The critical respone to director Mike Nichols’s Charlie Wilson’s War has been decidedly mixed, but with a pedigree of stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and actor du’jour Phillip Seymour Hoffman, all working from a script by Aaron Sorkin, you’ve got to wonder how do you screw that up?

But so far there’s really been little in the way that makes me want to see the movie.  Yahoo has posted an extended eight-minute clip of the movie, which has lately become the promotional method of choice for movie studios.

Again you don’t glean much from the clip but you don’t get healthy doses of Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which is still reason enough to watch this movie, just not sure if that will be in theaters or on DVD.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling like Heroes: Volume 2 was a complete waste of 11 episodes. The plots meandered, revealed marginally little, introduced no interesting new characters, and then killed off most of them anyways. What happened to the show we all grew to love last season?

Hopefully Tim Kring and his writing staff can fix those mistakes when it comes back for Volume 3. I say this because if they don’t fix the problems, which Kring has openenly admitted, then he’s going to lose a lot more viewers, this one included.

Recently, at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival, they displayed some upcoming footage of the next saga and by the crowd reaction we should be in for something fun. Not much is revealed, except there is lots of Sylar, H.R.G. indicates the big bag is like fighting “12 Sylars” which could be the shadowy organization, Elle is still in the picture (more Kristen Bell is always a good thing) and the most intriguing thing of all was the ending when we see Sylar and Mrs. Petrelli supposedly working together.

So now that the dust has settled over Brit’s 16-year-old sister getting pregs, everyone must have been asking themselves, well, what’s going to happen to mother Lynne Spears book about parenting?

Yes, “Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World” has been shelved indefinitely by the publishing house. Shelved, not cancelled.  MTV reports,

“The book is delayed indefinitely. It’s delayed, not canceled,” a spokesperson told the magazine. The spokesperson, who was not named, said the book, which Publishers Weekly had described as “Lynne Spears’ personal story of raising high-profile children while coming from a low-profile Louisiana community,” was actually put on hold last week. The spokesperson declined to say whether the focus of the book will change in light of Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy announcement, or if the decision was a result of the news about the latest scandal to rock the family.

In October, Spears and Thomas Nelson announced the deal for the book, which was slated to come out on Mother’s Day. At the time, a publishing rep who was not named told Us Weekly that it would be a parenting book “that’s going to have faith elements to it.” A manuscript was expected by this month.

Well, I guess she won’t be winning any parent of the year awards, or at least no more than say, Dina Lohan.  With that said though who would want to read a parenting book from a redneck who clearly hasn’t done a good job parenting her children?  Just asking, that’s all.

What with the holidays being a time for arts and crafts, and the current writer’s strike, it’s appropriate to all take a moment to acknowledge the art and the craft that is writing. I’d like to suggest that, if you are a true movie fan, you need to start paying attention to screenwriters.

I have a “Top Ten” list of writers who rarely let me down when it comes to providing enjoyable entertainment (Although most have at least one big stinker!).

The conventional wisdom is that film is a director’s medium and TV is a writer’s medium and that is somewhat true, with the lines being blurred so much recently. Bad direction can sink a great screenplay, and television often gives more time for things like complex character development. But a good screenwriter can definitely improve your odds of catching a great film. It’s the old adage that a good director can’t overcome a bad screenplay and a bad director can make a good movie from a good screenplay.

I actually began to compile this list long before the strike, but the timing is serendipitous. Most of us moviegoers tend to “collect” favorite stars and/or directors and make an attempt to see their movies when the come out. It isn’t quite like the old days where a “bankable” star could just about guarantee a successful opening weekend (usually considered to be box office receipts equal to at least one half of the film’s total budget). Unless of course, your name is Will Smith.

Huge stars like Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry and George Clooney couldn’t guarantee success for perfectly good films like A Mighty Heart, Things We Lost in the Fire, or Michael Clayton. So without further ado, I’d like to celebrate the art of screenwriting, an often overlooked aspect of filmmaking. We have five today and then five more tomorrow. This isn’t actually an ordered list, so don’t expect us Oysterites to numerate and give you the “number one greatest screenwriter.”

And by all means, if you have a personal favorite let us know in the comments below.

Lawrence Kasdan

The first guy who I really started noticing as a screenwriter was Lawrence Kasdan. He wrote the screenplay for Empire Strikes Back, my favorite Star Wars film, followed by writing and directing one of my favorite modern noir films, Body Heat, and then wrote the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In Continental Divide he made John Belushi believable as the lead in a rom-com, he wrote Return of the Jedi, and then wrote and directed everyone’s favorite movie about yuppies, The Big Chill. He’s followed those with Silverado, The Accidental Tourist, Grand Canyon, The Bodyguard (pure pap, but entertaining nonetheless), Wyatt Earp and Mumford. The notable stinker: the Stephen King adaptation, Dreamcatcher. At his best Kasdan manages to make the epic seem personal and even the personal, like a weekend reuniting with friends over an unexpected death seem positively gargantuan. That’s no easy feat to accomplish.

John Patrick Shanley

I noticed the next guy for much the same reason I noticed Kasdan: he wrote several movies in a row I liked, which were all in different genres. John Patrick Shanley showed amazing versatility when he wrote Five Corners, a 1960s period drama with Jodie Foster and John Turturro, followed by Moonstruck, and then a great quirky murder mystery called January Man.

These were followed by the hilarious and sort of modern classic rom-com Joe versus the Volcano, the “cannibalism” drama about the soccer team crash landing in the Andes mountains, Alive!, and the Michael Crichton adaptation, Congo in 1995. He hasn’t done much since then, other than a notable TV movie, Live from Baghdad.

He has a new movie in production called Doubt, based upon his own play which won the 2005 Tony Award, 2004-2005 Drama Desk Award, and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Doubt is about sexual abuse allegations at a Catholic School.

Nora Ephron

I admit it: I am a (straight) guy and I usually like romantic comedies. If–IF–they’re smart about it. Or have Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts in them. Nora Ephron, known primarily for that specific genre, has actually written some good dramas (Heartburn, Silkwood) and the romantic fantasy, Michael, but she will always be known for hitting the rom-com trifecta with When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.

Coincidentally, My Blue Heaven and Mixed Nuts are both underrated Steve Martin gems and though the meta-adaptation of Bewitched never really clicked with viewers you’ve got to at least give her credit for trying to make a television show adaptation clever and unique.

John Sayles

John Sayles is in the enviable position of usually directing his own screenplays, and of being an indie filmmaker whose projects nearly always make (at least some) money. Enough to allow him to make his next movie, anyways. He started with genre crap like Piranha and Lady in Red, but quickly distinguished himself with The Return of the Secaucus 7.

Some more crap, and then he went on a creative tear with a series of critically acclaimed films such as Baby, It’s You, Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, and Eight Men Out. He created a much beloved and extremely short-lived TV series called Shannon’s Deal, starring Jamey Sheridan.

Consequently, he may have single-handedly rescued Burt Reynolds’ career with Breaking In, followed by City of Hope, Passion Fish, an instant children’s classic called The Secret of Roan Innish. Lone Star, Limbo, Sunshine State, Silver City and Casa de los babies continued his streak of critically acclaimed independent work.

William Goldman

I want to be William Goldman in my next life. He writes successful novels, sometimes adapting them into successful screenplays. He is one of Hollywood’s most successful “script doctors”, rescuing other screenplays from mediocrity. And he writes original cinematic stories, as well.

Even if the only thing he had ever done was The Princess Bride that would make him one of the greatest of all time, but there’s more. Commentary by me need not apply to these movies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Stepford Wives (1975), All the President’s Men, Marathon Man. (If Psycho made a generation afraid to take a shower, and Jaws a generation afraid to go in the water, MM made a generation afraid to go to the dentist.)

He adapted Stephen King’s Misery, cemented Robert Downey, Jr’s stardom with Chaplin, wrote a nice update of Maverick, then turned in Absolute Power and The General’s Daughter. Interestingly enough he shares his major bomb as co-writer with Kasdan on Dreamcatcher. Mum’s been the word since that turd of a movie, but I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of William Goldman.

Tune in tomorrow for the final five screenwriters.

The recontexualization of music is nothing new. Predominantly, it’s been the use of samples in hip-hop to take familiar songs and bend and twist them and break them down and build the back up into something new. It might have reached its zenith during the mashup crazy of a few years back, notably on The Grey Album, where producer Danger Mouse took rhymes from Jay-Z and the music of The Beatles and coagulated them into an aural treat.

Everyone remembers the dawn of Napster and you couldn’t convince me otherwise that the single reason Napster was a success from the much talked about and spread cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” by The Gourds. At the time everyone got a kick out of the song, but no one could quite tell you who performed the track. Was it Phish? Was it String Cheese Incident? It was later until the dust settled.

Recently, a song that’s become sorta legendary in the same way has come this year from a white girl from Montclair, NJ named Jenny Owen Youngs. She’s only 26, but her version of Nelly’s “It’s Hot in Herre” pays both tribute and sorta mocks at the same time. There’s no doubt that Owen Youngs loves the song, but by singing it with folk underpinnings she draws attention to just how comicly ridiculous the song actually is. Musically, she has the chops from what I can tell to make her a musician worth watching.

Regardless, we haven’t been able to stop listening to this since a friend passed this along over the weekend. I like that on top of being irrepresably cute, she rocks this sort of preppy suburban look and isn’t trying to be remotely cool. But we all know not being cool and having a sense of humor makes you categorically cool.

Myspace: Jenny Owen Youngs
Website: Jenny Owen Youngs
Mp3: Jenny Owen Youngs - “It’s Hot in Herre”

Ms. Owen Youngs’s reissued debut album Batten the Hatches is out now via Nettworks Records.

Everyone in my generation sorta grew up with Mike J. Fox.  Alex P. Keating was our big brother on Family Ties, made us think we could travel in time and just how friggin’ cool that would be, made being a teenage werewolf seem appealing, tricked us into thinking we’d easily be able to work our way up from the mailroom to the boardroom.

In many ways he’s never left us because he was there on Spin City as we were just starting out in college and then when our own family members were diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease he so bravely announced to the world that yes, he too had the disease and that he would shoulder the burden for all those who suffered from it and do what he could to help fix the problem.

It’s odd to think of Michael J. Fox as a family member, but in this crazy time we live in when so many musicians and actors feel like family, well, it’s nice to know he can pass on a little wisdom.  His candor is a breath of fresh air. Via: Kottke

It started the summer before last summer, when the president vetoed the first Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. He had these families around him, these “snowflake babies,” which presented it like it was an either/or situation and the two were mutually exclusive. It was just such manipulation, and it just pissed me off so much.

When I see pictures of Lindsay Lohan in the car or Paris Hilton — the level of glee and the level of viciousness — wow. We’ve got a war goin’ on. We’ve got people dying. And we’re all up in arms about this girl.

No matter how much fame you have, it’s not something that belongs to you. If I’m famous, that doesn’t belong to me — that belongs to you. If you can’t remember who I am, I’m no longer famous.

I was never big on lunch boxes and all that stuff, and I look at it now and think, God, how much money I turned down. Oh, fuck, I’d do it in a heartbeat now.

I can’t always control my body the way I want to, and I can’t control when I feel good or when I don’t. I can control how clear my mind is. And I can control how willing I am to step up if somebody needs me.

Devin over at Chud has confirmed with several of his sources and ironed out some wrinkles regarding the upcoming Terminator trilogy.  Producers are planning movies numbered 4, 5, 6 in the series made famous by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This time around director McG (Charlie’s Angels, We Are Marshall) is stepping in to helm the first movie in the planned second trilogy.  Everything seemed like a joke until producers landed a casting coup convincing Christian Bale to play the part of humanity’s savior John Connor.

And now we sort of know what happens in the film.  Despite producers claims that John Connor will have a large role in the fourth movie, tentatively titled Terminator Salvation: Fight the Future, that is not the case.  His role will be expanded for movies number 5 and 6.

John Connor is not the main character of Terminator 4; that character is someone named Marcus. Marcus was put ‘out of commission’ before the nuclear holocaust on Judgment Day and he wakes up about 15 years before the future we see in the original Terminator films, which puts the movie at about 2015 or so. Marcus is a bad ass - think along the lines of Riddick - and what he finds is a blasted world filled with horror. Radiation poisoning, starvation, rampant jaywalking - all the things you expect post-apocalypse. There’s also John Connor, who is trying to build a utopian society while running the human resistance.

Connor’s role is apparently bigger in the second film; whoever they hire for Marcus (my understanding is that the part is not yet cast) will be around for all three films. Terminator 4 is going to be the most male-centric of all the Terminator films, but there is a butt busting female character by the name of Blair, a pilot for the human resistance.

They’re going to need some buttkickers, because the scope of the action in Terminator 4 is HUGE. Lots of machine action in this film, including some battles with the T-600s. Yup, the rubber skin Terminators. And there’s another familiar character that shows up - Reese shows up in a scene with John Connor. I don’t know what his involvement in the next two films will be, though.

Sounds like maybe this new Terminator franchise won’t suck, but I won’t hold my breath.  Though it certainly won’t be difficult to top T3: Rise of the Machines.  That movie was just awful.

Wired has an exceptionally done interview with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.  I can’t think of two musicians I’d rather have sit down to talk about the state of music and the business itself that these two gentleman.  They’re both incredibly intelligent and responsible for two legendary bands.

As a bonus the article also has soundbites of the two talking and Thom York sounds positively ecstatic to be talking with Byrne.  But then again who wouldn’t be?

(Photo by James Day at Radiohead’s Oxford offices)
Byrne: So this bypasses all those reviewers and goes straight to the fans.

Yorke: In a way, yeah. And it was a thrill. We mastered it, and two days later it was on the site being, you know, preordered. That was just a really exciting few weeks to have that direct connection.

Byrne: And letting people choose their own price?

Yorke: That was [manager Chris Hufford's] idea. We all thought he was barmy. As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, “Are you sure about this?” But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn’t nihilistic, implying that the music’s not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that’s just people having a little faith in what we’re doing.

Byrne: And that works for you guys. You have an audience ready. Like me — if I hear there’s something new of yours out there, I’ll just go and buy it without poking around about what the reviews say.

Yorke: Well, yeah. The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is the fact that we’ve gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It’s not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We’re out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are.

Head over to Wired to read the entire conversation.

I was thinking of ways to write more about this, but in the end I think the House Resolution 847, that was introduced to Congress on Dec. 6 by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and passed overwhelming on Dec. 11 by a margin of 372 - 9 (50 absented), largely speaks for itself.

However, reading between the lines one might surmise that this bill, which is about recognizing Christmas’s importance to Americans, is actually the first step in establishing Christianity as America’s official state religion.

That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

More than anything, it also sets up the dubious political machinations to force American policy into protecting Christians worldwide.  I’ve no issue with Christianity, but I do take issue with the utter lack of respect for the Founding Fathers’s ideal of a separation of church and state.

I guess that it was a permeable separation invisioned by Madison and Hamilton and not the hard separation invisioned by Jefferson that has become accepted.

Hugh Grant’s peripheral holiday movie, About a Boy is just about one of my favorite movies.  I adore it in the same way that you want to pinch you little niece’s cheeks or curl up in a blanket on a snowy day with a cup of spiked hot chocolate.  It might not necessarily be considered a “holiday” movie, per say, but more than any movie in recent past it fills you with the same feeling you’re supposed to have during the holidays.

A lot of that has to do with the story, but an even larger portion of that has to do with the soundtrack from the wildly eclectic British songwriter Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough.  So what happens when Starbucks decides to use a snippet of his song “I love NYE?”  Well, let’s just say that the result are full of cheer right up until you realize that the cute and coy animation is nothing more than a Starbucks advertisement.

I feel so let down and maybe the worst part is the slight feeling of elation about the holidays just as the coffe giant kicks you in the shins.

The animals are kinda cute though, so maaaybe we can give them a pass and stop being a scroogy scrooge.

I was going to try and get to this yesterday, but got tied up doing lots of other things. Pitchfork Media has, for good or bad, the single most important music publication in the last ten years. They have a large staff and they review and listen to more music than anyone could possibly imagine, but with their assumed status as reverend taste maker they