We’re entering that weird little window before Christmas where specific days of the week don’t matter — every day is a shopping day, or a running-around day, or a day to release a movie in advance of the holiday weekend, if you’re Universal or Paramount.
“Little Fockers”: I saw the first two movies in the series and didn’t enjoy either one — wow, Robert De Niro is giving Ben Stiller the stink-eye again, that’s just hilarious — so I recused myself and let Glenn catch the press screening. Poor, poor Glenn.
“True Grit“: Having made “No Country for Old Men” just three years ago, the Coens didn’t really need to make another Western … but they take the job very seriously here, and the result is something wonderful. Outstanding work from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld; gorgeous cinematography; a rock-solid script and a fine, fine score by Carter Burwell … really, just get in line now.
Oh, and my latest MSN DVD column is up, shuffling through some very special Christmas episodes you might want to bring home on disc. Not TV specials, but special episodes of previously established TV series, so there’s no Grinches or Charlie Brown loo-looing to be found. Sorry, but rules are rules.
Also, the latest issue of NOW hit the streets a day early, featuring our collective Top Ten movies list and the short version of my own picks for 2010. The expanded version, in which I address the films in considerably more than six words apiece, will be up later today.
Please tell me that the remake of True Grit doesn’t include the cringe-inducing spanking scene of the original. This is one of the three movies I’ll be trying to see over the holidays – the others are The King’s Speech and Black Swan – and I don’t want to vomit in my popcorn.
I’m not the only one underwhelmed with the stop motion episode of Community, right? I love the show, but that episode just didn’t work at all.
@ Chris — there’s still a spanking, but the Coens handle it rather differently. Give it a chance.
@ Josh — I thought the first act was really wobbly, but once things got going in the second act I was willing to go with it. Amazing how Chevy Chase — so blase as a voice actor in that awful redub of “Doogal” — can deliver such a moving turn here. It’s all in the writing, I guess.