Peter Sollet’s romantic comedy reviewed in 140 characters or less.

In the interest of brevity, as we sit on the eve of Selection Sunday, I’ve thrown in my review of this film posted a few minutes ago on Twitter.

Not much more to say about it than that. The film is really carried by Rudd and a surprisingly-decent performance by McLovin’  Christopher Mintz-Plasse. 13-year-old Bobbe J. Thompson steals every scene he’s in and is hilarious throughout (as he did during his guest stint on Human Giant where he played himself as the head of Child Casting Agency, Shutterbugs). Sean William Scott players Stiffler again. Elizabeth Bank is underutilized and forgettable and the best performances of the film are turned in by Rudd, Thompson and Jane Lynch. 

Grade: B-

This documentary had a lot in its favor before I slipped it into my DVD player to watch it before Idol tonight. For one, I’m a sucker for sports documentaries like this so it would have taken a lot for this doc, produced and directed by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, to turn me off.  After a long day of work, full of the usual end-of-journalism hoopla with talk of layoffs, wage decreases and furloughs, I was in the mood to be distracted and boy was I.

While Yauch gets much of the limelight, the real star of this film in the soundtrack. Yauch masterfully uses a slew of modern hip hop hits (and even a Beastie Boys classic) to masterfully enhance every jump shot, block and dunk to something of a masterpiece, often cutting together the same play from multiple camera angles at multiple speeds.  The sound editing in this film is also nothing short of amazing. There are several moments in the film when all of the noise is cut except for the subtle thud of footsteps and the pounding of the ball on the ashpalt as a player moves down the court. 

As a basketball film, Yauch’s movie is incredibly entertaining. Where it starts to get a little dicey is when Yauch attempts to comment on the use of basketball as a vehicle for social advancement for some of the inner-city players and the incredible hype forced upon the incredibly young by the interage age, typified by a comment made in the film by someone that anyone with an internet service can have a recruit ranking website. The film that “Gunnin…” will most often be compared to is 1994’s Hoop Dreams, but its a much less effective social commentary, more style over Hoop Dreams’ incredible amounts of compelling substance.  Instead this movie feels like am more stylish version of 2001’s “Preps: Chicago Hoops,” a show on Fox Net that followed a handful of Chicago-area prepstars – including Eddy Curry and Duke guard Sean Dockery – through their senior year.

The ineffective social commentary aside, this film is stylish, funky and endlessly entertaining. A must-watch for the avid or even casual basketball fan.

Grade: A solid B+

/Film has the movie poster for Kevin Smith’s new Seth Rogen-powered romantic comedy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The film has gotten a lot of attention from the movie blogging community for its battles with the MPAA, who initially gave the film an NC-17 rating.

One of the movie blogs that I read regularly, the aptly-titled TheMovieBlog.com, featured a rant from its editor, in which he encouraged movie bloggers and the readers of his blog to boycott Variety, essentially the New York Times of show business news.

What I find interesting about the editor’s argument is that he says that blogs, like his, often credit other sources for stories it gets and provides backlinks to them to help drive traffic to the person who broke the story but Variety, he claims, isn’t doing the same. Without getting into specifics, the editor accuses Variety of basically passing off the content of various movie blogs, including his own, as its own. If this is true, this is an ethics nightmare for a news source as reputable as Variety, however, being a journalist, I have a few questions that might help put the editor’s call for a Variety boycott into perspective:

• Is Variety re-publishing, word for word, the content of bloggers? If so, that’s a deplorable practice. If they are taking an idea that they get from a blog and doing their own reporting on it, that’s media, folks. It happens all the time with television and newspapers. A newspaper will break a story and a couple days later, quelle surprise, an eerily similar story will appear on the nightly news. I’ve had anchors read my copy, almost word-for-word over stories that they produced. It sucks, It’s frustrating but that’s what happens when you become a media producer. You’re producing media that lots of other people are seeing, including your competitors. Take the story of the Gloucester, Mass. teenage pregnancy pact. The newspaper in Gloucester had been working that story since March before Time broke the story nationally with a story of its town. I bet they’d like a little credit for that story but if Time did its own reporting, they probably won’t get any and that’s life
• Have they tried contacting an editor at Variety? If you’re accusing a news source of plagiarism, that’s bad news for the paper and even worse news for the reporter doing it. Give Variety a call. Newspapers don’t take these kinds of things lightly.

UPDATE:  Sent an e-mail to John Campea, editor of TheMovieBlog, who referred me to a couple of other movie blog editors. I hope to have an update on this story tomorrow.

It’s pretty tough to review a movie that was made in 1994 for about $30,000, the same way you’d review a movie made in 2008 for $30 million but, for me, Clerks was one of the first Indie films I ever saw and for that holds a special place in my heart.

So for that reason, I overlook most of the film’s community theater-level acting, bad editing and terrible overdubs.

I think every movie-lover sees something of themselves in Clerks and sees something of themselves in its everyman director, Kevin Smith. The film is the ultimate, “Hey, I can do that!” It’s a bunch of friends, some maxed out credit cards and a convenience store. It’s not pretentious, it’s hardly great-looking but the film works for me.

A little crude but never lowest common denominator, the film has a certain sarcastic, acerbic sensibility that makes it tough not to enjoy.

Stylish, clever, well-written, yes a little cartoonish and absurd, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is Guy Ritchie’s masterpiece or at the very least beats the pants off of any crappy movie he’s made since marrying Madonna.

I think it’s easy to say that Lock, Stock… is an overrated film, like so many other great indie films simply by virtue of the fact that everyone talks and raves about it. But there’s a reason for that. This film is a real blast to watch, though I find it difficult to watch without English subtitles.

Featuring a pretty great performance from Sting and the only film were former footballer Vinnie Jones isn’t playing a complete caricature of himself, Lock, Stock.. is the godfather of the ultra-violent, modern day heist film. Not to mention, watching it last night convinced me that, multiple Transporters aside, Jason Statham can be great if given the right script, the right role and some good direction.

Now that it appears Madonna and Guy Ritchie may be on the outs, everyone who loved this film and it’s follow-up Snatch, which I liked far less than Lock, Stock…, can keep their fingers crossed that the master of modern day heist can return to his old form or at the very least not attempt anything like that Swept Away remake ever again.

As writers return to begin working after a 100-day strike that shortened many of our favorite shows (The Office) and may have ruined a few (Heroes), it looks as though there’s a chance that actors may be on their way out to the picket lines.

Negotiations continue between the Screen Actors Guild of America and the major networks and studios on a new contract as the old contract nears its 12:01 a.m. Tuesday expiration date.

What makes this situation very unique and frankly interesting is that not all actors are members of the Screen Actors Guild, as was seemingly the case when the WGA went on strike late last year. While it represents the overriding majority of working actors, many A-list actors belong to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It should be noted that 44,000 actors belong to both groups.

The AFTRA’s membership is set to vote to ratify a newly brokered deal it reached with the networks, a deal SAG has actively campaigned against.

Also thrown into the mix are all of the other guilds that were adversely affected by the 100-day WGA strike and fear the reprecussions of yet another lengthy labor dispute.

The national president of the International Cinematographers Guild was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter as writing in a letter to his members:

“This movie has to end soon,” he added. “The paltry gains for which SAG continues to fight do not justify the pain a strike or continued slowdown will bring to those who work in this industry, who fight to pay their mortgages, feed their families and keep their health coverage intact.”

As of now, SAG has not sought a strike authorization from its members and the studios have not locked out the actors but with less than 24 hours before their deal expires, things could, once again, get very interesting in Hollywood.

Stay tuned.

Those looking for a different take on the Bond Film, which seems to be a genre onto itself, won’t find it in Martin Campbell’s 2006 Casino Royale, which featured Layer Cake’s Daniel Craig in his debut as Agent 007.

The film has all the usual trappings of a Bond film: Really awesome cars, slow-motion shots of bikini-clad women emerging from the ocean or a pool, some suspect acting and some not-so-clever wordplay (Eva Green’s character is told that her pseudonym is Stephanie Broadchest upon entering the Casino Royale). While the film is a marked improvement from the literally unwatchable Pierce Brosnan installments, it’s far from perfect.

At almost two and a half hours, the film clearly has no idea when to end, something I really noticed the third time watching this movie. When you do finally get to the end, though I won’t give it away, you don’t feel as if you’ve earned that ending because, frankly, it doesn’t make any sense.

Daniel Craig is alright as James Bond though a little silly and overacted at times, see the torture scene, Dame Judi Dench is great as M, ditto for Jeffrey Wright as a CIA.

Some movies you really grow an affinity for after watching them a few times but upon watching Casino Royale again, I really grew to resent the film’s flaws. Yes, some of the action scenes are great but where movies like this need to excel, the plot and the storyline, Casino Royale simply falls short.

Certainly an enjoyable watch with tempered expectations, just be careful not to watch it too many times.

With all of the sports I care about on hiatus until July or August, I thought I’d embark on a little project here at the Dispatch. For the next month or so, I will be reviewing all of the movies in my own personal DVD collection. The reviews won’t be as long or as detailed as the I finally got around to seeing…. reviews but I think it might be a fun way to pass the time and review some movies that maybe you (and especially me) haven’t thought about in a while.