What I’m Seeing This Week
Seven Pounds (for some reason I’m worried)
Nothing Like the Holidays (looks not so good)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (trailers not promising)
Valkyrie (Tom Cruise for life!)

What I Saw Last Week
Revolutionary Road (Phenomenal)
The Reader (Good, but bleak)
Doubt (Really good, Streep, Adams and Hoffman shine)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Not for me, but everyone else loved it)

Press Releases of Note
I’m appearing on the slashfilm.com /filmcast this evening! Nice! You can listen in starting at 10:15pm EST right about here. Actually, I think they start the show a good hour before I come on, and they are talking about The Wire, so tune in to the whole thing. David, Devindra, and Adam are a solid group of guys — they really know their stuff.

This Week’s Potential Podcast Topics

1. Hardwicke off New Moon

2. Debate: The second best movie of the year (after Dark Knight of course)

3. Oscar category breakdown: Best Supporting Actress

4. Solid user feedback received and “What should we do next?”

5. Celebrity spawn of the year

6. The potential Oscar strike

7. Our ideas for the next Superman film

8. Box office predictions

src="http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/6/6/3/0/22150366-22150369-thumbnail.jpg" alt="Brendan Frasier in Mummy 3" width="104" height="142" align="left" hspace="6"/>Deep Thought of the Week
I keep seeing these ads for Mummy 3 where they namecheck Ebert as saying “The best of the series!” Now then, Ebert is my hero, and arguing against someone’s opinion can be a bit absurd, but there are a few things in his review that must not go unchallenged. He gave the movie three stars and called it “plain dumb fun.” This is fine, and that description fits how I feel about a film like Rambo perfectly, so I get the sentiment. I personally found Mummy 3 to just be plain old dumb, but whatever. No issue there.

My true beef is discounting the first two Mummy films, films that were actually fun, and not really dumb at all. Rachel Weisz was in them for crikey’s sake. It’s a callous double standard. If “dumb fun” is lauded, and Mummy 3 was gifted three stars and called the best of the franchise, then the problem with the first two was that … what? They weren’t dumb enough? Because they were surely fun enough. It’s an odd inverse standard that belies the genius of the man. Perhaps they are just misquoting him, but as they’re using him to sell DVDs I wish I had more clarity on the whole matter.

Early Box Office Take
You gotta like The Day the Earth Stood Still this weekend. Big marketing budget, most theater counts, entering a soft market. Should win easily.

Videos For You
How about some old school Deathcab?

Tags: brad pitt, doubt, the curious case of benjamin button