I liked M.T. Anderson's YA book Feed (one of the bleakest things I've ever read for kids or adults, a true heir to the mantle of Z for Zachariah and other super-bleak '70s dystopian YA fiction designed to give young people zero hope for their future). But this sounds fun.

My town has had a Hollywood Video for many years that is at a well-trafficked intersection and appears to be open, yet never once have I seen anyone parked there or going in or out. I always wondered if the place really was open or some kind of black hole. Now I'll never find out.

I see all the superficial similarities between Twin Peaks and Lost, but to me they seem totally different both in what works about them and what doesn't. TP is a stylized mood piece. Its color scheme, its landscape, its creepy use of music, those Douglas firs looming in the night and how they kinda sorta evoked dark…

No, the lesson of remakes is that unoriginal and familiar sells. Or boring sells. Or something. This movie sure was boring.

As someone who pays attention to the shitty movies released each and every single week (for my job), I am kinda shocked by how many of them are interchangeable and disposable in the manner of Saw sequels or "the talking-animal movie Mom can use to babysit the kiddos this week." No doubt about it, bad movies made for…

That quote about the nihilism applies to every Duras book I have read (and every Duras-scripted film I have seen). She was very big in French departments when I went to college/grad school, and I ultimately found her kind of empty, despite the reams of articles written about her colonial/gender politics.

I live in a (roughly) 97 percent white area, and Tyler Perry's dramas do horribly here. (The first Why Did I Get Married? didn't even open; this one may last two weeks.) However, the Madea movies seem to have some appeal. I saw one and there was a bunch of large white ladies laughing their asses off. Conclusion: Fat…

Since when does Juilliard offer "unsolicited" admission? I thought there was a long and grueling audition process. Did her dad just send them a tape and she got an admissions package in the mail?

Hot Tub Time Machine sounds funnier than it actually is. Sort of like Tropic Thunder. I wouldn't be surprised if it picks up due to word of mouth anyway, because it's sort of the R-rated, Gen X version of Wild Hogs and people loved that shitty movie.

Bright Star was too slow to get a big audience, even among the I-love-historical-chick-flicks crowd (it was too low-key for them). I liked it, but I'm a Keats fanatic.

I hated it too. I didn't realize I was such a Lewis Carroll nerd until now, but the Harry Pottering of his work made me remember that, goddamnit, "Jabberwocky" is an awesome nonsense poem and shouldn't be turned into a straight-faced epic.

Does anyone remember that X-Files episode…
… where the ordinary middle Americans (of course they were really Canadians) started killing people because the LED displays in their appliances told them to, but actually they were the victims of a government chemical-weapons experiment implemented via crop dusting?

Bad Blake and his old-rasping-drunk-meets-cutesy-kid movie were not awesome. But the Dude deserves a belated Oscar.

I saw Valentine's Day with someone who enjoys stupid rom coms as "guilty pleasures." She hated it. It sinks below the average stupid rom-com level achieved by The Holiday, He's Just Not That Into You, etc. The best comparison might be a community theater production written by the beshawled high-school English teacher…

I haven't read the books, but I saw this film. It was bizarrely plotless and drama free. At least The Notebook had lots of fucking and social-class tension, or so I have heard.

When I saw Avatar on opening night, the audience appeared to be composed largely of twentysomething comic-book nerds. The theater owner was pissed because it hadn't sold out like Twilight: New Moon did.

It's Oprah-y only in the sense that it concerns family troubles, aging, etc. I resisted it for a long time, and in retrospect I think there were parts that didn't work or should have been cut. But it's still a dazzling piece of writing and human insight.

It's not the lack of realism per se that's the problem. The classic romantic comedies (well, the few I've seen) also had contrived situations and required some suspension of disbelief.

I thought he was forgettable in Match Point, great in The Lookout (menacing), totally dull in Brideshead Revisited, bizarre in Watchmen.

There was a New Yorker piece last year about marketing movies that had a whole section on the marketing savvy and effort that went into New in Town. (Among other things, the PR genius profiled in the piece decided to change the poster and title.) It's amusing in retrospect, but then, maybe the film was just…