The Screengrab : heather graham

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:30:00 GMT

The Worst:

CATWOMAN (2004)

Attacking Catwoman is almost too easy: it’s such an obvious, defenseless target, what with stinking up the box office like week-old kitty litter, damaging the careers of all responsible and winning Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Director (for “Pitof,” if that IS your real name) and Worst Actress for Halle Berry (whose Golden Raspberry acceptance speech alone very nearly redeemed both her performance AND her embarrassingly overwrought Oscar speech for Monster’s Ball, including gems like, “First of all, I want to thank Warner Bros. Thank you for putting me in a piece of shit, God-awful movie . . .it was just what my career needed”). But...nope, we’ll never be done kicking Catwoman, for oh, so many reasons. Geeks hated the flick (set in “Lake City” rather than Gotham) for heedlessly violating the sacred mythology of the source material, straight guys hated the way Berry dishonored the legacy of Kitt, Newmar, Meriwether and Pfeiffer by somehow making Catwoman (CATWOMAN!!!!!) distinctly unsexy, fashionistas hated the godawful costume, feminists hated the fact that while male superheroes were out saving the world, Berry’s crusader was investigating a frickin’ cosmetics company and right-thinking people everywhere coughed up hairballs of disgust to discover the whole tacky disaster somehow managed to cost 100 million dollars. But even worse is the nagging sense of how totally awesome a good Catwoman movie might have been...and how we’ll never, ever get to see it now. Thanks a bunch, Pitof.

FROM HELL (2001)

If you think Zack Snyder had a dense, intricate Alan Moore work on his hands when he set about adapting Watchmen, consider what the Hughes Brothers stepped into when they decided to bring Moore’s graphic novel From Hell to the screen. A speculative fiction based on the legend of Jack the Ripper, From Hell is an insanely detailed look at an alternate Victorian England and the massive conspiracy at its heart. It’s endlessly fascinating stuff, and the Hughes Brothers threw away just about all of it in order to make a nonsensical Se7en-style serial killer bloodbath. Johnny Depp is the police investigator, who is given opium-induced psychic powers here that he never possessed in the comics, while that great British actress Heather Graham plays the cockney prostitute he romances. The entire plot has been re-jiggered into a lame whodunit, thus jettisoning almost every unique aspect of Moore’s take on the Ripper story. It’s not shocking that such minutiae as the extensive tour of London’s Masonic architecture wouldn't make it to the screen, but keeping the Ripper's identity a secret throughout the movie only robs the story of its most interesting character. Worst of all, Hughes and Hughes don’t even bother trying to recreate the look of the comic – the whole sooty, early-Industrial vibe. From Hell looks like it was shot on the set of a Batman movie, which is probably what the brothers would have rather been doing in the first place.

BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997)

After the departure of Tim Burton and Michael Keaton, Warner Bros. put the Batman franchise in the unsteady, garish hands of director Joel Schumacher, who told everyone within earshot that he wanted to return to the "campy" tone of the old Adam West series, as if daring everyone in earshot to scream at him, "What're ya, high!?" Schumacher's first Batman movie, Batman Forever, which featured Tommy Lee Jones giving a performance that would have embarrassed Rip Taylor and Chris O'Donnell capering in his underoos and declaiming, "Holy twisted metal, Batman!", was one of the worst big-budget horrors ever, and damned if the old boy didn't manage to top it in his follow-up. Pre-release word on the movie was terrible, but Schumacher stubbornly continued to talk it up until his megaton bomb hit theater screens, inducing pain and suffering in all who had eyes that see. Schumacher reacted defensively at first -- "I had no idea that putting nipples on the Batsuit and Robin suit were [sic] going to spark international headlines," he pouted, in stubborn denial of the likelihood that people were trying to be nice and the nipples were the least objectionable thing about his movie. By then it was clear that, in the summer comic-book movie sweepstakes, the Caped Crusader had gotten his nuts crushed by Men in Black, a movie based on a comic little read by people outside the artist's and writer's immediate families.

DAREDEVIL (2003)

With X-Men and Spider-Man having solidified its status as king of the superhero-film hill, Marvel must have thought itself invincible, because only hubris could possibly explain the comic giant’s decision to okay Mark Steven Johnson’s take on Daredevil, the blind lawyer who combats crime at night. From the cheesy tone, to Johnson’s habit of turning his camera on extreme angles, to the miscasting of Ben Affleck, to the soft-core love scene featuring Daredevil and Jennifer Garner’s sexy assassin Elektra, Daredevil is a fiasco through and through, turning its hero into a second-rate Batman whose every extraordinary leap, jump and twirl is the byproduct of lame CGI. Johnson shoots every action sequence with maximum spasticity, setting his fights in rain and strobe lights and editing them to ribbons. Stuck headlining this misbegotten adaptation, Affleck vainly attempts to act tortured by flashing a variety of grimaces, all while an overacting Colin Farrell attempts to devour any scenery in sight as the hysterically corny villain Bullseye.

THE SPIRIT (2008)

With The Dark Knight proving in 2008 that it was possible to make a truly great superhero movie, it was actually kind of a relief to have Frank Miller remind us that same year that it was still possibly to make a truly rank one. Miller himself is one of the greatest comic artists and writers the industry has ever seen; though his work has been spotty in recent years, in the 1980s, he put out a fistful of some of the greatest superhero stories in the history of the medium. As a director, though, he’s a hell of a banjo player. Utilizing the same tricks he relied on in Sin City, but with a notably weaker cast and a downright rotten script, he took the Spirit – a venerable crimefighting character created by the beloved Will Eisner – and stuck him in a movie that would have to be twice as good as it is to be an embarrassment. Sidled with an incoherent screenplay, a tone-deaf sense of mood and pacing, a lot of wasted femmes fatale, and Samuel Jackson in one of the most deranged (and not in a good way) villain roles in recent memory, The Spirit would have been a disaster regardless, but the final nail in the coffin was the casting of charisma-free nobody Gabriel Macht in the lead role. Macht brought a Twinkie-heavy sense of anti-gravity to the Spirit the likes of which we haven’t seen since a young fellow named Klinton Spilsbury donned the mask of the Lone Ranger in his first, and last, motion picture role. Miller’s lucky he built up so much credibility in his comics career, because movies as crappy as The Spirit have ruined lesser men.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

A Better Travis Bickle for a Better New Year, and Other Great "Resolutions" Movies

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Today is Twelfth Day, the traditional end to the Christmas season for those of us who need a few days for the hangover to die down before we can start thinking about taking down the lights and chucking the tree out the window. So it's not too late to start thinking about taping some New Year's resolutions to the door of the fridge. Not everyone agrees about how much point there is to making New Year's resolutions; the idea behind them is to make some changes that will make your life better, and the world does not lack for evidence that people don't change. But here at the Screengrab, we think about these thing the same way we think about everything else: as filtered through movies, which is why we don't work for a golfing blog. And in the movies, there is no shortage of evidence that people can change resolve to change their lives. For the better? Eh, sometimes it depends on whether you're living the life or just sitting in the dark, watching it.

THE MOVIE: Taxi Driver (1976)

THE RESOLVER: Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro)

THE RESOLUTION: In his own words: "I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight." He also decides to try a new hairstyle.

THE RESULTS: Having turned himself into an urban guerrilla soldier in order to assassinate a presidential candidate, Travis, with a little help from the Secret Service, decides to redirect his energies towards persuading a child prostitute to return to her family in the Midwest after re-decorating the walls of a hotel room and corridor with her pimp's brains. After a period of rest and recovery in the hospital, he returns to work, where he finds that the girl who dumped him on their first date after a disagreement over his taste in movies is sufficiently impressed by the change in him to show up, hanging around his cab with a faraway look in her eyes. Clearly a success, made all the more gratifying by the fact that his hair grew out while he was in a coma and the girl never saw him in his ill-considered new look.

THE MOVIE: The Shining (1980)

THE RESOLVER: Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson)

THE RESOLUTION: To use the time and isolation provided by his new winter job to really sit down and focus on getting some serious writing done. Also, if the masterpiece gets finished early, maybe spend some time examining his relationship with his wife and son.

THE RESULTS: Torrence's breakthrough experimental novel, consisting of 38,000 typographical variations on the same ten-word sentence, didn't make Oprah's Book Club, but both Harold Bloom and David Eggers think it was underrated at the time of its original publication. (Back then, many critics questioned whether it would have been published at all if not for the surrounding news stories about Torrence's untimely death and the events surrounding the break-up of his marriage. Certainly the fact that his agent was able to arrange a six-figure movie deal came as a big surprise.) On the face of it, weighing the good against the no so good, this would appear to be a moderate success. However, thinking long term, it should be noted that the ending of The Shining seems to hint that Jack has been this way before, which in turn may indicate that he'll be back. And when he does, with all the life experience he'll be packing, the next book is sure to be dynamite!

THE MOVIE: Torremolinos 73 (2003)

THE RESOLVER: Alfredo López (Javier Cámara)

THE RESOLUTION: To make a better life for himself and his wife, Carmen (Candela Peña), by becoming a pornographic filmmaker.

This Spanish comedy, which is, or should be, dear to the hearts of all good Nerve readers, is a weirdly charming tribute to the homier side of the sexual revolution and the porno chic era. Alfredo and Carmen aren't the hardened pros of Boogie Nights but budding entrepreneurs trying to ride their mom and pop operation into a higher level of the middle class, and they have amusingly mixed feelings about the discovery that Carmen has become an international porn star. Alfredo, who can't compete with his wife for the camera's attention, tries to compensate by letting his artistic pretensions develop, and the two manage to go out in glory with the bigger-budgeted art-porn flick of the title, which also makes it possible for Carmen to conceive a child with one of her studly co-stars, a develop that delights both Carmen and her loving but infertile husband. By going all the way with his resolution, the lucky Alfredo is able to express himself artistically, enrich himself and his family financially, and strengthen his marriage. Somewhere, Jack Torrence is seething.

THE MOVIE: Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

THE RESOLVER: Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)

THE RESOLUTION: To end a long-standing and thoroughly enjoyed addiction to drugs, following an unfortunate incident involving a weekend in the woods spent burying a turquoise-faced Heather Graham.

THE RESULTS: Bob trades in a free-wheeling, exciting life as the unquestioned head of a "family" of doper-grifters and a marriage to one of the hottest women in the history of movies (Kelly Lynch) for a sorry, colorless nine-to-five existence and the random wild evening spent being lectured by William S. Burroughs. On the plus side, he is, at twenty-six, a healthy young man, freshly clean and sober, with his whole blooming life laid out ahead of him. On the down side, Max Perlich blows his brains out.

THE MOVIE: Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

THE RESOLVER: Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage)

THE RESOLUTION: To enjoy the exorbitant severance check that he has won as a result of his alcoholism by relocating to a city where the bars never close and drink himself to death

THE RESULTS: A spectacular success. Not only does Ben succeed in drinking himself to death, becoming so liquefied and benumbed that he is able to enjoy having broken glass embedded in every square inch of his naked back, but his glitteringly flamboyant self-destructiveness wins the heart of a fair hooker (Elisabeth Shue), one of those hard-edged but vulnerable blondes made all the more painfully alluring by the emotional and physical wear and tear of her unhappy experience. What's more, in his final scene, in a trope that would test H. P. Lovecraft's ability to suspend his disbelief, he was able to present her with a functioning erection, despite the fact that he was so drunk that his penis was the last remaining part of him that could still stand up. Though it will win us no awards from MADD for saying it, it must be admitted that Leaving Las Vegas makes a much stronger case for getting plowed than Drugstore Cowboy makes for cleaning up your act.

THE MOVIE: Lost in America (1985)

THE RESOLVER: David Howard (Albert Brooks)

THE RESOLUTION: To drop out of society, cash in their savings and the proceeds from the sale of their house to supply them with a $145,000 "nest egg", take to the road (with his wife, Linda, played by Julie Hagerty), and, in his own words: "Touch Indians, see the mountains and the prairies and all the rest of that song."

THE RESULTS: David starts out with a full head of steam but plows into a wall when he and the Missus stop in Vegas with plans to renew their marriage vows. Waking up to discover that Linda has hit the blackjack table and eaten into "the core of the nest egg"--and failing to persuade the casino boss (Garry Marshall) to give them back their money as a goodwill P.R. gesture--David flips out and becomes impossible to live with before settling down to try to start a new life in a trailer home, with Linda taking a job at a burger joint and David working as a crossing guard. After a day of this, he and Linda reconsider their devotion to their new identities as social dropouts and conclude that it would be better for David to return to the bosses he insulted and walked out on "and eat shit." On the most obvious level, it might seem that this resolution ended with a case of clear-cut, absolute failure. On the other hand, the simple fact of it is that most people are what they, deep down, prefer to be, and however much they might wish they were someone else, they don't change. Keeping that in mind, Lost in America can be seen as the story of someone who, in the course of about two weeks, gave it his best shot, found out that he wasn't cut out to be Walt Whitman--which means that he won't spend the rest of his life torturing himself with thoughts about the road not taken--and was able to return to his true path with a minimum of hurt and damage: no harm, no foul. Except that you have to wonder how David would feel right about now, given that he'd be about sixty, and would have spent the last several months watching his retirement fund turn to ash. If Brooks were up for a sequel, it might be scarier than whatever George Romero still has in him.

Morning Deal Report: Heather Graham’s Hangover

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here’s a project I can identify with this morning: Heather Graham will star in The Hangover for director Todd Phillips (Road Trip, Old School). “The story revolves around three buddies, played by Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, who lose their best friend (Justin Bartha) at his Caesars Palace bachelor party just 40 hours before his wedding,” says The Hollywood Reporter. “The trio must attempt to retrace all their bad decisions from the night before and figure out where things went wrong.” Based on my experience, I’m guessing things went wrong at the Circus Circus buffet.

“Bruce Willis will make his directorial debut with the indie psychological drama Three Stories About Joan,” Variety reports. Camilla Belle will play the title role in the film that “centers on a young woman at three points in her life and the family tragedies that cause her to lose her grip on reality. Willis will play the father of Belle’s character.”

Are you ready for American Psycho: The Musical? “Producers are betting Bret Easton Ellis' novel and screen adaptation will translate to a stage musical, with original 1980s-inspired songs and familiar covers of hits from the era,” THR reports. That hangover isn’t getting any better.

Related:
Bruce Willis to Play Robot
Fincher's Musical, The Canon of Thor, and Justice on the Rocks

Screengrab Pub Crawl: The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Back in my misspent Hollywood days, my friends and I used to enjoy the occasional round of “bar golf” through the dives and strip clubs of Hollywood Boulevard. The rules were simple: a “par one” bar meant we’d have one drink and move on, “par two” meant two drinks, etc., and the goal was to drink in at least nine separate bars by the end of the night. We’d usually “tee off” in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, followed by pitchers of cheap beer in the “par two” Power House on Highland, and somehow the night always seemed to wind up with fire-breathing transvestite strippers at Jumbo’s Clown Room.

And so now, in honor of the recent Memorial Day kickoff to the official Summer Drinking Season, we here at The Screengrab invite you to join us on another pub crawl, though the Top 15 watering holes of cinema...so brace yourself with a nice starchy meal, grab your smokes and aspirin, and join us as we tee off at our first bar of the evening...

THE DRESDEN ROOM, SWINGERS (1996)

Unlike most of the bars on this list, The Dresden Room actually exists in the real world (1760 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz, CA), as well as the fictional universe of Jon Favreau’s neo-rat pack classic Swingers. Maybe it was just the booze talking, but whenever my friends and I would hit the swanky-tacky Dresden on the Back Nine of an East Hollywood bar golf jaunt, we’d all feel as “money” as Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston and the rest of the film’s hepcat posse of unemployed actors, even though I’m pretty sure we never (A) dressed as well, (B) Lindy-Hopped as well or (C) scored digits from (or even met) any super-friendly, super-nice, conveniently single ladies with the suspiciously low standards and drop-dead movie star looks of Heather Graham’s swing-dance enthusiast, Lorraine (who, in L.A., at least, is a mythological figure on par with Liv Tyler’s elf princess in The Lord of the Rings). We did, however, spend plenty of nights enjoying the peculiar jazz stylings of Dresden’s house band staples, Marty & Elayne, who also straddle the line between reality and fiction...much like our drinking buddy a little further down the street in...

THE SKID ROW DIVE BARS OF BARFLY (1987)

To all my freeeeenz! The late Charles Bukowki, the poet laureate of the Thunderbird wine company, wrote this semi-autobiographical fantasy after he himself had stopped going to bars, and he must have wanted to get both his dream image of himself -- the great wino writer Henry Chinaski, played by Mickey Rourke -- and his idea of the bar of his dreams on film to warm himself in his dried-out dotage. The bar in question is a magical place where the women all look like hookers played by Sylvia Miles and the men stand around gawking in awe as our boy Henry shows off his verbal gifts by giving the bartender-bouncer (Frank Stallone) such tips as, "Your mother's cunt stinks like carpet cleaner." When Rourke (who holds his body here in a way that makes him look like a chicken carcass that was taken apart and reassembled by a blind crackhead with a science project due) and Stallone aren't taking turns going back in the alley to stomp a mud hole in each other's ass, Faye Dunaway and Alice Krige are celebrating Ladies' Night by rolling around on the floor, having a diva cat fight over this gorgeous hunk of man. They were going to include a scene showing what goes on there during Trivia Night, but then the picture would have been rated NC-17.

Next stop...the future, as we settle in for a little synthetic skin (and we don’t mean silicon boobs) at...

TAFFEY’S BAR, BLADE RUNNER (1982)

The world of Ridley Scott’s masterful Blade Runner is, for all its gorgeous set design, a pretty intimidating one: creepy warehouses full of nervous marionettes, run-down tenements and strangely glowing noodle shops, and huge corporate arcologies belching fire into the skies of Los Angeles. The only place we can see really spending a lot of time in the L.A. of 2019 is at Taffey Lewis’ rambunctious nightclub. It’s got a highly picturesque clientele, chainsmoking weird tobaccos and speaking the polyglot Creole of the moment; Taffey himself (greasily portrayed by Hy Pyke) always has Louie the bartender ready to hand out free drinks to anyone who can jeopardize his liquor license; and best of all, it’s a full-service erotic establishment, complete with robotic animal acts and the finest in genetically engineered bestiality. In fact, until her unexpected retirement, it was the only place in town where you could see the lovely Zhora (Joanna Cassidy, a million miles from Falcon Crest) “take the pleasures from the serpent which once corrupted Man”! Now that’s the kind of entertainment that money just can’t buy.

Tired of the city? Then grab a designated driver and we’ll head out to the desert for last call at...

THE BEER TAVERN, FEAST (2005)

This horror comedy, directed by John Gulager, is, if you'll excuse a real low ball of a compliment, by far the best of the movies produced by the Miramax-sponsored Project Greenlight TV series and talent contest. It's set in the Beer Tavern, a rickety-looking juke joint whose customers have to get all Straw Dogs when the place is besieged by slavering, man-eating monsters. It's a real mystery where they've come from -- the customers, I mean. The Beer Tavern looks to be set all by itself in the middle of a desert, and the people there appear to be a modest cross-section of everyone within a hundred miles who've worn out their welcome in all the more civilized establishments and no longer dare stick their head in the door anywhere else for fear of getting it shot off. Luckily, the bar is so well-equipped with secret exits and tunnels and hidey-holes, as well as such diversionary elements as the deer head mounted on the wall that one of the monsters, well, mounts, that it seems to have been constructed with a creature assault in mind. When Judah Friedlander is one of your best customers, it pays to take every precaution.

And, since we’re heading north anyway, might as well stop in for a quick one at...

THE PINK ROOM, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992)

Welcome to Canada! The conversation may not be all that stimulating ("I am the Great Went." "Don't expect a turkey dog here."), if you can even hear it, but the ambiance is out of this world. In our recent list of TV shows-turned-movies, we singled out this scene from Fire Walk with Me, noting that it's "set in what appears to be Satan's roadhouse." That's evident from the pulsing red lighting, the grinding, relentless rock band (playing a Lynch-composed track called "The Pink Room," which may or may not be the name of this place) and the array of seedy characters and half-naked zombie-women among the clientele. This is where innocence comes to die, as Laura Palmer, who long ago lost it, learns when she spots squeaky-clean pal Donna in a drugged topless clinch on the dance floor. As you can see from the above clip, somebody thinks this is one of the worst movie scenes of all time, which is ludicrous. It contains at least two signature Lynch shots I'll take to my grave: a vertiginous, drunken whirl past the repulsive Jacques Renault and into the lights above, and a pan across the unbelievably filthy floor, piled high with broken bottles and the smoking ash from thousands of cigarette butts.

Then it’s back across the border for a little marital advice at...

THE OVERLOOK HOTEL BAR FROM THE SHINING (1980)

On the surface, this nook in the corner of the Overlook Hotel's grand ballroom would appear to be the perfect bar. The stock is self-replenishing, you have the bartender's full attention, and most importantly, your money's no good here. On the other hand, since the place is supposed to be closed up for the winter and completely deserted except for you and your wife and son, there might be a problem: either you're crazy or the joint is haunted or both. But why worry about that? It's always New Year's Eve here, and Lloyd – "the best goddamn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine – or Portland, Oregon for that matter" – will always be happy to serve you the hair of the dog. As long as you steer clear of awkward encounters with the waitstaff in the blood-red bathroom…what could possibly go wrong?

And speaking of bathrooms, we’re gonna take a quick break to go “powder our nose,” but we’ll meet you over in Chicago for Part Two of the Screengrab Pub Crawl!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now, The Screengrab’s predictions for the Top 5 box office disappointments and/or outright disastrous flops of Summer 2008!

(Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Bombs, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS AN IMAGINARY FANTASY DATE WITH MIKE MYERS AND/OR SARAH JESSICA PARKER!)

5. SEX AND THE CITY

I guess I shouldn't exactly say that I'm confident this movie will be a huge failure. More like I'm praying to any god that will listen that it will be. (LP)

What kind of sick, twisted, topsy-turvy world do we live in where the promised Deadwood TV movies have never materialized, yet Sex and the City gets the full-fledged big screen treatment? No sort of world for me, I know that much. As hard as it is for me to believe that anyone on the planet still cares about the sex lives of Sarah Jessica Parker and her pals, I'm sure there are a few fans left out there. But they'll all see this on the first weekend and then it will sink like a stone. (SV)

Yes, the show has a built-in fan base, but will it be enough? The fact is, this is opening the week after Indiana Jones, and there are many more women who will buy a ticket for Indy than there are men who'll pay to see Carrie and Company on the big screen. Perhaps an early-fall release would have been a better idea? (PC)

4. SPEED RACER

Who was this movie made for? Everyone's heard of the show, but who remembers it all that well? Looks too kiddish for most adults, and too hyperkinetic for the family audience. Factor in the film's release date- the second week in May, historically a bum weekend- and the outlook here isn't promising. (PC)

Dissenting Opinion: Intersecting that demographic sweet spot where NASCAR fans, nostalgic hipsters, Japanese animation buffs, and people with nothing better to do on a hot afternoon meet, this cartoon revival will score big, and drive up sales of Steve Albini records and pet monkeys. (LP)

3. THE HAPPENING

It's not happening anymore for M. Night Shyamalan, who has seen his stock drop from Hitchcock heir to 21st century Ed Wood with each successive release. (SV)

Five years ago, the M. Night Shyamalan name would have been enough to guarantee box office. However, after The Village and Lady In the Water, the studio is going to have to step up their game to recoup their investment here. And without a Bruce Willis in the lead role, it's going to be that much harder. (PC)

DISSENTING OPINION: While I am on record as a LeBeouf hater, I’m an ardent Shyamalan apologist. For me, even his stinkers are interesting (or at least amusing), and I’m apparently the only guy in America who actually enjoyed Lady In The Water enough to put it on my year-end Top Ten List. Oh, sure, it SEEMS like it’s going to bomb...but the SHOCKING TWIST ENDING is that, y’know, it might not be a TOTAL fiasco. (AO)

2. THE LOVE GURU

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this looks like total shit? Mike Myers appears onscreen for the first time in five years, but let's not forget that his last leading-man role was- UGH- THE CAT IN THE HAT. (PC)

Coroners examining the bomb crater will have trouble separating the remains of The Love Guru from the remains of Heather Graham’s The Guru in an adjacent crater, and will thus bury them together in the Tomb of the Unseen Faux-Indian Musical Comedy. (AO)

1. THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Taking a movie, based on a very hard-sell Marvel character (whose entire existence is predicated on violence and stupidity), which was one of the few recent superhero movies to totally bomb and remaking it only a few years later with a much worse director? Now that's a formula for success! (LP)

Marvel Studios has gone out of their way to sell this film as a completely different creature than the last movie. But will people get the message? I think they underestimate how much people disliked the last Hulk, and it's going to take a lot of good press to make audiences believe they won't get fooled again. (PC)

By the way...does anyone else think a giant green ‘roid-ragin’ CGI depiction of Ed Norton is inherently hilarious? What’s next, Sean Penn as Martian Manhunter? (AO)

Memorandum Opinion: I don't want to say I'm rooting against The Incredible Hulk exactly, but as one of the few defenders of Ang Lee's version, I would feel some satisfaction if the presumably louder, faster, dumber sequel/remake/whatever-it-is met with an even worse box office fate. (SV)

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK

Recent presidential elections have shown us time and again that America has no tolerance for poor moral values, like this movie with 'cock' in the title and which features Will Smith, and yet does not have a single occurrence of the phrase "Aw hell naw". (LP)

GET SMART

The appeal of the old TV show -- a number of episodes of which were written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry -- wasn't its spy satire; it was its smart, character-driven comedy. The movie looks to go for cheap retro thrills and ultra-broad laughs, and America's love affair with Steve Carrell may have peaked. (LP)

People like Steve Carell on TV, but after last summer's Evan Almighty, his box-office clout is pretty questionable. This uninspired-looking TV spinoff probably won't counter that. (PC)

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

Does anyone still actually care? (PC)

WANTED/HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

2008 is the summer of comic book movies, but there's such a thing as overkill. Without the name recognition of Batman or the marketing push of Iron Man, these will probably be lost in the shuffle. (PC)

**************

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Hancock

4. Get Smart

5. Sex and the City

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Happening

2. Sex and the City

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

4. The Love Guru

5. The Incredible Hulk

Paul Clark

1. Speed Racer

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. The Love Guru

4. Get Smart

5. Wanted/Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Andrew Osborne

1. The Love Guru

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Speed Racer

4. Wall*E

5. Hancock

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce