413 minutes worth of Looney Tunes cannot be bad. Why? Because I don’t think that there are 413 minutes worth of bad Looney Tunes cartoons. Even considering this thing, it is easy to be amazed at the quantity of quality being presented here in the sixth installment of Warner Bros. Loony Tunes Golden Collection. It is a splendid mix of the entertaining and the important, a balance of the short films that are engraved into the brains of most of us under 80 and cartoons which haven’t been shown since the end of World War 2.

The opening quote of Cowboy Killer contains at least one typo. The film stars non-famous, non-actors. The sound effects are occasionally out of sync with the visuals. The visual effects are sometimes non-existent, and often unconvincing. The film is full of silly dick jokes, flat characters, and is generally crude.

Yet, there is something lovable about it.

The following review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will contain spoilers. I offer this tepid warning well aware of the facts that:

A) the film made a quadrillion at the box office, (I.e. everybody has already seen it)

And

B) things can only be said to spoil if they were, at some point, fresh.

Things have been crazy busy around here lately. Between laying around time and watching reruns of “House”, I haven’t had time to put together a decent column. (Not that I ever bother writing a decent column anyway.)

I like this Hulu thing. It allows me to watch episodes of “House” or “Newsradio” while taking a bath.
Perhaps, I’ve said too much.

The summer movie blockbuster season is all but over, and it seems like we have entered the next season: dying Blaxpoitation star season. Isaac Hayes and Julius Carry both dead? Crazy. (You really can’t count Bernie Mac as a Blaxploitation star, although I never saw Mr. 3000.) All I’m saying is that I’d be [...]

So I went and saw The Dark Knight last Thursday. I had received a series of horrifying phone calls, and was forced to see the film under threat of catapult. This damned movie has become a phenomenon. Even if you don’t care about it, you are obligated to see this thing. It appears [...]

The Batman has managed to make it to a fifth season without me paying much attention. This is of course the cartoon series which started up in 2004, and not the exceptional cartoon series from that started in 1992. Sadly, Batman: The Animated Series only lasted 3 season in it’s original incarnation.

Available at Amazon.com

Oftentimes when claiming a DVD on our super secret staff forum, I’ll choose something completely unknown to me. In this digital age, spoilers are everywhere and previews often give away too many of a movie’s plot points.

The depressing thing about seeing a ton of movies, is that one begins to realize how few movies there actually are. Not only are there numerous remakes and sequels, but we also have an abundance of movies that are, more or less, pre-existing films with a minor alteration. Disturbia is just a Millennial generation Rear [...]

Happy 4th of July, the holiday where we celebrate the day after the day after the writing of our Declaration of Independence.
This week’s column has nothing to do with that thing.

Rails and Ties is a nice, small, character-based movie. Like many of the other works starring Marcia Gay Harden, it is designed to make you cry, and has a good chance of being successful at that thing.

The Other Boleyn Girl tells the story of Anne and Mary Boleyn. Anne is the older, darker, flat-chested Jewish sister. Sister Mary is the younger, blonder, busty Polish-looking ingenue. The girls are pressured into seducing the King of England by their father and uncle.

They are more or less successful at this thing.

Neighbors and high school enemies, prospective Yale student Nell Bedworth and star quarterback Woody Deanne commit movie mistake number 107 A.

They have an argument in front of a mystical statue before important life events.

Naturally, the next night finds them switching soul-fog and the subsequent morning finds them in each other’s bodies. Now, they must figure out how to get back into the right bodies before the “Big Game” and the “Big College Interview” both of which are mere days away!

Imagine Rushmore, bastardized into a series on the CW. Then imagine the first season of that series edited into a 100 minute theatrical release.

That’s about what Charlie Bartlett feels like.

(This thing is cut a bit short this week. Feel free to play along at home. CPO the home game can be shipped to you directly for only 19.99 plus a 4.95 handling fee.)
Almost all film actors start out making B-movies. Most of them never move beyond these b-pictures and die sad, alone and penniless. [...]

The Incredible Hulk is coming out at about the same time as I’m writing this thing. I’ve got super-heroes on the brain once again.
Marvel’s word of the moment is cross-pollination. Everyone, myself included, has apparently jumped on that bandwagon and accepted the term. When Tony Stark shows up in The Incredible Hulk, they (and [...]

1996’s Mystery Science Theater: The Movie makes it back to DVD after being out of print for 10 years. Now you can own it for 15 bucks, instead of buying it used for 40.

Huzzah!

Of all the commercially unsuccessful movies to come out about our interminable conflict in Iraq, this is . . . one of them.

Okay, I kid, I kid.

The way that I was able to come up with this script is that I read somebody else’s script and changed how some of the parts were, so that the movie would be more like my family and me. And that’s how I wrote the script all by myself. Then I made the actor’s improvise [...]