While Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope is about the comic-con crowd, the film's underlying themes of hope, community, acceptance, and the human capacity to be extraordinary make the film boundlessly inclusive and universally engaging.
Morgan Spurlock's 'Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope' Is An Homage to Fandom
TV Junkie: Hulu's New Shows + Weekend Edition
Hulu unveiled a slate of new shows and a new season of Morgan Spurlock's "A Day In The Life" last weekend. Will these shows help keep Hulu relevant or do they need to keep negotiating to get more TV reruns? --- All this and the TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan weekend edition.
Weekend Movie Guide 04/29: Mo Cars, Mo Money, Mo Vampires, Mo Problems
Last week, Disney proved itself adept at wrangling packs of wild cats. They follow it up with a deadlier pride of preeners in Prom. Not to burst their bubble, but my prom was neither Fast nor Furious. Luckily, Vin Diesel & Paul Walker were, and they mark their ten-year reunion with Fast Five.
Weekend Movie Guide: Ghouls & Geeks
As someone who had used Facebook since its inception, only to participate in Quit Facebook Day earlier this year, I'm very interested in The Social Network. It's a rare peek into the real world behind our augmented reality, with plenty to "like": David Fincher as director, Aaron Sorkin as writer and Jesse Eisenberg as "the CEO, bitch!" himself, Mark Zuckerberg. The film has a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics comparing it to Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood & The Godfather. Freakonomics aims for a similar pedigree with its documentary all-star squad: Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Seth Gordon (King of Kong), Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) tackle abortion, education, offbeat baby names and cheating sumo wrestlers through statistical vignettes, but there may be too many cooks in the kitchen.
TV Junkie: Tuesday
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.
Box Office Review: Chan and Li dump Sarah Marshall
As expected (due to its wussy PG-13 rating and higher theater count) ($3.5M/$144.4M).
Weekend Movie Guide: Another Apatow disappointment?
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 brand can regain some strength after the relative failures of will restore some order to Judd's universe.
LAist at Sundance: A Great Doc Day
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: by Morgan Spurlock. Considering all the frantic back-and-forths I've been doing since last Friday, it was a blessing that these two awesome documentaries were screening right after each other at the same theater.
New Movie Friday: 28 Weeks Later..., Delta Farce, The Ex, Waitress + more!
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.
TV Junkie: 'Heroes' at Full-Throttle; Mike Myers on Leno; Peet on Conan (he wishes)
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...
This week in -ists
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.
Events This Week: Get Fired, Go Dance
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.
On the Homestretch in the Bottom of the Ninth
Running metaphors. Baseball metaphors. Prize-fighting metaphors.

