Sarah Jessica Parker, Unsexiest Woman Alive? Oh Please.

As I'm sure many of you have by now heard, Maxim magazine recently named Sarah Jessica Parker the world's "Unsexiest" Woman. Perhaps it's her unique style of beauty you find unsexy, or her demeanor, eh, Maxim? No, the magazine merely states that she is "unsexy," which, incidentally, is not a word. But you know, who better than a men's magazine to tell women whether they're sexy or not, right? One wishes they'd used clearly defined parameters when making this list, but no, we the public are not worthy of such contrivances. At the very least Sarah Jessica Parker has a stable marriage, a kid, a fairly successful career, and is by all accounts a decent human being. Within seconds, I was able to think of several women far more un-sexy than Sarah Jessica Parker.
Rachael Ray: Love her or hate her, she's everywhere I look these days. Over-saturation of the market is no good, especially when you're as cheerful as Rachael Ray tends to be, and she begins to attain the levels of devotion only inspired by Oprah. However, her recipes appear to be fairly unhealthy despite her insistence that they are not. Our obese children thank you, Rachael. Also, anyone, anywhere who calls sandwiches "sammies" is decidedly un-sexy.
Paris Hilton: While she is continually derided as a matter of public sport thanks to Sarah Silverman, Paris has actually been pretty good about keeping herself out of the media these past few weeks. Her previous, perhaps unknowing, insistence on maintaining her dumb blonde image, her lack of respect for herself and others, and the intense self-obsession are clearly not sexy.

Rose McGowan: Home-wrecking is never sexy. Enough said.

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Miss Piggy: Hers is a pretended sexiness, frightening in that she appears to be a pig wearing a wig and pearls, making inter-species advances towards Kermit the Frog. Just considering the possibilities is emotionally traumatizing. One wonders what went wrong in the young Miss Piggy's life to cause her to pursue a man so clearly out of her reach in many ways. Though billed as sexy, Piggy's constant nagging and out of control mood swings reveal that she is anything but.

Penelope Cruz: No, come on! I'm kidding, she's totally sexy in every which way. You know you'd love to have dinner with her, at the very least, and listen to her slowly pronounce words in Spanish-tinged honey-drenched tones. "Come on, say butter again!" you'd plead. Penelope: "Must I? MANTEQUILLLLA!"

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Big Batch O' Super Hot Daily Links: Weekend Edition

Is Teresa Palmer (pictured left) the new Wonder Woman? If so, we were waaaaaay off.On that note - this guy wonders if perhaps this Wonder Woman is too darn short.

No Capt. Kirk for Star Trek?? For shame.

This just in: U2 makes an awful lot of money.

Here's a Carrie Underwood album review. And here's a Carrie Underwood photo gallery.

Will Jack Bauer survive another season of 24? Perhaps. Depends on that whole drinking thing.

Juno is getting released early? Yet another good sign!

If one of our writers finishes a book we give him some pub. If one of our writers finishes a book on STEVEN SEAGAL we ponder if we're cool enough to even be associated with him. Here's the book, and the ruling was we're cool enough... but barely.

On that note, it's national novel writing month! I'm very tempted to try this, though it would probably be the end of every relationship I had. Writing books is hard. Then again, the good news is that anyone can do it, even Brit Spears' momma.

A list of the five sexiest funny girls in Hollywood. Hmm, I'm with them on Sarah Silverman and Kristen Wiig but Isla Fisher was brutally bad in The Lookout. And where is Maya Rudolph on this list?

A very well thought out essay on Dumbledore's sexuality.

Dre tackles how to make the Wolverine movie good.

Our song of the day is The Delgados "The City Consumes Us." The threat level is mauve.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Jigsaw Needs to Study Up on Vincent Price

The 2000s have seen plenty of horror movies, remakes, sequels, remake prequels, etc. But no 21st century horror series has set up shop like Saw, out of which part IV opens this weekend. Few series gets past part II these days, so having a part IV makes Saw's antagonist Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) the closest thing today's little horror fans have to a Freddy or a Jason.But in truth Jigsaw's shtick is not like any of the '80s slashers. He's more reminiscent of two characters played by Vincent Price: Dr. Anton Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again) and Edward Lionheart (Theater of Blood). These guys are all bitter, arrogant old men who believe they have been wronged. They have a knack for setting up elaborate, sadistic traps, for eluding the authorities, for giving away clues without being caught.

Jigsaw traps people in dirty rooms, he forces them to consider horrible things like cutting off their own legs or cutting open a guy's stomach to escape. He builds devices that split people open; he nearly drowns a guy in pig guts; he puts a junkie in a situation where she has to dig through a pile of dirty needles. In short he is a mean dude. Dr. Phibes is similar: he builds a mask that crushes a man's throat, a unicorn head that impales a guy, a deadly ice machine, and inundates people with bees, bats, rats and locusts. Lionheart cuts out a man's heart, electrocutes a woman with hair curlers, even force-feeds a guy his own dogs until his stomach explodes.

But the Price characters have a deliberate pattern or theme to their killings, something that seems to make their game with the police a little fairer. Phibes bases his crimes on the Biblical plagues, and Lionheart on the plays of William Shakespeare. Jigsaw's are free-form, based on his corny moral lessons so that the police aren't given the same opportunity to predict the next crime before it happens.

Of the three, Lionheart gives the most bang for your buck. With Phibes, or especially with Jigsaw, you get a series of increasingly horrible deaths. With Lionheart you get that too, but also you get to see Vincent Price performing a Shakespearian monologue with each one. Price always said his role in Laura was the one he was most proud of, but I bet he had the best time doing Phibes, dressing up in all kinds of costumes and playing so many great parts all in one movie.

Another move Jigsaw took from Price was the female sidekick. Phibes has Vulnavia (Virginia North, Valli Kemp in the sequel), as a silent assistant. Lionheart has his daughter (Diana Rigg), who spends half the movie in an unconvincing mustache and Afro wig, and the movie acts like it thinks we're gonna fall for it. Jigsaw's sidekick Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) is pretty cool because she has a pig mask and she started out as a victim in part I before she switched teams. She's no Diana Rigg in drag, but she should serve Jigsaw well in parts IV through VII, even if he runs out of traps and videos he already made before dying, and if he doesn't come back as a zombie, cyborg or ghost.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Ebert is Giving Out Stars Like Hotcakes!

Roger Ebert really loves watching movies. The poor man has been battling illness the last few years with real courage and dignity, and he's clearly missed the big screen. The smell of the popcorn maker as he enters the lobby, with it aching to clog one artery at a time; Goobers and Raisinetts boxes laminated in plastic, scientifically designed to crackle through the auditorium like a thunderstorm when unwrapped; the squishy sound his feet make on the linoleum flooring as he takes his seat, the gum stuck under his shoes unearthed one last time as he relaxes his ankles, crossing one over the other; the just-barely-audible squeaky noise as he sits back and reclines in his chair, his favorite seat four rows back and ten spaces in. Ah, yes, this is Ebert's temple. When he came back to his critical powers a couple months ago and started reviewing films again regularly, no one was more delighted than me. I look up to him the way I look up to my favorite writers (minus the hatred). He is my favorite writer of films this side of Outlaw Vern. With so many critics these days, too often I feel their love to be pompous, witty or hyperbolic. Never so with the Thumb Man. He is one of the great ones.

Yet, madness in great ones must not unwatched go. As an avid reader of my hero, I could but stand silent for so long. And so here it is...

What in Merlin's beard is up with all of the three-and-a-half to four star reviews the guy has been handing out? They're being bandied about like propaganda-full campus pamphlets so often I can barely hold onto them. The streets are littered with them, I say, and something has to be done.

It has even reached a point where I'm surprised Ebert's given a film a negative review and oh, this will not do. Take note: for 54 of the last 78 movies he's reviewed he has given a positive review. And of those 54 movies, 32 of them were three-and-half to four stars! I don't know about you guys, but there ain't that many good movies out there this year. And I'm not going to single any of these movies out. But I will say one of the films starts with an "R" and ends in "endition."

Now I know a some of the movies are ones he's been catching up with from last year or earlier films of 2007 but still, it's a little jarring and I wonder if maybe the critic formerly known as Ebert is a little too happy to be back in the saddle again. Maybe it's the medication. I once took Dayquil before watching Save The Last Dance and made odd phone calls at one in the morning telling people how surprisingly good it was. "Trust me, I don't normally like these types of movies. Oh ... yeah, yeah we could talk about this tomorrow ... "

It really must feel good sitting in a theater once again, though, doing what you love after such a long hiatus. Hey, I remember how much I loved Iron Eagle when I was free from a grounding.

O Ebert of old, Ebert of kinder distinction, when shall we three meet again? Alas, I'm sure the positive reviews will be toned down at least a tad. I'm sure this is all just a phase. Hell, I'm just glad to have the guy back.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Interview: An Interview with Saw IV's Marcus Dunstan

Two years ago I was fortunate enough to meet Marcus Dunstan at the world premiere of his screenwriting debut, Feast (co-written with writing partner Patrick Melton). Since I don't have cable (swear to god), I had never seen the Project Greenlight that led up to this wonderfully post-modern cult masterpiece: this was my first exposure to both the guys and to the film.I've since run into Marcus at a couple of conventions and festivals and we've become friends. And since he and Patrick took on the duties of writing for the Saw series, I felt I should probably shoot him an email and ask him a few questions in honor of the release of Saw IV. He was kind enough to oblige.

Cargill: What was it that attracted you to the Saw material? What about it excited you? What couldn't you wait to play around with?

Marcus: The Saw films are like the Dr. Phibesfilms with Vincent Price re-imagined for the modern age. There is no safety. Good guys can lose; bad guys lose more; and the villain is several steps ahead of all of us. The whole series reminded me of a line Gene Hackman said in Heist. His character was asked roughly how he outsmarted people and his response is "I imagine someone smarter than me and then I ask him what he would do." That was pretty much the thought we pressed into our heads every step of the way on this one. It just had to push. It had to be rough and vital. Otherwise, we would be the kids that pissed in the pool. Nobody needs that. What couldn't we wait to play with? The dark side of poetic justice. The recklessness of anger. And, what would Jigsaw do to someone that hurt him deeply? That excited the hell out of us.

Cargill: Was it intimidating to pick up a series that was so far along and had already developed its mythology?

Marcus: YES! Friggin' scary as acne. However, that intimidation led to more focus and effort than we could ever imagine. We just didn't want to screw this up. This is a terrific series, one that has to earn its viewers time and time again with evolving dynamics and grounded storytelling. It is a machine set to "pain" and it just keeps chugging along.

Cargill: What is your favorite moment out of the series?

Marcus: I have one "fan" answer and one conceited answer. The fan answer is actually the moment in Saw III where Detective Mathews outsmarts the leg shackle by breaking his foot, jerking open the door and screaming for murder. I jerked back in my seat and nailed my head on the wall when it happened. I thought that concoction of horror, intelligence and thrill were all turned up to ten in that moment. Stellar.

The conceited answer is a moment in SAW IV. Darren took a really difficult scene involving a red tinted room and made it into a recruitment film for the dark side. It was the make it or break it moment for me as a viewer and when the audience started clapping last night after that scene went down...oh man...that felt GREAT!

Cargill: What was it that you didn't like or felt lacked in the previous three films that you wanted to improve upon here?

Marcus: I was thrilled we had a chance to bring a grisly "who dunnit" vibe back to the series. This is Agatha Christie on meth.

Cargill: What angle did you decide to take with this new film? Was there anything you took in a new direction (without spoiling anything of course)?

Marcus: We wanted to adrenalize the proceedings. By the fourth entry, in order to demand attention, the film must be as tough and strong as the first. A part II or a part III is no stranger to multiplexes, but a part IV? A good part IV? There just aren't that many I can name. With that in mind, Patrick and I went at this film like it was alone. It had to earn back every single person out there. It had to be as good on the second viewing as it was the first. It had to be made of steel. If last night's premiere was any indication...I can't wait for FRIDAY NIGHT!!

Cargill: What's the toughest part of writing a horror sequel?

Marcus: Honoring the opportunity with quality. No matter the budget. No matter the time crunch. I think if I am going to be associated with anything my parents or friends are going to be forced to sit through, it better be damn good. The one thing we don't get back is time. I don't dare want to waste anyone's time.

Cargill: Speaking of sequels, you're presently putting together Feast 2 and Feast 3. Anything you can tell us about that?

Marcus: I can tell you that Feast II: Sloppy Seconds begins shooting on Halloween day! It will be a blast! These suckers are going to be a frenzy of unrated mayhem. This is unfiltered Gulager-vision unleashed to terrorize the world! We were laughing so hard the other day at one of the painful moments that we had a lovely assortment of tears and fluids shooting from our noses. The Feast [films] will be 100% unredeemable shock-o-rama!

Cargill: I was fortunate enough to see the test footage for your upcoming directorial debut Midnight Man. What can you tell us about that?

Marcus: Thank you! I hope to be shooting The Midnight Man for Dimension this February but... I will believe it when I am whispering "action."

Saw IV opens this Friday. Like I had to tell you that.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Review: Dan In Real Life is Easy-Going and Charming

As much as I roll my eyes at the generically ironic scenario -- he's an advice columnist, but his personal life is a mess! -- I'm delighted by the effortlessly breezy humor of Dan in Real Life. It breaks free from that lame set-up's confines to go deeper into the psyche of its central character. It's a smart movie with a deceptively simple premise.Dan (Steve Carell) is a New Jersey newspaper columnist and a widowed father of three daughters whom he loves and wants to keep young forever. He is the epitome of a Steve Carell character: hapless despite being successful, and upbeat despite being a loser. You get the sense he's just barely keeping his life together, that he's been just barely doing it for years, and that he could keep just barely doing it indefinitely. He's got just-barely-coping down to a science.

He and the girls go to Rhode Island for a weekend for an annual gathering of his parents, brothers, sisters, and their families. The clan is large, and I'm not sure I caught, in every case, which were Dan's siblings and which were his siblings' spouses. I kind of liked the hecticness of it, though. The long take where Dan first arrives and greets everyone felt exactly like my visits home for Christmas, where aunts and uncles and cousins abound and you try to say hello to everyone without making a spectacle of yourself or interrupting the festivities already underway.

The meat of the plot comes in the form of another potentially oh-too-wacky development. Dan goes into town to buy a newspaper and meets a beautiful woman named Marie (Juliette Binoche). They talk and laugh and have what seems to be a great connection. He gets her number and promises to call soon. When he gets back to the house, she is there, too. She is his brother's girlfriend, here for the weekend to meet the family.

The brother, Mitch (Dane Cook), looks up to Dan and quotes his writings liberally. Dan is smitten with Marie, though obviously now he can't do anything about it. Less clear is Marie's attitude toward Dan. She doesn't seem as head-over-heels about him -- or, for that matter, about Mitch -- as Dan and Mitch are about her. And would Dan really fall in love this fast, in one weekend, in the crowded, bustling family-reunion atmosphere? I'm skeptical, and the movie doesn't do much to allay my skepticism.

Yet, I'm charmed by the realistically cozy depiction of large families, with their inside jokes and their petty, lovable squabbles. There's a scene of extended riffing on a family acquaintance named Ruthie "Pig Face" Draper, which is terribly mean but terribly funny. (Don't worry, Ruthie isn't present.) Don't we all do that when we're together with the family? If it's not OK to make fun of people we know while in the safe confines of the family circle, when is it OK? That's what families are for.

This is the second film to be written and directed by Peter Hedges, who previously wrote What's Eating Gilbert Grape? His directorial debut, Pieces of April, was one of the indie gems of 2003, and it also dealt humorously and honestly with family ties. Here he lets the family stuff happen primarily in the background, focusing mostly on Dan's internal struggles. The Marie situation is the catalyst, but Dan's real issues go deeper than that, and the film is about him trying to get out of the emotional rut he's in. He could continue to live right on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he'd just rather not.

There's a happy ending, of course, and maybe it's just a little too easy. Maybe some of the conflicts are resolved more carelessly than they ought to be. On the other hand, what does Marie even see in Mitch? Look at it this way: it's Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook. I mean, come on.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

NBC, Fox to Launch Online Video Site

NBC and Fox are set to launch an advertising-supported online video site that hosts programming from varied entertainment companies in a bid to seize viewers from Google Inc.'s YouTube, the broadcasters said.

A test version of the site, Hulu.com, goes online Monday, with plans to premiere a final version in a few months, company officials said.

The site, developed by News Corp. and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., offers free viewing of full-length films and TV episodes, supported by advertising.

It will host programming from the two networks, as well as TV shows and films from Sony Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

"Consumers identify with shows and films," rather than networks, Hulu chief executive Jason Kilar said. "When you aggregate great content together, it makes things easier for the user."

Hulu's debut comes amid tensions between entertainment companies and popular online video sites, such as YouTube, where unauthorized clips from shows often appear.

Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central, MTV, VH1 and many other cable channels, is suing YouTube for $1 billion, claiming massive copyright infringement of clips from popular shows, including "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." YouTube has said it follows copyright laws by removing protected video upon request.

Hulu will legally offer hundreds of episodes of current shows such as NBC's "30 Rock" and Fox's "The Simpsons," as well as older shows such as "Lou Grant" and "Lost in Space."

Its movie offerings will consist of films that have already been edited for television broadcast, which will contain short ads online in the places where they would appear on TV.

The shows will be available at Hulu.com, as well as on distribution partner Web sites such as AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and Comcast.

It will also provide viewers with tools that let them embed full episodes on their own blogs, Web sites or personal profile pages. Users would also be able to select short clips from shows, such as Jay Leno's monologue on "The Tonight Show," and e-mail a link to the content to friends.

The services give Web users unprecedented flexibility to legally republish copyright content, observers said.

"The technology they've put together on this short notice is not only adequate, it's also better than most of what else is out there," said James McQuivey, a TV and media technology analyst for Forrester Research. "I think they have moved a couple of steps forward compared to their competitors in the industry."

Hulu will offer some premium content not available on NBC or Fox's own Web sites in a move at odds with some other networks that have tried to direct viewers to their own online content.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, for instance, sells downloads of its shows on Apple Inc.'s iTunes but streams free episodes mainly on ABC.com.

McQuivey said Hulu's model could be preferable to advertisers, who generally favor strategies that make popular content widely available.

"Advertisers want more opportunity to put ads next to prime-time hit shows," he said. "If they had kept the content on NBC.com or Fox.com, it would have limited the number of people who would see it."

But McQuivey said Hulu faces a number of challenges, such as the expense of hosting content and delivering it to a potential audience of millions.

Those expenses will only grow as the site finds itself having to offer content in high definition to make it look better on large-screen televisions, McQuivey said.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com