So which team are you on? Team Jacob? Team Edward? Team What-the-Heck-Is-He-Talking-About? Whichever side you choose, there's no denying that Twilight is a sensation. Except... There's nothing here we haven't seen before. Think The Coreys. Think Luke Perry. It's all just a wash of screaming, crying prepubescent girls. So if you feel like Twilight fever will never end, take a look back at the biggest tween sensations of the last decade or so. Take solace: Nothing lasts forever...

1. Twilight (2008)
Every couple of years, tweens get all excited up about vampires again. First, there was The Lost Boys. Then, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This time around, it's Twilight. The first Twilight movie rocketed Robert Pattinson to dreamboat status. This weekend, he's back...and dreamier than ever.

2. High School Musical (2006)
Drop the snide comments about High School Musical 3. The first movie in this song-and-dance bonanza rates as the biggest where-the-heck-did-that-come-from success in recent movie history. The second one counts as an equally surprising, how-the-heck-did-they-do-that-again. Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens are now household names. Now that's tween power!

Continue reading "Flashback Five - Tween Sensations (Twilight: New Moon, You're Nothing New)" »

When it comes the greatest half-human monsters, vampires have always been the clear favorite. Dracula or the Wolf-Man? Dracula, obviously. But things in the monster pantheon may have changed thanks to Twilight franchise's Taylor Lautner. The level of tween-squealing over Lautner's teen wolf has begun to rival that of his fanged co-star Robert Pattinson. Which has us wondering... Which do you prefer?

When Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog's remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 dark and gritty cult classic, was announced, more than a few cinephiles took it for a joke. Why would an acclaimed, expectation-defying director hop on the unnecessary remake bandwagon? How could Nicolas Cage, currently on a quest to alienate as many moviegoers as possible with a string of bad movies, hope to live up to Harvey Keitel's brazenly raw and (literally) naked performance? The war of words that erupted between Herzog and Ferrara hasn't helped. With Hollywood always hungry for movies to re-do, it's safe to say this sort of thing will happen again. Here's a look at a few controversial remakes from the past, and what we can learn from their mistakes.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)
Fans of the gritty original were less than enthused by the news that John Travolta and Denzel Washington would be starring in a big budget summer movie update. How could a distinctive 1970s New York City thriller be updated for the modern age? Not very gracefully, as it turns out. Travolta's tattooed, over-the-top hijacker bombed, and the gritty urban thrills of the original are absent in a remake that, as one critic put it, "cranks the volume and inflates the 'Noo Yawk' attitude to a cartoonish level of macho posturing."

Lesson learned: There's a fine line between gritty and garish.

Continue reading "Werner Herzog Rips Off Abel Ferrara? Hollywood Remakes Always Stir Up Trouble!" »

With all due respect to Philip Seymour Hoffman's expat DJ in Pirate Radio, loads of actors have proven their fast-talking mettle by manning the booth on-screen. Read on for some of the most memorable disc jockeys in movie history. Video may have killed the radio star, but cinema is clearly doing its part to keep them alive.

10. Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo) in The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996)
In this modern, gender-swapped take on Cyrano de Bergerac, Janeane Garofalo plays an average-looking veterinarian with a radio call-in show who convinces her model-esque neighbor (Uma Thurman) to impersonate her on dates with a hot listener. It scores points for cuteness, literary allusion, and giving hope to smart, funny, plain girls. But not enough to move it out of the tenth place cellar.

9. Alan Freed (Tim McIntire) in American Hot Wax (1978)
This cameo-filled biopic traces the career of disc jockey Alan Freed, who made rock and roll a household name. Critic Greil Marcus called it "the most emotionally accurate movie about pop music ever made," and it features performances from such luminaries as Jerry Lee Lewis and the late, great Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Yet it tanked at the box office. Maybe because Jay Leno was in it?

Continue reading "Classic Ten - Radio DJs in the Movies" »

Say what you want about Twilight -- it's certainly brought the vampire genre into the 21st century. (And ignited all manner of inappropriate fang fetishes among mothers and daughters alike in the process.) Of course, vampires aren't the only creatures to which the series has applied the sexpot treatment. In New Moon, buff young Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) gains the ability to transform into a wolf. How does Hollywood's werewolf-of-the-moment fare against his movie predecessors? Your vote decides!

Now: 2012 (2009)Then: The Day After Tomorrow 2004)

What exactly does Roland Emmerich have against humanity that he seeks to destroy it in his movies -- over and over again, in increasingly spectacular fashion? Or perhaps the better question is: What do we have against ourselves that we continue to flock to his epics of CGI extinction? Either way, the German Master of Disaster is back at it, wiping out mankind all over again in 2012, in which solar rays overheat the Earth's core and cause it to wreak havoc on the surface. This is technically different from what happened in Emmerich's 2004 opus The Day After Tomorrow, in which environmental pollution suddenly caused a new Ice Age to occur. But, as might be expected, not all that different...

The Scientists Who Saw It Coming
2012: U.S. scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Indian researcher Satnam (Jimi Mistry) discover that the Earth's core temperature is rising, and begin to warn that the crust will soon become unstable. Of course, it happens much sooner than expected.
The Day After Tomorrow: After a massive ice shelf breaks off Antarctica, paleo-climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) and climate researcher Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) realize a new Ice Age is headed our way. Of course, it happens much sooner than expected.

Estranged Families, Reunited
2012: Divorced writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) is a kind but somewhat neglectful father of two who races to save his kids, his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet), and her new boyfriend Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) when he realizes what's happening.
The Day After Tomorrow: After America freezes over, neglectful career man Dr. Jack walks (walks!) from Washington, D.C. to New York City to save the son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) he had with his estranged wife (Sela Ward).

Continue reading "Now or Then - 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow?" »