An unusually nasty piece over at The Guardian is causing revulsion, even among seen-it-all types like Jeff Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere, who calls it "one of the meanest and most heartless" celebrity journalism pieces he's ever read, as well as being "insensitive" and "pointless." I have to agree. Let me start by saying that, as a long-time fan of Nicole Kidman's -- check out the three-part retrospective of her early career I did a while back -- I share the originating sentiment of the Guardian piece, which is that Kidman is of late taking a wrecking-ball to her film career with one inexcusably awful choice after the other. From dreck like The Stepford Wives and The Human Stain to almost-unreleasable garbage like Bewitched and The Invasion, she's practically daring fans to turn away from her. Even her latest prestige project, Margot at the Wedding, is completely awful. After seeing Margot in Toronto, I declared this to be Kidman's "annus horribilis."

All that said, however, this piece reads like it was written by some fourth-grader, undercutting whatever serious intent it may contain with a ton of personal smears. Kidman is referred to as a "former Scientology hostage bride" who only won an Oscar for wearing "a false hooter" and who is now "box office poison." Soon enough, the piece warns, "Hollywood's powers that be -- or their accountants -- will rise from their crypts one morning and realize it's time to cut their losses." The article also urges Kidman to retire before she becomes "Joan Crawford 1944" and is way too harsh on Birth, the one semi-decent movie Kidman has produced in the last three years.

Kidman is also on the cover of this month's Vanity Fair, but that piece is hardly any more worthwhile. It's entirely oriented around her personal life and content to elicit from the actress fortune-cookie aphorisms about how to handle a long-distance relationship and the like. Is there no place left for a serious critique of an actor's career, or lack of one?

At what point do you stop taking a movie blog seriously? Can you ever take a movie blog seriously? And, most importantly, what is a movie blog? I like to think an opinion-based website that allows readers to comment is probably the best definition of a blog. Thus, Cinematical is a blog, JoBlo is a blog, AICN is a blog, and so on. But at what point does the "movie blog" become the "marketing blog" -- a site somewhat controlled by the studios; one that has no problem pimping out certain projects if it means they'll be on the "extra special" list when it comes time for interviews, scoops, etc. That's what The Guardian thinks happened to AICN (or Ain't It Cool News) right around the time AICN chief Harry Knowles began receiving private advanced screening invites and phone calls from folks like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. The site for fanboys, written by fanboys, had become (in The Guardian's words) "smug and pedestrian." Essentially, they jumped the shark.

Still, though, folks run to AICN for the latest "test screening" review, major inside scoop and/or ridiculous foul-mouthed banter between the site's authors and their brain-damaged commenters. All that's really changed, in my mind, is that the site is now being used by Hollywood as a go-between -- they don't know how to communicate with today's youth, and so they'll use this site (and its young-at-heart writers) to translate for us. But it's not like this doesn't happen at other spots around the net. Folks call us out all the time for being a part of a major corporation (which, in all honesty, we are), but that does not (and will not) stop us from telling you what we really think. Just the other day, a fellow online writer was telling me how a studio publicist took a bunch of other online writers out to dinner. I wouldn't be surprised if they walked away with a few hats and t-shirts as well. It's kind of like a parent trying to buy their kid's love (with a bunch of flashy items, like an iPhone or what have you).

And if that's what "jumping the shark" is, then AICN is definitely not the only website guilty of it. In the end, though, it's a catch-22. As with most things in life, if you don't scratch their back, they won't scratch yours. And everyone, including The Guardian, is guilty of taking one for the team if it means your readers would really like a particular piece of content ... like an interview with Stallone, or a gallery of Harry Potter photos.

When you're reading an interview with Dennis Hopper, you expect him to admit things like the following: that he once sold a priceless Lichtenstein painting for a thousand bucks, attended an orgy with Natalie Wood, and used to drink "half a gallon of rum and 30 beers a day." We're talking about Dennis Hopper, here. In order to surprise us, he's going to have to do a lot better than that -- and so he has. During an interesting interview with the Guardian that went up yesterday, Hopper held forth with some super-cryptic mumblings about his possible appearance in Speed 3 (!)

To back up a bit, it's the inteviewer who first brings up the topic, claiming to have some insider knowledge about it. He tells us, the reader, that the film is "due to include" a performance by Hopper, and that it's his intention to ask Hopper "plenty of questions" about it. I certainly hope so. When he finally gets around to it, however, the only thing Hopper will say is this: "It's a river of shit from which I have tried to extract some gold." Huh? The Speed series is a river of shit? The process of resurrecting your character for a third film when he clearly died in the first film is a river of shit? What are you talking about, druggy?

I personally think what we have here is an over-zealous reporter trying to make some news where none exists. Speed 2 more or less bombed at the box-office, when you consider its sizeable budget and the expectations that everyone had from the previous film. I've certainly heard nothing about a Speed 3, and as far as I know, no one is even thinking about it. So unless the movie is currently being filmed in complete secrecy under the title All About Steve (or Cloverfield), I think we can disregard this.

While Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction is certainly a very popular and influential film, I wonder how many of its fans remember a little Clint Eastwood movie called Play Misty for Me. The 1971 chiller was about a disc jockey (Eastwood) who turns a fling (Jessica Walter -- yes, the hilariously hateful matriarch from Arrested Development) into a freak-o when he passes her by for another girl. (Sound familiar?) But after the overwhelming success of 1987's Fatal Attraction, the multiplexes seemed over-loaded with all sorts of "domestic thrillers" in which "a normally generic nobody, albeit one belonging to a distinct domestic stereotype" goes ape-doody and starts stabbing people left and right. Gathered here are seven of the most memorable. Not the best, necessarily, but the seven I can remember right now. Hence "memorable."

If Fatal Attraction = Crazy Psycho Jilted Mistress, then...

Unlawful Entry = Crazy Psycho Dirty Cop -- Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe are thrilled to meet up with cop Ray Liotta when their home is invaded -- but when the guy keeps snooping around and using his badge as a license to ... peep, things take a turn for the worse. Fun stuff that only periodically gets campy, thanks mainly to a brisk pace and three strong leads. Plus Liotta's just so wonderfully evil in this one. (Jonathan Kaplan, 1992)

The Crush = Crazy Psycho Sexy Jailbait -- Underage temptress Alicia Silverstone doesn't take it well when dreamboat Cary Elwes rebuffs her amorous advances, and she's not afraid to kill people to show it. Low-rent cable fodder that's only worth watching if (absolutely) nothing else is on. But you might need a shower once it's over. But if you're a fan of "death by bees in a locked darkroom," here's a flick you'll love. (Alan Shapiro, 1993)

The Temp = Crazy Psycho Freckled Secretary -- It probably doesn't take much imagining to picture Lara Flynn Boyle as a raving psycho bitch, but this pulpy little horror comedy is a lot more entertaining than the "temp gone crazy" premise might sound. (OK, not "a lot," but still kinda fun.) Timothy Hutton plays the cookie company suit who finds that he's getting a whole lot of unexpected help from his new temp. And by "help" I mean she ruins and/or kills anyone who might stand in his way. (Tom Holland, 1993)

Leave it to those folks at The Guardian to put a smile on my face at the end of a very long day. (Don't even get me started on how long it took to find Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright for our interview this afternoon. Long story short -- we wound up chatting in front of -- I kid you not -- at least 100 different guns. But more on that when it comes time to unload our delicious interview ... ) Back to The Guardian, and an article written by the always-enjoyable David Patterson. In it, he spits out a devilish rant calling for the three strike rule to apply to Oscar-winning actors (and actresses) who, after winning their golden statue, go on to star in back-to-back-to-back stinkers.

The two ladies immediately called out for their role choices are Halle Berry and Hilary Swank. After somehow finding a way to win the best actress Oscar for Monster's Ball, Berry went on to star in Gothika, Catwoman and the upcoming Perfect Stranger (which, apparently, is being referred to as "Color of Night-bad"). As Patterson puts it, "Sounds like she's had her three endings already, and just because she has a feline role in her recent past doesn't mean we have to give her the full nine lives." And then there's Swank; with two recent Oscar wins under her belt, you'd think she'd be itching for some quality material. However, Patterson (who must have been injecting snark straight into his ass as he wrote this) points out that films like The Core, The Black Dahlia, The Reaping, The Space Between and Insomnia weren't exactly considered top notch entertainment.

So, what do you do about this? Patterson feels the Academy should take back the awards of those who follow up their Oscar win with three duds. Three strikes and you're out, right? In fact, they could dedicate an entire ceremony to it, and have Patterson host. "I can just see the Academy Awards' head honcho or The Man from Price-Waterhouse snapping Sylvester Stallone's best screenplay Oscar in front of him, and really enjoying the sight of a tiny man crying in shame. I'd pay good money to see that - who wouldn't?" I'd rather pay good money to see these folks in a, well, good film -- but hey, I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Simon Hattenstone, the journalist for The Guardian who recently sat down to talk with Sienna Miller, claims to feel "manic by proxy" just from talking to her, "as if I'm caught up in a sugar rush." In a fascinating, no-holds-barred interview published today, Miller opens up about every topic in her life, including the long and complex process of getting Factory Girl to the big screen. "After I'd been researching it for a year I had this way of talking and this way of laughing, this way of smoking, this way of dancing, this whole character that you've worked on, and then it's like 'It's a wrap, bye, guys, bye,' and you're like 'Eeeeugh, what do I do with it, what do I do now?" Miller also denies rumors that she took on Edie Sedgwick's destructive habits. "I didn't up my drug intake, if that's what you're implying. Edie shot up amphetamine and shot up heroine to come down off amphetamine and that's serious drug-taking, and look where it got her."

Nevertheless, she claims that "I took a morphine pill, just to feel what a safe way of taking heroine was like." When the interviewer ponders aloud why so many people are drawn to drugs, Miller blurts out "Cos' they're fun! Cos' they're f**kloads of fun! No, don't write that. I always end up putting my big fat foot in it." She also claims to enjoy the "odd hallucinogenic drug. I liked mushrooms, which were legal until a year or so ago." Her favorite vice, however, is smoking, which she endorses. "I love them. Love them. I think the more positive approach you have to smoking, the less harmful it is. I know it's an irresponsible thing to say, but I do know people who are 86 and smoked 60 a day and died of old age."

Miller is also keen on sharing her political views. "Basically, we're living under a fascist regime," she says of Blair's New Labour, before pulling it back and saying that she thinks her previous remark was disrespectful to people who live under true dictatorships. She also says "There's an image of Americans in a tank, and an Iraqi woman walks down the street and she sees the tank and the soldiers just run her over," although its not clear if she's free-associating, or referencing some real incident. As for her upcoming slate, Miller says she's finished work on both Stardust, the British fantasy film, and Interview, the latest directing project from Steve Buscemi. Throughout the sprawling interview, Miller also talks about mating rabbits at boarding school, filling a water-gun with piss and shooting it at the paparazzi, the stupidity of learning math -- "take a f**king calculator, you nob" -- re-naming American cities, and why people should walk around topless.

Over at one of my regular reads, The Guardian, Ryan Gosling, former Mouseketeer-turned-Oscar-nominee, opens up about his Mormon childhood, the job he worked two summers ago in a convenience store ( "It was fun because I had a job where homeless people could tell me what to do.") and the trouble he caused at the Mouse House, when his antics caused the moms of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears to complain to Disney about him ("I just told them what I heard - like positions and stuff.")

The article also gets into what Gosling has planned next -- a story about child soldiers in Uganda called The Lord's Resistance, his relationship with Rachel McAdams (they famously hated each other on the set of The Notebook, now they're dating long-distance) and his thoughts on Half Nelson. Gosling seems rather surprised to be Oscar-nommed for the role of the crack-using middle school teacher -- he notes that , "I was" planning on being ostracised!" Read the full interview -- you might just learn a thing or two about Gosling you didn't know going in.

I wouldn't necessarily call Joe Queenan a film critic. He's more of a humorist, though one that has devoted much of his writings to the subject of movies. I've followed his work for many years and think his book Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler: Celluloid Tirades and Escapades is only topped by Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese (by, of course, MST3K's Michael J. Nelson) where funny film writing is concerned. Lately Queenan has been writing about movies for UK's The Guardian, and so far, from the way our readers have commented on stories about his pieces, he's being taken too seriously over there. But then, Queenan is also seemingly guilty of trying to be taken more seriously as a film journalist.

Queenan's latest bit of internal musing disguised as a film feature is on the subject of The Departed, written in anticipation of the UK DVD release of the Martin Scorsese film. Queenan writes that Scorsese is trying to tell him something with the Oscar-nominated film because of the fate of a character in the film named Queenan (played by Martin Sheen). Apparently the name Queenan isn't very common, and Joe Queenan thinks the choosing of this name is a sort of payback -- or threat, maybe -- for unfavorable things he's written about the filmmaker, mainly that he has in the past addressed Scorsese's potentially misogynistic personal touches. In the end Queenan apologizes for making assumptions about Scorsese's real-life relationships with women.

The Guardian has a whopper of a movie review out today, in advance of the U.K. opening of Rocky Balboa next Friday. Reviewer Joe Queenan's basic premise: the popularity of the Rocky series is entirely due to its subconscious appeal (to whites) of a white underdog consistently besting black champions in their prime. The review touches on every previous entry in the series, beginning with Rocky, in which the white hero is paired up against a "motor-mouthed African-American punk who shows no respect for America." According to Queenan, the film said "exactly what White America wanted to hear: They're gifted but we work harder." Moving on from there, "Rocky II was insane, Rocky III and IV were even more insane, and Rocky V was really insane."

By the time Queenan arrives at Rocky Balboa, you can imagine his head spinning as he describes how heavyweight champion Mason 'The Line' Dixon "has only battled tough black men in their 20s, but has never had to face the ultimate test: a 10-round bout with a decrepit Caucasian restaurateur pushing 60." Fans of the series also come in for a beating: "Hardcore fans of the Rocky series have a tough time distinguishing fact from fiction, almost certainly never get any closer to an art museum than the steps leading up to it, and aren't terrifically bright."

Right now, The Guardian has a neat little thirty-question quiz up called 2006: The year in film. How well do you remember everything (film-related) that happened this year? And when I say everything, I mean even the tiniest details -- like quotes from actors, marketing mishaps and deaths. That's right, The Guardian has assembled a unique list of multiple choice questions that are, at best, extremely random.

Personally, I found the quiz to be rather easy, but then again I write for a movie blog -- I should know these things, right? However, I was surprised to only score 28 out of 30. Yes, even I'm not perfect. They got me with one death question (pick the actor who died in 2005, not 2006), as well as on a question about a marketing mishap that occurred during Lucky Number Slevin's promotional campaign. Now, if you're a faithful Cinematical reader, then you should be able to answer most (if not all) of the questions correctly, seeing as we've covered each topic at least once. Have fun, and definitely come back after you've finished to let us know your score.

Bonus Cinematical question not included in The Guardian's quiz: Which film did Erik predict would gross the most money at the box office this past summer? And was he right?

[via Hollywood Wiretap]

The Sunday Observer has a big surprise -- a nearly 5,000 word list of '50 Lost Movie Classics,' as compiled by the paper's film critics with assistance from filmmakers like Joe Wright and Peter Webber. By 'lost', they don't mean silent films that failed to survive to the present day or anything like that. They mean films from all eras that the critics supposedly got wrong and now should reevaluate. About half of the list is intriguing, while the other half is crazy. One of the most intriguing selections is Dreamchild, a 1985 fantasy-bio of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Also, there's 1978's Newsfront, which is supposedly Australia's version of Network, and a little-known Randolph Scott western called Ride Lonesome. They also rave about an obscure 1971 horror film called Let's Scare Jessica to Death. All of these will be arriving in my mailbox soon. However, the list also contains some 'lost classics' that I know were rightfully 'lost' the first time.

Those include Spike Lee's unwatchable borefest Bamboozled, a snorer from the Naked Gun guys called Top Secret! and Richard Fleischer's The Narrow Margin from 1952, which was improved on in the 1990 remake with Gene Hackman. Then there's Kevin Costner's Tin Cup, which I'm not even going to comment on. The list also includes titles with 'blacklist' cred, which is never a quality guarantee. Finally, there are films like 1969's Queimada, a "dramatised Marixst essay" about "neo-colonialism," and Le Petomane, a "masterpiece" from 1979 about a man with an "elastic anus."

The Guardian threw up an interesting story over the weekend in which Dan Glaister pondered Clint Eastwood's decision not to include any African-American soldiers in his new film Flags of Our Fathers. Pic revolves around The Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II and the six soldiers who instantly became famous when they were photographed raising an American flag. Yet, with almost 900 African-American soldiers involved in said battle, not one is present in the pic. No lines of dialogue. No extras. Nada. Zip. As The Guardian puts it, "Where have all the black soldiers gone?"

As you can expect, those African-American soldiers that were there, and even played a small role in raising the famous flag, are pretty upset ... and they should be. Right? Warner Bros. claims "The film is correct based on the book," but c'mon -- point to the line in the book that read, "Oh, and by the way, there were no African-American soldiers anywhere near this battle." If it's historical fact and written about in books like Christopher Moore's Fighting for America: Black Soldiers -- the Unsung Heroes of World War II, then why were they left out of the film? For a problem with such an easy fix (throw in an extra or two), it appears this was done deliberately. And if so, why?

Yvonne Latty (author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans) wrote to the film's producers, as well as Eastwood, but got no reply. Says Latty, "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie." While I'm not trying to start a nasty fight here (and please refrain from nasty comments), it upsets me to see a film that is sure to be a huge Oscar contender blatantly ignore the involvement of African-Americans during The Battle of Iwo Jima, especially a war epic that relies heavily on the little details. What do you think?

[via Movie City News]

You gotta love the Brits and their fabulously raunchy humor. Only from the UK would we have a documentary about disabled male strippers with the perfectly splendid tag line: "They might not have legs, but do they have the balls?" The 24-minute short doc, titled The Crippendales -- a play on the famous Chippendales dancers -- follows Lee Kemp, a wheelchair-bound man with a dream of being a male stripper (hey, we all need a dream) and his efforts to pull together and train a troupe of dancers, all with disabilities, to do the "full monty" in performances at a hen club -- clubs where women go for a "girls' night out" to watch men taking it all off.

Thanks to one of the best casts we've seen in quite some time, Martin Scorsese had the greatest opening weekend of his career with The Departed racking up a dominating $27 million. The director's previous best was $10.3 million, set back in 1991 with the film Cape Fear. While it's a bit frightening to think that a director of this caliber has never had a pic debut with more than $10 million, do keep in mind Scorsese's films usually open on a smaller number of screens before rolling out on a larger scale. However, with an all-star team of talent, Warner Bros. decided to swing big, throwing The Departed into 3,017 theaters. And boy did it pay off.

Though it made a good attempt to keep pace, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning failed to hack its way to the top, settling for a respectable $19.15 million and the weekend's second spot. With only a $16 million production budget, I'd imagine Texas Chainsaw: The Middle and Texas Chainsaw: The End will show up sooner rather than later. The Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson comedy Employee of the Month ($11.8 million) was in third place after Friday, but bad buzz and a whole lot of youngsters demoted it down one notch to fourth, while the animated Open Season (last week's number one) scored spot number three with $16 million. And knocking Jackass: Number Two ($6.4 million) out of the top five for the first time since its release, The Guardian rounded things out with $9.6 million.

Full numbers after the jump.

From looking at this weekend's box office numbers, it's quite obvious parents were desperate to get the kids out of the house and into a nice, comfy darkened theater. The animated flick Open Season (starring Ashton Kutcher and Martin Lawrence) topped all with $23 million, while Kutcher's live-action pic The Guardian sank into second place taking home a decent $17.7 million.

Both Kutcher films proved to be a bit too much for Johnny Knoxville and friends, as Jackass: Number Two (last week's number one) slid all the way down to third place with a crisp $14 million. However, I'm sure they're not complaining about a sweet 10-day total of $51.5 million. Not a whole lot of folks were interested in yet another dorky Jon Heder performance ( I know I wasn't), as School for Scoundrels opened in fourth with $9.1 million, and Jet Li's Fearless rounded out the top five with $4.7 million. It's also important to note that The Queen (which debuted Saturday on three screens in NYC) took home a ridiculous $123,000 in just two days, while The Last Kind of Scotland (four theaters in NYC and LA) nabbed $143,252.

Full numbers after the jump.