Contents

Almost Everyone Loves Avatar… Almost…

Director James Cameron’s Avatar is receiving almost universal praise from both critics and audiences alike. Chris Neumer investigates the ‘almost’.

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Animal House: The Movie that Changed Comedy

National Lampoon’s Animal House is the comedy that changed everything in Hollywood.  In honor of its 25th anniversary this year, Josh Karp talked to director John Landis, co-writers Harold Ramis and Chris Miller as well as studio executive Thom Mount to get the full behind-the-scenes picture on this pop culture icon.

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Another Self-Serving Controversy

During a recent meeting, one of the magazine’s editorial assistants pitched a story to me about the negative stereotypes that surround Italian-Americans in film and on television.  She simply said the words ‘Jersey Shore’ and everyone within earshot knew exactly …

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Back to School Running Commentary

1:00 Actor Jason Hervey plans the young Thornton Melon.  Hervey, of course, played Fred Savage’s older brother, Wayne, on The Wonder Years.  If I’m doing my math correctly, this means that Savage is somehow related to Rodney Dangerfield.

1:15 I’ve …

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Bai Ling

Bai Ling talks in metaphor, explains why it’s necessary to occasionally eat maggots and makes sense of when ‘not thinking’ is the best approach to things. Prepare yourself for a ride.

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Basic Instinct Running Commentary

:12 This is a Tristar picture!  Awwww… this truly is a trip down memory lane.

:23 This is a Carolco picture too!  For what it’s worth, I’d still love to interview Mario Kassar.  My top three dream interviews are with …

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Because Someone Like You Has Gotta Give The Holiday Two For the Money

When it comes to romantic-comedies, Hollywood has finally crossed a line: industry professionals are becoming completely and totally confused by the broad, non-specific names of these projects.

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Brian Herzlinger

The most upbeat filmmaker you will ever meet gets giddy about his date with Drew Barrymore.

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Charlie Hunnam

Actor Charlie Hunnam knows what he wants and is doing his best to get it on his own terms. Steering away from what he calls the ‘disposable shit’ and fighting for the projects that interest him, Hunam’s already ahead of the normal Hollywood learning curve.

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Croc Running Commentary

About a month ago, Genius Entertainment sent me a lovely DVD three-pack, the Maneater Collection, featuring three so-bad-they’re-good movies involving down-on-their-luck actors battling enormous animals with a predilection for human flesh. I tore through the films in hasty fashion, enjoyably …

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Dale Dye

Retired Marine Captain Dale Dye has been working in Hollywood for almost twenty years. The bounty of his tireless effort is an industry wide change toward a new and strikingly realistic approach to making movies about war. Nicknamed Captain Stanislovsky, Dye talks to Chris Neumer about dealing with studio executives, pampered actors and the importance of teamwork that is usually developed knee deep in mud.

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Fun With Tom Jane

Whether you know him as Thomas Jane or Tom Jane, the man has been turning heads since he broke into the industry. This may have something to do with his near chameleonic ability to morph in and out of any character he plays.

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Getting Smarter

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like for a sixties era television series in another time period, Get Smart’s revival has the answer. Chris Neumer is amazed at the results.

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Ghostbusters Running Commentary

The last few months have proved to be a treasure trove of rumors about the upcoming Ghost Busters III project. First it was a question of whether the film would be made. Now that it’s scheduled for a 2012 release, …

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How Do I Make It?

There are almost an infinite number of questions that can be asked of people. The hardest one to answer? The ‘How do I make it?’ question. Chris Neumer rolls up his shirt sleeves, investigates this question and answers it. Would be filmmakers take note, you’re not going to see this anywhere else.

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If a Smurf Smurfs in the Smurf and No One Smurfs, Does It Smurf?

The most entertaining Hollywood scandals are the ones that don’t take. Columbia Pictures found this out the hard way last week when a poster for its upcoming The Smurfs movie got leaked… and no one cared. Chris Neumer investigates and learns that this is only one of many reasons that The Smurfs is going to be a horrible movie.

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Indiana Jones and the Legend of Capitalism

Hollywood is about one thing and one thing only: making money. From the key grips to the actors to the studio executives (especially the studio executives), money remains paramount. America is going to see a new Spider-Man orBatman film …

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Inside the Lives of Hollywood’s Next Generation of Actresses

Thanks to the American public’s intense fascination with A-List celebrity, it’s been getting harder than ever to find articles on Hollywood actresses who don’t have have the last names of Kidman, Jolie and Aniston. While debating this press disparity, I realized that most people would jump at the chance to learn about what life was life for Jolie prior to her cracking the most elite levels of Hollywood. And thus an article idea was born.

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Jeff Nathanson’s Last Shot

Jeff Nathanson made a name for himself scripting Rush Hour 2, Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. Moving from behind the typewriter to behind the camera for the first time on The Last Shot, Chris Neumer sat down with Nathanson to talk about the craziness that is today’s Hollywood.

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Jesse Jane

Jesse Jane is one of the adult world’s biggest stars. So big, in fact, her movies are being stripped of the sex and released as R-rated films. Jane talks shop and gets inside the actual filmmaking of her films.

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John Travolta Is Not Gay…

It’s mid-May and the heat is still on in my apartment.  This is enough to make any man a hair depressed, especially given that I have many friends in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles who love relaying the fact …

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Josh Lucas

Actor Josh Lucas has anchored the casts of movies both big (Glory Road and Poseidon) and small (Undertow and Little Murder). More impressively, he has done so while making a name for himself as a stylish, intelligent and charismatic on-screen force.

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Kevin Grevioux

A fan of comic books, superheroes and a screenwriter who is rapidly rising in the Hollywood ranks, Kevin Grevioux is nothing like you’d ever expect.

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Knowledge… Isn’t Power?

I see a fair amount of movies with my brother.  One thing I’ve learned over time is that he and I have wildly divergent methods of vetting potential viewing choices.

I go by feel.  If I decide that I want …

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Luc Besson

Renowned French writer/director Luc Besson is retiring. There are, however, enough asterisks and footnotes to that statement that the movie-going public doesn’t need to worry about an absense of Besson in any conventional sense.

From very early on in his …

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Lunching with Morgan Spurlock

It’s noon in Beverly Hills and Super Size Me writer/director Morgan Spurlock is hungry. Something interesting is guaranteed to happen.

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Maneater Running Commentary

When Chris Neumer found out that Gary Busey–a man who can and does blink his eyes one at a time–would be matching wits with a hungry tiger in the movie Maneater, he grabbed his laptop and began taking notes. Because you don’t pass up opportunities to write about gold like this.

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Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus Running Commentary

Within the last few years, I have begun to truly enjoy and appreciate the horrifically bad. On one hand, I am insanely happy about this. I am sick of having intensely high standards and being disappointed by directors for ‘only’ …

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Michael Rispoli

Actor Michael Rispoli is a rarity in celebrity-obsessed Hollywood: he is a supporting actor in feature films who recognizes that you don’t have to be a major star to be a successful actor.

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Million Dollar, Buck Naked Baby

What’s wrong with the above picture? Give up? Hilary Swank is in bed and wearing clothes. Chris Neumer investigates Swank’s revealing statement that she walks around her boyfriend’s six year old son naked and wonders whether interviewer Joanna Coles could have handled the matter any worse than she did.

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My Nemesis

Most people are lucky enough to not have a nemesis. Chris Neumer is not one of those people. He breaks down his most nefarious archrival here: himself at age 16.

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OMG, C Saw Gossip Girl… WTF?

As a misanthropic, 33-year old, near hermit who is grumpier than both Waldorf and Stadtler, Chris Neumer is not in Gossip Girl’s target demographic. This doesn’t stop him from taking the plunge and attempting to get into the completely and totally off-the-hook world of Gossip Girl. The results are shocking. LOL ROFLMAO.

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One Hit (Film) Wonders

The very nature of the entertainment world suggests that there will be some fast rising (and falling) stars. Not everyone can sustain the momentum that Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts have had. However, while the music industry welcomes these one-hit wonders with open arms, the film world has a slightly different approach. Chris Neumer investigates…

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Oscar Commentary 2009

As the Academy honors the best of the year that was, Chris Neumer gets inside the evening’s events from a comfortable place on his couch.

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Oscar Commentary 2010

As the Academy honors the best of the year that was, Chris Neumer gets inside the evening’s events from a comfortable place on his couch.

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Oscar Commentary 2011

It was a night of many surprises, the best, naturally, being The Three 6 Mafia’s Oscar win. Has anyone else ever dropped the ‘N’ word in an acceptance speech? With the year’s biggest award show on hand, Stumped? kept a running diary of the night’s events, complete with more commentary than we thought possible.

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Oscar Commentary 2013

As the Academy again honors the best of the year that was, Chris Neumer gets inside the evening’s events from a comfortable place on his couch. Welcome to the eighth annual Stumped Oscar running commentary.

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Oscar Nomination Reactions 2012

I have been making a concerted effort to remove the word ‘unique’ from my lexicon.  The reason for this is simple: everything is unique.  Every movie, person or city is different than every other movie, person or city.  Richard Feynman …

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Oscar Nomination Reactions 2013

The 2012 Academy Award nominations were released this week. Chris Neumer gives his reactions and gets inside why nobody is ever snubbed, why dramatic film making and good film editing don’t go hand-in-hand and what Daniel Day-Lewis’ new nickname should be.

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Phil Joanou Reverts to Chaos

Disappointed with some aspects of his more recent films, writer/director Phil Joanou got personal and created the autobiographical work of art, Entropy.

In 1996, director Phil Joanou’s film Heaven’s Prisoners, starring Alec Baldwin and Kelly Lynch, was released …

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Phoning It In

It was probably inevitable, but ‘filmmakers’ are now shooting projects on their cell phones.

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Rejected!

There are a lot of ways for a journalist to get rejected in Hollywood. Chris Neumer details three of his personal favorites here. (And by personal favorites, he means the three most soul-crushing, comically over-the-top rejections that he wouldn’t believe if they hadn’t happened to him)

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Remaking the Unremakeable

Red Dawn is the single most unremakeable film in history, just ahead of Indiana Jones and Scarface. Most interesting of all, this didn’t stop MGM from taking a stab at it. Chris Neumer investigates.

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Robert Altman 1925-2009

Writer/director Robert Altman’s death isn’t just something that will impact the film world, it will affect everyone who had the pleasure to deal with the man. Chris Neumer looks back at his experience with Altman.

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Rosario Dawson

Energetic and bubbling with both wit and passion, Rosario Dawson is on the verge of becoming a major star. Just don’t let her know that.

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Scarface Running Commentary

At this point, I’ve done commentaries for roughly 25 movies.  Some of the movies I’ve commented on are good, some are bad and some are so perplexingly out-of-the-box that mere words don’t quite capture the essence of their insane …

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Some House Cleaning

I started publishing Stumped in late 1997. From early 1998 to 2001, I requested screener copies of what now seems like every single movie to have been released to the home entertainment market during that time period. Worse yet, I …

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Star Wars Running Commentary

Star Wars is one of the true iconic movies of Hollywood.  It is more than simply an institution, it is a juggernaut in history.  I’ve seen writer/director George Lucas’ film times too numerous to count.

:03 I actually associate the …

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Stephen Tobolowsky

Stephen Tobolowsky is the actor who has been in everything. Now he’s branching out into documentaries.

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Stone Cold Crazy

The core idea behind director Michael Hoffman’s surprisingly underrated film Soapdish is that the behind-the-scenes lives of the actors working on a soap opera were far more bizarre, comical and horrendously managed than anything fictional that a group of writers …

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Stone Cold Crazy Too

The core idea behind director Michael Hoffman’s surprisingly underrated film Soapdish is that the behind-the-scenes lives of the actors working on a soap opera were far more bizarre, comical and horrendously managed than anything fictional that a group of writers …

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Street Fighter Running Commentary

Street Fighteris the worst movie I have ever seen. I did not know this prior to writing this column. I didn’t go into it blind, suspecting a Soderberghian epic, but I truly did not expect it to be the …

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Stripes Running Commentary

Director Ivan Reitman’s 1981 film Stripes is one of the true classics of modern comedy along with Caddyshack, Animal House and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It is also one of the seminal films of my youth. Stripeswas …

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Summer 2010 Awards

The Summer of 2010 is officially behind us. Chris Neumer looks back at Hollywood’s most profitable season, notices some strange trends, hands out some awards including the best and worst movie of summer as well as the “Yeah That’s Not Going to Cause Any Problems” and the “What the Hell is Going On?” awards. All that and a look into how Piranha 3D got an R rating.

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Surfers are Everywhere… Except on the 1,000 Foot Wave That’s Heading Toward New York City

Surfers go to great lengths to be wherever the big waves are. Why, oh why, wouldn’t they be trying to surf the once-in-a-lifetime wall of water heading towards the United States in the disaster film of your choice?

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Tae-Kyeong Kim Sees Dead People

Considering his first-hand experiences with ghosts, it’s no surprise that Korean director Tae-kyeong Kim is a rising star in the horror world. Kevin Withers investigates.

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Ten Minute Guide #28: April 2, 2013

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Ten Minute Guide #33: May 7, 2013

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Terry Crews

Contradictions are an interviewer’s best friend. Guaranteed to stir up controversy or provide a one-of-a-kind hook for readers, a good contradiction is worth its weight in gold. Glancing over actor Terry Crews’ bio sheet while sitting in the office of …

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The Adventures of Ford Fairlane Running Commentary

Andrew Dice Clay is something of a mystery to me.  Clay first hit it big on the comedy scene in 1987.  In hindsight, his goal appears to have been to become the white Eddie Murphy.  And, at least on the …

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The Boost Running Commentary

To date, there hasn’t been any real kind of methodology behind writing a running commentary of a film. I just pick a mish-mosh of horrendously bad movies (Super Mario Brothers/Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus), movies that impacted my …

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The Complete Guide to Location Scouting: The Manhattan Edition with John Fedynich

It takes a lot more than one might imagine to secure locations and shoot in New York City. Veteran location manager John Fedynich (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2) takes Chris Neumer on his own location scouting expedition and together the two find the perfect Manhattan alley, stumble into some intriguing neighborhoods and deal with unexpected problems. After this article, you’ll never look at that Fifth Avenue setting in the same way again.

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The Curious Case of the Academy and the 10 Best Picture Nominees

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences couldn’t have found a worse year to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. Chris Neumer investigates the train wreck and is truly scared; America is closer that it ever should be to the phrase “Academy Award Best Picture nominee, The Hangover“.

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The Film World’s Manny Ramirez

There are a lot of similarities between the sports world and the film world. After reading the 19th article on Manny Ramirez in the last week, Chris Neumer asked the question: who is the film world’s Manny Ramirez? Stumped’s intrepid writers get to the bottom of this. The result may surprise you.

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The Incredible… Failure?

Marvel Studios learned from the mistakes of director Ang Lee’s 2003 film, Hulk and went about correcting them in 2008′s The Incredible Hulk. The unusual part of this is that the ‘corrected’ version is an even bigger disappointment than 2003′s flop.

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The Most Influential Filmmaker in the World: N.B. Nakoula

Entertainment magazines often release yearly power lists of the film industry players to rank who the most influential filmmakers are for a given year.  The lists are especially scientific and occasionally seem designed to sell more magazines (shock!) than for …

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The Most Unusual Superhero Movie Ever

Superhero movies earn more money than almost any genre of films. From The Dark Knight to Spiderman to Iron Man, these comic book adaptations rake in box office. Chris Neumer investigates the strangest superhero movie of all time, Batman: The Movie. Prepare yourself for one hell of a… trip.

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The Nigerian Connection

If you told Chris Neumer there would be fans of his writing in Nigeria, he wouldn’t have believed you. If you told him that those Nigerian fans would go on to hit him up for money, that might have held a little more water.

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The Stink of Success

How many industries reward abject failure? Not many. Interestingly, Hollywood is one, particularly when it comes to screenwriters. Chris Neumer delves into the sweet, sweet smell of… horrible failure.

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The Summer of 2010

As I started to write this Summer 2010 recap, my first step was to begin talking about how it was yet another strange summer for movies. It was my first reaction to the summer that was. After several sentences, I …

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The Tenth Time is the Charm

Director by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, with a score by Danny Elfman, Sleepy Hollow should be the perfect atmospheric, late fall movie. This is, however, not the case. Chris Neumer has yet to learn this lesson though and is convinced that his next viewing will right all previous wrongs.

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Thomas F. Wilson

Thomas F. Wilson’s instant sucess in Back to the Future enabled him to quickly gain perspective on stardom. The results may surprise you.

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Thomas Lennon

Thomas Lennon gets deep inside the nature of funny and why it doesn’t quite mesh well within the confines of the studio system.

For some people, being funny is simply an amusing character trait. For Thomas Lennon, being funny is, …

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Throwout

How many industries reward abject failure? Not many. Interestingly, Hollywood is one… particularly when it comes to screenwriters. Chris Neumer delves into the sweet, sweet smell of… horrible failure.

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Top Gun Running Commentary

:37  Kelly McGillis, where have you gone?  I’m looking at her filmography and since Top Gun, I have heard of only three movies that McGillis has appeared in; The Accused, The Babe and North.  I’m not …

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Wandering Eye of the Tiger

There are a lot of sad things surrounding the adulterous Tiger Woods at present. None are sadder than the fact that Tiger seemed to think that his mistresses were into him… for him! Chris Neumer investigates how adultery is impacted by fame and how to avoid the pitfalls of this if you have to, you know, cheat.

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Watching Snakes on a Plane on a Plane

Chris Neumer takes movie watching to another level… that of 35,000 feet. Nothing could have prepared him for the experience of watching Snakes on a Plane on a plane.

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Wedding Daze-d and Confused

The film world is filled with lots of great stories of creativity, artistic triumphs and wonderful feel-good accomplishments. This is not one of them. This is the story of one rookie filmmaker’s hell. What makes Michael Ian Black’s story unique is that this hell all happened after his movie was picked up for distribution.

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Weekend at Bernie’s Running Commentary

Weekend at Bernie’s has earned a place in the American cultural lexicon as something of a cult classic.  It is a very poor comedy in all the ways that one might expect a lower-budgeted, late ‘80s comedy to be poor.  …

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What Does it Take to Fight the Predator

In director Paul W. S. Anderson’s latest film, Alien vs. Predator (AvP), actor Carsten Norgaard is trying to do something that only two men, Danny Glover and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have succeeded in doing previously: fight the extraterrestrial known as the Predator and live to talk about it. Norgaard has his work cut out for him and is well aware of this.

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When the ‘It’ Girl Hits the Fan

‘It’ Girls are the most coveted resource in Hollywood. The Unborn’s director, David S. Goyer, stumbled onto a new and extremely interesting way to get the latest ‘it’ girl, Megan Fox, into his debut film: he cast a dead ringer for her in the lead. Say hello to Odette Yustman, Megan Fox when you can’t get Megan Fox.

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