We're coming down to a bit over 3 weeks to go before a SAG strike as the guild resumes talks with producers today. The guild has yet to vote for a strike and sources say that even though fellow actors' guild AFTRA signed a contract last month, SAG is unlikely to rubberstamp a copy of that contract for their members. All I know is that "Mad Men" is coming back to AMC in July so......

Let's go over the ground rules. Rule number 1: No touching of the hair or face... AND THAT'S IT! | Photo courtesy of Lionsgate As expected (due to its wussy PG-13 rating and higher theater count) The Forbidden Kingdom ($20.8M) knocked off the R-rated Forgetting Sarah Marshall ($17.3M) in the opening weekend for both films. Last week's dreary winner Prom Night endured the typical precipitous drop (-56%) but still managed to hold onto third......

Fat man in a little coat | Photo courtesy of Universal Ordinarily, I'm completely disinterested in the box office performance of a movie. Sure, my innate sense of justice leads me to wish that good films will do well and bad films poorly, but I never check Boxofficemojo over the weekend to see how a movie is doing. I may keep on eye on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, though, to see if the weakening Apatow......

Photo courtesy of dmax3270 via flickr While the features and shorts at Sundance are occasionally hit or miss, the documentaries are always strong across the board. Yesterday, I was able to see two that I have had my eye on since the festival schedule was originally released: Made in America by Stacy Peralta and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden by Morgan Spurlock. Considering all the frantic back-and-forths I've been doing since last......

Welcome to the lull between Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third, when studios and indie distributors alike unload little known films to sate audiences' hungry to be entertained by the fleeting magic of cinema. 28 Weeks Later... - Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto, Psicotaxi) picks up where Danny Boyle left off in 28 Days Later with most Londonites infected by a "rage virus" that turns them into violent zombies and prompts the great debate......

A Word or 89(approx): One thing I didn't mention over the weekend was Sunday's SNL In the '90s because I thought it woudl suck. I was right. First, why did it take them 7 years to come up with this 2 hours of dreck? Second, the equal emphasis of the (pathetic) music acts and the comedy was a mistake - the show is an hour and a half with 2 songs in it, the......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

MONDAY: Never The Girl Next Door Gretchen Mol plays Bettie Page in the upcoming movie, The Notorious Bettie Page that opens April 14. Join Mol and director Mary Harron at Reel Talk with Stephen Farber at the Wadsworth Theatre in Brentwood. Tuesday: Decruited “We [in show business] are experts in the field of rejection.” It began in L.A. when Annabelle Gurwitch collected stories from comedian friends to produce an event called Fired. Now, it’s......

Running metaphors. Baseball metaphors. Prize-fighting metaphors. It's no secret that the press loves to equate the scrum of American politics with, well, a rugby scrum. Sports lingo gives us ink-stained wretches a convenient explanatory shorthand (understandable by even the slobbiest of football slobs) to use in whittling down the impossibly complex narrative of a modern Presidential campaign into an easily digested blurb or soundbite. The candidates themselves play into this simplification, often by associating......