The New Republic

Bram Stoker must be spinning in his grave. In Dracula, he introduced one of the great hero-intellectuals in modern literature in Professor Abraham Von Helsing, "a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day." In the movie Van Helsing, by contrast, Stoker's creation is rendered as basically a meathead. Not only has he lost his academic pedigree, he shows little familiarity even with the details of his chosen profession of monster-slaying. READ MORE >>

In the first few oh-so-riveting minutes of Tim Story's remake of the French hit, Taxi, two undercover cops infiltrate the offices of Cuban phone card scammers. One actor is believable, but his fake-mustachioed partner hails from another planet, sporting retro-1970s leather and a terrible (and terribly inconsistent) Scarface accent. The idea is that this cop--this tries-too-hard hack--will blow the deal, and thus win laughs. READ MORE >>

"Cutting social commentary"; "acutely hilarious sociology"; "a harbinger of hope ... for future feminist comedies." These were some of the peculiar accolades bestowed upon the movie Mean Girls when it opened in theaters. Why did critics accord it such stature? Doubtless because it was, in the words of one, the "best teen comedy ever adapted from a sociological study." In actuality, the source material--Rosalind Wiseman's book Queen Bees %amp% Wannabes--is not a sociological study but a parenting guide, and Mean Girls is in no meaningful way "adapted" from it. READ MORE >>

Yesterday, at 10:15 a.m. Pacific time, an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale hit central California; news reports claimed that you could feel the shakes in Los Angeles, but no one I spoke to in the area noticed a thing. One day prior a similar sort of seismic activity struck the entertainment industry: Conan O'Brien had finally signed a contract to succeed Jay Leno in 2009 as the network's newest "Tonight Show" host. It shocked me that Hollywood insiders I knew balked at speculating about the news. Were network omertas keeping them silent? No, they said. READ MORE >>

It's often said that smell is the sense most closely tied to memory. This is nonsense. Yes, a scent may on occasion provoke an emphatic, unmediated recollection, but it is typically an imprecise one--a general period in one's life rather than a particular moment. Our specific memories, by contrast, are primarily visual and auditory, not unlike a movie playing in the mind's eye. It's hardly surprising, then, that cinema has often been described as a kind of synthetic memory.  As John Malkovich, playing director F.W. READ MORE >>

There are different ways a director can disappear from public consciousness. He can release films so infrequently that for long periods of time people forget he's alive (Terence Malick). Or he can hide in plain sight, steadily churning out movies that betray little sign of his former genius (Woody Allen). The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan (the former directs, the latter produces, and both co-write), appear set on the latter course. READ MORE >>

It's almost embarrassing to write about The Passion of the Christ at this point. Nearly as much ink has been spilled lauding or condemning the movie as fake blood was spilled filming it. This is particularly problematic for those, like me, who found the movie cynical and grotesque: It's clear that its extraordinary success was due overwhelmingly to its attendant controversies, controversies it was consciously engineered to stoke. READ MORE >>

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<?xml:namespace prefix = dsl />Almost a decade ago, Danish director Lars von Trier co-founded the Dogme 95 movement, which produced an "indisputable set of rules" for filmmakers called "The Vow of Chastity." Among its ten commandments: "Shooting must be done on location"; "The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa"; "The camera must be hand-held"; "Special lighting is not acceptable." READ MORE >>

The Da Vinci Code By Dan Brown (Doubleday, 454 pp., $24.95) The Rule of Four By Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason (The Dial Press, 372 pp., $24) Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking By Darrel L. Bock (Nelson Books, 188 pp., $19.99) Q By Luther Blissett (Harcourt, 750 pp., $26) READ MORE >>