Hollywood Won’t Wait for Troops to Come Home

Really? 'Hot Tub Time Machine' is the best we can do?

(NEWSER) - “2010 very possibly is the worst year in the history of motion pictures,” declares Joe Queenan in a hilarious Wall Street Journal piece bemoaning the downfall of American cinema. You know things are bad in Hollywood when:

• “Shia LaBeouf—who looks a bit like the young George W. Bush” is being passed off “as the second coming of Tom Cruise.”
• The top contenders for Next Big Action Star are Jake Gyllenhaal and Adrien Brody. “None of these are logical heirs to the throne abandoned by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone. They may not even be legitimate heirs to the throne vacated by Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.”

Movies disappoint, but rarely go the way of Ishtar

(NEWSER) - It's rare these days to see a big-studio movie truly bomb, and that's a shame, laments Tom Shone of Slate . Sure, we get our share of misfires like Jonah Hex or The A-Team , but few reach the depths of those glorious financial busts of yesteryear like Ishtar, Waterworld, and Cutthroat Island—"the swashbuckler that derailed the careers of Renny Harlin, Geena Davis, and Matthew Modine—and the last film to actually force a movie studio to close, Heaven's Gate-style." More»

A look at Rotten Tomatoes gives the crown to the Civil War

(NEWSER) - The new Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks series The Pacific got the folks at New York magazine's the Vulture blog wondering which war has produced the best movies. They looked up every one they could think of at Rotten Tomatoes, then averaged the scores. The winner: the Civil War. Here are the results, along with a top scorer from each conflict: More»

Jeff Bridges, Mo'Nique, 'Mad Men,' 'Glee' also among winners

(NEWSER) - Avatar and The Hangover captured the top film awards, Meryl Streep and Drew Barrymore charmed with stream-of-consciousness acceptance speeches, and host Ricky Gervais generally behaved at tonight's Golden Globes ceremony. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock established themselves as Academy Award favorites with victories in the leading dramatic role categories, as did Mo'Nique and Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds in the supporting categories. More»

The answering machine, the broken cell phone, the lack of GPS...

(NEWSER) - Ever notice that movie trailers are constantly employing the record scratch sound effect—even though today’s youth have no clue what that sound actually is? "Pop culture has shown no inclination to discard obsolete tropes simply because they are obsolete," writes Adam Sternbergh, who points out five other cinematic offenders in New York :

• Answering machines: Hey, if the protagonist were to use voicemail, how ever would the audience hear the serial killer’s scary message?
• X-rays: Nowadays, X-rays are displayed digitally, on a screen. But hanging a big, floppy piece of film on a light board is so much more dramatic!