The Da Vinci Code review

is giving me a lot of email.. and people want a couple of more hints.. so here they are..

1) one of the words is BUY

2) it's a statement. When I said "computer" I didn't mean a computer phrase like "cyber" or "RAM" or something like that.

3) this is a general statement. if you know me, you know what it is.

Have more fun!

Today, I'm going off topic for once and

talk Hockey. Hockey is Entertainment.
In my opinion, the NHL is about millionaires, watching millionaires doin' something that you can see for free at any arena, but whatever.

I live in Calgary, the home of the Calgary Flames. Y'know... also the home of the Red Mile. 2 years ago, the Flames had their run for the Stanley Cup, and we had large gatherings.. The Red Mile is known for the occasional girl lifting her shirt, and some guy climbing a pole





This year, our neighbours to the north.. Edmonton.. is having their run for the cup. Fair enough. They're having gatherings on their street as well. What's Edmonton's celebration getting known for?



Hockey is Entertainment. Please.. Celebrate Responsibly.

More movie stuff later

Further to yesterday's post

and to answer the emails..

1) Italics
2) Anagram
3) Computers

Good Luck :)

LONG before a single frame of

film was shot, Ron Howard's THE DA VINCI CODE had it's teaser trailer out to generate buzz around the fact that Dan Brown's book was being made into a movie. Since then, the Sony Pictures HYPE machine has been in full force, generating buzz around the movie. This film is without a doubt the most anticipated movie this summer by a lot of people, just not me.

Before I begin, I'm not going to be one of those people that will spend months trying to decide if THE DA VINCI CODE is a book that is a work of fiction, or if it is a clever book based on fact. I'm sure there are scholars around the world that will debate that fact for the rest of time. I do know that when I walked through the local book store on my way to the movie, the book was in the FICTION section, so I'm sure that there will be MORE scholars debating whether book stores have put the novel in the wrong section as an attempt to save religion as we know it.

Since the movie has made more than 70 million at the box office in North America ALONE on it's opening weekend, and 50 Gazillion People have read the book, recapping the plot here would just take up space and time. I know my time is valuable, I would just hope yours is as well.

I found The Da Vinci Code a frustrating movie. I grew impatient sitting in the theatre. This ISN'T one of Tom Hanks better roles, he seemed pretty stiff in the movie. The chemistry between Hanks and Audrey Tautou stilted and laughable. This isn't an action movie either. This is a talky film, it's HEAVY on the exposition, and after a while I found myself nodding off, much like I did during history class in grades 7 thru 12. To me, it was boring. I fidgeted, and I rarely do that in a movie during the summer.

I'm sure director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman did an admirable job of being faithful to Dan Brown's novel, Much like Christopher Columbus did with the first Harry Potter movie. But again, there is this fine line any filmmaker has to take when taking a novel from the page to screen, ESPECIALLY a Novel like The Da Vinci Code, where there is such a HUGE following: You have to satisfy the established base, and try and keep the interest of someone, like myself, who hasn't read the book. I'm not sure if they succeeded.

So, at the end of the day, The Da Vinci Code: The movie comes off as a long, drawn out snoozefest for me. Will it draw me into conspiracy theories like so many people? Will it make me wonder about religion? I doubt it. Is it a perfect example of the Hollywood Hype Machine gearing into overdrive to generate so much buzz people can't HELP but want to see it? That I'll go along with.

The one piece of controversy that has arisen from me seeing The Da Vinci Code came when I went to get my usual Diet Pepsi. The theatre chain has dropped Pepsi Beverages from their concessions, and have gone with Coke products. You would think it isn't the end of the world, but it is for me. Besides that, nothing to see... time to move on to the next summer movie, which next week is X-men 3.

The Da Vinci Code: D+


ps.. no they aren't a mistake... it's a GAME.. in the spirit of the movie...

Say goodbye to movies for Grown-ups

for the next 3 months as this past friday marked the beginning of the Summer blockbusters for 2006.

Kicking it off is Tom Cruise in the Third movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise, with the aptly original title Mission: Impossible III (for the purposes of this review, I shall now refer to this movie as M:I-III, which will save on typing). M:I-III is better than John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2, but doesn't hold a candle to Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible 1

Unlike the past 2 Mission: Impossible movies, which relied on a Impossible Missions, and lots of action, this time round director JJ Abrams (LOST) decided to try and give this movie more of a "personal and intimate feeling" by having a look a Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) personal life. We get to see Ethan at home, his friends, his Fiancée (played by Michelle Monaghan), a nurse who thinks Ethan studies traffic patterns for a living.

Ethan is trying to start a new life with his Fiancée, Julia, which means his has to face his real Mission Impossible that every man must face: living happile ever after with the woman he loves, he isn't a secret agent trying to save the world, he's a man trying to save his marriage.

Problems begin for the two when Ethan, who now trains agents, is lured back into the field when one of his star pupils is kidnapped by an evil arms dealer named Davian (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman). How does a guy who studies traffic patterns for a living explain late night phone calls, then explain to his fiancée right after he hangs up the phone why he has to suddenly leave for 2 or 3 DAYS because there's an emergency in the traffic department?

The other major difference between this movie and the other two is that those movies actually had missions that were considered, well, impossible. This time round, there are 3 missions.. one in Germany which could be considered Mission: Easy, Penetrating the Vatican (Mission: Not so easy), and the last one that finally takes place in the last 45 minutes or so of the movie that even starts to come close to a Mission: Impossible. In between are the usual uninspired explosions, car chases, and other mindless loud stunt sequences that border on the edge of sensory overload, and are the usual staple of a sumer action movie.

There are quite a few problems I have with this movie..
1) You would think in this day and age, the tired "Secret Agent" genre could be given a fresh shot in the arm with everything thats happening in the world. There could be NEW villians to face now, what with the war on terror. M:I-III doesn't touch on any of this and plays it safe with a what is now a generic villain (Hoffman showed more of an evil nature playing Truman Capote than he does in this movie).

2) The overall problem I find with this entire franchise is Ethan Hunt. He has a private life now, but no personality. He's just one of those summer movie heros that is boring unless he's being chased, or leaping off tall buildings (not in a single bound, mind you.. that's coming June 30th.. but I'm getting ahead of myself). Unlike James Bond where we like the action, but we also admire his lifestyle.. The cars, the women, everything. For all we know Ethan Hunt drives a VW Beetle to work. Sure, it's great to see Ethan run (which he does a LOT of), but do you want to be like him?

So, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to sit through the first 85 minutes of this 130 minute movie to see the actual 45 minutes of a film that this movie should have been the enire running time.

M:I-III - C+

As you read this,

The "future of DVD" will have arrived with the release of HD-DVD, and coming out very soon is Blu-Ray DVD. These 2 competing formats will be in a huge battle for your money, and the winner will become the dominate format for years to come.

Right now, the appeal is for the "early adopters".. people that like to buy any new technology as soon as it comes out, and proudly display it for others to envy. I used to be one of those people. I was the first kid on my block with a LaserDisc player, and a DVD player. Heck, for a while I sold LaserDiscs and DVDs online to other early adopters. This time round though, I will pass.

For those early adopters that ARE embracing HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, I salute you. I think it's great that you have $600 (Canadian) to go out and purchase an HD-DVD player, then spend the $30 on one of the 4 movies available in the format to show your friends. Then when Blu-Ray comes out in a couple of months, you will have the $1,000 to buy that player and spend money of movies as well.

It is you, the early adopters that will help decide which format wins the the war, and will allow us people that waited the 12 to 24 months for the dust to clear, and purchase the next generation player that will be considerably LESS than what you paid, and will be able to select from a much wider range of movies than you had originally, and probably at a much lower price point than you had.

I applaud you early adopters for blazing this trail for the rest of us. I AM quite jealous that you will be able to purchase the HD version of RUMOR HAS IT for $40us to help advance the cause. I, however don't think I could run into my nearest Best Buy and hold my head high and say "I want that"

I have seen the picture on HD-DVD, and although it looked good, it didn't make we want to yank my Credit Card out of my wallet and wander home with one.

If any of you ARE early adopters, I'd love to know what made you decide to jump in with this technology.

I have been eerily quiet

this past while, because of 2 reasons:

1) I haven't been able to get around all that well, since I have been having foot problems.

2) There hasn't been anything worth going out of my way to see lately.

No, wait.. I lie. I did go see THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN starring Anthony Hopkins, and quite enjoyed it. Yes, it was a little cornball, but Anthony Hopkins performance made it watchable. The rest of the time I just stare at the movie listings, and think "What would I want to spend my hard earned money on?" The answer is nothing.

There was a point where I would go see anything, and not cared. I would just head to a theatre, find the movie that started closest to the time I went, and sit and turn off my brain for the running time of the film. These days, I haven't found anything worth doing that with.

This has bothered me. I'm worried that I have started to lose my love for cinema and film. This is something that I don't want to lose. What do you do when you get this way? How do you rekindle your love for films? I would like to know.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! In IMAX 3D

There has been a rumour the IMAX was working on a new method to convert regular movies to IMAX 3D.

Word came today that SUPERMAN RETURNS will be the first conventional LIVE ACTION movie to be converted into IMAX 3D.

This could be the start of an interesting trend! I'm looking forward to it!

**Updated**

I guess that only 20 minutes of the film will be in 3D.. there will be visual cues when to put the glasses on to see it.

First off, sorry for anyone

who took my Oscar picks like they were gospel.

I was many of the people that entered Oscar pools, and although I posted my top *6* choices on here, I had to make picks in all 19 categories for the pools. My Record this year: 15 right out 19.

Although I picked BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as best picture, I'm satisfied with CRASH taking it. If you look back at my review of CRASH on here, you know how much I gushed over it. In my younger years, I would have had the moxy to pick CRASH and stick with it. This year, I went with the sentimental favourite, and got burned, like I think most everyone did.

Next year, I'll have learned my lesson, and will stick with my gut feeling.

Good film won, boring show overall. Jon Stewart is funny on The Daily Show, but I didn't think it translated for the Oscars.

In this time of the year, when movies

like FINAL DESTINATION 3 have a shot at being the Number 1 movie in the country, I take great solice in the fact that where I live where there are art houses.

This weekend, I saw MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS, the movie that Dame Judi Dench is nominated for Best Actress for this year.

In the movie, Judi Dench plays Laura Henderson who shortly after her husband's death, to relieve her boredom, buys a West End theater, the Windmill. With his cigars and pomaded coif, Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) is the manager she hires and immediately locks horns with. He wants complete artistic freedom, she wants to meddle. After the Windmill's initial success dwindles, she comes up with idea of doing a show in which the girls onstage appear naked.


It's wartime in London, and between Blitzes the theater does a thriving business in servicemen. Despite its scandalous reputation, the show itself is relentlessly tasteful, in the manner of '40s Hollywood musicals: In order to stay within the bounds of official censorship, the girls pose decorously as tableaux vivants. They're nudie cuties serving the cause of king and country.

Dench's role is so in her comic range that it would be easy to mistake it as her doing it in her sleep. The key to her performance is the depth of feeling beneath the imperiousness.
Henderson is nobody's fool, but as the film rolls along we start to realize that it is foolish passion she truly craves.
She finds it with Van Damm, who is as no-nonsense as she is. (Theirs is a real-life story). Van Damm and Mrs. Henderson are forever fighting each other because, of course, they recognize how much alike they are. Although Van Damm has a wife, his bickering with Mrs. Henderson mimics a marriage in which the jabs are really love pats. In one particularly memorable comic scene, an assistant interrupts the two of them at full throttle and is informed by Mrs. Henderson that "you must never interrupt a perfectly good argument."

There is plenty of Wit like that in MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS, compliments of Screenwriter Martin Sherman, who is at his best with these kinds of exchanges, and Director Stephen frears keeps things moving briskly along. The film is crafted very well: you watch the emotions slide from Witty Banter to utter sadness in one fell swoop, and at no time do you ever feel like you are being manipulated emotionally by a bunch of hucksters.

The director, like his actors, understands how high theatrics especially with show people, often hides deeper emotions.

Mrs. Henderson Presents presents theatre life with gusto! It's a nice break from the February Movie Blahs!

A

It has been a while since I've posted to this Blog.

A few people have been wondering if I had died or not. No, I am very much alive. Life has been interfering with movie-going. Between being quite tired after work and trying to walk for exercise, and actually taking a VACATION with the family to Disneyland, I have been quite busy indeed!

Oscar Nominations were announced, and in my previous post my predictions were 4/5s accurate (Unless you count my wildcard, then I was 100% accurate). The Nomination that I wasn't sure about was the Best Picture nod for CRASH. When the picture was first released I thought it would be a shoe-in, but in the past, the Academy Members have had short memories for pictures that were released early in the year. This is why, if your wondering, that most of the pictures that want to be considered for nominations are released towards the END of the year.

The other nominations were expected. This looks like the year Brokeback Mountain will win best picture, and it is very well deserved.

In the some of the other categories, I think the winners will be:

Best Actor - Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote

Best Actress - Felicity Huffman for Transamerica

Supporting Actor - George Clooney for Syriana

Supporting Actress - Rachel Weisz for Constant Gardener

Those are my predictions, so feel free to use them and win your Oscar Pools!


A Killer of a movie..
I went to see Final Destination 3. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was bored. I'm sorry I did. It was horrible. the "gore" wasn't, and I almost fell asleep during it. I can't think of a single redeeming factor for the movie. F-

Things are slowing down for me now, and I'm out of Vacation mode. I'll try and post more frequently.

Oscar Noms

I'm posting this at 5am My Local time. They are rehearsing the nominations announcement as we speak, using such great names as MILLION DOLLAR BABY as the potential nominees. This is false of course, but at 6:30am my local time, the real nominations will be announced. These are my guesses as to what till be nominated for best picture..

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
WALK THE LINE

My wildcard pick will be MUNICH.

I'll follow up after the nominations are announced, with my picks as well.

5:12am Calgary Time. Just got them in under the wire.

No movie has had MORE Debate around it

than Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

""You know I ain't queer," Ennis tells Jack after their first night together. "Me, neither," says Jack."

The most common way this movie is being described is it's "A Gay Cowboy Movie", which really oversimplifies it, and is totally unfair. The movie is about forbidden love.. it's the story of a time and place where two men are forced to deny the only great passion either one will ever feel. Their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups.

The movie doesn't try and give any message, it doesn't try to tell us "This is bad or good".. it does nothing but tell the story of these men. It stays on these men, never wavering, never looking at the big picture.

The movie starts in 1963, when Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) are about 19 years old and get a job tending sheep on a mountainside. Ennis is a boy of few words and he can barely open his mouth to release them; he learned to be guarded and fearful long before he knew what he feared. Jack, who has done some rodeo riding, is a little more outgoing. After some days have passed on the mountain and some whiskey has been drunk, they suddenly and almost violently have sex.
"This is a one-shot thing we got going on here," Ennis says. Jack agrees. But it's not.
Years pass. Both men get married. Then Jack goes to visit Ennis in Wyoming, and their undiminished urgency passion stuns them. Their lives settle down into a routine, punctuated less often than Jack would like by "fishing trips."

Make no doubt, in any other hands, Brokeback Mountain could have just been "a gay cowboy movie, but because the movie focuses so intently on the story of Jack and Ennis, it understands the individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. Hence, the story becomes a tragedy, the story of forbidden love, something that could never be. That what makes this movie deserving of all the praise it's getting, and will probably get it best picture this year.

Brokeback Mountain - A

Yes, I fully realize that I gave King Kong high marks as well. How can I give a movie like Brokeback Mountain and King King the same grade? Well, King Kong is a great POPCORN Movie. I never thought Kong is high drama.. it is what it is.. a matinee movie, something along the lines of early Spielberg. Brokeback Mountain gets an "A" for story, performances, and direction.

It's been a busy couple of days, and I'm

trying to play catch up with reviews. Here's the first of a bunch I'm working on:

THE PRODUCERS
I'm a big fan of the 1968 version starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. Back then it was it was a cutting satire, and has gone down in cinema history as one of Mel Brooks' classics, along with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

I would have loved to see the LIVE Broadway version of THE PRODUCERS with Nathan Lane, and Matthew Broderick, but didn't make it to New York, due to that "lack of money" thing that keeps putting up roadblocks to doing fun stuff like seeing broadway plays. Thank god the movie version is the next best thing.
When I say "the next best thing" I mean that this film version is EXACTLY like the stage play. It's almost as if director Susan Stroman took the camera, dropped it in FRONT of the stage and filmed a performance.
The film has the look and feel of a play, right down to sensing where the intermission is, and the end of the acts. It just has that "live performance look" that is rarely captured on film, which is a interesting take.
You can't really say much about Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, except they've transferred their roles onto film. They play well off each other.
The movie felt a little too long for my liking and the pace started to drag near the end as a result, but it was a nice diversion. - C+

On a Side note - I would pay almost anything to see someone write a Biopic of Abbott & Costello and cast Nathan Lane in the roll he's DESTINED to play (and win an Oscar for) as Lou Costello. That's all I could think of watching this movie.

Don't forget to add yourself to this sites Frappr! Map, and soon be ready to discuss films in the Forum

I'll be starting a forum

Soon, thanks to Frappr (Which is where you can add a marker to your part of the world, I would love to see where everyone is from), I'll be starting a forum for my blog, where everyone can talk about movies, etc.

KONG The 8th Wonder of The World!

After many years, Peter Jackson has finally brought his version of KING KONG to the big screen. Jackson saw the original version on TV when he was 9, and it became a major influence on his life. The wait was worth it. Jackson has created the ultimate popcorn flick.

Because of Jackson's love for the original 1933 film, the question wasn't whether he'd be true to the original, but how he could justify expanding the 100 minute running time of the original classic into a 3 hour spectacle.

Jackson, and his screenwriting partners (Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) have achieved this by expanding on EVERY part of the story, providing backstory, more thorough characterization, on events that were only alluded to in the original, and then using all the images and ideas Jackson has stored in his mind since his childhood, have taken the story and expanded it onto a much larger canvas.

What has ended up on the screen is nothing short of impressive. Jackson set his version in 1930's and adhered closely to Cooper and Edgar Wallace's grandly tragic story of a mighty beast brought to ruin by beauty and civilization. The emotional content is just as potent as Kong's sad solitude and embrace of companionship, are conveyed with simplicity and poignancy.

The movie in many respects takes its time to get rolling. Some people may find the 70 minutes it takes to get to see KONG boring, especially young kids. The opening act does an outstanding job of welcoming people into the story, especially into the tough prospects faced by pretty struggling actress Ann Darrow (Watts) once her vaudeville show closes down. Facing similarly desperate straits is filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black), whose backers want to shut down his new adventure-themed picture and who suddenly lacks a leading lady for it.

Denham's motto is, "Defeat is always momentary," and when he chances upon Ann, who believes that "Good things never last," he solves both their problems by spiriting her aboard a ramshackle tramp steamer bound for an unmapped island where Carl hopes to find the subject for his new production. Unlike the original, this "Kong" takes the trouble to flesh out passengers and crew.

Carl essentially kidnaps writer Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), a serious playwright enormously admired by Ann. In a great move, Carl houses Jack in a large below-decks animal cage, and the scribe spends most of the voyage behind bars working on the scenario. The trip takes long enough to have Driscoll and Ann fall in love, and for Denham to announce that their actual destination is a fog shrouded Skull Island.

It lives up to its name when, after a perilous arrival between soaring rocks, they go ashore to find countless skeletons at a bleak coastal fortress. In due course, the adventurers are surrounded by possessed natives both terrifying and terrified, the latter caused by whatever lurks in the jungle behind an enormous wall. Ann is kidnapped by the natives, and is offered as a sacrifice to KONG, the 20 foot gorilla that lives beyond the wall.

Kong's status as the lonely old man of Skull Island is cemented in a touching scene between him and Ann on his craggy promontory, from which he can endlessly watch the beautiful sunsets and contemplate his status as the last of his breed (Jackson thoughtfully includes a glimpse of a giant gorilla skeleton at one point).

There were 2 things KING KONG had to accomplish for me to like this movie. 1) I had to be drawn IN to the world, and believe that the Ape was real. 2) I had to believe the connection between KONG and Ann Darrow, see their interaction, and become emotionally attached to the situation.

What Jackson has accomplished with KING KONG in my mind is nothing short of amazing. The movie is just over 3 hours, and yet the pacing is quick enough to make it feel like a 100 minute running time. The mix between action sequences, and developing the relationship between KONG and Ann is just the right blend, and at the end, since you know what's going to happen, makes it even more heartbreaking.

That the unlikely relationship at the movie's core comes so plausibly alive is a huge tribute to Watts. She does her share of requisite screaming, but she makes Ann resourceful when she tries to amuse and distract Kong, bold in the way she defies him and open-hearted in her accessibility to her captor's plight, which is wonderfully expressed in the eyes and animated facial expressions. Naomi Watt's performance completely won me over, and proved Jackson made the right choice in using a big name actress in the Role

For me, KING KONG fires on all cylinders and provides what all the movies this SUMMER was lacking.. excitement and an engaging story. This is easily one of the best films of 2005.

KING KONG - A

Note: if you want to see behind the scenes stuff early, go out and buy the Peter Jackson Production Diaries. Throughout the entire shooting of the movie, Jackson created mini web documentaries on the making of the movie, and posted them on the KONG IS KING website.

The PRODUCTION Diaries aren't available on the site any more, but the POST Production Diaries are. The Diaries give you an appreciation of the work that goes into making a movie of this magnitude.

There is a point, early on

in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Potter, now 14, exclaims "I love magic" and for the first time in the series, I could understand why.

Since I'm a few weeks late in reviewing the movie, and it has grossed well over $250 million in North America, everyone knows the story. It's the fourth year at Hogwart's, and Potter and the gang now have to not only deal with their studies, they also have to deal with something else, their hormones. Potter also has to compete in the Tri-Wizards Tournament, a collection of 3 tasks which will determine the greatest wizard.

Director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco) has helmed this latest installment of the series with a steady hand, and has given us the darkest Potter yet. So dark in fact, that the film is rated PG-13 in the states.

When I was sitting in the theatre waiting for the movie to start, I was surrounded by a LOT of Potter fans and they were discussing the fact that maybe this movie should have been made in 2 parts, so everything in the book could have been shown. I can't really comment about that, as I haven't read the book so I can only judge the film on what appears on the screen, not the translation from page to screen. I've been told that J.K. Rowling has a a lot of input into the screenplay so I would assume that the movie doesn't disappoint her.

I went to the first Potter movie just to see what the commotion was all about, and sucked into the whole premise and world of Harry Potter. It's rare for that to happen to me, but what's even more rare is having it happen through 4 movies. I'm NOT going to the opening night of the Potter movies dressed up as a Wizard, and "casting spells" on the other "wizards" standing in line, but I do find myself enjoying the 2 hour+ visits (Goblet of Fire is 2.5 hours, with about 13 minutes devoted to credits) when they come around and almost always a few days AFTER the opening. B




GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

So, I'm sitting in the theatre, waiting for this movie (any frequest readers of this blog know how long I've been waiting for this movie), and notice 2 things: 1) It isn't that full, and 2) There's NO ONE under the age of 30 in the theatre. Two very good signs for me.

I come home and look over my past blog posts and see how MUCH I've been waxing poetic over this movie before I saw it. All I can think is "How can I do a review that doesn't smack of bias after all the hype?"

Good night, and Good Luck looks at legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's battle against the injustice known as the McCarthy hearings. Like the pioneering TV newsman it depicts, Good Night, and Good Luck, achieves something beyond entertainment. Like Edward R. Murrow, this drama is relentless in achieving its goals.

Last year Jamie Foxx became Ray Charles in the biopic Ray. This year David Strathairn becomes Murrow His performance, so focused and illustrative of Murrow's courage and idealism, is worthy of an Academy Award nomination, and he probably will get one.

This is the second outing for Clooney as a director, and he's picked some interesting subjects. I'm looking forward to the next film. B+

I'd like to take this time

to wish all my American Friends a happy thanksgiving!

Today as well, I'm wondering where everyone is from that reads my blog. Feel free to make your mark on my new map.

I'll be back tomorrow with a review of Harry Potter.

Here's a question for everyone,

and I'd like your input:

You are given a movie theatre for 24 hours. You want to show 12 movies. Which movies would you show? They can be any length, but you only have the theatre for 24 hours.

I'm interested in hearing your comments.

One movie that would be shown is Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense

Which ones would you show?

I got an email today that simply said

"Walk The Line looks good, I think... hmmm"

and I replied with "It does look good.. it's on my 'Oscar Watch/fall movie viewing' list for the fall. It's true, it is on the list.. Most of the movies on my list are no doubt going to get TONS of Oscar buzz, so here are some of the other movies that are on my "Oscar Watch/fall movie viewing" list(in no particular order):

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - easily the darkest of the Potter films so far, proving why the series has a strong adult following.

Walk the Line - about country music icons Johnny Cash and June Carter starring Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Cash, and Reese Witherspoon, who co-stars as Carter, is already on quite a few lists of films to watch for when nominations are announced.

Syriana - Writer-director Stephen Gaghan, who wrote 2000's drug war movie "Traffic," brings a contemporary story of the Middle East to movie screens. starring George Clooney and Matt Damon.

Brokeback Mountain - filmed in my hometown, and tells of the overwhelming power of love in a romance between two cowboys, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

There are a couple of other movies that are just starting to show up in screening rooms to get their oscar buzz going:

The Woody Allen romance Match Point

Steven Spielberg's Munich, about the aftermath of the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

Those movies join a list of films I already think have a chance come Oscar time: Good Night, and Good Luck, Shopgirl, and Capote, which are now playing in theaters and have award ambitions for their actors -- David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck," Claire Danes in "Shopgirl" and Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote."

Besides the usual films trying for Oscar considerations, there are a couple of others, both of which are no-brainers for being on the "must see list" this christmas season:

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - based on the children's books by C.S. Lewis that are populated by talking animals and tell of epic battles between good and evil that have a strong Christian slant.

And last but CERTAINLY not least:

KING KONG - Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic telling of the Monkey that goes out on a wild night on the town with his date (Naomi Watts), and ends up taking a trip up (and down) the Empire State building. THIS movie more than any OTHER this Fall season I have high hopes for!

anyways, that's my lineup for the fall/Christmas Season. As you can see, I'm going to be quite busy, and I'll do my best to post reviews of all the films I see.