This week Lori and I are all about reviewing the new movies — new in theaters, and new on DVD. From Ellen Page's fantastic turn in Juno and Keri Russell's yummy pies in Waitress, to Nicole Kidman's wasted efforts in The Golden Compass and the Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep talkfest Lions for Lambs, we show you scenes from the movies and give you our take on whether they're worth watching (don't worry, nothing too spoilery!).

And then there's Megan Fox's mechanically gifted girl-with-an-attitude character in Transformers, an entertaining action movie with surprisingly good female roles. A woman who can fix our car, battle killing machines, and look effortlessly beautiful, all at the same time? We're in! … continue reading

For the past 20 years or so, I've given my brother grief for reviewing Dune on his cable-access show without actually having seen the movie. So it feels a little wrong for me to blog about The Golden Compass, given that I've neither read the book nor seen the movie. But I'm not claiming knowledge beyond the Entertainment Weekly article on the religion controversy swirling about the film, so I'm pretty sure I can still claim the moral high ground.

In case you haven't heard, there are two levels of controversy. First, the books (The Golden Compass and its trilogy mates) have angered a lot of religious folk — particularly Catholics — and have been pulled off bookshelves in some Catholic schools. Why? Because atheist author Philip Pullman has apparently created a world in which the authoritarian church is the enemy and the protagonists set out to destroy it and God. (Again, I'm paraphrasing without having read the books.) The Catholic League calls the stories “Atheism for Kids.”

And then there's the movie, starring Nicole Kidman and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards. (What's with “Dakota” being the new official name of precocious young actresses?) … continue reading

Don’t you just love it when magazines get all literal with their headlines? Vanity Fair’s upcoming October cover reads “Nicole Kidman Bares All” and is illustrated by a photo of Nicole Kidman baring all she can bare in a magazine that doesn’t come shipped in a brown paper sleeve. With skin so milky you feel like grabbing for the Cheerios, Nicole’s cover accompanies an article in which the 40-year-old actress talks candidly about her former husband Tom Cruise and her current husband Keith Urban.

Among the revelations are that she had a miscarriage early in her marriage to Cruise, was briefly engaged (to an unnamed suitor) after her divorce and “yearns” to have a baby with Urban. She also talks about her emptiness the night she won her 2003 Best Actress Oscar: “It felt big. It felt lonely and big. You’re in a hotel and you’re like, okay well, I’m sitting in this big suite with an Oscar, and I still don’t have a life. What is wrong with me? It hit home that I needed to get a life. Who do I jump on the bed with, and celebrate with, and order pancakes with?”

… continue reading

Not to quibble, but — uh — she just won an Oscar; clearly she had a life. And a very successful one at that. What she didn’t have was a love life. Those are two very different things. Must successful women reduce themselves to that old yarn about their lives not being complete without a man partner? Ugh.

I haven't read The Golden Compass or any of the other books in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I feel like I should be embarrassed about that.

I do know, however, that the posters and trailer for the new film, starring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards and Eva Green, are pretty awesome:

A fantasy adventure about a girl, rather than boy wizards or dwarves or elves or whatever? Fantastic indeed. Where was this movie when I was a kid? … continue reading

This December, the movie version of Philip Pullman's incredible book The Golden Compass will be hitting theaters, starring Nicole Kidman as the mysterious and seductive Mrs. Coulter.

In case you haven't read the novel, which is the first in a trilogy, The Golden Compass follows the adventures of 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (who will be played in the movie by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), a girl who grows up in an Oxford, England, that is not quite like our own. In Lyra's world, everyone has an animal familiar known as a daemon. A child's daemon can change form, but as the child grows up, the daemon settles into one identity. As you read the book, you start to realize that one's daemon is more than a companion; a daemon is, essentially, one's soul. … continue reading