Yeah, it was expected — Tennant left when Russell T. Davies did, after all — but not confirmed until today. Capaldi had said last year that the BBC had asked him to stay for Series 11, but he also said hadn't made up his mind on that yet. And now he has.

Yeah, I see it strange that she would be *angry* about this, especially given how she keeps saying in promo interviews that Belle is her dream role. On the other hand, is this a sign that the "Beauty" remake hasn't turned out that well…?

Good for you!

And as Cracked recently pointed out, the big filmmakers are more and more often getting stuck doing other people's movies — i.e. franchise films and remakes — rather than fresher material they can put their own unique stamps on.

I get a feeling I wouldn't get much out of "La La Land" either. I was never especially interested in it, as much as I enjoy musicals, and now the recent ads make it look like something trying way too hard to make me love it. And I do not like being pushed.

"Santa Claus: The Movie" — another movie I saw as a kid. That is one underrated movie, even if it takes some goofy plot turns in the second half. It certainly didn't deserve the often mean-spirited reviews it got at the time, much less to flop at the box office. The producers and writers were the same guys who…

Also, the first one especially comes off as an almost quiet movie at times, compared to what's being made now.

I saw that "Jack and the Beanstalk" film as a kid in the late 1980s at a summertime free-movies-in-the-park event. Ah, for the old days when all kinds of crazy fluff came kids' way…

Not much this weekend. I'm starting a few things, but the only thing I finished was "Millennium Snow" Volume 2. At this point, the manga basically plays like a gentler, funnier version of the "Twilight" series (which I partook little of beyond the graphic novel adaptation of the first book) with more likable…

This would also explain "Speed"'s BP nomination in 1994, though that was an unusually good year for movies that cleaned up at the box office and at awards ("Pulp Fiction", "Forrest Gump"). Even in 1995 a straight-up fantasy movie was nominated with "Babe". But then, yep, "The English Patient" signaled the return of…

"Gladiator" had the advantage of an unusually weak awards season (recalling that the biggest box office hit of 2000 was "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"). Its main Best Picture competition was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Traffic", while the other two nominees were "Erin Brockovich" and "Chocolat". …

I'm enjoying these essays even though I'm not an action film fanatic. Can't wait for the '94 installment, because that means there must be some acknowledgement of "On Deadly Ground", the movie that saw Steven Seagal gloriously destroy any goodwill audiences, much less critics, had for him.

Oh yes, there was anti-Ah-hold sentiment in the air back then, and no doubt it didn't help. Nor did Columbia Pictures' marketing and scheduling — the trailer just up and called it "The big ticket for '93!" even as the "Jurassic Park" hype and buzz were kicking into high gear and stories were leaking about the bad…

Oh, I was talking about "Tekkon Kinkreet"! "Paprika" was properly advertised and actually went over pretty well, although there was some discussion in the post-Q&A regarding the more disturbing scenes.

It was even worse than that. MUCH worse. The flyer advertised it as a kid-friendly movie! Suffice it to say there were a few kids there, and oh, I felt a dead silence during the scene where one of the kid leads sets a thug on fire and the latter burns to death. It was a disaster.

Indeed. Also, in the moments leading up to him entering the "real" world, there's his monologue that doesn't seem to be addressed to anybody (the one that ends with "If God were a villain, He'd be me") — but then it makes sense upon recalling that now that he knows there's a fourth wall to his world and thus possibly…

I think that movie's issues run a lot deeper, partially because this was supposed to be the Schwartzenegger film for EVERYBODY!!! It had to be a semi-kid-friendly PG-13*, which meant it couldn't approximate the excesses of R-rated 1980s action films much less exaggerate them. So it tries other ways of making the…

Yeah, that movie does not get enough love. I tried convincing a film group I used to be part of, which had a lot of senior citizens, to show it as part of their foreign film selections after "Mononoke" went over well. They went with stuff like "Paprika" and "Tekkon Kinkreet" instead. There was just such an…

Or spend millions of dollars and ad tie-ins on an original fantasy romance musical.

The points are mostly nostalgia, more merchandise to push, and the presumption today's kids don't watch anything older than ten or so years ago.