The Top 10 so far and the craptastic, forthcoming fall movie season

So, it’s been an interesting first half of the moviegoing year. There’s been a decent number of fantastic movies, most of them surprises or lesser-known movies (which, actually, is a serious problem no matter how many cinephiles like championing shit you’ve never heard of). The last eight months were also the best shot you’ll have this year of seeing a wicked-awesome flick, but more on that in this very insightful hyperlink. Right now…

REVIEW: ‘Observe and Report’

If there is a silver lining to be found in the wholesale dismantling of our nation’s newspaper industry, it must be the forced retirement of a certain kind of film critic. The kind of person who watches a movie like “Knocked Up” and feels the preoccupied need, even while praising it, to reduce it to simply a “lovably profane” romantic comedy. Or the kind of guy who didn’t like — in fact, hated — “The Cable Guy.” Or the legion of people who trashed the insanely enjoyable, riotously funny “Just Friends.”

The Times writes about Jody Hill

Filmmaker Jody Hill, right, and Danny McBride

David Itzkoff at The New York Times wrote a decent story last weekend on North Carolina filmmaker Jody Hill whose second movie, “Observe and Report,” came out Friday. I just got back from seeing it.

TRAILER REVIEW: ‘Observe and Report’

UPDATE: Warner Brothers yanked the trailer off YouTube. Another version is here at Trailer Addict, however. Good times.

A little bit’s been said about “Observe and Report” for two reasons: 1) It’s Seth Rogen’s next comedy, and his movies are now essentially events among the Apatow-converted. And 2) It’s a comedy about a mall cop.

Filed under: WTF?

I was watching a Jody Hill short film on YouTube about Danny McBride learning to skateboard, and one of the related links took me to this rotund fellow who apparently hails from Towson, Md. I clicked the link, was immediately embarrassed, shocked, beguiled and then completely fascinated by what this dude has the stones to do.