What I'm Seeing This Week Bruno, I Love You, Beth Cooper, and 500 Days of Summer (again). Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy has always worked for about 30 minutes for me. Then the repetition gets a bit old. But we'll see -- perhaps this is his masterpiece.
What I Saw Last Week Nada. Everyone was off for the 4th of July holiday. However, I did see Disney's amazing A Christmas Carol train. USA TODAY wrote it up here. I approached the train at 7:15 in the morning expecting the worst. It's actually pretty cool though, and I've got to hand it to Disney for thinking up an innovative way to get a slow-burn marketing campaign going. The train had models and pictures from the film, a mini-CGI motion-capture studio, tons of footage, and historical Dickens artifacts from the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It was an all-access look at A Christmas Carol (starring Jim Carrey), which comes out Nov. 6. I could see kids really enjoying the experience; near the end there is even a way to CGI your face into the A Christmas Carol universe. Plus, as it's free, you can't beat the price. Here are a few pics of the festivities:
This Week's Podcast Topics The podcast is coming to an end, so we're taking this week to say goodbye. More details on the show itself will be released on Thursday.
Today's Movie Stories on the Internets An interesting read about how Best Picture odds will (and won't) change in Vegas.
Deep Thought of the Week Has the narrative song gone the way of the Dodo? Music used to tell a story from beginning to end, but now songs seem to be a random collection of thoughts. Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" is a perfect example. Who is the girl? What's her motivation? Does she actually play poker? When you think back to a song like "I Am, I Said" you get a pretty vivid image of a drunken Niel Diamond trying to talk to a chair. Everything Journey and Air Supply ever did had a through line. Rap is the same deal. Digital Underground and The Fresh Prince used to tell flat-out stories. Now Kanye hits a theme (she enjoys rich men) and hammers it home. Perhaps the problem is a larger one, though. Perhaps storytelling as a whole is fading away, to be replaced with a quick-cut image we can tweet about. Luckily, I've recently discovered a master storyteller; I'll embed a video of him at the end of this article.
Early Box Office Take It looks as though Transformers: Revenge of the Fallentook the 4th of July over Ice Age 3, but Bruno should get near $40 million and win this weekend easily. You heard it here first.
Videos For You Finally, that promised storyteller -- Mike Birbiglia -- to get your day going:
Film.com's FREE movie of the week is "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror." This 1922 classic of cinema based on Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (but with names changed) directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schrek in one of films most famous and frightening make-up jobs.
