The News: All-Positive Friday!

By S.T. VanAirsdale

A special holiday edition, as per tradition, of some of today's more upbeat movie news of note from around New York:

--As you can imagine, the day after Thanksgiving isn't yielding a bounty of developing stories of either positive or negative timbre. But I can't withhold my heartened state at seeing how well reviewers are taking to Starting Out in the Evening, whose nuance, upon my first viewing at Sundance, I was worried would be misunderstood by an increasingly impatient critical establishment. This Thanksgiving, I am grateful I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

--If you're going to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, expect a glimmering new 70mm, 3-D intro to replace the hoary old crap you've endured since 2001. Santa apparently comes "bursting out of the clouds" upstate in this one, flying low down the Hudson and beneath the GW, on which a typically traffic-addled 2-D Jesus blows into his bangs, checks his watch and sighs his own name in exasperation.

--"Scoop" of the Day: Someone at Paramount has seen Cloverfield -- and liked it! Shocking, but again, you try finding good news this morning.

--The commentary of the week likely belongs to the AV Club's Noel Murray, who offers this terrific analysis of the evolution of Entertainment Weekly's film coverage: "[T]he entertainment world and those who follow it are still best-served by old-fashioned observe-and-quote magazine journalism, even when it takes a light tone. There’s still a place for what EW does—or at least what it used to do." Discussion ensues in the comments, itself compulsive reading for this off day. Have a good weekend!

Posted at November 23, 2007 7:47 AM