The working-class Italian, Russian and Irish folks who populated Bay Ridge back when it spawned Saturday Night Fever are still representing, although an army of ex–Park Slope stroller-pushers now rolls among them. But fear not: The Bugaboo-to-adult ratio is still highly in favor of the grown-ups. Yay, grown-ups! [Read]

One of the reasons Battlestar Galactica works so well is the same reason Planet of the apes became a classic: In both, humanity’s demise is rooted in its Alfred E. Neuman-esque attitude toward the machines of war. [Read]

The argument against hand-drawn animation is based not on financial realities, but on the poor performance of a few features made back when Disney was gnawing off its own animation arm and DreamWorks was, well, being DreamWorks (which is to say when DreamWorks was gnawing off its own neck). [Read]

I now look forward to Carrie Bradshaw’s big screen debut about as much as I look forward to the day when I arrive in hell and am told David Spade is my roommate. [Read]

Empowerment, of course, does not greenlight movies. Cocaine-addled film executives greenlight movies, and they must be spoken to in a language they understand. Here’s how to sell it to them: [Read]

Truly, 2007 was a crap time to be an American actress with half a brain, —and this year isn’’t looking any better. Last Friday saw the release of two very different dramas driven by homegrown female talent: “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Bonneville.” That would be good news if the former wasn’’t cotton candy and the latter wasn’’t gruel (with a side of extra gruel). [Read]

When Saturday Night Live woke from its strike coma Saturday night, the first question viewers had for it was, Where the hell are you going to find a black guy to play Barack Obama. Always obliging, SNL answered in the cold open: Who needs a black guy when you’ve got a Latino and a bucket of face paint? [Read]

Thursday, Feb. 28: Janitors find Hal Holbrook asleep inside the Kodak Theatre. They clip a note to the front of his shirt and place him on a city bus. [Read]

“Angelina Jolie is too skinny.”

“I asked you about her acting.”

Talking Wall-E, Wanted and Trumbo June 27 on the BPP from NPR. [Listen]

Director: Peter Askin
Rating: PG-13
Grade: 4 globes

“Trumbo” is adapted from Christopher Trumbo’s play about his father, the late screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in 1956 after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the film — a collection of interviews, file footage and actors’ recitations of Trumbo’s writings — David Straitharn sets the tone with the first reading, taken from the author’s 1970 Laurel Award acceptance speech: “The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one that survived on either side was untouched by evil.” (more…)