A Friday report with "Wargames" madness, Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin

Something that perfect really shouldn't need any words from me, but just in case you somehow can't tell, that's Martin Freeman in his Bilbo Baggins costume for Peter Jackson's upcoming movie of "The Hobbit," making it pretty much pure bliss. 'Nuff said.

And in other movie news this morning, I've really lost all my zeal to complain about the need to remake every single thing that came out of the '80s, especially since it's so clear there's nothing I or anyone else can do to stop them.

When they keep claiming the careers of promising directors, however, it just keeps getting more and more distressing. First this week came the inexplicably bad/tame first trailer for "Hustle & Flow" director Craig Brewer's take on "Footloose," and now comes word that the '80s remake machine has claimed another victim in Seth Gordon.

Gordon, who made the sensational documentary "King of Kong" and in a few weeks will have "Horrible Bosses" starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day in theaters, has now signed on to direct a remake of "WarGames."

Think about that for a second. While "WarGames" was a perfectly fun little flick, was there an '80s movie that was more specifically of its time? I really can't see how you would recreate that ridiculously entertaining scenario in this even more threatening world, and there's another attempt to resurrect something similar that should serve as a cautionary tale, "Red Dawn."

Making a remake of that even sillier '80s minor treasure wouldn't really seem on the surface to be too difficult, but for the filmmakers it's turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. After all major filming for the movie starring Thor's Chris Hemsworth had been completed, whatever studio is behind this madness decided that China could no longer be the big bad because its potential audience is too large, so they had to make a last-minute change to North Korea, where for all I know they don't get many Hollywood movies at all.

And I tell you all that to simply say this: The "Red Dawn" remake still has no release date and may well just disappear straight to DVD, as hopefully this "WarGames" chicanery will too, if it happens at all.

OK, after that diatribe, there's two other bits of news out there that caught my eye this morning, starting with an "X-Men: First Class"-related casting shift for Danny Boyle's next movie.

"Trance," which the director will unfortunately most likely not make until after he directs the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, sounds like its right in the vein of his earlier work such as "Shallow Grave" (still my favorite Boyle flick) and "Trainspotting."

The flick is about an employee at an arthouse who teams with a group of criminals to steal a valuable piece. Though the heist succeeds, a blow to the head gives him amnesia and he is unable to remember where the art is hidden. Suspecting foul play, his co-conspirators hire a hypnotist to try and pull the secret from his mind.

Sounds like nothing but potentially great to me, and though Michael Fassbender was originally set to play the lead, it has now apparently been passed on to James McAvoy. Not really trading up or down there, but a lateral move, I'd say, so stay tuned for more on this project as soon as I can find it.

And finally today, it seems that when HBO gets is hands on talented directors/writers, it really doesn't want to let them go.

Aaron Sorkin already has a series going to pilot on the network this fall, "More as the Story Develops," which sounds eerily like "Sports Night" simply redone with a cable news show instead of a cable sports show (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that.)

And now comes word that he's teaming up with "The Office" star John Kraskinski, who will produce and probably star, for a mini-series of eight episodes or so that springs from the book "Life at the Marmont" by Raymond R. Sarlot.

Given the Sunset Strip hotel's juicy history, it should give Sorkin plenty to work with. It's where the corpse of John Belushi was discovered in 1982, and among the personalities who lave lodged there since the 1930s are Hunter S. Thompson, Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland and Lindsay Lohan.

Sounds like a whole lot of fun to me, and the casting alone should be a hoot. And if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to do some swimming before I take a chance on Jake Kasdan's "Bad Teacher," which I'm hoping against hope will deliver some pretty solid laughs. Peace out.

Macon movies: "Of Gods and Men" with the Film Guild, and Magnetic Fields too

Though we're smack in the middle of the movie summer, and in the world of wide releases we've now got the seriously satisfying "X-Men: First Class" and, this week, J.J. Abrams' "Super 8," here in Macon there are also great movies coming up outside of our multiplexes.

And that starts this Sunday with the French drama "Of Gods and Men," being presented Sunday at the Douglass Theatre by the Macon Film Guild. The movie, a quiet thriller of sorts by director Xavier Beauvois, center on the lives and sacrifices of a group of Trappist monks living in harmony with Muslims in Algeria in 1996, until they find their very existence threatened by extremist forces in the Algerian Civil War.

In giving his very moving movie the slow but absorbing rhythm of the monks' daily lives, Beauvois draws viewers deeply into their world and gives the movie a sense of peace, even as that peace itself is besieged on all sides by the modern life around it. And it's in this constant conflict, best captured in a scene in which the monks gather to share in a Gregorian chant as the terrorists' helicopters swarm around their compound, that Beauvois manages to give his movie at least as much urgency as a good Hollywood action flick.

He's certainly helped in this endeavor by the actors who play the monks at the story's core. Led by the French actors Lambert Wilson as the head of the monastery and Michael Lonsdale as a doctor who reaches out to the Muslim community, they all imbue their performances with a quiet grace, and in their faces show the humanity that give this movie its compelling drive.

In the end, without ever directly preaching, "Of Gods and Men" is ultimately about what it means to be a Christian in extremely trying circumstances. And the mix of hope and sadness with which it examines both the simultaneous power and futility of faith make it well worth checking out with the Macon Film Guild at 2, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Douglass Theatre.

A magnetic movie offering

The folks behind Macon's Second Tuesday Rock 'n' Roll Picture Show have been doing a great job of bringing us movies that move to all kinds of beats, from the pounding metal of "Lemmy" to the delightfully insane world of the Wu Tang Clan with "Rock the Bells."

June 14 at the Cox Capitol Theatre, they'll slow things down for the documentary "Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields." Merritt, who's been called "the Cole Porter of his generation," specializes in beautiful little ditties about all kinds of love, and this portrait by directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara should be an enlightening and entertaining glimpse into his creative process.

The fun begins with happy hour at 6:30 p.m., complete with dinner catered by Saralynn Harvey and her cooks from Good to Go, and then the movie at 7:30 p.m. Admission is just $5, or $3 if you wear a rock 'n' roll T-shirt, meaning that if I manage to make it I'll be wearing my T-shirt featuring an armadillo emblazoned with the logo of the Heartless Bastards. Hope to see you there. Peace out.

Leonard Nimoy channels The Dude for pretty pure bliss

OK, a short, rather lazy post today because I've got the chance to see Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life" if I can make it to Atlanta's fabulous Regal Tara Cinemas by 12:45, and I'm most certainly not going to let that pass me by.

I will, however, pass on my quick word that you can certainly believe every ounce of the hype surrounding "X-Men: First Class," because it really is just that good. "Kick-Ass" director Matthew Vaughn keeps things moving at a smart and very brisk pace, and if you're reintroducing well-known characters, it certainly helps when you've got James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender to play them. Super campy, silly and just ultra-fun summer fare.

And after that today, I just have a couple of videos, but when the first one has Leonard Nimoy channeling The Dude, it's well worth a few minutes of your time. The song itself by Bruno Mars? Like so much of today's breezy radio pop, it just quickly passes through one ear and out the other of this middle-aged dude, but the video is a hoot. Enjoy, and then stick around for a clip from one of the comedy's I'm most looking forward to for the rest of this summer.



Finally today is a clip from the upcoming Ruben Fleischer ("Zombieland") movie "30 Minutes or Less," starring Jesse Eisenberg and veryfunnyman Aziz Ansari and set to drop Aug. 12. Just in case you somehow didn't know the plot, Eisenberg lays it out in this clip, after some very funny stuff with Aziz as a school teacher. Enjoy the clip and the rest of your weekend. Peace out.

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Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Friday news, of Torchwood, Elmore Leonard and even Tarzan ... yes, really

There's really not anything I can add to Leslie Nielsen's rather blissfully funny tombstone, so I'll just let that speak for itself and move on.

Though I do try to be selective in my TV viewing, when there aren't many new shows on (like, say, now) it does leave a bit of a void.

I did quite enjoy the new season premiere of "Men of a Certain Age," especially since I'm now clearly one of them, but I don't think that show's ever gonna gain many more viewers than the very few it has now. HBO has certainly also stepped up with season two of "Treme" (another great show that just about no one watches) and, of course, the sublime "Game of Thrones," and FX has two shows coming up I'll tune in for, the second of season of Louis C.K.'s "Louie" and the truly odd-looking "Wilfred."

After that, however, it's time for catching up with shows I've simply missed that are now streaming on Netflix, starting (with the recommendation of my fellow cubicle slave, Renee Martinez) with "Torchwood."

Most anyone who would be in to such a thing probably already knows that it's a show about a sort of alien-hunting detective agency and is a spinoff of "Doctor Who," and three episodes in now, I really dig it. And in a rather severe case of burying the lead, I tell you all that to tell you this: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" scribe Jane Espenson and star Eliza Dushku are reuniting for "Torchwood: Web of Lies," which will be an animated tale appearing online in three installments before the July 8 premiere of season 4 of the live-action show on Starz.

Dushku, along with series regulars John Barrowman and Eve Myles, will do voice work for the animated offering, and you can be sure I'll tell you how exactly to find it as soon as I know. And Espenson, easily one of the best writers on TV, wrote an episode of "Game of Thrones" and is one of the main writers for the new "Torchwood" season, so definitely tune in.

OK, moving on to movie news, I love most of the movies made from Elmore Leonard's uniformly juicy source material (with "Out of Sight" easily being on any top 10 list if I were to make it), and "Justified" just made a huge leap forward in season two, so any news of a new Leonard movie is certainly welcome in this little corner of the world.

Well, there's a take on the Leonard novel "Freaky Deaky" in the works, and it's quickly assembling a pretty first-rate cast. Per Variety, the story revolves around a Detroit police sergeant (Matt Dillon) who moves from the bomb squad to sex crimes (of course), coming up against a group of '60s radicals who, in 1974, are part of an investigation involving the bombing of a limousine. Brendan Fraser will play a former activist who now uses his knowledge of explosives to provide effects for Hollywood films, and veryfunnyman Craig Robinson will play Donnell Lewis, a Black Panther in the '60s and now the assistant to a Hollywood power player (William H. Macy).

Sounds like a typical cup of Leonard craziness, so stay tuned for any more news about this flick being written and directed by Charles Matthau (director of "The Grass Harp," way back in 1995) as soon as I spy it.

And finally, before a couple of videos, the bizarre ... the once-great Craig Brewer, who managed to create another movie that's probably in my top 10 of all time, "Hustle & Flow," before lowering himself to an upcoming remake of "Footloose," is now going seriously ape-s%$# crazy.

Warner Brothers has apparently signed Brewer up to write and direct a new "Tarzan" movie, and he already has his mind set on a trilogy about the tree-swinger (I'm sure Fraser would jump all over this.)

It's another odd turn for a clearly talented but maddening director. I really couldn't make anything of the mess that was "Black Snake Moan," and I can't see any way I'll possibly go see this new "Footloose" monstrosity, but with this, well, I can only wish him good luck.

OK, quickly on to the clips, because I want to get out of here to go swimming and then see "X-Men: First Class" (man, do I like being off on Fridays.) First up, Jon Stewart making fun of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump eating "New York pizza" in Times Square is the very definition of shooting fish in a barrel, but that doesn't make it any less funny. You really don't need to watch the full seven minutes-plus of this, but if you haven't seen it, it really is a pretty first-class rant. Enjoy.

The Daily Show
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And finally today, it may be a severely chicky tale, but I enjoyed Kathryn Stockett's "The Help" (though it's certainly not without its faults), and am really looking forward to the movie version due out Aug. 12, both for the movie itself and because it should be what finally rightly makes a big star out of Emma Stone. In the movie and this short clip with Viola Davis, she plays Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, who rouses the black maids of 1960's Jackson, Miss., to tell their stories. Enjoy the clip, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend. Peace out.

Tags: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Is 3-D finally dying? The signs increasingly say yes

Change never comes easy.

And, I suppose, there are certainly more pressing issues today than the soul-sapping power of 3-D in movies, but if you're a fan of them (like me, of course), it's at least a real problem, especially during the height of the movie summer.

For movie fans, though, this summer's developments may actually be key in bringing about the insidious gimmick's demise, and for that Hollywood would have no one to blame but itself.

Quick, think, when was the last time that the addition of 3-D to a movie really dazzled, much less even mattered? For me, you have to go all the way back to Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," and there have been a whole lot of 3-D movies released since then (for which many I refused to put on those silly glasses on top of the ones I need simply to see what's in front of me.)

And beyond the sheer glut of 3-D movies (16 of them between May and September of this year, with two big, upcoming titles being "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"), there's the fact that (for me at least) it just adds nothing to the movie-watching experience, instead just draining the screen of color and often energy, too.

The problem is particularly galling with animated movies, which are now almost universally released in 3-D. In this, if I can exaggerate what I really think is only slightly, movie studios reveal themselves to be little more than pusher men, getting kids hooked on this shiny trick before they can figure out just how little they really get out of it. Luckily, however, unlike drug addicts who are truly too far gone, moviegoers do still have a choice, and the signs, according to numbers from the New York Times (and pointed out to me by always-welcome reader Jeremy Jirik), are finally starting to point to us just saying no to unnecessary 3-D.

One 3-D flop this summer was "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which made just 47 percent of its domestic box office take from 3-D ticket sales in week one (as a rule, successful 3-D blockbusters are expected to make about 60 percent of their first-week take from 3-D sales). Add to that last week's debut of "Kung Fu Panda 2," which made only 43 percent of its long Memorial Day weekend, $53 million take from 3-D ticket sales, and got absolutely trounced by "The Hangover: Part II," which pulled in about $118 million from Thursday-Monday.

But nothing this well entrenched will die easily, and the 3-D pushers have to take heart in its overseas performance, where fans flocked to the latest "Pirates" movie in 3-D in huge numbers. Is it, to be blunt, because they're simply dumber than we are? Of course not. It's just because 3-D hasn't been around as long or been as prevalent in some parts of the world as it has here, so there's still the thrill of the new. Eventually (I hope), everyone will see this emperor's clothing of movie gimmicks for exactly what it is.

Do I want movies to die? Certainly not. I just want them to stop leaning on this crutch which has by now much more than worn out its welcome. But what can we do aid in its demise? Well, when they're good, go see genuine, old-fashioned 2-D movies, be they big (like this week's "X-Men: First Class") or small (if you're here in Macon, check out the simply sublime "Of Gods and Men" with the Macon Film Guild on June 12.)

And in the meantime, just keep hope alive that 3-D will soon be something we can look back on with disgust. Peace out.

Summer of sequels: Is there anything good left on the menu?

I'm sure it's happened before, but it's been particularly galling that for the past two weeks we've had nothing but sequels in wide release.

And of course, that's not going to change any time soon, so rather than complain about something I can't do anything about (though anyone who knows me knows I do plenty of that, too), let's just take a look at what's on the sequel menu this summer to see if there will be anything worth ordering.

"Kung Fu Panda 2"
What's not to love about a panda that does kung fu? Of the two sequels opening this weekend, I'm definitely in for this one.


"The Hangover Part II"
When someone pointed out to director Todd Phillips that the story of this one looked exactly like the one for the first "Hangover," he basically said, "so what, it's just a comedy." He's right, I guess, and I certainly laughed at No. 1, so I'm up for one more round with the guys, this time out in Bangkok. Opening Friday.

"X-Men: First Class"
Matthew Vaughn will probably never make a movie as cool as "Kick-Ass," but from what I've seen so far, this prequel (not a sequel, I know, but bear with me) about the origins of the "X-Men" should be great. My only complaint: Between the trailers and every other kind of clip, it certainly seems like I've seen most of the movie already, so here's hoping there's something left to surprise us. Opening June 3.

"Cars 2"
The cars as international super spies? Sounds too silly even for me, who sees far too many animated movies, so I think I'll just say no to this one (which would make it the first Pixar movie I've skipped.) Opening June 24.

"Transformers: The Dark of the Moon"
No one spreads mass destruction better than Michael Bay, if that's your thing, and the third installment in his giant robot saga should be the loudest one yet. I'm not sure I can take any more myself. Opening June 29.


"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"
Not just a sequel, but the second half of a sequel? It's getting hard to keep all this straight, but the end to J.K. Rowling's wizarding tale should be the best movie in wide release for the rest of this summer, so I'm definitely in. Opening July 15.

"Final Destination 5"
This one just raises too many questions. If I skipped the first four of these (which I did), won't I just be confused if I start now? How can there already have been four, if No. 1 was supposed to be the "Final Destination"? And wasn't that actually supposed to arrive last Saturday? Now my head just hurts. Opening Aug. 12.

"Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World"
This one looks like its squarely aimed at kids, and what in the world is wrong with that? Robert Rodriguez usually has a lot of fun when he makes movies for younguns, and I loved the first of these movies, but I think I'll just have to skip this course unless it gets some incredibly good buzz. Opening Aug. 19.

And to close, if I can, a plug for a non-sequel that I finally managed to catch up with last weekend, and may well be out of theaters by now, "Soul Surfer." Yes, it's a Christian movie, but a fairly subtle one at that, and who can't be inspired by the story of Bethany Hamilton, the professional surfer who lost an entire arm in a shark attack? The surfing action is beautifully shot, the acting (especially from young AnnaSophia Robb as Bethany) is solid, and it's just a genuine feel-good story well told. So, catch it if you still can (it was still playing at the Galleria in Centerville last weekend), and keep an eye out for it on DVD if not. Peace out.

Of Bouncing Cats and a lot of other fun stuff

There are many things that make the Atlanta Film Festival 365 a thoroughly fun experience, but its international offerings each year may be the very best one.

This year, the focus has been on Africa (with other movies from all around the world, too), and after the engrossing documentary "An African Election," I followed that up last night with "Bouncing Cats," a genuinely unique movie experience.

The flick's title comes from the words that Ugandan kids use to make a beat when they have no music to dance to (try it, "bouncing cats, bou-bouncing cats"), and it chronicles the work of Breakdance Project Uganda. And though it never shies away from depicting how tough life is in the war-torn country, it's truly uplifting to see the joy these kids get from simply dancing (and they're really good, too.)

The hero here is Abramz Tekya, who started the group and travels the country spreading his b-boy gospel. As the movie begins, he brings breakdancer extraordinaire Richard "Crazy Legs" Colon of the Rock Steady Crew to tour the country and teach the kids some new steps. Along the way, you meet several of them and hear their stories, and its often as moving as it is simply infectiously fun.

My only real beef was the sometimes blatant product placement (the movie was financed at least in part by Red Bull, something I've never had the need to try), but director Nabil Elderkin's movie nonetheless pulses with the beat that drives these kids (and as a plus, it also features great African music by K'naan, Amadou and Miriam, and others), and even manages to capture a few genuine moments of grace in a land that sorely needs some. Highly recommended if you can ever find this at a film festival or surely soon on DVD. Enjoy the trailer, and then stick around for what else caught my eye this morning in movie news.

Bouncing Cats Trailer from Bouncing Cats on Vimeo.

OK, now on to what I found on the interwebs this morning, starting with the fact that it's good to be either lucky or good, but best of all both. "The Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal had already been at work on a movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden before, well, we all know what happened last Sunday.

So, with that rather fortuitous development, they're of course going to change the ending, and Australian actor Joel Edgerton has just signed on to play one of the special ops soldiers who carried out the operation. The only downside to all this (well, there could be several, but let's just stay positive here), is what is apparently the working title: "Kill Bin Laden."

Really? Sheesh. I suppose "Slay the Bastard" must have been taken.

And in better news, as a fan of stop-motion animation and an even bigger one of Aardman's version of it, this news about the studio rising, quite literally, from the ashes is just all-around excellent.

The company's Bristol, England, main studio was destroyed by fire in 2005, but now, with help from Sony Pictures Animation, company co-founder Peter Lord (co-director of "Chicken Run," too) is going to direct a stop-motion flick titled "The Pirates! Band of Misfits," set for release in March 2012.

So, what's it about? Here goes, per Aardman.

Hugh Grant provides the voice of Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they battle a diabolical queen (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a haplessly smitten young scientist (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

Sounds incredibly silly, but hopefully really fun, too, and any news about the studio that created Wallace and Gromit coming back to life in grand form is just nothing but great to hear.

OK, I had some more planned today, but I'm gonna try and catch "Thor" this morning (yes, it's great to be on vacation), so I'll just close with a couple of videos. First up comes a trailer of sorts for "X-Men: First Class" which shows us some more about Hank McCoy/Beast, being played by Nicholas Hoult of the UK "Skins" fame. And yes, it also features Jennifer Lawrence as Raven Darkholme/Mystique, and as anyone who's been here before knows, I never consider that a bad thing. Enjoy, and of course, keep an eye out for Matthew Vaughn's flick June 3.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

And finally, in a definite case of saving the very best for last, this is the first trailer I know of for "The Trip," a new flick from Michael Winterbottom starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as, well, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon being, as usual, very funny. The movie, being released in at least a few theaters by IFC on June 10 and then quickly to VOD on June 22, pretty much just follows the two of them on a tour of posh eateries as they discuss their careers, impersonate just about every actor they can think of, and just generally just give each other a lot of good-natured hell. Sounds like exactly my kind of thing. Enjoy the trailer, keep an eye out for this if you can find it, and have a great weekend. Peace out..

Summer 2011 movie preview

Though summer doesn't officially begin for at least a few weeks, in movie terms it got off to a faster-than-expected start last week with "Fast Five," and is now set to really explode with the release of the first big superhero flick.

So, here are the 10-plus movies I'm most looking forward to seeing between now and the end of August, with a couple of caveats. First of all, these are only my picks. It won't have every superhero movie coming out (there are four, if you're wondering) or pirates, and though there is an animated sequel, it's not "Cars 2." And second, these are only the movies likely to open where I live, so though I really want to see the British flick "Submarine," you won't find it here today.

And with that, in order of release (which may, of course, change), here goes:

May 6: "Thor"
I'm thinking I'll skip "Captain America" unless it just gets some really big buzz, but this is one "Avengers" lead-in I'm definitely in for. Directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Hemsworth as the warrior cast out of Asgard and sent down to Earth, I've been hearing that, like the first "Iron Man" flick, this will be one with almost as brain as brawn (and hopefully a lot of fun, too.)

May 13: "Bridesmaids"
I know women are funny, and you most likely do, too. So why is it so rare for a group of truly funny chicks to get to star in a movie where they get to really act up? That's a topic for another day, but this time out veryfunnywoman Kristen Wiig, who wrote the script, is the maid of honor planning a rambunctious bachelorette party and more that should just be a hoot to watch.

May 26: "The Hangover Part II" and "Kung Fu Panda 2"
At least there's a week off between "Bridesmaids" and the sequel to the movie that's pretty much its dude equivalent. The first "Hangover" was nothing but funny, so especially when Ken Jeong turns up again as Zach Galifianakis' "plus one," this one should be, too. And as for "Kung Fu Panda 2," I'm thinking it will share an impressive trait with its predecessor: Being an animated movie that's better than the Pixar movie it shares the same year with (Yes, I thought "Kung Fu Panda" was better than "Wall-E," and am certain the sequel will be superior to "Cars 2.")

June 3: "X-Men: First Class"
I doubt director Matthew Vaughn can re-create the genuine comic-book spirit that pervaded "Kick-Ass," and probably won't really try, but as the trailers have gotten better, I'm more and more convinced that this tale of the cold-war origins of Magneto, Professor X and other mutants (though a lot less than in "X-3") should be a real winner.

June 10: "Super 8"
If it's what I'm expecting, than director J.J. Abrams' flick about a group of kids who make an otherworldly discovery should harken back to the kinds of movies that Steven Spielberg made back in the '80s, and that would be just fine with me.

July 8: "Horrible Bosses"
The workplace revenge comedy is a truly tired gambit, but since this comes from "King of Kong" director Seth Gordon and stars Charlie Day of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," I'm hoping this tale of three friends who conspire to murder their bosses will be dark enough to be a summer treat.

July  15: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"
Though "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (two movies you'll notice didn't make this list) should give it a run for the money, the end of Harry Potter's long saga (in 2D for me) should be the box office champ this summer, and just a much better movie than either of those. Bring it on.

July 24: "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love"
With the most "Snakes on a Plane" title of this summer, as long as Jon Favreau's flick indeed delivers plenty of the titular cowboys (Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford among them) battling alien invaders, how can you really go wrong? Also this week, Steve Carell makes his first post-"Office" movie appearance in "Crazy, Stupid, Love" as a dude facing divorce who gets advice on pitching woo from ladies' man Ryan Gosling. The thought of the two of them together already makes me laugh.


Aug. 12: "30 Minutes or Less" and "The Help"
"30 Minutes or Less," Ruben Fleischer's follow-up to the sublime "Zombieland," stars Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari as two dudes forced to rob a bank. I'm betting on very funny. And in genuine counterprogramming, "The Help," based on Kathyrn Stockett's novel about a Southern woman who leads a group of Mississippi house maids to tell their stories, should finally make a big star out of Emma Stone.

Aug. 26: "Our Idiot Brother"
With Paul Rudd unleashed to be genuinely funny as the titular idiot and Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Rashida Jones all tarring as his sisters, I'm hoping this will somehow be as good as the sum of its parts.

So, there you have it. A few more than 10, and I'm still sure I left some out, so please feel free to add any I may have snubbed, and have a perfectly pleasant Tuesday. Peace out.

Harry Potter, X-Men and much more on a jam-packed Thursday

Before we get into some truly fun trailers for smashes coming this summer and fall, there's some other movie news out there, and for me it all starts with the news that "Rabbit Hole" playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is headed back to the big screen.

If you haven't seen "Rabbit Hole," it's out now on DVD, and there really are very few recent movies I can recommend higher. It features a sublime performance from Nicole Kidman and just tells a great story very well, with touches of wicked humor throughout.

And now, Lindsay-Abaire will have another great leading lady to work with as he adapts his current Broadway hit, "Good People," for the big screen. Frances McDormand, who plays the lead role on Broadway, will do the same for the movie.

So, what's it about? Well, it's set in Boston's working-class Southie neighborhood, and McDormand plays Margie Walsh, a high school dropout and single mother of a mentally disabled daughter struggling to make ends meet. On Broadway at least, Tate Donovan plays a successful former classmate of Margie's who enters into a relationship with her, but no word yet on whether he will reprise that role for the movie.

"Rabbit Hole" focused on similarly odd relationships, so this should be a real winner. And just in case you need any more convincing, here's a clip of McDormand in the play on Broadway. Definitely stay tuned for more on this.



In other news, you know, I can really take or leave Sacha Baron Cohen. Like most of the world, I loved "Borat," but I couldn't even bring myself to watch "Bruno" (and if I'm somehow missing on some kind of comic masterpiece with that one, please let me know.)

His next collaboration with co-conspirator and "Seinfeld" veteran Larry Charles, however, sounds like something I'll definitely be into, especially since he's whittled his candidates for the female lead to, for my money, probably the funniest two women in movies, plus one other solid choice from TV.

The duo are working on "The Dictator," "inspired" by "Zabibah and the King," a novel purportedly written by Saddam Hussein. Cohen would play dual roles of a goat herder and eventually the titular dictator, and now comes word that he's down to Anna Faris, Kristen Wiig and Gillian Jacobs to play the female lead.

Anyone who's been here before knows that I'm extremely partial to Faris and Wiig, but am a big fan of "Community," too, so any of these comediennes would make what already sounds like a very funny movie even better. But for my money, if I had to choose, I'll take Anna Faris every time.

OK, now on to some great clips for a Thursday morning, starting with a couple of trailers for sure-to-be summer smashes. In fact, if I were a betting man (and I no longer am), I'd put my money on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" being the highest-grossing flick of this summer. My favorite among both the books and movies will always be "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," but part one of the finale was fantastic, too, and I can't wait to see the saga finally come to a close July 15 (though, for me at least, certainly not in 3D!) Enjoy the trailer.



Next up comes the first trailer I've seen that really has me thinking that Matthew Vaughn will deliver something fairly great when "X-Men: First Class" really launches Summer when it drops June 3. Enjoy what should be the final trailer for it.

Does the world really need another "300"? I really don't, but even if this trailer for Tarsem Singh's "Immortals" seems to promise just about exactly that, I still have enough faith in Singh to be looking forward to this. If you've never seen his "The Fall," there really are few better examples of truly imaginative filmmaking, and I recommend watching it as soon as you can. And with an eclectic cast that features Superman Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto and somehow Mickey Rourke, too, this should be nothing but fun when it finally drops Nov. 11. Enjoy the first trailer I know of for it.



And finally today, tonight will indeed bring the final appearance of Steve Carell's Michael Scott on "The Office," and NBC has stretched the episode out to 50 minutes to make room for it (though I'm looking forward to the also-extended episode of "Parks and Recreation" that will follow just as much.) The run-up to his departure has been some of the show's funniest stuff in years, and tonight should be no different. I probably won't watch it until next week, though, because today I'm off to the Atlanta Film Festival 365 for the first of two weekends, and really looking forward to it. Enjoy this short clip from tonight's episode of "The Office," and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

In honor of the late Sidney Lumet: Free movies!

Before we get into any of that, and afterwards some other video treasures, you really can't do much better for extremely funny news than those wacky Chinese.

It seems that, upset with how the country has been portrayed in recent movies, whoever controls such things in China has come up with a novel solution: Ban time travel in movies and TV. Take a second to let that sink in.

Here's what film critic Raymond Zhou Liming had to say, apparently in support of this madness:

“The rationale [for the time travel ban] is that whatever isn’t possible in the real world belongs to superstition."

Well, with logic that solid, it's really hard to argue. Here's a bit more from Zhou, via the Hollywood Reporter:

“Most time travel content that I’ve seen (in literature and theater, that is) is actually not heavy on science, but an excuse to comment on current affairs."

Fair enough, I guess. If I had the power, though, I'd ban something really harmful, like movies with too many endings. Now that would be movie justice.

OK, now on the videos, first two from Sidney Lumet, then two more that I guarantee it's well worth sticking around for. When Sidney Lumet died recently, we lost one of our truly great directors, and if they were all online in their entirety (and I could find them), I could easily post 10-20 of his movies. Heck, I even really, really like "The Wiz."

For the sake of efficiency, however, let's just stick to two, one of his first and his very last. First up comes "12 Angry Men," a movie we all surely had to watch in grade school, and still one of the finest legal dramas ever made. The flick starred Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, John Fiedler, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec and Robert Webber, and here (if I'm not mistaken - I didn't have time to watch the whole thing) is the movie in its entirety. Enjoy.



Next up comes Lumet's last movie, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a little crime drama that proves he was on top of his game until the very end. The 2007 movie starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney and even Amy Ryan. It's a pretty superb flick all around, but if you're going to watch any of this at work, please be warned: Marisa Tomei, as she has fairly often recently, gets naked early and often in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," so don't say I didn't warn you. Enjoy the movie.



After that today, I just have two more clips that caught my eye this morning, starting (where else) with Larry David and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." As you'll see from this behind-the-scenes teaser for season eight, Ricky Gervais, Michael J. Fox and even Bill Buckner are all set to appear, and the Fox stuff looks particularly funny in the true Larry way. We have to wait, unfortunately, until July 10 to see the show move to New York, but enjoy this clip now.



And to wrap things up today, courtesy of Screen Rant and to get you in the mood for summer, here is the ultimate summer movie trailer. An example of film editing at its finest, it manages to pull together clips from "Thor," "Cowboys and Aliens," "X-Men: First Class," "The Hangover Part II," "Cars 2" and others for one simply awesome trailer. In fact, it's nearly guaranteed that these three minutes or so are probably better than many of the movies they feature. Enjoy, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

A Friday clip cache, starring X-Men, Arthur and Pixar

I have no idea who all the dudes playing the 13 dwarves are, but it just warms my movie heart to see Martin Freeman in the photo above for "The Hobbit," even if he's not in his Bilbo Baggins costume, so there you go.

And before we get to the videos, there are a couple of tidbits of news out there that caught my eye, so bear with me.

Buffy ... well, at least Sarah Michelle Gellar, is coming back to TV this fall in a series that sounds fairly promising, and now it's starting to flesh out its cast. "The Ringer," created by two of the brains behind "Supernatural," stars Gellar as a woman on the run from the mob (or the law, or something, I'm not really sure yet) who takes the identity of her twin sister, only to find out sis is in some trouble too. So, Buffy in two parts, and now we find out that "Lost" vet Nestor Carbonell is joining the CBS drama as the FBI man charged to protect her so she can testify against the mob. Yeah, I'll check out at least a few episodes of that.

And in actual movie news about Jennifer Lawrence because, well, I'll watch her in just about anything, she's apparently signed on for Oliver Stone's "Savages," and though it's been years since he's made anything even approaching great, this sounds promising. The movie, based on the book by Don Winslow, is about two friends and pot dealers from Laguna Beach who, as their business thrives, come up against a Mexican drug cartel who kidnaps and holds for ransom their shared girlfriend (Lawrence). Juicy. And though I can't imagine there's any way that Lawrence will prevail in the Best Actress Oscar race for her performance in "Winter's Bone," she or Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine" would get my vote, so here's hoping. (And in case you have trouble taking your eyes off that photo, you can thank my co-worker Mike Stucka for pointing it out ... it's apparently from Rolling Stone).

For her next part on screen, though, Lawrence plays Raven/Mystique in "X Men: First Class," which brings us to the first of today's three clips. With this coming from "Kick-Ass" director Matthew Vaughn, I have high hopes, since that was easily one of my favorite movies of 2010 (and made my top 10). The few photos that have leaked so far have been a little sketchy, but as you'll see from this first trailer, this should be an old-fashioned, but also hopefully great, superhero affair, with some somber thrills. Enjoy, and tune in to find out exactly what Vaughn has managed to do with this on June 3.



OK, I've railed about thoroughly unnecessary remakes as much as anyone, but I can't help it: This, at least from the trailer (which may well, of course, have all the funny bits), looks friggin' hilarious. As you'll see from this first trailer below, Russell Brand jumps into the role of "Arthur," which turns out to be funny enough, but when you add Dame Helen Mirren as his butler/nanny and Luis Guzman (welcome back!) as his driver/sidekick, this looks really promising. Besides, even if you like Russell Brand (which I really do), there's just something soothing about watching him get punched in the face by Mirren, and Guzman's Robin suit is something to behold. Enjoy the trailer, and keep an eye out for this on April 8.

And finally today, since it's Friday, and just in case you didn't hate your own job quite enough, Elena Myzik, one half of the New York Times' most recent incarnation of the Carpetbagger blogging team, recently got to go behind the scenes at the Pixar studios, and it's indeed about as amazing a place as you might imagine. Enjoy this video about her trip, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend. At least part of mine will be taken up reviewing both the most recent Doctor Who christmas special and Tanya Hamilton's "Night Catches Us" on DVD for Collider.com, so things could certainly be worse. Peace out.

I suppose that was Parkinson's, too?

In case anyone was wondering, yes that is a thoroughly inappropriate and equally funny Larry David joke that's featured in the video at the bottom of this post. Nothing like a good tease ...

But before the videos, most of which have to do with HBO, there is a bit of news out there today, starting with the photo at the top of this post. Just to get the particulars out of the way, it features, from left, Michael Fassbinder as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havoc, Zoe Kravitz as Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and James MacAvoy as Charles Xavier.

And they are, of course, the stars of "X-Men: First Class," which is set to come out in June. If you ask me, they all look more than a little awkward and rather unhappy to be there, but if director Matthew Vaughn brings any of the true comic book sensibility he did to "Kick-Ass" to this, it should just be a whole lot of fun.

After that, just a couple of tidbits I found interesting, starting with the fact that Robert Downey Jr., once he's finished bitching about Ricky Gervais' very funny Golden Globes performance (from what I watched, anyway), will be starring as Mr. Peabody in Dreamworks Animation's big-screen "Mr. Peabody and Sherman."

Surely you remember the genius dog and his pet boy from "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show," usually the funniest thing about the show each week. I should probably know to just say no to these by now, but I just have a sneaking suspicion this could turn out to be pretty darn funny.

And something I can almost guarantee you will be funny, if it ever comes to series, is what Fox has just ordered from Rob Thomas in pilot form. After creating the sublime "Veronica Mars," which you can watch in its entirety on Netflix streaming, bully, he also made the wickedly funny "Party Down," which surely would have lasted more than two seasons if it hadn't lost Jane Lynch and then Adam Scott to "Glee" and "Parks and Recreation," respectively.

The point is, the man knows funny, so I have high hopes next fall for "Little in Common," a new comedy from Thomas that centers on families whose children play little league sports. Not being one of those myself, I always find it funny when parents take something much more seriously than their children, so this could be a hoot.

OK, I do have to get ready for work, so as promised, to close just a quartet of videos. The thing I'm most psyched for on the big screen this spring is that one of my favorite novels, Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants," is hitting theaters in movie form in April. As you'll see from this New Zealand trailer, if you didn't know already, Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz make up the three sides of an odd love triangle at the circus, and definite Reel Fanatic fave Hal Holbrook also makes an appearance. Enjoy the clip, and definitely see this when it comes out.



And just to solidify its hook on me until at least next fall, HBO will be premiering "Game of Thrones," based on the series of novels by George R.R. Martin, on April 17. This should just be epicly good, and just in case you need any further inducement from me to watch, at least the first episode was directed by Thomas McCarthy, director of "The Visitor" and "The Station Agent." Enjoy this clip which rather briskly introduces some of the main players, and then stick around for two doses of, yes, Larry David.

The Game Begins

Most sane people simply accept the fact that Bill Murray is the funniest man on the planet, but I think there are two people who can give him a run for that title, Larry David and Ricky Gervais. So, when you put them together, as this behind-the-scenes clip for season eight of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" promises, I would hope hilarity would, by force, ensue. I'm not sure when the new "Curb," which brings Larry back to New York, will premiere, but it usually seems to pop up around August or so. Enjoy this clip and, even better, the Godzilla spoof that follows, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

Not exactly a summer crowd pleaser, but the best movie I've seen this year

Mi hermano and I had a blast during the week off in New York and, even better, Philly, but we only ended up doing about half of the murals tours I had mapped out simply because it really was murderously hot.

So, what do you do when it's too hot to move? Go to the movies, of course. I asked for "Inception," but we couldn't work it in over the weekend, so that's to come this weekend. Apparently, it might be pretty good.

We did, however, manage to see at least five movies during the week, including the recently restored "Breathless," which looks better than ever and is just as sublimely silly as I remembered. I just love that flick. We also saw the Duplass brothers' "Cyrus," which was as downright uncomfortable to watch as it was sheerly entertaining; "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," which was a surprisingly good portrait of quite possibly the rudest woman alive (and yes, it is a singular experience to watch a 75-year-old woman do a joke about anal sex); and "Micmacs," a flight of fantasy from Jean-Pierre Jeunet that never reaches the sweet heights of "Amelie" but is nonetheless a little ball of fun (which I liked more than my brother.)

Easily the best of all, however, was "Winter's Bone," and that's what I'm here to talk about today.

Nothing draws me into a movie faster than sense of place, even if, as with Debra Granik's mesmerizing film noir of sorts, that's a place you'd never really want to even visit for a minute in the real world. We've all driven by such places, maybe a beaten-down shack or a collection of them, and wondered just how in the world someone lives like that.

Well, the answer, of course, is you really don't want to know, but the two things that make "Winter's Bone" work so well are how much humanity she finds in this extremely bleak tale set in Missouri's Ozarks and the compelling lead performance by newcomer Jennifer Lawrence (well, new to me, but you may recognize her if you manage to see this ... and trust me that you'll never forget her performance as Ree Dolly; in a related bit of very good news, she's just been cast as Mystique in Matthew Vaughn's "X-Men: First Class," which just keeps piling on the good casting news.)

At the movie's outset, Ree learns that her deadbeat father, who among other wise career options is a meth dealer of some sort, is due in court in a few days, and to make matters worse has put up the house she and her two younger siblings live in as the guarantor that he'll appear (which, obviously, is none too likely.) This sets in motion what could have - in lesser hands - been a pretty straightforward detective tale, but instead unfolds naturally (if a bit slowly) as more of a descent into hell as she tries to uncover the mystery of just where her father is hiding out and at the same time save her family.

To reveal much more about the plot would be a crime, so I'll just say it unfolds much like Rian Johnson's "Brick," with Ree methodically compiling often contradictory clues from a cast of characters who are far too unpolished to even be called unsavory. If anything, however, it has far more urgency in its storytelling and, no offense to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I always enjoy, just a far better hero to cheer for.

Lawrence, often nonverbally, just perfectly captures the mix of fear and resolve that drive Ree on her quest, and though she'll probably be overlooked when that time comes, here's hoping she somehow slips into the Best Actress race at the Oscars much like Melissa Leo did for "Frozen River." And she's aided here - eventually - by her uncle Teardrop (yes, really), played by John Hawkes, who does a great job of concealing his motivations until it finally becomes clear just how much he's willing to help. It's a natural performance that will have you wondering where you've seen him before (and the three best answers I could find all involve TV: As the unfortunate brother of Danny McBride's Kenny Powers on "Eastbound & Down"; as the Jewish merchant Sol Star on "Deadwood"; and, perhaps best of all, as the janitor George on the ghostly "I Only Have Eyes for You" episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer.")

But as usual, I digress. The bottom line, if you can still find it in theaters, "Winter's Bone" offers a chilling look at a place you'd never want to live in but will enjoy visiting if you can dig film noirs with a raw streak of reality. Peace out.

Christopher Nolan, uncaped crusader against 3-D? Not so much

Actually, if you like the funny, there's nowhere else to start today than with the fact that the extremely funny Louie CK is coming to F/X tonight with his new sitcom, appropriately enough titled simply "Louie."

The show, which will blend his standup with sitcom set pieces, has gotten nothing but positive write ups from what I've seen so far, so you can count me as thoroughly psyched for this, even if, since it's on at 11 p.m. on a school night, this kid will be in bed already and will watch it in DVRed form Wednesday night. Here's a fairly funny promo clip. Enjoy.



OK, now on to the main event. I'm still entirely convinced that Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is going to do nothing but rock when it comes out July 16, but any notion that he was some kind of uncaped crusader against the virus that is 3-D (which, admittedly, really only existed in my own mind) has now been shattered.

It seems that, rather than standing up to the tide and making his blockbuster without Hollywood's latest gimmick, Nolan and his crew simply ran out of time to complete the 3-D conversion process. Sheesh. Here's what he had to say about it:

"When we edited the film, we looked at the post-conversion process and did some very good tests, but when I really looked at the time period we had and where my attention needed to be in finishing the film, I decided I didn't have enough time to do it to the standard I would have liked."

In the very next quote, however, he goes on to make the exact case against 3-D, post-conversion or otherwise, that holds the most sway with me.

"It's perfectly possible to post-convert a film very well. I like not having glasses on when I see a movie and I like seeing a bright immersive image. So, I think at the end of the day I am extremely happy to be putting the film out with 35 mil film prints. Very brightly projected with the highest possible image quality. That's really what excited me."

Amen brother, Now, just remember that when and if you ever get around to making a "Batman 3"!

In other superhero news about a flick that's so far coming together very well, it seems that Matthew Vaughn has hired his Emma Frost for "X-Men: First Class." Having already made solid choices for the leads of young Professor X and Magneto, respectively James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, it's only natural in comic-book progression that they'd find, and forgive me for saying it, a sublimely hot actress to play the White Queen. And in Alice Eve, pictured, of course, here, they certainly have.

So, who's Alice Eve? Well, I've only ever seen her in the surprisingly satisfying "She's Out of My League" with Jay Baruchel. Before that movie collapses into a pool of rom-com formula for the finish, it's remarkably funny, especially co-star Krysten Ritter. If you haven't seen this one, you could certainly do far worse with a rental.

OK, as we go into the videos, where else to start than with this this touching tribute to O Rei Pele, executive produced by Fernando Meirelles of "City of God" fame. It imagines a parallel end to the great one's playing career, and if you like soccer (and please, if you don't, keep it to yourself), this is certainly worth about five minutes of your time, and may even jerk a tear or two out of you. Enjoy.



Where do you go from there? Why not to a kung fu movie directed by RZA of the Wu Tang Clan? Yes, really, and this two-minute trailer (with, I apologize in advance, just horrendously bad music) promises that "Wu Tang Vs. the Golden Phoenix" will be bad in the most delightfully fun kind of way. Enjoy.



And finally, how better to end than with the first trailer for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which they've rather wisely stashed in front of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" beginning at midnight tonight (or tomorrow morning, or whatever.) You can argue with making it into two movies, but the final chapter of Harry's saga is an epic tome, so I really have no beef with it. What you can see from this is that they really got it done just in time, because the kids really can't get any older for this to work at all, but I'm confident director David Yates will come up with winners for these two flicks, the first of which is coming in November. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Tuesday. Peace out.

James McAvoy joins cast of superhero flick I'm not too old to get geeked up for

So, kids (or at least males a fair bit younger than me), looking for a way to kill your summer vacation? Why not try out for Paramount's remake of "Footloose"? After all, since once-great director Craig Brewer (director of one of my favorite movies with "Hustle & Flow" but also of the cinematic abortion "Black Snake Moan") has nothing better to do this summer than direct this, why not get in on the fun? Here are the actual details:

Seeking males 18 or older to play high school seniorS in FOOTLOOSE, shooting Summer 2010. MUST HAVE NATURAL RHYTHM AND BE COMFORTABLE DANCING. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A TRAINED DANCER BUT A QUICK LEARNER.
THE SETTING: The South, Present Day
Click here

Nothing like a call for white dudes (or mostly, at least, I'd have to imagine) with "natural rhythm." Sheesh.

And just as I'm too old to try out for the new "Footloose," I'm at least somewhat too old to get excited about every bit of superhero news that comes down the pike. I really couldn't care less who will be playing Captain America, though since I do spend a fair amount of time reading about movies, I'm fairly certain it's Chris Evans.

I will never, however, be too antiquated to get geeked up about genuinely good superhero flicks, which Matthew Vaughn's "X-Men: First Class" certainly seems to be shaping up to be. Anyone who saw Vaughn's "Kick-Ass" (which given how great it is really is a criminally few people) knows that he has the style to direct a first-class comic book flick, and with this first nugget of casting news (that I know of at least) things are moving in the definite right direction.

James McAvoy has, according to the Hollywood Reporter, just signed on to play the young Charles Xavier, aka Professor X. The movie (another damned prequel, but I guess we just have to deal with it) will explore the early friendship of Professor X and Magneto, and how it eventually morphed into enmity, so the casting of the other role will be key. Fox is moving this along very quickly now, with shooting planned to start this summer, so expect that word to come any day now.

And for a weekend rental suggestion, you could do a whole lot worse than the last thing I saw McAvoy in, "The Last Station." Though about the heady subject of the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, McAvoy and much more so Dame Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer just make it a thoroughly funny romp before it gets serious, but still always fun to watch. Highly recommended.

As for what I'll be watching on TV this weekend, one thing will certainly be Peter Morgan's "The Special Relationship," making its HBO debut Saturday night at 9 p.m. If that name sounds familiar, he was the screenwriter for "The Queen" starring Dame Mirren, and also for the simply sensational soccer movie "The Damned United" (actually, if you only rent one movie this weekend, make it that one, to stoke the World Cup Fever!)

What those movies have in common is the great Michael Sheen, who has quickly developed into one of my favorite actors. "The Special Relationship" examines the relationship between Sheen's Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, played here by Dennis Quaid. This is actually the third installment in the Tony Blair trilogy that started with "The Queen." The second, "The Deal," which examines how Blair pushed out Gordon Brown (briefly my former boss) to first become prime minister, is actually better than "The Queen," so here's hoping the arc just keeps getting better.

Though W. apparently plays no visible role in "The Special Relationship," in spotlighting how the U.S. and Britain got involved in Yugoslavia, The Hollywood Reporter says this flick, directed by Richard Loncraine, will say a lot about how and why both countries later jumped back into Iraq. I'm there.

And finally, because I'm just a sucker for Aziz Ansari and will hopefully never be too old to plug something as silly as the MTV Movie Awards, airing June 6 with Ansari as the host, I'll close with the latest promo. Interestingly enough, though I can't imagine "The Hurt Locker" will actually win any big MTV awards, this is the second promo spoofing Kathyrn Bigelow's flick, this time with its star Jeremy Renner and some kid named Justin Bieber (and being a geezer, I have the right to misspell his name, if I indeed did.) Enjoy, and have a great weekend. Peace out.

MTV Shows

Now here's a comic-book movie that should truly kick a**

As a very small part of my paying job, I have to compile the "movie caps," or summaries of those movies that are still surviving in Middle Georgia multiplexes, which brought me to this sad fact yesterday: Matthew Vaughn's "Kick-Ass" has already left Macon theaters.

Now, just to put that in perspective, I see a good deal (probably way too many) of movies, but outside the festival circuit I've seen exactly three very good to great ones this year: "A Prophet" (which damn well should have won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language flick), "That Evening Sun" with Hal Holbrook and Vaughn's sublimely silly "Kick-Ass" (actually, you should probably make that four, because I enjoyed Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" IN 2-D quite a bit too.) Which just makes it thoroughly depressing that "Kick-Ass" is gone in no more than a month.

Just to make it even odder, still vying for viewers' attention (though not mine) is "Death at a Funeral," quite possibly the most thoroughly unnecessary remake of all time (with stiff competition from the upcoming redo of "Let the Right One In.") Hell, even "Furry Vengeance" gets at least one more week.

Which finally brings us to today's rather glorious news: 20th Century Fox has signed a deal with Vaughn to direct "X-Men: First Class," with the mutant prequel already getting a release date of June 3, 2011. Bryan Singer, who had been originally booked to direct the flick and is still a producer, apparently made the case for Vaughn, so bully for him.

Though "Wolverine" was nothing but average, and that was unfortunately a massive improvement on Brett Rather's abortion that was "X-3," I'm still extremely confident that Vaughn can make magic from the origin stories of Professor X, Magneto and all their fellow young cohorts. As I've said here before, with "Kick-Ass" Vaughn created the best comic-book movie I've seen quite in many a year, so this should be nothing but tons of fun.

And when it comes to "Kick-Ass" the comic by Mark Millar, there's actually even better news on that front. Millar is teaming up with fellow funnypeople Jonathan Ross, Frankie Boyle and others to launch CLiNT, a new anthology magazine that I will certainly be subscribing to as soon as I can figure out how, especially since the first issue will featuring nothing less cool than "Kick-Ass Volume 2: Balls to the Wall."

Here's how Millar described his new venture in an interview with Bleedingcool.com:

“I want this to be edgy and irreverent, the kind of thing guys will be passing around lunch-halls and common rooms, and there’s nobody I’d rather have creating new characters for CLiNT than Jonathan and Frankie. They’re both brilliant writers and will surprise a lot of people with this stuff. The last thing you’d expect from Jonathan, for example, is a vampire strip, but he pulls it off amazingly. People are going to love this.”

OK, I'm officially in. Best as I can tell, the first issue of this will be available Sept. 2 in the UK and then will be available later by subscription in the U.S.A.

And now for something completely different ...

Though 2009's "Broken Embraces" wasn't one of Pedro Almodovar's best movies, it was certainly one of his funnest to watch, and the film noir works nearly perfectly as a valentine to moviemaking (well, more specifically, a valentine to making Almodovar movies, but the man's certainly earned the right to brag a bit by now, right?) If you haven't seen it, I recommend it very highly, and you can indeed rent it now.

And today comes word about Almodovar's next movie, which won't feature regular muse Penelope Cruz, but will mark a reunion with Antonio Banderas, who got his start way back when in Almodovar flicks like "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" (man, do I love that movie.)

Their new project is called "La Piel que Habito" (literally translated "The Skin I Live In.") It's based on the novel "Tarantula" by Thierry Jonquet, which I'll now have to read, and is scheduled to shoot this summer in Spain and elsewhere. Ever the enigmatic one, Almodovar really didn't reveal much at all about what it's about when he first spoke of this to the Spanish daily El Pais (for you kids, that means daily newspaper, of course):

"The film will be a terror film, without screams or scares. It's difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre -- something that appeals to me that I've never done -- I won't respect any of its rules. It's the harshest film I've ever written and Banderas' character is brutal."

An Almodovar "horror" film? I'm already there. More specifically, it's apparently about a plastic surgeon's revenge on the man who raped his daughter, but if you know any more than that, please do let me know.

OK, all I have after that is two videos via my Facebook friends that are indeed just perfect for a Wednesday because they're guaranteed to make you nothing but smile and laugh (and if not, please do get yourself checked out as soon as possible.) First, courtesy of a head's up from Movie Mom Nell Minow comes the first teaser trailer for a movie called "Easy A." Coming in September, it will be an update on the classic "The Scarlet Letter," and as you'll see below it will star easily one of my favorite comediennes working today, Emma Stone. I won't tell you anything else about the teaser except that the Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher called it and Stone both rightly "adorkable." Enjoy.



And what could possibly top that? The tagline for this last one, which came to my attention courtesy of Bob, just sums it up perfectly: "Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers at Poet's House." It's a bit long at six minutes plus, but it really is a joy to watch man of the people Murray cutting up with all the working folk and reading, among other things, a poem by Emily Dickinson. Just the perfect thing to get you and me through even the most dreary of Wednesdays. Peace out.