In this weekend's well-meaning docudrama, Flash of Genius, Greg Kinnear portrays an inventor who struggled for years to sue car manufacturing behemoth Ford and get them to admit that they helped themselves to his patent on the intermittent windshield wiper. (Eugene reviewed it back at Telluride, and I basically agree with his assessment.)

Despite the real-life case being settled a couple of decades ago, Ford has taken this current opportunity to point out the factual inaccuracies in the movie that they've taken issue with, doing so in the form of this handy timeline, without causing any sort of formal stir, as covered in this accompanying text. Especially considering that the film's subject, Robert Kearns, passed away over three years ago, I doubt it would (and hope it won't) come to any sort of renewed head.

Maybe in thirty years or so, we'll get a movie about a blogger battling impossible odds to get all the facts straight on either side of a movie in which an inventor battled impossible odds to get just some facts straight. Now, to just work the word 'Genius' back into the title...

(We're re-posting our review of Flash of Genius from the Telluride Film Festival to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend)

By: Eugene Novikov

Flash of Genius is a conventional crowdpleaser but not, I'm pleased to report, a shameless one. Chronicling the true story of a college professor's fight to reclaim his invention – the intermittent windshield wiper – from the car company that stole it, the film does many of the things you'd expect, but it may also surprise you. Don't let its Telluride placement fool you: this is a staunchly mainstream, unchallenging film, the sort of underdog-vs.-corporate-behemoth story you've seen time and again. But it's a decent rendition, hitting the right notes without insulting our intelligence.

Now, the intermittent windshield wiper is not exactly the light bulb. If you're not familiar with the term, the wiper is "intermittent" in the sense that it can pause between wipes – a problem that apparently puzzled engineers at all the major car companies until Kearns cracked it the late 60s. But part of what's nifty about the film is its ability to create suspense and curiosity around something so seemingly mundane. Kearns' first demo of his device to Ford is exciting in a very goofy way, but exciting nonetheless.

"Well, you tried it just for once, found it all right for kicks.
But now you found out that it's a habit that sticks,
and you're an orgasm addict." – The Buzzcocks

The new movie Choke, adapted from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, is about a sex addict (Sam Rockwell) who, in one element of the plot, hooks up with other sex addicts who attend the same Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings as him. Ah, the irony. The same thing happened to Sam Malone on Cheers, if I'm not mistaken, which makes the joke around 20 years old. Yet, despite that fact, sexual addiction as a term and a (non-DSM-recognized) medical problem seem fairly new to cinema.

Sure, there have been sex addicts in films for many decades, but they were more likely to be described as nymphomaniacs, lechers or typical men. Think of Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind, a number of the female characters created by Tennessee Williams and certainly the locked up nymphos in Shock Corridor. In the past few years, however, there have been a slew of actual "sexaholics," both male and female, though some aren't exactly referred to in such a manner.

Last December, Cinematical was the only movie blog invited to visit the set of Ghost Town over at the beautiful Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, New York. Directed by David Koepp, Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni, Billy Campbell and Kristen Wiig, and it arrives in theaters on September 19. Check out our report below ...

I always get nervous whenever visiting a film set. In the past, I've been a part of a larger group, which meant I could simply follow behind three other people and hopefully fade into the pack. I never want to stand out. I never want be the guy who's standing in the wrong place, on the wrong wire, or the guy who accidentally coughs during a three-minute period where everyone is silent. Sometimes a film set can be an intimidating place to visit if you're not working there, slaving away for hours upon hours -- there's a sort of team mentality and closeness that's shared amongst the crew that you're not a part of. You're the outsider, the blogger -- the guy who's there to criticize and report back on a project that's not yet complete. In some cases, you're the enemy.

But when you're part of the pack, it's easier to digest the experience. It's easier to not be that guy. However, when I showed up to the set of Ghost Town on a very cold day in December, I suddenly realized I was the only web outlet invited ... and knowing I'd be all by myself on this one, my Neurotic Jew Meter (Thanks Mom!) went through the roof.

Flash of Genius is a conventional crowdpleaser but not, I'm pleased to report, a shameless one. Chronicling the true story of a college professor's fight to reclaim his invention – the intermittent windshield wiper – from the car company that stole it, the film does many of the things you'd expect, but it may also surprise you. Don't let its Telluride placement fool you: this is a staunchly mainstream, unchallenging film, the sort of underdog-vs.-corporate-behemoth story you've seen time and again. But it's a decent rendition, hitting the right notes without insulting our intelligence.

Now, the intermittent windshield wiper is not exactly the light bulb. If you're not familiar with the term, the wiper is "intermittent" in the sense that it can pause between wipes – a problem that apparently puzzled engineers at all the major car companies until Kearns cracked it the late 60s. But part of what's nifty about the film is its ability to create suspense and curiosity around something so seemingly mundane. Kearns' first demo of his device to Ford is exciting in a very goofy way, but exciting nonetheless.

Whoopi Goldberg sort of had it coming in Ghost. She was a hack of a psychic, so it was poetic justice to get haunted by Patrick Swayze.This time around, it's still justice, but not the kind you would expect. Up above, you can check out the trailer for Ghost Town, which popped up on YouTube over the weekend.

Ricky Gervais stars as a jerky dentist who can't be bothered to do the simplest thing for another person -- like, say, hold the elevator. But then he goes in for a colonoscopy and dies for a little less than seven minutes. Upon leaving the hospital, he discovers he can see dead people. Lots and lots of dead people. Of course, in a predicament like this, he has to face his jerkish past, but he also has to do something else -- help the ghost of Greg Kinnear keep his widowed wife from shacking up with the wrong guy. The comedy looks cute -- if a bit too familiar. It'll hit theaters this September.

The first time I heard the term "Baby Mama" was probably on either Maury or Jerry Springer (don't laugh... you hear a lot of things as you're flipping over to PBS). It and its male equivalent, "Baby Daddy," essentially describes a person with whom you've had a child, but no other relationship currently exists. It used to be street slang, but in a movie world where pregnancy of all types seems to be the hot, go-to topic (Juno, Knocked Up), the whole "baby mama" thing was sure to come up at some point. I just never thought it would come from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

In Baby Mama, which opens the Tribeca Film Festival tonight and arrives nationwide on April 25, Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a successful vice president of a Whole Foods-esque organic supermarket chain. She's got the great job and the stunning Philadelphia apartment, but at 37, she longs for something more. You guessed it: Kate wants kids, and doesn't want to wait until she gets married to have them. One little problem: her chances of actually having a child are one in a million ("I just don't like your uterus," is what Kate's fertility doctor, played by The Daily Show's John Hodgman, tells her).

From a magical private school to the heart of the Iraq war is quite a jump. Luckily, Jason Isaacs is just the kind of versatile actor to pull it off. (If you don't believe me, take a look at the man's IMDB page -- talk about well-rounded!) Variety reports that Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy of Potter fame) has signed to star in Paul Greengrass' military drama, Green Zone. Isaacs will play an American officer in Iraq in the days following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Matt Damon stars as an investigator searching for weapons of mass destruction, Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) plays as a foreign correspondent from the NYT, and Greg Kinnear makes an appearance as a CIA agent.

Zone is based on the non-fiction book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, titled Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone. For those of us who maybe don't watch the nightly news as much as we should, here is a little reminder: "The Green Zone, (the common name for the International Zone of Iraq), is a 10 km² (4 mile²) area in central Baghdad that was the center of the Coalition Provisional Authority and remains the center of the international presence in the city." Chandrasekaran's book highlighted the "absurdities, incompetence, and bureaucratic failings which prevented a timely transfer of power to the Iraqis and bred the growing insurgency" -- you know, just your usual fun bedtime reading.

Greengrass wrote the original script for the military thriller, but eventually L.A. Confidential scribe Brian Helgeland was brought aboard to help smooth out some of the rough edges. Green Zone started filming in Spain last month, and will then move to Morocco (the two locations have served as stand-ins for Iraq, since the production could obviously not work in the actual area). The film has yet to secure a release date, but is scheduled to arrive in theaters sometime in 2009.

This is a great week to catch up with a few indies that came and went quickly in theaters. Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound burst out of Sundance last year with positive notices -- check GreenCine Daily's roundup -- and our own James Rocchi named it one of the ten best of the year. The basic premise is that two music scouts go on the road in the American South to look for acts to sign. In James' original review, he described it as "funny and vital and tough." Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and deleted scenes.

If Feast of Love had nothing else to recommend it, it would deserve recommendation as director Robert Benton's latest work. As Jeffrey M. Anderson commented, Benton's melodramas (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool) "almost always hit home." Feast of Love "focuses on several couples in a Portland college community," he wrote. "These characters may live in a college town, but in love, everyone has something to learn." Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and Radha Mitchell star. MGM's DVD looks bare, with just one feature evidently on board.

Director Allan Moyle returned to his roots (Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records) to make Weirdsville, in which stoners, Satanists and drug dealers commingle. In her TIFF review, Monika Bartyzel called it "fun, endearing, and quite fluid for a stoner comedy. It's also recognizably Canadian (the drug dealer is into curling), but still completely palpable for wider audiences." Wes Bentley and Scott Speedman star. Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and 14 featurettes: behind the scenes, making of, and interviews.

Moviefone is hosting our first look at the new trailer for Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Looking to capitalize on the very-hot-right-now pregnancy theme, Tina Fey plays a successful (yet still single) businesswoman who's having trouble getting pregnant on her own. When she learns how expensive a surrogates fee can be ($100,000), she begins to explore other options ... like allowing a sleazy-looking slacker (Poehler) to carry the baby for her. What follows appears to be a pretty cute buddy flick co-starring two of the funnier and more talented comedic actresses working today. I especially like the scene with Dax Shepard (who plays Poehler's husband/boyfriend), and I hope he shows up more than a few times throughout. Sigourney Weaver, Greg Kinnear, Maura Tierney and Romany Malco also star, while Michael McCullers (of Austin Powers fame) wrote and directs. Baby Mama will arrive in theaters this April 25, and you can check out the trailer above or head on over to Moviefone to watch it in glorious HD.