Wallingford Meaningful Movies, free every Friday night, is showing the documentary Sharkwater this week. This fact is exciting because it means i get to point you to Jen Graves's wonderful little review:

Rob Stewart, the boyish director and star of this film, can be a cheeseball. But he is so in love with sharks, and sharks need his love so much, and so many other people love to hate sharks, that this movie ranks up there, despite its occasional stinky ripeness, with the best of the rile-'em-up, change-the-world documentaries. Did you know that 90 percent of the world's sharks have been killed in recent years, largely by being hauled onto a boat, having their fins sliced off while they shuddered, and then being thrown back into the water, where they immediately sink to the ocean floor and bleed to death? You will see this happen many, many times in Sharkwater. If you love living things, this will be punishing to watch. If you love only yourself, that's fine, because Sharkwater is a straight-up action flick (it's a shark movie!).

Sharkwater plays tomorrow night, 7:30 pm, at Keystone Church.

This whole post is totally worth it just for the headline.

Anyway. the Razzies nominating ballot was released today. Here is the list of Worst Movie nominees:

Speed Racer, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, The Day the Earth Stood Still, High School Musical 3, The Hottie & the Nottie, Dungeon Siege, The Love Guru, Postal, Rambo, The Happening, Meet Dave, Witless Protection

I'm shocked by the lack of inclusion of two major franchises: Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the WTF. I think The Day the Earth Stood Still was too boring to be Worst Picture, but many of the others on the list are worthy of being there. Putting High School Musical 3 on the list seems a little teenage boy-ish of the nominators, frankly. And nowhere on the list of nominees are Punisher: War Zone or Seven Pounds. There were a bunch of lousy movies released at the end of the year in 2008. In fact, maybe this list was simply produced too soon and didn't include any year-end stinkers? It didn't have any nominees from this movie, after all:

In the past, I've written about conservative film blog Dirty Harry's Place. Well, it's shuttered.

But not because he's given up on providing conservative perspectives on film and entertainment, oh no. Instead, he has moved to Big Hollywood, a giant blog that collects the perspectives of conservative film fans. It's kind of the Defamer of Andrew Breitbart's conservative Gawker-esque empire. This site is rich with wince-inducing conservative internet writing:

I’m a Conservative. And I am also an actor who lives and works in Hollywood. Many of my friends advise me to keep that on the down-low, advise me to not speak up lest I scuttle any future employment prospects, so predominantly liberal is the entertainment biz. And yet I persist.

You see, I’m one pissed-off dude.

I’m told I’ll hurt my career if I continually spout off about Liberalism — which I see as a growing cancer in our society. Worldwide, I’ve seen Liberalism metastasize into virulent incarnations of Socialism, and, left unchecked, even into its malignant cousin, Communism. Only the arrogant or the somnambulist would think such a thing could never happen here. It’s a matter of increment. Once a group organizes into a coalition, it’s a short step to claiming the right to the property of another group. All that is necessary is for an individual’s right to personal property to become a secondary concern. The ‘needs’ of the group must supercede, dontcha know. It’s a vicious cycle — wants become needs become rights. The fact that the thievery is done at the behest of a ‘civilized’ government does not sanitize the crime.

and

Have a look at some of the great things that have happened recently at the multiplex. Spider-Man 3, a pro-American, pro-responsibility film with deeply Christian overtones topped the box office in 2007. 300, which said a lot that needed to be said about the war on terror, came in at number ten. Even more amazing, the Oscar winner for the year was No Country for Old Men, a decidedly conservative film that linked the evil of its nihilist serial killer to the decline of morals since the 1960’s. “Once you stop hearing sir or ma’am,” says the film’s lone moral voice, “the rest [of the evil] will follow.”

It was pretty much the same this year. Top of the box office so far: the blatantly pro-war on terror Dark Knight. The Christian Prince Caspian is at number eleven. The pro-abstinence Twilight is currently at sixteen and still hot. And perhaps most delightfully, and of course most ignored by the MSM: the Christian pro-marriage film Fireproof, despite suffering from its shoestring budget, still out-performed such favorites of our media elites as W, Religulous and Stop-Loss.

During the election I spent a lot of time watching conservative sites to keep an eye on what the other side was doing. I don't know why I keep going to these sites—I know I have a car-wreck fascination with watching angry old white guys whining about how everything's going to shit because everything's not run by angry old white guys—but I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of time reading Big Hollywood and repeatedly smacking my desk with my jaw.

The stars of W., Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, were tased, pepper-sprayed, and arrested by cops.

TMZhas released the incredible video of Josh Brolin's arrest outside of a Shreveport bar last summer, along with his "W" costar Jeffrey Wright.

In the video, viewers see Brolin and Wright standing hugging as they are sprayed with pepper spray and then separated by cops. Brolin is made to kneel and is handcuffed while Wright gets laid out on the street and repeatedly tasered, as the cellphone camerawoman screams in protests.

Maybe the cops confused the actors with these criminals:

Via Wooster Collective, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha:

God, fuck that movie.

Thanks, Andoodoo.

It looks like Crank 2 is going to be the film that really captures all of Jason Statham's B-Movie sleazoid glory. I liked Crank a lot, but this looks like the real winner. The trailer is as NSFW as NSFW can be (no goatse, unfortunately. Maybe in the finished film.)

Now hopefully, after this one, Statham can get a real director to give him a respectability boost. He can't keep making Death Race over and over again, and he'll never be able to out-smarm Crank 2, from the looks of it.

Did he "forget his pre-game bourbon"?
Did he not "get the memo" that "there are more issues in the world than racism"?
Does he have trouble understanding Manohla Dargis's oddly glowing review for the same reason that "he works at an alternative weekly in a B-list, snow-phobic city"?

I am confused. What does snowphobia have to do with reading comprehension? Did I not "get the memo"? Do you guys know how to construct sentences that are not insane?

Anyway, read Mudede's review here:

The recipient of this arrogance/aggression is a meek Hmong teen named Thao (Bee Vang). The boy lives next to Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in a Detroit neighborhood that has seen much better days. Gangs of all kinds now control this economic wasteland; the police and the church are powerless. The situation is down to the lawless terms of the Wild West, to a war of all against all, to a raw survival of the meanest. And none is meaner than Kowalski. He is a racist in a part of the city that has too many races. He also has no love for white people or what they have become—consumers of professional sports, black entertainment, indecent clothes, and foreign cars. The new whites are all about cell phones and text messaging; the old whites are all about steel tools and face-to-face communication.

Weigh in on the small, confusing kerfuffle here.

Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov have teamed up to produce an animated movie called 9 that's going to be released on 9/9/09. It looks like a cross between Wall•E and Lord of the Rings. It's a postapocalyptic fantasy movie, and this character is voiced by Crispin Glover:

Between this, the fancy-looking Up trailer from Pixar and the stop-motion Coraline adaptation by former Burton collaborator (on Nightmare Before Christmas) Henry Selick, the movies I'm most looking forward to next year are animated. That hasn't happened since I was 6.

Oh, you should!

The problem is that every year around Oscar season, Hollywood dresses up like average people and puts on a caricature play of suburban life, and we know the score far too well at this point. There is sad, meaningless adultery. DiCaprio and Winslet relentlessly feud—from the very beginning of the film—in the kind of screaming, snot-splattered scenes that always wind up in Best Actor and Actress montages at awards shows. And you can throw all the money in the world at this sort of thing (the costumes and sets are beautiful), but without the soul of Yates's gorgeous language, it's only so much pretty whining.

Like all sane people, we here at The Stranger love The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2.

However, buried within Part 2's several hours of glory is a tiny cluster of some of the worst acting and writing ever to appear in an otherwise great film.

Here's the scene that contains the horrors, which proceed from the mouth of the otherwise-great-in-the-'70s Diane Keaton.

From her klutzy repetition of the A-word to her impassioned denunciation of "this Sicilian thing!", she totally deserved that slap. (The screenwriter and editor both deserve hearty slugs as well.)

The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2 continue through tomorrow at SIFF Cinema.

At Schmader's suggestion, I made it my year-end mission to see Rob Epstein's 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (which I'd never even heard about until all the Milk-related happenings this fall). But it wasn't easy. Last month, I put the documentary at the top of my Netflix cue and... waited. And waited. Apparently a lot of people had the same idea, and Netflix didn't have enough copies.

Yesterday it arrived—finally!—and when I mentioned this fact here, a helpful commenter told me:

Silly Eli, you could have just gone here.

D'oh! If, like the former me, you're out there right now waiting in some virtual line to get a copy of The Times of Harvey Milk—which you should be, because it's amazing and affecting and a necessary companion to Gus Van Sant's Milk—well, Hulu's got it for free.

From this...

The creator of beloved U.S. TV show Gilligan's Island has inked a deal to bring back the classic characters stranded by the S.S. Minnow - on the silver screen.

The classic 1960s series' creator Sherwood Schwartz has signed on to make a movie version of the show.

According to TV Guide, Schwartz already has an all-star cast in mind.

He's reportedly eyeing Arrested Development star Michael Cera for the title role, originally played by Bob Denver, and pop singer Beyonce Knowles to take on Tina Louise's role as the island's sultry siren, Ginger.

To this...

Lesbian Vampire Killers teaser:

And yet, I'm compelled to go. Especially because it's British. Hopefully, it will be better than Zombie Strippers.

On Hulu, you can now watch Howard the Duck in its entirety.

I don't know why you'd watch Howard the Duck in its entirety, but the only reason adolescent Paul Constant watched a video of Howard the Duck is after the jump. NSFW!

But, you know, if you want to see Tom Cruise blow up some Nazis... here you go. You're welcome.

At Slate Stephen Metcalf takes a long, hard look at Tom Cruise's career— and it isn't pretty.

I can't name another American icon who has been so popular, and for so long, and yet so hard to like, and for so long. (When the studio sent the then-mostly unknown Cruise to Paul Brickman, the writer-director of Risky Business, Brickman recoiled, saying, "This guy's a killer. Let him do Amityville 3.") But note a curious fact about his career: It maps perfectly onto the 25-year bull market in stocks that, like Cruise, is starting to show its age. Nascent in the early '80s, emergent in 1983, dominant in the '90s, suspiciously resilient in the '00s, and, starting in 2005, increasingly prone to alarming meltdowns.

Metcalf's dissection of Cruise's first big film—Risky Business—made me want to watch that film again, and not just for the TWs scene. Read the whole thing here.

Due to Prince Caspian's lower-than-expected box office performance, Disney is backing out of the next Narnia movie, which I'm fairly sure means the series will eventually end in a direct-to-video Last Battle with Atari-level special effects.

Attention fans of The Theatre, classic cinema, Bette Davis, amazing screenplays, and/or chick flicks with fangs: Tonight through Sunday, the Central Cinema will be screening All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Oscar-clobbering drama of 1950, and—for me at least—the most entertaining Great Film ever made.

For those who don't know, All About Eve concerns a bitchy grande dame of the American stage and the mysterious young woman who enters and insidiously begins to upset her life. The screenplay and the performances are dazzlingly witty, but the wit only darkens the film's dark heart. If there's a better movie about the soul-eroding machinations women are required to perform in pursuit of "success," I haven't seen it, and the film's setting in the world of the Theatre—where lying and manipulation are artistic callings—only makes things that much richer and stickier.

P.S. Yes, that is a young Marilyn Monroe hovering above Anne Baxter's left breast. All About Eve was one of her first films, and she's perfectly cast in a small but important role.

Well, Christmas is over. Anyone get/give anything good?

Here is something that happened to me: We had lamb for dinner, and then I took my half-empty glass of water from the dinner table into my bedroom. Then, in the middle of the night, I took a sip, and the water tasted like lamb. Lamb water! Lamb of God water. L.O.G.water. Ew. Anyway, I'm not even Christian. What day is it?

MOVIES!!!

Brad Pitt is born an old man, grows backwards into a little baby (Karl Pilkington-style)! Wise and spiritual black people help. I think. I haven't seen it. But Paul Constant did:

The nearly three-hour movie sails by, and director David Fincher's dogged determinedness to get the perfect shot pays off well, too: The film—with its seemingly effortless historical accuracy, rich color palettes, and beautiful cinematography—is real, rich eye candy. There are serious flaws (Button's aging doesn't flow as it should, and his narration, supposedly from a diary, becomes omniscient whenever the story needs it), but those almost make the movie more endearing. And several scenes—especially a midfilm dalliance with Tilda Swinton and a few suspenseful moments where the audience can see doom coming from miles away—are cinematic perfection.

Eli Sanders recommends Frost/Nixon:

It's compelling to watch because of how much was at stake then, with much of the American public desperate for the trial and conviction that the presidentially pardoned Nixon had managed to avoid (until he agreed to take $600,000 for a interview with Frost). It's also compelling for the resonance with this particular moment: a publicly unrepentant president, cloistered and clearly troubled by the mistakes he's made, grappling with whether to stonewall any and all attempts at a public reckoning.

Valkyrie, not so much:

Not that the United States under George W. Bush and company was Nazi Germany, but wouldn't a story about making sacrifices to resist an outlaw government have been a little more relevant several years ago? Or even just last year? Released, as it will be, during the transition from the Cowboy Presidency to the Hope Presidency, Valkyrie loses any sense of moral urgency. Which is too bad, because it didn't have much else going for it.

Paul Constant claims that The Spirit is, somehow, not quite as bad as it looks (it looks like your grandma getting waterboarded):

The saddest thing about The Spirit is its lack of imagination. There's nothing here—from the cartoony visual effects right down to the Converse All-Stars on the hero's feet—that wasn't done, and better, in Sin City. Rather than being an aw-shucks, lantern-jawed hero, Gabriel Macht's Spirit is a womanizing hard-boiled tough guy who continually soliloquizes about how his city is his "sweetheart," his "plaything," his "love" and "wife."

Bedtime Stories, says Evan Stewart, is exactly what you think it is (plus extra farts!):

Disney is obviously phoning it in this time, throwing in its patented heartstring-pulls whenever the story seems like it's sagging. And mama, this story sags more than a cheap hammock. Is the audience losing interest? Mention the kids' absent father! Is the forced romance between Keri Russell and Mr. Sandler fizzling? Bring up the kids' school being closed by the evil big company! The lazy formula is down pat: The first act makes you happy with the setup, the second act makes you sad with the conflict, and the third act makes you happy again, with a race to save the school and the passionate kiss at the end.

And Jen Graves writes a whole bunch of amazing sentences about The Reader:

When one is not eyeing Winslet's nipples, one is meant to note her pale, wrinkled face—even during the scenes when she is young, sh e (playing a lonely tram conductor) looks exhausted—and her frumpy, frizzy hairstyle. The veneer is of a serious role in a serious film about a serious subject, and this movie is already being talked about as Winslet's first-Oscar vehicle. Yet the movie's most lasting quality is that it is hot. The Reader is an erotic movie about the Holocaust.

Oh, and I have no idea what Concessions is about this week.

Other things you should go see: All About Eve, Escape from New York, Late Bloomer, Day of Wrath, The Godfather, and The Godfather Part II.

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