Okay. So you all know about my dislike of "Black Friday" hype from my previously posted complaints, from both my own personal experience as well as from madness in the headlines.

But I just can't let it go. This year, I must register my distaste over a particular persisting word associated with the Black Friday madness:

"Doorbuster." (Read more...)

Some movies speak for themselves. One such movie is 2012, which comes billed as the end of the world, Roland Emmerich style. This review could simply state "Roland Emmerich destroys the world for real this time" and that would probably be sufficient. If you've seen any of his other movies, you know more or less what to expect from Emmerich. And since you know what CGI effects are capable of in 2009, you can probably predict what the destruction of earth circa 2012 might look like.

An airplane flies through the collapsing L.A. skyline — the first of many things that Roland Emmerich destroys in his latest world-ender, "2012."

And since you've seen the trailers, you know what you're buying going in. The only question here is whether 2012 delivers what you expect respectably and entertainingly, or whether it's a cliche-ridden, implausible, over-the-top exercise in gratuitous mayhem.

Well, why can't it be both? I submit that's exactly what it is. 2012 is what it is: a spectacular popcorn disaster epic that appeals to a mass PG-13 audience. It's a special effects thrill ride that will not be particularly disturbing or depressing. How can "the end of the world" not be depressing, you ask? I wouldn't presume to give away the ending, but like all Emmerich mass-consumable destruction opuses, this one comes with a certain tempered conclusion to make all the world-ending that transpires over 150 minutes somehow seem okay, if you see what I mean. Never mind that untold billions have perished. This movie is not about who dies, it's about who survives! (Read more...)

As everyone who has watched this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (and probably many who haven't) knows, this was the year in which Curb went hyper-meta and became, in part, a show about making a Seinfeld reunion show. The plotline came to a head in last night's finale, which was brilliant, and in some weird ways played like science fiction.

"Larry David" and "Jerry Seinfeld" prepare a "scene" on a "reunion show." In the show-within-a-show, Larry later decides to play George, who was originally inspired by Larry. Brains explode.

Larry David, who plays a fictional version of himself on the show, spent this season getting the Seinfeld cast back together (with the usual amusements that ensue from setbacks, histrionics, and in-jokes) in order to create a Seinfeld reunion that would serve, in a sense, as a second finale to the series which had that famously disliked final episode.

The arc was a clever device that allowed Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld to do a reunion without actually doing one. All season, when Larry was told that this would allow them to "make up for the finale," he would maintain that there was nothing to make up for. (The whole plot was ostensibly a means to an end — a Machiavellian scheme for Larry to get back together with his wife.) (Read more...)

Back in the day — a long, long time ago — Robert Zemeckis was best known for directing Back to the Future and its eventual sequels. He probably became a big mainstream name with the massive success of Forrest Gump. That movie also perhaps signaled the beginning of the end for Zemeckis as a traditional live-action filmmaker (although one could argue that moment was earlier signaled by his helming of the then-groundbreaking animation-combined-with-live-action Who Framed Roger Rabbit?).

"Ray Winstone" in Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf. Performance capture technology turned Winstone from Average Joe into ripped superhero.

With Forrest Gump, Zemeckis played with the notion of compositing live action with archival footage, allowing Tom Hanks to appear in the same shots as TV footage of President Nixon, among plenty of others. It was a gimmick that Zemeckis later employed in Contact, in order to merge the movie with footage of President Clinton in press conferences.

If you watch the special features on the Contact DVD (or maybe it was the VHS tape, to be honest), you see that Zemeckis' penchant for tweaking existing images began in earnest with that film: He found that when the skies in particular outdoor shots weren't "interesting" enough, he could replace them with skies that had better-looking clouds. I think it was this sort of "because I can" mentality that guided Zemeckis' career into the 2000s. (Read more...)

On Friday, the much-advertised gargantuan-FX behemoth 2012 comes out. The film is the latest world-destroying epic from director Roland Emmerich, perhaps best known for his entertaining world-destroying Independence Day, his not-so-entertaining NY-destroying Godzilla '98 and his decidedly ungood world-destroyed-by-climate-change The Day After Tomorrow.

What! Fucking! Ian guy?! There was a time that John Cusack had girlfriend problems. Now he's a dad occupying the foreground framed by the background of Roland Emmerich disasters. (Columbia Pictures/Sony)

He also made the passable history-as-a-Mel-Gibson-revenge-melodrama The Patriot and the lame pyramids-built-by-aliens Stargate.

Independence Day, probably Emmerich's best entertainment, worked on its chosen level of lightweight summer popcorn movie (with the question of just how much the destruction of the world could be portrayed as lightweight being answered, "quite a bit"). The White House and Empire State Building blown up! Awesomely!

Godzilla was a bad movie, with its annoying characters and mindless destruction for the sake of destruction. And The Day After Tomorrow was pretty lame. I just can't abide the end of that movie, where the characters were RUNNING AWAY FROM LETHALLY COLD AIR, as if you can escape the flow of air by RUNNING TO A DIFFERENT ROOM. (Read more...)

Is it just me, or does former Tampa Bay head coach and current Monday Night Football color commentator Jon Gruden think everyone is the most awesome player ever?

I think we need to institute:

The Jon Gruden Scale

- Words cannot describe this football player
- Spectacular football player
- Outstanding football player
- One heckuva football player

After Monday night's victory of the New Orleans Saints over the Atlanta Falcons, which put the Saints at 7-0 along with Indianapolis as the last two undefeateds in the NFL, we then had the obligatory news conference where the press asked head coach Sean Payton if it seemed more likely now that the Saints could go undefeated.

More likely than when they were 6-0? Well, sure, I suppose — in the same way that 4th and 30 is more likely to be converted by the Cleveland Browns offense than 4th and 32.

Then, during his ESPN analysis, Steve Young went on to go down the Saints schedule to point to the only two teams remaining to play them that have a chance of beating them (Dallas and New England). The Saints are better, he said.

So are the Saints going to run the table?

Please. (Read more...)