20 Weeks To Oscar
Looking For Purpose In The Oscar World
by David Poland

It's looking like The Bookend Oscars this year... tune into see who gets Best Supporting Actor, take a three hour nap, then wake up to check out Best Picture. Nothing else seems terribly interesting... with due respect to the many whose hearts will be leaping out of their chests all day on Oscar day, regardless of how locked in many of the winners seem to be.

The Oscar Chart Quiz
A. A great small performance... truly worthy...
B. A nice prize for one of the most beautifully made films of the year.
C. Will look great, will charm... A Major Career Is Born
D. Genius work... will look even better in retrospect.. but even Werner Herzog might have a hard time saving this campaign.

______________________

It's Oscartown, Jake
Endurance
by Kristopher Tapley

Much has been written about Crash's position as a socially conscious piece of filmmaking. The film uses race relations to ignite a spark that details civilization's wariness of itself and suspicion of one another, as the urban sprawl of Los Angeles plays host.

"Everyone can identity with the characters on the screen, whether they admit it or not. We're living in difficult times now, obviously. So I think Crash, although it's a topic that hasn't been entirely ignored, it's not something that was being talked about."

The Ultimate DVD Geek
Cinderella Man
by Doug Pratt

It's a great story. Martin Scorsese has probably poisoned boxing movies forever with the revelation that most boxers are violent, pig-headed lugs, but Braddock was genuinely good-natured and emotionally stable. As a result, however, Howard may have replicated the family scenes as accurately as if he'd found film from a camera hidden in the walls of the original Braddock apartment, and yet the movie can't shake the sense that the scenes away from the boxing ring are somehow false or artificial, because everyone is so nice. But the fights are thrilling—most viewers will duck and bob right along with the fighters—and the film is as honorable in its intentions as it is rousing in its dramatic arc.
MCN Review
Dretzka's DVD Review
The Hot Button

Five short documentaries about the number 12… What did you want to be when you were 12? Did you ever see a 12-toed cat? People—and animals—will always surprise you.

The Weekend Report
by Leonard Klady

It's an odyssey with a decided happy ending. The Pink Panther squeaked ahead of the competition with an estimated $21.4 million to emerge as the weekend's top grossing movie. Three other films also made national debuts and took the next three positions. The horror sequel Final Destination 3 grossed $19.9 million while the animated Curious George arrived with $15.4 million and the Harrison Ford thriller Firewall followed with $13.7 million.
Weekend Estimates (Full List)
Domestic Market Share

MCN DVD Wrap-Up
Elizabethtown

Copies of the Elizabethtown DVD should come with a special sticker, warning diabetics that the contents could be dangerous to their health. It would be difficult to find another big-budget Hollywood production that wore its heart so openly on its sleeve. More >

MCN Review: The film misfires in virtually every way. It opens with a faux Jerry Maguire section that feels like we’ve seen it before – complete with company girlfriend who leaves when things go bad

Plus: Bambi II, The Batman, The Best of the Electric Company, Demon Hunter, Doom, Dungeons and Dragons 2 - Wrath of the Dragon God, Elizabethtown, Extreme Dating, The Cary Grant Box Set, Grounded for Life, Growing Pains, Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, Oktober, Pizza, Beer and Smokes, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Ryan's Daughter, A Slightly Pregnant Man, Teen Titans, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, You Stupid Man, When a Stranger Calls

The Gurus Look At The Top Three Choices In The Big Eight Categories This Week, Hoping For Some Heated Competition Somewhere The Charts

Updated throughout the day
Updated: 3:40 pm

The Wondercon Posters
Six XMen Take A Stand

James Bond Gets A French Bond Girl, A Danish Nemesis And Jeffrey Wright All In One Day

Welcome To Oscar U

Larry McMurtry Sums Up Brokeback In Five Words: "Life Is Not For Sissies"

King Kong, Gromit And War Of The Worlds Dominate The Visual Effects Awards

With A Star-Filled Red Carpet, A Billion Television Viewers In 231 Countries, The BAFTAs Are More Than Just A Prelude To Oscar

It's Not Just A Gift Bag, It's A "Gifting Experience"

It's The Sex Repressed That Is Remembered In Brief Encounter

Trailer du Jour
Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights

The Woz Trendizes Films With Magic In Them... Which Almost Always Mysteriously Disappear At The Box Office

"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)," The 25-Year-Old Song Being Revived By Willie Nelson

Skeet Ulrich And Others In The Not-Awe-Inspiring Category

The Always Shy And Reserved Bruce Willis
"Entertainment Weekly hates me. They’ve hated me since they’ve been a magazine. Fuck ‘em. And you can go and tell them that."

Frank Miller's Batman Is Taking On al Qaeda

"Watch David Lynch's Eraserhead From A Toilet Seat" And Other Fun Things To See And Do At Turin's Cinema Museum

Remaking Friday The 13th With Michael Bay Should Be Interesting At The Very Least

A New OscarSeating Experiment From Gil Cates To Replace Awards In The Aisles
"With this year's crop of grown-up movies, finding and keeping a large audience isn't going to be easy"

Michael Winterbottom Treads The Road To Guantánamo

Michael Medved Offers His Opinion About Che Guevera, The "Commie Thug"

Claudia Eller On The Long Road To The Pink Panther Release... Which Will Actually Mean Something If The Film Has Legs, But Is, For Now, Just The First Not-Unkind Piece About Sony In A While After A Job Well Done By The Studio In Getting The Film Out There And Sold To Kids

Tim Burton On Hollywood, The Oscars And What's Really Important
"But will they let me to go the front of the line at the Hollywood Wax Museum?"

Vendetta
"You have a world teetering on the brink -- apocalypse being the animating anxiety of the superhero genre"

Berlin Welcomes A Prairie Home Companion

Devin Gordon Spins Out Seven Oscar Opinions Prentending To Be Observations... Including A Few Factual Errors And Grand Canyonesque Leaps

John Horn On The Studio Mergers And The Orphaned Releases They May Leave Behind

Lars Von Trier Makes A "Statement Of Revitality"

Jaws' Peter Benchley Dies

Mark Caro On The Long Road To Crash

Before The Olympics, "Cinema In Italy Was Born In Turin"

Even In The Year Of Gay Cowboys, Ian McKellen Says "The Film Industry Is Very Old Fashioned In California"

Peter Howell On The Often-Overlooked Magic Of Good Film Editing

The Tale Of Roy Lee: The Amazingly Successful Producer Who Gets The Business & Has Only A Passing Interest In The Show

Paramount Continues To Use "Interim Journalism" In Which The Troubled Target Tries To Overwhelm Traditional Media With "Honest Insight" Before Perspective Can Cement The Real Story Into Ugly Legend
Anne Thompson Delicately Joins The "Paramount Is Not Flailing" Marketing Team... Though She Does Get In Some Shots... But Those "We'll Talk Candidly" Interview Offers Are Hard To Pass Up

The Oscar After Market
"It's almost like buying the Mona Lisa — no, like that painting 'The Scream.' There's no or little value, or even underground value. It's too famous."

Icahn, You Con, We All Con... For Icahn
And - Why Don't Messages Movies Say Very Much Anymore?

"I don't Michael Moore this shit. I don't come out and go, 'Look what these fuckers do.'"

Does This Letter From The World Conservation Union Bury Hubert Sauper's Already Remote Shot At Winning The Doc Oscar For His Darwin's Nightmare... Or Does It Make You Root For Him Even Harder? (pdf)

The Woz Looks At The Red Carpet Celebs Confused For Support Staff

The Democratic Image Of Netflix Threatened By A Year Old Policy That Penalizes Customers Intentionally For Frequent Use Of The Service

In The Valentine Mood, Erik Lundgaard Lists Great Kisses In Film

The Paramount Bloodletting Hits Distribution Hard

Sony Embraces The Da Vinci Code Critics And Launches A Forum Just For Them

Berlin Opens In Snow Cake

Picture Jack Black In Blue Tights And A Red Cape Flying Behind Him
And - Here And Here And Here
And -Now See The Trailer

Mark Caro's Pop Machine Dispenses Bad Movie Titles

John Malkovich, Fashion's Mr. Kimono