I became a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro right after I saw what he did with Blade II. He totally made that film his and attention to detail with all of the creatures and baddies in that film were amazing. I went back and watched his previous films The Devils Backbone, Cronos and even Mimic all showed that insane eye that he has for the fantastical. Since then he has kept up that mentality and made Hellboy one of my favorite “super hero” movies. So naturally when the sequel was announced I was eagerly anticipating what he would do with the characters that he had already introduced.

The second time around Hellboy and his gang of rag tag BPRD agents including Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and newcomer Johann must save the world once again. Prince Nuada is a creature of the forest and since he has been held back to the forests for centuries because of a truce between the mystical beings and humans he feels betrayed. Once a proud warrior and now he is forced to stay within the forests hidden from the humans as they destroy his land slowly. Using the help of a giant creature he breaks the code and goes to the surface to reclaim his land and to start a war by combining three pieces of the golden crown to awaken the indestructable army to take back what he believes is rightfully his. But Hellboy and pals have different plans.

The opening scene of the film takes place in 1955 when the Professor is still young and Hellboy is but a young kid. This is probably the only scene in the whole film that I felt was a little over the top and kind of cheesy. But it was important to the story that it happened. It helped introduce the golden army and the legend surrounding the Golden Army. I think the child actor in the role had a difficult time with all of the prosthetics and maybe that was why the whole thing just didn’t work for me. He didn’t feel like the character I knew. But that some problem aside everything from there on out went WAY uphill.

This movie has so many set pieces that are just amazing that there is no way I can talk about all of them. The most impressive however is the Troll Market which is basically like the Black Market only its for the mystical creatures. I think if George Lucas saw this scene he would smack his FX team in the head for not being smart enough to make the updated Cantina scene look this fantastic. We see all kinds of amazing new character designs and creatures that will just blow your mind. I should also point out a very funny scene that happens in this piece between Hellboy and a goblin involving a baby. You really have to see it to truly enjoy it. The eye candy is plentiful.

Usually when you hear a critic say this movie is for everyone its kind of their way of getting people out to see it because it is in their opinon just to good to miss even if half the population wouldn’t like it. But honestly this movie does have something for everyone.. except maybe little kids on second. They might get a little scared at some of the more elaborate monster designs. But the film has so many layers that it makes for the perfect movie to bring you girlfriend/wife too or ladies you can definitely drag your man into this one.

The reason it is so well rounded is that del Toro manages to sucessfully balance a couple love stories with some insane battle sequences. Such is the talent of this man. He is one of the best at directing action sequences but knows just how to pull at your heart strings and on the opposite end of the spectrum make you laugh til it hurts. He also weaves the story in a way that it all rolls along within the context of the movie. Del Toro addresses both puppy love and love that really knows no bounds in this film. Surprising from a super hero movie which is what makes Hellboy such an interesting character.

Oddly enough he also has several different messages that he weaves into the story as well. If you look close enough in a single line he can address a whole issue which is being dealt with today. Everything from gay marriage and taking better care of the Earth are addressed. None of it however is heavy handed or in your face. Especially the point of gay marriage which if you zone out for a second you might miss. It takes a master craftsman to be able to do all that he does and not have a mess on your hands.

Now this brings me to the subject that I feel I must bring up. Sequel? I sure hope so! This movie brings up so many questions and has so many loose ends that are no tied together that it would be shame not to see a part III. What struck is the way the movie ends is such a set up for another movie yet del Toro has gone on record saying he wasn’t sure about doing another film. I have my fingers crossed that this movie makes bank at the box office so we can see that part III and after you see this movie, you will too. So strap those shoes on and drive to your local theater and check this one out. Even if you are not a fan of Hellboy.. the visuals alone are worth the price of admission.

Adam Sandler is kind of like Cher’s wardrobe.  No matter what the critics say he keeps coming back for more.  If you look at his box office performance it doesn’t matter what they say because he always makes money, and in Hollywood good reviews don’t give you respect and power (sorry Paul Thomas Anderson), box office dominance does. 

A lot of people have dismissed Sandler’s films as silly and stupid and aimed at 14 year old boys with too much acne and a changing voice that would scare away even Harvey Fierstein, but I have to admit I get a chuckle out of his movies.  The stories are usually non existent but every once in a while there will be a laugh out loud moment similar to watching Britney trying to navigate the freeway. 

Then I saw Click.  This had to be the worst, most un-funny, so called comedy of the last 20 years.  The first two thirds of the film were supposed to be the funny parts and they more boring than listening to Laurence Fishburne talk about his “method”.  The last third was supposed to tug at your heart strings and it was more painful than listening to Laurence Fishburne discuss proper beard trimming etiquette.  I thought Sandler had outgrown his audience. 

We all know that when Hollywood stars have kids they re-examine their lives and usually try to do a  animated kids flick so they have something to show their children (even Ron Jeremy).  But Click still made money proving once again that Sandler’s audience was more interested in poop jokes than quality cinema.

Last year Sandler really put his surefire box office past to the test when he made I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.  The film was seen as homophobic by many and the advance buzz was that the  was both insulting and not funny.  Luckily for Adam most of his audience doesn’t read film reviews or can’t read film reviews, either way Chuck and Larry opened to good numbers and went on to gross over $100 million.

Most of the time Sandler walks through his movies without much effort.  He doesn’t really play a character, he just plays himself and exchanges his sweatpants for a pair of .  He’s the cool guy who is always quick with a so-called witty comment and impresses the girl with his honesty and tenderness.  He’s the grown man who behaves like a teenager and gets away with it because people (in the movie) think he’s funny. 

In his new movie You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Sandler does play a real character other than himself (a Mossad agent).  He hasn’t really done this since The Waterboy (which I found to be somewhat funny).  Now when I say character, let’s not get confused.  Sandler isn’t channeling Daniel Day Lewis and going all method on us, he’s just playing someone other than Adam Sandler.

Zohan also has the honor of having been written by Sandler along with Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow.  Hollywood seems to be more in love with Apatow right now more than it is with itself.  But aside from the films he actually directs, the ones he produces and writes are not nearly as funny.  Did you laugh once during Walk Hard?  Me neither.  Did you even see Drillbit Taylor?  Me neither.  Smigel on the other hand has been consistently funny with his animated pieces on Saturday Night Live, but those usually have heavy political humor and are probably too sophisticated for Sandler’s true audience.

There is a small reason to see Zohan and his name is Nick Swardson.  Remember the guy who stalks Jon Heder’s character in Blades of Glory?  Ya, the funny guy?  The guy that made you laugh every time he showed up on screen?  That’s Nick Swardson.  In my opinion he stole Blades of Glory from Will Ferrell (Heder really is still coasting on his Napoleon Dynamite fumes).  It is easier to be a supporting character in a comedy, because you get in, make people laugh, and get out, but Nick does it so well that he makes me want to see Zohan even if he’s only in it for a brief amount of time. 

On the other hand, the film (like most Sandler movies) also stars Rob Schneider who I think is not only not funny in his own movies but manages to drag down his friend’s movies too.  Do I really need to see him show up and say “You can do it!” one more time.  That catch phrase has less steam than Mr. T’s “I pity the fool!”.  Schneider should spend more time working on his hairline and leave his friend’s movies alone.

Yes, it’s sort of even more Lord of the Rings-ish than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was — I’m talking about the movies here — what with warrior trees and some deadly magic on a raging river and all the battles and creatures and so on. For which you cannot honestly put all the blame on director Andrew Adamson, who also wrote the screenplay with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who jointly wrote You Kill Me), because all those things are in C.S. Lewis’s book. You can maybe blame Lewis for being such pals with J.R.R. Tolkien that they argued about stuff like God and morality and such and ending up riffing on each other in their fiction. But they’re not around to complain to anymore.

So ya gotta feel for Adamson (Shrek 2), who must have said to himself, “Crap, Jackson just did this, the trees and the river and all, and did it so well….” And ya gotta admire him for dealing with it as he does here, in Prince Caspian, by just plowing through and getting it up on the screen without a lot of fuss or showing off. By letting the real charms of his second outing with The Chronicles of Narnia flow much as they did in the first one: by not lingering on the spectacle but on the sweetness of what is unique here, in the child characters and the enchanting talking animals. Which makes Prince Caspian even more like Lord of the Rings Babies than Wardrobe, but you know what? That’s great. Guess who steals the show here? It’s Eddie Izzard (Ocean’s Thirteen) as the voice of the warrior mouse Reepicheep… and the CGI wizards who animated him. Just adorable.

But things are a bit more intense this time out, too. The Pevensie kids have been magically transported from World War II England back to Narnia a year after they left, but 1,300 years have passed in the magical realm, and the critter Narnians — talking badgers and fauns and centaurs and mice and minotaurs (the minotaurs are extremely cool) and so on — have been subjected to a genocide by the invading human Telmarines. Hoorah for children’s movies with their talking badgers and their genocide! The concept is not fixated on, so mommies and daddies may escape some awkward questions from the kiddies, but the fight for survival the Narnians are engaged in is what the film is all about, and while there isn’t a lot of blood or gore — there isn’t any, in fact — there are lots of scary-thrilling moments, and unpleasant ones too. When the eldest Pevensie and Narnian High King Peter — he’s meant to be about 16; actor William Moseley is now 21, and a sweetly charismatic screen presence — leads an attack on the Telmarine castle that goes badly, he’s forced to make a tough decision, as leader and military commander, that is handled by Adamson — and Moseley — with surprising depth and feeling. Again: it’s not drawn out, not turned into the kind of drama that would drag down what is, for the most part, a romp of a flick, but it’s there enough to lend some genuine heft. And it’s a nicely balancing bookend to the rousing, enthusiastic cry with which Peter opened the battle: “For Narnia!” Which I admit gave me a little chill.

And then there’s the Telmarine Prince Caspian (played by 26-year-old British stage actor Ben Barnes in his first major film role — he had a small part in last year’s Stardust — which makes the character twice as old as he is in the book, but who cares, because there will be much sighing and daydreaming from the junior-high set, and not a little from, ahem, us older gals, too). His uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto: Mostly Martha), who’s got his eye on the Telmarine throne in the wake of the death of King Caspian, our Caspian’s father, wants his nephew dead, and there’s the fun way the movie opens: with Miraz’s men attacking Caspian in his bed. Good luck getting the kids to go to sleep after that.

So Caspian flees… into the mysterious woods of Narnia. Where he meets a talking badger and a warrior mouse and a dwarf named Trumpkin (the always wonderful Peter Dinklage [Death at a Funeral], who makes himself stand out even under layers of latex) and ends up siding with the Narnians against his uncle for the throne of the kingdom… and the betterment of all Narnia, of course. Oh, and of course he meets the Pevensies, too, the “kings and queens of old” who’ve returned to help Narnia in its hour of need, and gets to butt heads with Peter a bit over who’s in charge and who isn’t.

Aslan is back, bringing the “deep magic” of Narnia into play, and even the White Witch makes a brief appearance. But if you think two pretty boys with swords ain’t the icing on the fantasy cake for me, well, you’d be wrong.

Baby Mama? Really? That’s where we’re going with this? We’re turning supposedly grown women into juvenile idiots like we’ve been doing with supposedly grown men of late? Why don’t we just call it Knocked Up and be done with it?

Look: Babies are great. Sex is great. Messy and ridiculous and laughable — babies and sex — but great. So why don’t we get movies like that, that acknowledge the deeply weird wonderfulness of all this chaotic and confusing and hilarious life stuff? Why do we get movies, these days, about ostensible grownups dealing with ostensibly grownup things — like sex and babies and stuff — that treat their characters like they deserved to be snickered at and their audiences like they’re children whose only possible reaction to matters of sex and babies and stuff is to snicker? Are there any adults anywhere today?

I expected more from Tina Fey, who at least seems like a grownup, yet here lets herself be treated like she’s not worthy of respect we’d accord a dog. Her Kate Holbrook is a successful professional who, at the age of 37, decides she’s going to stop waiting for the right man to come along so that she can have a baby and just go it alone. Which would be fine, if the movie made any pretense at all, even in a farcical way, to understanding how complicated women’s lives can be today, how tough it is for those of us who decide we want to juggle a career and a family, how ridiculous it is to be a woman trying to have it all. How you might even just want to laugh at the absurd nonsense that passes for feminism (like this movie) these days.

Why bother to do that when you can hire a man — here, writer-director Michael McCullers, a Saturday Night Live writer who’s never directed anything before — to crack gynecological jokes and reduce that apparently smart, competent woman to the level of a simpering child? Oh, and she’s a child who is, conversely, too weirdly, twistedly old to seriously believe she could carry a child in her weird, twisted old womb. (“I just don’t like your uterus,” John Hodgeman’s OB-GYN tells her, and he’s funny about it. I want to see a movie where a woman says something to a man like, “I just don’t like your dick,” and she’s seen as humorous, and not a witchy, bitchy villain.) Kate defends her decision to go with a surrogate mother to her own mother thusly: “Being single is not an alternative lifestyle.” “It is when you’re 37,” her mother (Holland Taylor: The Wedding Date, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over) replies, which is, on the surface, supposed to be a joke, something that shows off the mom as old-fashioned and out of touch with the modern world… except the rest of the movie appears to be on the mom’s side. Who is this freaky strange old woman who wants to have a baby, anyway?

But hey, what do I know? I’m only a 38-year-old childless dried-up old prune of a hag myself. I’m probably just bitter. And also a lesbian. And most likely some kind of communist.

And it’s not like Kate hires Juno to carry her baby: she hires white-trashy Angie Ostrowiski… who’s played by Amy Poehler (Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, Shrek the Third)… who is all of 16 months younger than Tina Fey. And let’s not even get started on the exploitation of poor women that is the for-pay surrogacy industry. Or, okay, let’s, at least as it concerns would-be pregnancy farces: If you were a smart woman paying $100,000 to another woman to carry your child, wouldn’t you ensure there was something in the contract about, oh, not smoking and not eating junk food?

Oh, but it wouldn’t be “funny” if the white-trash surrogate wasn’t sneaking smokes and Dr. Pepper on the side. Cuz god knows there’s nothing else funny that could be mined from such a scenario… at least, nothing funny that doesn’t require an IQ over 75 to come up with…

Even on its own sorry terms, Baby Mama is ludicrous, falling back on toilet humor because it has nothing else to offer. (“I’m sorry I called you stupid,” Kate tells Angie. “I’m sorry I farted into your purse,” Angie relies. Really? Are you kidding me?) And falling back on making fun of what it is itself supposedly celebrating: Why does Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s (Charlotte’s Web, Fever Pitch) new-agey birthing coach come complete with lisp (which supposedly somehow connotes emotional sensitivity as absurd)? If Baby Mama wants to pretend it’s all about the human experience of nurturing a baby in the womb and giving it a good start in life — which is what Fey’s character is, allegedly, all about — then why is it making fun of getting in touch with that?

Baby Mama is bizarre — “I knew I was supposed to have a baby” Angie tells Kate at the faux sentimental ending, “but you taught me how to be a mother,” for which there is no evidence whatsoever. It is atrociously written: the first act (that is, the setup after which there needs to be some twist) is 50 minutes long (30 is about as long as a 95-minute film can tolerate). It absolutely wastes Greg Kinnear (Invincible, Little Miss Sunshine) as Fey’s new love interest… and if you can’t follow where that subplot is going, you deserve this movie as it is.

Director: Gregory Hoblit

Running time: 100 mins

Hoblit loves directing thrillers that are as twisted as a corkscrew.

His previous films, Primal Fear and Fracture, attest to that. In his latest project he is on top form once again.

It’s about a hunt for a serial killer, with a difference. The psycho performs his murders in public, for a live Internet audience.

The victims are all placed in a lethal trap. For example, one person is stripped naked with his legs encased in concrete. He is surrounded by sun lamps, and a live-streaming image is posted on the website “Kill With Me.”

The killer then tells the viewers that the number of hits the site gets will accelerate, or slow down, the heat to which the man is exposed. The more people log on, the faster he fries.

The killer coerces the thrill-hungry public to participate in an act of public murder. Inevitably, the site is jammed with viewers and everyone who watches is a murderer.

It’s a fiendish scheme that an FBI cybercrime agent, Jennifer Marsh (Lane), and her partner, Griffin Dowd (Hanks), must unravel.

Local cop Eric Box (Burke) joins them, but the cunning villain has made his website untraceable. Indeed, any attempt to crack it gives the killer the name and location of the investigators, who instantly find themselves on the killing list.

There are echoes of David Fincher’s Seven and a touch of The Silence of the Lambs with its cryptic clues, but the ingenious and sinister use of the Web puts this film on a different level. It’s only in the last 10 minutes that the film resorts to the traditional car chases and kicking in of doors, but even those have a twist or two in them.

The grey setting of Portland, the skilled cast and the frightening look at the dark side of the online community will keep you glued to your seat in horrified fascination.

The success or failure of a movie is often determined by the sales of tickets during the first weekend it’s premiered. In an effort to pump up these sales, many studios do, “advanced screenings”, to get positive feedback that they can use for advertisements. These screenings also let the studios know what to anticipate in public reviews.

With the rising cost of movie tickets, a lot of people hesitate to go see them, so the studios employ high profile, expensive actors to lure the public in. They also use special visual effects to dazzle the audience and suspenseful plots that will hopefully keep them riveted to their seats.

Most movie studios know what the public wants to see when they go to the movies. Some studios have been pleasantly surprised by movies that cost little to make in comparison to the blockbusters, but have developed a “cult” following, such as the black and white movie, “Night of the Living Dead” or the still popular, “Rocky Horror Picture Show”. In an effort to continue to profit from old popular movies, they often try to make remakes of them but usually without the same result. One such movie was “King Kong”, which was done several times. People go to see these movies with the hope that they will be as good as the original one, or to let their children experience them the way they did when they were children.

Another tactic that the studios are using is to make sequels of popular movies. The Matrix trilogy brought in a lot of profit, as did the, “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Harry Potter movies are anticipated long before they come out and the movie studios know that they will be able to count on making huge profits from them.

Another way that studios profit from these movies is by selling merchandise that represents the characters in them, which can range from dolls to videogames. They also make money on the DVD sales and rentals and employ popular music artists to record soundtracks, so they can sell the CDs and increase their profits even more.

Blockbuster movies will always be a form of entertainment that the multitudes will walk away from their televisions to go see. There is nothing like getting a box of popcorn and losing yourself in a great movie that’s shown on the silver screen.

Casting:
Raiders also had a charismatic leading man, who looked like a man, not a boy. They didn’t cast him because he was pretty enough to keep girls entertainined while all the guy-action was going on, and he wasn’t in the role because of his box-office clout either, the guys who made the movie cast somebody they thought would be best for the role, after Tom Selleck backed out, that is.

Pacing:
It had rapid-fire, globe-hopping, location-shifting pace that no other movie franchise has been able to duplicate, though many have tried. Spielberg is good at creating detailed, fast action sequences, where there is so much visual information being thrown at you that it feels like a news-clip.

2. Memento

Gimmicky plot:
It was an OK movie, with a premise that kept you hooked, waiting for the punchline. Gimmicky little plot ideas get made into movies because they make morons feel smart because they were able to figure it out. It’s the art of coming up with something that looks clever and different but isn’t really all that hard to figure out.

Felt gritty:
It had the kind of atmosphere that felt like a Tarantino or Scorsese movie, where you know bad shit was about to happen, edgy and harsh, which made it seem better than it really was.

3. Fight Club

Original, Edgy:
It was original in the sense of it being a bloody, violent movie that wasn’t predictable and wasn’t like anything a Hollywood writer would have come with on his own. You had Palahniuk’s homo-erotic social critique/satire acted out by 2 decent actors and directed by a genius who can make any scene feel dark and and grungy. It had the feel of being a movie unlike anything you had seen before, and was going some place that Hollywood would likely never go again.

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden:
This is the only movie I have ever really liked him in aside, perhaps, from Kalifornia, where he played a similar character. Tyler Durden is the epitome of sociopathic cool, and Pitt thinks he is the shit, so it’s perfect casting.

4. American History X

Excellent Bullshit:
It felt like it was dealing with American racism honestly and from both sides. It was an anti-racist diatribe that felt real, like it was dealing with an immensely complicated issue that matters to everybody in a way that Hollywood had not before. It had that indie credibility that appears  to dispense with Hollywood bullshit entertainment and seems to be telling you a real story about people. All of that was bullshit, but it was smart, expert bullshit and you have to give it credit for that. If you can’t tackle a hard subject honestly, tackle it so that you look like you are being honest.

Casting:
Give them credit for casting the most nebbishly sincere-seeming actor since James Stewart. Edward Norton, while not exactly convincing as a skinhead badass, did the contrition part quite well. I guess the solution to America’s racial issues involves them being raped by other skinheads.

5. The First 2 Godfather Movies

Pretend Realism:
Years before The Sopranos took you into the heart of the most public criminal organization on earth and pretended to tell you what it was really like, The Godfather did the same thing, proving that you don’t need to be realistic to get an audience to believe you are, you just have to be able to replicate what your average audience member will think is realistic. The Godfather movies were really just a set of guys’ soap operas with a little gun-play that didn’t seem like your regular Hollywood gun-play. The idea was to get the story-lines to mesh with the common American perception of the Mafia not to introduce them to the real thing.

Casting:
Young Al Pacino was the epitome of silk-suited cool. He radiated confidence and the certainty that he deserved what he had and knew exactly how to rule an empire. Robert DeNiro’s Vito Corleone was similarly perfect, depicting a man the with the unusual traits of  cunning viciousness and class.  

6. Alien


Sincerity:
The sweet sweet combination of sci-fi and horror, only this time done really well, by a director who took the shit seriously. Take something fantastic, perhaps even ridiculous, and make the audience see how it would play out in real life. The oldest and most sincere kind of film-making, and the sensibility present-day Hollywood has left behind. Now movies aren’t even trying to get you to see the shit as something that could really happen, people aren’t interested in realism any more, just soap-operatic twists and video-game theatrics.

Sigourney:
Alien gave us Sigourney Weaver in panties, not your fake, surgically-enhanced current hot-starlet, but a real chick. In her underwear.

7. Sin City

Rodriguez didn’t fuck it up:
I don’t like Robert Rodriguez movies, the seem tacky and overdone to me, like they are aimed totally at inner-city high-school drop-out of the 80s. I was prepared to dislike Sin City, but I did. Violent, melodramatic, and with no real message whatsoever this movie was good because it felt serious, it was anything but half-hearted. The bloodshed was depicted seriously, the arch Hammett-style monologues weren’t tongue-in-cheek, nothing about it felt like a typical Hollywood paycheck movie.

Mickey Rourke:
I have no idea why this wasn’t his comeback role except that he looks like a freak and is, apparently, quite a dick to work with. It should have been, though. He was way better than Travolta was in Pulp Fiction.

8. Goodfellas

Joe Pesci:
The core of this movie was Joe Pesci’s performance as a sadistic thug. At the time it was shocking, and resonated with everybody. You could forget everything about the movie but you remembered two things: a) Lorraine Bracco putting that gun in her panties, and b) Joe Pesci stabbing that guy in the trunk. If you have ever met anybody like him, the kind of short guy who flips out at the slightest perceived slight, then it stays with you even longer. It was a character whose violence felt genuine, heartfelt, you kind of knew why he was that way, you know people who are almost like that, and because of that he was scary.

Scorsese:
It always seemed to me that his priority as a film-maker was to make his movies feel edgier and desperate than anything else on the screen, his characters live in a brutal world with no mercy and no joy, just like most of us. I love the fact that he flinches from nothing, and expects that of his audience.

9. The Princess Bride


Pleasant Surprise:
If you saw it early on, before it got its “hip” Internet cult-following, as I did, you probably thought, like me, that you were going to have to sit through and entirely different kind of movie. This is the kind of movie that gets you to love it even when you are a reluctant 14 year-old boy whose mother rented it because she thought it was a different kind of movie too. It’s the last movie that I can remember being clever-funny without being dirty, meaning that unless your kids are dumbasses you can watch it with them.

Shamelessly sentimental without ever getting cute or corny
A brilliant trick which Rob Reiner has never quite managed to pull off again. Hell, the closest ever Hollywood came again was Almost Famous which while a great movie was not quite as charming as this one.

10. Snatch/Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Shallow Entertainment:
If you took Tarantino or Scorsese’s bloodiest, most overblown moment and combined it with a Chuck Jones Wile E. Coyote cartoon sensibility you have Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Both are somewhat overrated but still quite entertaining. There is nothing original here but there is quite a bit to make it all seem less-hackneyed, which I appreciate. They are the kind of movies where you know it’s all going to work out fine in the end for everybody, but you still stick around to see how it gets there, in other words, no suspense, but you get hooked any way.

Built Short Attention-spans:
Play a lot of video games, do you? Well here’s a movie to suit your inability to concentrate on any one thing for very long. The locale shifts every few minutes to get you into the goings on in some other part of the story.

British Exotica:
Cockney sounds impossibly exotic to your average Americans, and yet it’s a variety of English, so it doesn’t have the gibberish taste of a foreign language.

Please be sure to visit: Coupon Whale

And that’s the film. Loopy eye candy that you can enjoy in a non-demanding way and which will never cross your mind again. It’s the latest film from writer-director Roland Emmerich and it makes his Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow look like cinematic masterpieces. They were fun films that are worth revisiting from time to time, but Emmerich’s latest is nothing but forgettable fun.

The filmmaker evidently had visions of a pre-historic Braveheart, but 10,000 BC is hardly an epic. It involves D’Leh (Steven Strait), the son of a mammoth hunter, and his blue-eyed lady love Evolet (Camilla Belle). After a mammoth hunt in which he’s deemed a great hunter, he ends up leading some of his clansman on a quest to free his girlfriend (and other clansfolk) from the hostile Rock people, who are a cross between Egyptians and punk rockers. Along the way D’Leh and his gang fight what are best described as giant chickens and run across a sabre-tooth tiger. They also make allies and attach the Rock people’s metropolis, where slaves and mammoths are used to erect pyramids.

It’s all as silly as it sounds. Some of the dialog is equally as goofy (“Don’t eat me when I free you,” D’Leh says to a tiger as he frees it from a trap) and the special effects range from very good (a mammoth stampeded) to sub-par (the phony looking sabre-tooth).

Still, all those involved with 10,000 BC serve up their giddily goofy tale with such gusto that even the dumb (even compared to what’s come before) ending can’t quite make the film the cinematic trainwreck it should be. There’s no really good reason to see 10,000 BC, but if you do, you’ll be reasonably entertained for a couple of hours.

10,000 BC is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence. Running time: 109 minutes. Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.

Javier Bardem, who portrayed a particularly brutal serial killer in No Country, won the first of the “big six” Oscars, in the supporting-actor category.

During his acceptance speech, the Spaniard — directing his comments toward his mother in the audience — told her in Spanish that this Oscar will help “to recover the dignity of actors… and it’s for our pride.”

Soon afterward, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen won the Oscar for adapted screenplay for No Country — based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Canadian writer/director/actress Sarah Polley, 29, was nominated in that category for her celebrated feature-film directorial debut, Away From Her. She had adapted her screenplay from Alice Munro’s short story.

In a huge early upset, French actress Marion Cotillard beat huge favourite Away From Her’s Julie Christie for the best-actress Oscar. In her broken Engish, a clearly rattled Cotillard thanked “life” and “love” for her victory. Ellen Page of Halifax, who just turned 21, was up for best actress for her turn as the pregnant teen in Juno.

Whether Oscar was going to heap its lion’s share of praises by night’s end on Old Men, oil men, war men, corporate men or a lovable pregnant teen was unknown at press time for this edition.

No Country for Old Men, the dark tale of a serial killer on the trail of a looted fortune, was thought to be the likely winner of the best-picture Oscar, over the oil epic There Will Be Blood, the World War II drama Atonement, the corporate drama Michael Clayton and the popular comedy Juno, starring Page.

The Coen brothers went into the evening hoping to make Academy Awards history by winning all four categories in which they were nominated: best picture, director, adapted screenplay and — under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes — in film editing. But when The Bourne Ultimatum won for film editing, that dream died. Only legendary animator Walt Disney has ever won four Oscars in the same year, albeit not for the same movie.

No Country lost in three other technical categories, one to There Will Be Blood in cinematography, and two to The Bourne Ultimatum, in sound editing and sound mixing. The latter meant that Kevin O’Connell’s incredible Oscar losing streak was extended to 0-for-20.

In a big surprise, Tilda Swinton won the supporting-actress Oscar for Michael Clayton. Cate Blanchett’s turn as folk-era Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and 83-year-old Ruby Dee, for American Gangster, were seen to be the favourites in that category.

Swinton said she was completely shocked.

“I thought Ruby Dee would win and then, frankly, anybody but me,” Swinton told reporters backstage.”

She did not react to her name being announced as winner, she admitted.

“I had a reverse Zoolander moment when I thought I heard someone else’s name. Then I slowwwwly heard my own.”

Other Canadians were up for Oscars at the Kodak Theater.

Two Canadian filmmakers lost in the animated-shorts category. Josh Rankin’s I Met the Walrus and Chris Lavis and Maciek Szcerbowski’s Madame Tutli-Putli failed to gain more academy votes than Peter & the Wolf.

Also for Juno, Montreal-born Jason Reitman, himself only 30, was up for best director. He is the son of Canadian director Ivan Reitman.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, hosting for the second time, opened last night’s awards show by referencing the bitter writers strike that ended earlier this month, saying, “Welcome to makeup sex.”

The first award of the night, presented by Jennifer Garner, went to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. George Clooney, in a traditional tuxedo with a big ’70s-style bow tie, introduced a montage of highlights from Oscar shows past.

In the early going, even though it was clear No Country had begun to pick up steam, the awards were spread far and wide — with seven other films getting at least one Oscar.

Brad Bird, director of Ratatouille, which won as best animated feature, made an impassioned plea backstage for animated films to get back in the running for best picture. But he still said that he’s happy with his own category.

“It’s all good. Come on, it’s the Oscars!” Bird told reporters.