Coincidentally enough, a look at the credits for last night's premiere of "Life on Mars" revealed it was directed by Gary Fleder, who also directed this week's "The Express," the inspiration for this list. I haven't bothered to tune in for any cop shows in the last 10 years or so except for "The Wire," but I think this one just might be a winner, based on both the rather remarkable cast (Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol and Michael Imperioli, among others) and fairly innovative story about a cop who does the time warp back to 1973.

And I'm fairly certain I've done a list of at least my favorite baseball movies before, which could certainly also go to more than 10. For this list encompassing all sports (and two flicks that arguably aren't about sports at all), I found I had to leave off a full four boxing movies that just missed the cut ("Requiem for a Heavyweight", "Someone Up There Likes Me" [in honor of Paul Newman], "The Hurricane" and "Raging Bull.") Given that caveat, here are my 10 favorite sports movies, and as always, please feel free to add any of your favorites among the many, many flicks I have snubbed.

"The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg"
Even more than boxing movies, I just love flicks about baseball, and this doco was directed with clear love for a great man by Aviva Kempner. Without taking away AT ALL from what Jackie Robinson accomplished, it will really open your eyes when you see what hammerin' Hank had to go through as the first great Jewish player to slug for the Detroit Tigers.

"Hoop Dreams"
I can still remember watching Roger Ebert just go gaga for this flick when it first came out, and it's almost as good as his orgasmic review made it sound. Spike Lee's fictionalized version "He Got Game" is pretty good too, but it just can't pack as much punch as this true story of two Chicago kids who dream of playing in the NBA.

"Bend it Like Beckham"
Silly? Sure, but also just a heck of a lot of fun. I had to check the IMDB to see what in the world ever happened to director Gurinder Chadha after she made this flick about two girls (Keira Knightley back when she used to eat and Parminder Nagra of "ER" fame) who just want to play soccer and the extremely fun "Bride and Prejudice." It turns out she did indeed manage to direct a feature film in 2008, called "Angus, Thongs and Snogging," which will be added to my Netflix queue at the first opportunity.

"Vision Quest"
Like Matthew Modine, I had visions of becoming a wrestler in high school, but I never took it nearly as serious as he did or got to have Linda Fiorentino hanging around to inspire me. Sure, this one might be an adolescent fantasy, but it's also just a very entertaining flick.

"Eight Men Out"
Granted, "Field of Dreams" (which was on this list before I cut it back to 10 titles) is a much sweeter take on the story of Joe Jackson, but the real story is also very compelling as told by director Jon Sayles with help from John Cusack, John Mahoney, Charlie Sheen, DB Sweeney (as shoeless Joe himself, David Strathairn and even Michael Rooker and Gordon Clapp of "NYPD Blue" (the only cop show I regularly tuned in for between "Homicide" and "The Wire.")

"The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings"
Ben "Cooter" Jones (yes, that Cooter) stopped by our office about two weeks ago to promote his new book about his time on Capitol Hill as a Democratic representative from the great state of Georgia. When he got to me and someone told him I write about movies, he very proudly said he had a small part in this odd little flick about a colorful crew of ballplayers including Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams who barnstorm across the Midwest (even though most of the flick was filmed right here in Macon.) I love this one almost as much as Cooter does.

"Breaking Away"
Having sat beside Renee Martinez, who is both a serious cyclist and rather fanatical fan of the Tour de France, at work for the past five years or so means I've been exposed to more cycling than any nonfan should ever have to sit through. Even though I still protest otherwise, I have come to both respect and enjoy the sport of cycling, but not as much as I do this silly little movie about an Indiana "cutter" who just wants to ride with the Italians.

"When We Were Kings"
This is the only boxing movie that made the final cut because it's about a whole lot more than boxing. This Leon Gast doco about the 1974 heavyweight "Rumble in the Jungle" between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire is also about the crazy concert featuring James Brown, B.B. King and others that Mobutu Sese Suko put on to go with it. Add it all up and you've got a whale of a tale well told.

"Searching for Bobby Fischer"
OK, these last two aren't about real "sports" per se, but I defy you to find a better movie about the nature of raw competition than this 1993 flick about a young boy thrust into in the world of competitive chess. Interestingly, this one is one of three flicks directed by Steven Zaillian ("A Civil Action" and "All the King's Men" are the others), who would go on to pen "American Gangster" and soon "I Heard You Paint Houses" for Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

"Bring It On"
If you can actually look me in the eye and claim you don't enjoy this one as at least a guilty pleasure, I have to say you, sir or madam, are a liar. Kirsten Dunst, Gabrielle Union and Eliza Dushku as high school cheerleaders? I'm there, and I usually am for at least a few minutes every time this inevitably shows up on TBS' afternoon movie slate.

So, there you have it. Like I said, please feel free to add any of your favorite sports flicks, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend.

When his movies are so uniformly entertaining, I guess you really can't begrudge David Cronenberg the right to make flicks at his own pace, but I can certainly selfishly say the world would be a much better place if he indeed chose to work more often than every two or three years or so.

Since the 2007 thriller "Eastern Promises," which was made by a seriously chilling performance from Viggo Mortensen, I think he's been toying with making an opera of "The Fly." I can't even picture what that might look like!

Thankfully for the rest of us who don't live in Canada and get to see this madness, he's also now ready to get back into movies in a rather big way. Word comes today that he's managed to recruit no less than Denzel Washington (heard of him?) to star in a political thriller from "Bourne" author Robert Ludlum.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold war, "The Matarese Circle" revolves around two men — one American, one Soviet — who must cooperate in order to foil a sinister plot to topple the world’s governments. Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, who crafted the mostly satisfying "3:10 to Yuma" remake, are writing the adaptation.

Oscar alert for Forest Whitaker

I guess maybe this is Forest Whitaker's way to make up for missing out on the role of Notorious B.I.G. (which in all seriousness, of course, I doubt he was ever up for). Getting back on track in his quest to play every heavyset, famous black man on the big screen, he's next set his eyes on directing and starring in "What a Wonderful World."

All kidding aside, this should be a lot of fun, and perhaps more importantly it's actually being filmed in New Orleans for the French company - Legende - behind "La Vie en Rose."

The flick will kick off during Louis Armstrong’s impoverished early years in New Orleans and primarily chronicle his career as a trumpet virtuoso and improvisational singer. Since Mr. Whitaker's last directing effort was with Katie Cruise in "First Daughter," which I admittedly haven't seen, I'll still confidently bet this will have to be much, much better.

Julie Taymor creating a "Tempest"

I really should have given Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe" a chance when it finally came here for one week last year, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Thankfully, the Macon Film Guild is gonna screen it sometime in the next couple of months, so I'll certainly make up for that oversight when it comes again.

And Ms. Taymor is now back at it to create another oddity, this time with Dame Helen Mirren in tow. She's assembling a rather stellar cast for "The Tempest," and has already flipped the gender roles to make Prospero a Prospera for Mirren to play.

All I can really remember about "The Tempest" is that the sorcerer Prospero (Prospera), the former Duke of Milan, has been stranded on an island with a lot of his books and his 3-year-old daughter Miranda. From there I'm sure it will get very dreamy in Taymor's hands with help from a cast that will include Jeremy Irons, Djimon Hounsou, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Ben Wishaw, Felicity Jones and Geoffrey Rush.


Watch Kevin Smith make a porno

From what little I've seen of Kevin Smith's next flick, opening hopefully everywhere on Halloween, I think it's gonna be a real winner. To build the hype for the movie starring Seth Rogen and the fabulously funny Elizabeth Banks, Smith and Co. have starting posting brief "webisodes" at his Quickstop Entertainment site.

The first one, which is up now, features Messrs. Smith and Rogen in a fairly funny discussion about how Rogen should bring more "Affleck-tion" to the set. You can watch it here, and I think it's well worth wasting three minutes or so of your work day. Peace out.

When it comes to recommending books rather than movies, I feel more than a little like Nixon, especially since I only manage to read six or so a year nowadays. Having just completed "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," however, I'm confident in giving it my full endorsement.

The debut novel by MIT professor Junot Diaz was actually a long time in the making, coming 11 years after his 1996 volume of short stories, "Drown" (which I'll be reading very soon to satiate my hunger for more).

In a tale fitting of its long gestation period, Diaz here not only takes on the story of the titular Dominican "ghetto nerd" Oscar, but also three generation of the Cabral/De Leon women and the modern history of the Dominican Republic to boot. Like many Caribbean nations in the 20th century, the DR was ruled a strongman, Rafael Trujillo, who along with ravaging his homeland also managed to bestow upon the Cabral clan a "fuku," or curse.

Diaz's tale of how this "fuku" inflicts itself on the family is often heartbreaking (in case you can't tell from the title, Oscar is pretty much doomed from the very start) but also written with a style that has it crackling with energy. Oscar, despite being an enormously fat individual possessing none of the Dominican male's innate skills to be a mack, still insists on walking up to women he's never met before and displaying his best version of "game," with pretty much uniformly disastrous results. And I guarantee you'll laugh out loud when you hear how poor Oscar earned his titular nickname (his real name is Oscar De Leon).

But while Oscar is nominally the hero of this story, Diaz's novel is at its strongest when it tells the tales of the De Leon/Cabral women, Oscar's rebellious sister Lola and long-suffering mother Belicia. In short, it's a well-told tale that's at once both intimate and epic in scope, and I would go so far as to compare Diaz's writing style to John Irving, which from me is a compliment of the highest order.

A word of warning: Diaz has a tendency to lapse way into geek speak ("Lord of the Rings," "Akira" and "Watchmen" being his principal inspiration) or write entire passages in Spanish, but if you stick with it I guarantee it will be well worth your time.

So, how in the world did I find this book after much of the world already had? Through movies, of course. Specifically, Rebecca Hall, in an interview about the simply enchanting "Vicky Christina Barcelona," mentioned that she had just finished one of my favorite books, Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" (which the Coens should really make into a movie), and was currently reading Diaz's book. With a recommendation like that, I had to bite.

And speaking of movies, I'll close with the trailer for "Sunshine Cleaning," a flick about a woman (Amy Adams) who is forced by her situation to get into the cheerful business of cleaning up crime scenes. I'm not sure when or if this one will ever hit theaters, but enjoy the trailer anyway, because what day isn't at least a little better with a dose of Amy Adams? Peace out.

If there's a formula for making movies that I will like a whole lot, Peter Sollett has certainly found it with his two features, "Raising Victor Vargas" and now "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."

So, what are the ingredients? Just make it a celebration of good music, New York City and sappy love, and you've got me hooked. Seems easy enough, but it rarely happens as well as it does here.

Since 2002's "Victor Vargas," Sollett has moved up to a higher class of kids who circulate around NYC, specifically the Jersey tribe who invade each weekend and turn it into their playground. While this crowd may annoy many people (me included when I manage to visit the big city and instantly like to pretend like I live there), Sollett and authors Rachel Cohen and David Levithan, who wrote the novel on which the flick is based, clearly embrace them as a natural byproduct of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg's cleaned-up New York.

And I have to say, though I have my issues with some of what that pair has done, as a vision of New York I'll take Sollett's every time over one like Neil Jordan's simply abysmal "The Brave One," which with its vision of terror at every turn has managed to stick in my mind as the single worst movie of all of 2007. Sollett lets his love of the city play out much like Woody Allen used to (and did again this year in a new locale with the equally entertaining "Vicky Christina Barcelona"), and makes the city just as key a player as the two young lovers at its core.

And in "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," the music also takes center stage as early as the opening credits, when the bands get equal billing with Michael Cera (but not the simply terrific Kat Dennings, what the hell's up with that?) even before the movie title comes up.

The emo (I think that's the word, but I have to admit I'm so old and unhip that I really have no idea what that means) soundtrack gives the night's adventures a natural flow, and I must say it's nice to know that, 20 years or so after I was in their shoes, the wannabe-hip kids still listen to bands that - in varying degrees - just want to sound like the Velvet Underground. It also gives the story its bare semblance of a plot as our kids spend the evening trying to find the hot spot where a mythical band, Where's Fluffy?, will be playing that night (and yes, I'll admit it, I did actually google the name when I got home to see if they were a real band or not.)

But this is, of course, at its core a story of young love, and a fairly familiar one at that (any doubt about the outcome is pretty much already wiped away by the movie poster, after all), so Sollett's flick has to derive its charms (and there are many) from the two leads.

Luckily, he has Cera, who by now is already an old pro at playing the sensitive lead (and will at least two more times in "Youth in Revolt" and "Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World"), and he has an equal here in Ms. Dennings, who I had never seen in a movie before. She plays Norah from the beginning as rather snobby (referring to Cera as a "bridge and tunnel" kid when she's clearly of the same breed), but lets the character get more and more vulnerable as the night goes on. The two of them manage to make this familiar tale seem just fresh enough to work (at least for me.)

In the supporting cast, Ari Graynor steals just about every scene she's in as a sort of drunken muse. One very funny scene in particular, when she manages to lock herself in a car, encapsulates the fine line that Sollett is walking here between fun and danger, even in the new New York. And Cera's bandmates are the first gay characters in a teen movie that I can ever remember who manage to generate laughs without being the butt of juvenile jokes (and the use of the name "Lethorio" near the end is just about the hardest I've laughed in a movie theater this year.)

I had planned a little side rant about how A.O. Scott manages to be condescending to movies he clearly likes a lot, as he did by referring to "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" as "Before Sunrise" remade for Nickelodeon (wtf?), but I reckon I've gone on enough already. In the end, this one is as light as air but perfectly sweet, just the way I like it. Which means it's sure to be devoured by those little talking ratdogs, but do yourself a favor and go see this one while you can.

The surprising answer is yes, I think there are actually three movies in wide release that I want to see this week. And, well, there's also a movie about talking chihuahuas, but I guess you can't win them all, right?

For as long as my three-day weekend lasts (which may not be much longer, though I did manage to survive my newspaper's latest round of layoff/buyouts fairly intact), I'll probably go see three movies if I can find three I think are worthy of a matinee. Here's a look at what's available in a week that has, rather amazingly, seven new movies opening in wide release, in the order that I want to see them (and not including Bill Maher's "Religulous" for two reasons: It's not playing here and I wouldn't bother to see it anyway because that's simply not my cup of bile.)

1. "Blindness"
I'm willing to make one exception to my new rule that I will no longer watch the world end (yet again!), but only because this comes from the great Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, who created the simply perfect flick "City of God." (By the way, I recently watched the sequel of sorts, "City of Men" [pictured here], on DVD, and while it' a different kind of flick it is - in its own way - a compelling tale of coming of age on the rough streets of Rio.) Reviews have been surprisingly abysmal for this flick starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Diego Luna, but I'll find out for myself anyway, probably Saturday.

2. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"
Roger Moore threw down the gauntlet of hyperbole by calling this flick "this generation's 'Say Anything'," but as comparisons go, here's hoping he's accurate. Extremely funny man Michael Cera and Kat Dennings star in a tale of two teens who find love and hopefully a lot of funny high jinks during a wild night in NYC.

3. "Appaloosa"
I'm really glad that 1. someone in Hollywood (in this case Ed Harris) loves old Westerns as much as I do and 2. this movie is actually playing in theaters near me, unlike the sublime "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," for which I had to settle for DVD. Here, Harris and Viggo Mortensen star as hired guns brought in to restore order to a town under the control of strongman Jeremy Irons. Renee Zelweger is unfortunately in here somehow too, but hopefully she won't have too much to do.

4. "Flash of Genius"
As silly and sappy as it is, there are just very few movies I love more than Francis Ford Coppola's "Tucker," so I've always had a soft spot for movies about the little guy and cars. Unfortunately, reviews so far have painted this flick starring Greg Kinnear as intermittent windshield wipers inventor Bob Kearns (and Gilmore Girl Lauren Graham as his wife, huzzah!) as too heavy on the courtroom and too light on inspiration. I'll wait a week, but if you see this one and I'm wrong, please let me know.

5. "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People"
I guess I shouldn't be surprised given the title of this one that Simon Pegg just looks extremely annoying in the trailer. I'll see it eventually, because I like movies about journalists and see just about anything with Jeff Bridges in it, but not this week.

6. "An American Carol"
With Michael Moore reduced to releasing his latest "movie," "Slacker Uprising," on the Internet for free, doesn't this flick just seem like a really mean-spirited case of kicking the man when he's already way down? I guess it's nice that Hollywood's Republicans get to have a little fun, but I'll wait until at least DVD to see this one.

7. "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"
I have to assume that this one will win the weekend, but I really have nothing to say about that.

Instead, check your multiplexes Saturday night for a possible sneak preview of "The Express," starring Rob Brown as Ernie Davis, the first black dude to win the Heisman trophy. "Glory Road" was just a crapfest of epicly bad proportions, but I have high hopes that this flick will be much better. Peace out.

First thing first: Last night's "Pushing Daisies," after a rather disastrously long bit of opening exposition to catch everyone up, was just as funny and whimsical as ever, and will hopefully lead ABC to announce later today that the show has received a full season-two order (so far it just has 13 new episodes coming.)

And, in reference to my headline question, does Robert De Niro really need saving? Well, I'm sure his life in NYC is still a whole lot more fabulous than mine down here in Macon, GA, but if its from mediocre movies I'd say the answer is surely an emphatic yes.

I had to go back to 2006's "The Good Shepherd" to find a De Niro movie I really liked unconditionally and much further back to 2000's "Meet the Parents" to find another one (and the second one gets an asterisk in the "like" column because Mr. De Niro isn't nearly as funny as he seems to think he is nowadays).

So, what could bring this formerly great man back to his glory days, to roles in movies such as "Raging Bull" or "Goodfellas," or even in John Frankenheimer's rather severely underrated "Ronin"? Well, either reteaming with Martin Scorses or doing a great movie about the mob would probably do the trick, so throw in both and you'd seem to have just about the perfect project.

Indeed, word comes today that Mr. Scorsese is attached to direct and Mr. De Niro to star in "I Heard You Paint Houses," based on the book about the mob assassin who many believe was involved in the death of Jimmy Hoffa. (And despite my rather heavy diet of mob movies and TV through the years, I had no idea that "paint houses" was mob slang for a contract killing ... yet another rather useless bit of trivia to clutter my brain!)

De Niro will play Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran, who is reputed to have carried out more than 25 mob murders and confessed to "Paint Houses" author Charles Brandt that he also carried out the killing and dismemberment of Hoffa on orders from mob boss Russell Bufalino. On top of my love for mob movies, I also like flicks like "Confession of a Dangerous Mind" in which our "protagonist" makes an outlandish claim that stays in doubt throughout the entire movie, so this should be ideal.

Steven Zaillian, who crafted the crisp script for "American Gangster" but also the rather uneven screenplay for Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" too, will adapt Brandt's book for the big screen.

And Scorsese, I predict, will have one of both the biggest critical and box office successes next year with "Shutter Island," starring Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo in his take on Dennis Lehane's novel about the mysterious happenings at a mental hospital on the titular remote island.

And now, since I have no other news to report, I have to get ready for the job that still somehow pays my rent. Peace out.

Is is just me, or does the new TV season just kind of suck? I mean, I guess we knew it would be pretty bad with last year's strike, but so far I've only found one show that has me hooked, and that one not entirely.

I'm still sticking with "Fringe" simply because I'm a sucker for the supernatural, but until last night's pretty good episode that show has seemed nothing but predictable, especially given its drive to be bizarre.

Much better but still improving is FX's "Sons of Anarchy," which has been accurately described as "The Sopranos" on motorcycles. Starring Ron Perlman, Katey Segal (yes, that Katey Segal), Charlie Hunnam of "Undeclared" fame (what there was of it) and Maggie Siff (a k a Don Draper's mistress Rachel Mencken on season one of "Mad Men"), this drama airing tonight at 10 delivers plenty of grit and is still working on the storyline to match it.

But the real news, and what I've been waiting for all fall, is the return of "Pushing Daisies," which has to be the last show to either return or premiere in this entire year. If you haven't tuned in before to this prime-time fairy tale from the mind of Rryan Fuller, I can't urge you strongly enough to start tonight when it returns at 8 on ABC. All you really need to know is its a super-sweet romantic tale about a piemaker (Lee Pace) who just happens to have the ability to bring people back to life for one minute and the return of his childhood sweetheart Chuck (Anna Friel), whose father he just happened to kill by accident when they were kids.

From there, it usually just gets crazier, and a whole lot of fun. So, what's gonna happen in the new season? Well, tonight Ned, Chuck and Emerson Cod (the extremely funny Chi McBride) are on the case of a murder involving some killer bees (and just as deadly honey marketers). In the next two weeks they'll then visit a circus where the human cannonball has some deadly ideas of his own and then a convent, where Ned and Emerson will play men of the cloth.

That all sounds like a lot of fun, but will it be as whimsical and entertaining as ever? Variety, thankfully, says yes. Here's what they had to say about the opening episodes of season two:

Emerging like a sweetly scented addition to primetime’s musty flower bed, “Pushing Daisies” opens its second season in full creative bloom. Producer Bryan Fuller’s Emmy-nominated dramedy is one of the few programs that dares to deal in whimsy, which is perhaps why audiences drifted away before the writers strike truncated its initial run. Managing expectations is paramount to the show’s longevity -- such an offbeat concept is unlikely to break out in a major way -- but let’s hope ABC’s patience is rewarded with this gentle if somewhat delicate flower.

Beyond its fairy-tale explosion of color and production design, “Daisies” indulges in moments of almost surreal imagination, like having Kristin Chenoweth -- as Ned’s lovelorn assistant Olive -- put her Broadway chops to use reenacting a memorable scene out of “The Sound of Music.” The cast, meanwhile, is uniformly terrific -- down to the 150-some-odd-year-old Golden Retriever (in dog years) that Ned can only scratch with a stick.

In my mind, I'm already there. One of my other favorite TV dramas, "Friday Night Lights," also returns tonight, but since I don't have DirecTV and will be unable to watch it I have nothing else to say about that (yes, I'm a petty man in many, many ways.)

'Now I'm a paraplegic and I know why'

Instead I'll leave you with the video for what I still think is the catchiest cautionary tale of all time (and the only one I can think of that could make the above line about paraplegics very, very funny). I have no idea how it came up, but somehow I got into a discussion the other day with my fellow cubicle slave Randy Waters about the old Afroman song "Because I Got High" and just how infectious it is. MIA's "Paper Planes" has been driven almost as deeply into my skull this year, but that tune isn't nearly as cool as what will probably be Afroman's only hit song ever. Enjoy this video featuring Jay and Silent Bob, but please, if you're watching this at work do so with headphones, because the end gets a little racy. Peace out.

If you would have told me several years ago that David Fincher would direct a bona fide "Christmas movie," I would have thought you were straight-up mad.

And I had my initial doubts that he would be able to do much with F. Scott Fitzgerald's odd tale "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," about a man (Brad Pitt) who ages in reverse through the Twentieth Century. Judging from everything I've seen, however, including this lengthy new trailer, it indeed seems like he's come up with something that combines all his best touches with the crowd-pleasing scope of a holiday flick. Enjoy.



Since I've made little secret of just where I stand in this year's election race (and since I, frankly, don't really care who I might possibly offend), I finally decided to break down and get a Barack Obama "widget" for this site (and who came up with that crazy word anyway?).

I originally thought Oliver Stone's "W.", much like Michael Moore's movies in the past, would have a none-too-positive effect on the race, but with Bush so far gone in people's minds and this movie just looking more and more like such silly fun I now just can't see that happening. Here's the latest look at what Stone is cooking up, with the final product set to drop Oct. 29.



When I first heard what Baz Luhrman was attempting to pull off next, I can't say I was terribly excited. What in the world is a director with so much - for lack of a better word - flair doing making a movie in the dusty Australian outback?

I'm ready to be proven wrong once again. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star in this appropriately epic-looking tale about an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a huge cattle station in Oz and joins forces with a stock-man (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land during World War II. The "Casablanca" touch on the typography is more than a bit much, but count me there when this finally comes out Nov. 26.



And there you have it. Hopefully a little pleasant fodder for wasting some of your work day. Peace out.

I had planned to talk about Spike Lee's uneven but often wildly entertaining "Miracle at St. Anna" today, but I instead woke up to the rather depressing news that Paul Newman had died.

He was 83 and had suffering from cancer for quite a while, and therefore hadn't acted too often in recent years, most recently adding his voice to Pixar's "Cars." Looking back through his IMDB resume, he made many movies that I and the rest of the world love, but if I had to pick three favorites, they would have to be 'The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Hustler" and, of course, "Cool Hand Luke."

Probably the most quotable movie of all time, that last one is just cinematic comfort food. I've probably seen it as often as any movie I own, and will surely watch at least part of it tonight (after watching the Georgia Bulldogs just roll the Alabama Crimson Tide.) I really don't have anything terribly profound to say about this tragic loss, so instead just enjoy this fairly somber moment from "Cool Hand Luke" Mr. Newman singing "Plastic Jesus" and playing the banjo. R.I.P Mr. Newman.

I've been rather shocked at the mostly negative reviews that have piled up so far for Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" (30 percent positive at Rotten Tomatoes, and even those were only really lukewarm.)

The main complaint I've read is that Mr. Lee has just bitten off too much to deal with here and lets his movie sprawl over the place and never really focuses on a single story line. Even if that is the case, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a rather whopping 2 hours and 46 minutes of my life to see what he's cooked up, because the only Spike Lee movie I can think of that I just had no time for at all was "Crooklyn," and most of the rest of them are movies that I just love. I'm gonna see it this afternoon, so please feel free to check back either tomorrow or Sunday to find out what I thought of it.

(As an aside, there's one scene in "Crooklyn" that just makes me cringe more than just about anything else I've ever seen on the big screen [and I'm really not exaggerating]. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but the stretch comes when the kids get shipped to my Maryland for a while, and apparently to make some kind of swipe at my homeland, he films the whole thing with some kind of gauzy haze. I still have no idea what he was going for, but it was just bloody awful.)

OK, I'm back. Along with releasing his own movie this week, Mr. Lee made news earlier in the week when he apparently disclosed to Roger Ebert the name of the director for "Red Tails," the upcoming Tuskegee Airmen flick being produced by Georgia Lucas. Here's what he had to say:

It was like eight men at the roundtable. And two of ‘em, Lee Archer and Roscoe Brown, was the 8th pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen, which I might add, this spring George Lucas is finally doin’ his Tuskegee Airmen film, “Redtails." He’s gonna produce it and a young African-American director, Anthony Hemingway, is gonna direct it. He’s done several episodic TVs, and is a young director so I’m looking forward to that and hopefully “Miracle” with “Redtails” coming’ up will generate more films to show the untold story about the participation.

You can read the rest of Mr. Ebert's interview here, and it's well worth spending a couple of minutes on. Mr. Hemingway's TV work covers everything from a few episodes of shows I love, "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Wire," to scattered episodes of other blockbusters like "ER" and "CSI NY." Screenwriter John Ridley, who came up with the uneven but still very funny "Undercover Brother" among other films, is scripting the tale of the pioneering airman, so this is one well worth keeping your eyes on when it comes out next spring or so.

And, finally, out today is also the first trailer (that I know of) for Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie," which if I'm not mistaken will finally come out in January. Tom Cruise stars as the main agent in an operation to kill Adolph Hitler, and though the movie supports a rather astounding supporting cast (Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Carice Van Houten, Stephen Fry, Terrence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson and Eddie Izzard, among others), I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that Cruise is the only name that appears in text in this rather kinetic trailer. Enjoy, and have a great weekend. Peace out.

The biggest "Office"-related news this morning is actually that Ricky Gervais is close to being tapped to be the host of the next Oscars telecast. Wow. That would have to be a step up from every possible host except maybe Jon Stewart, and probably even from him. Bring it on.

But, of course, long before that, "The Office" returns tonight, and is sandwiched between two other hours of comedy that make this for folk like me a rather blissful night to just veg out in front of the TV.

First on NBC at 8 p.m. comes the return of "My Name Is Earl." Here's a show I can take or leave, but they've hooked me this year for at least the hour-long premiere by casting Seth Green as the latest poor sap Earl Hickey reaches out to help. It seems that Joy's (the insanely funny Jaime Lee Pressly) latest con reminds Earl (Jason Lee) of a wish he stole from a dying child, but he finds out the child, Buddy, is still alive. Throw in the mix that Buddy is being played by Mr. Green and he asks Earl to produce his movie, and you've got what should be high comedy.

That, however, is of course just a prequel for "The Office" at 9 p.m., which initiates what for the next three weeks or so should be two hours of perfect comedy (stay tuned for what follows, in case you some how don't know already.) As fans will remember (and I can't imagine that by now I'm spoiling anything for anyone who would care), in the season four finale Jan turned up pregnant - though not apparently by Michael's seed - and the now-engaged-to-Andy Angela was caught going fairly well beyond heavy petting with her former paramour Dwight. Juicy! Here, according to NBC, is what we can expect in the first three, I believe, all hour-long episodes starting tonight (and I'm extremely happy to report that "The Wire" alum Amy Ryan apparently appears in all of them!):

Weight Loss (tonight)
For the first time, we see what happens over eight weeks of the summer, as a Dunder Mifflin weight loss initiative causes the branch to diet and become obsessed with their weight. Michael (Steve Carell) pursues a friendship with his new HR rep, Holly (Amy Ryan). Jim (John Krasinski) misses Pam (Jenna Fischer), who attends art school in New York. Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Andy (Ed Helms) and Angela (Angela Kinsey) attend to unfinished business. (Aside from me: That last bit should just be priceless.)

Business Ethics (Oct. 9)
(Hold on a minute ... we have to take a week off? I guess that's to make way for Emmy-magnet "30 Rock," so I guess that's OK with me.)
Following Ryan’s (B.J. Novak) recent scandal at corporate, Holly must hold a business ethics seminar. The meeting gets out of control when Michael lets everyone speak freely about their unethical behavior at work. Meanwhile, Jim makes Dwight (Rainn Wilson) comply with the company’s “time theft” policy. (I can't imagine what that means.)

Baby Shower (Oct. 16)
Michael practices for the birth of Jan’s baby by having Dwight go over possible birthing scenarios (hah!). Meanwhile, Michael tells Holly that he will pretend to dislike her for Jan’s benefit.

Sounds like my second-favorite TV comedy will be back in top form, to be followed tonight by a fresh hour of the only one that's funnier (could it get any better than this?), "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." I'm not sure the guys and gal could ever be funnier than they were in last week's season four premiere all about the virtues of cannibalism, but thankfully they're gonna keep trying. Here, according to TV.com, is what's on tap tonight:

On the first episode, "America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model Contest," the gang invests in a billboard, so Mac and Frank attempt to find Paddy's next top model. Meanwhile Charlie and Dee work together to come up with the next big thing on YouTube. (I love the new apparent Charlie-Dee alliance - nothing but funny.)

After that comes "Mac's Banging the Waitress," which probably explains itself. Charlie wants Mac to beat up the waitress's new boyfriend, but what he doesn't know is that his friend is the one who's seeing her.

Now, I'll just close with this: I was in high school when NBC had it's last true Thursday night powerhouse lineup, led by "The Cosby Show" and "Cheers," and therefore thought I was too cool (believe me, I never really was) to admit these shows were classics. That said, take this NBC/FX combo, once you factor back in "30 Rock" and - while it lasts - the simply sublime "Scrubs," and I submit there's never been a better night of TV comedy, possibly ever. Enjoy it while you can! Peace out.

There's just a lot of odd stuff out there today, so let's start with the creme de la weird (with all apologies to Chuck Shepherd.)

The movie version of Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho," starring Christian Bale, was a surprisingly good adaptation and a rather severely underrated little flick. Not once, however, did I ever think while watching it, "gee, this would make a great Broadway musical." Someone else apparently did, though, and so we get this (and I can't read any of it without laughing):

Per Variety: "An '80s-tinged tuner adaptation of "American Psycho" has begun the development process and is aiming for Broadway. The graphically bloody novel, which juxtaposes Reagan-era decadence and gruesome killings, includes prominent references to bands of the era, a fact that contributed to the idea of musicalizing the story. Sounds of the time will influence the new show's score. 'Now in particular it seems relevant, especially given what's happening on Wall Street,' said David Johnson of Johnson-Roessler."

Now, as an employee of a company that's currently in the process of downsizing 10 percent of its workforce (which could quite possibly include me), I can certainly understand the impulse to tell the story of a Wall Street banker who just happens to be a serial killer in his spare time, but sheesh.

Free Michael Moore?

Almost as odd, and from the short snippet I've watched so far, possibly much more annoying is the fact that Michael Moore's new "movie" is available for free starting today on the Internets.

Now, don't get me wrong, I used to have a lot of love for Michael Moore, and still have a fairly sizable reservoir of goodwill for the man. I thoroughly enjoyed all of his movies up until "Sicko," and even that one - in which I thought he squandered the opportunity to diagnose what's severely wrong with our health care system to spend too much time gallivanting around Europe to show what's right with theirs - was at worst a noble failure.

Now, however, with "Slacker Uprising," it seems he's made an entire movie about, well, Michael Moore (and it's surely got to grate his cheese that David Zucker's movie mocking him, "An American Carol," will actually get to play wide in movie theaters starting next week.)

What you get in "Slacker Uprising" is Michael Moore touring college campuses to urge young people to register to vote in 2004 and oust George W. Bush. Both noble goals in my book, but Michael Moore being Michael Moore, in the trailer alone he already takes credit for truly starting some kind of real "uprising."

Excuse me? No offense to the youth of America, of which I am no longer a card-holding member, but what exactly have you accomplished at the ballot box, with or without Michael Moore? I'm fairly confident that things will be different this time, but if so, that will have a heck of a lot more to do with BARACK OBAMA and his forces than Michael Moore.

But I hadn't even planned to launch into all that just to tell you this: You can watch Mr. Moore's flick (which I do intend to do, in small snippets) for free by clicking here.

First look: "Notorious"

I have rather strong doubts that any flick about the Notorious B.I.G., a k a Christopher Wallace, that's being funded by his own mother is going to be terribly objective, but the cast at least is first-rate.

Jamal Woolard, who landed the role by being a rather large black man who knows how to rap, will play Biggie himself, but the supporting players are much more exciting. Angela Bassett will play his mother, Voletta Wallace (I guess when you put up your own money you get the best to play you!) Even better, Derek Luke - easily one of my favorite actors - will play Sean Diddy Combs, and the equally promising Anthony Mackie will play the late Tupac Shakur. (And, if I may digress just a bit, I wasn't really expecting to get the rather salacious "Choke" in Macon this week, but at least we get to see Mr. Luke in Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna." I can't wait.)

You won't learn too much more from this teaser clip for the flick set to open in January, but enjoy anyway.



Warning: Black man in drag and fat suit alert!

I really was hoping beyond hope that Tyler Perry was finally ready to retire the character of Madea for good.

After all, his latest flick - "Tyler Perry's The Family that Preys" - isn't perfect by any means, but when it sticks to the story of the friendship between the characters played by Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates, it's tremendously entertaining. But I guess the urge to clown around in Madea's wig and fat suit was just too strong, so his next Lionsgate flick will indeed be "Madea Goes to Jail," based on his stage play of the same name. (And, oddly enough, Derek Luke's in this one too, playing an attorney.)

Remember, I warned you, but if you still want to see more, here's the teaser trailer. Peace out.

First off, a hearty congratulations to "Mad Men" in snagging the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series, but how in the world Jon Hamm didn't win for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series is simply a mystery and more than a small crime. Here today, however, it's all about my favorite flicks in easily one of my favorite subgenres.

Although I found a few charms in Samuel L. Jackson and Neil LaBute's "Lakeview Terrace," it was over all so generic and predictable that I just have to beg out of reviewing it (and since it obliterated everything else out there at the box office, they hardly need my help.)

Instead, here are 10 psychological thrillers that are a lot more subtle than that crowd-pleaser, starting with my all-time favorite and then proceeding in perfectly random order. So, here goes, and as always, please feel free to add any you truly love that I may have omitted (because, after all, I only have time to list 10.)

Death and the Maiden
I think I first watched this Roman Polanski flick based on an Ariel Dorfman play as part of a class at Catholic University, but as I said it has stuck with me as just about the perfect psychological thriller. Though the play is clearly about Augusto Pinochet's reign of terror, Polanski sets the movie in an unnamed third world country where Sigourney Weaver plays a housewife who is convinced that her houseguest, Ben Kingsley, is the man who tortured and raped her in the past. As the triangle between Weaver, Kingsley and Stuart Wilson, who plays Weaver's husband and a prominent attorney, unfolds it will just keep you engrossed until the very end, so see it if you haven't already.

A Simple Plan
Though "Spider-Man 2" is easily the best movie ever made by Sam Raimi, I'd put this little flick starring Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton and Bridget Fonda in second (yes, ahead of "Evil Dead.") I've heard tell that the novel by Scott Smith is even better, but never having read it I can't attest to that, but I can tell you this little flick about the power of money is just a winner.

With a Friend Like Harry
The next two flicks on this list will be French because, well, they do psychological thrillers as good as anybody since Alfred Hitchcock, to whom this flick in particular owes a huge debt. In it, Laurent Lucas and Mathilde Seigner play a middle class couple who have a chance encounter with one of Lucas' old school mates Harry, played with chilling precision by Sergi Lopez. It's fun to watch as Harry slowly brings out all of Lucas' worst impulses, and it must be said for folks who take note of such things that Sophie Guillemin, who plays Harry's girlfriend Plum, is just an insanely beautiful woman.

Man on the Train
If I'm not mistaken, it was Ashok who kindly recommended this Patrice Leconte flick starring the French singer Johnny Hallyday and the great actor Jean Rochefort, and I'm certainly glad he did. In it, Hallyday plays a man who comes to a small town with the intention of robbing the main bank and Rochefort is a retired schoolteacher who takes him in as a boarder. It becomes a bit ponderous as they each start to examine the life choices they have made, and the end is just completely crazy (in all the best ways), but I can also recommend this one to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Apt Pupil
It's more than a little bitterly funny that the late Brad Renfro, who only managed to make it to the age of 25, almost made this list twice with both this mindbender and "Bully," a thoroughly terrifying flick from Larry Clark which just missed the cut. In this Bryan Singer flick based on the Stephen King short story, a very young Renfro plays a boy who finds out the old man down the street (the great Sir Ian McKellen) may just happen to be a rather notorious Nazi war criminal.

Hard Candy
What in the world ever happened to Ellen Page? I skipped the only movie I know she was in this year, "Smart People," but it certainly would be nice to see her on the big screen more often since "Juno." It was this truly chilling flick that first brought her to many people's attention, and in it she plays a teen who lures an Internet perv (Patrick Wilson, who also stars in "Lakeview Terrace") into a trap and just tortures him without mercy. It's almost as uncomfortable to watch as it is simply entertaining as hell, and Page is just fantastic in it.

Rosemary's Baby
Since this one doubles as my favorite horror flick, and is a second entry from Roman Polanski, it was a natural fit for this list. Michael Bay and his fellow felons actually have their eyes on remaking this one (along with "The Birds" and who knows how many other horror classics), but there's no way they'll even come to close to what Polanski created from Ira Levin's pulpy tale of an aspiring actor (John Cassavetes) who offers his wife's (Mia Farrow) first child to the couple next door, who just happen to worship Satan. Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer are just hilarious as the leaders of the little Satanic cult down the hall.

Memento
All the tricks that Christopher Nolan had perfected by the time he made "The Dark Knight" were honed in this little trip starring Guy Pearce as a guy with short-term memory loss who tries to piece together the details of his wife's death using notes and tattoos. "Insomnia," which Nolan made just after this one, is almost as good, but Pearce's singular performance just elevates it a notch above.

Manchurian Candidate
If Jonathan Demme's 2004 version of this hadn't been a remake of John Frankenheimer's classic, the latter one would have been a perfectly pleasant little political thriller. When compared with the original, however, it just can't stand up to what Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury delivered in this slightly flawed but still great flick about those pesky Communists and their predilection for mind control.


Shallow Grave
Whew, last one, but if this were in any order of preference I'd probably have this Danny Boyle flick right below "Death and the Maiden." Even more so than "Trainspotting," this tale of money and greed starring Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox (man would it be great to see her again!) and Christopher Eccleston established Boyle as easily one of my favorite directors, and I can't wait to see what he's cooked up this year with "Slumdog Millionaire."

And there you have it. As I said, please feel free to add any of your favorites, and have a perfectly passable Monday. Peace out.

I have no idea if writer/director David Koepp created "Ghost Town" with Ricky Gervais in mind, but after watching it you won't be able to see how it could have worked in any way without him.

What they've managed to do is take a fairly routine ghost/love story and turn it into a bona fide charmer. And for the record, I can't remember the last time I bothered to see a movie about ghosts that wasn't a horror flick because I generally have little tolerance for sap.

There's certainly more than a little of that here, and more and more of it as the flick goes on, but from the outset it's a showcase for Gervais' endearingly jaded view of the world. As dentist Bertram Pincus, he's annoyed with just about everyone and everything around him.

The first 20 minutes or so (after you get to watch Greg Kinnear die, which I suppose has its own kind of joy for a certain number of folks) are basically one long Gervais riff, and it reaches its funniest point when he tries to get a straight answer about his slightly botched colonoscopy (of course) from a dippy, spray-tanning doctor (Kristen Wiig) and the hospital's lawyer/enforcer (Micheal-Leon Wooley). I guarantee that if you've ever been even a little frustrated with doctors (and if you haven't, I'm amazed) you'll just laugh out loud at all of this.

It's that operation that left Gervais' Pincus dead for about seven minutes or so, and afterward cursed with the ability to see and communicate with the many ghosts that lurk on New York's streets (and the flick, by the way, makes great use of NYC in the fall.) Luckily for us, until the inevitable warming of his heart, he remains just as annoyed with the dead as he was with the living, and just as caustic with their many requests.

Chief among them is Kinnear, who enlists Pincus to break up his widow's engagement to a human rights lawyer. The two of them are funny enough, but what saves the flick from ever careening completely into the realm of schmaltz is Tea Leoni, who as Kinnear's widow just has a natural rapport with Gervais. One of the movie's true pleasures is in watching her try to stifle her laughs at the more inappropriate of Gervais' riffs (cheeky but rarely crude stuff, a welcome change from the norm.) And "Daily Show" fans will enjoy seeing Aasif Mandvi as Pincus' dental partner who has to deal with all his most anti-social outbursts.

In the end, you won't learn a whole lot from this late-summer charmer, and hopefully Ricky Gervais won't either, because we all need him to be as sardonic as possible after this turn that should hopefully show the world he can successfully topline a Hollywood flick.

Unfortunately, a quick look at the box office numbers shows this one will only make about $5.5 million and finish behind even "My Best Friend's Girl." That's a real shame, but I think word of mouth about Gervais will keep this one in theaters for a good little while, so consider this my little part to help with that. Just go see it already!

I get the feeling from watching this trailer for Charlie Kaufman's upcoming "Synecdoche, New York" that almost everyone's gonna agree he was probably better off with collaborator Spike Jonze, but so what?

After Jonze passed on this to direct "Where the Wild Things Are" (which may never even make it to a screen anywhere near you in the form that Jonze envisioned), Kaufman continued as both writer and director of this apparently rather sprawling flick, due out in at least limited release Oct. 24. And without that filter, we apparently get Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a theater director but really playing, well, Charlie Kaufman.

Anyone who's seen "Adaptation" probably agrees this can be a maddening but extremely entertaining thing to watch. In "Synecdoche, New York" (the title is apparently a play on Schenectady), Hoffman's character spends at least 17 years (guessing from a heartbreaking line that comes at the end of the trailer) building a replica of the entire city of New York in a warehouse.

According to Variety, who provided the trailer at the end of this post, the flick is an uneven meditation on life, death and anything else that crosses Mr. Kaufman's rather twisted mind, but it also "exerts sufficient power and artistic mystery to pull the willing a fair way down its twisty trail, and a first-rate cast led by Philip Seymour Hoffman and some wonderful women provide a constant lifeline even when it’s hard to know what’s going on.

When those women are Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton and Dianne Wiest, I'm definitely along for the ride, no matter how ponderous it gets (and even if I have to drive to Atlanta to see it.) Anyways, that's enough prattling on from me. Enjoy the trailer, which although it's often too dark to make out is still enough to get me geeked up for this one, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend.