Are films political? Do they fall into left-wing and right-wing camps? I would imagine that not all films have an agenda. Some films can be considered "great uniters," in that they bring together agreeing audiences from all over, films like the $200 million hits I Am Legend (264 screens) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (177 screens) or a critical favorite like There Will Be Blood (339 screens) that has pleased nearly everyone who has seen it. Of course, There Will Be Blood is about a snaky, sinister, blustery oil baron willing to sacrifice his family, country and humanity for the allure of black gold, which may or may not have a little something to do with current events. (Not to mention that director Paul Thomas Anderson dropped the word "Oil" from the title of the source novel and replaced it with the word "Blood.")

In recent years it has been determined that film critics are a liberal bunch, educated, well-read men and women of letters, who can see and comprehend the human condition in films from different cultures all over the world. Or, they're sometimes known as pompous, ponderous, pretentious, conceited, snooty know-it-alls, lacking in good old-fashioned horse sense. "Why can't you just enjoy the movie," is a question very often asked of critics. Rambo (201 screens) is a fascinating case. It's impressively violent, but very grim and not much fun. Rambo debuted and reigned during the Reagan era (Rambo: First Blood Part II grossed three times the amount of the new film, even with 1985 ticket prices). Bringing him back in a decidedly different political atmosphere didn't seem to work, though the film was screened for the press and earned a few good reviews. It's now starting a downslide, and it's still shy of breaking even on its $50 million budget.

Enchanted
The yester-year of Disney animation is long in the past, and while you probably won't be getting any epic, artistically-driven Sleeping Beauty-type features any time soon, Enchanted offers those old classic scenes with characters ripped out of the cartoon world and delivered to a crazy and manic Manhattan. Amy Adams' Giselle becomes the victim of her soon-to-be stepmother-in-law's evilness and gets transported to the real world, where life isn't animated and the world is very, very different. From there, we've got cartoon Prince Charmings with James Marsden, who comes to save her, and real life beaus with McDreamy Patrick Dempsey. Oh yes, and of course -- Susan Sarandon as evil mommie dearest doing her best reincarnation of Maleficent.

This is your normal Disney DVD -- there are deleted scenes, bloopers, behind-the-scenes featurettes about the film's "cinematic wizardry," and a pop-up adventure with Pip, Giselle's little friend.

Check out Kim's Review | Buy the DVD

I don't think I'm alone when I say that I Am Legend was a little bit of a disappointment. Although there were a lot of good things going on (mainly in the performance of Will Smith), it wasn't a great film, and something was missing. Based on Richard Matheson's sci-fi classic, Smith stars as Dr. Robert Neville, a scientist who is immune to a "vampiric plague" that has wiped out humanity. Now an alternate ending to the film has been leaked to the net (thanks to Slash Film for the heads up), which you can check out above, and it gives you the chance to play 'What If?' If you haven't already seen the film, you might want to stop reading now, because I am about to give you one heck of a spoiler.

A friend of mine pointed me toward this YouTube video over on Hollywood Elsewhere which was cut together by a guy named Matt Shapiro using clips from a bunch of 2007's great dramas, all set to the wonderful tune Falling Slowly, performed by Glen Hasard and Markéta Irglová from Once. Though there's a bit too much I Am Legend in there, as well as comedy-dramas like Juno, Knocked Up and Ratatouille, I must say the video itself is pretty damn well done. I feel like every year around this time, as awards are being handed out, you get comments from people along the lines of, "Man, last year sucked in terms of movies." Well it's videos like this one that show just how great 2007 was in terms of high-quality entertainment, even if the bulk of it didn't arrive until those last few months. Check out the video up top, then let us know which films you would've liked to see get a mention. Oh, and then you can head over to iTunes and download Falling Slowly. Trust me, if you haven't heard this song yet, you're guaranteed to be swept away in its beauty. It's that f**king good.

Most people have a favorite place to sit when going to the movies. Some people like the back row; some people like the centermost spot (middle seat, middle row); some people like to sit near the front so that they can stare up at the screen and let the picture fill the limits of their peripheral vision.

I figure that last preference made more sense fifty years ago, when Cinerama and CinemaScope presented vast, expansively shot epics and westerns that were made to surround our senses and engulf our whole eye-span. Nowadays, most movies are too fast-cut and often the camerawork is too shaky to really work for close viewing. Have you ever been forced to sit in the first few rows when a movie is sold out? Wasn't it hard to tell what was going on most of the time?

Personally, I like watching movies close up, when it's appropriate. Unfortunately, it rarely is. But movie theaters can't just start removing those front rows because they aren't good for the moviegoer's eyes. No, that would mean a lot fewer tickets sold, a lot fewer popcorns sold, and a lot less money going to both the theater owners and the movie distributors. So, moviemakers should go back to making movies that are more accommodating to the theatrical audience, right? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Our own Scott Weinberg recently told you about the canning of quote whore Pete Hammond from the pages of Maxim Magazine, and brought you many of Hammond's incredible quotes, culled all year long by the indefatigable Erik Childress at efilmcritic.com. Now Childress has announced his annual Criticwatch "Whores of the Year" list, saving his "2007 Michael Medved Bag of Douche Memorial Award" for Hammond. Jeffrey Lyons and Earl Dittman made the top ten this year, along with young E! Online critic Ben Lyons -- son of Jeffrey -- for calling I Am Legend "one of the greatest films ever made." Says Childress: "If he were 12 and had only seen 50 movies in his lifetime it would STILL be one of the dumbest god damn statements ever made by a human being named Lyons."

Apparently Childress has taken on the superhuman effort of combing through every blurb on every movie ad for the entire year and cataloging them in such a way as to reveal their hidden hypocrisies. How many films in 2007 were called "masterpiece"? At least 20, and that's including Dittman's assessment of Halloween. Even more films were called "spellbinding" and "a must-see!" I personally escaped this year, but several of my critic friends did not. Even Cinematical's James Rocchi is mentioned, for having used the phrase "raw sexuality and fever-pitched emotion" in his review of Red Road. A big thanks to Erik for keeping score.

The Golden Globes and the Oscars may be in trouble due to telecasts, strikes, and all of that turmoil, but the other award presentations are trucking on as planned. Variety reports that the Visual Effects Society has picked their nominees for their 6th awards ceremony. Thinking back on the year...who would you pick? The Academy, they picked a pretty solid 13-film shortlist that they have to somehow whittle down into 3 picks -- a list that includes the likes of Rataouille, Beowulf, and Spider-Man 3. This society is pretty in-line with that.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End unsurprisingly leads the pack with six nominations, and they're closely followed by Transformers and I Am Legend -- both of which follow with 5 nominations each. You just can't refuse a screen full of Johnny Depps. Continuing on, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on the other hand, has to hold court with Spider-Man 3 with three nods each -- and according to Variety, both of them have fallen off the Academy list. Of course, as with the Oscars, animated films are also present with Ratatouille neck and neck in nominations with Surf's Up (both have 4 each).

Who will come away with the big, special prizes? I imagine the leading three will probably have a pretty successful sweep when the awards are held on February 10 in Hollywood. In the meantime, you can check out the full list of nominees for film after the jump.

What sounds like the more highbrow date? Going to see the artsy film I'm Not There while sitting on a couch, eating a pizza and drinking a cold beer, or going to see the mainstream blockbuster National Treasure: Book of Secrets while sitting in a VIP section with reserved, "luxury seating," eating a "sophisticated entree" and drinking an "elegant martini creation?" Both options feature wait service, great picture quality and the benefit of not having any youths around. In their own way, each is equally lowbrow and highbrow, but depending on your definition of those terms (dumb vs. intelligent; cheap vs. expensive), you might have said one or the other. To me, highbrow is intelligent and intelligent is cheap; so I pick the former, which will cost a whole lot less.

The first option was what you might have experienced this weekend at Oakland, California's Parkway Speakeasy (other movie choices were Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and American Gangster). Your movie ticket would have been a mere $6, your personal cheese pizza a fair $8.50 and your pint of Sierra Nevada only $4.50. The second choice was one of this weekend's offerings at the new Lux Level of Randolph, Massachussetts' Showcase Cinema (the other available movie was I Am Legend). The movie ticket cost $21.25 (you definitely bought it online and paid that $1 service charge), the personal cheese pizza about $8 (I don't see anything on the theater's online menu appropriately considered to be "sophisticated entrée", though other Showcase Cinema menus feature items such as "Bourbon Street Steak Medallions") and your Raspberry Mocha Tini was about $9.

It's still way too early to call it a done deal, but given the small nugget of news we just got from STYD.com, it sure looks like WB wants to make a sequel to I Am Legend. (And given the flick's massive box office numbers, that should come as no surprise whatsoever.)

No, there's nothing official just yet: No casting calls or press releases ... yet. But we do know that author Richard Matheson recently sold the sequel rights over to the studio ... which means that someone at Warner Bros. is getting the ball rolling NOW. (And good for Richard Matheson, earning an easy paycheck like that!!) As Shock so accurately points out, this would make the first cinematic follow-up to the oft-lensed source material. (Neither The Last Man on Earth nor The Omega Man earned a sequel, which would make this the first.) Curious to see how they get Will Smith to "return" for the sequel. (Let me guess: It involves cloning.)

Oh, and if you liked the new movie version, cool. Do yourself a (big) favor and read the book now.

The Klingon death blade you see Diablo Cody wielding here is what she used to slay the other box-office contenders over the weekend. Juno leapfrogged from number ten -- already respectable for such a small film -- to number five, coming in just behind Charlie Wilson's War and I Am Legend with an impressive $10.3 million. These numbers were enough to cause Fox Searchlight to press the big button -- Juno will now expand to 2,000 screens next weekend. So far, the film about a wise-ass 16 year-old who becomes pregnant and decides to carry the baby to term and give it up for adoption, has brought in a total of $25.7 million. This puts it well on track to blow Little Miss Sunshine, its equivalent from last year, totally out of the water -- LMS only brought in $59.8 million domestic total.

In other box office news, Cage continued to hold the top spot with National Treasure: Book of Secrets bringing in $35.6 million. In nine days, the film has pulled in $124 million. Meanwhile, although I Am Legend slipped down to the number three slot this weekend, it still pulled in $27.5 million and is just on the verge of breaking the $200 million mark. It will be interesting to see if National Treasure can gain ground on Big Willy over the next few weeks -- it seems to be the film with the most staying power at the moment, but Legend has a big head-start. Sweeney Todd also stayed strong this weekend, bringing in $8 million for a ninth-place finish. Atonement, on the other hand, has yet to find its audience, which will hurt its Oscar front-runner status.

It's only been three months since I began this column on theater exhibition and movie going, but already I've covered all kinds of experiences, both good and bad. And now I'd like to recap the year, concentrating on that quarter year in which The Exhibitionist existed, in order to present you with the best and the worst theatrical experiences I had in 2007. However, while this may seem like a cheap way to link back to previous writings and make an easy article out of that, I assure you that it's only a coincidence that some of my favorite and least favorite moments in exhibition happened since October. Anyway, there are plenty of moments I cite that were never mentioned in The Exhibitionist, so regular or new reader, read on:


Theatrical Experiences of 2007 Part I: The Worst


Pan's Labyrinth at Cobble Hill Cinemas, Brooklyn, NY, 01/16/07

I came away from watching Guillermo del Toro's "masterpiece" underwhelmed, thanks primarily to my inability to appreciate the Oscar-winning cinematography of Guillermo Navarro. How so? Well, the projection of the film where and when I saw it was terribly underlit. At least, I'm guessing it was. I've only seen the film partially since then, on DVD, and at that time it looked much brighter than I remembered.

At the time I saw the film theatrically, though, I just assumed the film was really that dark. Well, actually I thought it could be faulty projection, but I didn't want to get into the issue with the management. Most theaters are quite defensive when it comes to the subject of whether or not they dim the projector bulbs, and whether or not it matters. Even before I became a projectionist I knew thanks to Roger Ebert's Answer Man columns about the stupidity and annoyance of turning down the power on projector bulbs, but unfortunately not everyone else seems to know.

I pity the fool who doesn't want a Hobbit film!

I did not see I Am Legend this past weekend, but apparently there was a poster planted in the film's fictional Times Square for a Batman vs. Superman movie, due out on May 15, 2010. (Check out a screen grab above, courtesy of Slashfilm.) Folks immediately began speculating -- was this a secret teaser poster for Justice League? Had they changed the name (as previously rumored) to Batman vs. Superman? No such luck fanboys (and girls); seems it was only a gag dreamed up by screenwriter/producer Akiva Goldsman, who, long ago, was attached to write a Batman vs. Superman film. But it's still pretty cool, and a neat little Easter Egg if you ask me.

We know John Singleton has signed on to direct a big-screen A-Team movie, and that casting is currently underway, but what's the script look like? Moviehole got their hands on the script, and there's some "interesting" stuff in there. Like, B.A. Baracas (played by Mr. T on the TV show) is listed as a "22-year-old walking steel with two-percent body fat." Yup, expect Tyrese Gibson in this role. Here's a bit more from their synopsis: "I'll be honest - it's not that tantalizing. The whole action of the movie revolves around some vases and stolen art. At one point there's a scene that takes place on a yacht - and it's an art auction. It's just not that interesting." Head on over to Moviehole to read their full review of the 118-page script.

This morning it was announced that Peter Jackson and New Line had kissed and made up, and are moving ahead on the long-planned Hobbit adaptation. However, Jackson is only listed as an executive producer, which means they still need to seek out a director to helm the picture. I'd expect Sam Raimi to be the first one they call, but if Sam takes on this monstrous double-feature, don't expect the guy to be back in the director's chair for Spider-Man 4. Which will also likely mean that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will opt out. Would you gladly take Raimi on Hobbit, or could Jackson get real nutty and somehow convince Guillermo del Toro to give up all 300 of his current projects to direct two Hobbit films? Where do you stand? Who do you want directing these movies, if not Jackson?

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Will Smith and the cast and crew of I Am Legend should be tickled pink about this. The blatant knock-off is a longstanding tradition of the B-movie world, and occasionally the practice can spawn something noteworthy. Everybody's heard of Godzilla, right? Well, the Big G started life as an imitation of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and has since become a pop culture icon while The Beast (which sported some very cool stop-motion animation from Ray Harryhausen) is largely forgotten by the general public. Lucio Fulci's Zombie has become a gore classic, despite going so far as to call itself Zombi 2 in its native Italy in an attempt to make people think this was a sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which had been released there as Zombi. On the other hand, Carnosaur has become little more than a footnote in monster movie history, despite its attempts to cash in on the buzz surrounding Jurassic Park.

This is the newest release from The Asylum, and its resemblance to I Am Legend, and more specifically to The Omega Man, the previous film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel, is stupefyingly obvious. The Asylum has become the modern torch-bearer of the B-movie knock-off with the likes of Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers and AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter all hitting DVD at a time convenient enough to take advantage of the big budget publicity machine of the films they are imitating.

Even as Will Smith battles for his life in I Am Legend, the film is set to fight it out with Hong Kong action epic The Warlords for box office supremacy in Asia this weekend. Who will win? Will and his dog will have to come from behind because The Warlords is already ahead. Variety reports that the film "rampaged across Asia in its six territory day-and-date" premiere on Thursday.

Compared to the US, the numbers may be small, but everything is relative: $1.77 million on opening day in Mainland China, plus $1.22 million in receipts from sneak previews on Wednesday. Preview and opening day audiences in Hong Kong added $215,000 to the take, while the picture also did well in wide release in Singapore ($119,000) and Malaysia ($54,300). The Warlords also launched in Thailand on Thursday, in Indonesia on Friday, and will expand to Taiwan on December 28. Meanwhile, I Am Legend premieres in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan this weekend, according to Variety, and is expected to do well "given the foreign appeal of Will Smith and the offshore appetite for action."

The Warlords stars Jet Li, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro in a film that director Peter Chan says was inspired by his watching Chang Cheh's Blood Brothers as a young boy in 1973. He told Yvonne Teh of BC Magazine that when he revisited it as an adult, he felt that the movie was "too simple for today," so he "started digging into history and into the background of the period of the Taiping Revolution where 70 million people were killed in a matter of 14 years." Early reviews have been positive with some reservations (The Visitor at Twitch) and no reservations (Stefan at Twitch). Sounds like Jet Li's record paycheck has been earned. Too bad we don't have any word on a North American distribution deal.

If you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about I Am Legend, what follows counts as a SPOILER. Otherwise, as Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth says, "Good news, everybody!" Matt Sullivan forwarded us the news that Popular Mechanics is officially debunking the chain of events in I Am Legend. Their team of scientists and technologists assert that it's all just fiction: retro-viruses causing vampirism, Serengeti-style velds growing in Times Square, gas powered generators working for years, and Manhattan mocked by the sad spectacle of the brick caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge with dangling cables hanging from it. (The upside is no more bridge and tunnel people.)

In the article, Alan Weisman of The World Without Us describes a people-free Manhattan. Dr. W. Ian Lipkin of Laboratory for Immunopathogenesis and Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center claims that a vampire plague, as described in the film, can't happen: "Viruses don't mutate and become airborne. They typically fall into a couple of different categories-respiratory, STDs and vector-borne like insects, ticks and mosquitoes. They don't change from tick-borne to pneumonic. They just don't do that." Some will be agonized that Popular Mechanics wasted their time dissecting this fantasy, but, if you have a nightmare prone child the article might bring them some comfort. Future issues promise to prove that volcano-style supervillain headquarters are impossible to build, and that a yellow brick road would be unstable and prone to fissures.