James Franco, the new king of all media

Howard Stern may still be the self-crowned King of All Media, especially since he just sealed another obscenely lucrative deal with Sirius XM Radio. But James Franco is fast becoming the media man of the hour. See him seduce and make out with himself in a mirror! (It's part of a New York Times series called "14 Actors Acting.") Weigh in on whether you think he'll be a good Oscars co-host with Anne Hathaway! Check out his award-worthy performance in 127 Hours, where his life-saving (and arm-detaching) move as hiker Aron Ralston is so overwhelming it's caused moviegoers to puke and pass out! And for General Hospital junkies, breathlessly await Franco's return in February to the daytime drama! (He's been on the show twice before, starting in '09, and his psycho artist character, named Franco, apparently isn't finished wreaking havoc on the melodrama's denizens.) That's scads of exposure. Lucky for him, Franco is so unassuming and non-Hollywood that he's not likely to face a backlash from all this attention. Anyway, who could get tired of looking at that face? Not me.

'The Social Network': Friended or not?

This past weekend, I was finally able to see blockbuster movie The Social Network. I admit I didn't have high expectations for a film co-starring Justin Timberlake. Sure, his "Dick in a Box" sketch on Saturday Night Live was good for a quick laugh, but I wasn't so sure about his dramatic chops. (Timberlake is cast in a front-and-center role as rico suave Sean Parker, co-creator of Napster, who eventually gains 7 percent ownership of the social network.)
  Let me get this out of the way first: I liked the movie. I thought it was great fun. I'd see it again, even. But here's a more in-depth look at it, for those of you who need something a bit more concrete than a four-star review from Rolling Stone's aging critic Peter Travers.

Bieber fever spreads to filmmakers

You may know Davis Guggenheim from the fine filmmaking he's done on documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud and Waiting for Superman, so maybe he should get an automatic pass for considering a Justin Bieber project? It's in 3D! Not sure, actually, if that's the more disturbing piece of news here -- that a well-respected industry veteran may be capturing "Bieber fever" on film or that the teen heartthrob is quickly becoming the new King of All Media. Bieber, in case you're not following, just announced he'll be writing his illustrated memoirs for HarperCollins. The book, Justin Beiber: First Step 2 Forever: My Story, will be out in October, revealing "Justin's amazing journey to superstardom," the publisher says. Oh boy. Meanwhile, he's racked up 270 million views on YouTube for his latest music video for the single, "Baby," and he's the most-viewed artist on the site. The movie is expected to be a biopic of the 16-year-old Canadian pop star with concert footage sprinkled in, reports Hollywood business site Deadline.com in a scoop that likely sent its traffic soaring and its age demo plummeting. Guggenheim is in talks with Paramount Pictures to direct the flick -- never to be confused with 8 Mile -- though it's not a done deal. And, no, that 3D part wasn't a joke. The picture's set to launch Feb. 11, 2011 so that little girls everywhere can spend Valentine's Day with the fresh-faced idol/mogul. Probably a good day for anyone over 12 to stay away from the multiplex.

Six classic Fourth of July weekend movies

With the Fourth of July upon us, Hollywood gears up for one of its biggest weekends with Eclipse, the latest in the Twilight saga (probably better off seeing Toy Story 3 again if you haven't already). Let's take a look at some of the best Fourth of July movies from years past.

Jaws
Released: June 20, 1975
OK, so it wasn't technically released for the Fourth of July weekend. It will forever be the ultimate summer blockbuster, though (sorry, Star Wars). Jaws is a rare breed: an all-time classic that never gets old no matter how many times you view it.

Airplane!
Released: July 2, 1980
Certainly nothing resembling a blockbuster upon initial release, its legend grew over time. But make no mistake: Airplane! is right up there with Woody Allen's Idiot Trilogy (Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper) and Mel Brooks's best (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety). Its comedic formula has been copied to death, yet rarely equaled.

'Kick-Ass' really kicks ass (well, naturally)

Wait, did someone say Avatar was coming out on DVD? Who cares! It was one of the worst movies of last year—and deservedly got stiffed at the Oscars. Anyone who bought into its 3-D, pseudo-fun, hackneyed plot can just go back to their basement room and have Mom heat up that plate of meatloaf.
  Now, if you want to see a real action movie—one with all the right guns, violence and dialogue—go out and watch Kick-Ass today. I went into the theater this weekend not really knowing what to expect; the trailer was not all that grabbing, and the promo posters in the subway were pretty vague. It looked like one of those parody movies, like Scary Movie or something.
  Well, it turns out the lack of promo was all an act, because Kick-Ass was easily the best action movie I've seen since The Matrix. I'll take that a step further and say it was Nicolas Cage's comeback movie—like Travolta's Pulp Fiction. Why? Well, it's just an inexplicably amazing action movie that you'll have to go out and watch to figure out what I'm talking about.
  I will let out this tiny spoiler: Look out for a salty-tongued 11-year-old girl who can waste people with the best of them. And she makes Dirty Harry look like a schoolgirl.

—Posted by Will Levith

At what point do guys like Brendan Fraser decide they just won't try anymore?

So, I just saw a truly awful trailer for Furry Vengeance, which kinda looks like Home Alone, only with computer-generated animals instead of Macaulay Culkin. Not surprisingly, Brendan Fraser's in it. The question is: When do actors like Brendan Fraser decide to give up?
  Fraser's off to a blazing start in 2010, already in two of the worst films of the year (along with the Patch Adams cinch Extraordinary Measures). Makes me wish our Bad Movie Club were still active. My friends and I used to play a game where we'd pick an actor or actress, go through their filmography—and compute their batting average. Fraser's hitting .167, and that's being kind. He'd be playing for the single-A Staten Island Yankees, yet Hollywood keeps giving him roles.
  Fraser's first major release was 1992's Encino Man, a Bad Movie Club staple. He briefly recovered with the decent School Ties, before reverting back to bad (With Honors, the unwatchable Airheads). Then in 1998, he co-starred with Ian McKellen in Gods & Monsters, a strong picture depicting the last days of Frankenstein director James Whale. This is the turning point of his career, right? Wrong. Very wrong. He followed with dumb and dumber: Dudley Do Right and Blast From the Past. Then The Mummy arrived, and outside of the grossly overrated "indie" film Crash, it's been Mummys and one stupid movie after another ever since.
  Fraser's probably making a very good living. I'm sure I don't want to know how good. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention his terrific guest turn on TV's Scrubs. But one day he decided: I don't care about the script or the story. Just tell me when filming starts, and I'm there.
  So, what other actors are annually mailing in performances?

—Posted by Craig Russell

And the Academy Award for best seating arrangement goes to …

I watched the Oscars last night on ABC and felt pretty blah about it. Co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin? Blah. The men's and women's fashion? Toned down compared to previous years (= blah). The Oscar speeches? Too fast to comprehend (= blah). The best actor/actress "roasts" by people like Tim Robbins and Oprah Winfrey? Blah, blah, blah, snore.
  What the Oscars people love to do is make you sit around and watch the whole damn thing so you don't miss the "water-cooler moment." Congrats to Sandra Bullock for that moment. I think she was just as flabbergasted as we were. I haven't seen The Blind Side yet, but I'd like to see if it was an Oscar-worthy performance. (Why do I have a sinking feeling that it's going to be similar to Julia Roberts' in Erin Brockovich?)
  Who wants to sit through hours of teary acceptance speeches and shots of George Clooney if there isn't going to at least a little off-the-cuff drama? This year, it arrived in the form of the seating arrangement: James Cameron, director of megahit Avatar (which I saw and strongly disliked), sitting behind ex-wife and fellow best-director/best-picture nominee Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). Sure, they are supposedly still buddies, and he smiled and clapped last night, but I wonder what CGI-scripted four-letter words must've been shooting through his mind when she got the nods for director and picture directly in front of him?
  Look, the votes happened, and The Hurt Locker won. I saw the film months ago and thought it was great—but did I walk out of the theater thinking best director and best picture? Not really. That seating arrangement, however, paid off in the end. That made the Oscars watchable. That put The Hurt Locker ahead of Avatar for me.
  The guy who came up with that idea should win an Oscar.

—Posted by Will Levith

'MacGyver' people, like most people, are not that excited about 'MacGruber'

For pure kitsch value, MacGyver is the gift that keeps on giving. The action adventure show, which aired on ABC from 1985 to 1992, birthed the handy catch phrase "I MacGyvered it," meaning, I used bubble gum and rubber bands to fix something. It launched a thousand fantasies for man-hungry Simpsons characters Patty and Selma (they love them some Richard Dean Anderson) and inspired a recurring Saturday Night Live skit, "MacGruber," that recently starred Charles Barkley and his "acting" skills. Now, though, a legal scuffle is starting between the original MacGyver rights holder—the creator of the TV series—and Relativity Media, which is preparing to open a big-screen MacGruber on April 23.

What's really so fantastic about 'Avatar'?

Before Avatar came out, a colleague of mine said, based on early buzz, that the movie sounded like "the Smurfs running around in the jungle." I laughed, but secretly hoped it was more complex than that. Then I saw it for myself. And it was worse than jungle-happy Smurfs. Its hackneyed plot and depthless characters, not to mention the overwhelmingly blasé graphics, were nearly too much for me to handle. At three hours or so, it was like watching the polish dry on my girlfriend's toenails. The question I left the theater asking myself was: Why did these avatars have to look so ridiculous and have such a complicated backstory? (Sigourney Weaver's avatar was dumpy and un-hot compared to the cougar she is in real life, for example.) Not to mention that the movie featured some truly talentless actors: Joel Moore (his delivery is like that of a high school janitor), Giovanni Ribisi (still think the only thing good he ever did was his turn on The X-Files as a lightning-tapping teen) and Wes Studi (the same-Native-American-in-every-movie guy). And now everyone's saying it's going to sweep the Oscars after a big night at the Golden Globes a few weeks back. Am I missing something here?

—Posted by Will Levith

Relive those glory years with 'The A-Team'

Ok, who's pumped for this? Come on, admit it. There are two things I can guarantee you about the big-screen version of The A-Team. It will probably be over-the-top cheesy. And I will definitely see it. I realize it has awful written all over it (like say the recent Knight Rider remake). But at first glance, the trailer (posted above) is so damn promising: They've got the voiceover! ("If you can find them …") They've got B.A.'s awesome van, the 2010 version! They've got Hannibal's hair, and his signature line ("I love it when a plan comes together"). They've got the cool guy from The Hangover. For me, back in 1983, as a 10-year-old, The A-Team was big stuff. Mr. T couldn't have been cooler. Stuff blew up every week. And no one ever died, no matter how many M-16s were fired. I have a distinct memory of a helicopter crash in one episode, where the two pilots just walked out like they were in a fender bender. I can't find it on YouTube. Actually, if you ever think of going back and watching classic clips of The A-Team, don't. The Honeymooners it ain't. The '80s cheese violence doesn't exactly age well. Your memories might be ruined. But the theme song is still awesome.

—Posted by Mike Shields