Camera Obscura: The Zach Galifianakis Movie You Never Saw

Comedian Zach Galifianakis has been one of the busiest and most sought after actors in movies, turning in work on three different TV series, 8 movies in 2009, and much more on the way. He's hosted SNL after his breakout role in the movie "The Hangover", and has at least 5 more films ready for release next year.

By luck or fate, I saw his fantastically funny film from 2008, which was dumped on DVD last summer, because no one knew how to market this sharp-witted and horrifying dystopian comedy titled "Visioneers".

Zach plays George Washington Winsterhammerman, a numbed employee of the largest company in the world, which apparently runs everything, though we never really find out what they do. The movie has some similarities to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", but first time filmmakers Jared and Brandon Drake don't go in for huge and crazy effects, they use the numb and understated world George inhabits to create their satire. And it is a brilliant satire touched with melancholy. "Visioneers" also shows off just how good an actor Zach can be. George may be dull, but we empathize with his search for meaning and the absurdity of a very sad nation. A growing cult of fans of his work will love this movie.

These drones of corporate living of the Jeffers Corporation in the movie are suffering a new and unexplainable epidemic - people are suddenly exploding. One of the symptoms, say doctors, is having dreams. Poor George has started to have them - and fears he too might explode. His wife, played by Judy Greer, blithely endures her dullness by shopping or putting butter on everything they eat or reading the self-help book "10,000 Things To Be Happy About."

But no one is happy - attempts to locate or feel such a thing, or to feel anything, is a near-criminal act. The corporate mindset so controls the world, all greetings are done by giving the "jeffers salute" - which is flipping a bird at someone. The legendary Jeffers can't pronounce the word "chaos" correctly, so everyone says it like he does, pronouncing the "ch" as in the word "church". Even the President is a dim drone who does as Jeffers commands.

There are so many expert jabs at our world today - a sleepless George surfing through television channels hits perfect marks; workdays are punctuated every 60 seconds with a recording of how many minutes of productivity are left before the weekend; productivity, in fact, is meant to be everyone's goal, since a profitable corporation is more important than anything else.

You can watch the complete movie for free at Fancast.

Camera Obscura: 'F.T.A' Returns to America; 4th Futurama Flick; Killing Tyler Perry's Medea

Hip-deep in the main streams of mainstream movies, there are oddities and obscurities which reveal the eerie underbelly of motion pictures. As you read, you may enjoy this Grammy-winning song from 1973, which blends the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" with some jazzy Brazilian riffs by Deodato.



Now then ...

Last week's box office winner, Tyler Perry's "Medea Goes To Jail", is irritating even to Tyler Perry. He's quoted now as saying he wants to kill the character which has made him famous. And not just kill her -- "I would love to see Medea die a slow death in the next film." Why not? His movies bored me to death after one partial viewing, and so her demise seems fair.

This week, the box office may see the Teen Triumvirate of The Jonas Brothers nab the top spot with their 3-D "concert" movie. Carefully crafted in the Teen Labs section of Disney, the trio's music is quickly headed into fame for being part of the CDs-Too-Embarrassing-To-Admit-You-Own. But what will stun the parents in the audiences (and the more perceptive 'tweens) are the rather constant thrusts of microphone stands, guitar necks and hot dogs into the 3-D screens, culminating in a ... a "climatic moment" where the boys each haul out hoses which squirt this white goo over the crowd. Yeah. Subtle. Boys will be boys.

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For the first time since it's very limited one-week-long release in 1972, the subversive anti-Vietnam War documentary "F.T.A." is back. Released this week on DVD and airing as well on the Sundance Channel, the movie is an account of the road show into the Pacific Rim protesting the war via skits and songs by a troupe of actors and singers led by Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Dalton Trumbo and others. Yes, it's that Jane Fonda, the one who still angers people today.

While watching it the other night, it was startling to see how vocal and angry members of the military were about the war. Fueled by the protests from the then constantly rising off-base military press of the previous year or two, this anti-USO tour is a full-throttle rebellion by troops, aided by a few Hollywood outsiders. The troop response is scathing, giving voice to an utterly demoralized military. The jokes and songs of the F.T.A. show are not nearly as provocative in comparison. I did enjoy one skit as Sutherland gave a sports announcer rapid-fire on-the-scene play by play of a military strike which goes horribly wrong.

Perhaps this movie would make a nice gift for your aging hippie friends or something to give heart attacks to your conservative pals. Mostly, it plays out for what it is -- an odd sample from a forgotten time capsule, one forgotten on purpose.

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The fourth and final (??) installment of the Futurama DVDs hit stores this week, "Into The Wild Green Yonder". Reviews are good, and I surely hope we get more. Here's the trailer.

Camera Obscura; New Futurama; Johnny Depp in The Three Stooges; Wrath of Kahn - The Opera

Some fine DVD news arrives this week -- the fourth (but hopefully not final) installment of the Futurama DVDs is about to arrive, titled "Into The Wild Green Yonder", set to debut on Feb. 24th.

As with three previous features, events continue to expand on the time-traveling mess created in the first feature, "Bender's Big Score." As the review at DVD Talks says:

"Our story revolves around Leo Wong (Amy's rich dad, who owns Mars) and his eco-unfriendly developmental habits. Not content with the size of his miniature golf course, Leo plans to destroy a large arm of the Milky Way for expansion purposes. A curious incident at Wong's construction facility injures Fry (and several members of a group of female protesters, who we'll hear from again), which gives the lovable goofbag mind-reading abilities. Deciding to use his powers to win at poker---and with the help of a tin-foil hat, to block out the voices when needed---Fry competes against Bender and a gaggle of greedy gamblers. Meanwhile, Leela departs to join the feminist protesters, we're introduced to "The League of Mad Fellows" and the story of a mysterious dark enemy unfolds. Long story short: the fate of the universe depends on Fry and company, even if they aren't completely aware of it.

For the record, I do not want simple narrative to drive the stories here - I want lunacy, hewn from the history of sci-fi books, television and movies. Lunacy, I say, wild and unfettered by logic and driven by humor which makes fanboys like myself giggle like a schoolgirl about to take her first ride on a pony.


Second good news for DVD - an all-animated tie-in to the massively popular movie of this summer, "The Watchmen". This effort follows the comic book within The Watchmen called "Tales of the Black Freighter", which is a wretched and gory tale of a a sailor who is marooned and must tackle efforts at rescue which would (and will) stun audiences. The comic is being read by one of the characters in "The Watchmen" and seems to mirror the impending doom headed to New York City and the world. Actor Gerald Butler ("300") plays the lead character. Filmmakers knew it would make the feature film far too long, but the story is too good to just ignore.

It's set for release at the end of March and includes another element from the original Watchmen comic, "Tales From Under The Hood" which gives some backstory to how the events in the main story originated.

Also, a new webisode about the making of The Watchmen is now online, detailing just how the filmmakers brought the character Rorshach to life onscreen. I live that the character is being played by the too-easily forgotten actor Jackie Earle Hailey, who earned fame as the bad boy baseball player on a motorcycle in the original "Bad News Bears".



High hopes continue to rise for this epic tale of superheroes who don't embody the typical trappings of comic book characters.

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Johnny Depp is in talks to play in a new movie version of "The Three Stooges"?? The Farralley Brothers are heading the movie which may also include ... Sean Penn? That's the rumor.

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Why not end today with a new operatic version (with toys) of "Star Trek: Wrath of Khan" via Robot Chicken??

Camera Obscura: Anime, Kung-Fu, Texas Hold Em and Werner Herzog

Actor Keanu Reeves will leap into anime if his current project continues to move forward -- the project being a live action version of the anime series "Cowboy Bebop" with Reeves starring as the laconic hero Spike Spiegel.

Urf. This is not really happy news. I was hoping for another animated feature from the series which ran for 26 episodes in 1998. The story is set in a science fiction world of bounty hunters, but the real pleasure came from the characters and their failures and successes - and the arc of the story is rather non-linear and goofy, an anti-action tale with anti-heroes, a genius dog named Einstein and a computer whiz child named Ed. It's oddity is endearing, but I truly doubt Hollywood can do anything at all worthy of the time and money they'll throw at this.

Do yourself a favor and watch the original series, the one feature they made and be happy with that perfection.

Hollywood sort of flirts with animation and comic book tales - especially if they make money. Does that mean the just-announced Oscar nominations for Heath Ledger as The Joker, and the other nominations for "The Dark Knight" will actually earn the award itself? (Oh boy, here I go on comics again. Fanboy rants and raves about comic books are akin to those tedious scenes in "High Fidelity" where the characters talk about music and records. It's full-blown nerdiness.)

Here's what I know - Ledger's performance was surely one of the best I saw all year. And with Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman hosting this year's awards, maybe the comic book is finally --- naw, Hollywood loves money first and last. (Though Oscar does love tragedy, such as Ledger's untimely death last year.)

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Via the pages of Topless Robot (a blog about toys and nerds which is on my daily must-read list) we get the new trailer for a kung-fu movie called "Chocolate". It is absolutely my kind of Valentine's Day flick:



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Texas Hold-Em poker has never been more popular - and a raft of comedians get a chance to create a mock tournament improv movie in the often-hilarious "The Grand". The cast includes a grizzled Gabe Kaplan (who is a bona fide player on the poker circuit these days) as a deranged dad of two in the movie, and former SNL player Chris Parnell, a math genius player who also hurls insults culled from books like "Dune" at the other players. The movie is a broad and scattershot work, but has tons of funny performances and crazy moments -- Michael McKean recalling how he lost his hearing after he swam into a school of Man of War jellyfish, for example.

The real jewel in this movie, the one that makes it an underground classic, is director Werner Herzog, who plays a cruel contestant, known only as "The German". Herzog and "Grand" director Zak Penn have worked together before in also hilarious mockumentary "The Loch Ness Incident". Check out all the familiar faces in the trailer:



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Let's talk horror movies -- or rather horror movie music.



Blogger rhsmith at The Movie Morlocks blog from Turner Classic Movies gives us the rundown on some hefty collections of music from horror movies from days long past and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of spooky music and how said music landed on vinyl.

Read his full post here.

Smith also has a great list of pop music used in the movies in highly original ways. It's a trend I go for too - often bringing whole new legions of fame to old (or new) pop songs. Like the way the song "Mad World" infects everything in the movie "Donny Darko."

Smith offers a list of his favorites in this post, a collection of tunes and movies which is easily as nerdly as the above mentioned discussions of comic books. Read his list of favorites here.

Camera Obscura: Batman Dead?; Swedish Vampire Children; 4th Futurama Movie News

I do take much pleasure in writing about movies -- as this holiday-shortened week offers numerous Camera Obscura posts on this humble and lovable blog. Let's get rolling.

Batman is dead. Well, really Bruce Wayne is dead.

Or is he? Killed off in the comic book format this month by writer Grant Morrison, the fanboys all wonder if Bruce is indeed gone or just hiding out after he has learned his father is not dead after all.

Speaking of comic books, the upcoming movie version of the 80's cult hit "The Watchmen" truly looks promising. Also just released, heaps of action figures based on the characters from the comic (which are really characters based on old comic book characters) are ready for you. Dr. Manhattan is impressive, but discriminating fans all want the one for Rorschach.


Best Action Figure of 2008, however, goes to the brand new Barbie version of Tippi Hedren in "The Birds". Yes, all children love their Hitchcock action figures ... and if no one is making an all-Hitchcock-action-figure collection then they really should - Norman Bates is sort of obvious here, but me, I'd like the two action sets for "North By Northwest", which should be the Crop Duster and Field Playset and the Mount Rushmore Action Scene. (HT to Cinebeats for the news.)

A close second place Best Action Figure of '08 must go to the one of li'l backwards-spider-walking-down-the-stairs Regan from "The Exorcist".

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Last weekend movie audiences were all in a frenzy for "Twilight", but a new vampire movie which has been raking in awards at festivals around the world is the upcoming Swedish-made vampire film called "Let The Right One In". The movie is getting amazingly strong reviews.

Like "Twilight", this tale is based on a best-selling novel and is a sort of love story, but mostly a rather poetic look at kids who are trapped in a world where safety seems to be a luxury. The lead character is 12-year-old Oskar, a frequent victim of bullies young and old. But one day a little girl named Eli moves into his neighborhood, and they become fast friends. She too is a 12-year-old ... except she has been 12 for some 200 years and she is a vampire. And she really, really gets angry if you try to hurt Oskar.



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And since it is the gift-giving time of year and I've mentioned the dolls -- whoops!! action figures -- above, here is one more for the movie fan in your life -- a cookie jar design from the "Alien" movie series. Details here.



And finally, the 4th and final "Futurama" movie gets a release date and a title.

Camera Obscura; Morristown's Ballet Movie Premieres; Ultra-Groovy 60s Movies; New Futurama on DVD

On Saturday at Rose Center's Perk Prater Hall, a movie premiere will be held for "Morristown - A Ballerina Love Story". It was all shot in town, especially amidst the old Downtown area and on the overhead sidewalks, and at Ashley Cunningham's Dance Studio. The movie is already available on DVD, which you can order here at the film's web site.

The story follows several dancers and their passions on and off the dance floor and it looks like a fine bit of work. WBIR reported on the story and offered this behind the scenes look at the film. The showing in Morristown Saturday is at 1:30 pm, no admission charge. Here's a trailer:


Best of luck to these very talented performers.

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The first theatrical film version of the James Bond novel "Casino Royale" from 1967 boast a 1960s cast of huge stars (Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Orson Welles, David Niven, Woody Allen), has 6 James Bonds, was written and directed by half a dozen pros, and gets a new special DVD release this week.

The eye-popping visuals are matched with an excellent score by Burt Bacharach and some truly wild story twists and turns as it spoofs the Bond genre. I've always liked the movie -- not because it is great, but simply because it is so ambitious and (at times) a spectacular failure. This new disc captures the movie and the experience of making it quite well:

Was it censored, assembled from bits by Frankenstein, or did everyone quit halfway through? The answer, courtesy of an exhaustive disc docu and commentary is, "All of the Above."

It includes the ultra-weird performance of Deborah Kerr as M's wife, a Scottish matriarch whose madness is so hammy it could fill an entire deli. Take a peek if you've never seen this Technicolor trip of a lifetime:



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Speaking of ultra-trippy 60s movies, you can catch the amazing version of Marlowe's classic play Doctor Faustus from 1967 on Turner Classic Movies at 6:15 pm. The movie was made after Burton had a highly successful run of the stage play and was made at the height of the frenzied tabloid reporting on his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor, who plays Helen of Troy in the movie.

Cinebeats has a great write-up on the movie and it's history here. As she writes:

"Together with the skilled international crew that included cinematographer Gábor Pogány, this group of creative people helped give Doctor Faustus an impressive look and stunning visual style even though most of the film was seemingly shot on rather small sets. Horror fans who enjoy Roger Corman’s Poe films, Hammer studio productions and Mario Bava’s Italian thrillers might be surprised by how much Burton’s Doctor Faustus seems to resemble horror films from the same period."


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The third of four Futurama movies has arrived on DVD, titled "Bender's Game".

I love this series so much, and I've liked all the movies, despite some shortcomings. This time, the wise-cracking Bender leaps into the world of Dungeons & Dragons as he tries to create a sense of imagination within his circuits, and yes, hilarious and crazed results follow.

The makers of the show continue to excel at sci-fi comedy, and there just ain't much of that around ... well, comedy sci-fi on purpose.

Also worth noting on DVD is the result of the very obscure TV show "Quark", starring Richard Benjamin, from 1977, created by Buck Henry. The show is almost indescribable, but I have friends who just loved it and quote it to this day.

This review of the DVD set tries to capture the plot-line:

"Set in the year 2222, Adam Quark (Richard Benjamin), captain of the interstellar garbage scow, the United Galaxies Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, scours the Milky Way, seeking out...space baggies full of trash. Relegated to the most prosaic of United Galaxy duties, Quark longs for adventure and excitement as the captain of his own star cruiser, but for now, cleaning up other people's mess is his main assignment - that is, until "The Head" starts giving him more dangerous assignments (often by default, since no one else is out in the middle of nowhere more often than Quark), missions that Quark often lucks his way into completing.

Aiding Quark in his unconventional missions are his, to say the least, unconventional crew members. Ficus Pandorata (Richard Kelton) is the ship's science officer, an emotionless Vegeton (plant humanoid) who engages in endlessly convoluted philosophical discussions with Adam. Betty One and Betty Two (Cyb and Patricia Barnstable) are the gorgeous navigators and pilots of the ship. One of the Bettys is a clone (both of them deny it), and both are in love with Adam - only Adam can't determine who the "real" Betty is, and thus, keeps his distance. The ship's engineer is Gene/Jean (Tim Thomerson), a "transmute" with a complete set of both male and female chromosomes."

I say give it a look - it's an amazing bit of TV which TV was never ready for.

Camera Obscura: Weirdest Halloween Candy; Scariest Halloween Ever

The fear is palpable. Ominous winds blow cold and harsh, and bitter despair and endless melodrama mark the last days of the 2008 presidential election. Change - of any kind - awaits us as we move away from the bleak failures of the past 8 years and it grips voters whose future Fates continue to be just unknown and unknowable. Nov. 4th is the scariest day of this year for some.

Whispered rumors of the Democrats reaching for elected authority turn now to shrieks of sheer horror as The End approaches. The horror, the horror. A prophecy of secret socialism and grim predictions of the end of Boy Scouting and the Rise of Gayness chill the barely beating heart of the Republican party. It's cheesy overacting worthy of the most amateurish B-movies ever made.Yes, Halloween '08 has dire shadows made by voting machines and not by hordes of costumed creatures wandering the streets in search of sweets.

Even the candy one might receive for trick or treats seems odd this year - more than usual.

The list of the Weirdest Halloween Candy includes such items as:

Spider Sacs

Flesh Fries and Chili Fingers

Zit Poppers

A full list and review of these oddities can be found here. And trust me, I did not show images on this page of the really nasty stuff (that might be chocolate in that diaper, but I would not eat it.)
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Here are a few more treats for you this Halloween:

A vast collection of some classic, some new and some just awful horror movies are yours for free viewing at Fancast. From "Night of the Living Dead" to "Blacula" and "The Giant Gila Monster" are here and many more.
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A fine list of more obscure scares to view at Bloody Disgusting.
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The Ultimate Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection is now available.
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And finally, the effects of staking a vampire - remember to put down some newspapers on the floor first:

Camera Obscura: Dance of The Dead Arrives; Palin Lands Sitcom?; Tarantino's WW2

For many months now I have been crowing with delight about my brother, who landed a part as a zombie extra in the horror/comedy "Dance of The Dead", filmed last summer in north Georgia. In addition to gaining fantastic reviews, the best news this week is that you can rent/buy it right now on DVD at yer favorite video/DVD outlet. So here's a preview ... and just kept telling yourself, it's only a high school zombie movie, it's only a high school zombie movie:


Dance of the Dead 2008
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Move over, Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live. Sarah Palin is aiming for her very own TV series, called "Cadillac Ranch". The set-up for the show is revealed here:

" ... it's about a female character who's a mayor in this town with the crazy family and the kids and the stay-at-home dad, and everyone couldn't help but think of Sarah Palin now that they've read it."

With her hilarious catch-phrase ('You Betcha!"), she might just make it. I suggest the producers add-in a Russian neighbor whose house is right next door.

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There is one and only one reason to read the magazine Entertainment Weekly - Stephen King's column. But Star Trek fans must have felt like they were "goin' down to Eden, brother" this week with the release of the full cast photos for the new "Star Trek" movie. My only thought when reading/seeing the tale via Cinematical was "Sylar is Spock"???

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Brad Pitt is taking the lead in the long-rumoured-and-now-finally-in-production of Quentin Trantino's World War II action tale "Inglourious Basterds" (that's Q.T.'s spelling of the title). And what's next for the action star -- would ya believe ... an outer-space version of Homer's "The Odyssey"? Rumor's say that "Road Warrior" director George Miller. Pitt is also slated to be a producer for the movie ... see, it starts out when this gang of apes gets lost on their way home from Troy and hitch a ride on a boat helmed by an insane Cap'n HAL ....

Speaking of Mr. Pitt, the most recent release date for the unusual romantic tale of a child born as an old man who ages backwards into youth "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", directed by the multi-talented David Fincher , is now slated for Jan. 2009. A spectacular preview is here.

Camera Obscura: Doomed Movie Marathon; Pie Fights on Film; New Romero Zombie Movie

There are fans and then there are fanatics - fans seek and watch and talk about movies, fanatics force life to accommodate their movie addictions. In recent years, the rise of the DVD has made it easier to become a fanatic, true, but you can always tell the difference between a fan and a fanatic.

A true fanatic is Richard of Doomed Moviethon. For the past few years, he's been keeping careful catalogs of the horror and cult movies he views, and he also gives you the lowdown on what happens when you create a stack of movies with a theme and watch them for endless hours. Past efforts already featured on the website include horror movies from the year 1976, 13 of them in 42 hours, or the Argento project, where he watched 13 of Argento's movies in 34 hours.

I get queasy just thinking about it. One must carefully prepare for such mind-bending journeys. Selecting the films for a marathon viewing session is tough enough, but then you must likewise create a store of food and drink, prepare your furniture arrangements, clear your schedule of interruptions, and get your mind right to commit to a few days to nothing but watching movies.

He also keeps a blog of individual movies he views, and his selections are always fascinating and sometimes quite obscure. There are decades and decades of films from Grade Z to Grade A and only the strongest dare create a marathon of Grade Z movies because after a few hours, your brain starts playing tricks on you. That happens even if the movies are Grade A, it's a time thing.

I confess I am a marathon viewer too, have been since VHS first made it possible. It isn't too hard to find friends willing to watch 3 in a row, but only the most hearty souls will sign on for 10 or 15 movies in one gulp. I've never had much problem to commit to 20 hours of horror/cult movies, but there have also been some light marathons, like all the Pink Panther movies in one setting, and others I know have downed multiple seasons of The Sopranos or The Wire with much ease.

Make no mistake - this isn't escapism, it's work, people, brain-twisting and muscle-breaking work. Only the strong can survive.

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Watching some of the political wrangling on the floor of Congress or out and about with the campaign trails this year, I've often wished and prayed a good pie fight would break out. Pie fights work best when they occur among folks dressed in fine clothes. A clown pie fight, for example, just is not funny. Cinematical offers a selection of great pie fits on film here, wisely including one from The Three Stooges. These guys are the indisputable kings of pie fights - the sound effects, the textures of the pie fillings, the crusts, and the well-heeled societies which quickly devolve into a pastry rage - these are their hallmarks. Here's one fine example:



The Cinematical link above also features a fine scene in the comedy "The Great Race", which becomes a technicolor blur of pie fillings which literally coat the walls of the kitchen. Tony Curtis, as the film's hero, seems to escape pie dangers ... for a while. And Natalie Wood just looks fantastic when covered in pies and whipped cream. (shut up, i know what that sounds like, so just shut up)

I've wanted to make a short film for a long time now which would incorporate the style of a John Woo Hong Kong shoot-em-up with a pie fight. There's this image in my head of someone leaping sideways in slo-mo hurling pies from each hand as the room around them is pock-marked by pie debris. Yes, I have strange ideas stuck in my head.

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MOVIE NEWS

A new Moby Dick movie -- without a crazed Cap'n Ahab?? The Russian director of "Wanted" and "Nigh Watch/Day Watch", Timur Bekmambetov, is eyeing a version of the Melville novel that would be more "Orca on steroids" with lotsa CGI carnage and Ahab the hero who saves the seas from the beast.

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Romero is back behind the camera for a new zombie movie, which does not have a title yet. No matter. Details here at the Port Dover, Ontario website and here at AICN.

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With awards and praise piling up for the AMC channel for their series "Mad Men", the cable channel is developing several new mini-series, like the remake of the 60s sci-fi show "The Prisoner" and announced plans this week for an adaptation of the award-winning sci-fi novel "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson. That's a very good book about the first human colony on Mars, with heaps of political drama driving the tale.

Camera Obscura: "Burn Notice"; "Fringe"; Those Coen Brothers

I took it on myself to watch some new/returning television shows, despite the risk of being exposed to The Awfulness.

The good news is a couple of shows which have gotten a small amount of critical praise, but which I have enjoyed immensely. Like the USA network show "Burn Notice." It's a very smart take on the con job and the private investigator riff with a great cast, including the supporting work of actor Bruce Campbell, a smarmy and world weary con artist. He's had shows all over the map on television (I was partial to "Adventures of Brisco County Jr.") so I'm glad to see his talents put to good use. Gabrielle Anwar looks most sexy, but her character usually has to be restrained from ripping into any problem with an AK-47. Sharon Gless is pure Mom-In-Miami, and has a perpetual cigarette dangling from her mouth as she needles her way into her son's life. Her son, played by Jeffrey Donovan, is the star of the show - a former CIA operative who got turned out of the agency for nefarious and mysterious reasons. He's trying to figure out the why of that, how to return to service and works as a fixer and a PI in the meantime with the help of Campbell and Anwar.

Shot with stylish flourishes, the show really plays like a 21st century version of "Maverick", a more intense "Rockford Files", with lots of humor and a steady tough-guy narration about how to play the con. The show does have sort of an over-arching theme of Donovan angling his way back into the CIA, but each episode stands alone as complex schemes involving the innocent and the guilty play out in the Miami sunshine. The show wraps up it's second season next week, and I hope it returns again next summer. It's great fun, has strong characters played at excellent levels and blends a lot of TV private detective shtick into a new brew.

I also made use of the online service of Hulu this week since I missed the premiere of the new J.J. Abrams series, "Fringe." Hulu was quick to post the episode and the sound and images were crisp, with just a few commercials, so I'll probably try them again. I just don't have the luxury of simply patterning my evenings around what is on prime-time TV so being able to pick both what and when I watch is a most welcome change.

As for the show -- well, Abrams is a savvy creator and storyteller. As with "Lost" and "Alias", he plays around with television conventions and expectations very well. And he can certainly create interesting characters. This pilot for "Fringe" ran 90 minutes, but might have been better served running at two hours ... perhaps. Maybe it was best to race through the set-up for the show rather than let the goofiness of it linger.

The basic set-up: super-secret government task force is tracking a worldwide series of bizarre beyond-science events, from teleportation to earthquake machines and a plucky FBI agent, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), gets drawn into the mysterious group. But what made the show work for me was the character of Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), formerly a cutting-edge scientist and researcher who has spent the last 17 years in a mental ward. He's babbling, potentially dangerous, and of course, a genius. Sort of like a cross between The Professor from Gilligan's Island, if he had been a secret Pentagon expert who went a little crazy.

It was a decent start for an X-Files wannabe, but as usual, it will take several more episodes to see if it's worthwhile or just a little too silly. If nothing else, it's a chance to explore Abrams' work while I wait for new episodes of "Lost" and his reboot of the "Star Trek" franchise.

One more show I'll mention, but I classify it as a pure guilty pleasure, so your enjoyment will vary. The show is "Eureka" on the Sci-Fi network. It's a town full of scientists and researchers in a secret bajillion dollar complex who seem to always be creating some apocalyptic devices each week and the local sheriff, a non-scientific dude, muddles into each mess with his intuitive crime-solving and common sense nature to resolve it all.

What I like best in the show is that it's collected all the bizarre and complex tales from old pulp fiction sci-fi into a single town, so there are plenty of astounding events and addled geniuses. They fling theories and jargon around faster than you can say Beam Me Up Scotty, and I just like that kind of thing.

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While the Oscar crowd raved about "No Country For Old Men" by the Coen brothers, I've been in a sizable community of fans for all of their movies since their very first, "Blood Simple". This week, they offer up another black comedy "Burn After Reading", a satire on the spy movie genre and populated with some moronic characters played by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. A lot of critics just don't - and never have - been able to process their movies while viewers laugh and enjoy their work.

A fine example of this split is in "The Big Lebowski", which got a deluxe DVD treatment this week in a double-disc collection which even comes packaged in a bowling ball. The movie, like all of their work, is layered with comedy and satire and unforgettable characters.

Here's the bottom-line - I have liked every single one of the Coens' movies and to hell with box office returns and critical acceptance. Their original screenplays always pop and sizzle with hilarious dialog and fascinating characters, the cinematography is flawless, the music always perfect, just like the acting. One of their lesser-appreciated movies was the black and white noir crime tale, "The Man Who Wasn't There." As with all their other movies, it looks fantastic and it's crammed with sly wit. A near-sociopathic barber (Billy Bob Thorton) and his wife (McDormand) get mired in the murder of a local retail store kingpin. The attorney they hire, played by Tony Shaloub, arrives and offers this take on "reasonable doubt" and physics and perception:



All of their films play within and around and mix film genres with incredible ease, able to be both aspects of the past and the modern. They make movies you like to watch many times, whether to grab bits of dialog, laugh, or simply marvel at their skills.

Camera Obscura: "Honey West' Returns; JCVD is a Hit; Del Toro Does Frankenstein; plus a Zombie Puppet Musical!

I heard rumblings about the movie "J.C.V.D." a few months back - b-movie action guy Jean Claude Van Damme stars in a wildly satiric comedy as himself, caught in battles over child custody, his problematic career, media swarms and a bank robbery.

The movie is out now the Toronto Film Festival and got raves at the Cannes Festival this summer.

One review, like others, is stunned by his performance:

"That JCVD is able to show you a new face to its star and subject at all makes it a major accomplishment. That it does so with such an incredible sense of style, insight, and pure entertainment value makes it a revelation. Ladies and gentlemen, after spending decades turning out lowest-common-denominator action pictures Jean Claude Van Damme has just made a truly great film. No matter what criteria you may use to judge it - scripting, cinematography, humour, action, even dramatic performance - JCVD is one remarkable piece of work. Yes, I flat out love this film. "

And a trailer --





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And since I'm posting wee movies today, this is for all the folks who are beyond being zombified by the ongoing political debacle in America and for zombie fans too. And musical fans. And puppet fans. Oh, just watch it.



I love the one zombie back up guy there just mumbling the lyrics and sort of off the beat. And if your jaw falls off while singing, it's gonna affect the performance. Yep.

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"Hellboy" director Guillermo del Toro is gonna be busy, busy, busy. He's already at work on a pair of movies adapted from "The Hobbit", and this week he announced a monster deal with Universal. Remakes of "Frankenstein", "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", plus a version of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" ... and a new TV series based on "Hellboy." Whew!

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HBO rolls out their new vampire TV show, "TrueBlood", from "Six Feet Under" creator Alan Ball, on Sunday night after months of obligatory online viral ad campaigns. The story is set in an America where vampires have 'come out of the coffin' and now seek some respect and rights, the ones due them as 'undead Americans'. OK. The show stars Anna Paquin. One blogger tackles the viral marketing and offers a pilot episode review here.

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The internet sci-fi musical comedy known as "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" released the soundtrack this week, according to the first of the Horrible Newsletters in my mailbox:

"The Official "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" Motion Picture Soundtrack is now available on iTunes. Internationally too. Thanks to all of you, we're already one of the top sellers in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and the list goes on! It is great for listening in your car, at work, while working out, it makes a great gift, do I sound like a whore? I'm whoring now, aren't I? Anyway, spread the word, tell a friend, say it was Horrible..."

Go here for more info.

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A fantastic arrival at long last on DVD, the complete series of the 1965 TV show, "Honey West." If you haven't seen or if you are one of those folks like me who recall it fondly, this is a must have. Honey made American TV history:

"Certainly the character of Honey West wasn't TV's first independent woman, or even its first female private detective. But she was the first TV action heroine (in the U.S. TV market, at least) to be modeled specifically after her male counterparts: namely in this case; James Bond. And even more importantly, she was the star of the show. In no way did Honey "answer" to her bigger, stronger, hotheaded partner Sam. It was her name on the agency, and she ran it her way, despite Sam's constant hectoring for her to play it safe and let him protect her. Not that she needed his protection. Equally skilled in the martial arts, Honey could keep up with Sam in hand-to-hand combat, small weapons proficiency, and in utilizing all those tricky little gadgets Sam thought up for audio and video surveillance. And she did it all while being a most...aggressively erotic woman - something that TV audiences regularly tuning into the housewives on Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Lucy Show didn't see as a lead character in a weekly series. That kind of thoroughly independent, sexualized (while not being punished for her looks and appetites) woman was a first for American TV audiences. Mrs. Emma Peel would have a bigger, longer-lasting impact, but Honey West was there on American TVs first."

Camera Obscura: "Doomsday" Rocks; New Heinlein Film; "Appaloosa"; and More Movie News

After a few weeks of uninteresting movies and/or news of films on the way, it's great to have some goodies to offer.

Question: what happens when two of the world's most outlandish directors- Takashi Miike and Quentin Tarantino - join to make a movie? You get "Sukiyaki Western Django". Sort of looks like a MGM-Technicolor musical version of Sergio Leone. Opens in limited release on August 29th. Are you ready for the trailer??


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The recent DVD release of the unrated action-packed movie which had some of the worst marketing of the year and left the movie to die quickly at the box office is a must-see for sci-fi and action fans. "Doomsday" is the most recent from Scottish director/writer Neil Marshall. His first two films are likewise excellent genre pieces, "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent". He's inventive, imaginative and makes some truly intense movies (meaning you should make the effort to see all three movies). He makes sharp choices in casting, composition, pacing and each of his movies deliver far more than you might expect.

"Doomsday", as Marshall explains in the DVD, is his homage to early John Carpenter movies, especially "Escape From New York" and to "Road Warrior." The result is high-octane fun and mayhem and easily rests very well with those other two classics. And yes, the car-chase finale is almost as good as the end of "Road Warrior". He's not ripping off these movies, he's saluting them.

In "Doomsday's" futuristic world, the Snake Plissken/Mad Max part falls to actress Rhona Mitra (as Colonel Eden Sinclair) and she is every bit as tough, world-weary and relentless as those guys. The story begins as a brutal viral outbreak in Scotland causes the U.K. to wall it all off, leaving the dead and any survivors to fend for themselves in hopes of halting the killer disease. In the evacuation at the time, the young girl Eden is separated from her mom and even has her eye shot out. But, decades later, the disease starts to appear in London and turns out corrupt government officials have known that survivors are thriving in the walled-zone. Maybe there's a cure. Time to send in Snake - I mean Col. Eden (complete with an eye-patch and a cyber eyeball to boot).

Like "Escape" and "Road Warrior" all the set-up for the movie rolls out fast to get you into the action of her adventures. She's joined by a top-notch military squad (who last a bit longer than usual in such action yarns) and discovers a world overrun with madness and cannibalism. One of the leaders in this nightmarish landscape is a character named Sol, and in one amazing scene, he takes to the stage like a rock star, the descendant of Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger, and super-charges the crowd into a frenzy.

The movie isn't mean to be more than it is - escapist sci-fi, a little social commentary, and loads of atmosphere. Add in some fine character performances from Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, and David O'Hara (who did great work in "The Departed") and this is more than just B-movie hijinks. It's a roaring good time. Director Marshall has turned in 3 great flicks, and his next projects are directing Hugh Jackman in the thriller "Drive" and a horror-themed western called "Sacrilege" (which he calls "Unforgiven" as told by H.P. Lovecraft).

Folks, I've picked many a director/writer in the past based on their skills with basic genre movies and predicted they would make major marks in cinema and haven't been wrong yet. Just two such names include David Cronenberg and Peter Jackson. So check out Neil Marshall's work and I'm sure you'll see just what I mean.

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An actor who both Cronenberg and Jackson helped make a star is Viggo Mortensen and he has two movies on the way this fall which will likely make him even more well-known and respected. The first is the much-anticipated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road".

And also out this fall is a western he stars in with Ed Harris, "Appaloosa", based on Robert Parker's best-selling book about two hired guns brought into to battle an no-good rancher, with Harris also directing. Co-stars include Jeremy Irons and Renee Zellweger. The trailer was just released:


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Director Alex Proyas ("Dark City" and "I, Robot") is tackling one of the biggest names ever in the sci-fi field, Robert Heinlein. It's one of his lesser-known novels, first published in 1942. "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathon Hoag". Hoag has a disturbing mystery to solve - he has no memory of what he has been doing during his waking hours, and so hires a detective team to find out. The discovery, of course, has consequences which no one expects.

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One of the legendary names of Bad Cinema is Herschell Gordon Lewis, famed for ultra-low budget drive-in fodder with gallons of really cheesy blood and gore effects. I've seen more than a few of them, and unless you're some kind of horror-movie fanatic, I can't suggest one worth watching. Of course, here in the 21st century, Hollywood (or maybe Burbank or some place in Idaho, I'm not sure) thinks that it's remake time.

HSG's single great accomplishments were his titles: "The Gore-Gore Girls", "2000 Maniacs", "Blood Feast", etc. etc.

But a new remake just landed on DVD of "The Wizard of Gore". And it actually has some decent reviews and that's due to some strong production values and a casting coup of the ultra-strange actor Crispin Glover in the lead role of Montag The Magnificent, a magician whose show is pure Grand Guignol as he goes about dis-assembling the bodies of volunteers from the audience. Glover is joined by some other famous odd actors, like Jeffery Combs and Brad Dourif, plus Bijou Phillips and top billing is also given to the 21st Century .... um .... models, known as The Suicide Girls. Sort of the pierced-and-tattooed Playmate wannabes.

I almost rented it -- almost. But after reading some reviews, hey, it might be more fun than say, sticking a fork in my eye. There's a trailer for the movie which you can see here - it's a bit too bloody/nasty for this humble yet lovable blog. Check it out here. I have to admit it, Glover and Dourif look like they chew up the scenery with wild abandon.

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For you honest-to-Pete horror fanatics might like to take a look at the 3-Disc Amicus Collection. Director Roy Ward Baker offers some fine and funny commentary about the company which was sort of the low end of Hammer films.

Camera Obscura: Best Movie Blog of All Time

Gird your grids, kids.

Today's edition of movie news and reviews is a Super Giant Exxxtreeeeeme Summer Edition Madhouse Marathon, making this post quite possibly the best movie blog of all time and space, as the Twins of Hype and Hoopla ascend the Heavens on fantastical wings of Godlike ....ahem,sorry. Oh sure, the country is tanking on addictions to oil and power and we're in hock way past our great-great-great-grandchildren's eyeballs to China, and we're like that sleazy slightly drunken uncle who's always around to remind The Family they have lost their grip on relevance and authority.

But it's summer! So ...

After months of rumors the first preview trailer arrives for (what will be) the biggest online hit of the summer: "Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog". The premise - a musical sci-fi comedy web-series about the always thwarted would-be arch-evil nemesis Dr. Horrible. Made late last fall during the writers strike by writer/director Joss Whedon ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer") and here we go:


Nathan Fillion ("Firefly") plays the always victorious Captain Hammer and other cast members include Adam Baldwin and Felicia Day. Go ahead and bookmark the Official Site for Dr. Horrible now - it starts soon!
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Quentin Tarantino, the late Sydney Pollack, and Bill Murray are just some of the special guests for the new Turner Classic Movies channel series "Under The Influence", hosted by Elvis Mitchell and debuting in July. Mitchell asks guests to explain the movie experiences that changed their lives.

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Futurama's new DVD movie "Beast With A Billion Backs" came out Tuesday and is sitting right there by my television at this very moment, about to be viewed. This time, our intrepid and idiotic heroes encounter hideous anime tentacle porn.

"Arrested Development" star David Cross voices the nasty beast, and Stephen Hawking returns too, to shoot lasers out of his eyes, and even Robot Satan is back! 'Nuff said!!

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I have decided I am living in one of those rare times when Really Good Things populate the pop culture of America. Sure, the country is tanking on addictions to oil and power and were in hock way past our great-great-great-grandchildren's eyeballs to China, and we're like that sleazy slightly drunken uncle who's always around to remind The Family they have lost their grip on relevance and authority.

But, still - Really Good Things. We've reached this pinnacle moment in cinema where we - the unruly audiences of Cult Films and Revisionist Genres - have successfully taken over the mainstream movie world. Comic book heroes from Batman to Silver Surfer to the X-Men rule the box office; fantasy books by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling have achieved unprecedented success, Christopher Lee alone now holds the Mantle of Evil which reaches from his cape as Dracula and his scars as Frankenstein and the withered remains of The Mummy to Lord Saruman to Fu Manchu and even Willy Wonka's dad (we won't mention Count Dooko, because George Lucas should just be ashamed).

It's truly a Golden Age when technology and time have collided to bring us gifted creators of cinema magic - Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter and his entire Pixar team - to name just a few.

For the first time since the nefarious sirens of the 1960s and 1970s appeared and brought fierce, proud, highly capable and unstoppable beauty to the Women of Cinema, we can watch the likes of female action heroes today such as Angelina Jolie, Rosario Dawson and Asia Argento. I'd watch those ladies read the phone book if someone filmed it. Hell, I'd go see live shows of it.

I watched Asia this week in "Boarding Gate", a French-made noir which turns from tragic Paris love story to brutal Hong Kong street thriller. Sure, the movie, being French, moves far too slow at first, but ramps it up quite well by the time she takes that gun into her hands.

Jolie gets busy again this weekend in "Wanted" as a professional killer in an action film based on a comic book. You don't like her or her politics or her kids? Who cares?? I love to watch her on screen.

All I'm sayin' ... Really Good Things ... now if we could just fix television and kill the Un-Reality stuff.

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Oh, noooo, this post ain't over yet!

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I finally saw one of the very Best Horror Films of 2007 this week - the made-in-Georgia horror/sc-fi film "The Signal" and was most impressed with it. It debuted at the Rome, GA International Film Festival and has been gathering an impressive collection of reviews.

The story is set in the fictional city of Terminus (Atlanta) and focuses on a young adulterous couple. They wake, she has to go home to her husband, and reality unravels into an apocalyptic nightmare. A signal of unknown origin takes over all television, radio, phone, etc and it makes people go just crazy enough to justify murder, endlessly. However the movie takes a unique view of these events through the lives of the husband, his wife and her lover - making a three-part story which is by turns terrifying, hilarious and terrifying again. Three writer-directors from Atlanta, David Bruckner, David Bush, and Jacob Gentry, take each chapter and each does a masterful job with their tale.

I was partial to the middle section, which turned the terror into high comedy as a survivors try and gather for a party in suburbia. There's buckets of gore aplenty in the movie, and actor Scott Poythress as Clark nearly steals the film as the landlord who winds up in the middle of the battle between the three main characters. He even dons his own tinfoil hat by the third section of the movie to preserve his brain from the evil signals and keeps the hero on his journey.


Slide this one somewhere between 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and Cloverfield, and add in a loving homage to movies like Texas Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes. It's a brutal trip, shot in just 13 days by some very talented performers and creators.

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Even the most mindless summer of movie fun can have it's serious cinema too. So on a final note today, take a look at the very literate and compelling Jasminembla's Weekly. Her recent post on the folktales about The Man in the Moon is greatly researched and fascinating. She also did a recent take on vampires and zombies.

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Since "The Signal" put me into apocalyptic thoughts, I discovered this entry online about Hacking The Entire Planet to bring about doomsday scenarios. It's a time-honored genre event. And once again, technology has provided us with ways today to smash it all apart. Hey, if we can create global climate change by accident, why not alter the world by design? Or, as mentioned above, what about the Moon?

One of my favorite world-destroying events was in the animated TV show, "The Tick". In one episode Chairface Chippendale devises a dastardly plot to literally carve his name onto the surface of the Moon. Thank goodness for The Tick, who stops his plan -- although only after the gigantic letters of C-H-A have already been cut into the lunar surface. For the rest of the series, whenever the Moon was in a shot, you could still see CHA on the Moon.

Interviewer: Well, can you... blow up the world?
Tick: Egad. I hope not. That's where I keep all my stuff.

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EXTRA: The 34th Annual Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror's Saturn Awards were handed out this week. Big winners were "Enchanted" and "Lost". The list included:

Best science fiction film, "Cloverfield"
Best horror film, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Best action/adventure/thriller film: "300"

The full list is here.

Camera Obscura: Al Gore's Opera; New Coen Brothers; 'Stuck'; Learn Filmmaking Secrets; A New Futurama Movie

More crackling comedy is ahead from Joel and Ethan Coen in the movie "Burn After Reading", a farce about the CIA and would-be spies starring Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, George Clooney and Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton. A brand new trailer hit the internet this week:



Opening this week is a sort of comedy/thriller/true story called "Stuck", from director Stuart Gordon, whose career stretches from the H.P. Lovecraft cult hit "Re-Animator" to a very shocking adaptation of playwright David Mamet's "Edmond". But for "Stuck", he turns to true crime for the story of a woman who hits a homeless man with her car, embedding him in the windshield and then just decides to drive home and deal with the whole thing later. Yeah, can't make up a tale like that. You've got to see the trailer to catch what's happening here at IGN.

IGN also has a trailer for the Pang Brothers American remake of their thriller, "Bangkok Dangerous", due out soon. The movie is still about the dangers of being a hitman, but the deaf-mute killer in the original is now Nicolas Cage, who is not deaf or mute. The trailer is here.

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Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins has his own web site where he gladly dives into forums to talk about every aspect of filmmaking - lighting, using cameras, and much more - which you can explore right here. It's a mini-filmmaking class loaded with insights.

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Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" is going to be an opera. No I am not kidding.

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The Beast With A Billion Backs is the title of the new movie from "Futurama", the second of four DVD movies, and is out in late June and picks up once again with the gang from Planet Express. Here's a trailer:

Camera Obscura: 'Diary of the Dead'; Get A Life-Size Indiana Jones; And Laser Cats!

"When there is no more room in hell, the dead will create a MySpace page."

Let's talk about zombies.

Shambling undead humans who rise up from the grave to feast on human flesh were once the fevered imaginings of odd readers and bizarre writers and film-fans such as myself. Today, zombies are cultural icons. All across the globe, everyday folks will slap on some gory make-up and gather for Zombie Walks, and the movies about them and with them are everywhere, some very funny, some very scary and some very poorly made. The literary world reeks of rotting flesh and survival guides flourish to the point one may well wonder if some people know they are still creatures of the imagination.

The guru of zombies is George Romero and his most recent movie hit DVD this week, "Diary of the Dead". His dark fantasies have fired up imaginations for decades, movies that have skewered society with visceral glee. Students and teachers and film critics and cultural anthropologists pontificate on the Romero Zombie with frequent essays and doctoral thesis papers. In Romero's movies, the story is more than just a scary tale told in the dark - they are also stories about us all, about how we react and respond to disaster and destruction.

"Diary" continues such themes with a digital skewer. It's the YouTube Internet Zombie Age in his film, and more than any of his previous movies, this one pushes the undead into a vague fearful background and the foreground is full of cameras and people obsessed with them. The story begins with a narrator who says the following images were all captured via a variety of media sources, which the narrator is compelled to send out via the Internet. We then see a group of would-be low-budget horror movie filmmakers whose shoot is cut short when the radios begin crackling with reports of the rising undead. Quickly, the group gathers up and begins to flee, all of their actions being "documented" by an obsessed director named Jason.

Just as quickly, the viewer gets inundated with images within images, frames within frames. Our hardy survivors meet other survivors, but no matter what they do or where they go, they begin to die and transform into the undead. It is the camera and the cameraman (or woman) who remain the focus of the film. Though horrified and terrorized, the characters can't stop observing themselves as they are being destroyed. In one scene a character shoots a zombie and then passes the gun to someone else, saying "It's too easy to use". Moments later, after another attack, someone passes a camera off to someone else saying the same line "It's too easy to use."

Romero conceived of his idea to be an online movie only at first, and his MySpace page remains quite active. He hits all the aspects of the constant barrage of information, from cell phones to blogs to videogames , citizen journalism and surveillance cameras. And he notes too that even if the zombies devour every human, all those digitized details will remain long after all life is gone.

Does all of that information have any value? Towards the end of the movie, a comment is offered that all the billions of voices captured and sent around the world have no provided more truth or more illumination - instead it has deafened us, made us less sure of everything.

For the DVD release, 5 short amateur films submitted via MySpace are included in the extras and they're pretty good too - imaginative and spooky and funny takes on the zombie apocalypse. And I do have some complaints about the movie - mostly that Romero found some really bad actors, some of the worst in any of his movies. But "Diary" is more about the hardware, not the software, and the hardware wins out in the end.

One other aspect of all of Romero's zombie tales I truly like is that there is never a really clear explanation of a cause or a solution. How one might survive is considered, but if it's even worth surviving has always been his biggest question.

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MOVIE NEWS

Also rising up from the long ago this weekend is Indiana Jones in "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." If you just can't get enough Indy and crave more, then perhaps you can bid on a life-sized Indiana Jones to place in your own home. It's being offered on eBay, with bids starting at $50,000.

Another attempt at resurrection arrives from the director of not-very-good "Sahara", Breck Eisner. He's working on a new version of "Flash Gordon" and "Creature From The Black Lagoon." Keeping his career alive at this point is a notable feat.

A blogger worked some liveblogging for Quentin Tarantino's two-hour talk about his movies, which you can read here.

The movie "16 Candles" has just been re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies. The result is here.

See the latest on the new animated movie "Space Chimps and Patrick ", featuring the voices of Andy SambergWarburton. What I want to know is when will someone greenlight a feature movie of Samberg's SNL creation - "Laser Cats"??? I'll pay cash money in a heartbeat to see that!