If you give an award and nobody comes, does it still make any sense? This ancient philosophical question is about to be tested by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as they attempt to give Jean-Luc Godard an award on Nov. 13. The...
Want to make a movie? Great! Just send me money and I'll "produce" it for you. Maybe I'm being too obvious with the scam, but there may already be several people anxious to know how much and where to send it. So let me right off...
What connects Sylvester Stallone, Paranormal Activity 2 and a Swiss brand of condoms? Not much, since the Harry Popper condom brand is the one Hollywood-related item that seems to be actually making money. OK, the Swiss company claims that the name has nothing to do...
Whoever said you shouldn't beat a dead horse was obviously never in the DVD business. After all, you don't expect people to keep buying the same lousy version of the same crappy film over and over again, do you? Which is why we now have multiple...
If this were France, we all would be on vacation. But it isn't, and the citizens of the U.S. are expected to trudge away through stifling heat and the umpteenth Will Farrell movie like dutiful workers in a redo of Metropolis. It all sounds just...
Life was simpler before the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system. Americans were all married, had 2.5 children, and nobody engaged in sex. Yep, those were the days. But in 1966, the MPAA created the first version of the rating system and thereby opened the...
Friends, fan boys and countrymen, I come not to praise Comic-Con but to bury it. Oops, don't need to because Hollywood has beaten me to it. Now that the recently completed 41st Comic-Con Festival in San Diego has become a celebration of everything that has...
The cicadas have already begun their seasonal dirge, and despite the unprecedented heat, summer is moving into its final, sultry stage. Sultry, however, is not the word to describe the summer box office. Words like limp, mediocre and just plain dismal would seem more appropriate....
Whenever I feel lonely, I just remember that I have friends. Lots and lots of friends. People whom I have never met, never talked to and could never pick out of a line-up. Yep, they are almost like family. The social network revolution has become the...
There are various ways of guessing the future. In ancient Greece, the Oracle of Delphi is believed to have sniffed fumes from a crack in the earth. In other practices, people “read” the entrails of a goat or chicken. The prophecies could be pretty...