Thursday fun, of "Walking Dead," Bill Buckner and more

If you're not a Baltimore Orioles fan, I should first say you're rather lucky, but also that you can be excused for thinking the celebration after last night's season-ending game was a bit much for a team that, once again, finished in last place in the American League East.

Except for it wasn't. When all you can enjoy with a team is schadenfreude, you have to take what you can get, and since the O's aren't headed to the World Series anytime soon, there is at least pleasure in knowing the Boston Red Sox won't be this year either. Especially when your team had everything to do with it.

And in honor of that, and since my father reminded me of it this morning via the New York Times, I give you a scene from easily the funniest half-hour of TV to appear this fall, the return of Bill Buckner on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Coincidental timing? I think not, but either way, seeing him be dressed down by the extremely foul (I warned you) Susie Essman just adds to the pleasure of this glorious day. Enjoy.



If you don't get HBO, you can watch much more of Buckner's stuff on "Curb" at Youtube, and it's all really funny. And moving on, before we get to all kinds of zombie stuff, Twitch, which is very rarely wrong, has the goods on a remake that's quickly shaping up to be potentially worthwhile (and no, I'm not talking about "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," for once.)

The news that Mandate has hired Spike Lee to direct an English-language remake of the rather fantastic Korean revenge saga "Oldboy" is old news by now, but still welcome since it means the return of the often-great and never boring Mr. Lee to feature films. The perhaps even better news now is the cast that might be coming together for this.

Josh Brolin has definitely signed on to play the lead, a man who is mysteriously locked away in a hotel room for 15 years and then methodically takes his revenge after being just as mysteriously released. I could tell you more, but you really need to see this Chan Wook Park gem for yourself, which you can watch on Netflix streaming right away, if you haven't given up on them completely yet.

And in the fairly solid rumor mill, Christian Bale is apparently being sought for the role of Oh Dae-su's (in the Korean version) tormenter, and perhaps even better, Rooney Mara, aka the new "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (ack, I just can't get away from it) is being eyed for the female lead, a waitress who helps Dae-su (again, at least in the original version.) This is quickly coming together as one remake I'm definitely in for.

And after that today, it's all about zombies, because, let's face it, they're just o much fun. And though "The Walking Dead" should really today apply to the Boston Red Sox (ha!), it's also the name of AMC's sophomore series formerly led by Frank Darabont and set to return Oct. 16.

If you watched the short but seriously entertaining season one, you saw the closest that mainstream TV has come to real horror in as long as I can remember, plus a show that almost perfectly combines genuine humanity and suspense. The former may suffer a bit with the departure of Darabont, but I'm still betting the second season will be great.

In the meantime, AMC is filling the gap with a series of short webisodes, which will all appear starting Monday. They will tell the story of Hannah, a.k.a "Bicycle Girl," the legless zombie taken down by Rick Grimes in the first episode. It will tell the backstory of her pre-zombie life and how she tried to save her family before becoming one of "The Walking Dead" herself.

Look for them beginning Monday at 2 p.m. at AMCTV.com, and in the meantime, enjoy this new promo for season two, and then stick around for something that really needs no explanation beyond its title, "Zombinladen."



Finally today, and courtesy of Iwatchstuff.com, comes a grindhouse trailer that, well, you really have to watch because no words from me will really do it justice. Enjoy, "Zombinladen," and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

ZOMBINLADEN The Axis Of Evil Dead

Wednesday news, of Spike Lee, Errol Morris and a small clip show

Actually, let's start with the photo above, which I'm sure everyone can tell is a photo of Woody Allen and Penelope Cruz on the set of his new film, "The Bop Decameron," in Rome. Why? Because I always like seeing Penelope Cruz, and with Woody's "Midnight in Paris" being my second-favorite movie so far of 2011 (behind only Thomas McCarthy's "Win Win"), you can certainly say I'm psyched to see what he cooks up on the next stop of his late-in-life European tour.

And after that, though the news about Spike Lee returning in a big way may be a bit old now, so am I, and besides, to me it's easily the biggest story of the week, and there's something new to report about his "Oldboy" remake.

Before he makes that, in better news, Mr. Lee is apparently already at work on a low-budget flick that will have him playing Mookie once again. Think for a minute about just how good that could be. The movie, called "Red Hook Summer," is about "an adult from Atlanta who comes and spends the summer in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, NY."

That doesn't say a whole lot about where this might go, but as Lee fans will certainly know, the last time he made a big splash in Brooklyn in a very hot summer was with a little movie called "Do the Right Thing," so certainly stay tuned for more on this as soon as I can find out.

And Mr. Lee, apparently eager to get busy after his too-long hiatus from making big-budget feature films, has also signed on to direct Mandate Pictures' "Oldboy" remake, and there's good news today about how that might just come together.

Twitchfilm was the first to correctly report that Mr. Lee was going to direct this (the best way it could happen, since there's clearly no way to stop it), and the site is now reporting that Josh Brolin is being pursued for the main role. Without spoiling too much for anyone who somehow hasn't seen the original (do so, please!), he would play the American version of Oh-Dae Su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years before he finally gets to seek revenge on his unknown captors.

Perfect casting there, I'd say, so here's hoping it actually happens.

And there's other news out there this morning about another of my favorite directors who likes to move between the worlds of documentary and feature films, Errol Morris. In theaters in at least some corners of the world, he'll soon have a new documentary, "Tabloid," with the rather juicy subject matter of a model who allegedly kidnapped a Mormon to sex him up. I'm sure it's all more complicated than that, and it's just a great match for Morris.

For his next project, however, he'll be venturing into the world of feature films with a movie about cryogenics based on a the book "We Froze the First Man" by Robert F. Nelson and a "This American Life" segment titled "You're Cold as Ice." For me, Morris has always been at his best when he delves into the truly odd, as with "Mr. Death" and "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," so this should be a real treat.

And now comes word that Paul Rudd has signed on to play the lead in this as-yet-untitled flick. It's unclear yet if he'll play the first man to be cryogenically preserved or Nelson, who helped invent the technology in the 1960s. Either way, this should be nothing but fun, so stay tuned.

OK, now on to the videos, and where better to start than with something new from Studio Ghibli, especially since, in Japan at least, it's coming out very soon. "From Up on Poppy Hill," directed by Goro Miyazaki from a screenplay by his father, one Hayao Miyazaki, it tells the story of a group of Yokahama teens who try to save their school's clubhouse from being torn down in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The real treat from Studio Ghibli will be "Porco Rosso 2," which the elder Miyazaki is at work on now, but in the meantime enjoy this teaser for his son's flick, which looks like a real winner too.



As far as the clips go, it's almost all about cartoons here today, but that's the way I like it, and I'm the author here, so deal with it. Next up comes the most thorough trailer I've seen yet for "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn." I still say that Tintin just looks way too modern in this, but it should still be a pretty good Christmas gift from Steven Spielberg to finish up this year. Enjoy.



OK, I know this weekend is all about "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," and I'll certainly go see that, probably on Friday, but there's also a "Winnie the Pooh" movie opening this weekend, and even though I don't have any little kids to drag with me, I think I'll sneak in to see that, too. After all, with two or three new songs from Zooey Deschanel and a good, old-fashioned story about Pooh and all his friends, what's not to like? Enjoy this trailer, and don't be afraid to unleash your inner little kid this weekend.



And where better to end up on a Wednesday morning than with a free movie, especially when it's "Repo Man," not to be confused with that "Repo Men" flick from a couple of years ago. That's right, this is the one with Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Esteves and all kinds of punky fun, so enjoy it, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

A Wednesday clip show, with "Curb," cancer as comedy and much more

Actually, before we get into any of that, there's some intriguing movie news out there today, so let's get right to it.

Though he hasn't made a traditional feature film since 2008's "Miracle at St. Anna," which was really just a well-intentioned mess, Spike Lee has nonetheless been doing some of the best work of his career lately, largely in the shadows. His two New Orleans documentaries, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" and "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise," are both sensational, and his movie of the Broadway musical "Passing Strange" was easily one of my favorite movies of 2009.

And now it seems that Mr. Lee is finally ready to get back to big-time moviemaking, and with a project that couldn't be stopped even if we wanted to, so why not? Given that Hollywood remakes even thoroughly average foreign movies all the time, it's only inevitable that Park Chan Wook's excellent revenge flick "Oldboy" would get that treatment, and now Mr. Lee's name has been attached as the possible director for it.

This project has been gestating for a while now, but in some earlier form it was being eyed as a vehicle for Will Smith to star in, and since he turned down the lead role in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" (HUGE mistake, that), he may still be interested.

No matter how this all turns out, here's hoping that the part about Spike at least turns out to be real, because he's been gone for far too long.

OK, to transition into the videos, let's start with news about one of my very favorite funnymen, J.B. Smoove of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." He'll return with the show this Sunday on HBO, and after that now comes word that he'll be starring in Sacha Baron Cohen's latest prank, "The Dictator." It's at least supposedly "inspired" by Saddam Hussein's novel "Zabibah and the King," and is about a despot who "risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come the country he so lovingly oppressed," according to Paramount.

I don't know anything else about what Smoove will have to do with this except that his character is called "Usher," but with this being directed by "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Borat" helmer Larry Charles, I'm expecting some truly inspired madness this time out.

And keeping with "Curb," which I'm thoroughly jazzed for, the eighth season finally comes to HBO this Sunday, and it will bring Larry David where he belongs, back to New York, along with guest stars Ricky Gervais and Michael J. Fox, among others. Enjoy this final preview clip, and tune in Sunday for the return of Larry "yelling for society," as we all should.



OK, continuing with the clips, the first trailer today is for a flick that I had forgotten all about, but looks like it could be a real sleeper hit this fall. Once known as "I'm With Cancer," I believe, the flick, now known as "50/50, stars Reel Fanatic faves Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anna Kendrick, plus Seth Rogen and many others too, in a movie based on Will Reiser's battle with cancer. The movie, due out Sept. 30, is at least kind of a comedy, and a thoroughly human one at that, so just my kind of thing. Enjoy.



"The Help" is going to be an extremely chicky movie, and probably one that will have people reaching for their hankies, but I'm still betting it will be a lot of fun, too. After all, it's based on Kathyrn Stockett's mostly great but not perfect novel "The Help" and features Emma Stone in the role that should finally make her a bona fide big star. Stone plays Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young woman who organizes the black maids of Jackson, Miss., of the '60s to tell their stories. Keep an eye out for this as counterprogramming to the standard slate of late summer comedies on Aug. 10, and enjoy this second trailer made for the UK.



I've already seen Kevin McDonald's "Life in a Day" when it premiered earlier this year on YouTube, but it was definitely good enough that I will again on the big screen if I get a chance when it hits at least a few theaters starting July 24. For the documentary, McDonald, director of "The Last King of Scotland" and other movies, gave people around the word cameras and asked them to describe what happened in their lives on July 24, 2010. The result is fascinating to watch, so definitely go see this if you can, and enjoy this trailer.



I'm about halfway through season two of "Torchwood" now on my Netflix streaming, and the "Doctor Who" spinoff about an alien hunting agency remains pretty spectacular summer TV viewing. What will happen when the show crosses the pond for season four and premieres on Starz on Friday night with many new cast members? It could very well be a disaster, but I'm hoping not, of course, and hoping that Netflix's deal with Starz will put the new season on streaming very soon. Enjoy this clip from the new season, "Miracle Day," featuring Bill Pullman.



And finally today, where better to leave off than with a free movie, especially when it's "Easy Rider," the perfect way to escape from thinking about your actual Wednesday morning. Enjoy the movie in its entirety, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

A Wednesday clip show with Cronenberg and Footloose, plus Tyson and Spike Lee to HBO

Let's start with HBO, since they're clearly intending to keep scheduling programming made specifically for me in an attempt to just wring as much money out of me as possible.

"True Blood" returns Sunday, and then the rather miraculous eighth season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will return Larry David to New York, where he of course belongs. And after that, HBO has just set in motion a boxing project that should be nothing but great.

"Da Brick" will be a drama loosely based on Mike Tyson's early years in the boxing ring, with Tyson involved to offer his perspective on it. Much better, Spike Lee will direct at least the pilot episode, and John Ridley is on board as the showrunner.

Toiling largely in the shadows in the last five years or so, Spike has nonetheless managed to make two of his best movies (no small accomplishment) with his two New Orleans documentaries, "When the Levee Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" and "If God is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise," and his movie of the Broadway musical "Passing Strange" is easily one of my favorite movies of 2009 (please rent that one now if you've never seen it.) And there are few genres of entertainment I love more than boxing, so this should nicely fill the void left by the sorely-missed-by-at-least-me "Lights Out."

OK, working briskly so I can have time to go swimming before going to work, let's move on to the clips, starting gloriously with the first trailer I know of for David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method," one of the movies I'm definitely most looking forward to for the rest of this year. As you'll see from the trailer below, it stars Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Keira Knightley as the patient on which they try the titular cure (which, as you'll see, somehow involves spanking ... juicy.) Enjoy the trailer, and keep an eye out for this one hopefully opening wide enough to even reach my little corner of the world in November.



Up next comes the first trailer I've seen for Craig Brewer's take on "Footloose," which, not terribly surprisingly, appears to be the exact same movie as the original, except with some rather flashy hip-hop dancing to excite the young folk. I'm clearly not one of those, so I probably shouldn't complain, but how in the world did Brewer go from making one of my all-time favorite movies in "Hustle & Flow" to this? Sheesh. Oh well. At least Miles Teller of "Rabbit Hole," an actor definitely worth keeping an eye on, is getting work in this, but he'll never be able to fill the shoes of the late, great Chris Penn. "Enjoy" the trailer, keep an eye out for the movie if this is your kind of thing on Oct 14, and then stick around for a glimpse of new "Futurama" (huzzah!).

Tags: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

How in the world "Futurama" has managed to survive and thrive for so long is something I'll never understand, but I certainly do appreciate it. Believe it or not, the show is back for its second season of new episodes on Comedy Central starting Thursday night. That's also the same night that FX's "Louie" returns and its new series "Wilfred" premieres, so my DVR will finally be getting a bit of a workout. Enjoy this brief clip from Thursday's "Futurama" premiere, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

DVD review: If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise"

Toiling largely in the shadows of popular culture, Spike Lee is nonetheless doing some of his most important, insightful and yes, entertaining work in telling the story of New Orleans, as he first did with "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" and now with "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise," coming to DVD on April 19.

Lee returns to the city five years after it was thoroughly savaged by Hurricane Katrina, framing his story with ecstasy and then agony, starting with the Saints' victory in the Super Bowl and wrapping things up (four hours later) with an examination of the BP oil spill. And, through interviews with people who have either stuck it out there, managed to return or simply moved on, he tries, in the early segments, to get at the psyche of the Crescent City. It is, as several people note, a city with both a serious inferiority complex and schizophrenia, where, as one woman states, it's a "blessing and a privilege" to live, even as the disasters keep coming.

As he does with his best works of fiction ("Bamboozled" and "Get on the Bus" in my book), Lee lays out the city's dilemma in words and images that are equally striking. It's hard to argue when you hear residents describe the shackling of housing projects as "ethnic cleansing" or later when the term "dispersants" is used for much more than something to spread out spilled oil. It's with images, however, that Lee makes his most penetrating points, as when he uses the stone steps that are often all that remain to introduce a segment about the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, but much less subtly or successfully as the bodies simply start to pile up at the end.

The meat of Lee's story this time out is pretty much the rebuilding of the city from the ground up, or in effect as one resident puts it, "nation building." As he examines the services we all take for granted - from policing to health care - there are at least as many failures as successes, from the still-closed Charity Hospital to the Dr. King Charter School of Excellence, which was reopened and reborn through the sheer will of the people who depend on it.

What makes this all go down a lot smoother is that it's peppered throughout with interviews with a wide variety of New Orleans residents whose lives are very engaging, along with both heroes and goats who have had an impact on the city. In the latter categories are retired Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré, who was sent to take charge in the wake of Katrina and has evolved into a local hero, and on the opposite end, former FEMA chief Mike Brown, who to his credit submits to an interview and even has the nerve to refer to himself now as an "emergency management consultant" with a straight face.

And it's humor like that in these dire circumstances that makes Lee's movie so watchable, even if he of course could have used an editor brave enough to question its length. The funniest point in Lee's second New Orleans documentary comes early as a man who's been dispersed to Houston explains, with his wife sitting beside him, how he was looking for "a churchgoing woman with a house," and since he admittedly has a foot fetish, how their coming together was a matter of "fate, and probably feet."

In the closing credits, the many personalities reintroduce themselves holding picture frames, which just reinforces what makes what is ultimately a four-hour civics lesson as entertaining and often riveting as it is important: The people. And they are what make Spike Lee's "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise" worth checking out on DVD.

Down in the "Treme," it's me ...

Yep, that's what happens when I get four days off in a row - my head not only gets filled with crazy ideas, but I also act on them.

Yesterday's was that, having just made it through all of Spike Lee's sensational "If God is Willin' and Da Creek Don't Rise," his second opus about New Orleans and its people, and also having thoroughly enjoyed the first season of David Simon's "Treme," perhaps I should go to the city myself.

And so, if you happen to be there in the third week of November, you just might run into me (staying at something called the "Rathbone Mansion" - I've never stayed in a mansion before, but at $60 a night, I wasn't about to turn that down.)

And in New Orleans news that might just matter to someone besides, well, me, the track listing is out for the collection (you'll see soon why I didn't say "CD") "Treme: Music from the HBO Series, Season 1," and the music itself will be coming very soon too (and will certainly find its way into my digital downloads.)

If you watched the slow-moving but engrossing show (and if you didn't, why the heck not?), you know the music played not just a key role in it, but really set the pace and feel for the whole operation. Musicians from up-and-comer Trombone Shorty (whose "Backatown" I'm listening to right now - excellent) to legends like Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas all popped up at various spots (and watching Irma Thomas play poker is a surreally entertaining sight.)

Thankfully, they also all make appearances in the music collection for season 1, which will be available for digital download Sept. 28 - with a CD to come at some undisclosed future date. Man, I gotta say, for someone who still doesn't and probably never will own a cell phone, the modes of delivery for entertainment continue to surprise and often confound me (stick around for more on that after the track listing.) Here are the 19 songs you'll find when this comes out:

TREME: MUSIC FROM THE HBO ORIGINAL SERIES, SEASON 1

1. "Treme Song (Main Title Version") - John Boutté
2. "Feel Like Funkin' It Up (Live Street Mix)" - Rebirth Brass Band
3. "I Hope You're Comin' Back to New Orleans" - The New Orleans Jazz Vipers
4. "Skokiaan" - Kermit Ruffins & The Barbecue Swingers
5. "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" - Trombone Shorty & James Andrews
6. "Drinka Little Poison (4 U Die)" - Soul Rebels Brass Band & John Mooney
7. "We Made It Through That Water" - Free Agents Brass Band
8. "Shame Shame Shame" - Steve Zahn & Friends
9. "My Indian Red" - Dr. John
10. "At the Foot of Canal Street" - John Boutté, Paul Sanchez, Glen David Andrews & New Birth Brass Band
11. "Buona Sera" - Louis Prima
12. "New Orleans Blues" - Tom McDermott & Lucia Micarelli
13. "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" - Michiel Huisman, Lucia Micarelli & Wendell Pierce
14. "Indian Red (Wild Man Memorial)" - Mardi Gras Indians
15. "Indian Red" - Donald Harrison
16. "Time Is On My Side" - Irma Thomas & Allen Toussaint
17. "This City" - Steve Earle
18. "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" - Treme Brass Band
19. "My Darlin' New Orleans" - Leigh "Li'l Queenie" Harris

All I have after that today is a cache of clips, but the first one comes with a bit of news. Though "Freakanomics," the documentary based on the best-selling book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, isn't coming to at least a few theaters until Oct. 1, it's apparently available for at least rental now on Video On Demand, iTunes, Amazon On Demand, PlayStation Network and Xbox Marketplace. I say apparently because, although it was listed for a $3.99 rental at iTunes, it only said "this item is being modified" and wouldn't work when I tried it, and there's no way in the world I'm going to pay a whopping $9.99 for it at Amazon On Demand. As for the movie itself, with six portions directed by Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "Casino Jack and the United States of Money"), Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing ("Jesus Camp"), Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me"), Eugene Jarecki ("Why We Fight") and Seth Gordon ("The King of Kong"), I'm certainly going to watch it as soon as I figure out exactly how to find it, perhaps as soon as tonight. Here's the latest TV spot. Enjoy.



OK, if I really ever did have a wall of resistance to Matt Reeves' upcoming "Let Me In," I have to admit now that it's just about completely washed away. It certainly should still be there, since it's a thoroughly unnecessary English-language remake of "Let the Right One In," my single favorite movie of 2008 and easily the best horror movie I've seen in many years, but with each clip they release, it's getting lower and lower. The cast - Chloe Moretz, Kodi Smit-Mcphee and the simply fantastic Richard Jenkins - is perfect, and if you've seen "Cloverfield," you know Reeves is a solid director. And from this first actual footage from the movie, you can see that they at least got right that Jenkins' character, though charged with finding fresh blood for the "young" vampire Eli (renamed Abby in the remake and played by Moretz), he's pretty spectacularly bad at it. Keep an eye out for the movie, also due out in actual theaters Oct. 1, if, like me, you've decided to give in and see it, and enjoy the clip.



In case anyone's wondering, I am very well aware that I'm too old to be watching a bunch of high school-age kids (or probably slightly older) lip-synch their way through incredibly cheesy musical numbers each week on Fox, but I'm also aware that "Glee" is a wickedly funny and very addictive show, so I guess you can call me a "Gleek." The show itself thankfully comes back soon (Sept. 21), and Fox has released this promo clip in which the kids put their spin on Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," and though that will and should make all hip-hop fans cringe, I like it. Enjoy.



And finally today, in something just perfect for a Friday morning, "Zach Galifianakis' brother" interviews a game Sean Penn in the latest Between the Ferns segment. It's not all funny, but when it is, it really works, especially the thought of Galifianakis, Penn and Jack Nicholson hitting the town to eat at Long John Silver's. Enjoy the clip and have a great weekend, which for me will include at least two movies, "The American" and "Machete." Peace out.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Sean Penn from Between Two Ferns

John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe? Bring it

If you were to hang a day on only bit of news, as I'm doing today because I'm soon off to watch the Braves probably lose to the Marlins with my old friend D-Eye, at least it's as cool as this.

Rumors had been swirling for a long time that James McTeigue was eyeing a project called "The Raven," a tale of Poe tracking a serial killer, inspired by his own stories, during the last days of his own life.

Being obsessed as I am with all things about Charm City, that was nothing but good news, and it's just getting better as filming is set to start this fall. Since he broke the news on his twitter feed, atrocious spelling and all, I'll let John Cusack himself do the honors:

officiali- will play edgar allen poe in fall-a-film called the raven, send any poe- gold - my way as i begin this journey into the abyss

I'm going to assume the man knows how to spell official and was actually just typing too fast, but either way, this should be sensational. I almost always like Cusack, but I can't think of the last movie he was in that I even bothered to go see, much less enjoyed (a quick check at the IMDB reveals it's "High Fidelity" - almost 10 years ago! - since I somehow managed to avoid both "Hot Tub Time Machine" and "2012").

And as for McTeigue, he's made one movie I truly love with "V for Vendetta" and one I endured with "Ninja Assassin." Yes, I really did go see the latter, but it was only because one of my sicker co-workers, Sharon, really wanted to. We walked in about two minutes late and a man was already getting samurai sawed in half - one of the tamer stunts in that bloodbath. My bet, though, is that "Poe" will be a lot more like "V for Vendetta," so I can definitely say bring it on. Stay tuned ...

After that, all I have today is one clip, but if you like Bruce Springsteen (and who doesn't?), it's a great one. Courtesy of Vimeo, it's a 3-minute-or-so sneak peek of the documentary "The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town'." That title pretty much tells you exactly what you're getting here, and the movie is set to come to HBO this October (to divert for a second, I finally managed to record Spike Lee's Katrina followup, "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise." Not exactly cheery weekend viewing, but I can't wait to see it, probably not in one sitting, since it's FOUR HOURS long.)

But back to the matter at hand, coming after the movie in November will be a 3 CD set (I think) titled "The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story," which will feature 21 previously unreleased Boss tracks from the "Darkness" recording sessions (plus, I'd have to assume, the original album too.) Epic goodness there. For now, enjoy the clip, and have a great rest of the weekend. Peace out.

Bruce Springsteen - "The Promise: The Making of 'Darkness on the Edge of Town'" Sneak Peek from Columbia Records on Vimeo.

For Thursday, no laughing matter in baseball, great movie news and a cache of funny clips

I suppose I would actually get a few people to read this if I ever bothered to make it single entries rather than a fairly free-flowing outpouring of whatever enters my mind at 6 in the morning, but than it would stop being fun, so what then would be the point?

But I, like many people, was watching baseball on ESPN last night (actually out of the corner of my eye while watching something else on Netflix, about the most multitasking I can actually do) when Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was absolutely robbed and jobbed out of a perfect game.

That was the lead story on NPR when I woke up this morning, so it's obviously already a lot bigger than baseball, which it should be. For me, however, as angry as it initially made me, it was Galarraga's classy reaction to the obviously blown umpiring call that sticks with me: "No one is perfect."

He's certainly right there, and it is, in my own warped way, while I'll always be opposed to the introduction of replay in baseball (though I'd be willing to bet Galarraga would vote for in an instant.) Baseball is and always be a sport with as many opportunities for error as grace, and that all goes into what makes it the world's second-most beautiful game (second to, only of course, soccer.) It's far preferable that these errors be committed by the players than the umpires charged with regulating the game, but even in extreme cases like this one, think about it for a second.

Do we really want the game to be stopped every time there's a close call on the base path or anywhere in the field? That slippery slope will eventually lead to recalls on balls and strikes, and games that could easily go on for five hours or more. It would simply disrupt the natural flow of the game, which often, yes, does involve the extremely human act of umpiring, and would be a disaster.

OK, enough about baseball in what is supposed to be a movie site, especially since it's a day full of good news about directors I really like.

To start, does anyone remember Whit Stillman? He made his debut with what lingers as one of my favorite movies in "Metropolitan," a very dryly witty look at the lives of wealthy young NYC socialites (it's a lot better than I'm making it sound here, and rather amazingly, you can watch in on Hulu.) He followed that up with two movies that were not quite as good but still entertaining, "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco," and then pretty much disappeared, at least until now.

He tried to make a comeback a couple of years ago with an adaptation of Christopher Buckley's satirical novel "Little Green Men," but like many ventures in our brave new world, that fizzled fast. Now, however, it seems like he's actually going to be able to make a movie, and it will be called "Damsels in Distress." Here's a synopsis:

[The picture] centers on a group of college girls who take in a new student and teach her their own misguided ways of helping people. Lily, a new student at Seven Oaks University, winds up filling in with a dynamic and highly individualistic group of girls, addicted to the elegance of the past: Heather, Violet and Rose all volunteer at the campus Suicide Prevention Center, convinced that musical dance, sharp clothes and good hygiene — the Dior perfume “Diorissimo” is their trademark — can all contribute to staving off the inevitable self-destructive impulses that follow hard on the heels of failed college romances. Despite their sophisticated talk and savvy use of perfume, the girls are plagued by Cupid’s arrows and must adjust their psyches to the onset of amour.

That all sounds really funny to me already, and casting is apparently going on now, with eyes set on a five-week July shoot in NYC, so it looks like, yes, we will actually get another movie out of Whit Stillman.

In other news, I didn't know that Spike Lee was working on a sequel to his sensational Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," but it certainly makes sense, especially since those same poor folks could find their land covered in oil any day now. Never being one for half-measures, however, it now seems that Lee is also now filming in Haiti, to draw obvious parallels between what happened there and in N'awlins.

The fate of Haiti is worthy of a Spike Lee documentary on its own, but whatever he comes up with here should be as painful to watch as it should be thoroughly engaging (and frankly, thank God that he keeps doing things like this as the attention of the rest of us understandably turns elsewhere.)

And, in a final bit before we get to the, I promise, extremely silly clips, it seems that director Sam Mendes has very, very wisely turned his back on some kind of "Wizard of Oz" prequel, sequel or whatever the hell it might be called "Oz the Great and Powerful" to instead direct a movie based on the Ian McEwan short novel "On Chesil Beach," a minor McEwan work but one of my favorites, and even better, "An Education" star Carey Mulligan will apparently star in it (even with Robert Downey Jr. as the wizard, there's just no way you could have gotten me to watch that "Oz" crap.)

As for "On Chesil Beach," it's about a couple on their honeymoon on the titular beach in the 1960s, and like Mendes' best movies so far, it explores the psychological barriers to and burdens of intimacy. Again, I'm surely not summing that up very well, but trust me, it's great stuff, and Mulligan as one half of the couple at its center will surely be fantastic.

OK, you have my solemn promise that from here on out today, it will be nothing but silly in the clips. First up comes something that needs absolutely no more description from me: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert vs. Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter in a fatal danceoff. Enjoy.



I was already convinced that "Get Him to the Greek" is gonna be exactly my kind of raunchy funny with just enough heart, but just in case anyone else needs some convincing here, courtesy of Funny or Die (I'll take the former with this) are the movie's first five minutes. As were the best parts of Nicholas Stoller's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," it's a pretty spot-on hit on our celebrity culture, and I think that even if you can't stand Russell Brand (which I can, because he's just friggin' funny), this is still gonna be a winner. Enjoy.

Get Him To The Greek Opening - watch more funny videos

Next up comes the second trailer for one I'm not as sure about, Jay Roach's remake of the sublime French farce "Diner de Cons," which is now called "Dinner for Schmucks" and stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd (and as you'll see from the trailer, Zach Galifianakis too.) This has a high hurdle to jump in being compared to the original flick by Francis Veber, but it at least looks like Carell will be in full geek mode when this comes out July 23. Enjoy.



Well, these last two are probably more silly than funny, but Ben Kingsley trying out for a part in "Transformers 3"? Why not? (Sorry to break it to you, Sir Ben, but I'm afraid you somehow missed out on this to Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whitely - say what you want about Michael Bay, but the man does certainly at least have a type.) Enjoy the clip and compare it to Heidi Montag's apparently earnest "Transformers" audition tape he's spoofing, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

Sir Ben Kingsley Shows Up Heidi Montag - watch more funny videos

Free Rip Torn

You know, that title really is apropos of absolutely nothing, but this morning I'm listening to the surprisingly good Lil Flip album "I Need Mine" (yes, really), and its perfectly pleasant morning listening except for the fact that every couple of minutes or so it's interrupted by the phrase "Free Z-Ro."

Now, I have to assume that's some kind of rapper who was in jail at the time, and I've decided to take up the cause and champion someone far too talented (but obviously just perfectly crazy enough) to be locked up: Rip Torn. I'm fairly certain I don't have any power in this area, but I just saw this morning that he pleaded not guilty to armed robbery (who among us hasn't wanted to rob a bank at some point in your life?), and could only think how great it would be to have him somehow come back to life on "30 Rock."

And yes, it's gonna be one of those kind of days around here. Sandwiched among the absurdities will be exactly one piece of serious news, about what sounds like an absolutely fabulous Errol Morris film, and it will all be wrapped up with the 160 best Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes (again, yes really.)

Where in the world would you start things off, however, than with this: The Coen brothers need a one-armed woman to complete filming on their version of "True Grit" (and being a huge fan both of theirs and of author Charles Portis, you can count me as thoroughly psyched for this one.)

If that proves anything, I guess, it's at least that the Coens have no time for CGI (thank God.) Here, courtesy of AICN, is the casting call they put out:

Paramount Pictures is seeking a WOMAN MISSING HER LEFT ARM to be a photo double in the film, TRUE GRIT, a new film by Joel & Ethan Coen.

Character description: Photo double for adult Mattie Ross: This woman must be MISSING HER LEFT ARM. Optimally, she would be around 5'8", 138 lbs, slender to medium build. However, we are open to various looks.

To submit: Please do so asap! Send photos, measurements & contact information to texascasting2010@gmail.com. Photos should be non-glamorous, simple snapshots (incl face and body. It's best to wear a tank top & shorts). Measurements should include height, weight, bust, waist & hips. Include age, phone numbers & place of residence. Approrpriate candidates may also call our office at 512-637-6775.

So, if you happen to be a one-armed woman who's reading this, this is truly your lucky day. Since I'm not one of those, the best thing I can take from that is the phrase "we are open to various looks" ... as long as, of course, you happen to be a one-armed woman. Priceless.

Before going from that to two things that are almost as crazy, why not class things up at least a bit with some Errol Morris news? Though the man has made many great documentaries, my favorites of his are "Mr. Death" (watch that immediately if you haven't seen it) and "Fog of War," movies which offer well-rounded, almost sympathetic portraits of seriously evil or f-ed up people. And it certainly sounds like that's exactly what he has for his new movie.

It seems he's just finished work on something to be called either "Tabloid" or "A Very Special Love Story." No matter what it ends up being titled, it should be just fascinating. The subject is Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming who, in the late 70s, abducted a Mormon missionary in England, chained him to a bed and forced him to have sex with her. From there, of course, it just gets weirder. After jumping bail, she was convicted in absentia (sp?) to one year in prison because, at the time, there were no laws on the books about raping men. She was later accused of stalking the same dude, and in 2008, took her dog to Korea to be cloned.

Not much to build a sympathetic character out of, I suppose, but I'm betting Morris will at least come very close to doing it. Definitely keep your eyes out for this one, which is rumored to be in the running for this year's Cannes Film Festival.

OK, there will be nothing else remotely serious today from here on out, I promise. Anyone who's been here before (and there may be a few of you) knows that I'm a solid backer of Anna Faris, both for her obvious feminine virtues but even moreso because she's just about the best comedienne out there today. For proof that she can be insanely funny in just about anything, look no further than Jody Hill's "Observe and Report," in which her memorable turn as a seriously bitchy counter girl was just about the only redeeming quality.

Well, she's about to put the "watch her in just about anything" idea to a real test by starring in a remake of "Private Benjamin." In the realm of unnecessary remakes, this is far from the worst offender (my vote there goes to "Let Me In," the upcoming English language remake of "Let the Right One In), and though it surely won't win her an Oscar like it did Goldie Hawn, I'm still betting it could be a hoot. And besides, since I've seen "House Bunny" (and actually enjoyed it more than a bit), the odds are pretty good I'll see this too.

And finally today (or at least before Ahnuld), in the category of a man's gotta eat, it seems that Malcolm D. Lee has signed on to direct "Fantasy Basketball Camp," to star one Lebron James. Take a second to digest just how bad that could be, and then please let me come to the defense of the other Mr. Lee (who, if I'm not mistaken, is indeed some kind of cousin to Spike.)

How many directors can you name who have made three movies that you either love or really like? Well with "Undercover Brother," "Roll Bounce" and "Soul Men," Malcolm D. Lee has in my book, so I'm more than a little willing to give him the benefit of the doubt (and yes, maybe even go see his Lebron James movie too.) If you haven't seen the Bow Wow roller skating flick (once again, yes really) "Roll Bounce" or "Soul Men," which paired the late, great Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson, I highly recommend them both.

OK, how better than to wrap up all that absurdity than with the 160 best Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes? I can't imagine anyone will sit through the entire 10 minutes of this, but as far as time-wasters go, this one is pretty epicly good. My favorite part would have be the "bullshit" compendium, but there's obviously a lot of Ahnuld to choose from. Enjoy this clip courtesy of Pajiba.com, have a perfectly pain-free Wednesday, and, now and forever, free Rip Torn. Peace out.



P.S.: In honor of opening day coming Monday (finally!) enjoy this clip of Steve Wynn singing his simply fabulous tribute to Fernando Valenzuela. Play ball!

My (and only my) best movies of the decade: The 2000 edition

Though I will confess I swiped the idea of picking the best movies of the last decade from somewhere in my morning Web reading, I promise you these choices are all my own (and since, I believe, only one of them from the first year received a Best Picture nomination, they're clearly not anything approaching consensus picks.)

The rules? Well, there aren't many. Simply that I limited it to 10 for each post (though that's a maximum, not a minimum), mostly because of the time it takes to do this. And beyond that, I only ask that if you want to ridicule my picks, please allow for the factors of time and space since they came out, and that these are indeed only MY favorites (and please, feel free to add your own.)

And, also please feel free to check back tomorrow for the 2001 list, and, interrupted only possibly by reviews of "Ninja Assassin" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox," then the best of every year through 2009 (so far, of course.)

OK, here goes: My best movies of 2000, in no particular order (though I will tell you the best in my book.)

"The Hurricane"
You know, I really dislike "Training Day," not only because I just find it to be one of the most overrated movies ever (yes, some hyperbole to start), but also because the Oscar it netted for Denzel Washington was clearly just awarded to make up for him being so egregiously snubbed in this and Spike Lee's "Malcolm X." Though a pretty straightforward biopic, Norman Jewison's movie about Ruben "Hurricane" Carter is anchored by a great, nuanced performance from Mr. Washington and just tells a tragic American story very well.

"Wonder Boys"
This is one that had to grow on me on DVD, but it pretty well captures the spirit of Michael Chabon's book, and besides, Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes (yes, Katie Holmes), Robert Downey Jr. and even Rip Torn clearly just had as much fun making this Curtis Hanson flick as I did watching it.

"High Fidelity"
When I heard they felt the need to transport Nick Hornby's novel across the pond to make it into a movie, especially since it was being helmed by British director Stephen Frears (one of my favorites), I was certainly skeptical. It works, however, because of John Cusack and because Frears captured the obsessive rhythm of Hornby's work, and it's just one of my favorite romantic comedies.

"Chicken Run"
Though hardly anyone noticed, there was a Wallace and Gromit movie released on DVD this year ("Wallace & Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death"), and it's really good. And since children's movies actually aimed at adults are certainly in vogue now, why not go back and check out this masterwork from Aardman animation maestros Peter Lord and Nick Park?

"The Virgin Suicides"
I'm really looking forward to Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," scheduled to drop sometime next year, because in my book she really needs a winner after the disaster that was "Marie Antoinette." However, three out of four ain't bad, and even better than her "Lost in Translation" was this debut flick starring Kirsten Dunst, which was just a perfect hazy dream to watch unfold. (And yes, in case anyone is wondering and bothers to pay this much attention, this movie is listed as being from 1999 at the Internet Movie Database, but I'm going with Movieweb for this list.)

"Almost Famous"
Man, what in the world ever happened to Cameron Crowe? I just hated "Elizabethtown" with a passion, but for proof that he was once a great writer and director, look no further than this autobiographical tale at least loosely based on his life as a scribe for the Rolling Stone. If the best test of a movie's merits is how often you go back to it, this is my pick for the best movie of 2000 (and by any standard, it is.) And in case you were wondering, all Crowe is down for now at the IMDB is a Pearl Jam documentary, which just makes me say meh.)

"Bamboozled"
I had to go back and look at his filmography to make sure, but this was indeed the last Spike Lee movie I saw in a theater that just blew me away ("When the Levees Broke," a real stunner, doesn't count, since I only saw it on TV.) Though it falls apart rather disastrously at the finish, Lee's "Bamboozled" still works very well as a scathing satire about race and entertainment, and Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson are just great in it. And if you want proof that Spike Lee can still make good movies, his take on the Broadway hit "Passing Strange," which you can watch On Demand (or whatever your cable services calls it), is exceptional.

"Unbreakable"
Yes, really. The last M. Night Shyamalan worth a spit in my book is, I think, actually better than "The Sixth Sense." I just wish M. Night had concentrated long enough to deliver a sequel based on Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price character rather than making two of the worst movies of the last decade (probably a much funner list, and one I may tackle later) with "The Village" and "Lady in the Water."

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
Yes, this is the only movie on this list that made the Best Picture slate, and it was well-deserved. I can still remember watching this movie in a New York City theater and then seeing it being played again later that same day on TV at Grand Szechuan. A rather amazing lesson in the power of piracy and also a great kung-fu epic from Ang Lee.

"Bring It On"
I should probably put some kind of asterisk by this one to denote it as a guilty pleasure, but I really don't feel remotely guilty about loving this extremely silly cheerleader flick that has spawned what seems like a zillion direct-to-video sequels. And yes, Kirsten Dunst really did make this list twice, which probably robs it of all credibility, but movies just don't get much more fun than "Bring It On," and I often don't ask for much more than that.

And there you have it. As I said, this is a ten-day project, though not necessarily on 10 straight days, so please feel free to check back for the next nine years, and of course, also please feel free to rain mockery down on my picks or offer your own.

And anyone who bothered to stick around that long today certainly deserves a reward, so here's what has to be the craziest short film I've ever seen about baseball but just a great little discovery, James Blagden's animated tale about Dock Ellis' no-hitter pitched under the influence of some rather seriously heavy drugs. Enjoy, and have a perfectly pleasant Tuesday. Peace out

Quite possibly the greatest time-waster of all time

As anyone who's been here before well knows, I've always had a love for movie trailers.

That has waned just a bit as more straightforward commercials have invaded the premovie space (oddly enough, seemingly most often for beer and cars - not exactly a great combo), but, well done, they're still just the perfect way to get geeks like me jazzed up for movies months before they even come out.

And now, IFC.com has gone to the trouble of assembling what it considers the 50 greatest trailers of all time, complete with YouTube clips of each one. As with any list, you can quibble with their choices, but it does contain some real gems.

For example, it has both Spike Lee pushing "She's Gotta Have It" in character as Mars Blackmon and a teaser trailer for Sam Raimi's first "Spider-Man" flick that was dropped because of when it came out and its rather sensational use of the Twin Towers. From this year alone, both "Watchmen" and easily my single favorite trailer of the year, that plug for Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" that features the Arcade Fire song "Wake Up," both made the cut.

Anyways, I can't think of a better way to kill up to an hour or so when you should be working on a Friday, so click here, enjoy and have a great weekend. Peace out.

Demko's DVD shelf: The return of "W."

Actually, the best thing out there this morning was more about "The Rum Diary," which it looks more and more like will turn into an actual movie in 2010.

So far, we know that "Withnail and I" (watch that, already!) director Bruce Robinson is writing and directing the Hunter S. Thompson adaptation for Johnny Depp to star in as Thompson's alter ego at the time its set - Paul Kemp, a washed-up journalist in 1950s Puerto Rico. And now the movie is quickly assembling a first-rate supporting cast.

Just announced are Aaron Eckhart as a wealthy landowner competing with Depp for the affections of Amber Heard, and - even better- "The Visitor" star Richard Jenkins will play Depp's boss. Bring it on now!

Also out there is this morning is word that one of my favorite directors who I was fairly convinced might never work again is indeed staying in the game.

I think I was one of about seven people on the planet who really liked Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding." Dysfunctional and uncomfortable, sure, but to me at least also very entertaining.

Now it seems he's up to something along the same lines with another relationship dramedy titled "Greenberg," set to star Ben Stiller and now Greta Gerwig, an indie actress who I'd never heard of before. Details are scant so far except that it's set to begin shooting in March and be set in Los Angeles.

Even better, Baumbach might even soon direct a movie that won't make people want to hate just about everyone in it. He apparently reunited with Wes Anderson (remember him?) to co-write Anderson's animated take on Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," now scheduled to come out in November. And he's also signed on to write and direct the "9/11 tale" "The Emperor's Children," based on the novel by Claire Messud.

But here today it was supposed to be all about DVDs, and from here on out it will be, because it's actually a week jam-packed with great stuff. Given the state of my economy and nearly everyone else's, I'm not recommending that anyone buy any of these, but they're (the three I've seen, anyway) well worth a rental.

"W."

I'm not sure anyone wants to see anymore of our recently past president, but Oliver Stone's flick is well worth checking out for both a fairly nuanced portrait of a man in over his head and a star-studded cast that pretty much completely shines. Josh Brolin makes W. a likable enough character while not shying away from his "cowboy" tendencies, and Elizabeth Banks, Stacy Keach, Jeffrey Wright and Richard Dreyfuss (as tricky Dick Cheney) in particular are great in supporting roles. The only weak link is Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, who is just unwatchable (I'd like to give her a lifetime pass since "Flirting" still remains one of my all-time favorite movies, but she really is just truly horrible in this.)

"Miracle at St Anna"

If Spike Lee hadn't stepped in it so deep by getting in a verbal spat with Dirty Harry over the lack of black soldiers in Eastwood's World War II movies, he might have generated a bit more goodwill for his own flawed but still often fascinating effort. Like many of Spike's recent flicks, this tale of four Buffalo Soldiers who get trapped behind enemy lines in a Tuscan village is more than a bit of a sprawling mess, but it's beautifully shot in Italy and is full of little moments that make the flick still worth a rental.

"Soul Men"

Like most of the world I just snubbed the late Bernie Mac's final film - directed by Spike's cousin, Malcolm - during much of its theatrical run, and I'm still sorry I did. A silly movie in many ways, yes, but the tale of Mr. Mac and Sam the man Jackson as two aging soul stars reuniting for a comeback tour is also very funny, especially when the two of them really start to go at it. With "Undercover Brother," "Roll Bounce" and now this, the other Mr. Lee is starting to put together a small stable of movies that I really like.

OK, from here on out are movies I haven't seen, either because I never had the chance or simply missed my window of opportunity.

"Frozen River"

"Homicide" vet Melissa Leo has rather shockingly received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in this drama about two women who get into the business of immigrant smuggling through an Indian reservation border crossing between New York and Quebec. This one was just ordered from Netflix and should be here when I get back from Ohio on Thursday, and I can't wait to see it.

"Blindness"

Fernando Meirelles' "City of God" remains as easily one of my favorite films, so I'm rather ashamed I didn't jump on this one during the ONE WEEK it played in my little corner of the world. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo star in this flick about a world struck by a mysterious case of the titular "Blindness," based on the Nobel prize-winning novel by Jose Saramago.

"My Name Is Bruce"

I can't see any way this can be anything but extremely funny. B-movie king Bruce Campbell stars as himself and takes on Guan-di, the Chinese protector, who has been awakened by teenagers (these kids today!) in the small mining town of Gold Lick.

And with that, I'm off to Ohio to watch the Americans stomp the Mexicans in a World Cup qualifier (honestly, I really have nothing against Mexicans off the pitch, but on it they can will hopefully just suffer a slow and very humiliating defeat.) On a much more civil note, I'll leave you with a rather nifty video showing how they created the Rorschach mask that Jackie Earle Haley will soon don for "Watchmen." Peace out.

An open apology to the great Mr. Bernie Mac

Actually, the - potentially - greatest news I could find out there this morning is that Warner Bros. has finally given a release date, Oct. 16, 2009, to Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are." Of course, that says nothing about what the final movie will look like and doesn't mean Warner just won't move it back again, but there's still hope that my favorite story of childhood will make it to the big screen while I'm still drawing breath.

But the main subject here today is an apology to Bernie Mac, whose last movie, "Soul Men," I had snubbed until last weekend. As I'll explain, though, I don't really think it's entirely my fault.

This summer and into the fall has really been pretty solid for comedies, but I had avoided Mac, Samuel L. Jackson and director Malcolm Lee's "Soul Men" because of what has to be just about the worst marketing campaign of all time. Can you remember it? It pretty much scarred my brain for the rest of the year with two of the most tired jokes I've ever heard, one about what happens when poor Jennifer Coolidge removes her dentures (man, does she deserve better) and the other about what happens when Mr. Mac accidentally takes a viagra and gets into bed with Mr. Jackson.

So, you can understand why I've just said no since the movie opened in the first week of November, but this weekend was finally weak enough to make me just give in. I just couldn't bring myself to watch any remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and even with five of my very favorite actors (Luis Guzman, Elizabeth Pena, Alfred Molina, Melonie Diaz and Freddy Rodriguez) in "Nothing Like the Holidays," I also couldn't see taking in what looked like just the most predictable kind of holiday fare. However, neither could I see a fall weekend with no movies.

What it came down to was a choice between "Role Models" and "Soul Men," and my love for Bernie Mac swung me to the latter (how in the world either one is still in theaters remains a mystery, however) and I found there's a lot of good things just under the crude surface in the other Mr. Lee's flick.

If they had just told me (and perhaps I should have been able to figure it out on my own) that this was mostly a sweet buddy road movie in which Mr. Mac and Mr. Jackson drive cross country to reunite at the Apollo Theater as soul duo the Real Deal (and, even better, you get John Legend in a coffin, to boot), I would have been in from the start. Those two dudes are clearly friends and enjoy ribbing each other, and the road leads to very funny scenes like them performing in a country and western bar (complete with Mr. Jackson line dancing.) As a much less funny Adam Herschman says at one point, "They say motherf***er a lot, but they're real nice guys," and that - and support from the always welcome Sharon Leal - is where the flick gets most of its appeal.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is BY NO MEANS a great movie, but it is a really fun one, and well worth a rental when it hits that point (even if this is somehow still playing in a theater near you, too, I'd still wait for DVD.) And a further apology from me to Malcolm Lee, who is, yes, Spike Lee's cousin. He's certainly not making movies that look anything like Spike's, but he's still managed to make three flicks - "Soul Men," "Roll Bounce" and the silly but satisfying "Undercover Brother" - that I really like, so huzzah to that.

Like most of the world, I first found the late, great Bernie Mac in Spike's "Kings of Comedy," and to this day I still can't believe that it was this hilarious but very blue routine that really set up the premise for and landed him his mostly funny sitcom. After a tired couple of minutes of black-white comedy, in this clip he really launches into "his sister's kids" (the 2-year-old is "a shepherd of the devil"), so if you've never seen this watch it with your headphones on if at work and enjoy. And please accept my apology for snubbing your last movie so long, Mr. Mac. Rest in peace.

"The Express": A goal line fumble

I knew Gary Fleder's flick about Ernie "The Express" Davis wasn't going to win the box-office weekend, but can anyone tell me how in the world it ended up finishing sixth with a seriously paltry take of $4.7 million (with those talking rat dogs on top for a second week in a row.)

Being such a solidly entertaining flick about college football, it certainly deserved a much better than fate than that. I've given up even wishing that movies can have a second-week rebound given our atrociously short attention spans, but if any movie deserves it this one certainly does.

As is the case when I'm watching movies, my mind always drifts to the ones already stored there, no matter how good the flick unfurling in front of me happens to be. In this case, Gary Fleder's "The Express" inevitably made me think of the basketball flick "Glory Road," and I can state definitively that Fleder's flick is superior to that crapfest in every way imaginable.

The main virtue of "The Express" is that it treats the huge role that race played in the story of Davis, the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, with earnestness, but never lets that get in the way of telling a rousing tale.

Though Rob Brown gives it his all as Mr. Davis, he's playing a character so nice by design that he gets overshadowed by the many great supporting performances turned in for this one. Baltimore's own Charles S. "Roc" Dutton is perfect as Davis' grandfather "Pops," and in smaller roles Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette on the seriously satisfying "True Blood") shines as Davis' brother Will and Omar Benson Miller - who is having a banner year with this role and his work as the "chocolate giant" in Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" - makes the most of all his screen time as big Syracuse lineman Jack Buckley.

Fleder's flick is at its best when the two primary forces of race and football collide on the actual gridiron, as they do at their most combustible in Morgantown, W. Va., and Dallas, Texas, in the Cotton Bowl. And it's in this volatile cauldron that the character of Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder, played with spirit by Dennis Quaid, comes to the fore.

Fleder resists any impulse to make Schwartzwalder into anything approaching a saint, never forgetting that he was a very practical man much more interested in winning than advancing any kind of cause when he brought first Jim Brown and then Davis into the Syracuse program. How he uses these players is an insightful window into the factory nature of college football that clearly still persists and thrives today.

Which, with all that good mojo going for it, makes the final act of Fleder's flick such a horrendous disappointment. Now, just in case you're among the many, many people who haven't seen this one yet, I don't want to tell you exactly how Davis' story comes to an end, but let's just say it's easily one of the great personal tragedies in all of sport.

In the hands of Fleder, however, it's amazingly sort of swept under the rug, just brought up casually in the last 15 minutes or so and dismissed without any change in tone or approach. It's as if Fleder looked at his watch (as I would have been if I ever wore a watch, with the Georgia-Tennessee kickoff quickly approaching) and just said to himself "OK, this has already gone for about two hours, so let's just wrap it up." Which is in itself a minor tragedy.

That said, for the first nearly two hours Fleder's flick delivers a solidly entertaining tale, which is a sight more than you can say about a lot of the other movies out there this year. And, not having seen the latter, I still have to be fairly certain that it has to be better than that talking rat dog flick, so just see it already.

R.I.P. Paul Newman

I had planned to talk about Spike Lee's uneven but often wildly entertaining "Miracle at St. Anna" today, but I instead woke up to the rather depressing news that Paul Newman had died.

He was 83 and had suffering from cancer for quite a while, and therefore hadn't acted too often in recent years, most recently adding his voice to Pixar's "Cars." Looking back through his IMDB resume, he made many movies that I and the rest of the world love, but if I had to pick three favorites, they would have to be 'The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Hustler" and, of course, "Cool Hand Luke."

Probably the most quotable movie of all time, that last one is just cinematic comfort food. I've probably seen it as often as any movie I own, and will surely watch at least part of it tonight (after watching the Georgia Bulldogs just roll the Alabama Crimson Tide.) I really don't have anything terribly profound to say about this tragic loss, so instead just enjoy this fairly somber moment from "Cool Hand Luke" Mr. Newman singing "Plastic Jesus" and playing the banjo. R.I.P Mr. Newman.

World War II all around: Valkyrie, Miracle and Red Tails

I've been rather shocked at the mostly negative reviews that have piled up so far for Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" (30 percent positive at Rotten Tomatoes, and even those were only really lukewarm.)

The main complaint I've read is that Mr. Lee has just bitten off too much to deal with here and lets his movie sprawl over the place and never really focuses on a single story line. Even if that is the case, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a rather whopping 2 hours and 46 minutes of my life to see what he's cooked up, because the only Spike Lee movie I can think of that I just had no time for at all was "Crooklyn," and most of the rest of them are movies that I just love. I'm gonna see it this afternoon, so please feel free to check back either tomorrow or Sunday to find out what I thought of it.

(As an aside, there's one scene in "Crooklyn" that just makes me cringe more than just about anything else I've ever seen on the big screen [and I'm really not exaggerating]. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but the stretch comes when the kids get shipped to my Maryland for a while, and apparently to make some kind of swipe at my homeland, he films the whole thing with some kind of gauzy haze. I still have no idea what he was going for, but it was just bloody awful.)

OK, I'm back. Along with releasing his own movie this week, Mr. Lee made news earlier in the week when he apparently disclosed to Roger Ebert the name of the director for "Red Tails," the upcoming Tuskegee Airmen flick being produced by Georgia Lucas. Here's what he had to say:

It was like eight men at the roundtable. And two of ‘em, Lee Archer and Roscoe Brown, was the 8th pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen, which I might add, this spring George Lucas is finally doin’ his Tuskegee Airmen film, “Redtails." He’s gonna produce it and a young African-American director, Anthony Hemingway, is gonna direct it. He’s done several episodic TVs, and is a young director so I’m looking forward to that and hopefully “Miracle” with “Redtails” coming’ up will generate more films to show the untold story about the participation.

You can read the rest of Mr. Ebert's interview here, and it's well worth spending a couple of minutes on. Mr. Hemingway's TV work covers everything from a few episodes of shows I love, "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Wire," to scattered episodes of other blockbusters like "ER" and "CSI NY." Screenwriter John Ridley, who came up with the uneven but still very funny "Undercover Brother" among other films, is scripting the tale of the pioneering airman, so this is one well worth keeping your eyes on when it comes out next spring or so.

And, finally, out today is also the first trailer (that I know of) for Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie," which if I'm not mistaken will finally come out in January. Tom Cruise stars as the main agent in an operation to kill Adolph Hitler, and though the movie supports a rather astounding supporting cast (Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Carice Van Houten, Stephen Fry, Terrence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson and Eddie Izzard, among others), I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that Cruise is the only name that appears in text in this rather kinetic trailer. Enjoy, and have a great weekend. Peace out.