0308.31 : Today's New York Times Magazine offers a fantastic cover story (by Lynn Hirschberg) on Sofia Coppola and Lost in Translation (which I'm madly in love with, and will see for a second time tomorrow).

0308.29 : So last night I got to see the final cut of The Movie (and, for the first time, my name on the silver screen). Wow. As I told Tim, I don't know that I've ever been more proud. It opens nationwide on 9/19, and tickets go on sale Monday for the Austin premiere taking place Sunday 9/14 (which I'm organizing). In the meantime, check out Harry's rave review.

0308.28 : Behold my new favorite trailer! Apple has posted Sony's new teaser for The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (which stars my friend Fay Masterson). I'm so thrilled (and amazed) that this film is finally/actually getting distributed I can hardly contain myself. When I showed it to Guillermo a year or so ago, he repeatedly uttered such exclamations as "That's genius!", "This is a masterpiece!" and "Oh my fucking God!")

0308.27 : Four years after its nigh-perfect predecessor debuted on the (ill-fated) Dreamcast to universal praise, the highly anticipated Soul Calibur II has finally been released from Namco for PS2, XBox, and GameCube. Long have I awaited this day... (Highly recommended.) P.S.: Oh! As if that wasn't enough, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds is also out today. Coolness abounds!

0308.19 : Russia plans a Martian nuclear power plant by 2030.

0308.18 : London police have put out an APB for Batman.

0308.17 : At long last... wireless PS2 controllers. (And a suitably high-tech toilet to go along with it.)

0308.16 : The Slayer's Scythe sold for $15,200. Holy crap.

0308.12 : A ton of cool Buffy props and costumes continue to be auctioned off on ebay via BuffyAuction.com - including the Slayer's Scythe (which, yes, is really an axe).

0308.11 : Time has a rather amusing Q&A with Michael Eisner, in which he does not completely rule out the idea of turning "It's a Small World" into a movie (among other evasive responses). Meanwhile, check out this recent AP article on Pixar's conference call with analysts last week to discuss their great second quarter earnings, and prospects for a new distribution deal with Disney - or someone else. (Luckily for Eisner, Bruckheimer's reupping for another five years, according to today's New York Times.)

0308.10 : Today's New York Times has a great Travel feature (by Paris bureau chief Elaine Sciolino) about the Amelie Poulainization of Montmarte in Paris. Be sure to check out the cool slide-show with audio commentary. (And if you don't already own Amelie on DVD, for heaven's sake go buy it right now!)

0308.06 : A Reuters article regarding the October opening of Krispy Kreme's first store in Britain (at Harrod's, no less) reveals a rather startling statistic - domestically, via 300 stores, Krispy Kreme makes 7.5 million doughnuts a day. Holy mother of crap.

0308.05 : At long last, you can now buy the long-awaited Two-Disc Special Edition restored DVD of Casablanca. (Highly recommended.)

0308.04 : Holy crap, where does the time go? Sorry for the lack of updates over the last ten days, but I've just been swamped. (I haven't even had time to go see Seabiscuit yet!) I should be getting back in gear this week, though.

0307.24 : Over at IGN FilmForce today, Ken Plume has a fun little Q&A with one of my favorite TV people, the gleefully brilliant Andy Merrill - a.k.a. Brak himself! (Though I think he really wants to be Space Ghost.) BTW, you can now buy a limited edition porcelain Brak maquette, a Brak action figure, and even a Brak Sing-Along Radio at the dizzyingly cool Cartoon Network Shop. (P.S.: You can also check out Andy's office.)

0307.23 : Friend and faithful robo-reader Carol Pirie (of the esteemed Texas Film Commission) tipped me off to a particularly cool Rube Golderg-esque commercial called "Cog" from Honda UK that (reportedly) took a staggering 606 takes to get just right.

0307.22 : The Dark Knight returns in Batman: Dead End, the much-ballyhooed independent short that premiered at Comic-Con this weekend, and pits the caped crusader (played by Clark Bartram) against his deadliest foes. There are interviews with director Sandy Collora at AICN and Superhero Hype, while AICN's original report on the project (with stills) can be found here. Or you can just go download the eight-minute film as a free 48MB QuickTime file right now (courtesy of TheForce.Net).

0307.20 : Today's New York Times Magazine offers a feature profile of actor-producer Tobey Maguire, star of two of my favorite films of recent years (Wonder Boys and Pleasantville), as well as the soon-to-be-released (on Friday) Seabiscuit - which gets an entire section in this week's Time, and will be the subject of Monday's Charlie Rose.

0307.19 : Behold Korean Karaoke Bliss (courtesy of GeekAmerica.com), which I happened upon today thanks to Marc Laidlaw's guest blog at bOINGbOING. Click here to download the 8.5 MB dose of giddy insanity before it's gone! Share the joy! Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news... the good folks at New Line have redesigned the official website for Secondhand Lions (the movie I worked on last year, which opens on 9/26).

0307.18 : Apple has posted the killer trailer [QuickTime] to Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon A Time In Mexico, the third flick in his El Mariachi trilogy, shot in gorgeous 24p HD. Awesome. (Opens 9/12.)

0307.17 : Three tidbits today... 1.) Terrence Malick will direct Benicio del Toro in Che. 2.) Orrin Hatch has a plan that would allow Arnold to become president. 3.) The trailer [QuickTime] for the Michael Bay-produced remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually looks pretty damn good. (It opens 10/17.)

0307.16 : CNN reports on the new "Meowlingual" pocket cat translator device, slated for release this November in Japan from Takara. It comes on the heels of the (apparently) very successful "Bowlingual" dog translator, which is due to hit the U.S. market in August. (At last, we are truly living in the 21st century.)

0307.15 : Last night I saw the new Michael Bay / Jerry Bruckheimer magnum opus Bad Boys II: Testosterone Bliss (which isn't the real title, but should be). Holy mother of crap! The movie is, to use the vernacular, off the hook. Gleefully excessive and gloriously unapologetic, it is a relentless assault of stylized brutality. And I loved it. This is a magnificent B-movie, full of humor and action, both of which is often so utterly wrong. I mean, this movie makes the '80s look politically correct, and in terms of violence, it's practically porn. (There's no nudity save for corpses, and the only sex is rat sex.) As my friend Sachin said, "a morbid visual onslaught of senseless overkill - in other words, the perfect summer movie". I must say I was thrilled to see Bay abandon the pretentious and ponderous banality of Pearl Harbor and get back to down-and-dirty basics of what he does best, aided by Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Joey Pants, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Molla, and Peter Stormare (playing, I theorize, a black sheep relative of his Russian Cosmonaut character from Armageddon). Hoo-zah! (Disclaimer: I have a potential conflict of interest with certain parties involved in this production, so please don't consider this an unbiased review.)

0307.14 : Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Robert Rodriguez's new "digital file" Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over at the Paramount, which sure was fun. The movie does for TRON what its predecessor did for Ray Harryhausen movies, and offers a truly nutty performance by Sylvester Stallone (not to mention an inspired cameo by Elijah Wood). But what I loved most was the magnificent gift it gave the great Ricardo Montalban, who makes the most out of every moment. Can't wait to see Once Upon A Time In Mexico. (Disclaimer: I'm a friendly acquaintance of the filmmakers, so please don't consider this an unbiased review.)

0307.13 : There's an interview with the irrepressibly adorable Alyson Hannigan in today's Sunday Times of London.

0307.12 : Check out the yet-to-be-released trailer for Mel Gibson's The Passion over on AICN. (Direct download link here.) [22.6 MB QuickTime]

0307.11 : Chris Garcia has an interview with yours truly in today's Austin American-Statesman about the new P.o.V..

0307.10 : The League of Extraordinary Stupidity [which opens tomorrow] is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It starts out mediocre, then offers a glimmer of hope with the introduction of Sean Connery's character, but then rapidly gets worse and worse and worse, to the point it's astonishingly, unbelievably bad. It has a deplorably inept script that doesn't even attempt to make sense (or be true to its characters), which is made even worse by shoddy execution. For instance, what exactly is the point of having a vampire character in your movie, who a.) can see her reflection in a mirror, and b.) walk around in broad daylight - which none of the other characters seem to notice, much less bother to comment on? (And this is from the director of Blade!) I could go on and on with an endless litany of this movie's glaring problems and inexcusable flaws, but all you really need to know is that it's a steaming pile of crap. (Not at all recommended in any way, shape or form.)

0307.10 : Dark Horse Comics has announced The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a new 80-page quarterly anthology that will bring to life Michael Chabon's character from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. It is slated to debut in December.

0307.09 : Last night I met up with a few friends at Cedar Street to check out my pal Dan Hardick's Fingerpistol - a band that's more fun than you can shake a stick at. They performed three sets of toe-tapping originals (self-described as "patio pop", which is accurate), along with a couple random covers thrown in for good measure. (Their sound check was "Country Roads", which was pure joy.) If you get a chance to check them out, I recommend it.

0307.08 : Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Pirates of the Caribbean [which opens tomorrow] is a hoot and a holler. Disney's first PG-13 movie (courtesy of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski) may be a tad too long, lack a great score, and have a fairly lame, anti-climactic ending (though do stay through the credits for a second, better ending), but is worth seeing just for Johnny Depp's madcap performance, which is sheer, utter genius. He has one of the all-time great film entrances (the crowd cheered), which beautifully tells you everything you need to know about the character without a word of dialogue. But once he starts talking it gets even better; as has been widely reported, Depp based his character on Keith Richards by way of Pepe le Pew. Meanwhile, to call Keira Knightley fetching would be a gross understatement; she's gloriously gorgeous, and now a bona fide star. Then again, so is Orlando Bloom, who offers a good contrast to Depp. And Geoffrey Rush makes for a savory villain. Plus you've got skeleton/zombie pirates out the wazoo, which is just... cool. Fun stuff. (Recommended.)

0307.07 : You can now download the relaunch issue of PoV as a free 4MB Acrobat file at the Austin Film Society's website, austinfilm.org. (You can get Adobe's free Acrobat reader app here.)

0307.06 : Chris Garcia has a good article in today's Austin American-Statesman about Austin Studios and its impact on the Austin film industry.

0307.05 : To celebrate the 4th I watched Michael Curtiz's glorious Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring the inimitable James Cagney as George M. Cohan (the role that won him his only Oscar). It's one of those movies that always gets to me, and is high on my list of films I wish were on DVD. If you've never seen it, the very title may strike you as fairly ridiculous and antiquated, but it's an enthrallingly wonderful movie (save for one brief scene in blackface, which is admittedly painful). Has there ever been a more movingly patriotic film? It airs again on TCM a week from Thursday on 7/17 at 9:30am (8:30am CST), and a month from Monday on 8/7 at 1:15am (12:15am CST). (Check out the trailer here.)

0307.04 : There are two really good interviews on AICN today, both of which are well worth checking out. Alexandra DuPont offers the first part of her definitive interview with Jeff Smith (creator of the beloved and brilliant BONE comic book series). Meanwhile, Hercules has a fun interview with Jane Espenson (one of my favorite Buffy writers; for more see janeespenson.com). Enjoy.

0307.03 : So the relaunch issue of PoV: Persistence of Vision finally came out yesterday, after getting a nice plug in the Austin Chronicle (thanks, Marc). We basically revamped the Austin Film Society's eight-year-old quarterly newsletter into a free mini-magazine for the entire Austin film community, more than tripling our circulation. (I'm editor-at-large.) AFS members should be getting it in the mail shortly, and it'll be available online next week in Acrobat format, but you can also pick up a copy at the Alamo Drafthouse, Austin Motel, Bookpeople, Central Market, the Dobie, Flightpath, Flipnotics, Guero's, Hotel San Jose, I Luv Video, Little City, the Paramount, Tower Records, Vulcan Video, and Waterloo Records & Video. (Let me know what you think of it.)

0307.02 : Activision filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Viacom yesterday for letting "the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay". Well it's about damn time. Nemesis was the biggest box office failure of all ten Trek movies (grossing a mere $43M, or about 2/3 its budget), while Enterprise is the lowest-rated yet of all five Trek TV series (ranking #101 this past season, with only 2.1M viewers) - not to mention the fact that they're both just incredibly bad. As the Terminator says, "Anger is more useful than despair." It's time for Trek fans and Viacom shareholders alike to get angry and hold Paramount and producer Rick Berman accountable for their gross negligence and intolerable incompetence. (A couple fan-driven campaigns are here and here.)

0307.01 : I went into Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines expecting at best crap, at worst an abominable bastardization of James Cameron's vision. Not only was it directed by Jonathan Mostow (of the insipid U-571), but it was produced by Warner Bros., C2 (aka Carolco resurrected), and Intermedia. Has there ever been a surer pedigree for shit? Well, then, imagine my surprise when I realized T3 had somehow, miraculously turned out good. Pretty damn good, actually. It's basically a Terminator version of a Road Runner cartoon, and gleefully succeeds on that level. (It's also the best movie the next governor of California has made since 1994's True Lies.) The action is tremendous - the best I've seen this year (and wipes the floor with Matrix Reloaded, btw). The car chase sequence in particular is an astonishing, exhilarating display of violent excess that just goes on and on and on - prompting spontaneous applause from the audience at its conclusion. And the bathroom duel of the Terminators is giddily brutal (not to mention some of ILM's best work of late). Meanwhile, the film is refreshingly unpretentious, unexpectedly witty, and doesn't take itself too seriously - at times even bordering on self-parody (though thankfully it takes itself seriously enough). Sure, there are plot holes and glaring continuity flaws. Sure, it lacks Brad Feidel's iconic Terminator theme (which Marco Beltrami stupidly refuses to use even in moments that cry out for it, only to dust it off for the end credits like a slap in the face). Sure, there's no quantum leap forward in effects like we got in T2, nor the lofty philosophical aspirations of that film. But it's a satisfying and entertaining big-budget B-movie ride, and concludes with one of the gutsiest endings I've ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually hope they make a T4. (Recommended.)
For more, read Kenneth Turan's LA Times review.

0305-0306 : Click here for May and June, 2003.

0303-0304 : Click here for March and April, 2003.

0301-0302 : Click here for January and February, 2003.