One moment later, the young girl was completely devoured by the circus bear. | Photo courtesy of New Line Cinema Readers of The Golden Compass will find a book that severely questions religious authority, venerates childhood sexuality and virtually espouses atheism. Viewers of the film adaptation, however, will find none of these ideas in the movie. By stripping out the elements that made the book so compelling, director Chris Weitz and his partners at......

In ten years, we'll remember this movie for introducing Olivia Thirlby | Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Now that all the hubbub has subsided, can we all agree that Juno was really just an okay movie and that there's no way Ellen Page should ever have been nominated for an Oscar? All I know is that whenever Rainn Wilson or Olivia Thirlby were on-screen I paid zero attention to the dour and monotone Page.......

Sweeney ponders blood-letting | Photo courtesy of DreamWorks Though it did decent business at the box office, I'm thinking that Sweeney Todd will kill on DVD. It's Burton's best film since Edward Scissorhands. I enjoyed Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, but it's nice to see him in something less hammy. I understand that David Cross did Alvin and the Chipmunks because he needed the dough, but what's Jason Lee's excuse? He......

Nothing quite goes together like kites and Afghanistan. | Photo courtesy of Paramount Vantage The Kite Runner was one of those movies that I obviously should have seen in theaters. I just could never work up enough enthusiasm to actually go out and do it. It's a no-brainer DVD rental. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't The Mist sort of crappy? Why exactly is it getting the deluxe edition DVD treatment? It took......

As reports and tweets comes out of of SXSW in Austin, TX where BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy reportedly held a disastrous interview with 23-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, news of the popular social networking site with more of a national and local business twist hit the wires: Paramount will offer movie clips via a Facebook application, a first for the movie industry....

LAist catches up with Michael J. Nelson, a former host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, as he talks about his latest project, RiffTrax. In the interview, he also gives us the scoop about political ads, bloopers and a possible live event in Los Angeles....

Photo courtesy of Universal Wow! Most weeks I'm happy if there are a couple of new DVDs worth picking up. Today, I count at least eight that would be solid editions to any library. American Gangster may not have been the great film that many were expecting, but it was still solid studio fare. I'll say the same for Michael Clayton even though it inexplicably got better critical attention. Has Ang Lee ever made......

Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford didn't exactly set the box-office on fire when it landed in theaters. Something tells me, though, that this superb, meditative neo-Western will enjoy a long life on DVD. Across the Universe is the world's longest music video and a treat for any Beatles fan (and only for Beatles' fans!). Elizabeth - The Golden Age was unexpectedly ripped by critics.......

President Bush landed this morning at LAX for a Southland visit to promote the free trade agreements he mentioned in Monday's State of the Union address with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. LAX shut down temporarily to accommodate the arrival of Air Force One, and at the airport Bush was greeted by sisters Marni and Berni Barta, two Harvard-Westlake students who founded a program called Kid Flicks, which "collects new and used DVDs that are......

Photo courtesy of travelin librarian via flickr One of my favorite films of 2007 arrives to DVD today, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I know what some of you are thinking--why would I want to watch a documentary about grown men competing at Donkey Kong? To that question I can only say, "Trust me. You won't be sorry." Like all great films, King of Kong is about much more than its......

As a devoted fan of Wet Hot American Summer, I feel it's my duty to give top-billing to the equally hilarious The Ten. I'm not sure there was a more surreal comic moment last year than Liev Schreiber's competition with his neighbor over--what else--CAT-scan machines. I almost resent Ricky Gervais for not sticking with Extras a few more years. There are now only three funny shows left on TV. Between grief and Good Luck......

I've managed to avoid watching NFL playoffs and college bowl games but I'm getting worn down, I'm tellin' ya. If I got the Fox Movie Channel I would watch Less Than Zero tonight at 7pm because I'm just about as strung out as Robert Downey Jr.was in that flick. I'm not begging for the writers to capitulate, I want them to win, I'm just begging the networks to send me some shite to write about.......

You know it's a light week when I lead off with the DVD of a TV series. The Tudors wasn't great television, but it was pretty good and Natalie Dormer was fantastic as the doomed Ann Boleyn. Am I the only one who confuses Shoot 'Em Up with Smokin' Aces? War is Jet Li's last martial arts flick...until the next one. Weird Science lasted two whole seasons? Amazing. Consumer alert!: Indie Sex is mostly......

Post Xmas doldrums have hit the tube big time, here's what's worth watching tonight: 7:00pm BBC World News BBCA - BBC will exclusively cover Benazir Bhutto's assassination and turmoil in Pakistan, aka "shit hits fan" 9:45pm A Guy Named Joe TCM - (1943) Featuring Spencer Tracy as the ghost pilot who shadows Van Johnson who is courting his old girlfriend played by Irene Dunne. This original is a million times better than Spielberg's piece of......

I'm hoping you got a bunch of DVDs to tide you over during this dead week as well as until the writer's strike ends. It looks like TCM is running an "aviation in movies" marathon tonight and IFC's featuring Harvey Keitel. For further marathon action, check out BRAVO which is showing all of Project Runway's fourth season (starts at 6:00pm). 4:15pm Five Easy Pieces IFC - (1970) If you've got the day off like me,......

After debuting last week on the Internet, Jackass 2.5 is coming to DVD tomorrow. I'll be watching, laughing and drinking--in that order. If you missed Eastern Promises in theaters, pick it up immediately. Viggo has never been better. I enjoyed The Kingdom, but I think I would have preferred the original ending (spoiler warning!). The Heartbreak Kid was funnier than critics gave it credit for and had the best last line of any movie......

There are two movies that are being scandalously left off the year-end best lists. The first, Rescue Dawn, is already out on DVD. The second, Once, is available today. Simply put, this is one of the best musicals and love stories in years. Buy it and watch it immediately. The Simpsons Movie was much better than I expected. If only the same care was put into the TV series. Why did Stardust bomb? It......

So, here we are. Living in the crazy post-Office/Pushing Daisies/30 Rock world that none of us wanted, and of course it's only about to get worse. With shows falling off like Bud Selig's credibility (zing!), the time to start seeking out alternatives is now. Of course we've already given you a good start, but believe me when I say those recommendations are the tip of the television iceberg. Lucky for you, I have the......

So most of the shows are either about to run out or have run out of new episodes (raise your hand if you're sad that there wasn't an Office Christmas show this year!) What will you do instead? I could suggest that you knit quilts for poor children, invent a plausible substitute for gasoline, start that novel you've been thinking about. But you're not going to do that. You're going to watch tv. So let's talk about what you can do to not get caught up in the increasingly noxious diet of reruns and reality tv. ...

The Harry Potter series of films may be due for a bit of a letdown now that the books are all done and the secrets are out. Nevertheless, something tells me I'll be curling up with the family to watch Order of the Phoenix over Christmas. If Paul Greengrass isn't the best director working right now he's definitely on a very short list and Bourne Ultimatum is the proof. What was Vanessa Hudgens thinking?......

There's only one 1/2 hour of TV I'm looking forward to tonight and it's on NBC. Out of some desperate need I've turned to Kenny vs. Spenny (which debuted on Comedy Central a couple weeks ago) but I scored the Season 3 DVDs which includes the hilarious "Who Can Make the Best Porno" competition which resulted in the first sketch comedy porno ever (although, it could be argued, that the majority of porn is sketch......

So, yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Superbad are the big releases this weekend. Honestly, I liked both movies well enough, but neither deserves the #1 slot in the weekly rundown like Battlestar Galactica: Razor does. Since new episodes of the best show on television won't air until March 2008, we'll have to make do with this 2-hour movie that follows the adventures of the Pegasus after the treacherous Cylon attack against the......

Everyone has a guilty pleasure when it comes to terrible movies (mine is Autumn in New York--don't ask). Tonight at the glorious old Vista in Los Feliz, the good people from the So Bad It's Good Film Fest will be screening one of the true standards of the genre: Road House. Patrick Swayze stars as James Dalton, a "cooler" who is brought in to tame the rowdy Double Deuce bar in Jasper, Missouri where......

When you consider the numerous fiascoes that afflicted the production of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, you realize that it's sort of a miracle it was ever even finished (much less that it turned out to be a minor epic). What seems even more improbable, though, is that two relative newcomers like George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr would be hired to cobble together footage shot by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, and that the resultant documentary......

It's such a great shame that Adrienne Shelly's life was cut so tragically short last year. Her last film, Waitress, was one of the true, unexpected delights of the summer season. Hot Rod, however, was one of the bigger disappointments. Maybe Andy Samberg is better in two minute increments. I Know Who Killed Me may one day rival Showgirls as a guilty pleasure. It's odd. I really like Rowan Atkinson as a performer...except when......

The WGA and the producers are back at the negotiating table, hopefully they will catch the breaks that they need so that the collapse of Western civilization is averted. In a desperate attempt to avoid family time over the holiday, I managed to watch season one of Showtime's Dexter and my optimism for the future of mankind was restored. I missed Dexter when it premiered last year but was happy to cover the zany stunts......

Hearts of Darkness is such a perfect complement to Apocalpyse Now that it's hard to watch one without thinking of the other. Though it's not the greatest print, the former is finally available on DVD. Now that the year is coming to an end, people are starting to talk about Oscar contenders. Why is the superb Rescue Dawn being left out of the mix? Live Free or Die Hard doesn't play like a Die......

In the world we live in now, Pixar is nothing less than an institution. Every film it releases is an event and each of them receive excellent reviews and make piles of money. Of course, Pixar wasn't always so admired and ubiquitous. It was once a money-losing division of LucasFilm that was sold off to Steve Jobs for a paltry 5 million dollars. All of this is laid out in a behind-the-scenes feature on......

I decided to hold this review (and the Pixar Short Films DVD) for as long as I could because I wanted it to be fresh in everyone's minds as they prepared for the start of the Christmas shopping season this Friday. Whether you are looking for something for a girlfriend or a nephew or even a grandparent, Ratatouille belongs in your basket. It is another in the increasingly long string of delightful movies that......

As Josh mentioned earlier, today's DVD re-release of the classic Rob Reiner fairy tale "The Princess Bride" is happening now to celebrate and coincide with the film's 20th anniversary. The problem for the MGM marketing team was how do you repackage a movie that everyone has seen and everyone loves, and everyone loves it so much they have probably memorized most of it? One way to do it is to create a title logo......