“Green Lantern” opens nationwide a week from Friday. Warner Bros. has done a great job promoting the DC Comic adaptation, starring Ryan Reynolds. But in one location in New York City they’ve taken the film’s marketing plan to a whole new level: the lower level. Inside Penn Station – “In brighest day, in darkest night, […]

A couple of big announcements from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences concerning the Best Animated Feature category. First, the length a film needs to be to be eligible for an Oscar nomination has been shortened from 70-minutes to only 40-minutes. This means the upcoming “Winnie the Pooh” will have a chance to […]

Jennifer Yuh Nelson joined DreamWorks Animation in the late 1990’s and worked in the story department on both “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” (2002) and the original “Madagascar” (2005). But her next job would help lead to her latest, director of “Kung Fu Panda 2”. I spoke with her this week about here career and […]

“Kung Fu Panda 2” is DreamWorks Animation’s 22nd film. The studio’s first film was “Antz” back in 1998. Pixar’s first film was “Toy Story” in 1995 (3 years earlier), but “Cars 2” will only be their 12th movie. Why has DreamWorks made more movies in a shorter amount of time? It makes sense once you […]

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” will now open on Wednesday June 29 instead of Friday July 1. This should come as no surprise, as it’s heading into the 4th of July weekend, when Wednesday releases are common. In fact 2009’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” opened on a Wednesday (June 24) and it made $62 […]

I was watching “The Simpsons” Sunday night and was just quick enough to change the channel when the special preview clip of “Super 8” began. I read about the 4-night campaign that Paramount is doing to publicize the film, but forgot that it was coming. Fortunately I’m pretty quick when it comes to the TV […]

Right around this time last year I predicted that “Toy Story 3” would win the 2010 Summer Box Office battle and be the highest-grossing film of the year. Most other critics and box office “experts” disagreed. Well, the rest, as they say, is history – as “TS3” went-on to break records and gross over $415M […]

According to Movieline.com, there is now a reason why Disney/Pixar’s “Newt” (which was supposed to open in theaters this summer until they switched the date with “Cars 2”) was cancelled last year. One word: “Rio”. John Lasseter (Pixar’s Chief Creative Office and the director of the first two “Toy Story” films, “Cars” and “Cars 2”) […]

The Summer movie season officially kicks off Friday with “Thor” (though “Fast Five” apparently had other ideas). Here’s my list of the 5 movies I’m most looking forward to seeing this Summer. It was hard for me to choose only five, since I’ll be seeing at least 20 over the next four months, and many […]

I went to see “African Cats” on Earth Day, and it may have been the worst experience I’ve had in a theater in the 5 year that I’ve been a critic. Dozens of people, kids and adults, talking, texting, getting-up and walking around. There were crying babies, and little kids talking non-stop (including one sitting […]