You know, I wasn't planning on seeing "Something New", which seemed a fairly stereotypical romance with a racial angle thrown in, but then there was the trailer in the theater yesterday (I was watching The New World) and OMG SIMON BAKER IS HOT LIKE A GOD. OK, Sanaa Lathan is no slouch in the looks department either, but being a heterosexual woman, my eyes just gravitated to his form like whoa. And touseled blondes are not even my usual cup of tea! But Simon Baker in this flick looks like... I don't know, Matthew McConnaughey without the sleaze or Scott Speedman with a glimmer of intelligence. And he was all artfully dirt-smudged and rumpled, with a lovely smile and a dog! I can't resist a combination like that.

Plus, it didn't help that I already had sort of a crush on that guy from that legal drama from a couple of years ago... The Guardian, I believe it was called. *And* he's one of those hot Australian men who are happily married (to Rebecca Riggs, who played Grayza on Farscape) with multiple kids and well-adjusted to boot, like Hugh Jackman. Sigh.

I may have to go watch this one in the theater.

• Purdue
• Rutgers reproduces the same text
• Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
• Multi culti discussion of punctuation

The first five cites I found do it my way. Which is just and proper.

Mmmm, the Guardian. Angst, hot Australians, and thousand-dollar suits. What's not to love?

This Something New seems to be charming the pants offa everyone who sees it. Manohla Dargis liked it a lot, and I do not think of her as a liker of romantic comedy.

Manohla Dargis is relatively new to NYT, right? I like her reviews. They are a bit on the frothier side than those of the rest of the NYT critics, which is a nice change of pace. I was reading her review of The New World yesterday, and she cracked me up at the end in the warning section with this blurb: '"The New World" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). There is some intense, bloodless violence and the beautiful underage lead actress may cause cardiac arrest among some viewers.'

She was at the LA Times previously. I'm about 50-50 on her reviews, myself.

I haven't started reading her reviews regularly until she came to NYT, but from what little I've read, we've got similar tastes. I still miss Elvis Mitchell though. Where is he working now, I wonder?

In the US, it's grammatically proper to put the close-quotes outside the punctuation at the end of a sentence, whether or not the quoted sentence is appropriate with that punctuation.

Yeah, I follow that rule, because it's grammatically correct, but I hate it because it's annoying, and often confusing.

I went to see Something New first and foremost for the Donald Faison comedic touch. Of which there was little to none, so it's just as well the two leads were entertaining and practically set the celluloid aflame when together.

Blockbusters are Doomed

On The Long Tail blog, Chris has posted a great, crunchy, stats-rich piece on the death of the Hollywood blockbuster. According to Chris's research, the proportion of Hollywood's money coming from blockbusters is falling, while the cost of making blockbusters is up, and the number of people going to blockbusters is falling. It doesn't take a psychic to see that this means trouble for Hollywood, which has been mainlining $200MM box-office turds for half a decade now.

[T]he fraction of total box office that comes from the blockbusters (top 25 films) has been steadily falling, even as the cost of making those films (expressed here as a percentage of total box office revenue) has been rising.

Bottom line: even in Hollywood, the home of the blockbuster, hits are losing their power. It's not nearly as dire as in music, but it's trending in the same direction. Does this mean the end of movies? Not at all--there have never been more films made, just as there has never been more music available than today, despite the fact that the bestsellers sell less.

It's not that people aren't watching films and listening to music, it's that they're watching different films and different music--we're just not following the herd to the same hits the way we used to. I'd guess that most of the decline in box office is due to the rise of the DVD, not a loss of interest in movies. Likewise for music, where the ubiquitous white earbuds suggest that music has never been a bigger part of our culture, despite the fact that CD sales are back to mid-90s levels.

I squeed about this elsewhere, but as a PSA:

Sony Pictures just released The Cary Grant Box Set. [link]

It contains Holiday, Only Angels Have Wings, The Talk of the Town, His Girl Friday, and The Awful Truth. I'm particularly excited about Holiday, which has never been released on DVD before. The extras are apparently not that great, but who cares? Five of best Grant comedies for $35! I would have paid as much for Holiday alone.