Some of us haven't even hung the Christmas lights, and we're already supposed to pop champagne for New Year's Eve? Elsewhere, Jonah Hill & Charlize Theron battle for extreme arrested development! more ›

After a summer of mostly lackluster debuts, Toy Story 3 demolished the competition this weekend, setting a Pixar opening record of $109M. Surprise powerhouse The Kung Fu Kid finished a distant second ($29M | $106.2M), well ahead of the mediocre and disappointing The A-Team ($13.7M | $49.7M). The unexpectedly funny Get Him to the Greek showed good legs in its third weekend ($6.1M | $47.8M) while Shrek Forever After continues to print money against all sound judgement ($5.5M | $222.9M). more ›

It isn't like we needed a Toy Story 3, but there's no doubt it will be awesome. Pixar's perfect string of massive commercial and critical hits continues with seemingly no end in sight. Barring the last minute addition of a full-frontal nude scene from Megan Fox, expect Jonah Hex to sink quickly to the bottom of the box-office charts. Who exactly is interested in seeing this movie? It still astonishes me how deeply the influence of religious weirdos runs in our society. In 8: The Mormon Proposition we see how a small group of devout lunatics prevents gay Californians from equally participating in society. People who supported Prop 8 hate America. more ›

For the third week in a row, the tired Shrek franchise managed to place its latest entrant atop the weekend box office race. The lame Shrek Forever After raked in $25.3M ($183M) to easily top the hilarious newcomer Get Him to the Greek ($17.4M) and the lame Killers ($16.1M). The unnecessary Prince of Persia ($13.9M | $59.4M) and the... more ›

After two weeks of middling studio releases (e.g. Sex and the City 2: Bitches Abroad, Shrek 4: Again?, Prince of Persia 1: Why?), we finally get some decent product today. Fresh off its recent Sundance success, Splice launches into theaters as a thinking-man's Species. Brody and Polley give this horror flick extra class and oomph. I didn't love Russell Brand in Sarah Marshall, but I'll give Get Him to the Greek a shot -- mostly due to the always interesting Jonah Hill. The presence of the lethally dull Sean Combs is cause for alarm, however, more ›

Still not quite sure why so many branded Funny People an unmitigated disaster. Sure, it wasn't as big of a box-office performer as your standard Apatow or Sandler joint, but it was hardly a huge bomb ($51M). Plus, the reviews were fairly solid across the board (68% positive on RT). Something tells me that this is a film that people will find on DVD and VOD, and it will eventually become a basic-cable classic. It's not saying much, but Angels & Demons was a hell of a lot better than The Da Vinci Code. If you want to see a great movie that takes place in the same basic neighborhood, try out the fascinating Gomorrah. more ›

Despite facing a brutal marketing challenge, Funny People managed to top the box office this weekend. Though it was the lowest-performing champ of the summer, the Judd Apatow-helmed laugher brought in $23.4M to hold off a resilient Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($17.7M | $255.4M). The awful G-Force was a hair behind ($17M | $66.4M), followed by the awful The Ugly Truth ($13M | $54.4M) and the, uh, awful Aliens in the Attic ($7.8M). Orphan ($7.2M | $26.7M), Ice Age 3 ($5.3M | $181.8M), The Hangover ($5M | $255.7M), The Proposal ($4.8M | $148.8M) and Transformers 2 ($4.6M | $388.1M) rounded out the top 10. more ›

If you're planning to see one movie this weekend, you should re-jigger your schedule and see four! Funny People would be an excellent place to start. It's Rogen, Apatow and Sandler's best film to date (LAist review here). Sure, it's not a straight comedy, but it is damn funny. You'll leave the film in a good mood, but that will quickly turn into righteous anger once you've seen The Cove. The best movie at the Sundance Film Festival this year (LAist reviews here and here), it's a thrilling and sad documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. I mean seriously, how many eco-documentaries have scenes inside ILM? The Cove is that cool. More to the point, it almost feels like a narrative film with all the intrigue and plot that go into capturing the wrenching footage of dolphins being mercilessly pitchforked in the water by giggling fisherman. See it! more ›

The lazy response to Judd Apatow's Funny People will be that it isn't as, well, funny as his two previous films, The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up. The subtext of that observation, of course, is that it isn't as good as those other films, and that is a howlingly wrong presumption. True, Funny People is not Apatow's funniest film, but -- true also -- it is his best. While not a straight comedy, it has plenty of laughs and inspired lunatic performances (Eric Bana, in particular, is a revelation). What it also has, though, is an interest in exploring the intersection of mortality and human failing, and it does so with great clarity and a requisite lack of pity. more ›

DirecTV has finally come to the on-demand table but is it too late? Supposedly it's at least as bad as the Dish Network's offering - very limited functionality, automatically sending content to a set top box with limited storage and potential delays in viewing. more ›

This weekend's new movie offererings are so spectacularly awful that I felt compelled to lead with the dreamy 1961 French classic, Last Year At Mariendbad, which opens this weekend at the Nuart. You'll probably walk out of the theater wondering what in the hell you just saw (it's trippy and plotless), but at least you'll be challenged a little bit. That certainly won't be the case with Jessica Alba's latest snoozer, The Eye. This "horror" movie is, of course, a re-make of a better Japanese film. Please Jesus, make this trend and this actress go away. more ›

Exceeding even the most optimistic of expectations, continued to hang on with 6.6 million and a new cume of 165.1M. more ›

Unlike the Michael Cera gets fired from Knocked Up clip we mentioned a while back, this looks like it might be a real outtake from the movie. It features Jonah (Jonah Hill) spouting off to Alison (Katherine Heigl) about the disappointing lack of hot gay sex in Ang Lee's "boundary-pushing" film, Brokeback Mountain.... more ›

A Word or 77 (or so): ABC has a lineup of new episodes and shows tonight - bucking the other networks, with the exception of Fox and the CW, who were always trend-buckers [hey, I said "buckers" ok, you dirty-minded individuals]. You might have also seen on the AP that the kids are trying to keep Jericho on the air - if CBS doesn't want to run it, they should sell it. I always... more ›

A Word or 10: Intercity baseball rivalry tonight - check it. Have a great weekend! Tonight - Friday - May 18, 2007 Dodgers @ Angels (KCAL, 8:00 p.m.) That's the Way It Is: Celebrating Cronkite at 90 (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) The last great newsman turns 90. Dateline NBC (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) More exploitive garbage. The Henry Rollins Show (IFC, 8:00 p.m.) Joan Jett(!!); The Blood Brothers perform America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC, 8:00 p.m.)... more ›

Besides exposure for new and upcoming music, SXSW also serves as a launching pad for products, companies and shows like MTV's upcoming Human Giant. Starring funny men Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer, the show kicked off a sneak preview party last night at Friends on 6th St. We ran into Sam Grossman, development exec at MTV. He talked about the new sketch comedy show with us over beers. “There’s a Bugs Bunny... more ›