The Screening Room

Midsummer movie report

Summer movie guide

Opening this week:

Hancock (B)

Brick Lane (B-)

Gonzo: The Life And Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (B)

The Animation Show 4 (B+)

If you weren't geeked out enough about Hellboy next week, here's a little something to tide you over (for a whole 20 seconds):

Not enough? Understandable. Apple.com/trailers has lots more goodies to help you waste time before the three-day weekend.

With Hancock out this week, it got me thinking about who are the top performers when it comes to having both recording and acting careers. Admittedly, it's pretty subjective, but I think Will Smith may be the top dual threat performer of all time. His movies have grossed more than a billion dollars and he's been nominated for two Oscars; on the music side, he was awarded the first-ever rap Grammy and he's had several No. 1 hit singles.
That being said, I don't think it's a slam dunk. Here are the other four performers who I would consider to be in the top five. I'm sure that I am forgetting someone, so I am relying on you all to serve me up good
-- Frank Sinatra: The music side needs no discussion as he's maybe the most famous and loved crooner in American history. But he was no slouch on the big screen either, as he was nominated for best Oscar for The Man With the Golden Arm and he won the supporting actor award for From Here to Eternity.
-- Barbra Streisand: She may be Sinatra's female counterpart when it comes to music. On the movies front, she has been nominated for five Oscars, winning the best actress award for Funny Girl and for a song in the film A Star is Born. She also gave memorable performances in The Prince of Tides and The Way We Were.
-- Cher: Between her solo career and her duo with Sonny Bono, she's sold more than 275 million records worldwide and is resposible for the biggest selling dance single ever, "Believe". She won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Moonstruck and she picked up another GG for Silkwood, for which she was also Oscar-nominated.
-- Bette Midler: She's got a pair of Oscar nominations (For the Boys and The Rose) and four Grammies to show for her storried career (and a Tony to boot).
So there's the list. I also considered Elvis, but his movies were really more vehicles for him designed to sell more records. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson also crossed my mind, but they all still have a ways to go to match this bunch. So, again I ask, who am I missing?

It's time to explain my recent spotty performance in the blogosphere, and perhaps hope that anyone noticed. You see, Ive come down with a bad case of what the kids used to call Senioritis. Except I'm not about to leave school. I'm going back.

From Hollywood Reporter:

Christopher Guest is joining Fox's sequel to Night at the Museum.

The Spinal Tap star will play Ivan the Terrible for the comedy adventure, officially titled Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Also joining the cast are Jon Bernthal (Al Capone), Bill Hader (Gen. George Armstrong Custer) and French actor Alain Chabat (Napoleon).

The film, directed by Shawn Levy, reunites lead Ben Stiller with castmates Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais and Owen Wilson.

Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, who penned both "Museum" films, will make a cameo in the sequel, playing the Wright brothers.

Museum was a box office success for Fox, grossing $574 million worldwide. With the Smithsonian as the centerpiece, the studio and Levy kicked the current production up a notch by getting the rare chance to film portions of the movie in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

Dynamic duo
Wall-E is short on dialogue, but its $63 million opening weekend spoke volumes about audience demand for high-quality animation. The Pixar gem combined with Wanted, which impressed with $50.9 million, to mark the first time that two movies each earned more than $50 million since Memorial Day weekend last year, when Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Shrek the Third turned the trick.

According to Hollywood Reporter (via MSNBC.com), everyone's favorite period heroine and Tim Burton-muse may take a turn in one of 2009's Hollywood blockbusters:

NEW YORK - Helena Bonham Carter could soon be joining the battle between man and cyborg. The British actress is in talks to board Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment in the franchise kicked off by James Cameron in 1984. Roles in the new film have been kept under wraps, but insiders described the Bonham Carter role as small but pivotal.

Read the rest of the article here.

This would not be her first foray into Hollywood territory -- she starred in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The early reviews of The Dark Knight are trickling in, and word is that Heath Ledger's final performance is one to remember him by. Los Angeles area critics got an early press screening Thursday night (luckies) and the best-supporting-actor campaign has already begun.
David Germain of the Associated Press writes, "With his final full film role, Ledger delivers what may be remembered as the finest performance of his career ... At times sounding like a cross between tough guy James Cagney in a gangster flick and Philip Seymour Hoffman's fastidious Truman Capote, Ledger elevates Batman's No. 1 nemesis to a place even Jack Nicholson did not take him in 1989's Batman.
The Dark Knight comes out July 18, aka, not soon enough.

• Wall-E (A)
• Wanted (A-)
• Savage Grace (C)

Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, who directed the heavily Texas-flavored Drive-In Movie Memories in 2001, has some exciting news about his latest project, Dear Zachary, a documentary that had people weeping openly at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin earlier this year. Dear Zachary has been acquired by the MSNBC cable network as the debut film for its newly formed MSNBC Films division, which Mr. Kuenne describes as "a platform through which they will be presenting provocative and award-winning films on television, while also supporting films during their festival run and theatrical release." (Read on by clicking the link below!)

Photo: Kurt Kuenne with Zachary Bagby, who's featured prominently in Dear Zachary

'Smart' move
Get Smart's $38.6 million opening changed the course of a couple of recent trends. First, it showed that Steve Carell can open a big summer movie after the disaster that was last year's Evan Almighty. And second, it continued the winning streak of successful TV show adaptations on the heals of Sex and the City (and following a string of dreadful attempts prior to that).

I can't say much about the strange and wonderful Wall-E before the movie opens Friday or the Disney people will hunt me down and take my first born. But I can recommend catching up on a couple of sci-fi classics to get you in the mood (and perhaps help things make a little more sense).

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which Hal, the ship's computer brain, decides to take things into his own hands (and shows a remarkable grasp of lipreading). Stupid humans. What do they know?

2. Metropolis (1927), the silent slice of dystopia in which the masses are all-too-easily placated - until they decide not to be.

Sorry. That's all I got for now. (Except that the photo is courtesy of Disney/Pixar).

Dinosaurs were long gone by the time 10,000 B.C. rolled around, but that doesn't keep the dimwitted 10,000 B.C. from laying a huge dino egg at video stores everywhere today. Flee this one as if a herd of giant dodo birds were bearing down on you.

Starting this week, the Nasher's Friday Night Films series is free. That's adding to a pretty impressive list of free screenings, such as the Get Reel summer movie series (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is tonight's selection). There are also options in Plano and Frisco.

For other low-cost movie options, you can check out a roundup here.

We like lists. We must like lists; magazines and organizations keep pumping them out and the hunger still isn't satiated. So, as part of a 1,000th issue stunt called The New Classics, Entertainment Weekly has worked up a list of the 100 best movies of the past 25 years (including a Pulpy No. 1, at right).

Should you care? Not really, but the random, arbitrary nature of such beasts is always good for a few arguments. Anyway, where else would you discover that Titanic is ten notches better than GoodFellas, or that Schindler's List eats Jerry Maguire's dust?

Check the list and share your beef. (Photo courtesy of Miramax).

I've heard from a number of readers unhappy with the fact that my review of The Happening gives away a crucial plot point, including one guy who thought I wrote the headline. (For future reference, that's the copy editor's job). They say I have violated the unwritten spoiler code of conduct. Here's why I disagree. Just in case, stop reading here if you don't want to know something that's revealed about 30 minutes into the movie. (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox)

Both The Love Guru and Get Smart have been savaged by critics far and wide. Yet you'll find that both movies got the same not-so-bad B- grades in today's paper. (I did Love Guru, while Tom Maurstad handled up on Get Smart).

What gives? I can't speak for Tom, but the most important thing I can say about The Love Guru is that it made me laugh. It made me feel slightly ashamed for laughing. It sometimes made me wonder why I was laughing. But laugh I did. I can blame my inner eighth grader, but I can also admit that I went in with very low expectations, knowing that Mike Myers specializes in a sort of juvenile carpet-bombing humor. I got a slightly better version of what I anticipated - better than the last Austin Powers movie. Yes, I groaned through many of the gags, but plenty of them tickled me, and there's something to be said for a film that knows its limitations (The Love Guru barely bothers to tell a story). Plus it only lasts 88 minutes. Nothing makes a critic's heart sing like a movie that checks in at under 90 minutes. (Love Guru photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

• Get Smart (B-)
• The Love Guru (B-)
• Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (B-)
• The Unforeseen (B+)
• Mongol (B+)
• Jellyfish (B+)
• Mother of Tears (C-)
• And When Did You Last See Your Father? (C-)

As any movie fan/geek knows, Criterion editions are the ones to own.

And now Western lovers can join in the fun. Criterion will release its first Western this month, Anthony Mann's The Furies. It's available for pre-order now through Criterion.com.

Synopsis from Criterion: In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his daughter, Vance (Barbara Stanwyck), a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of husband, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Both sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is a hidden treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar-nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.

Special Features:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer


• Audio commentary featuring film historian Jim Kitses (Horizons West)


• The Movies: "Action Speaks Louder than Words," a 1967 television interview with director Anthony Mann


• A rare, 1931 on-camera interview with Walter Huston, made for the movie theater series Intimate Interviews


• New video interview with Nina Mann, daughter of Anthony Mann


• Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes photos


• Theatrical trailer


• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by renowned critic Robin Wood ans a 1957 Cahiers du cinéma interview with Mann, as well as a new printing of Niven Busch's original novel

The Love Guru and Get Smart will face off in a comedy smackdown this weekend, but this also shapes up as a battle between Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show over which is the better comedic farm team these days. In one corner, Love Guru is the brainchild of ex-SNLer Mike Meyers. In the other is former Daily Show coresponant (and current Office star) Steve Carell. Over the long haul, this is of course comparing apples and oranges as SNL has a much longer history and a wider cast of characters to chose from. But in terms of recent production, I'm going to have to go with The Daily Show on this one. In the last few years, it has spun out Stephen Colbert and Carell, two of television's biggest stars. And it has provided reliable side men like Rob Corddry and Ed Helms.
Which is not to say that SNL has performed poorly of late. Tina Fey has become the funniest woman on television with 30 Rock while boosting the profiles of fellow SNLers Tracy Morgan and Chris Parnell on the show. And Kristen Wiig is really making a name for herself with small but juicy roles in films like Knocked Up and Walk Hard. But the show has had its share of misses, too. Andy Samburg flooped big with last summer's Hot Rod while fellow graduates (Horatio Sanz, for one) have just drifted off into the ether. If there's a tie to be broken here, looking again at this weekend's movies provides the breaker. When Meyers needed to fill a couple of key roles in Love Guru, he didn't dredge the usual SNL pond for the Rob Schneiders and David Spades of the world. Instead, he picked current Daily Show corespondant John Oliver and the previously mentioned Stephen Colbert. That's a pretty strong indication of where the top talent resides.