Movies movies movies movies movies. Movies!

Movies:

The only reason to see Bolt, says Megan Seling, is the hilarious hamster:

Rhino is fucking awesome. Rhino is probably the best fat sidekick in any Disney movie ever (because there's always a fat sidekick—Gus Gus, Flounder, Pumbaa, etc.), and he's the only reason you should even give a shit about this movie. Rhino is a fluffy hamster in a plastic ball who watches TV all day, and he's a big fan of Bolt's show. And wouldn't you know it, after a clumsy mishap takes Bolt off the set and into the real world, Bolt ends up in Rhino's trailer park. Rhino freaks the fuck out!

Paul Constant assesses Twilight (see below).

I really, really liked Slumdog Millionaire:

The film is exhilarating and gorgeous and contains the most sublime use of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" (not sick of it yet!) through which you've ever had the pleasure of whooshing. Little skinny-limbed boys navigate treachery and temptation and mountains of garbage, seas of garbage—their corner of Mumbai is all lurid colors and postapocalyptic beauty. Boyle's ambition is exhilarating—if he's going to fail, he's going to fail spectacularly (and the second half of the film is shamelessly melodramatic)—and Slumdog Millionaire is a crazy, blazing contradiction.

And Charles recommends Days and Clouds for Americans facing murky economic futures:

That's the moral core (the message) of this simple but pleasant film: Can the two recover from the ruins of their finances/marriage and lead a normal but severely limited life? We must not stop there, we must extend that question to all of America: Can we live and love with less wealth? The answer: If we are ever going to be happy again, we have to live and love with much, much less.

In my livejournal Concessions, I write a million words about Gregory Peck's eyebrows. Can you believe the nerve of me?

At 4:30 in the morning, I woke up, rolled over to the computer that sometimes lives in my bed, and (true story) e-mailed myself some thoughts that, at the time, seemed important to remember: "Gregory Peck named his only two children Gregory Peck's Left Eyebrow and Gregory Peck's Right Eyebrow. This is absolutely true. The fact that he actually had five children, all with normal human names, remains Gregory Peck's greatest lament."

Aaaaand in Limited Runs:

Harvey is playing at the Grand Illusion, and Steel of Fire Warriors 2010 A.D. is their late night. Late night at the Egyptian is Labyrinth (———>). Central Cinema has some movie called In Search Of about people doing sex to each other. Sex!!! The Short Films of the Brothers Quay is at SIFF Cinema. And at Northwest Film Forum there's the usual Secret Sunday Matinee (last one, I think!), the much-anticipated Flaming Lips movie Christmas on Mars, and Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press, of which Paul Constant says:

The story of Barney Rosset’s Grove Press—publisher of works by William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and many other beat-era giants—is one of those miraculous adventures that can only happen in America. As a tiny independent press, Grove published books that inspired the American imagination, titillated the American groin, and roused American Puritanical indignation. Parts of this documentary, especially the interviews with literary figures like Erica Jong, Morgan Entrekin, and Gore Vidal, are fascinating stuff, although it should be noted that almost everybody here has a face that only the publishing industry could love. General audiences will probably be shocked to learn about the legal battles Rosset had to fight to keep his books from being banned, and lit fanatics will find a few interesting bits of trivia here and there. But even with sex, drugs, and a couple of bombings, the narrative drags, and all the cheesy computer animation of words rising off the page can’t save the documentary from its own funereal tone.

As The Stranger's resident squealing goth, I have decided it is my duty to keep on top of Twilight reviews. There's Metacritic, of course (56: Mixed or average reviews), but there's also the conservative movie blog I linked to a few days ago.

Here is what Mr. Red State Movie Watcher has to say about the Twilight, in an e-mail to a friend he posted online:

Dude, I’ve just come out of the most subversive film since … who knows when. This isn’t a vampire flick, it’s a total piece of cinematic propaganda disguised as a vampire flick and aimed right at your children. Only — get this - it’s subversively upholds traditional values.

Not only is it a high school movie set in a small town filled with likable characters of different races where race is never mentioned but the whole film is about restraint and discipline; the teenage girls aren’t sexualized, the boys are chivalrous, and the parents caring and real.

Hell, the the good family of vampires even play baseball because it’s “the American pastime,” and on a shelf in a bookstore owned by an American Indian sits Rush Limbaugh’s first book.

We know none of this stuff happens by accident and I’m still processing it.

I noticed Rush Limbaugh's book in the movie—it's not actually on a shelf in a bookstore, it's a battered mass market on a bargain spinner rack in front of a bookstore—and I would've mentioned its presence if I thought anybody else would have noticed it. I've got a pretty sharp eye for books in movies—I can usually tell what a character's reading from just the spine.

(There's one scene in Zodiac where a modern-day Baker & Taylor book distributor box is clearly shown in a basement scene, even though the rest of the movie is pretty strict in strictly representing the 1970's period. That box fucking drove me nuts, but only one other person I've talked to has ever noticed it.)

But I agree with the Republican Gene Shalit: It's a conservative movie. It's a very conservative series. Bear that in mind before you go in.

Twilight opens today, to the collective squeals of goths across the land. It screened too late for our print edition, but our resident squealing goth Paul Constant wrote an excellent review, which you should read:

Look, fuck it: If you really liked the Twilight books, you’ll probably really enjoy the Twilight movie. Although your favorite line of dialogue, whatever it is, will probably not make it into the movie, and that will give you something to complain about on the message boards at www.bellaandedward.com for months to come. If you have no desire to read Twilight—or if you tried it and found the hackneyed dialogue and empty-headed plotlessness too offensive to continue—there is absolutely no reason for you to see this movie.

The excellent review also contains this extra-excellent sentence:

At first, as they snap and snark at each other, they appear mildly alarmed by their own budding puppy love, like a monkey who can’t quite stop touching an electric fence.