http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/articles.sec-8436-1-film-tv.html By Jesse Fruhwirth

“I love Mormons,” was the last thing filmmaker Reed Cowan said to me. “I just want them to love me back.” Cowan is the writer, director and executive producer of the upcom]]> By Scott Renshaw

If you embrace movies as works of art, not just as works of commerce, then here’s why you should embrace Coraline: Not a frame of it looks like it was crafted with a thought to who might actually want to buy a ticket. nI mean that as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. In contemporary Hollywood, there’s only one paradigm for selling any kind of feature animation, and that’s s...]]> By Bill Frost

Panicked letters have been flooding in about the Feb. 17 (maybe) Digital TV Transition—not to The Only TV Column That Matters™, of course, but I’m always here to help. The following is a compendium (means summary) of concerns compiled into convenient FAQ (means Frequently Asked Questions, or Frost Ain’t Qualified) form. Prepare to have your Fears All Quelled (another FAQ). ...]]> By Scott Renshaw

"The ’90s fucking sucked,” observes Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) at one point in The Wrestler. He’s referring specifically to the music—how “that pussy Kurt Cobain” killed the era of the hair-metal classics he loved—but it’s obvious he’s also referring to his own life. Once a golden-haired star of big-time professio...]]> By Bill Frost

Super Bowl XLIII Sunday, Feb. 1 (NBC)nSporting Event of Some Sort: The Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Arizona Cardinals at Tampa Bay, Fla. The Only TV Column That Matters™ only knows about the Super Bowl because it’s being pimped to death across the NBC/Universal broadcast and cable spectrum—even with football-centric episodes of Burn Notice, Monk and Psych on USA this week! (Thanks...]]> By Scott Renshaw

Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road was one of the most staggering literary experiences I’ve had in years; I just didn’t see it coming. Sure, I picked it up—as I do most of my fiction reading—because I knew a movie version was on the way, and I had a vague awareness that it was about suburban disaffection. But I was several chapters into its jagged, stomach-punch ...]]> By Bill Frost

Burn Notice Thursday, Jan. 22 (USA)nReturn: In the second half of Season 2, we’ll finally learn why Michael Westen (yes, he survived that cliffhanger explosion—you were concerned?) was fired from the spy game, as well as mysterious Carla’s role in his burn notice, and … wait, no? It’s back to Freelance Job of the Week? Saving another woman in distress? With gratuitou...]]> By None

nIn 1985, a struggling little operation called the U.S. Film Festival turned a corner when it was taken over by Robert Redford’s nonprofit Sundance Institute. The rest is 25 years of snow-covered independent cinema history. nWith the festival’s 25th Sundance-supervised incarnation on the horizon, that history continues to be written. By way of looking back—and wondering what we&r...]]> By MaryAnn Johanson

That Defiance is not relentlessly grim—even as it’s, you know, still fairly grim—is a credit to director Edward Zwick, whose track record on intense storytelling ranges from the starkly brutal (the 1983 TV movie Special Bulletin, about a nuclear terrorist attack on American soil) to the laughably off-key (2003’s The Last Samurai). Here, though—in the tale of three rog...]]> By Bill Frost

Battlestar Galactica Friday, Jan. 16 (Sci-Fi)nReturn: When the first half of Battlestar Galactica’s fourth and final season left off six years, er, months ago, the humans and the Cylons (including the one yet to be revealed) had joined forces and finally reached Earth. Unfortunately, the planet was a monochromatic blue wasteland, the result of a nuclear holocaust and perhaps some ’80s ...]]> By Scott Renshaw

Clint Eastwood is not a great actor. Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have been a particularly daring critical statement; the odd outlier like Tightrope notwithstanding, he was known primarily as a guy who could squint one-dimensionally while firing a gun, or squint one-dimensionally while being punched by an orangutan. nBut at some point during his cinematic dotage, we all started cutting Ea...]]> By Bill Frost

nnnn n n n Former child stars in crisisn Current child stars in crisis n Best Week Ever, new format n Best Week Ever, old format n Any members of Poison n Any of Poison’s members n Anything … of Love n Prank shows n Skank shows n Kardashians n H...]]> By None

nn n n {::INSERTAD::}n n nnScott Renshaw’s Top 10 of 2008 nn Rachel Getting Married: Recriminations are few in Jonathan Demme’s simple, powerful, portrait of a family trying to function for one weekend in spite of its dysfunction.n My Winnipeg: Guy Maddin delivers a quirky, hilarious salute to his hometown in which a uniquely stylized vision creates...]]> By Bill Frost

Game Show in My Head Saturday, Jan. 3 (CBS)nSeries Debut: A new hidden-camera reality show from Ashton Kutcher? Hosted by Joe Rogan? I am so elsewhere! Setup: “Contestants wear an earpiece as they go about life in the city and are instructed back in the studio by Rogan. If the contestants can perform crazy, outrageous and often embarrassing tasks in public, they can go home with big money.&r...]]> By Scott Renshaw

Here’s a helpful comparison for understanding why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button really shouldn’t have been made into a movie: Consider Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a “gigantic vermin.” How would that transformation be realized for the screen? What w...]]> By Scott Renshaw

I’m not sure Frost/Nixon actually means all that much of anything. And furthermore, I’m not sure it actually matters. nAt this time of year, critics spend a lot of time watching dramas battling to prove that they have enough gravitas to deserve year-end awards. They tell stories of great people and/or great historical moments; they journey to far-off lands; they explore weighty themes,...]]> By Bill Frost

The Best n Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, Life on Mars (ABC): The first two have been canceled; the latter will return Jan. 28, 2009, paired with Lost. Life on Mars, about a present-day cop mysteriously transported back to 1973, actually improves on the British original—when was the last time that happened? nGary Unmarried (CBS): Jay Mohr’s sitcom managed to wring genuine laughs fr...]]> By Scott Renshaw

Posters and other advertisements for Seven Pounds promise … well, not all that much, actually. In a film marketing universe where the general object of a trailer or commercial is to give away pretty much the entire plot, Sony Pictures has been downright elusive about what the hell this thing is even about. Maybe we can determine that it’s a drama, and that there are tragic elements&md...]]> By Bill Frost

nnnDVDnn n n n Burn After Readingn Dumb gym monkeys (Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand) attempt to extort money for misplaced CIA files; hilarity and George Clooney’s beard ensue. It’s like the Coen Brothers’ other film, The Big Lebowski. Only not. (Dec. 21; NBCUni.com)n n n n Death Racen Like in...]]> By Scott Renshaw

Everyone loves a fairy tale. Everyone loves a love story. And everyone seems to love Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, an underdog crowd-pleaser with just enough of a gritty undercurrent that people who generally don’t embrace underdog crowd-pleasers won’t consider it too frivolous. nThat’s assuming, of course, that you think underdog crowd-pleasers actually work with a gr...]]>