Jonathan Nail messes with the Zohan. | Photo courtesy of Ask You Movie Review Large crowds of children propelled Kung Fu Panda to a win at this weekend's box office race ($60M) while legions of morons drove You Don't Mess with the Zohan to a healthy second-place finish ($40M). Hold-overs staked out the rest of the top 10, led by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($22.8M/$253M). Sex and the City......

Is it me or is Adam Sandler the natural successor to Noel Coward? | Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures I understand the appeal of Steven Seagal far more than I ever will that of Adam Sandler. I've hated him in his comedies just as much as I have in his dramas. In fact, I've yet to make it through the entirety of Punch Drunk Love even though Paul Thomas Anderson is high on my......

Dentistry? I can't even believe that's something that's real. | Photo courtesy of Paramount Vantage One of the great things about living in Los Angeles is that there are countless opportunities to see movies in advance for free. Spend any afternoon at the Burbank Town Center or the Third Street Promenade and you'll see people hanging around movie theaters with clipboards and flyers for upcoming screenings. Next week, as part of MTV's Sneak Peak......

Fat elephant struggles to save bacteria colony | Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox To no one's surprise, Horton Hears a Who swamped the box office this weekend with a year's best $45.1M. It easily out-distanced 10,000 B.C. which managed to bring in an additional $16.4M ($61.2M) in its second weekend. Newcomer Never Back Down surprised to the high side with a take of $8.6M followed by hold-overs College Road Trip ($7.8M/$24.2M), Vantage Point......

Love Will Tear Us Apart | Photo courtesy of Warner Independent David Gordon Green is in the very first rank of American filmmakers. As far as I'm concerned, every movie he makes is an automatic must-see on opening weekend. Snow Angels debuted last week in New York and opens today in Los Angeles. What sets Green's films apart from so many others is the lyrical melancholy that hovers over every scene and the carefully......

Monday Keith Gessen & Chad Harbach discuss the latest issue of n+1 7pm @ Book Soup Jay Inslee & Bracken Hendricks presents Apollo's Fire 7pm @ Vroman's Jenna Bush signs Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope 7pm @ Barnes & Noble, The Grove Robert Hass presents Time & Materials 7pm @ Central Library Tuesday John Leake presents Entering Hades 7pm @ Book Soup Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg present Superbad: Seth's Drawings 7pm @......

Though it's opening weekend box office total was surprisingly low, it was no surprise that critics savaged The Heartbreak Kid. Of all the Farrelly Brothers movies, only There's Something About Mary received good notices (the very funny and underrated Stuck on You and the weak Fever Pitch did okay). Comedies, of course, never get the critical respect that dramas do and vulgar comedies typically fare worst of all (with the notable exception of Judd......

So is anyone NOT buying Knocked Up this week? There's something like 5 different versions in Amazon's top 25 bestsellers right now. Wow. The TV Set is a great movie that about 400 people saw when it was in theaters. I had a near-private screening one afternoon at the Santa Monica Laemmle. Next is really only interesting if you're a Nicholas Cage hairpiece connoisseur (like myself). Evening has an incredibly raunchy nude scene with......

Exceeding even the most optimistic of expectations, Superbad hauled in a huge 33.1 million dollars to top the box office this weekend. Seth Rogen can do no wrong right now. The terrible, awful, unfunny Rush Hour 3 dipped precipitously in its second weekend, pulling in 21.8 million and bringing its total to 88.1M. The Bourne Ultimatum stayed strong in its third week, finishing third at 18.9 million and now standing at 163.8M. The Simpsons......

In an era of comedic atrocities like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" it is important to go to the source of film comedy for a refresher on the fundamentals of on-screen hilarity. Hands down, the best place to get a taste of where comedy came from is the Silent Movie Theater. With screenings featuring film greats like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton it is a wellspring for classic cinema. There is an inherent......

Man, didn't you just love "Freaks and Geeks"? Weren't you pissed when it got cancelled, almost as pissed as you were when they cancelled "Arrested Development"? Or, if you discovered it post-axe, weren't you pissed there was only one season to savor on DVD? But then The Forty-Year-Old Virgin came out and was really funny and did really well at the box office, and you were still pissed about "Freaks and Geeks", but at......

6:51 - Some chick and some dude from The Hills grace us with their presence. Why are they here? Oh right, they're on a show that's on MTV. Notice the cross-promotion. Together, I will count them as 1 celebrity, and even that's stretching it. Total Number of Celebrities Who Have Visited the Blogghetto: 2. 6:49 - Johnny Depp wins Best Performance. Wearing a black blazer and jeans, he ascends the stage to a chorus......

From old-timey comedians like Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Oliver Hardy (Stan Laurel's rotund partner) to character actors like Sydney Greenstreet and Victor Buono to wild men like John Candy and Chris Farley, Hollywood has always had a special place for fat men, especially the funny ones. But in a body-obsessed, size 0 industry even Hollywood's corpulent comedians aren’t immune to downsizing. Fat -- whether used as epithet, compliment or neutral descriptor -- meant something......

The plucky underdogs are front and center this weekend during a brief break between the summer sequel heavyweights. They’ll be trying to steal what little bit of box office they can post-Pirates, pre-Ocean. Have to move fast though, Clooney and his Ocean’s crew seduce your ticket dollars next week with their sensitive eyes, well-tailored suits and charmingly witty speech-cadence. Knocked Up - Seth Rogen accidentally impregnates Katherine Heigl during a one-night-stand (I should be......

I could write a movie review of Knocked Up -- and maybe I still will -- but it will just be a long list of hilarious moments (there's the part where he does this one thing... and then she says this other thing...) in a movie overflowing with hilarity. Trust me on this: you will walk out of the movie floating on fluffly pink cloud of funny-ness, and I don't want to spoil a second......

All photos taken by Rob Takata for LAist. Last night the Mann Village theater in Westwood hosted the premiere of writer Judd Apatow's latest comedy, Knocked Up. The movie is hilarious! From start to finish. And worth watching multiple times. But we'll save the review for another day. Here are some snaps from the post-premiere party, which was held at a dolled-up parking lot adjacent to the theater. The film's star, Seth Rogen with an......

It looks super funny. It stars Katherine Heigl, who's pretty and funny. It stars Seth Rogen, who's hilarious. It co-stars Paul Rudd, who's cute. It co-stars former Groundling (and current SNL castmember) Kirsten Wiig, who's very funny. It has lots of Freaks & Geeks cast members in it. Yay, Judd Apatow!......