The Rite - DVD Review

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Starring Anthony Hopkins, Colin O'Donoghue, Ciaran Hinds, Alice Braga, Toby Jones and Rutger Hauer. Directed by Mikael Hafstrom.

I like the occassional gothic demonic flick, even when I don't like them that much. They usually have elements I can cling to and revel in. This had nothing. It took forever to set up, and the third act had nothing unique or original about it. The script's not great, but the central problem is Colin O'Donaghue is utterly dull as the lead, a black hole of charisma. Not only can Anthony Hopkins not save it, he can't even make it passable.

Random Entertainment News - 6/22/11

- While Tarsem's Snow White movie (with Julia Roberts) has cast actual little-people actors like Danny Woodburn as the seven dwarfs, Snow White & the Huntsman sounds like it's going the Lord of the Rings route, as Ian McShane has been cast as the leader of the seven dwarfs in that film. Snow White & the Huntsman also stars Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and Sam Claflin.

- Woody Allen's next movie, The Bop Decameron, will film in Italy. Allen will appear in this film alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Greta Gerwig and Judy Davis. It will open in 2012.

- Jamie Foxx is officially the lead in Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti-southern Django Unchained, about a freed slave who seeks to free his wife from an evil plantation owner, to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson co-star.

- Terry O'Quinn will join his former Lost co-star Daniel Dae Kim on several episodes of CBS's Hawaii Five-0 next season.

Midnight in Paris - Movie Review

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Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Corey Stall, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody, Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill, Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy. Directed by Woody Allen.

It's nice to see Woody Allen back in fine form. He had me the first minute where we just get images of Paris, reminiscent of the opening of Manhattan. We see the famous and the alleys and the stairwells and the parks. Then we get Gil (Owen Wilson), a screenwriter vacationing in Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams). She can't wait to get back to Malibu. He's in love with the city and would love to move there. He aspires to quit screenwriting to become a novelist, and hey, all the great American novelists spent some time in Paris.

Since this is an Allen film, we know he's going to be attracted to someone else, and that eventually comes, but in an unexpected way. Let's just say that he winds up meeting some of his idols. The standout for me, and the one that got the biggest laughs was Corey Stoll (Law & Order: LA) as Ernest Hemingway. It was one of those performances where he left me wanting more and I wished his part had been bigger.

Owen Wilson, it turns out, is the perfect stand-in for the typical Woody character. I wouldn't mind seeing them collaborate again.

I'm happy Woody's rediscovered his whimsy, and it's movies like this that demonstrate why so many name actors agree to be in his films. It might turn out to be like this. Other stand-outs include Marion Cottilard as the Frenchwoman who captures Gil's eye, and Michael Sheen as a pedantic friend-in-law Gil would just as soon ditch.

Random Entertainment News 6/19/11

- Evangeline Lilly (Lost) has joined the cast of The Hobbit for director Peter Jackson. She'll be playing a woodland elf. Also, Barry Humphries, best known as Dame Edna, will play the Goblin King, with the same motion-capture Andy Serkis uses as Gollum.

- Billy Bob Thornton will direct and star in the ensemble drama Jayne Mansfield's Car, co-starring Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, John Hurt and Robert Patrick.

- Thor Freudenethal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) will direct Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, sequel to The Lightning Thief. Logan Lerman will return as Percy.

- Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin will star in Labor Day for director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air). It's a coming-of-age drama about a mother and son who give a stranger a ride, and that stranger turns out to be an escaped convict.

- Universal Pictures has staked out July 3, 2013, as the release date for Despicable Me 2.

- There've been many indications that JJ Abrams will not have Star Trek 2 ready for its current June 2012 release date and so Paramount is looking at other possible tentpole projects that could be done in time for next summer. One is GI Joe 2. Another is World War Z, which takes place ten years after a zombie uprising was successfully stopped. It'll star Brad Pitt, Ed Harris, Matthew Fox and Mirelle Enos (The Killing).

- Vanessa Minnillo is in and Jill Wagner is out as cohost of ABC's Wipeout.

Weekend Box Office

For the weekend of June 17-19.

1. Green Lantern - $52.69 million - 1 wk (WB)
. . . 3816 screens / $13,806 per screen
2. Super 8 - $21.25 ($72.78) - 2 wks (Par) -40.1%
. . . 3408 / $6235
3. Mr. Popper's Penguins - $18.2 - 1 wk (Fox)
. . . 3339 / $5451
4. X-Men: First Class - $11.5 ($119.93) - 3 wks (Fox) -52.3%
. . . 3375 / $3407
5. The Hangover Part II - $9.64 ($232.67) - 4 wks (WB) -45.5%
. . . 3460 / $2785
6. Kung Fu Panda 2 - $8.7 ($143.34) - 4 wks (DW) -47.4%
. . . 3469 / $2508
7. Bridesmaids - $7.49 ($136.84) - 6 wks (U) -25.6%
. . . 2573 / $2910
8. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - $6.24 ($220.34) - 5 wks (BV) -43%
. . . 2742 / $2274
9. Midnight in Paris - $5.24 ($21.8) - 5 wks (SPC) -10.2%
. . . 1038 / $5045
10. Judy Moody - $2.24 ($11.17) - 2 wks (Rel) -63%
. . . 2524 / $888
11. Thor - $1.15 ($176.11) - 7 wks (Par) -53%
. . . 875 / $1309
12. The Tree of Life - $1.12 ($3.85) - 4 wks (FS) +34.8%
. . . 114 / $9781

Green Lantern did well. It did its job. Considering the $350 million the studio spent on production and marketing, it'll need to be big overseas to make a profit. So weird that movies have come to this.

Jim Carrey's entering that Eddie Murphy phase, I guess. Carrey hamming it up with penguins for the kids equals a mediocre opening and likely quick drop in the weeks to come.

Happy for Super 8's decent week 2 showing.

My Emmy Ballot - Drama Nominations

Best Drama
BOARDWALK EMPIRE
BREAKING BAD
GAME OF THRONES
THE GOOD WIFE
JUSTIFIED

Best Actor
Sean Bean, GAME OF THRONES
Bryan Cranston, BREAKING BAD
Michael C. Hall, DEXTER
Andrew Lincoln, THE WALKING DEAD
Timothy Olyphant, JUSTIFIED

Best Actress
Khandi Alexander, TREME
Mirielle Enos, THE KILLING
Michelle Fairlay, GAME OF THRONES
Anna Gunn, BREAKING BAD
Julianna Margulies, THE GOOD WIFE

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Cumming, THE GOOD WIFE
Peter Dinklage, GAME OF THRONES
Walton Goggins, JUSTIFIED
Aaron Paul, BREAKING BAD
Michael Shannon, BOARDWALK EMPIRE

Best Supporting Actress
Christina Hendricks, MAD MEN
Margo Martindale, JUSTIFIED
Kelly MacDonald, BOARDWALK EMPIRE
Julia Stiles, DEXTER
Maisie Williams, GAME OF THRONES

My Emmy Ballot: Comedy Nominations

Best Comedy
THE BIG BANG THEORY
COMMUNITY
MODERN FAMILY
THE OFFICE
PARKS & RECREATION

Best Actor
Alec Baldwin, 30 ROCK
Steve Carell, THE OFFICE
Louis CK, LOUIE
Ed O'Neill, MODERN FAMILY
Jim Parsons, THE BIG BANG THEORY

Best Actress
Jane Adams, HUNG
Courtney Cox, COUGAR TOWN
Tina Fey, 30 ROCK
Patricia Heaton, THE MIDDLE
Amy Poehler, PARKS & RECREATION

Best Supporting Actor
Ty Burrell, MODERN FAMILY
Donald Glover, COMMUNITY
Nick Offerman, PARKS & RECREATION
Danny Pudi, COMMUNITY
Eric Stonestreet, MODERN FAMILY

Best Supporting Actress
Julie Bowen, MODERN FAMILY
Alison Brie, COMMUNITY
Yvette Nicole Brown, COMMUNITY
Jenna Fischer, THE OFFICE
Christa Miller, COUGAR TOWN

TNT's Franklin & Bash - TV Review

Remember the Jim Belushi-Jerry O'Connell series The Defenders? This is a younger, more obnoxious version of that show.

The two leads should be likeable enough. There's TV guy Mark-Paul Gosselar of Saved By the Bell / NYPD Blue fame. There's movie guy Breckin Meyer of Clueless / Rat Race fame. But these are two cool cats who don't play by the rules, who use and abuse the legal system to exploit people and companies, twist the laws around for a quick buck, who can kick back and play guitar while tossing around ideas....

.... BAAARRRFFFFFFF!

If these guys were real, I'd say, "Guys like these are what's ruining America." In fact I've noticed that about a lot of lawyer shows, especially the light-hearted ones. Delightful scamps like these are why we have 100,000 laws on the books, each to protect us from the dumb one that got exploited/twisted/abused before it.

The Other Woman - DVD Review

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Starring Natalie Portman, Scott Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Charlie Tahan, Lauren Ambrose and Anthony Rapp. Directed by Don Roos.

I've seen it a million times. Rich man leaves his wife for younger woman. But I don't know if I've ever seen a movie from the younger woman's point of view, right after she's become Wife #2. In some ways this is a public service announcement warning women thinking of sleeping with married men - the aftermath ain't all sunshine and roses.

These are selfish, wounded people, bouncing against each other. Portman plays Emilia. She slept with her married boss Jack (Scott Cohen), and later married him and had a baby with him. That baby only lived a few days, and now Emilia is an emotional shell, dealing with a manipulative stepson (Charlie Tahan), a vindictive first wife (Lisa Kudrow), and an increasingly distant husband.

This soap opera features several opprtunities for the three adults to lash at each other, usually in front of the kid, surely scarring him to become a sociopathic shark when he grows up.

This movie is the perfect punishment to show adulterers. Sure, it features some good acting, but what have I done to deserve this?

Super 8 - Movie Review

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Starring Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ron Eldard, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Sasso, Noah Emmerich, Zach Mills and Glynn Turman.
Directed by JJ Abrams.

This movie is executively produced by Steven Spielberg, and it's like a loving tribute to his earlier work.

It's been a long time since we've had a summer special-effects movie center on kids coming of age, and have the relationships be believable, realistic, and the kids are natural actors. The movie does have an alien, but it's the B-story. The A-story is a group of kids in 1979 trying to make a zombie movie when they get interrupted by a giant train wreck.

I recognize the plot has several logistical problems, several points that don't quite make sense if you think about it long enough. I don't really care. I wanted to spend more time with Joe (Joel Courtney) and Alice (Elle Fanning), watch their puppy love develop.

And I should mention specifically that Fanning, Dakota's little sister, is tremendous here. There's a scene in this movie where I watched her and thought, "A star is born."

(One pet peeve: too many lens flares. We get streaks of blue-purple light from it and it was distracting.)

Weekend Box Office - 6/12/11

For the weekend of Jun 10-12.

1. Super 8 - $37 million - 1 wk (Par)
. . . 3379 screens / $10,950 per screen
2. X-Men: First Class - $25 ($98.89) - 2 wks (Fox) -54.6%
. . . 3692 / $6771
3. The Hangover Part II - $18.5 ($216.56) - 3 wks (WB) -41%
. . . 3675 / $5034
4. Kung Fu Panda 2 - $16.64 ($126.91) - 3 wks (DW) -30.4%
. . . 3929 / $4234
5. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - $10.85 ($208.77) - 4 wks (BV) -39.6%
. . . 3433 / $3159
6. Bridesmaids - $10.15 ($123.9) - 5 wks (U) -15.7%
. . . 2922 / $3475
7. Judy Moody & the Not Bummer Summer - $6.27 - 1 wk (Rel)
. . . 2524 / $2483
8. Midnight in Paris - $6.15 ($14.23) - 4 wks (SPC) +121.9%
. . . 944 / $6511
9. Thor - $2.37 ($173.6) - 6 wks (Par) -44.2%
. . . 1782 / $1330
10. Fast Five - $1.71 ($205.08) - 7 wks (U) -45.9%
. . . 1329 / $1290
11. The Tree of Life - $.88 ($2.41) - 3 wks (FS) +41.5%
. . . 47 / $18,617

Super 8 did well, and with its $50 million budget, it'll be nicely profitable.

The Dilemma - DVD Review

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Starring Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum and Queen Latifah. Directed by Ron Howard.

This movie is so uneven that it really needed a director skilled in dark comedy to navigate its waters. I think Barry Levinson or Danny DeVito would have been good. But the thing is, I would have thought beforehand that the director of Night Shift and The Paper could have done it. By the time it was done, though, my thoughts were on the director. What was he thinking?

The casting of the men would indicate light-hearted farce. Jennifer Connelly, though, means weepy drama. Winona Ryder can go either way and I'm just glad to see her get work.

The premise isn't some Three's Company escalation of misunderstandings. Vince Vaughn sees his best friend's wife is cheating on him, and it's not a mistake. No she's really cheating. But as layers get pulled back on the characters, we see there's more going on. There's pain and disappointment and hurt. But even through most of that, the tone tries to stay fluffy. "Hey, we got Vince Vaughn! It's a comedy!"

Another Vaughn-Com, The Break-Up, had similar problems. As their relationship soured, the movie grew less funny and more sad. I didn't like that movie either.

But I'll say this: I've never enjoyed Channing Tatum more. He showed genuine comic energy and timing.

It just hit me. This was as though Ron Howard was trying to make a Woody Allen movie.

Drive Angry - DVD Review

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Starring Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner, Billy Burke, David Morse, Charlotte Ross and Tom Atkins. Directed by Patrick Lussier.

This is the slightly more attractive cousin of Ghost Rider. It embraces its absurdity better. It's by no means good; it's gleefully executed grindhouse drive-in junk food.

Nicolas Cage is Milton (get it?), a father who has escaped hell and now drives a fast car shooting up bad guys, and hot on his trail is a demon known only as The Accountant (William Fichtner). Milton's daughter was killed by a satanic cult and they plan to sacrifice his granddaughter. The plot's there as an excuse to set up several fellers to line up and get killed at interesting angles, preferrably so that blood and /or body parts can fly toward the screen (in 3-D!)

Cage's crazy performance matches his bleached hairpiece. Fichtner is the most fun to watch, an all-powerful guy who can maim with a finger. He has the cockiness of someone who, well, knows he's immortal standing in front of this here green-screen. Billy Burke is the cult leader, doing the pure-evil thing as a break from playing dear-old-dad in the Twilight movies. I should also point out David Morse shows up as an old friend named Webster. Could practically feel the screenwriter elbowing me in the ribs when his name's revealed.

Tons of bullets fly in this film, and they made ghastly splooshing sounds when they hit their targets and rip through flesh. The special-effects are hit-and-miss, some of it likely due to the 3D-ness. And now Cage has Ghost Rider 2 coming. What a world. But if crazy Cage sounds like your cup of tea, why the heck are drinking such tea? Try orange juice.

X-Men: First Class - Movie Review

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Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, Zoe Kravitz and Matt Craven. Directed by Matthew Vaughn.

This is the fifth X-Men movie, and the best. I've held X2 as my favorite til now, but I think this one passes it.

This has a quick pace and jumps through many plot points, but it never feels rushed and it never feels like any of the many characters that matter are getting cheated. We're back in the 1960's, when Charles and Erik first meet, where Charles (James McAvoy) is a cocky but kind-hearted genetics genius, and Erik (Michael Fassbender) is a Count of Monte Cristo, hunting down the Nazis that killed his parents, culminating with Schmidt (Kevin Bacon) the man who point-blank shot his mother.

Schmidt is now Shaw, and his plans for world chaos are as ambitious as any Bond villain. Shaw also has some mutants working for him, so the future Professor X and Magneto are going to need help.

This is an origin film that in many ways doesn't feel like an origin film. There is some continuity issues with some of the X-Men movies, but then so what, let's call it a reboot.

I should also mention that McAvoy and Fassbender have great chemistry together. It's kinda nice to have an X-Men movie without Wolverine. I'm about as excited as where this plans to go as the Star Trek reboot.

P.S. Plenty of familiar faces pop up in small parts. I'm pretty sure I'm one of only dozens in the world who geeks out when Michael Ironside suddenly shows up.

Gulliver's Travels - DVD Review

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Starring Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Chris O'Dowd, TJ Miller and Catherine Tate. Directed by Rob Letterman.

Jack Black... what can I say. I loved School of Rock, but lately it seems like he's picking projects where he does the same thing in different scenarios and it's just not funny anymore. Year One was an odious example, and this big-screen high-concept low-ambitioned comedy isn't much better.

Black plays mail-room slacker Lemuel Gulliver, a guy going nowhere aspiring to nothing. One day he plagarizes some articles to impress a hot editor in his building, and she immediately sends him on a writing assignment to the Bermuda triangle. Naturally he gets caught in a whirlpool out there (with some inept green-screening, I might add) and land in Lilliput, an island where little people can instantly build contraptions to trap giants, as though one washes up on shore every year.

The likable-enough cast is trapped in this Blackian world of easy punchlines. The finale where everyone dances with Black as he sings "War" made me want to hide my face.

There is no aspiration here to make it a memorable movie. There's no ambition beyond lowbrow humor and making as many elementary kid as possible giggle when Gulliver pees to put out a palace fire.

P.S. Emily Blunt tried to get out of making this so she could be Black Cat in Iron Man 2. Poor thing.

OWN's Sons of Perdition

Directed by Tyler Measom & Jennilyn Mertin.

This documentary was in a film festival or two last year and had brief releases in theaters. It aired on OWN this week and I was able to record it and watch it.

It's the story of teenage boys who have escaped Colorado City, aka the "Crick", the compound run by fundamentalist Warren Jeffs. You can't help but feel for these boys as they unwind in the real world and try to figure out how to move forward without their families.

We get melancholy shots of polygamists working on their lands, and you can just feel the isolation and oppression of that environment. It's worth seeking out.

One thing I learned from Warren Jeffs: the Care Bears are evil.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

Continuing to catch up on old Woody Allen titles.

This 1982 trifle from Woody is okay. It's about three couples spending the evening together and even if it had a benign title, we know that because it's Woody, not all the couples will remain faithful by the time the night is over. I was amused by setting it in the 1900's, where Woody's a Wright-brother-esque inventor, and I enjoyed Jose Ferrer as the pompous professor.

TV Season Finales - 30 Rock, Cougar Town, Chuck, etc.

30 ROCK - I tend to enjoy it while I watch it, but if it got cancelled, it wouldn't affect me. In fact, the series really seems to only have one more season in it.

AMERICAN IDOL - I quit watching around the top nine. Just didn't care. And as I'd read each week about who got voted off, it affirmed to me my apathy was justified. When is the last time the actual winner made a splash in the music world? Runner-ups (Jennifer Hudson, Chris Daughtry, Adam Lambert) tend to have just as much success as winners. (Did Kris Allen ever do anything?) I do still have the finale on my DVR but don't know if I'll actually watch it.

SURVIVOR - Boston Rob played a masterful game, but the viewers suffered for it. When you know who's going to win and there are still twelve people playing, it's just painful. Rob lucked out by getting the younger useful-idiot tribe. Felt bad for the four or five players that didn't get any screentime in the live finale. Did enjoy Julie's speech to Rob about making sure he raises his daughter to never let a man take advantage of her the way he did with Natalie.

THE AMAZING RACE - I can't say my favorite team won. In fact of the final three teams, the sisters were who I wanted third. But that's what's great about this show. You never know when a bad taxi driver's going to cost you a million bucks.

THE GOOD WIFE - I figured Alicia and Peter were going to break up; after all, they keep emphasizing how Alicia and Will still have feeling for each other, and Will (Josh Charles) is in the opening credits, and Peter (Chris Noth) is always "special guest star." But I like that Cary (Matt Czuchry) is now going to be working for Peter, still on the opposite side of Lockhart/Gardner. It's a sign of a good season finale when I look forward to how the characters' decision will reverberate in the fall.

COUGAR TOWN - The cul-de-sac crew are best when things are kept light, and the bromance between Andy and Bobby is the best since Scrubs' JD & Turk. Also loved the Danny Pudi-Dan Byrd cross-cameos on each other's shows (especially since they're all different networks). But it's consistent for Grayson to want a kid, and does 42-year-old Jules really want another kid when her only son is in college? It means either Grayson and Jules have to split, or Jules gets pregnant.

CHUCK - I've enjoyed this show, but I'm glad it's only getting 13 more episodes to wrap it up. I feel like it's pretty much run its course. They've hinted at one giant conspiracy behind Fulcrum, Volkoff, the Intersect, EVERYTHING, and so we'll get this fall to learn what that is. After that, give it a good series finale and call it a day. But they need to find a way to get Jewel Staite a guest spot.