Loder is exactly right, which goes a long to explain why Cox stages most of his action in daylight and why the result of this alternately harrowing, beautiful, and poignant examination of two heroin addicts is the furthest thing from just another piece of Hollywood nihilism. Cox never flinches from the debasement that made up much of the life of our two protagonists. The genius of the script, though, is how the presentation of those moments is easier to take thanks to a wickedly funny and knowing sense of humor. You find yourself laughing out loud at the absurdity and outright stupidity of how these two lived their horrible lives, fed their habit, and raged in self-delusion against reality and their own self-immolation:

Nancy: I fucking hate them! I fucking hate them! ! Fucking motherfuckers! They wouldn’t send us any money! They said we’d spend it on DRUGS!
Sid: We would!

And:

Nancy: I hate my fuckin’ life.
Sid: This is just a rough patch. Things’ll be much better when we get to America, I promise.
Nancy: We’re in America. We’ve been here a week. New York is in America, you fuck.

Best of all, the story never denies its protagonists their humanity. In order to feel every moment of a slow-motion suicide, Cox makes it impossible for us not to pity Sid and Nancy, even though their many flaws are always on display. As two unspent lives swirl the drain, the glimpses we’re given into what could’ve been (especially with respect to Sid) makes these moments touching in a way that sneaks up on you.  And as destructive as the relationship was, we do know for certain that these two truly loved one another and, moreover, we are never allowed to forget how heartbreakingly young they were (he was 21, she was 20).

Cox never excuses or asks us in any way to sympathize with the behavior or actions of his characters. While we might admire their free spirits and refusal to conform to the establishment, how these qualities manifest into action is an honest-to-God horror story. The monster is the pursuit of pleasure, the victims are the two people who created that monster, and the price they pay is an inability to ever experience happiness.   

Gary Oldman’s performance is, in my opinion, one of the greatest of the ’80s. The actor doesn’t mimic, he transforms. Even though he’s a much bigger star today and an instantly recognizable face, you never see Oldman, you only see Sid. And without any exposition or contrived moments, you see in the actor’s eyes the pride, confusion, helplessness, and rage that made Vicious both compelling and self-destructive. You see the man not the symbol or the celebrity.

Webb has an even harder job in making the persistently obnoxious and harping Nancy into someone we don’t want to see end up dead. Webb makes Nancy funny, though, very funny, and her lack of self-awareness is surprisingly endearing. Nancy’s child-like innocence makes it impossible not to like her:

Nancy: [Pointing] No! Look, that’s the roller ramma. Sid, I won a roller skating trophy there when I was six years old.
Granma: Nancy, don’t fib.
Nancy: Fuck you, Grandma.

Nancy is neither mean nor vindictive, just young, selfish, and clueless. One of the most poignant scenes is how legitimately hurt and confused she is by the rejection of her family after the drugged out couple spends a little time at home (the sequence itself is a trour de force of filmmaking).

“Sid and Nancy” is a genuine cinematic classic, one of the best biopics you’ll ever see, and one of the strongest anti-drug films to date. Cox’s genius is never letting go of the humanity in the squalor, and I dare you to not be moved as the doomed couple shares a tender kiss in a filthy alley as garbage rains down on them or to be touched by their final moment together.

This is one of those films where the idea of home video feels like magic. For a mere $18 bucks you can own a perfect copy of a masterpiece and watch it again and again and again.

MUSLIM WHINING AT ALL-TIME POP CULTURE HIGH

Hit play on both videos embedded here. After the first video plays on each player, a second set of clips runs automatically, and that’s when the crybabying really begins.

“The Muslims Are Coming!” is even harder to stomach.

Regardless of religion or whatever, self-appointed victims disgust me to no end. I’m sorry, but Muslims have no more to crybaby about than any other “group” in this country. Furthermore, other than the L, G, B, and Ts, no group is more protected, coddled, and given a pass as some sort of sacred cow.

Being a Muslim isn’t anti-American, but posing as a victim, especially on television, sure as hell is.

ARCLIGHT ANNOUNCES SIX-FILM GARY OLDMAN RETROSPECTIVE

It’s impossible to believe The Mighty Gary Oldman is not an Oscar recipient. Hopefully, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” will remedy that wrong (it’s doing well in its limited run) and this film retrospective in the heart of Hollywood will remind voters of just what a talent they’ve overlooked for decades.

WATCH THE OPENING OF ‘RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK’ CUT TOGETHER FROM 30 OTHER FILMS

So someone took two years to locate and edit together shots from 30 other films that duplicate the first 13 minutes of “Raiders.”

The video is all over the Web now, but for some reason not under the label: The dumbest waste of time since the “Star Wars” prequels.

‘EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE’ POSTER DEFACED

Can’t remember the last time a movie was so openly hated, at least not along partisan or cultural lines:

Not everyone is clamoring to see the post-Sept. 11 drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Case in point: A defaced movie poster at a bus stop on the corner of Main St. and Abbott Kinney in Venice, Calif. showed what one person thought of the film (see image above). Covering the title of the movie, a plain white paper with text in a similar font as the poster reads: “Yet Another Tediously Boring Twin Towers Collapse Movie Dramatization.”

In fine print below, the criticism continues: “Ho hum … think it’s just another Redbox night for me. Thank you very much.” The poster appeared to be professionally done, though it is unclear who is responsible. The sign has since been taken down.

The Redbox crack is especially satisfying.

Wake up, Hollywood. You are losing us.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

The Family Man (2000) — Over and over again in interviews and on Twitter I’ve been repeating my mantra that Hollywood hasn’t produced a classic Christmas film since 1994’s “The Santa Clause.” For some reason, and I don’t know, I keep forgetting about director Brett Ratner’s superb spin on “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Nicolas Cage, Tea Leoni, Don Cheadle and Jeremy Piven.

Watching this again over the weekend also gave me a new perspective on elements I missed or didn’t appreciate as much in the past. For starters, the Christian cross placed so prominently (using the office window lights from a nearby skyscraper) above the scene where Cheadle’s angel(?) tells Cage’s businessman that because he did something good, something’s about to happen.

Also, it used to trouble me that Leoni’s character (boy, she’s good here) didn’t want the better life her husband promises after he’s offered the wealth and career from his original life. It never made sense why she would pass on the opportunity to put her kids in better schools and the like.  Maybe coming home to my small town life after spending 9 years in the “gay Paree” of Los Angeles has taught me a better appreciation for the simpler pleasures of life.

Wonderful film, and yes, worthy of the title “Christmas classic.”

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

007.COM RELAUNCHES FOR ‘SKYFALL‘

INTERVIEW WITH DAN WALLIN, THE OLDEST WORKING SOUND ENGINEER IN THE FILM INDUSTRY

REVISITING ROBERT ZEMECKIS’ ‘CONTACT‘

‘THE AVENGERS’ SURPRISE VILLAIN REVEALED BY TOYLINE?

HAPPY 47TH BIRTHDAY TO THE ORIGINAL USS ENTERPRISE MODEL

IF YOU LIKED ‘THE ARTIST,’ CHECK OUT THESE CLASSIC SILENT FILMS

SCHWARZENEGGER TO PLAY AN ANGEL IN ‘BLACK SANDS’

THE 30 HARSHEST FILMMAKER-ON-FILMMAKER INSULTS

10 FAMOUS AUTHORS’ FAMOUS ADDICTIONS

WATCHING TV WITH YOUR KIDS OVER THE HOLIDAYS? TRY ‘FIREFLY‘

25 FACTS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL ‘STRAW DOGS‘

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF ‘MASTERPIECE THEATRE‘

10 WEIRDEST SCIENTIFIC THEORIES PROPOSED IN SCIENCE FICTION

10 FAMOUS ACTORS WHO STARRED IN FULL-MOTION VIDEOGAMES

‘STAR WARS’ SAMURAI-STYLE

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY, JANUARY 3

TCM:

11:30 PM EST:  Annie Get Your Gun (1950)  — Fanciful musical biography of wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Dir: George Sidney Cast:  Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern. C-107 mins, TV-G, CC.

A perfect musical.

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Please send comments, suggestions and tips to jnolte@breitbart.com or Twitter @NolteNC.

For the anarchistic, screw-you attitude that comes with punk rock in movies, one need look no further than the films of Alex Cox. “Repo Man” is the greatest movie ever made when it comes to capturing the punk aesthetic, and even Cox’s lesser works like “Straight to Hell” share its chaotic mindset.

Cox’s great genre love is the spaghetti western. He can be found on the supplements to numerous DVDs discussing films by the likes of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. But even when he dabbles in the western in films like “Walker,” the snarling spirit of punk comes seeping through (methinks the magnificent score by the late Joe Strummer in that particular film certainly adds to it). Only once has Cox delved into a straightforward fictionalization of a chapter in the history of punk, and that’s when he chronicled the most unhealthy relationship in the history of rock n’ roll with “Sid & Nancy” in 1986.

The way Cox chose to depict his subjects caught a great deal of flak from the community it depicts, as John Lydon himself dismissed the film as “mere fantasy … the Peter Pan version,” and Clash bassist Paul Simonon decried what he saw as a depiction of Lydon as a “fat, beer-slurping idiot.

Lydon, however, did give props to the great Gary Oldman’s performance in the lead as Sid Vicious, but he noted that Oldman “only played the stage persona as opposed to the real person.” But “Sid & Nancy” isn’t a film that feels like a presentation of deep personal truth. For that, one must go watch Julien Temple’s excellent “The Filth and The Fury,” which chronicles the history of The Sex Pistols in a delightfully formless manner.

Instead, Cox’s film feels like the the sort of truth that this psychotic couple represent to the world of punk rock; it is the depiction of their public persona rather than one that gets to know the “real” Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. It’s the Sid and Nancy we see handcuffed together in a photograph, sneering into the camera.

While Oldman had been noted for giving standout performances in films like Mike Leigh’s underseen TV movie “Meantime,” “Sid & Nancy” was the movie where he erupted as a force of a nature in the acting world, proving himself to be a leading man of undeniable intensity. Chloe Webb reaches a perfect level of shrill sycophancy as Nancy, and their toxic chemistry builds until it finally poisons them on that fateful, heroin-soaked evening in the Hotel Chelsea. Where “Sid & Nancy” falters is on its final notes, the taxi to the heavens being a sourly sentimental note to end such a bleak rock n’ roll relationship saga on.

The film comes to Blu-ray this week, and it’s a shame that Criterion no longer retains the rights to release it as their old DVD edition goes for a pretty penny. The Blu-ray sports a few bite-sized featurettes but nothing on the level that was contained on the Criterion release. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll be able to bring it back in a nice, updated Blu-ray package, but for now, this is what we get, and it ain’t bad.

Available on Blu-ray

Other Noteworthy Releases

Final Destination 5: These movies are essentially excuses to kill people in complex, absurdly violent ways, which is something I fully support. Silly, formulaic horror comfort food. May give you gas later.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Apollo 18: My favorite kind of horror is horror with a shot of science fiction, but the “found footage” gimmick is old hat.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Hostel – Part III: Here’s the sure sign we’re in the post-holiday DVD dumping ground. I’ve fallen so out of touch with the underbelly of the horror genre that I was unaware that “Hostel” was still a thing.

Available on DVD

In the Name of the King 2: The first movie in this newly-minted, uh, “series” is a bit of a guilty pleasure. The misfire casting (Burt Reynolds?! MATTHEW LILLARD?!), the ham-crusted cheeseball dialogue, the impressive choreography by Ching Siu-Tung, and Jason Statham’s cold stare make it a trashy delight. So, will I be watching Uwe Boll’s sequel starring Dolph “I Must Break You ” Lundgren? Um, hell yes.

Available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Amazon Instant

Brighton Rock: An adaptation of the Graham Greene novel starring Sam Riley and Helen Mirren. Carol Reed did wonders with Greene’s material, seeing it with Rowan Joffe’s modern eye should be interesting.

Available on DVD

The complicated film, which also stars Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Toby Jones, has been adapted from the best-selling novel by John le Carré and is a remake of a 1979 mini-series that starred Sir Alec Guinness. Although that mini-series was nearly five hours long, this new adaptation settles in with a running time of a little over two hours. The story focuses on Smiley, a former British intelligence officer, who returns to his agency to uncover a mole who is selling secrets to Russia during the height of the Cold War.

Although the plot sounds like a storyline from the show “24,” this film works as a quiet study of a group of characters who live in secrecy and survive by keeping their mouths shut. In fact, when Alfredson was asked what the biggest challenge of making the movie was, his answer spoke volumes. His greatest challenge was “to create as much space for silence as possible so that the audience could not just digest but also chew some of the information before swallowing and digesting it.”

Indeed, “Tinker” isn’t your typical spy thriller. Instead of abrupt violence and long chase sequences, this story relies on quiet observations and subtle dialogue as Smiley leads his investigation.

The story’s setting–England during the Cold War–could turn off some viewers. But the story doesn’t focus on the politics of that period.  As Oldman noted, “the Cold War is a backdrop to the story about these very, very, lonely” and “damaged people” who are often simply trying to serve their country. Oldman added that the story is very relevant today. “Back then, it was [a] Communist threat,” gripping the world, but “now it’s something else.”

Oldman also spoke out about the role that he took over from the well-accomplished Guinness. There was “lots of fear” going into the film because of that, he said. He added that “the ghost of Guinness loomed very large” over the set.

Despite the pressure, Oldman enjoyed playing Smiley. “It’s like my blood pressure lowered with George,” Oldman said. “Obviously,” he noted, “it’s great to play someone…who’s the smartest man in the room” unlike some of the “pretty stupid” characters he’s played in the past.  Interestingly enough, Oldman spoke about playing his character like a man talking about a suit he had just tried on.  “I loved coming in in the morning, putting him on, y’know, as you kind of do…” he said. After the film wrapped, the actor said that he missed the character and found himself almost looking for George.

For fans of the story, Oldman seemed open to the idea of reprising his role in the future. “There’s whispers that we may do another,” he said bluntly adding that if there is a sequel and if everything comes together for it, his answer would be obvious: “I’m in.”

ALEC BALDWIN IS A SAD AND MISERABLE MAN:

From 2008:

Alec Baldwin, who stars in “30 Rock,” the NBC sitcom that has revived his career and done nothing to lift his spirits, has the unbending, straight-armed gait of someone trying to prevent clothes from rubbing against sunburned skin. He is fifty years old, divorced, and lives alone in an old white farmhouse in the Hamptons and an apartment on Central Park West—feeling thwarted, if not quite persecuted. In conversation, he lets out an occasional yelping laugh, but he is often wistful, in a way that is linked to professional and romantic regrets, and to a period of tabloid notoriety last year, when an angry voice mail that he left for his daughter, who was then eleven, became public. He is very conscious of what is lacking in his life—a spouse, for example, and a film career something like Jack Nicholson’s, and the governorship of New York—and his rhetoric can sometimes bring to mind a scene from “30 Rock” in which Baldwin, in his role as Jack Donaghy, a shameless but astute TV executive, stares at an equestrian painting by Stubbs and, in a growled whisper of longing, says, “I wish I were a horse—strong, free, my chestnut haunches glistening in the sun.” According to Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” and an executive producer of “30 Rock,” Baldwin “guards against enjoyment.” (Michaels is a friend of Baldwin’s and was a model for the Donaghy character.) “I’ll say, ‘Alec, you have one of the best writers in television’ ”—Tina Fey—“ ‘writing this part for you. It’s shot in New York, where you chose to live. You work three days a week, you get paid a lot of money, you’re getting awards. It’s a great time in your life. It’s an all-good thing. And, if you were capable of enjoying it, it would be even better.’ ” Or, as William Baldwin, one of Alec’s three younger brothers, said recently, “There’s always something for him to fucking whine about.”

The price of being a narcissist is that happiness is an impossibility. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

THE 10 BEST CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD TOUGH GUYS

Nothing to disagree with here, especially the “special mentions.”

PIERCE BROSNAN FINDS NO COMFORT WATCHING HIS BOND FILMS

Shame, really:

Pierce Brosnan doesn’t mind leaving the James Bond-watching to his sons these days.

“I never go near them,” the actor tells Zap2it about his four rounds as Agent 007 that began with “GoldenEye” (1995) and ended with “Die Another Day” (2002). “I’m badly criticized by my boys that I will not sit and watch them with them, but I just don’t have any desire to see them. I find no nourishment in them.”

At the same time, Brosnan maintains he’s “deeply proud” of the work he did as the Bond predecessor to Daniel Craig, who will mark the movie franchise’s 50th anniversary in “Skyfall” next year. “I just don’t find any comfort in watching them. I’ll cast my eye over them, but I have to move away and say, ‘Go ahead, boys. It’s all yours.’”

Brosnan was a very good Bond. Sometimes the films let him down, but I was sorry when he left the franchise,  and after “Quantum of Bourne-ShakyCam,” I was real sorry.

In related news….

DANIEL CRAIG ON WHAT WENT WRONG WITH ‘QUANTUM OF SOLACE‘

Blame the writers strike:

[Craig] had some interesting things to say about the muddle that was Quantum Of Solace.

When asked if the script sometimes was “an after-thought on huge productions”, Craig related that back to Quantum Of Solace.

“On Quantum, we were fucked”, he said. “ We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, ‘Never again’, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.”

When pushed further on the fact that he was having to write scenes himself, Craig contined:

“Me and the director [Marc Forster] were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished.”

I’d feel a whole lot better if Craig had blamed the shaky-cam. You don’t how much better.

TOM CRUISE CONFIRMS ‘WE’RE WORKING’ ON ‘TOP GUN 2′

Video at the link:

About reuniting with director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer for the possible sequel, Cruise said that “Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas of where it is now. I thought, ‘Wow, that would be … what we could do now.’”

Cruise added: “If we can find a story that we all want to do, we all want to make a film that is in the same kind of tone as the other one and shoot it in the same way as we shot ‘Top Gun.’”

I’ve read more than once that Cruise caught no small amount of hell for doing the original “Top Gun” from Hollywood liberals like Paul Newman, who saw the iconic film as right-wing, pro-military propaganda (as though that’s a bad thing). I’ve even read that Cruise doing Oliver Stone’s “Born On the Fourth of July” was a sort of penance to put the actor back in the good graces of the liberal plantation.

If they do another “Top Gun,” it should be interesting to see how this might affect the outcome.

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF ‘STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY‘

I still remember sitting in the theatre, knowing this would be the last outing with the original crew, and hoping it would never end. Once those goodbye signatures started flying up on the screen, a piece of my childhood died.

“Undiscovered Country” was a terrific adventure, though — a worthy send off.

Shatner and Nimoy were only 60 at the time and, looking back, I’m guessing Paramount wishes they had held on to the original cast for a few more features. The “Next Generation” movies are fine, but nothing and no one will ever replace the goodwill and warm chemistry of Kirk and company.

In this house, they’re family.

RUH-ROH: DROP IN CD SALES EXCEEDS GROWTH IN DIGITAL SALES

When the Super Bowl half-time show keeps reaching for senior citizens, the music industry has a problem:

Warner Music Group continues to sing a sad tune when it comes to its financial performance. It reported today that it had  a net loss of $103M in the quarter that ended in September, 124% bigger than its loss in the same period last year, on revenues of $707M, down 6%. The financial report is mostly for bondholders; Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries bought the company in July for $3.3B. Still, it’s a dreary filing for the company whose roster of hitmakers includes Bruno Mars, Cee Lo Green, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jill Scott. Warner says that its recorded music revenues fell 8% to $571M. Although sales from digital distribution were up 6% to $194M, that was “more than offset by contracting demand” for CDs.

When I was a teen, music was all about freedom and sin: Sex, drugs, and rock -n- roll. What I hear today is mostly about anger (rap), social responsibility and kissing the ass of the state. Bono’s kind of a downer, no?

Any day of the week, I’ll take music that says “fuck you” to the establishment and the planet and The Man and the government and the sanctimony of crybaby do-gooders over music that places a virtue on surrendering to the establishment.

At heart, though, I’m a Sinatra guy — but don’t forget, he was the original gangster.

‘STORAGE WARS: TEXAS’ RECORD-SETTING DEBUT SEEN BY 4.1 MILLION VIEWERS

Every time I come across this program I watch and wait for the concept to kick in. Then the credits roll and I realize it did.

Don’t get it.

CONTROVERSIAL HITCHCOCK BIOPIC IN WORKS

Here we go:

The BBC plans to air a movie based on Tippi Hedren’s account of her relationship with Alfred Hitchcock when she was “discovered” by him to portray the lead character in the 1962 movie The Birds. Among other things, she has claimed that she had to rebuff Hitchcock’s sexual advances during the making of that film and the follow-up, Marnie. She reportedly was interviewed extensively by screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes for the project, and Donald Spoto, who wrote a largely unflattering biography of Hitchcock in 1999 (The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock), will reportedly act as a consultant on the movie. British actress Sienna Miller has been signed to play Hedren; Toby Jones, to play Hitchcock; and Imelda Staunton, to play Hitchcock’s wife Alma.

Hitchcock’s wife Alma was involved in everything her husband did. She was very much his right arm and especially crucial to the screenwriting and pre-production process, so it should be interesting to see how that plays out.

I met Hedren at an autograph show last year and let me tell you, at 80 years old, she’s still stunning. The photo she signed for me is very similar to this one. Same dress, but there’s a crow perched on her finger and the background is orange. It’s one of my favorites.

As far as the psycho-sexual backstory that always seems to  come with everything involving Hitchcock, it was boring decades ago. Okay, we get it; he had a thing for hot, young, icy, unobtainable blondes. Please don’t ever stop giving us that insight, because we didn’t hear it the first 400 times.

People are people. Hollywood didn’t devolve into degeneracy over the last few decades. Tinseltown was always Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s just that once upon a time, Hollywood didn’t attempt to normalize their deviant behavior and spoon feed it to our kids.

Once upon a time, Hollywood had class.

‘DARK KNIGHT’ 4 AND 5?

The Mighty Gary Oldman:

“Yeah, yeah. For us I think ['The Dark Knight Rises' is] the end. Whether they will make more, my guess is probably. I mean, they don’t have [the Harry Potter franchise] anymore. So, there could be a Batman 4 & 5. It may be Chris [Nolan] overseeing it in a producorial position, but for us and for Chris I think that’s it. It’s a great way to go out though. It’s a great story. Epic, epic thing it is.”

Works for me.

More: TOP 10 GARY OLDMAN PERFORMANCES

‘THREE STOOGES’ TRAILER

It’s a good thing Christian Toto did yesterday’s Big Hollywood write up for this. My first impression was that it was awful, but after a few more viewings, it’s kind of growing on me.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

More episodes of “The Closer.” If you haven’t seen the show, you should. We’re in the middle of season four and it just keeps getting better. What’s not to like about a protagonist who wants murderous kids tried as adults, is in favor of the death penalty, and loathes the “L.A. Times”? Other than a couple of stupid, out-of-nowhere, obligatory (if you’re going to survive in Hollywood) shots at “torture,” when it comes to crime and punishment, this is as good as it gets for conservatives — like the first four years of the original “Law and Order.”

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

GORE VERBINSKI’S ‘THE LONE RANGER’ FINALLY RIDES

SET PHOTOS FROM ‘THE EXPENDABLES 2‘

‘THE DARK KNIGHT RISES’ VIRAL CAMPAIGN KICKS IN

ANGELINA JOLIE TO STAR IN UNTITLED DRAMATIC THRILLER FROM DIRECTOR LUC BESSON

HAS THE ‘STAR TREK’ SEQUEL FOUND ITS NEW VILLAIN?

DETAILS ON THE WACHOWSKI/TOM TYKWER FILM ‘CLOUD ATLAS‘

EPIC ‘JURASSIC PARK’ ART SHOW

COMING TO THE SYFY CHANNEL IN 2012: THE ORIGINAL MOVIE ‘JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK‘

THANK GOD.

UNIVERSAL ANNOUNCES HARRY POTTER WORLD FOR HOLLYWOOD AND ORLANDO EXPANSION

ANOTHER TRAILER FOR ‘THE IRON LADY’ ARRIVES

THE LATEST VINTAGE FILM SCORE RELEASES

4 STORYLINES FOR A ‘DAREDEVIL’ REBOOT

COMPARING FRED ARMISEN’S ‘SNL’ OBAMA TO DANA CARVEY’S BUSH

10 GREAT ACTORS WHO PLAYED TERRIBLE SUPERVILLAINS

A LOOK BACK AT WOLFGANG PETERSEN’S UNFILMED ERNEST SHACKLETON MOVIE

A LOOK BACK AT ERNST LUBITSCH’S DESIGN FOR LIVING

4 UNEXPECTED FAN BASES IN POP CULTURE

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CLASSIC PICK FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9

TCM:

4:00 PM  EST: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) —  A dying plantation owner tries to help his alcoholic son solve his problems. Dir: Richard Brooks Cast:  Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives. C-108 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format.

Superbly realized and acted adaptation of the Tennessee Williams’ play. Though it was hidden deep in the subtext of the film, in the original play, the Paul Newman character was openly dealing with his homosexual urges.

As a kid, seeing Elizabeth Taylor in that white slip, I was dealing with the just the opposite.

PIRATES DOWNLOAD FLOPS, IGNORE HITS

If Hollywood despised child rapists and terrorists as much as they do the 99%-ers who steal from movies and music from the 1%, the world would be a much better place.

PAGING ARMOND WHITE: ‘GROWN UPS’ SEQUEL PLANNED

This makes Armond White and me very happy. And if you’re looking for Armond these days, he’s writing over at City Arts. His “Week With Marilyn” review is a must-read: “A Giant Played By a Midget.”

[Michelle] Williams lacks the personality and lush physicality for successful prurience; she’s more Renée Zellweger than Monroe.

I don’t know what “prurience” means, but I sure wish I’d written that.

Anyway, “Grown Ups” made $271 million thanks to an amusing, easygoing story and a cast that blended together perfectly thanks to a chemistry that should serve a sequel quite well.

SO WHAT DOES DISNEY HAVE IN STORE FOR THE MUPPETS IN 2012?

Well, they’ve already attacked Big Oil and told us Newt Gingrich is “from the swamp,” so I’m guessing it will have something to do with helping to reelect President FailureTeleprompter.

THE 15 BEST SHOWS ON NETFLIX INSTANT

Doesn’t anyone write about popular culture anymore who was born before 1989? There are some perfectly fine choices on this list but the oldest listed is probably “Scrubs.” Where are “Gunsmoke,” “Columbo,” “Andy Griffith,” and “Mission: Impossible”? Where are “Wagon Train,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and “Thriller”? One of the pleasures of writing about Hollywood is having the opportunity to introduce or re-introduce the classics. And I’m not that old. I’m only 45, and many of these shows that I’ve managed to discover were well before my time.

As a teenager, I used to get up at six a.m. every Sunday morning because a local PBS station aired a two-hour block of “George Burns and Gracie Allen,” “Jack Benny,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and “Our Miss Brooks.” I remember all the tin foil I wasted trying to get “The Honeymooners” off of WGN in Chicago. What attracted me to these shows is what attracted audiences decades earlier. They were and are marvelously entertaining, well acted, and clever. That hasn’t changed.

This isn’t a knock in any way on modern television. As I’ve said many times, television is currently enjoying a new golden age. But one of the glories of the age in which we currently live is access to almost everything.

Everything’s so hip, so cool, so now… Which is fine, but there still needs to be a sense and knowledge of history. I see this same problem in those who complain about the lack of content on Netflix Streaming. What in the world are they talking about? You could lose yourself in that library for a decade… if you can manage to live without season 29 of “The Simpsons” or “The Hangover II.”

And now I need all of you need to get off my lawn.

RIDLEY SCOTT SAYS BLU-RAY HERE TO STAY

Not sure I buy this:

Short of that, the technically sophisticated Blu-ray disc, of which I’ve been a supporter since its inception, is the closest we’ve come to replicating the best theatrical viewing experience I’ve ever seen. It allows us to present in a person’s living room films in their original form with proper colors, aspect ratio, sound quality, and, perhaps most importantly, startling clarity.

Which is why it has never made sense to me that those preoccupied with how movies are delivered have for years written off “physical media” (i.e., movies on discs) as “dead” even though the evidence shows it isn’t happening and won’t for years to come. Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today’s 3D movies.

It’s been three decades since the CD was first introduced and you can still buy vinyl, so there’s no doubt that Blu-ray is likely to always be with us in some form, especially for those who obsess over “proper colors” and packaging and the like. But the picture delivered through streaming is pretty damn good, as is the sound, and I think Scott is under-estimating how enamored most of us are with the miracle of having a library of movies and television shows just a click away. And then there’s the cost.

And is 3D really going to become such a big deal at home that it will save Blu-ray? According to the box office, 3D  is far from the savior it was predicted to be there.

20 NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS OF STEVE MCQUEEN

Fantastic.

For years I’ve called McQueen the last true movie star, and as you’ll see from the photographs, he was no skinny-jeaned, pierced, pasty-white metrosexual.

McQueen was also a rock-ribbed Republican.

If I make it to Heaven, one of the top one hundred things I’m going to is thank the Good Lord for is DVD. Can you imagine living in a world where your only choices were George Clooney, Ashton Kutcher and Nicole Kidman? I’d have to kill myself or get a life.

ANGELINA JOLIE ON BEING SUED, ‘IT ALWAYS HAPPENS’

Jolie’s correct. One of the pitfalls of the film business is that a copyright suit against a high-profile film is more likely to happen than not. Someone’s going to claim the idea was their idea first or that years ago they pitched the story. Sometimes someone really does get cheated, but most of these suits are frivolous.

GARY OLDMAN ON ‘DARK KNIGHT RISES’

Den of Geek:

So where, then, do things pick up for Gordon this time around? Well, “when we meet him, things are calmer in Gotham. It’s reminiscent of the Gordon that we met in the first one”, says Oldman, adding that “even though things on the surface are now calmer, he’s cleaned up Gotham with the Harvey Dent Act, it’s seething underneath”.

Appreciating that there’s only so much he could say about the film, Oldman did note that “It’s a terrific conclusion to the trilogy. Nolan rounds if off: he brings in a bit of the first one, from Batman Begins, and he does some really surprising things with it”.

Promising “the fans won’t be disappointed”, he said there’s “a relief and it’s mixed with [some sadness]” that his Batman adventures have come to an end.

Not many sequels have so much to live up to. We expect most sequels to suck, especially the third, but since Christopher Nolan is apparently incapable of making a bad film, expectations couldn’t be higher.

More here.

IS KHAN ‘STAR TREK 2′S VILLAIN?

Vulture thinks so, but would Benicio Del Toro be your first choice in casting that role? Maybe.

On Friday, the site Latino Review claimed to have confirmed that choice of villain, though Abrams promptly replied to Hitfix that the report was “not true.” Still, the famously secretive director was probably trying to keep the cat in the interstellar bag for a little while longer, as Vulture hears from a highly placed source that Khan is indeed the film’s baddie.

Another sequel much is riding on. Let’s hope there are more lens flares.

TOP 10 MEMORABLE BLAXPLOITATION FILMS

Not a single flick anchored by Pam Grier. Blasphemy.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Hoping to review this later today. 

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

DEAL OF THE DAY: 35 EASTWOOD FILMS FOR $77

MARTIN SCORSESE TO DIRECT ‘SILENCE’, BASED ON THE BOOK BY SHUSAKU ENDO

THE NEXT STEP FOR THE ‘EVIL DEAD’ REMAKE

MICHAEL BAY WANTS MARK WAHLBERG AND DWAYNE JOHNSON FOR HIS NEXT FILM, ‘PAIN AND GAIN‘

NEW PICTURES FROM ‘SHERLOCK’ SERIES 2

TEASER TRAILER FOR SCI-FI THRILLER ‘LOCKOUT,’ PRODUCED BY LUC BESSON

BOND 23 SET PHOTOS

R.I.P. LEGENDARY CASTING DIRECTOR MARION DOUGHERTY

EW’S ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR IS…

SETH GREEN LAUNCHES A NEW STOP-MOTION ANIMATION STUDIO

‘MYTHBUSTERS’ MISHAP SENDS A CANNONBALL FLYING… THROUGH A HOUSE

10 HORROR CLICHES IN ‘AMERICAN HORROR STORY‘

BRADLEY COOPER TALKS ‘PARADISE LOST’ & WHY HE LEFT ‘THE CROW’ REMAKE

PANAVISION CAMERA USED TO SHOOT ‘STAR WARS’ SELLS FOR $625,000 AT AUCTION

‘AMERICAN CHOPPER: THE BUILD-OFF’ WINNER REVEALED!

RUMOR: UNIVERSAL ORLANDO’S ‘JAWS’ RIDE BEING SCRAPPED FOR HARRY POTTER EXPANSION?

A. O. SCOTT ON ‘THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE’

9 NERDY FILM LOCATIONS YOU MUST VISIT IN YOUR LIFETIME

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CLASSIC PICK FOR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8

11:30 PM  EST: My Man Godfrey (1936) –  A zany heiress tries to help a tramp by making him the family butler. Dir: Gregory La Cava Cast:  William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady. BW-94 mins, TV-G, CC.

Depression-era classic. Hopefully TCM’s print is better than the public domain DVDs we’ve been saddled with for years.

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is the teenager caught between two boys in this story. She’s in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a local boy who has known her since she was little. Peter loves her as well and the two of them want to run away together. Unfortunately, Henry (Max Irons) is also in love with Valerie and has her mother’s support. Suzette, Valerie’s mother (Virginia Madsen), has arranged for Valerie to marry Henry despite her daughter’s wishes. As the romance plays out, a local wolf begins hunting for human flesh.

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The wolf isn’t a new visitor to the small town. The townspeople know it lives in the woods and lay out food for it on a regular basis. However, when Valerie’s sister turns up dead,  the locals start searching for the violent animal. Eventually, a priest named Soloman (Gary Oldman) arrives to find the wolf himself. Soloman has a history of hunting wolves and quickly informs the townspeople that the wolf is an actual person in town who transforms into the deadly beast.

Oldman is one of the very few things to like about this story. His presence alone brings gravitas to this teeny-bopper love triangle. It’s fascinating to watch a solid actor appear in a story that demands little acting from its lead actors, who look like they got lost on the way to a “Gossip Girl” audition. Even in his bland role, Oldman is still highly watchable in this melodramatic mess.

Because of the weak story, none of the actors have strong characters that they can develop. The script itself is, at times, laughably bad. Characters either say things simply to advance the plot or they spit out over-dramatic lines that would seem out of place on “Days of Our Lives.” Many viewers likely won’t care who Valerie ends up with. They’ll only worry that the wolf won’t have the appetite to swallow them both.

Ultimately, “Red Riding Hood” feels like the kind of sequel to “Twilight” that even the main actors from that film wouldn’t want to be in. Instead of using the same characters, the writers created a similar situation where a teenage girl has to make difficult decisions about the man she loves. Billy Burke, who played Bella’s father in “Twilight,” also shows up to play Valerie’s father. Both “Twilight” and “Red Riding Hood” may have settings that are beautiful to look at but they are both terrible to sit through.

Alas, there’s not much else to like about the dead on arrival “Red Riding Hood.” Gary Oldman tries to elevate the proceedings but “Red Riding Hood” isn’t worth salvaging. Julie Christie also shows up as Valerie’s grandmother and there is the inevitable scene where Valerie says “what big eyes you have” to her. I only wish that the creators of this film used their eyes (and their brains) to create something more compelling than this disappointing drama.

Along his lonely way, Eli stumbles into a town resembling those of the Old West. The leader of the town is a self-appointed, ruthless leader named Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman who is simultaneously a cross between Mickey Rourke from 9 ½ Weeks and Mickey Rourke from The Wrestler, as well as the whole process of evolution between the former and the latter. Carnegie is an evil megalomaniac who sends his lowlife savages in search of the Book, convinced that possession of a copy of the now-extinct Bible can help him spread his rule and establish control over degraded humanity.

In case abusing his concubine, killing some people, and treating the rest like dirt was not enough to convey that Carnegie is a bad guy, we are shown that his favorite read is Mussolini’s biography. Yet, with all the weight of culture going against him, Carnegie is the only person who had managed to forge some semblance of a settlement with brewing elements of potential civilization.   His wild town—reminiscent of an Old West settlement but surrounded with cannibals instead of Indians—is the only semi-safe and positive place in an otherwise out-of-control and collapsed world. He is assembling a hierarchical society and he needs the Book to bring, as he thinks, “all the weak and wounded” under his dominion. His intentions are sinister and self-serving, but he seems to be the only person who understands the real power of the Book and its ability to transform and civilize the brutally egotistical and animal nature of disintegrated humanity . . . while at the same time correctly assessing any man’s, including his own, inability to re-create functioning societal interactions without a binding belief system.

Eli, on the other hand, is hell-bent on delivering the Book all the way west, as if Carnegie town, the etalon of the west, isn’t west enough. Eli is unwilling to bestow the power of the Book to the maniacal ambitions of Carnegie who, nevertheless, manages to usurp the Book by exchanging it for a hostage, Eli’s model-looking girl companion (the precise type of a woman you must leave home when you are going on a mission for God, which to his defense Eli attempts to do but finds himself powerless against the Biblical urge of Hollywood producers to stick an out-of-context young pretty face in everything they do). 

When the salivating Carnegie breaks open the thoroughly locked Bible, he tragically realizes that it is written in Braille and there is no one left who can read it since there is no one left who can really read anything anyway.

At the end of the movie, to our—and even to Ray Bradbury’s—surprise that Michael Moore is not the only person he should be mad at for stealing his ideas and book titles, we find out that Eli, in fact, memorized the entire Book. He IS the book and he finally gets himself to the place where the book was needed, where God, as Eli claimed, wanted him to deliver the Book…and that place is…—and this is where I wanted to deliver my popcorn, in partially digested form, to the row in front of me—that place is San Francisco.

Alcatraz prison has been turned into a citadel of cultural values and is protected by a hi-tech armed force, making it into a cross between Berkley and Guantanamo Bay. It is here that some surviving intellectuals—including a cross between Howard Zinn and the wacky Christopher Lloyd character from the Back to the Future franchise—collect surviving cultural values, print them, and distribute them to survivors, cannibals and murderers . . . who, when they are not busy eating and killing each other for old radio parts, are of course going to read Yeats and Keats.

As the head intellectual leads Eli through the sterile archives of stored masterpieces, he points out the fact that they had recovered some pieces of Mozart and Shakespeare but hadn’t had gotten any copies of the Bible yet, and now, well, they have gotten that too … delightful, isn’t it?  Wait now. This guy Eli carried this book (or himself) through dirt and blood, killed and mutilated people who endangered his mission, was chased by cannibals and maniacs . . . and after all this, the intellectual goes …”oh, perfect we got ourselves yet another bestseller.”  That’s all?  You’re kidding me, right?

This comfortably secular and politically correct ending is sad not because it is formulaically stupid but because it robs the movie of the great potential of actually being a movie about spirit as opposed to a movie about a religious book that it lamely is.  As with most current American artistic expression, The Book of Eli blindly follows the established academic elites’ anachronistic view of a cultural value as something belonging to a museum, library, archive, university and solely validated by peer views, professional commentators, Al Gore, and accepted intellectuals—basically, anyone but the people by whom and for whom those values are created.

Ironically and particularly with the Bible, it was a different story.  The Word of God was delivered directly to the people who needed it, who in their despair and ignorance depended on it not as a cultural value but as a living breath of divinity upon which depended their very existence.  It was given to the likes of people who inhabit Carnegie’s wild settlement and it was given to people like Carnegie, willful and often times evil kings, who nevertheless had the ability to deliver the Word to the people who needed it, because the Word had the power to cut directly to the people, bypassing those who tried to use It for their selfish purposes.  It was given to ruthless emperors like Constantine and mass executioners like Paul and it transformed them.

The Word of God was given to lowlifes and prostitutes, to criminals and sinners, to murderers and tyrants. In short, the Book was given to everyone but the scribes and Pharisees, the self-appointed custodians of agreed values, the professors and intellectuals. If anything, the Word was the simple liberating truth of passion that defeated the established complex dictatorship of the mind.

And this is the real story of the Great Book of Eli instead of the religious bestseller carried by a guy named Eli who, even in a post apocalyptic wasteland, feels the urge to conform to elite snobbery which, for what we know, might have been responsible for the apocalypse in the first place.

Credit where credit is due… Hollywood is trying. Granted, six years have passed since “The Passion” proved we Christians can be convinced to return to a medium that has spent decades taking great pleasure in insulting who we are and what we believe; and with that clinical Christmas card of a follow up called “The Nativity” it seemed as though they would never figure it out. But between the unapologetic Christian “Blind Side” and now the down and dirty “Book of Eli,” there’s reason to hope the Pagans of the Pacific might have just moved a little closer to cracking our code.

“The Book of Eli” isn’t just Christian, it’s off-the-rails Christian … literally. Heathens might as well hit the lobby at the end of the second act because the final act is all about the faith. You’re more than welcome to stick around, but I have a feeling those of you with red strings tied ‘round your wrist will be checking your watch for the last twenty-minutes. Not we Bible-thumpers, though. That’s when it all comes together; and it’s moving and smart and best of all, not some hyper-reverent snoozer.

So, thanks Hollywood. Oh, I’ll be kicking your ass again in a sec, but for now… really, thanks.

 The book is the King James Bible, it’s the last one, and its protector is Denzel Washington’s Eli, a man old enough to remember life during The Before, before the last war some thirty years ago. Ever since, through a post-apocalyptic America, he has made his way west, walking alone and honing his survival skills. Gangs of marauders with robbery on their mind are no safer than the few stray animals unfortunate enough to cross Eli when he needs a meal.

Eli doesn’t understand the how or why of his mission. He just knows what God has called him to do, and in a touching act of faith has spent three decades of suffering and sacrifice to fulfill and complete something he instinctively understands is more important than himself — three decades of trudging through a desolate, colorless desert landscape where water is more precious than gold and cannibals are a constant threat. Like the book he carries, Eli is part Old Testament and New: Part Job, part St. Paul.

Carnegie (Gary Oldman) is a character right out of those great Westerns where one ruthlessly ambitious man runs a dusty old town and orders about a gang of gunslingers who cater to his every whim. Carnegie’s primary whim, however, is something he has in common with Eli: an instinct. Only the voice he hears comes from a darker place and tells him that he can fulfill a mission to widen the hold on what’s left of the world by using the Word of God as a weapon to “run the hearts and minds of the weak and desperate.”  Think of him as a community organizer – the Jeremiah Wright of The After.  

Carnegie runs a blown-out saloon complete with prostitutes and a bar. But his real hold on power is due to a secret water supply. Paying off his henchmen with H2O and girls, he sends them out to murder and rob innocents in the hope of finding the Good Book.

Carnegie also runs Claudia (the ageless Jennifer Beal) and her daughter Solara (the absurdly fetching Milas Kunis). As is expected, the dynamics Carnegie has become accustomed to, relationship and otherwise, will be turned on their head when Eli strolls into town. Oh, Eli’s not looking for trouble…  

Like most of you, many years ago I decided that after the apocalypse it will be The Mighty Gary Oldman I’ll choose as arch-nemesis to my Road Warrior (or Tina Turner). Oldman has a high-old time here, and what a credit to this great actor that he can perfectly inhabit the buttoned-down Commissioner Gordon one day and leave no scenery left un-chewed as Carnegie the next. Every line of dialogue, facial expression and movement is delivered for maximum impact. Oldman understands this genre, what it takes to be its villain, and succeeds in finding a place of his own.

And oh how I loves me some Denzel.

After exploding on the scene with their still-just-as-powerful 1993 directorial debut “Menace II Society,” the Hughes Brothers (Albert and Allen, who have yet to make a bad film — this is their 5th) understand the iconic power of their star; the way he walks, talks, laughs, stands, and holds a weapon. In lesser hands the stoic Eli would barely register as a character. The power of an actor like Washington is in his unique and near-extinct movie star ability to fill the void of a character’s silence with an emotional inner-life without saying a word – with pure presence.

The directorial touches are everywhere. Listen for a fitting nod to “Once Upon a Time in America” and check out the posters on walls. The directors get the big things right, as well. Thank the Good Lord, no shaky-cam. The actions set-pieces are extremely satisfying, especially an early one we see only in silhouette.

But make no mistake, this is a genre film. A B-film (with kind of a silly final twist). No molds are broken. You’ve seen it all a hundred times before. But this is a Christian genre film … a very Christian genre film with a fabulous cast and stylish direction. And I’m still thinking about it, still debating which choice of the Brothers Hughes I liked most…

….the all-kinds-of-awesome casting decision to put Tom Waits in a post-apocalyptic Western, or the film’s most Christian moment – most generous moment – when a nod of respect is granted to our friends who have found God through other faiths.

But the new movie “The Book of Eli” doesn’t fit either of those molds. In fact, this wildly entertaining, ultra-violent, post-Apocalyptic tale of a lone wanderer named Eli (Denzel Washington) who will defend the mysterious book in his possession at all costs is one of the oddest yet most forthright faith-based films to ever come out of a major studio. 

Eli is carrying a copy of the last Bible on the planet, since all other religious texts – including Torahs and Korans – were rounded up and destroyed 30 years before after religious strife was believed to have caused a devastating global nuclear war. Eli believes he’s heard the voice of God telling him to bring the Bible to an unspecified place in the West, but a ruthless despot named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) knows that if he gets his hands on the precious book, he can distort its teachings and have total control over the minds and spirits of the people who live in his empire of revived, Old West-style towns. 

With Eli joined by Samara (Mila Kunis), a Carnegie servant girl hoping to find a better life, the race is on between the duo and the tyrant’s small army of henchmen and weapons to maintain final control over mankind’s destiny. And that means Washington will slice, dice, sever or shoot anyone who gets in his way. 

Directed by Allen and Albert Hughes (aka: The Hughes Brothers) –  who previously built their careers on nihilistic fare like “Menace II Society,” “Dead Presidents” and the pimp-praising documentary “American Pimp” –   “The Book of Eli” couldn’t be a bigger surprise. But Washington has long been one of Hollywood’s most openly Christian actors, and in taking on the executive-producer role for “Eli” as well, he has placed his clout squarely behind his beliefs to create a film that adds plenty of spiritual substance and feeling to what might otherwise have been a time-worn template for predictability. 

It’ll be interesting to see the box-office results, for Oldman and his henchmen are profanely tough-talking baddies and the battles with Washington are as violent as a movie gets. Yet the movie also features many tender moments in which Eli reads the Bible privately while praying, or one beautiful scene in which he recites particularly vivid Scriptures to the illiterate Samara. 

“The Book of Eli” wears its heart on its sleeve from beginning to end, clearly crediting the Bible as the one book above all that can change the world. And while Oldman’s Carnegie has plenty of fun as the film’s face of evil, the film as a whole never strays from its vision of Eli and Samara as unshakably right and Oldman as unmistakably wrong. 

That clear point of view, mixed with doses of surprising emotional depth, should prove to be a welcome bonus for viewers, whether they’re Christian or not. It’s simply refreshing to find that with “The Book of Eli,” Hollywood has created a genre film that delivers on hardcore action while hardly settling as a by-the-book exercise.