Who are the two dissenters raining on David Fincher's parade?

Actually, before I get into that, there are two tidbits about creative folk whose work I often enjoy out there today.

Though he certainly hit a rough stretch in my book with "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and "The Darjeeling Limited," Wes Anderson has also made four movies I truly adore in "Bottle Rocket," "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox," so any word of the man getting back to work is welcome around here, even if that info comes in the form of the skimpiest of details.

According to Production Weekly's twitter feed, the title of his next movie will be "Moonrise Kingdom" and, best of all, he has plans to shoot it next spring. The only other detail available right now is that he's looking for two 12-year-olds, a boy and a girl, to play the leads.

So, something for children (and not completely jaded adults) like "Fantastic Mr. Fox"? Perhaps, but this will apparently be a live-action affair instead. No matter what, this is good news all around, so stay tuned for more about is as soon I can track it down. ...

In TV news, when it was revealed that "Pushing Daisies" mastermind Bryan Fuller (who also had a big hand in the early stages of "Heroes," before that show completely derailed) had signed a new deal with NBC, that was certainly a promising development. If you've never seen the show that ran for 22 episodes on ABC a few years ago, it was just the definition of whimsy and a perfect little bit of escapist TV.

So I was really looking forward to finding out what he would sink his teeth into next, but according to the always reliable Michael Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly, it's just a remake of "The Munsters," and while that certainly has a little potential in his hands, it mostly just sounds extremely tired.

Even with Ausiello saying the series has been described as "Modern Family meets True Blood," and I have a lot of time for both of those, I just can't say much but meh to this idea so far. ...

And finally today, having given in long ago to any notion that I would somehow boycott Matt Reeves' "Let Me In" on general principles, I've set my viewing schedule for what really should be one of the best movie weekends of the entire year: David Fincher's "The Social Network" on Saturday afternoon, followed by "Let Me In" on Sunday afternoon.

And while Reeves' still thoroughly unnecessary remake of the perfect Swedish vampire coming-of-age tale "Let the Right One In" is doing a more than respectable 83 percent positive at Rotten Tomatoes, Fincher's flick was approaching the perfect score achieved by "Toy Story 2" until a couple of holdouts spoiled the party and knocked "The Social Network" down to 97 percent.

So, who are these two flies in the ointment? Well, they, not surprisingly, have brought their own opinions about much more than the movie itself (and that's their right, of course) into their attempts to judge it.

First up is Armond White of the New York Press, who if he wanted attention, has certainly gotten it this time, with more than 6,000, often very harsh, comments on his review posting at Rotten Tomatoes.

White has earned the reputation as more than a little of an iconoclast for trashing movies like "The Town" and "The Kids Are All Right," and while I can't go with him completely on either of those, I do have to agree that they were both at least a little overrated.

Where he really stepped in it this year, however, was in his completely wrongminded thrashing of "Toy Story 3," calling Pixar's best movie since "Ratatouille" simply "besotted with brand names" (it's about toys, after all ... sheesh.)

So, what's his beef with "The Social Network"? Well, I encourage everyone to read his full review here to find out, but my reading of it is that he just generally finds Hollywood to be a morally bankrupt kind of place, and while that may or may not be true, letting that generality cloud your view of specific films is a sad approach to take. Here's a sample:

Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It’s really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness. That’s why it evades Zuckerberg’s background timidity and the mess that the Internet has made of cultural discourse.

There's much more like that proving that White craves, along with attention, easy answers in his movies, something I've never had much time for.

The second holdout (and there may indeed be more by the time I finish writing this) is someone named Prairie Miller (yes, really) of a conservative blog NewsBlaze, who, perhaps predictably, has a problem with Hollywood's "in-your face cocky" portrayal of Harvard culture, therefore managing to trash both of this country's supposedly elitist coasts without - much like White - saying much at all about the movie itself. Read the whole thing here, but here's a sample:

Though according to filmmaker David Fincher, who seems to already have an experienced handle on scrutinizing budding sociopaths with Fight Club, Se7en and Zodiac, and as mapped out in a series of legal depositions inserted into this film, Zuckerberg had a flair for ripping off both ideas and profits from fellow matriculated collaborators in this venture. Cavalier when not in your face cocky, the gabby snob navigates a Hollywood notion of Harvard in what seems less brainiac boot camp than an Ivy League Club Med where nobody does homework.

Now, both of these writers have a lot more readers than I do, and perhaps rightly so, but is it all surprising that the only two dissenters from what has been almost universally hailed as a great movie have done so due to preconceived notions they clearly took into the movie with them?

Everyone's welcome to their opinions though, of course, and if I have time before I, sadly, have to work on Sunday, you'll get mine on David Fincher's "The Social Network." And with that, have a great weekend, and go see lat least one new movie if you have the time. Peace out.

No, I really don't have a heterocrush on George Clooney, but this stuff looks damn funny

But before we get into any of that, the details have finally emerged about just what "Pushing Daisies" creator Bryan Singer is gonna do after walking away from "Heroes" for the second time (when they thoroughly wasted Hiro's time trip to Japan, that was enough to make me walk away for the first time and make it permanent.)

The good news is he now has two projects in the works for NBC, but unfortunately neither of them sound anywhere near as imaginative as "Pushing Daisies."

In the first, Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt the Augusten Burroughs book "Sellevision," which apparently revolves around the inner workings at a fictional home shopping channel. Sounds like an awful lot of meh to me, but who knows? It could also be really funny, I suppose.

The second project he's on sounds much more appealing to me simply because of the oddity of it. Described as a "workplace comedy," "No Kill" will be set inside a no-kill animal shelter. Sounds great to me, especially with this tease from Fuller: "There's definitely a 'Barney Miller' workplace aspect to it."

And of course, for you "Pushing Daisies" fans out there (and there had to be at least a few of you, right?), Fuller is also working on a 12-issue series of comic books based on the show, and like just about any show creator you can think of, dreaming about a movie someday. I don't even think I have the heart to go there ...

OK, from here on out today it's all about George Clooney in two clips, as the fall will seem to be with the two flicks below and Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" all coming out in short order.

First up comes a new, short clip from "Men Who Stare at Goats," featuring Clooney torturing Ewan McGregor with some kind of odd device. The movie, set to come out Nov. 6 and based on Jon Ronson's book about the Army's exploration of uses for paranormal activity, should probably be the funniest movie for the rest of this year, and is one I'm really looking forward to. Enjoy.



Next up, and potentially even better, is as far as I know the first teaser trailer for director Jason Reitman's return, "Up in the Air." Clooney stars as a downsizer who compiles his frequent flier as he travels the globe firing people, and thankfully the great Anna Kendrick (who I've loved ever since "Rocket Science" - rent that little charmer if you've never seen it) plays a rival who develops a way to fire people even faster (comforting thought, eh?). Before today, I had only seen this as having a probable Christmas day release, but now it's listed at the IMDB for Dec. 4, so I can only say huzzah to that. Enjoy the trailer, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

Trailers and tidbits

Actually, the best news I could find out there this morning, and it's awfully vague, is that Bryan Fuller has once again left "Heroes"!

Now, I don't really have anything against "Heroes," but I did stop watching it during season two, when they absolutely squandered that potentially great storyline with Hiro in Japan. But Fuller leaving once again has nothing to do with "Heroes" and instead, hopefully, a lot to do soon with some more of the interesting TV that usually springs from his mind.

And to give credit completely where it's due, this quote comes from AICN. Here goes:

"Development was really starting to heat up, And it appears like I may be writing multiple pilots for NBC so that wasn't leaving a ton of room for 'Heroes,' unfortunately."

Now, anyone who bothered to tune in for the whimsical and sometimes wonderful "Pushing Daisies," Fuller's most recent creation for Warner Bros. and ABC, can only be excited about what might come next. Neither the AICN article, Michael Aussiello at Entertainment Tonight or the IMDB had any idea what this might be, but you can believe I'll pass it on as soon as I get any word.

And easily the funniest thing I've come in contact with in the last 24 hours or so is this blog maintained ny Matthew Robinson, the co-writer/co-director, along with Ricky Gervais, of the upcoming flick "The Invention of Lying." Along with tidbits about the movie, you get, in the two most recent posts, "Oh, the maid list" and "Sketch ideas I own," the kind of wildly inappropriate humor ("She must always refer to me as meester") that just makes the workday go by a little faster.

Except for that, today all I really have is a couple of trailers, but they're varying degrees of fascinating. The biggest surprise I heard after Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds" (I've given up on checking whether or not I spell that incorrectly correctly) screened at Cannes (after the fact that he finished it at all) was that it really has little to do with the band of Nazi killers that Brad Pitt leads with the ridiculous accent. In this second trailer, we see a lot more of the greater story, which at least in part involves a plot to blow up a moviehouse full of top-ranked Nazis. Enjoy!



This second clip poses, but certainly doesn't answer, what must be a burning question to absolutely no one who bothers to read this, including me: Will I ever see another M. Night Shyamalan movie? The answer is most likely yes, especially since I found his last one, "The Happening," to just be delightfully, deliriously bad in many of the best ways (that scene of Markie Mark singing the Doobie Brothers into a cabin inhabited by aliens, or whatever that crazy movie was about, was just priceless.) Anyways, his next flick will be "The Last Airbender," and as you can see from the teaser trailer below, it just looks like the most generic brand of kung fu. It's actually based on the first season of an animated Nickelodeon show I've never seen, and it somehow stars both Dev Patel of "Slumdog Millionaire" and even veryfunnyman Aasif Mandvi of "The Daily Show." Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Tuesday. Peace out.

A Super "Office" party and a remarkable glimpse of Che

Congratulations to the Grammys, which although it did manage to nominate a slew of tired music once again did at least recognize what in my book are the album and song of the year: Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III" (which I'm listening to right now) and MIA's "Paper Planes," respectively (actually, MIA is nominated for "record of the year" but not "song of the year," a distinction I'm sure I'll never understand.)

In TV news, Bryan Fuller's return to "Heroes" has now been confirmed for episode 20 of this season, making the already certain imminent death of "Pushing Daisies" now official. A way beyond sad day indeed, especially with the creepy-but-cool developments of last night's episode. As for "Heroes" itself, I lost interest last year then tried to come back again, but the show is just BORING. I'm sure Bryan Fuller will help, but for me it's certainly too little too late.

In much better news, "The Office" will be getting the coveted post-Super Bowl hour, and will make the most of it with what will be a hopefully just way wrong roast of Steve Carell's Michael Scott. Though there will be several celebrity drop-ins, the roast (requested by Michael, of course), will thankfully be conducted by his semiloyal employees.

And in tonight's episode, Oscar (Oscar Nunez) informs Michael that the office must spend a $4,300 surplus or lose it in next year’s budget. When Michael opens up the floor for suggestions, factions break out and officemates square off against one another in order to get what they want. Even better, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) takes Angela (Angela Kinsey) and poor Andy (Ed Helms) to Schrute Farms to work on their wedding plans (I can't wait to see that for a season finale!)

The end of the "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" season just leaves a black hole in the blackest part of my sense of humor, so here's hoping "The Office" can continue to bring the funny.

And speaking of funny, "Funny or Die" has put together a musical video retort to California's Prop 8 starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney and a bunch of other stars (and even a closing number from Barney!) It's predictably preachy, but also indeed pretty friggin funny, so I decided to include it here for your Thursday enjoyment.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

And finally, since this is nominally supposed to be about movies, here's easily the coolest thing I could find this morning. At some point, the first half of Steven Soderbergh's truly ambitious Che Guevara epic starring Benicio Del Toro was to be known as "Guerilla," but it now seems that for America at least they've dumbed it down to "Che Part One." Thanks for clearing that up, guys. Either way, you can tell from this trailer that Soderbergh has something rather remarkable here, and I suspect you'll definitely be hearing Del Toro's name right next to Sean Penn's for "Milk" on Oscar night. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Thursday. Peace out.