Just checked out WALL-E. It was a wonderful animated film, maybe the best one to date from Disney/Pixar.
It does something no Pixar film has yet done: mix live-action inserts into the realistically animated scenes. WALL-E, the incredibly cute robotic protagonist of the piece, has a job compacting garbage in the ruins of an abandoned city [...]

Finally, finally finally got out and caught a movie, at the spiffy new Century 20 in Tanforan Mall. It’s a nice new theatre with excellent presentation, but it isn’t without some problems. For one thing, it’s understaffed: On the way to our auditorium I came across a pair of propped-open exit doors, which is an [...]

We’re all excited here at Box Office Weekly over the propinquity (look it up!) of Sonoma’s Annual World’s Ugliest Dog contest. It’s a kind of evil twin to the Westminster Dog show, in which dogs are judged solely on their disturbing countenances. No prancing, no heeling, just “OMFG, what the hell IS that?!” It’s a little more [...]

I’m proud of TPN:: Box Office Weekly. I believe the editorial and critical content on these pages is of a generally higher level than most media-news blogsites. At the end of the film Ratatouille, the food critic Anton Ego put forth a splendid little summary of what criticism truly is. I’ll excerpt it here:
In [...]

As we’ve learned from better science fiction, our creations sometimes surpass their original parameters. Sometimes they run amok (2001), sometimes they kill everyone everywhere (”Battlestar Galactica,” The Matrix), and sometimes they turn into charming naïfs (Data from Star Trek). Another unusual example can currently be seen during commercial breaks on American television.
Esurance, an online insurance [...]

Got to spend the weekend up in Lake Tahoe with family. Tahoe is a large high mountain lake that straddles the border between California and Nevada. It’s mean level is 6225 feet (1898 meters) above sea level. I’m a sea level sort of guy, which meant the first evening I was up there I [...]

SCENE: The rec room in a basement of a suburban home.
At a table strewn with lead figurines and hex-graph paper sit FOUR PLAYERS and a DUNGEON MASTER, behind his dragon-emblazed standing folder.
DUNGEON MASTER: Did you hear about Gygax?
JAPHETH BLIGH (8th-level warrior): What’s that? A troll? I’m taking out my +5 Longsword–
HELVETICA the MEDIUM (6th-level Cleric) [...]

I love movies. I love Hollywood, and Hollywood cinema. Fresh-popped popcorn gets me a little high, and I think the little changeover cues in the corners of the frame are cute. And God help me, I’m just as hooked on television as everybody. But there are quite a few things about Hollywood I hate.
Most [...]

Unlike Daniel, I did not bother watching what was left of the Golden Globes award-announcing telecast thingy. I was instead on good ol’ Fox, watching the premiere of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” Gotta admit, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t exactly excellent television, but it had impressive effects, fairly lean (if lazily motivated) plot [...]

A few brief notions:
The Lead Compass: The Golden Compass took in just under $26M when it opened last weekend. It’s probably headed to the basement as more holiday movies, I Am Legend in particular, open. For a film that costs upwards of $180M to make that’s south of bad news.
A few months ago I bemoaned [...]