Fast Food Nation trailer

When I first heard about this one, I was very skeptical. A fictional take on the effects of fast food on America? Just sounds fishy.

I should have had more faith. This is, after all, the great Richard Linklater, with at least two flawless films to his credit, in my opinion: "Dazed and Confused" and "School of Rock." Heck, I even thought his misguided "Bad News Bears" remake was actually quite funny, especially the wheelchair-bound kid in the Wheaties t-shirt.

His latest, "Fast Food Nation," is in competition at Cannes, and according to first-night reaction, it will at least fare better than "The Da Vinci Code." The promising trailer sets it up like "Traffic," going at the situation from all angles: health, business, employment, all the ways our addiction to fast food is detrimental. And it seems to do it with a real visual flair.

But don't take my word for it. Check out the trailer here and decide for yourself.

Del Toro, Cuaron and Dahl

This juicy tidbit comes directly from Ain't It Cool, and well, yes it is. Guillermo del Toro is adapting Roald Dahl's book, "The Witches," for Warner Bros. with an eye to direct. He's teaming up with Alfonso Cuaron, who will produce the flick.

Del Toro, who is also in competition at Cannes with "Pan's Labyrinth," a fantasy set during the Spanish Civil War, is a great match for Dahl. They both have a perfectly warped view of the world.

From what I remember of Dahl's tale, a young boy who has been orphaned is taken to a hotel in England by his grandmother, where they stumble upon a convention of very wicked witches. Even after they turn our hero into a mouse, he must fight to foil their fiendish plot to rid the world of children. Great stuff in the works here for sure.

"Be Kind, Rewind" and Kirsten Dunst

I've mentioned this upcoming Michel Gondry flick before, but the news about it just keeps getting better and better. We knew already that Jack Black was on board, but now it seems he will be joined by la bella Kirsten Dunst (who is also at Cannes this year, in Sofia Coppola's intriguing "Marie Antionette." Sense a theme here?)

If you're unfamiliar with this project, which is developing very, very quickly, allow me to fill you in ... Jack Black plays a guy whose brain becomes magnetized (apparently after he tries to sabotage a power plant!), which leads to all the video tapes at his friend's store being erased. After that, our duo set out to remake all the movies for their demanding customers.

It all sounds sublimely silly, and I'm sure Gondry will manage to make it all about the magic of making movies. And of course, we now have Kirsten Dunst. If you've managed to erase from your brain that vision of her jumping up and down on the bed in Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," you're a stronger person than me. Their reunion can only be a good thing

Rival Marvin Gaye biopics

The first thing I can say about all this is it's about damn time! Next to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye was the strongest member of the Motown stable, and an artist who mixed pop and politics better than anyone.

D. Stevens (who?) has come aboard to direct "Marvin - The Life Story of Marvin Gaye." Stevens is making his directorial debut with something called "The Pet," which is being screened out of competition at Cannes. The Marvin Gaye biopic plans to incorporate 24 of the soul singer's songs into a script written by Robert Scharrer. Roberta Flack will serve as music supervisor.

Perhaps even more intriguing, to me at least, is a competing project about Gaye's final years, also in preproduction. Jesse L. Martin is set to portray Gaye in "Sexual Healing," an indie drama written and to be directed by Lauren Goodman. If you're unfamiliar with Martin, he was the best thing about Christopher Columbus' mostly forgettable film of "Rent," and has starred on "Law & Order" for years now. He's a first-rate actor, and certainly has the look just right.

I'm sure I will see both of these, and hopefully at least one will do this great American hero justice.

Napoleon Dynamite special edition

"Vote for me and all your dreams will come true."
- Pedro

To me, "Napoleon Dynamite" is more than a movie; it's a litmus test for your sense of humor. If you didn't laugh out loud at this you should consult a doctor immediately.

I can still remember that I had to drive 20 miles down to Warner Robins to see this at what is now only a $1, second-run theater, and I had little idea what I was getting into. As those funky credits came to an end, there was a pack of kids in front of me who had clearly seen the movie at least twice already, and were quoting the best lines as they came up. I would have been mad if I weren't laughing so hard.

Now comes the rather accurately titled "Like, the Best Special Edition Ever!" on DVD. So-called "special editions" can be a real sham, but this one appears to pack in enough extras to earn its name. According to the IMDB:

Disc 1 will feature two new commentary tracks, one by director/co-writer Jared Hess, actor Jon Heder and producer Jeremy Coon, and a second by actors Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Jon Gries and Tina Majorino. Disc 2 will feature five deleted/extended scenes with commentary by Hess, Heder and Coon; new outtakes and additional deleted/extended scenes; audition clips; "World Premiere Jared Hess" featurette; "On Location: Napoleon Dynamite" featurette; original short film "Peluca" with commentary by Hess, Heder and Coon; "The Making of the Wedding of the Century" featurette; MTV promo spots; Napoleon and Pedro sightings: clips from TV appearances and a still gallery.

Whew! It sounds like they put as much care into this as Kevin Smith does with his DVD releases, and given the devoted fans of "Napoleon" they should be richly rewarded.


I think what made "Napoleon" so perfect to me was it's complete repositioning of what it means to be a "geek." The great "Freaks and Geeks" hinted at the idea that "geeks" aren't always the smartest kids around, just the oddest. And "Napoleon" took this to the extreme, so fiercely proud as he was in the fact that he would never fit in with the world around him.

And of course it's funny from start to finish. It remains such a quotable movie that no matter how many times I ask my cubicle mate Rodney Manley to do something and he responds, "I'll do it when I want to. Gosh!", it will never get old.

Looking at Heder's career since, it seems he knows this was his bright, shining moment, and he is trying desperately to re-create it no matter what role he plays. But in this case, "Dynamite" only struck once. Enjoy it all over again in this great new release.

"Snakes on a Plane" news

If you ever wake up on a Monday morning and think nothing is happening, a visit to the fine folks at Comingsoon.net can dispel that notion immediately.

This morning comes this promising nugget about "Snakes on a Plane" director David R. Ellis. His next project will be called "Asylum," and will be about a group of college freshmen who learn that their dorm was once a notorious asylum.

If you read that and didn't laugh, just move on. It works for me because I knew the second I walked into my dorm at Catholic University that it indeed still was an asylum, though perhaps not notorious.

My freshman year roommate was a young man from New Jersey named Paul who had an odd but enduring love for all things Southern rock, an art form I detested at the time but have since grown to appreciate. Whenever I would do anything to piss him off, he would put on the Allman Brothers' "Mountain Jam" and play it in its entirety. For the uninitiated, this little ditty goes on for about 30 minutes. Pure torture from start to finish.

So whether our dorm was an asylum or not, it certainly drove me crazy until we reached a sort of detente and became friends. Last I heard, Paul was a high school teacher and football coach, so bully for him.

As for the movie, it just sounds like pure popcorn bliss. Is it healthy to get so excited about a director before seeing the finished products? Of course not, but it sure is fun.

Beerfest pics

Again from Comingsoon.net are these great pics from Broken Lizard's upcoming "Beerfest." They're from Warner Brothers and are too large to be posted on this blog, so go see them here.

What I love about the photos are the evident spirit (especially the track suits!). Comingsoon.net also offers a little more about the plot:

"When American brothers Todd and Jan Wolfhouse travel to Germany to spread their grandfather's ashes at Oktoberfest, they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries old, underground beer games competition – "Beerfest," the secret Olympics of beer drinking. The brothers receive a less than warm welcome from their German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens, who humiliate Todd and Jan, slander their relatives and finally cast them out of the event. Vowing to return in a year to defend their country and their family's honor, the Wolfhouse boys assemble a ragtag dream team of beer drinkers and gamers: Barry Badrinath, the consummate skills player with a dark past; Phil Krundle (aka Landfill), a one-man chugging machine; and Charlie "Fink" Finklestein, the lab tech with a PhD in All Things Beer. This Magnificent Five train relentlessly, using their hearts, minds and livers to drink faster, smarter and harder than they ever have before. But first they must battle their own demons... as well as a bunch of big, blond, German jerks who want to destroy the team before they can even make it back to Munich."

I love beer movies, when they're done right. And though I've said it here before, it's worth repeating that I've seen Broken Lizard's "Super Troopers" multiple times and always find something new to laugh at. This had better be good.

With this, "Snakes" and Kevin Smith's "Clerks 2" all coming in August, it looks like we will laugh a lot at the end of summer.

Art School Confidential

I've gotten plenty of odd stares from people in my life after saying this: "I think Ghost World is a perfect movie." Not the perfect movie, just a perfect movie.

So you'd be right if you thought my expectations were high for the reteaming of comic book artist Daniel Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff for "Art School Confidential." Well, it was a big disappointment, but I'll eventually get over it.

What plot there is centers on young Max Minghella and his adventures, of course, at art school. As they set up early, it's a world of backbiting and misplaced bile, the perfect scenario for satire. But after setting the stage, they dropped the ball completely.

What we are in desperate need of to get the story going here is a hero. Enid from "Ghost World" was perfect because, even though she was one mixed-up chick, she was confident and cool anyway (please, please come back Thora Birch!) Max Minghella's Jerome, on the other hand, is miserable from start to finish, just as we are watching him. As if we needed it, one of Jerome's classmates offers us a guide to the art-world stereotypes in "Confidential." When he gets to Minghella's Jerome, he says: "I've got it: You're the class douche." Exactly, and exactly the problem.

And the art school kids? There was some real potential for humor here, but Clowes and Zwigoff are just too mean for their own good. As they attempt to poke fun at these kids, they seem to be doing it as one of the students themselves would, with a petty paint brush that has no room for even an ounce of empathy.

If you're gonna be mean, you've gotta be funny, in my opinion. As I got bored, I thought back to John Waters' "Pecker," a much-funnier skewering of the art world. And I thought of what Telegraph entertainment writer Maggie Large said about "Ghost World."

She, like I, loved the movie, but after reading the comic book was a little put off because, according to her, Zwigoff basically built up Steve Buscemi's character as a way of putting himself into the movie. Well, I sure wish he would have done that here. Just one character even close to as sympathetic as Buscemi's Seymour would have made this bitter pill a lot sweeter.


To be fair, it's not all bad. There are several very funny scenes from very funny people. John Malkovich is great as an art instructor whose fame is fleeting, and Jim Broadbent is even better as a former student who has long ago gone over the edge. And keep your eyes on Sophia Myles, who played Isolde in the recent adaptation and is supposedly Jerome's love interest in "Art School." It's not her fault that no sparks fly between them, and I think she will do great things in the future.

And Terry Zwigoff will again do great things, probably very soon. Look at the track record: "Bad Santa," "Ghost World" and "Crumb" are among my favorite films. Everyone makes mistakes, and Zwigoff has made his here. Let's all now move on to happier thoughts.

Poseidon

As I was watching Wolfgang Petersen's "Poseidon" slowly sink on screen, I had the nagging feeling he was taking the whole summer with him. This movie is just that bad.

The five minutes he spends on "back story" are the definition of a double-edged sword: They're so excruciatingly awful you're thankful to see the giant wave rolling towards these "characters." But it isn't until they're running through the umpteenth ship tunnel to escape yet another moment of peril that you realize you have no idea who these people are, and therefore don't particularly care if any one of them lives or dies.

It's simply amazing how much bad dialogue they packed into such a short period of time, but here's my favorite snippet: In a conversation with her father, played by Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum refers to a certain part of her body as "the twins." Not exactly the best example of big-screen father-daughter bonding.

With an ounce of character development, though, we would have cared for these people, because, after all, they're all fairly attractive individuals. Josh Lucas and Russell lead the band of passengers who break out of the entrapped ballroom, and Rossum is the definition of waifish beauty. Richard Dreyfuss is also on hand as a gay architect (I guess it was the earring that was supposed to give him away.)

I could have forgiven all this if there was an ounce of excitement in their quest for survival. If this were remotely like an adventure. Instead it felt all too real, eliminating any possible notion of escapism.

Maybe it's the CSI effect. They spent much more time examining maps or hatches, or arguing about whether the fireman or ex-Navy dude were better qualified to lead, than on actually building up any intensity or suspense. I expected an adrenaline rush, but this wasn't even a pulse-quickener for an instant.

And one last thing that really pissed me off. I realize that, this being a Hollywood horror/disaster movie, the black guy will have to be among the first to die, but when that black man is the great Andre Braugher, who played the ship's captain, can't you give him more then three lines of dialogue? What a waste. At least he took that annoying Fergie, who played a cruise-ship singer (glimpse your future, hon?), with him.

But remember, it's still early. There will surely be much, much better films this summer. Starting tomorrow, I hope, with "Art School Confidential." Stay tuned.

No "Da Vinci Code"

I've never been in the business of telling people not to see movies. Heck, even the folks at Focus on the Family and other groups have figured out that seeing movies that offend them and explaining why is more effective than trying to organize any kind of boycott.

And that's not at all what I'm trying to do here. I just wanted to say why, after thinking a lot about it, I have reversed course and finally made up my mind to not see "The Da Vinci Code."

Being one of maybe 10 literate people who haven't read the book, here's the premise as I understand it. A Harvard professor of something or other, while investigating a murder at the Louvre, discovers clues in Da Vinci's work that lead to the covered-up "truth" that Mary Magdalene was actually Jesus' wife who, after his crucifixion, gave birth to a daughter, Sarah, who went on to somehow become French royalty.

Juicy stuff, eh? And I love a good conspiracy. But I won't be biting at this one.

Why? Would I ask a Jewish person to sit through a well-made movie that posits the Holocaust was a hoax fabricated to give the United States a valid reason for taking out Hitler in World War II? Or a black person to enjoy a glossy Hollywood blockbuster about how top-secret documents show slavery was also a fabrication to give Lincoln cover in standing up to the Southern states?

Of course not. And as a fairly lapsed but still clinging Catholic, that's exactly how I view "Da Vinci Code": as a very elaborate assault on everything I believe.

I pay for a lot of swill from Hollywood, and I enjoy well more than half of the blockbusters I see. But I don't need to pay to be lied to by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard.


I'll give Audrey Tautou a pass on this one, because she's just simply so adorable and because I love "Amelie" and "A Very Long Engagement" so much.

And I won't be like that guy who drags his poor 8-year-old-or-so son to picket outside the Barnes and Noble in Macon every time a "Harry Potter" book comes out (besides, I love "Harry Potter"!). I encourage anyone who wants to see this to do so and, indeed, let me know what you thought. You just won't be seeing me there.

What I will be seeing this weekend is "Art School Confidential" on Saturday and "Poseidon" on Sunday. Feel free to check back for reviews of each late afternoon on each day.

Snakes on a Plane goodness

The story of "Snakes on a Plane" is one of the funniest things I've encountered, and may just show how Hollywood can save itself.

Rather than put a muzzle on the idiot nation (of which I am a proud member) that latches on to any idea it finds fascinating, the producers of this b-movie bon-bon have instead consistently fed the beast. And it has grown beyond any reasonable expectations, even though the film doesn't come out until August.

And why not? It's Samuel L. Jackson, who finally delivered a performance that wasn't phoned in for the otherwise disappointing "Freedomland" already this year, and who we all know is a certified bad MF. And, as the brilliant name for this flick promises, it's snakes. On a plane. I'm already there.

Now, courtesy of Comingsoon.net, rapidly becoming my favorite geek-out site, comes a clip of Samuel on the "Ellen" show for those of us who, well, work during the day. Why Ellen? Who knows, but in it Samuel is clearly having fun promoting the flick (love the "Big Blue Sea" joke), and you can tell from the short clip he brought along, he will be an absolute badass in it. Watch the fun here.

Mike White news


Along with Judd Apatow, the short-lived but much-loved (at least by me) dramedy "Freaks and Geeks" employed the very funny Mike White.

Since writing for that show, he has penned the nearly flawless "School of Rock" for Jack Black and Richard Linklater, and the still-to-be-judged "Nacho Libre" for Black and Jared Hess.

Now comes word that he is finally getting in the director's chair himself, for something called "Year of the Dog."

It apparently will star Molly Shannon (one of the few SNL vets who can actually act) as a woman who is dealing with the sudden death of her dog. Doesn't sound particularly funny, but we'll see.

Making for a stellar supporting cast, so far, will be Peter Sarsgaard, Regina King, John C. Reilly and Laura Dern. All goodness here.

Though I wish nothing but the best for White, Apatow and friends, a small part of me wants them to flop at the movies, only so they can save us from the dreck that is prime-time TV with another "Freaks and Geeks" or "Undeclared." One can dream, after all.

Gilmore Girls finale

"When a woman gives birth to a crack baby, you don't give her a puppy."
Emily Gilmore

Last night's sendoff for season six showcased exactly what's best and worst about what is still easily the best show on television.

What was good? The dialogue, as usual, was razor sharp, particularly when Lorelai briefly broke out of her funk to bust up Emily's latest attempt to meddle, this time by trying to fix up Christopher with that hot young psych. And Lauren Graham in general, throughout the finale story arc. How she has escaped the eyes of Emmy voters over the past years is a crime of the highest order.

I thought the bands descending on Stars Hollow angle was funny, but would have been better with fewer bands (maybe just Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, and of course Sparks) so we could have heard them speak. Still, seeing Kim Gordon bounce around while espousing the joys of oral sex in the town square was just a pure pleasure.

I also would have liked to see more of what Logan called the greatest party he's ever been to. How can you dress up a hottie like Queen Elizabeth and give her nothing to say? A glimpse of domestic life with Zach and Lane, obsessed as they are with cleaning products, also would have been welcome, but I suspect we will see a whole lot of that in season seven.

If you're a fan who somehow hasn't seen the finale, stop reading now, because I have to address the ending.

The entire story of Luke and Lorelai's engagement has seemed forced, with young Anna Nardini, at least to me, feeling like a last-minute add-on to stall the wedding bells. After watching both of them whine all season, it was jarring, but welcome, to see Lorelai finally take action (and that line about Maryland was great!). Having her in the arms of Christopher to springboard into a new season was the perfect ending, even though the journey there this year has often been rocky.

The only problem with such a great cliffhanger is the departure of show creators the Palladinos leaves the future murky at best. All the actors are signed for one more season on the CW, which will probably be the last.

I've been an evangelist for this show from the beginning, telling anyone who still listens to me to watch it, and sharing my DVDs liberally. I'll be there for at least one more year, so here's hoping it will be a fun one.

Rocky trailer

A whole blog devoted to Rocky Balboa? Why not, especially when it brings us something this good.

Not sure what number Rocky this will be, but Sly comes out of retirement into the ring one more time at the end of the year for "Rocky Balboa." And judging from the trailer you can see here, it should be shockingly good, a real old-school Rocky-style joint.

I love the blue cast throughout and the Philly soul sound. And Gilmore fans take note: According to the IMDB, Milo Ventamiglia (sp?) is cast as Rocky's son. Milo as Rocky, the next generation. Now that could be great.

Knight Rider, Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor

Well, I'm sure at least David Hasselhoff should be available.

In further proof that there really are just no ideas left, the talking car K.I.T.T. is heading to the big screen in the Weinstein Co.'s adaptation of the 1980s TV series "Knight Rider."

The problems with this are so many, but let's just start with the technology. Although I've never felt the need to have my car talk to me, hasn't ONSTAR been around for about 10 years or so by now?

There's only two ways you could make this interesting. Either have the car turn into a really lascivious version of Hal mixed with Christine, voiced by Eddie Murphy. It could refuse to take orders, just driving wherever it wants to until it eventually turns on Michael, torturing him to a slow, painful death.

Or maybe K.I.T.T. could be like Dr. Katz, counseling Michael on life's problems as they face them together. On second thought, both those ideas suck almost as much as the "Knight Rider" movie itself will.

Is there no way to stop this? Also in the works is CHiPs with master thespian Wilmer Valderrama filling the huge shoes of Erik Estrada as Officer Francis Llewellyn 'Ponch' Poncherello.

Since Hollywood trends run for at least five years or so, why not give us what we (or at least I) really want: Good Times, the movie. Remember: "Van Gogh and Rembrandt, don't be uptight, cause here comes KID DYNOMITE." Timeless.

Cheadle and Ejiofor ready to talk


In much, much better news, Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor will star in Kasi Lemmons' "Talk to Me."

The film, which begins shooting next month, centers on the real-life story of Ralph Waldo "Petey" Green (Cheadle), an ex-con who courted controversy at a white-owned radio station and became an iconic Washington-area on-air personality in the 1960s. Ejiofor will play Dewey Hughes, producer of Green's show.

Add up a strong story, two great actors and a still-striving director and we should have a fantastic flick. The story of our nation's capitol, where the citizens still often have fewer basic rights than the rest of us, is a fascinating one, even in a microcosm like this.

After a long acting career, Lemmons has made two very interesting movies, "The Caveman's Valentine" and "Eve's Bayou," that both starred Samuel L. Jackson and dwelled in the realm of magical realism. It will be fun to see what she can do with this story much more grounded in reality.

And Cheadle and Ejiofor make up two-thirds of the most promising trio of young black actors we've ever seen, in my mind (the third being Mos Def, who just gets better with every movie.) Good times, indeed.

Daniel Pearl, "Hot Fuzz" diaries

The story of Daniel Pearl, as sad as it is, could give embattled journalists just what we need right now: A true cinematic hero.

Tod Williams will direct an untitled thrilled inspired by the Bernard-Henri Levy book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" The French author, not one to shy away from a good conspiracy theory, journeyed to Pakistan to investigate the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl, and came away convinced Pearl had dangerous information about complicity between the Pakistani secret service and Al Qaeda.

There are, however, some danger signs. For the movie, the story will be told by New York Times magazine foreign correspondent Peter Landesman and, due to a competing project based on a book by Pearl's widow, Marianne Pearl, will be fictionalized. And, I guess because we Americans need our leading men to be, well, American, Levy has been changed into an American TV newsman who sheds his media celebrity trappings to find answers in a terrorist hotbed.

And this TV newsman will be played by Josh Lucas. Though he has one very big black mark in my book after starring in the simply horrendous dumbing down of "Glory Road," he's still a young man, and life is all about second chances, so in the spirit of good Monday karma, I wish him well. The production will begin this fall, with scouting under way in Morocco, Dubai, India, Libya and Tunisia.

On the up side, Williams did a fantastic job with the 2004 John Irving adaptation "Door in the Floor" (according to the IMDB, he is also working on an even more exciting project, an adaptation of Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire.") He should fare well here.

The stakes are just far too high to fail here. With journalists getting threatened with arrest by their own government for simply telling the truth, we're sorely in need of more agitprop that celebrates rather than demonizes their work.


"Hot Fuzz" diaries

And now for some footage that can only brighten up your Monday morning (well, at least it really did mine.)

Courtesy of Ain't It Cool News, I discovered this morning that the makers of "Hot Fuzz," who previously brought us the perfect zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead," have been making "video blogs" about their new production.

And the premise for this one sounds even better than "Shaun." The very sunny Simon Pegg will play a London cop reassigned to the sleepy West Country village of Sandford. After a series of grisly accidents breaks up the calm, Pegg and his new partner investigate what might lay beneath the surface. While this might sound like the premise for a bad American horror movie, in the capable hands of Pegg and writer-director Edgar Wright it should instead be comic gold.

Getting in on all the fun will be a cast that includes Jim Broadbent, "Shaun" vet Nick Frost and Timothy Dalton. But enough of my rambling. Check out the seven video production diaries here and see what you think.

Mission: Impossible III

With this being the first movie I've seen in a theater since "United 93," I felt awkward for about the first 10 minutes of this one. I needed a little while to remember that it's OK to just have fun at the movies.

It didn't help that the weakest link in this mostly fun bowl of popcorn from TV hotshot JJ Abrams is the first third.

In the setup of reuniting with MIF agent Ethan Hunt (TomKat, of course), we find out he is about to be married to beautiful Michelle Monaghan (more on that later.)

As he is called away from the party to rescue an agent he trained (Keri Russell) who has been kidnapped by a blackmarket dealer in all things nasty (a seriously slumming Philip Seymour Hoffman), I had a very unpleasant flashback to the virtually unwatchable "MI2." Just as John Woo smothered that one in his bullets that defy all logic, not to mention gravity, Abrams filmed the first action sequence with the shaky-camera, quick-cut, strobe-like technique that just gives me a headache.

After that, however, things only get better. It quickly becomes a battle of wills between Cruise and Hoffman (whose character has, of course, kidnapped Cruise's fiance Monaghan and is trying to buy a doomsday device and sell it to shady characters.) From here the action is refreshingly low-tech, including a scene supposedly on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that will have you thinking fondly of "True Lies."

Abrams keeps the foot firmly on the pedal from there, and the rest is all fun. Though TomKat seems to have little need for an entourage, he has one here of course in his MIF squad. He and Ving Rhames have by now developed a believable and often witty repartee, but the other team members, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q, are just there to take up space. Billy Crudup and Laurence Fishburne are Cruise's rival handlers at agency headquarters, and they both factor in the predictably outlandish twists that take you to the end.

Despite all the gadgets on hand here, it all has an old-fashioned spy-vs.-spy feel, the kind we used to get from the best Bond movies. Unlike the haters already lining up against him well before the release of "Casino Royale," I predict new Bond Daniel Craig will have similar success later this summer.

Now, a final note about the dangers of thinking too much about silly movies. New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis, in a review that told us much more about what she thinks of Tom Cruise than what she thinks of "M:I:III," she said having Cruise be a joyful newlywed-to-be who is forced to rescue his damsel in distress is all an elaborate ruse to make us think more positlvely about the couch-jumping antics of his personal life.

Surely Tom Cruise didn't invent the damsel in distress, but on a larger level, will the man ever again be able to make a brainlessly entertaining flick without being put on the psychiatrist's couch?

Making me feel sorry for Tom Cruise is no easy accomplishment, but Dargis has pulled it off. Now there's a real Mission Impossible.

The real "Star Wars"

Maybe even George Lucas started to feel guilty about all his butchering of these great movies. More likely, he saw another opportunity to make a ton of money at the expense of all us fanboys and girls.

Either way, this is huge DVD news for fans. In a move that is overdue by at least 10 years, on Sept. 12 Lucasfilm will finally release the movies in the original "Star Wars" trilogy as individual two-disc DVDs.

The news here, of course, is that these will be "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" as they appeared, respectively, in 1977, 1980 and 1983, not as they did after Lucas became drunk with power and changed them all in 2004. Yes, among many other great things, you will get to see Han Solo shoot first.

Like everyone, I remember these movies with more fondness than they probably merit. They're all great, but "Empire" and Yoda were the things that set me solidly down the path of geekhood, with no chance of turning back. I can still remember that we were in California the summer when "Empire" came out, and being 10 years old, I had until then never seen a line stretched around a city block just to get into a movie theater. I was fascinated then, and still am today.

Snap these up while you can: In a move I suppose is intended to drive sales, these DVDs will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st.

NBC OKs 'Studio' for Sorkin

In a move that should come as a surprise to no one but holds great promise for fall TV, Aaron Sorkin is heading back to NBC next season.

Ten days before "The West Wing" is set to end its seven-year run, the network has given the green light to his latest drama series, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," for the 2006-07 season.

This one sounds like its tailored perfectly to Sorkin's two big strengths: An intimate knowledge of how TV shows operate and the ability to write for ensemble dramas. It will be a behind-the-scenes look at a late-night sketch comedy show like "Saturday Night Live" (though hopefully with much funnier sketches.) Anyone who watched Sorkin's "Sports Night," and there must be few of you out there, knows this holds great potential.

The large cast thus far will include Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Bradley Whitford from "West Wing," Sarah Paulson, the always funny D.L. Hughley, Nathan Corddry, Timothy Busfield, Steven Weber, Evan Handler and Carlos Jacott.

Who knows, maybe there is still hope for those of us who, like Emily Gilmore, "just don't find forensic work all that fascinating."

Where the Wild Things Are

Since I started reading the Hollywood trades online every morning a few months ago, I've come across several things that have made me smile. Nothing, however, has come close to being this good.

This one had slipped by me completely until now, but apparently music-video maestro Spike Jonze is working on an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are," due some time in 2007. For someone who longs for the days when children's movies weren't exercises in flatulence, this can only be good news.

Sendak's perfectly told and illustrated story is the ultimate children's fantasy: summed up, our hero, Max, after getting in a fight with his mother, runs away from home to the forest "Where the Wild Things Are," ultimately being crowned their leader.

Now comes word that a group including Benicio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker and Michelle Williams has been recruited to provide the voices of the main characters.

Spike would seem to have just the perfectly skewed view of the world to pull this all off, which will apparently use live-action puppetry as well as computer-generated animation. Add in the final tidbit that McSweeney's Quarterly Concern editor Dave Eggers has been recruited to help with the script, and you can give this one my guarantee that there is no way it can suck.

We need more news like this. After all, this site is called Reel Fanatic, not Reel Curmudgeon, although I know it's sometimes hard to tell.

Lucky bastards

Well, I don't really think the fine folks at Comingsoon.net are bastards, or lucky for that matter, but they are very good at what they do.

This morning they have an exclusive interview with "Ghost World" creator and comic book genius Daniel Clowes. It touches on Clowes' reunion with director Terry Zwigoff for the upcoming "Art School Confidential," of course, but also runs through much of Clowes' comic book work. It's a great interview, so do yourself a favor and read it here.

U.S. World Cup squad

As my boss pointed out yesterday, maybe with a grimace, I can say and be fudging only a little bit that I will be in Germany watching the World Cup in one month.

OK, it's a little bit more than that, but with the unveiling of a top-notch squad by coach Bruce Arena last night, I'm ready to go now.

For anyone who missed it, here's the 23-warrior roster:

Midfielders: Damarcus Beasley, Bobby Convey, Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, Pablo Mastroeni, John O'Brien, Ben Olsen and the great Claudio Reyna.

Forwards: Brian Ching, Eddie Johnson, Brian McBride and Josh Wolff.

Defenders: Carlos Bocanegra, Steve Cherundolo, Jimmy Conrad, Corey Gibbs, Frankie Hejduk, Eddie Lewis, Oguchi Onyewu and the great Eddie Pope.

Goalkeepers: Marcus Hahnemann, Tim Howard and, of course, King Kasey Keller.

The first thing that leaps out at you is how far we have come in the last decade or so. I can't believe I'm writing this, but it's true: MORE THAN HALF OF THESE MEN, 12, PLAY IN EUROPE!

I have to admit I never thought we would reach this point, and it can only get better from here.

In the middle is where we are the most solid, with still-fairly-young lions Beasley and Donovan leading the charge and a hopefully healthy Claudio Reyna keeping everything steady.

Oguchi Onyewu has always frightened me in all the best ways. He will simply be a monster on defense, helped out ably by Gibbs and, probably most often, Hejduk. As a longtime D.C. supporter I'm also thrilled that Eddie Pope gets one more shot.

Add to that goal-scoring machine Eddie Johnson and goal-stopping machine Kasey Keller and you've got the perfect squad. To me, Ching over Taylor Twellman was the only real surprise.

I realize this is far from a scientific analysis. For that, turn to Bruce at Du Nord, who wisely sleeps later than me but will surely be sounding off on all this with authority later today. He is a member of the Minnesota squad who have graciously allowed me to tag along with them to Germany, and a man who just knows way, way too much about soccer.

Arena also named 13 alternates: Tony Meola, Matt Reis, Chris Albright, Gregg Berhalter, Todd Dunivant, Chris Armas, Chris Klein, Pat Noonan, Steve Ralston, Kerry Zavagnin, Conor Casey, Chris Rolfe and Taylor Twellman. Of this group, Berhalter, Armas, Ralston and Twellman probably had the best shot at making the squad, but they simply didn't play their way onto it. Nuff said.


In related news, want to garner puzzling stares from all your neighbors and friends? Then these great Bruce Arena-Che t-shirts are for you. Made by the fine folks at Blue Sky Soccer, they're just perfect for the U.S. soccer fan who is crazy enough to buy just about anything. I already have one, of course. Click here for yours

But enough about soccer. If I get any more excited either a) my head will explode, like that poor Mexican chap I read about in the National Enquirer (he was watching the World Cup, so, yes, there is precedent!) or more likely b) I will be unable to go to work, be fired and left penniless just more than a month before the world's greatest sporting event.

We can't have that, so I'll just put on my Bruce-Che t-shirt and sign off for now. Viva Bruce!

Jack Black and Michel Gondry

Luckily for those who love great movies, Michel Gondry is a very hard-working man.

Fresh off the relative success of his blissful "Block Party" with Dave Chappelle, word comes from the Hollywood Reporter this morning that Michel Gondry is now teaming up with Jack Black for what can only be described as a delightfully odd project.

Gondry has already finished the script for "Be Kind Rewind," a comedy in which Black will play a junkyard worker whose brain is magnetized, destroying every tape in his friend's video store and forcing the pair to remake the lost films.

In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including "The Lion King," "Rush Hour," "Back to the Future" and "Robocop."

I don't know about you, but I was already laughing as i read that. And admit it, all of us who claim to be able to write movies really want to be able to make them. To remake "Back to the Future"? It should be geek heaven, and hopefully very, very funny.

In an even dream-geekier pairing, Gondry is also set to make a movie of Rudy Rucker's graphic novel "Master of Space and Time" based on a script from Daniel Clowes. With "Be Kind, Rewind" set for a two-month shoot in New York beginning in September though, it sounds like we'll see that one first.

As for Jack Black, I like him almost every time I see him. We all met him in "High Fidelity," and he just got better in "Jesus' Son" and, of course, Linklater's "School of Rock."

And he's back with funnyman Mike White, the writer of "School of Rock," and "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess for the supersilly "Nacho Libre." If this and "Clerks 2" aren't laugh-out-loud funny, it will cast a real pall over what is shaping up to be a promising summer.

You can see the trailer here, courtesy of IMDB. Enjoy.

Broken Flowers

The Macon Film Guild has just been on a roll lately.

Last month, Camp Bacon and friends brought us "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" less than a month after it left theaters in Atlanta, and now a little later but just as welcome comes Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" Sunday, May 14, at the Douglass Theatre.

In it, Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, an avowed batchelor who, at the movie's beginning, gets dumped by the simply stunning Julie Delpy then finds out from an anonymous note that he has a son he's never met who is approaching adulthood.

Think of Murray in "Rushmore" and "Lost in Translation" then go even further and you're approaching Johnston. At the onset he appears to have given up on life, is just kind of dead to everything around him.

It takes the urging of pesky neighbor Winston, the very funny Jeffrey Wright, to get him to take off in a rented taurus and slowly rediscover what he has wrought and perhaps meet his offspring. The scenes with the two of them, as the energetic Winston, a wannabe mystery writer, maps out the whole course for Murray's deadpan Johnston, is some of the funniest work of Jarmusch's long career.

On his mission, Johnston meets a quartet of women from his past, starting with Sharon Stone as a widow with a thing for race car drivers and a none-too-shy daughter (named Lolita, though she's blissfully unaware of the joke.) You'll also meet Frances Conroy, who is now one half a husband-wife team of Realtors, Jessica Lange, who has given up on men all together, perhaps because of Don, and Tilda Swinton, who lives in a trailer with some bikers who give Don a rather rude welcome.

If you've seen any Jarmusch movies, you know that Don will learn some things about himself but nothing will be wrapped up in a neat package at the end. This one's all about the journey, and if you choose to take it you'll find plenty of the quirky characters and awkward situations that drive Jarmusch's best work.

United 93

I'm often drawn to movies about the darker side of life. I bought the documentaries "Waco, Rules of Engagement" and "Capturing the Friedmans" and have watched them multiple times. I thought I could handle seeing almost anything on screen.

Then I saw "United 93" today and realized that I, too, have limits. By the time director Paul Greengrass reached the final act, and we all know how it ended, there were several moments that I just couldn't even look at the screen. It's a very well-made, very disturbing movie.

Bear with me, because in order to review it, I'm going to have to look at it two ways: Objectively as a piece of art and subjectively as how it affected me.

Objectively, "United 93" is a very good movie about a very horrible day in American history. From the outset, Greengrass meticulously lays out how it began like any other day, with people going about their business at bustling Newark airport (which I use more often than any airport in the country except Hartzfield in Atlanta.) In this just barely pre-9/11 world, the hijackers don't stand out more than any other passenger, but of course we know who they are.

The air traffic tower scenes from around the country are also meticulously reconstructed, and you can tell that, even before things quickly went way wrong that day, air traffic controllers have just about the worst job in the entire world. As things get more and more chaotic, just before the first plane hits the World Trade Center, I noticed the sound effect of having different bits of dialogue coming from different speakers around the theater, a great way to raise the tension, in case we needed it.

Aboard flight United 93, things are likewise hyperrealistic. Even as they made their eventual move to take back the cockpit, I never thought of these people as anything but regular airline passengers. Greengrass wisely chose not to speculate on what they would have been talking about before the four hijackers took charge of the plane, but we feel an instant connection with them anyway.

All that said, by the end of this one I just felt very, very uncomfortable. I really thought I was ready to watch a real-time, chillingly realistic flight which I already knew would end in disaster. I was way wrong.

Maybe it's because of my experience on 9/11 itself. When the first plane hit the World Trade Center I was asleep. In my defense, I was a night copy editor at the time, and often didn't get to sleep until around 2 a.m. or so.

That morning I was woken up by the phone ringing. I didn't drag myself out of bed fast enough to answer it, and instead ended up playing back a message from my boss at the time, Bill Weaver, that simply said, "Keith, I need you to turn on your TV set and then get down here as quick as possible." Bill is a very nice, very laid-back guy, but I would have appreciated a word of warning before I saw the smoke coming from the tower.

I got to the newspaper as fast as I could, and of course it was pure chaos. As the other planes hit the WTC, Pentagon and then a field in Pennsylvania in succession, I wasn't able to absorb it all because we were simply pulling the info off the wire as fast as we could to get a four-page emergency edition out on the street. After a couple of hours down time, we were back to put out the regular paper. Through it all, I never really had time to digest the magnitude of what had happened. That didn't come until about 2 a.m. or so the next morning, when I stayed up for another four hours or so and watched that footage over and over again.

Even when I grasped everything that had happened, the plight of those passengers who died on United 93 was always secondary to what happened in NYC. No longer. Thanks to Paul Greengrass, for better or worse, their horrid deaths will be etched on my brain for a very, very long time.

I've read many commentaries on this movie, with many writers urging people to see this so we will never forget what really happened on 9/11. Well, I'm as guilty as anyone of sometimes being complacent. I get comfortable in my daily routine and can from time to time forget just what a crazy world we live in.

That said, I can't tell anyone to go see this movie. I normally enjoy giving out my opinion about flicks, or else I wouldn't have started this blog. With "United 93," however, I can only advise you it is a unflinching look at terror, and will stay with you long after you have left the theater.

If you can handle that, buckle up for a movie experience unlike anything you've ever seen before.

The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse

I can't remember the last time I sat through a complete SNL, much less stayed up until 1 a.m. to watch TV. This weekend I'll make an exception (or at least program the VCR.)

Finally admitting that the rest of what they spew up every week is, well, crap, Lorne Michaels and his gang have given the entire 90 minutes to Robert Smigel for "The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse," the show's only funny creation in at least five years.

According to a Variety reviewer who has seen the show, The Ambiguously Gay and deliriously funny) Duo are featured prominently and in new segments. We'll also get visits from the ex-presidents and the Divertor, who deflects public attention away from failed GOP policies by directing his powerful scandal-causing ray at Hollywood celebrities.

And he'll again test the limits of taste by taking on the latest made-for-video "Bambi" sequel and affixing anatomically correct genitalia to Hanna-Barbera characters.

My favorite Smigel creations are when he starts with an audio tape, usually something from Stern or at least on that level of maturity, then creates his own visuals which spiral out of control and end up somewhere we never expected.

His cartoons aren't always funny, but they always hit hard and look great with that '70 nostalgia in high gear. And best of all, even if they fall flat, they rarely run more than about 2 minutes apiece.

I miss the real "TV Funhouse" series on Comedy Central. It only seemed to make it for about 10 episodes or so, but it was pure Smigel, and very, very funny. I especially loved his animal creations, which started where Triumph left off and just got more and more foul.

I had heard rumblings that Smigel was teaming up with Tony Millionaire to bring his Maakies strip to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. All Tony says on the Maakies site is this: "All of the Saturday Night Live animations are on hiatus, due to an upcoming project!"

Here's hoping that's Maakies on TV, the beginning of Drinky Crow's campaign to rule the earth. For anyone who doesn't know Maakies, here a sample that's (barely) fit for a blog linked from a family newspaper. Click to enlarge and enjoy!

Wu Tang documentary

This one just sounds like pure chaotic fun.

The Wu Tang Clan have to be one of the most fascinating yet frustrating groups in all of hip-hop. At their peak they had even gringos like me hooked on "C.R.E.A.M." and other classics, but their fall has been just as colorful.

Every once in a while, though, we get glimmers of hope like the documentary "Rock the Bells" that make us think it could all (minus Dirty, of course) come back again.


After all, it's not like they've been in hiding all this time. Ghostface has recently set the bar very high for hip-hop in 2006 with his insane masterpiece "Fishscale," and the GZA teamed up with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs for the fairly great "Grandmasters" just last year.

And they managed to get it together for a brief tour earlier this year (that somehow skipped Atlanta completely, what's up with that?). Now, for those of us who missed it, a documentary has been made about Cali festival producer Chang Weisberg's ultimately successful attempt to reunite the Clan for a show.

From watching the trailer, this one seems to have caught all the craziness that would come with such an undertaking: Frenzied crowd, overcrowded venue, ornery performers and what must have been one hell of a show. As openers we should get to see some solid members of the Rhymesayers stable, including Eyedea & Abilities and Sage Francis.

(As an aside, I attempted to see Eyedea & Abilities at a Pizza Luce in Duluth, Minn., but must admit we didn't make it until their performance. We did, however, see about five other acts, including this duo of white dudes from Wisconsin who made surprisingly cogent rhymes about cheese, a fairly unique experience.)

"Rock the Bells" just aired at the Tribeca Film Festival, and will hopefully get some kind of distribution deal to bring it out somewhere near wide-release world sometime this year. Until then, check out the trailer here and keep hope alive.

Drive-By Truckers A Blessing and a Curse

"Once upon a time my advice to you would have been to go out and find yourself a whore"
- Patterson Hood, "A World of Hurt"

I can still remember when my brother called me and said, "dude, you've got to hear this."

After getting over the embarassment of missing what was going on in my own back yard, I ingested the Drive-By Truckers' two-disc love letter to Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Southern Rock Opera," like musical crack, and have been hooked ever since.

The world's greatest rock band has come a long way since then, and have lost some of its bombast for the new "Blessing and a Curse." I would have written about it sooner, but it's proved to be a hard album to digest.

Whereas the "Opera," "Decoration Day," and "Dirty South" have been great Saturday night records, the kind that, unfortunately feature lyrics that everyone likes to sing along to when the Truckers take over the 40 Watt, "Blessing" is for the morning after.

Which makes it, in its own way, equally great. It's slightly less democratic, with Patterson Hood penning seven songs to two each for Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell.

Under the guiding hand of veteran North Carolina producer Michael Easter, the Truckers have gone pop for this one, and thankfully turned their sights on the human condition rather than spinning any more too-tall tales about Buford Pusser.

Highlights from Hood include the mournful but soulful "Goodbye" and the closing "A World of Hurt," which is actually all about hope. He also shows the Truckers can still crank it up better than anyone as they tear through "Aftermath USA."

Cooley, who proved with "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" and "Marry Me" that he's on a mission to revive the lost art of the Southern pop song, scores again with "Gravity's Gone," which revels in that '70s AM radio sound. Isbell also shows some of his best writing with "Daylight."

One more song worth mention is "Little Bonnie," which delves into family history and marks a welcome return to "Decoration Day" territory.

Overall, it's a great change of pace from a band that has clearly gotten older, probably gotten wiser, and still rocks hard enough to leave the upcoming kids in their dust. Check it out.

Cronenberg and Mortensen, together again

Don't know much about this one yet except what little I could glean from Ain't It Cool News this morning, but I just have to say well yes, it sure is.

In what seems to be a perfect aligning of the stars, director David Cronenberg will reteam with Viggo Mortensen for "Eastern Promises." Plot details are murky, but according to AICN it all has something to with "a Russian prostitute who dies during childbirth, the mafia and a nurse who is dragged into the underworld." Mortensen is signed to play "a mysterious man with ties to the mob."

As if this needed to get any better, it apparently all springs from the mind of Steven Knight, who previously penned the script for Stephen Frears' nearly flawless "Dirty Pretty Things." If you haven't seen that one, a great little semi-thriller about organ smuggling among immigrants in London starring adorable Audrey Tautou and emerging star Chiwetel Ekiofor, rent it now and thank me later.

Cronenberg is that rare director who may have made some missteps in his long career, but has never once, in my opinion, been boring. And his last collaboration with Mortensen, "A History of Violence," was my single favorite movie of 2005, and it just gets better with each viewing. It's not Cronenberg's best work, which I think is 2002's "Spider" with a very disturbed and disturbing Ralph Fiennes, but it asks a lot of smart questions and lets you find your own answers rather than handing them to you. Can't wait to see what he and Viggo cook up next.

Demko's DVD shelf


I normally wouldn't find a commentary track from Roger Ebert anything to celebrate, but in this case I bet it's good.

For a "Special Edition" of Terry Zwigoff's engaging documentary "Crumb," the main draw is apparently a commentary by Zwigoff and Ebert together. For all his many faults, Ebert was an early champion of Zwigoff and this great doco that is as much about the great cartoonist R. Crumb as it is the members of his odd, troubled family.

Timed to promote the upcoming release of Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential," which has me cautiously optimistic, check out this one to see what the director was all about before he teamed up Daniel Clowes to bring "Ghost World" to our world.

I remember well when I saw Woody Allen's "Match Point." My brother and I were driving home from Athens Sunday morning after seeing the Drive-By-Truckers turn the 40 Watt into a pit of sin the night before. A stop in Atlanta for this dark masterpiece from Woody Allen was the perfect counterpoint.


You probably know the story line by now, but if not, it centers on Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a shadowy young man who charms his way into a wealthy family by marrying the daughter (charming Emily Mortimer.) Things get complicated when he has an affair with the son's fiancee (an overmatched Scarlett Johansson,) and things go seriously downhill from there.

Apart from some choice jokes about the rather ridiculous London real estate market, this is an unfunny but very suspenseful tale about the nature of pure evil in the human condition. Not horror movie evil, real evil, and a real return to form for Woody Allen. Think of "Crimes and Misdemeanors," then just think a whole lot darker, and you're getting close. I loved it, and I think you will too.

Cannes Film Festival

With the lineup recently unveiled for the 59th Cannes film fest, the big question is where is David Lynch? (It starts May 17, by the way, if you just happen to have a few thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket and want to do some stargazing.)

His upcoming "Inland Empire," described as a "Mulholland Drive"-style mystery starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons and Harry Dean Stanton, was rumored to be a favorite to make the feature competition list. Maybe he just didn't finish it in time.

Even without him, the festival features a strong lineup of filmmakers old and new (I'll only mention the ones I've heard of, but the full list of films in competition is at the end.)


If I had to handicap the field, I'd predict a Latin director will triumph. I'm most excited about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel," which stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal in three interlocking (I think) stories set in Tunisia, Mexico and Japan. I loved his "21 Grams," and am ashamed to say I didn't manage to see the equally great "Amores Perros" until a week ago.

Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro should also be a favorite with "Pan's Labyrinth," set in Franco's Spain, and don't forget about Pedro Almodovar, who should return to form with "Volver," a drama about three generations of women featuring Penelope Cruz and the welcome return of Carmen Maura. If you're lucky enough to live in one of our bigger cities, keep your eyes out for an Almodovar retrospective featuring remastered cuts of eight of his best flicks.

The Americans are led by Sofia Coppola and Richard Linklater. Though I'll gladly watch Kirsten Dunst do just about anything, I just have a bad feeling about Coppola's "Marie Antionette." Don't know why, especially with Jason Schwartzman, Asia Argento, Rip Torn and Marianne Faithfull in on the fun. I hope I'm wrong, because though "Lost in Translation" got all the (mostly deserved) attention, Coppola's "Virgin Suicides" is one I've watched about five times now and is the work of a first-rate director. See it now.

Linklater will be in competition with "Fast Food Nation," an oddity that seems to be a fictionalized "Super-Size Me." Much more exciting is his upcoming take on Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly," which only has star Keanu Reeves going against it and will be shown out of competition at Cannes. Keanu's presence should at least guarantee this one makes it out here to wide-release world.

Only one more to mention: The always serious Ken Loach represents Britain with "The Wind that Shakes the Barley," featuring Cillian Murphy in a portrait of Irish Republicans.

There are many more movies in competition, but those are the ones I would want to see if I were, well, going to the festival.

As usual, the jury room sounds like a great place to party. In case he needed more proof that he's the coolest cat on the planet, Samuel L. Jackson gets to hang with Zhang Ziyi, Monica Bellucci and Helena Bonham Carter, among others, and watch and judge flicks. What a hard life.

Here's the list of flicks in competition:

Volver
Director: Pedro Almodovar, Spain

Red Road
Director: Andrea Arnold, Britain

La Raison du Plus Faible (The Weakest Is Always Right)
Director: Lucas Belvaux, Belgium

Indigenes (Days of Glory)
Director: Rachid Bouchareb, Algeria

Iklimler (Climates)
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey

Marie-Antoinette
Director: Sofia Coppola, U.S.

Juventude Em Marcha (Youth on the Move)
Director: Pedro Costa, Portugal

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
Director: Guillermo Del Toro, Mexico

Babel
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Mexico

Laitakaupungin Valot (Lights in the Dusk)
Director: Aki Kaurismaki, Finland

Southland Tales
Director: Richard Kelly, U.S.

Fast Food Nation
Director: Richard Linklater, U.S.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Director: Ken Loach, Britain

Summer Palace
Director: Lou Ye, China

Il Caimano (The Caiman)
Director: Nanni Moretti, Italy

L'Amico di Famiglia (The Family Friend)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino, Italy

Flandres (Flanders)
Director: Bruno Dumont, France

Selon Charlie (Charlie Said)
Director: Nicole Garcia, France

Quand J'etais Chanteur (I Did it my Way)
Director: Xavier Giannoli, France

Akeelah and the Bee

There's just something about spelling bees that fascinates me beyond all reasonable attraction. Maybe it's because I'm about as likely to be able to spell the words these kids take on as I am to hit a home run off Curt Schilling.

It's this fascination that, at least for me, managed to lift "Akeelah and the Bee" above all the calculated cliches thrown at it by writer-director Doug Atchison and make it an immensely entertaining flick.

Much of this is thanks to young Keke Palmer, who shows a genuine geekiness (smart geek, not Napoleon geek) we haven't seen in a long time, and Laurence Fishburne, who channels a lot of Morpheus as the zen master/spelling guru who leads the way.

If you can't guess from the title, the story is about 11-year-old Akeelah (Palmer), who rises from Crenshaw Middle School to compete at the National Spelling Bee. Along the way, Atchison shows remarkable restraint in telling her story: He establishes quickly what we all know, that Keke's neighborhood doesn't exactly foster academic excellence, and focuses tightly on the story of Keke and her mentor, former UCLA professor Dr. Joshua Larabee (Fishburne, better than he's been in years.)

Don't get me wrong; we've seen this many, many times before (hopefully you've all managed to forget "Finding Forrester.") What sets "Akeelah" apart is a certain infectious spirit.

There's actually a comment on the IMDB that starts out "Anyone who doesn't like this movie is probably a racist." Well, at least they said "probably." I'm not gonna touch that one, I'll just say that I haven't cheered so much for a character so calculated to be likable as Keke Palmer in a long time. Atchison films the competitions with a real visual flair, using the event's inherent intensity to full advantage.

It does drag quite a bit in parts. As Akeelah and the professor are training, he has to confront the requisite demons that slow things to a halt. Thankfully, the main training montage was set to the Spinners' "Rubberband Man," a song that just makes me smile every time I hear it.

Along the way, you'll see some familiar and friendly faces. Curtis Armstrong, who will still always be best known as "Booger," is just earnest enough as Keke's principal, Earl's "Crabman" Eddie Steeples plays a vaguely menacing neighborhood hood and Angela Bassett (I couldn't remember the last time I had seen her) plays Keke's mother.

After the National Spelling Bee finale that will leave even some of the least cynical among us cringing, a final voice-over from Akeelah let's us know what this was all about. It's agenda filmmaking with a simple message: If we let an entire generation of kids slip away simply because they live in a horrible neighborhood, we're all to blame.

I thought about that as the credits were rolling, until they reached the end of the cast list and I just had to smile again. Several of the kids are identified simply by the words they spelled. This one is just that geeky, and that makes it a joy to watch.

"American Dreamz"

It's true a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but with director Paul Weitz this leads to just a minor annoyance.

In "American Dreamz," he knows a little about farce, a little about satire and apparently even less about how the world around him works.

The scenario: Hugh Grant, playing his usual annoying cad, is host of "American Dreamz," an "American Idol" spoof. Contestants include Mandy Moore's Sally Kendoo as a stand-in for Carrie Underwood and Sam Golzari's Omer, an aspiring Arab terrorist who is conflicted because, well, he just wants to croon showtunes. The president, suffering low approval ratings, signs on to judge the finale. There's way too much more going on here, but let's just say it leads to a supposedly explosive finale that's truly a dud.

Having watched, perhaps, five minutes of "American Idol" in my entire life, I nonetheless thought the spoofing on the show was the movie's strongest point. That Bo Bice ringer singing "Rocket Man" was pure comedy, almost as good as Shatner. But, had I gone to get a refill on my coke, I would have missed the five minutes of competition that led to Mandy, Omer and a Hasidic rapper (Adam Busch) being crowned as the finalists.

(There's a joke in here somewhere ... Mandy Moore, a would-be Arab terrorist and a Jewish rapper walk into a bar .. but I digress .. focus!)

One more word about the "Dreamz" stuff: Mandy Moore is a born charmer, and a great singer, and in a so-called spoof of "Idol" we get to see her sing for all of about five minutes? Christopher Guest could have built a solid little spoof around the whole "Idol" phenomenon that would have given her much more to work with, but Weitz apparently had little interest in that.

In another under-developed story line, Dennis Quaid is game to play a sendup of W., but he's given absolutely nothing to work with here. Weitz takes one joke, that VP Cheney (in the movie represented by a fairly funny Willem Dafoe) is the puppet master at the White House.

Well, that is most likely true, but painting the president as a total dingbat misses an opportunity. W. may be many things, but I don't think he's stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing, and much of it is, indeed, scary.

Setting up a more developed version of our current president, whose poll numbers right now are probably enough to make him crave a spot on "American Idol," could have been seriously funny.

The kind of funny Weitz showed flashes of with "American Pie" and even moreso with "About a Boy."

I would have laughed a lot more at either a real spoof of "American Idol" or a "Wag the Dog"-type satire of the Bush gang. I just wish Weitz had picked one and run with it, instead of taking on way too much and just falling flat.

Gilmore Girls creator quits

A dark day indeed. The show, apparently, will go on, but without creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and hubby, executive producer Daniel Palladino.

There will most likely be a seventh season of "Gilmore Girls" on the still-forming CW network, but the duo have told TV Guide they couldn't reach a deal with Warner Brothers to continue, so have quit the show.

Is that a death knell? Probably not, but it's close enough to be worried.

I discovered "Gilmore Girls" about five shows or so into the first season on a friend's recommendation. When I turned it on, mother and daughter Lorelai and Rory were rather petulantly arguing about whose breasts were bigger. I had never seen a show that was so sincerely off-kilter and that moved so fast, and I was instantly hooked.

Since then, as Rory's gone off to Yale, left and come back again and Lorelai has struggled to find happiness in Stars Hollow, the fictional town has been populated with the kind of quirky but instantly identifiable characters you rarely find on TV or anywhere else.

Take the recent run-up to Lane Kim's wedding. It has featured some of the show's best writing ever, and has let a relatively minor character, Mrs. Kim, shine with some of the funniest lines (You let women ride horses?). It features the kind of cast that predecessors like "Northern Exposure" strived for but never found.

It shows that, after almost six seasons, the show is far from getting stale, like "Buffy" did after our heroine died (again) and was brought back (again) after season five.

There are still solid people around the Gilmores, assuming the cast is game for what will probably be a final season on the CW. David S. Rosenthal will stay on as show coordinator, and "Buffy" veteran Rebecca Rand Kirshner, a very funny woman, will still be around to write a lot of the scripts.

But you get the sinking feeling it just won't be the same without the genius who created all this. As for Amy and Dan, they had apparently pitched another show, described as a "Nick and Nora in Manhattan, with kids," to the former WB, but never got anywhere. It will interesting to see where they end up, and how Stars Hollow goes on without them.

And tonight, Kris Benson returns to New York to lead the surging Baltimore Orioles into battle against the Yankees. Bring em on.

Turturro and Baumbach

Where art thou, John Turturro? Scanning his IMDB credits since he last worked for those Coen boys is an often-depressing read, but things are finally looking up.

It seems, according to the Hollywood Reporter, that he has joined up with Noah Baumbach for the director's new project rapidly taking shape at Paramount Pictures' new specialty division.

Jack Black, Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh - Baumbach's real-life wife, lucky bastard - have already joined the cast of what has been described as a multigenerational dramedy. If that cast doesn't entice you, I have to ask: Why do you bother watching movies?

What little else we know is the story takes place over a weekend and follows a mom and her son who visit the mom's sister. Kidman and Leigh will play the sisters (talk about good genes!), and Turturro will play Kidman's husband. Not sure how Jack Black fits into all this, but surely he will be funny.


After "The Squid and the Whale," easily one of the five best movies of 2005, I'll follow Baumbach just about anywhere. His ability to find the comedy and humanity in the autobiographical tale of his parents' divorce was a small masterpiece, and I'm definitely ready for more.

Baumbach's script for "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," an animated take on Roald Dahl's tale being directed by Wes Anderson, is described as "locked" on IMDB, and I'm not sure exactly what that means. Maybe Baumbach's own next project will sneak by it and come out first. Either way, I'll be there.

P.S.: In my surfing, I have found out Turturro has also just finished directing a musical called "Romance & Cigarettes" which sounds like pure fun. Stay tuned.

The Jason McElwain story?

This one may just prove that I've permanently succumbed to cynicism.

I literally spit up my coffee laughing as I read this on The Hollywood Reporter site this morning, certainly not the correct reaction by most standards.

It seems Columbia Pictures has acquired the "life rights" (what a tacky term) to Jason McElwain, aka the young man who ruined almost a month's worth of Sportscenter with this accomplishment: He made six three-pointers in the last four minutes of a high school basketball game.

Now, this is not something I could ever do, and I, unlike Mr. McElwain, am not autistic. But the only thing seeing him do this every time I turned on what is supposed a sports highlight show inspired in me was exasperation.

Given Hollywood's Oscar love affair with afflicted characters, the idea of a movie about this drove me to even darker thoughts. Could this fairly remarkable young man's true story be just the right break to finally snare that Oscar for Heath Ledger or maybe even a master thespian like Freddie Prinze Jr.?

The evil genius behind this impending disaster is, apparently, Magic Johnson, who will serve as an executive producer.

"When I first saw the highlights on ESPN and then heard Jason's backstory, I said, 'Man, I've got to be a part of this.' This story touched me, my kids, my wife," Magic Johnson said, according to THR. "When we go to the movies, this is the type of story we want to see."

Well, your talk show was probably something you wanted to see too, but luckily noone else did.

But enough ranting from me. I really am, usually, a nice person. Really.

"Breakfast on Pluto"

Rarely does a director capture the essence of a great book as well as Neil Jordan did with Patrick McCabe's "Breakfast on Pluto."

For the many of you who missed out (it never played anywhere near our Southern outpost of America), you can catch up on DVD today.

The story centers on Patrick "Kitten" Braden, who discovers at an early age that he enjoys dressing like a girl, not a terribly well-accepted thing to do in Northern Ireland in the 1960s.

Patrick is played as a young adult with spirit by Cillian Murphy, who managed to snag a Golden Globe nomination for getting all dragged up.

It is deliberately, and occasionally annoyingly, episodic, with no scene lingering for longer than a few minutes. But that's how Patrick deals with "the troubles," choosing to live in a fantasy world that repeatedly gets shattered by the reality of life.

On a quest to find out his father is, Patrick travels to London and elsewhere, befriending along the way characters like Stephen Rea as an odd magician and Brendan Gleeson as a children's entertainer with an amusingly short fuse. It's all fairly light but very entertainng fare.

McCabe has written some bad books, but this one struck just the right balance between whimsy and woe, and Neil Jordan kept that alive in this little flick. Check it out.

Anticipating United 93

I still can't decide what to think about this one, coming to wide-release world April 28.

On the one hand, Paul Greengrass is a first-rate director. His "Bloody Sunday" re-created that moment in Irish history with a storyteller's flair that kept you riveted even though you knew the horrible outcome. He also made a movie about the Omagh bombing for the BBC which my parents saw over the weekend and recommended highly.

I have confidence he can retell the story of the tragic flight that ended in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11 without being exploitative.

However, will I want to watch it? Just the trailer gave me chills, so I expect it will be an intense experience, what I usually enjoy at the movies.

If this were fiction, I probably wouldn't bother to go. Seeing Harrison Ford or Steven Seagal battle terrorists (not snakes!) on a plane just isn't my idea of entertainment. Knowing this actually happened - and didn't end well, despite the heroic actions of the passengers - makes it a different animal. In the end I wish Greengrass would have waited until we have captured Osama bin Laden, but since our idea of fighting terrorists currently only consists of creating more of them in Iraq, that could be a very long wait.

Greengrass and his cast of unknowns, worried about the backlash, have gone out of their way to explain their motives in featurettes. Check them out at Comingsoon.net.

One thing I know for sure, after my experience watching A History of Violence here in Macon, I'll try to see Flight 93 with as few people as possible. If anyone lets out a hoot or holler of any kind - like the lady directly behind me did twice when the son turned to violence in Cronenberg's great flick - when they hear "Let's roll" I may just lose it.

"Scary Movie 4"

Bill Pullman: I'm not long for this world
Regina Hall: Pussy

One of the hardest things in writing movie reviews, at least to me, is how much of the story to reveal.

Thankfully, with Scary Movie 4, there's nothing to worry about because there is no story at all.

Director David Zucker and writer Jim Abrahams (with Craig Mazin), who have made a living on spoofs, just throw jokes around faster than Jackson Pollock splattering paint, just to see how many will stick.

So, does it work? Almost half the time, in my opinion, a better ratio than I would have expected going in.

The spoofs here center on five movies: Two I had seen and mostly enjoyed War of the Worlds and Million Dollar Baby) one I simply detested (The Village), and two I skipped (The Grudge and Saw.)

The War of the Worlds stuff, an easy target thanks to Tom Cruise, is very funny. The Saw and Village jokes not so much. I'd say my favorite joke had to be the ipod/tripod one. Stupid? Maybe, but I try not to let thinking get in the way of the fun at movies like this.

The real plus here is Baltimore's own Anna Faris, who plays such a convincing dingbat you think she really must be one until you remember she's stuck it out through four rounds of gamely delivering lines like "It's OK, I've taken balls to the face before" and surely cashing a bigger paycheck with each movie. She and Regina Hall are clearly having fun, and I mostly did to.

However, can we, please, bring to an end to the Brokeback Mountain jokes? The mashups were pretty funny at first, but it's getting old very fast. And besides - a word of warning - Anthony Anderson and the guy who used to play Bud on the Cosby Show in assless chaps is just something I never needed to see.

And seeing Leslie Nielsen as the president - complete with a fairly funny sendup of Bush's reaction to hearing the news about 9/11 in that classroom, if you can stomach that - just made me long for the days of Naked Gun or, even better, Airplane. Those Zucker/Abrahams movies were funnier than this, and at least bothered to have a plot. Scary Movie 4 is like watching a series of "SNL" skits, though it's often much funnier than that dreck.

But critizing Zucker movies is the definition of an exercise in futility: You can't stop him (Scary Movie 3 made $110 million in domestic box office alone, I believe), and I don't think we should.

The Hardest Part of Hope

On a different subject entirely, I'd highly recommend this article "as told to" Telegraph writer Joe Kovac Jr. It's a first-person account from Linda Tillery about her battle with ovarian cancer, dutifully transcribed and reconstructed well by Kovac, and it's truly compelling reading. The first of three installments is on the Telegraph's site here, and look for the rest of the story Monday and Tuesday. I know I will.

Thank you for Smoking

Joey Naylor: Dad, why is the American government the best government?
Nick Naylor: Because of our endless appeals system.

After seeing "Thank You for Smoking," I had the urge to say "thank you" to director Jason Reitman, but, of course, I don't actually know him.

It's not perfect, but it's often laugh-out-loud funny (as I did, since there were maybe 10 other people there with me in the theater) and uncomfortable to watch, as the best satire should be.

What's really funny? The dialogue, always the first thing I look for in a movie, is very fast and often very sharp. The performances, with one exception I'll discuss later, are dead on. Aaron Eckhart was born to be smug, and Maria Bello and David Koechner keep up with him as his fellow "merchants of death," lobbyists for the alcohol and firearms industries. William H. Macy as an anti-tobacco crusader is flustered and funny from the start, and Adam Brody (Lane Kim's Dave Rigowski, of course) is up to delivering some of the best lines as an ass-kissing Hollywood assistant.

For anyone who doesn't know, here's the basic story, what little there is: Eckhart is Nick Naylor, a cocky and very competent spokesman for big tobacco. I won't tell you any more except, in his mission to keep America smoking, Eckhart works with a Hollywood uber-agent (a game Rob Lowe) to get cigarettes good placement in flicks and is dispatched to bribe the former Marlboro man who has come down with cancer (the always-welcome Sam Elliott). His overmatched nemesis is Macy, a senator from the great state of Vermont.

What I liked most was that Eckhart's Naylor doesn't "see the light" and repent for his evil ways. He knows exactly what he does, and he does it well. Christopher Buckley, who wrote the novel from which director Reitman adapted the flick, didn't set out to expose the underbelly of Washington. He really just scratched it with a very light touch, just enough to make you think a little and laugh a lot.

The two main complaints I've heard have been about Katie Cruise and the story line with Naylor's son Joey, played by Cameron Bright. First, about Katie, I can't manage the level of vitriol she inspires in most people, but they're right. Would Nick Naylor want to, well, nail her? Of course he would, but she never looks or acts remotely like the kind of person who would use that to her tremendous advantage. She's just annoying, but she doesn't do enough damage to ruin the rest of it.

With the kid, I thought he was key in showing just enough of Naylor's conscience, but not enough to spoil the image that he's basically a scumbag. Even under his son's admiring gaze, he remains so, which I thought was crucial.

As for smoking, it's something I did enjoy briefly in my youth and again in my adulthood for a while. I won't deny it: there's something inherently enjoyable about inhaling tobacco smoke. It's something I gave up quite a while ago because, well, it will eventually kill you, and I'm not particularly interested in that.

I still won't ever tell anyone not to light up in my presence. It's their decision, and to me that is the essence of liberty. What right do I have to tell them not to? None, so I don't.

But enough of that. Go see "Thank You for Smoking," laugh a lot, maybe learn a little and, if you want to and still can, smoke one for me.

Dave Chappelle in Esquire

So it really was The Man's fault after all.

After hinting at why he walked away from a $50 million deal with Comedy Central last year, Dave Chappelle spells it all out clearer than ever in the May issue of Esquire, which hits newsstands Saturday. (Disclosure: The quotes here are via E!Online).

"The bottom line was, white people own everything," Chappelle told Esquire, "and where can a black person go and be himself or say something that's familiar to him and not have to explain or apologize?"

"I felt like I was really pressured to settle for something that I didn't necessarily feel like I wanted," he continued. "The thing about show business is that, in a way, it forces dysfunctional relationships in people."

OK, fair - and true - enough, but here's what I still don't understand and would love to know: What exactly did Comedy Central keep him from doing? As an addict of his weekly exploits there, I thought he was really pushing the envelope pretty far already. Clayton Bigsby? The racial draft? "I'm Rick James, bitch"? Where else on TV, could you have seen such outrageously entertaining stuff.

The sad answer, of course, is nowhere. If he wants to put his money where his always welcome mouth is, why not take his act to BET? New president for entertainment Reginald Hudlin has promised the network will focus on original programming rather than the music videos that have sustained it thus far. I can't imagine he would turn Dave away.

"Hot Fuzz" from the "Shaun" team

My love for the movie "Shaun of the Dead" is unconditional. A funny movie about zombies is a natural draw for me, and this one was one of the funniest I've seen.

Now, in good news from Variety, it seems we'll be getting a new dose of fun from the team that created "Shaun."

Rogue Pictures has nabbed North American distribution rights to "Hot Fuzz," a police comedy featuring "Dead" stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, director Edgar Wright and producer Nira Park. Wright and Pegg penned the screenplay for the estimated $12 million film, in which Pegg plays a successful London cop whose jealous co-workers transfer him to a podunk British town and place him with a hapless partner (Frost). The pair stumble upon a series of suspicious accidents.

This one gets my guarantee: There is no way it won't be funny.