Credit where credit's due...

I've been fairly critical of some of the Guild's decisions recently, but I've got no complaints about the one-two punch of filing unfair labor practices charges and the decision to negotiate with the studios on an individual basis. Good job, guys. And if the rumors are true and the negotiations have kept stalling thanks to a small handful of slobbering fanatics, this may turn out to be a brilliant bit of gamesmanship.

Now let's just hope that something develops before the DGA can fuck us in the ass.

Again.

In other news, I AM LEGEND might be the most frustrating movie of the year. It comes roaring out of the gate with some nicely creepy imagery, and the first encounter with the "Dark Seekers" (Yeah, because that sounds less corny than "vampire.") is genuinely terrifying.

And then the monsters turn into shrieking rejects from a Stephen Sommers movie and the movie promptly goes flying off the tracks. From the cringe-worthy Shrek scene to the most out-of-the-goddamn-blue Message From God since SIGNS, the movie just gets worse and worse. And naturally, everything that made Matheson's original novel interesting and haunting gets jettisoned in favor of an ending where people snarl at each other and then blow up.

Oh, and Will Smith becomes obsessed with the Bob Marley album "Legend." Seriously. Because, you know, he is one. And I have no idea how such a cutesy, dumbfuck idea survived the entire development process, but every time he reached for that CD, I started wishing for a hand grenade of my very own.

And if you ever needed definitive proof that CGI is killing the horror genre, here's a shining example. The "Dark Seekers" and their monster dogs ("Dark Sniffers"?) are horribly, hilariously unscary. They scurry up telephone poles and fling themselves through the air like bastard superballs, but they never once look tangible. They're weightless, weirdly-shiny cartoons. And you can't scare an audience if there's no suspension of disbelief.

The six minutes of footage from THE DARK KNIGHT, on the other hand, were phenomenal. If the rest of the film can somehow live up to that scene, SPIDER-MAN 2 might finally have some real competition.

My neighbor has a big fat cock.

I can't imagine any reason for owning a rooster in North Hollywood that doesn't involve A) eating its sweet, sweet roosterflesh, or B) attaching cute little bird-sized razor blades to its talons before forcing it to fight to the death in some sweaty, smoke-filled garage down in the Valley of the Mud People.

The cock-a-doodling little fuck seems doomed either way, which is just fine with me. If I wanted to rise with the sun, I'd set my alarm clock.

More randomness:

Yesterday I answered my door to find some huge guy with a ponytail and a deathmetal t-shirt standing there. He was dripping sweat--and despite what you may think about Southern California, yesterday was cold--and his eyes were very, very wide. Like, anime character-wide. "I live on the other side of the building," he whispered. "And I think there's someone in my apartment."

He was literally whispering, by the way. And his voice was shaking, while his eyes kept darting back and forth.

Thinking quickly, I said: "Oh."

"Yeah," he said. "You mind if I come in?"

Now I may be a dumbass, but I'm not stupid. This clearly guy either wants to rape me or steal my new TV. And I'm not sure which would be worse, but I do know this sweaty son of a bitch is lying. He doesn't live in my building. I take another look at his muttonchops and decide he's definitely here for the rape.

I don't own a gun...not because I dislike violence, but just because I'm afraid I'll get drunk and accidentally shoot myself while diving sideways over a couch, Tequilla-style. But I *do* own a ridiculously sharp X-acto knife that I leave stashed just behind my front door, so while this guy is talking, I'm sloooooooooooowly reaching behind the door with my free hand and sliding the blade free. It feels good in my hand. Real good. And in the background somewhere, Battle Without Honor or Humanity suddenly starts playing. Yes. I've been training for this moment my entire life. Well, not really, but I have seen lots of Ashley Judd movies.

"Um...that's not gonna happen," I tell him, "but if you want to wait out here, I'll call the cops for you."

"No cops," he mumbled. "Don't want no cops here. Can I just, you know, come in and sit down?"

"No," I tell him. "Sorry, but no way."

Now he's getting desperate, shuffling from one foot to the next. "I just need some water, man," he pleads. "Just let me come in and get a glass of water."

"Fuck that. See ya." I shut the door in his face.

And now I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. My first attempted mugging, and I passed with flying colors! Wallet and sphincter firmly intact. Sorry, Crazy Homeless Guy, but you'll just have to settle for one of my elderly Persian neighbors, ha-ha.

Except later I saw the same Crazy Homeless Guy on the sidewalk talking with another one of my neighbors, and they seemed to know each other. And judging from the nasty glances they shot me as soon as I came around the corner, it's not hard to figure out who they were talking about.

Whoops.

In my defense, though, I don't like being raped.

Rhymes With Socksmuckers

Regardless of which side you're on--although if you're with the AMPTP, I'm not sure why you'd be reading this--I think we can all agree that "We're not going to negotiate until you abandon all of your demands" isn't a viable bargaining strategy. When a bully on the playground tells you to give him your toy or eat a fresh fist sandwich, he's not negotiating with you. And so I'm finding it pretty tough to write anything about the strike without dipping into my usual vocabulary. (See: headline. Or any Sam Kinison show where he's too coked out to be creative.)

Really, it's the worst kind of ultimatum because of how decisively it backs the Negotiating Team into a corner. There's no way they can acquiesce without looking utterly weakened or beaten in the process. Which is too bad, because as Craig Mazin eloquently points out here, several of these demands DESERVE to be abandoned.

I was at the Freemantle rally last Friday, and like Craig, I was sort of dumbfounded to hear Verone talk about solidarity between the striking writers and the reality show writers who--this can't be stressed enough--aren't striking with us. While we're going without Christmas presents and eating Ramen noodles twice a day, they've never been busier.

And the programs they're creating right now to plug the gaps in the Spring schedule are the very thing that's going to allow the studios to batten down the hatches indefinitely. Of course it hurts to lose new episodes of C.S.I. But when you can eke out five or six primetime hours of Big Brother every week, it sure hurts a hell of a lot less.

It sounds uncomfortably Bushian to say that if you're not with us, you're against us. But when your actions are hurting us and helping them, I'm not sure there's any other way to phrase the situation. When reality writers put their pencils down, then we can talk about "brothers in solidarity." Until then, I'm not sure why we're apparently prepared to take a bullet for the same guys who keep sticking their dicks in our asses.

So the idea of dropping the reality and animation provisions and the what-the-fuck-were-they-even-thinking "sympathy strike" provision makes a lot of sense. But now that the AMPTP has backed us into a corner over these issues, what should have been cut and dried has become a public dick waggling contest. We can't drop the demands that are actively hurting us without looking weak in the process, and the AMPTP can't withdraw their reckless ultimatum for the same reason.

In short, everybody's fucked. Happy holidays.

In other, better news...

SCORE made this year's industry blacklist! Considering that the script wasn't sent to that many people, I'm amazed and humbled that it got included. So many thanks to the folks who voted for me, whoever you are.

As for movies I saw this week:

THERE WILL BE BLOOD: A genuine, no-foolin' masterpiece. I need to see this again--like, now--but it has already edged out JESSE JAMES and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN as the best film I've seen all year. I saw it almost a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. Just an amazing achievement.

ATONEMENT: It's certainly polished and well-made, but it never really came alive for me. It's worth seeing for the beach scene alone, but in a year of great films, "good" simply doesn't cut it. But Keira Knightley was at the Q&A, and I'm happy to report that the most beautiful woman in the world is, believe it or not, pretty goddamn attractive in real life too. Shocking, right?

THE KITE RUNNER: A really good script that kind of goes nowhere because Marc Forster couldn't direct piss into a toilet bowl. Poor David Benioff deserves better, and in the right hands, this could have been a great film instead of simply a pretty good one.

JUNO: I was worried that Diablo Cody's heralded quirkiness and hyperstylized slang would overpower the film. And for the first ten minutes, it nearly does. ("Honest to blog"? Yeesh.) But Cody quickly finds the sweet spot between honesty and cleverness, and the result is a really fun movie that's surprisingly sweet. It's not my favorite comedy of the year, but it's much better than I was expecting.

THE WRIGHT STUFF: Shane Black was on hand this weekend to introduce THE LAST BOY SCOUT and KISS KISS BANG BANG. And tonight brings John Landis and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF and the gang behind TREMORS. And if those names don't make you jealous...well, good. That'll probably make it easier for me to get tickets tonight.

Just so you know...

SWEENEY TODD is excellent.

Really, really good.

A good week.

If you live anywhere near Los Angeles and you're skipping THIS, I hope spiders suck all the juices from your eyeballs while you sleep.

All that plus screenings for Sweeney Todd, Juno and Atonement? Complete with Q&A sessions with folks like Kiera Knightley, Michael Cera and Jason Fucking Bateman?

Eat your heart out, Rest Of The Country.

If you own stock in New Line...

Sell, bitches, sell.

I remember when New Line gave the greenlight to THE GOLDEN COMPASS and a lot of people got bent out of shape over its supposedly controversial religious themes. "Turning that book into a movie? They're crazy!"

And I agreed with them...just for different reasons.

The problem with Pullman's novels has nothing to do with God and everything to do with his goddamn awful writing. THE GOLDEN COMPASS is more of a travelogue than any sort of true adventure, as Lyra glumly gets shuffled from one location to the next while a cast of interchangeable characters bark exposition at her.

Of course, that description could also be applied to Tolkien's books, a fact that probably wasn't lost on New Line. The difference being, of course, that Frodo 'N Friends were visiting abandoned mines and fantastic Elvish cities suspended in the trees. Lyra, on the other hand, sets her sights on heart-stopping destinations like:

--A university.
--A rich lady's house.
--A restaurant.
--An alley.
--A gypsy's boat.
--An icy field.
--Some random village.
--Another icy field.
--A cafeteria filled with kids.
--Another icy field.

I suspect Chris Weitz is going to catch a lot of flak for the movie's lifeless pace and pointless meandering--there's a baffling 20 minute detour spent in Angry Polar Bear Land that has NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie--and that's sort of unfair. Pullman is the one who fucked this up; Weitz's biggest sin was not tossing the source material out the window and starting over himself.

I happen to like Weitz. (ABOUT A BOY was a great movie, and I'll knife-fight anyone who says otherwise.) He's simply out of his element when it comes to the epic stuff. The film has only two real action sequences: one a CGI slapfight between two polar bears, the other a dreary and confusing night battle as the film limps toward a laughably unsatisfying climax. That's not the sort of epic adventure you want to gamble half a billion dollars on.

(Don't get me wrong: every penny is up onscreen...it's simply being wasted on things that aren't particularly impressive. CGI housecats walking beside people. Polar bears tromping through the snow. A mouse poking out of someone's shirt. You get the picture.)

So save your money, folks. And here's hoping that Weitz doesn't go down with the ship on this one. He's too talented of a director to wind up in Hollywood purgatory just because Phillip Pullman wouldn't know a plot if one bit the tip of his dick off.

In other news, I survived the big moving day and am now hunkered down in North Hollywood with my traumatized cat, a ridiculously cool TV and a big empty space where a refrigerator is supposed to be.

If anyone wants to hang out, I'm real easy to find: I'm the white guy.