smooth shooting stroke (and surprisingly adequate acting chops) of one Ray Allen. Even though I was rooting for the Lakers (whaddya want, I'm from Cali), I was happy to see Allen, a class act for years, get his. I'm also happy to say the movie gets better every time I see it. (Photo courtesy of AP)

It may be the most famous (infamous?) advertisement ever, and it's still an incendiary piece of short filmmaking. Now Tony Schwartz, the man behind the Lyndon Johnson campaign's Daisy ad, is dead at the age of 84.

You think today's political spots have shock value? Here's a one minute clip that essentially says "If you vote for Goldwater you're asking for a mushroom cloud." Brass knuckles stuff, in the form of a child with a daisy.

Fun stuff over at EW.com: A rundown of the 22 best twist endings. (22? Sure, why not). You'll find plenty of obvious ones: Bruce Willis' recognition of his death in The Sixth Sense, Charlton Heston's unfortunate discoveries that Soylent Green is made of people and the Planet of the Apes is good ol' Earth. But what about Citizen Kane? No love for Rosebud? We're talking about a guy's childhood here.

Got a favorite twist? Bring it on.

Looking back at my review of The Happening I realize I didn't merely dislike the film. It actually made me angry. It made me bang my head against the back of my seat before I left the theater. It made me feel like this guy on the right. Why such a visceral reaction?

Part of it has to with the film's pace, a slog into nowhere and nothing. But there's also something about squandered potential that makes me want to go all Hulk. In this case that goes for a premise that goes to pot and a filmmaker with talent coming out of his pores - and an inability to harness it without drowning in pretension.

Grrrr.

As you probably know The Incredible Hulk begins sneak-peak screeenings late tonight (click here for a mini review and theater info). The film not only packs in references to the original comics, but also to the old TV show starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby. Stop reading if you don't want to know about some of the best in-jokes. Keep going if you do. And look for the full review tomorrow at guidelive.com

So The Incredible Hulk screened Tuesday night at the North Park. Screening started at 7:30 (or thereabouts). But the line to get in started at about 4 p.m., this after the frenzy for the early Iron Man screening prompted publicity folks to do a second showing later that night. Moral of the story: If you want to check out an advance screening of a superhero movie you had best get there in time to beat the fanboys.

We'll have a sneak peak review Thursday in the paper and at Guidelive.com. One side note: I watched the Ang Lee Hulk again when I got home last night. That is one loopy movie, and not just because The Hulk looks like Gumby. All that Oedipal mumbo-jumbo? The 'roided-up attack dogs? Weird, wild stuff. Suffice it so say that the new film is, well, different.

The abundance of movie Websites (and the completeness of IMDB) have made the mammoth-size VideoHound a bit obsolete. Apparently the Hound folk have realized this too: There's now a brand new VideoHound site that promises the same kind cross-referencing bliss as the big book. Check it out here.

Largely lost amid the talk of Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure : The production value is freakin' amazing. With a score by Danny Elfman and cinematography by Robert Richardson, the film - especially the re-enactments - reminds us that a documentary can look and sound every bit as good as a major Hollywood production.

"Documentary is interesting because you can re-invent it," Morris told me when he came to Dallas. "You can create something that is really different. Thin Blue Line to me was really different than anything that had been made before. I'm proud of it. Just because it had style and it's been constructed and thought out doesn't mean it didn't have facts underlying it, or an investigation underlying it. The same is true of this movie. I should use really bad cinematographers to make it more truthful? It is still a movie."

Much will and should be written about Sydney Pollack who died of cancer as reported in The New York Times today. But while he may be most lauded for his directing, it's his acting turns I can't get out of my head. He was terrific as the practical, just business lawyer in Michael Clayton (a character for whom the concept of conscience was nothing more than an annoying peculiarity that afflicts the weak-willed). But I will always see him as the agent in Tootsie -- so exasperated when Dustin Hoffman's character insists he has to feel like a tomato to play a tomato. I was even more impressed knowing the fierce battles he had with Hoffman on that film and how he managed to turn the tension of their difference into some of the most unforgettable comedic moments on film. I will miss him.

Does anyone think that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is setting up plans for a new series starring a younger adventurer? It is hard to believe that Harrison Ford could do any more of these and the way Shia LaBoeuf was looking at Indy's hat at the end, well...What do you think? Would the series, like Bond, survive a new actor in the role?

In honor of the new Indiana Jones adventure the folks at Rotten Tomatoes have posted a rundown of Steven Spielberg's ten best-directed movies. Jaws tops their list, and it tops mine as well. But I have to say I'm not the typical Spielberg fan. E.T.? Liked it when I was 11, not so much now. Minority Report? Loved it. Same with Munich, Close Encounters and Private Ryan (I guess that would be my five, with 2-5 jumbled and random).

What sayeth you?

I have a new favorite movie for the year -- Then She Found Me, directed by and starring Helen Hunt. I caught it at the Angelika in Plano Saturday night and it made me cry at least three times -- in a good, life-affirming way. Hunt plays a woman who wants a baby but rejects adoption as she herself was adopted and views that as a lesser option. When her devoted adoptive mother dies, her biological mother (Bette Midler) seeks her out. Rather than that being a panacea, it makes her life emotionally more complicated. And that, it turns out, is not a bad thing. Hunt is better than you've ever seen her in terms of summoning up the complex depths of her wounded character. Colin Firth is the most irresistible of leading men. And Bette is and always will be the Divine Miss M. What amazes me, too, is how this movie about a baby can come out the same time as Baby Mama and guess who gets the love? Well, not from me. Get thee to the Angelika.

I'm glad to see Prince Caspian top the box office, and I hope it will have legs this summer. Now I'm not one to trash on fellow critics (as the tables can turn oh so quickly), but one thing that bothered me in some reviews was the apparent lack of familiarity with the books. Too many critics have been comparing this one unfavorably to the first film OR comparing it unfavorably to Lord of the Rings. Hello? C.S. Lewis had different things to say about the nature of faith, the ways faith changes as you mature and how you deal with the apparent absence of God in dark times. Also, when I think of that haunting scene of those left behind as the Pevensies flee Miraz's castle, I'm impressed by the guts it took to film a scene in a family movie that deals so viscerally with the high cost of war.

In My Blueberry Nights Dallas' Norah Jones plays Elizabeth, a heartbroken traveler with a taste for blueberry pie. Audiences might have a hard time figuring out what makes the character tick. At first, so did the star.

If you missed the great animated film Persepolis and subtitles challenge your faculties, you're in luck. A dubbed version is rolling into theaters this weekend. I'm not sure if this sublime look at growing up in the Iran and Europe of the '70s and '80s would have made my Top Ten in a dubbed version - dubbed foreign films make my skin crawl - but hey, different strokes.

Beware if you have a chimp in your movie: PETA is watching. In the last week I've received two E-blasts from the animal rights organization, one concerning the new documentary Circus Rosaire (just played at AFI-Dallas; check the earlier post here), the other condemning the upcoming adaptation of the anime TV icon Speed Racer (which I'm tempted to condemn just because of its live-action format, but I digress).

Keep reading for the full text of PETA's Speed lament.

So on Saturday I moderated an AFI Dallas panel at the Nasher with the esoteric title "Listening to the Crowd: How Much Does the Audience Influence the Artist's Voice?"
My co-panelists were Michael Addis, who made the documentary Heckler; Jewel, who is featured in said documentary; and the great Dolph Lundgren, killer of Apollo Creed and the man behind the new film Missionary Man.

There were some interesting moments.

As promised, here are some more golden nuggets from the great Martin Scorsese. His latest, the Rolling Stones concert movie Shine a Light, opens today.

The star of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival Wednesday night at the Magnolia was not an actor, or a filmmaker, or even a person. It was a chimpanzee named Rickey.

Here's something wacky: a non-AFI blog item. I just got back from talking to one of my favorite actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor. He's exuded intelligence and range in Dirty Pretty Things, Talk to Me and American Gangster, among others, and now he's in David Mamet's upcoming Jiu-Jitsu film, Redbelt. The strongest impression from a 30-minute chat: This is a very international dude.

Has it really been 20 years since Public Enemy was the most incendiary and relevant thing in pop music? Damn you, old age. But you can relive the glory days, kind of, with the documentary Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome. It shows tonight at 7:15 at the Angelika, and Chuck D is slated for a red carpet walk earlier in the evening at North Park. Chuck will also rock Ghost Bar after the movie with PE's prime provocateur, Professor Griff, and DJ Lord. (Where's Terminator X at?).

As for the film, I wanted a little more. The interviews are candid enough, but I wanted to be picked and put back down in the late '80s/early '90s Fear of a Black Planet days. The live footage is mostly from the last few years, well after PE's heyday, and the editing is pretty pedestrian. Still, this is PE, and I'll be raising my fist tonight in the presence of the great Chuck. Too black. Too strong.

Just hung out with Alex Gibney, who has become a major stud in the documentary world. His Taxi to the Dark Side won the doc Oscar this year, and his new film, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, plays AFI Dallas at 7:30 tonight and 12:15 Saturday at the Magnolia.

Among the surprising interview subjects in the film is Pat Buchanan, a Nixon man whom Thompson met covering politics for Rolling Stone (read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, if you haven't). Gibney told me Buchanan originally declined to participate in the film, but changed his mind when the filmmaker reminded him that the great Gonzo's work spoke to folks of all political stripes and ideologies. (Apparently Thompson and Buchanan were known to knock back a beer or ten together).

Gonzo will be released by Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner's HDNet Films later this year.

AFI Dallas is ready to roll through April 6 and we'll be all over it like Jerry Jones on Darren McFadden. Peep our preview of the many small town Texas films on display here. Stevie Becker will be covering the opening night festivities at guidelive.com (I'll be reviewing Chris Rock. Very stoked). Check The Screening Room every day for news, reviews and all the AFI you can handle.

Chris Cooper, who can be seen in the new film Married Life, is a Kansas City native. But his people come from Texas. "I'm the only one that's not from Texas, going back generation to generation on both sides of my family," he told me recently.

It seems his great-great grandfather once had a chance to get in on the ground floor of a fledgling city called Dallas. But it didn't quite work out.

As promised, here's a little more on my Martin Scorsese interview Saturday. We talked mostly about his new Stones movie, Shine a Light, which opens April 4. If you're a fan of Scorsese's music flicks, this one is more of a Last Waltz-style concert movie than a No Direction Home study of Dylan.

Near the end of the interview I told him I was a fan of his doc A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. He immediately lamented that his press schedule was causing him to miss a rep screening of Bigger Than Life, a Nicholas Ray/James Mason film that was playing up the street in New York and is featured in Personal Journey. Classic Scorsese: He's rather be watching a movie - even one that he's seen a million times - than doing anything else. Except, possibly, making a movie.

We'll have much more Marty as his film's opening date approaches.

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I somehow ended up on the Hillary e-blast list, which means I get to find out about every last campaign stop in the state. Anyway, the other day I got a message reporting that Melanie Griffith had endorsed Hillary (Woo-hoo!).The message went on to mention that "Griffith has starred in dozens of movies and won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Working Girl. Uh, no. She was nominated, but did not win. Then again, politicians have always been prone to exaggeration.

No. 138 with a bullet (Fox Searchlight)

So we thought it would be fun to take this year's best picture nominees and see where they rank in the all-time scheme of things. Read on for the results.

Wanna buy some deodorant? (New Line)

Are the products selling the movie? Or is the movie selling the products? Is this blog posting selling both? Does it even matter anymore?

What a tangled green web we weave.