Eugene Weekly

My fellow movie critic Jason Blair, who doesn’t have a blog of his own yet, sent this over this morning and it just cried out, “Blog fodder! I am blog fodder!” So here you go: Continue reading →

I always mange to forget it’s Oscar nominations day until I see one of my usual morning reads (i.e. blogs) mention something about it, then bolt immediately to the Oscars site to see what the hell is going on. This year, well, frankly I just need to see a lot of movies. But naturally I have opinions even about the things I haven’t seen. So here are my thoughts at present. A bit off the top of my head, sure, but we’ll come back to this. Probably. Continue reading →

This is totally awesome. Totally wicked awesome, even. It’s a massive spreadsheet of critics’ top picks for movies this year. I don’t yet understand why some names are in purple and some in blue, but I don’t really care. It’s still fascinating. Out here in the relative boonies, of course, half these movies have yet to arrive, even ones that have already opened elsewhere — and in regular ol’ chain theaters, no less! Continue reading →

Best. Movie. Ever. That? IS TOTALLY MY CAT. (By Simon Tofield, whose work you can see here.) PS. Heroes sucked way less this week! More on that later. Continue reading →

The automatic ticketing machines at Regal ask too many questions. The standup cardboard ad for The Seeker makes me growl and grimace every time I see it. That is a travesty. You thought the tidied up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was bad? Try reading Susan Cooper’s amazing Dark Is Rising series and then stomaching this horrendous preview. Mmm, pretzel. Now if they just had pretzel bites. Continue reading →

Superbad is pretty super-good, but I can’t help but wonder if I would have liked it as much if it didn’t star Michael Cera, whom I have also adored as George-Michael Bluth on Arrested Development and as slightly creepy campus tour guy Dean on Veronica Mars. Cera’s a slender, wide-eyed 18-year-old with incredible comic timing and a subtle sense of humor that’s hard to pin down. Why, exactly, is it hysterically funny when he runs (in Superbad), or when he tries to explain to his dad that his dud girlfriend is cute (in AD)? Continue reading →

From a fresh-from-the-inbox press release: Continue reading →