Some Movie News to Ponder This Weekend

--Andrew Garfield has been cast as Peter Parker in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. And what surprises most people is that he hasn't been in hardly anything. What makes me so excited is that I actually met this guy a few years ago during a screening of Lions for Lambs (2007). He was born in Los Angeles but grew up in England, and I think he's a much more inspired choice than all the other options they were considering. Yes, he looks like a terrible hipster, but he's actually pretty cool, at least in Q&A sessions.

--Twilight Eclipse made $68.5 million on its opening Wednesday, which is the second-biggest opening day gross in history. The number one record is held by Twilight New Moon. As if the news couldn't get more facepalmy, Eclipse indeed knocked The Dark Knight back to third. For the record, though, whenever June 30th lands on a Wednesday and July 4th on a Sunday, a box-office record gets set. No joke: Spider-Man 2 did it in 2002.

--According to the critics, Shyamalan still sucks. The Last Airbender (2010) is getting awful reviews, with one critic going so far as to suggest that this proves Shyamalan made a deal with the devil to make The Sixth Sense (1999).

--Mel Gibson is still racist and sexist, if the reports (and audiotapes) are to be believed. The specifics don't matter, but people are now wondering if Gibson's brief comeback in the not-horribly-received The Edge of Darkness (2009) was way too prematurely announced. Last years hottest spec script, about a man who talks to a beaver-puppet which remains forever attached to his hand (shows you how desperate the studios are for good spec scripts), which Mel Gibson is currently shooting, has been pronounced dead-on-arrival by many a critic. Me? I wasn't gonna see it because of the logline, not the lead.

--Don't ever trust a headline that ends in a question mark.

See? That wasn't so painful. Next week we get Predators, and then the Friday after that comes the big mac-daddy of the summer: Inception *BRAAAAAMH* That was the sound of the epic bass, which must accompany any mention of Inception *BRAAAAAMH*

--Serge