I am optimistic about Cloverfield as well. I love a good monster movie and a good hand-cam movie and a good New York movie and a good run-on sentence.

Now they're saying that VM won't be involved in that desert island movie.

Veronica Mars what?

Oh.

I'm so glad Juno is doing well. That's really cool!

I really liked I Am Legend for most of the reasons Stephanie stated. I loved the way that it doesn't really tell you what's going on for almost the first half of the movie, and, similar to Children of Men, you're expected to piece together some of the backstory just from the set design, reading articles and flyers and magazine covers posted on the walls that the camera never focuses on specifically but are right there in the frame, waiting to be noticed. It was a cool, creepy experience.

I also finally saw The Third Man, which was interesting. Oh, classic noir and your moral dilemmas!

Then I finally saw Life of Brian, which is the only movie I have seen with a hilarious scene about Latin grammar. And then some aliens for no apparent reason.

That same night, I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was pretty good, if a bit cynical.

I saw No Country for Old Men at the Arclight, which was great because the sound in that movie is amazing. Also, it's scary as fuck. It was three-quarters of the way through the movie before I realized, "Oh yeah, these are the guys who made Blood Simple." Javier Bardem's character is terrifying.

I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was pretty good, if a bit cynical.

Because they turned out to be wrong?

I think it's that they both have super-magnetic-charm power along with an everyman quality.

Re: Clooney. I think it was seeing him in "Good Night and Good Luck" playing a secondary screen character that points this up. He could have taken the Murrough part for himself and done a very good job, but putting Straitharn in there was such perfect casting, I'm glad he didn't. He had that everyman quality that they needed for Fred and he played to it beatifully.

I love that movie SO much.

The weird thing in watching that movie (as well as Apollo 13 ) was just how much everyone smoked back then....

I couldn't believe they had the kids smoking in Newsies! They'd never get away with that today. Accurate for the period or no.

My grandpa started smoking when he was 9 years old. He was born in 1911. A little bit after Newsies, but still.

I'm sure the kids then did smoke. I'm just shocked they had the young actors in 1990-whatever smoking! Or maybe it was just Max Casella, and he was a grownup anyway.

No, I just watched newsies, and I am pretty sure they were all smoking! I was shocked too!

Also, it was so "pro-strike" which I found funny in light of the writer's strike.

Also, the same director is now directing the High School Musical franchise.