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Whit Stillman hasn't made a lot of films. In fact, there are only three: Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. All filmed in the '90s, his trio of movies morphed from upper-class teen Manhattanites, to heading out into the international working world, and finally to a look into the end of disco. Unfortunately, the last was sadly overlooked because another big disco fest hit the big screen -- 54 -- which may have been terrible, but with the likes of Mike Myers and a big-name cast, it was the flick in the spotlight.

Nestled in the shadows was The Last Days of Disco, starring Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale as two young book editors who fill their nights with dance and banter while looking for romance. Each night, as they head to the club, they come across a myriad of faces, from the Stillman pro Chris Eigeman, to the likes of Mackenzie Astin, Matt Keeslar, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Beals, Burr Steers (recently directed 17 Again), and even Drew's mom, Jaid Barrymore. They gossip, discuss intellectual pursuits, analyze Lady and the Tramp, and even purr over the sexiness of Scrooge McDuck -- all to a classic disco soundtrack.

If you love satire, and a mixture of surreality intermingled with spot-on dialogue (think intellectualism on the back-drop of all-out glam), you've got to check it out. Best of all, should you adore watching this for free, you can then pick up the new Criterion on sale at Barnes & Noble, where they're having their wicked 50% off sale again.

Watch The Last Days of Disco over at SlashControl!

Jason Reitman, whose next film Up in the Air comes out on December 4th, posted a very funny image on Twitter recently – a pie chart detailing the different things that people have asked him in recent interviews. The top three were about George Clooney (111 people), the economy (96 people), and his next project (78 people). The fourth is a little more confusing, as it just reads "Real People," so apparently 77 people asked him about real people. Maybe they wanted to know if the people being laid off in the movie were real people? Who's to say what goes through the murky depths of the mind of a journalist?



I humbly ask Jason Reitman to make a pie chart of his answers. Here's what I picture it to look like.

111 people: "Clooney is such a prankster! But he's also a great serious actor. He's the Cary Grant of our times. Sometimes we have moustache contests."

96 people: "The economy sucks. Seriously though, I've never been laid off, but if I had to be laid off, I'd hope George Clooney would do it."

78 people: "My next project will be with George Clooney. Actually, it will be catching up on all the sleep I lost talking to you people and answering the same damn questions over and over again."

In one jpeg, Reitman manages to sum up the exhausting paces that filmmakers, actors, musicians, et al are put through to get their names and faces and projects out there, the laziness of some journalists, and the terror that faces every journalist that wants to be good at what they do and engender an interesting discussion that is hopefully pleasant and/or illuminating (but at the very least not boring) for everyone involved, including the reader.

If you could ask Jason Reitman anything, what would it be?

Spoiler Warning: The world isn't going to end in 2012.

The most comical aspect of Sony's marketing strategy for 2012 is that it's got people actually believing that the world is going to end in the year 2012. Folks are so beside themselves that NASA has already intervened to try to combat the thousands of paranoid emails they've received, and now Discovery.com is doing their part to calm down the human race by attempting to prove that the world will not end on December 21, 2012, contrary to what those dastardly Mayans predicted.

What they've done is collected the 10 most popular doomsday scenarios and then systematically debunked each one by presenting, ya know, facts and stuff. So before your cousin Eddie tries to convince you that he totally know what he's talking about and the world is, like, totally going to end in 2012 because he saw it somewhere on TV at some point but he doesn't remember where, well, you might want to read up on what the Discovery folks have to say. Here are a couple examples:

4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.

A threatening near-Earth asteroid that's gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don't know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn't know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there's no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.

More after the jump ...

I have to tell you that this installment of Scenes We Love was a close one, because the more I searched for the scene in question from A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master, the more I realized that it was a pretty terrible movie. The fourth installment of the horror franchise saw Freddy looking for some fresh meat after he had worked his way through the original "Elm Street brats". But like I said, this is about the song as well as the movie, so Dream Master (despite it's failings) lived to earn its very own Songs We Love thanks to "Anything, Anything", by Dramarama.

Now, no one would blame you if the name isn't ringing a bell, but Dramarama was an LA-based power pop band that made some inroads to fame before fading into obscurity in the early 90's -- with the exception of an appearance on a VH1 reality show, which seems to be the fate of most 80's bands. The song was used during a scene in which one of our young victims is practicing a martial art that will be utterly useless against Freddie, but one look at Andras Jones as Rick Johnson and this 13-year-old was in love (although I chose to overlook the Karate Kid headband). So even though "Anything, Anything" never really became a huge hit for the band, according to legend it is still one of "the most requested songs in KROQ [LA Radio] history" -- which I guess means I'm not the only one with fond memories of this tune.

After the jump: Dramarama's contribution to the Canon of Freddie...

The battle of the sexes is alive and well in Hollywood, and whether it is the subject of a rom-com or an indie flick, audiences love to watch a good ol' fashioned throw down. But what makes a 'battle of the sexes' comedy a tricky proposition is that someone has to lose. So how do you make your audience (who is for the most part, female) accept the idea that a strong and feisty gal has learned the error of her ways and has 'surrendered to love''? Granted, it was a heck of a lot easier when they were making these movies in the '30s and '40s and marriage was the inevitable 'happy ending' for most gals.

Today, The Ugly Truth has been released on DVD and just like a million films to go before it, the story centers on a man and a woman who 'meet cute', fight a lot, and then fall in love -- and just like every other film, the whole thing hinges on the happy couple. When you're covering well trod ground like a battle of the sexes comedy, the charm and likability of your leads are your bread and butter -- and on a personal note, I just don't think Truth pulled it off, and I never got that charge from watching Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler engage in a little 'verbal foreplay'.

So at risk of sounding like somebody's grandmother, I decided that when it comes to the battle of the sexes comedy, nobody did it better than classic Hollywood, and it didn't matter whether it was during the hay day of screwball comedies or gritty films noir. That's why this Cinematical Seven is dedicated to those classic Hollywood couples that could battle with the best of them, but unlike Heigl and Butler, their chemistry became the stuff of movie legend.

After the jump; seven classic couples that are all-time champs when it comes to the battle of the sexes....

Many of Michael Jackson's fans have paid tribute to the deceased pop icon by seeing This Is It, the ghoulishly titled assemblage of rehearsal footage and outtakes that was rushed into theaters last month, just in time for Halloween (or, as Jackson used to call it, "every day"). But some of the beloved nutjob's greatest admirers have gone a step further and contacted him beyond the grave in a seance, which is about as believable as The Fourth Kind.

Derek Acorah, an English medium of some renown on that side of the pond, conducted the spirit-contacting and aired it on the U.K.'s Sky 1 channel. We have a YouTube clip after the jump. Acorah is the older, silver-haired gentleman in the video. The host asks him if people can ask Michael Jackson questions through him, and Acorah says yes, absolutely, the King of Pop would love that. Then Acorah opens his eyes and looks a little stunned. Apparently this is when he starts "channeling" Jackson. Michael Jackson is inside this man's body!

Then there is a fellow who looks a bit like Michael Ian Black who was apparently one of Jackson's friends and, by the looks of things, the inheritor of some of his wardrobe. He is very emotional about the chance to speak with his dead friend, especially when the dead friend, through Acorah, tells him that love and sensitivity "oozes" from him. Finally the friend asks, "Do you realize how much I love you, Michael?" Really? That's your question? Not "What's the afterlife like?" or "Have you had any awkward encounters with the Elephant Man?" but "Did you know I love you?" LAME.

The clip, after the jump.

In their neverending efforts to cover all things Twilight related, MTV has been asking cast members who they think should helm the final installment (or two), Breaking Dawn. (Because, if Robert Pattinson is to be believed, the movie will film next fall.) Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the Volturi member Caius, thinks it should be Tim Burton, while Pattinson himself is also playing the guessing game, and wishes for Gus Van Sant. Apparently, RPatt heard that filming would take place in Portland, and Van Sant "shoots everything in Portland."

In other words: Everyone has different ideas, which seems to be the big theme of Breaking Dawn.

Do you guys really want it? Sure, after taking this journey, you want to see it through to the end and see the final (and epically long) book make it to the screen. But let's face it -- it's not going to be as you expect. Is your curiosity for anything stronger than your desire for a worthy-to-the-source adaptation?

Hit the jump for the spoilery discussion.

By: John Gholson

Screenwriter John August declared the Shazam feature film completely dead in January 2009, unable to come up with a screenplay that seemed to satisfy Warner Bros. "By "dead," I mean that it won't be happening. I don't think it's on the studio's radar at all, " August stated in a blog post.

I'm happy to report that John August was wrong. Shazam is most definitely on Warner Bros radar, and they've tasked DC Comics scribe Geoff Johns and rookie screenwriter Bill Birch with a new version of the script. Birch spoke to CineFOOLS about the project, "The way the story is shaking out, Geoff and I see this not as 'dark' as Dark Knight but definitely as cool...Tonally, I think it's important to successfully find the balance of comedy and danger in the story. That's a major aspect I'm focusing on. Frankly, hitting the right tone is what's going to either get this made or keep it in development hell."

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad