Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

Considering I’m in New York and I spent all of last weekend rewatching AMC‘s Mad Men on On Demand, I decided to dedicate today’s post to the show. When Mad Men started last year, it received decent, but not stellar reviews. If you peruse its page on Metacritic, only 77% of the reviews are positive. When the DVD of Mad Men came out a few weeks ago, nobody had a single bad thing to say about the show. You can read EW’s DVD review of it here and listen to NPR’s here. Also, the inimitable Peter Travers dedicated his entire DVD column — available here — to Mad Men the day it came out — and that was the same week Point Break was released on BluRay, so there was definitely something else to talk about.

Mad Men grew slowly on critics and it did with audiences as well. In its initial run, it did alright ratings-wise, then it won two Golden Globes, got some buzz and attracted even more viewers in reruns. Now it’s available on Comcast’s On Demand and I can’t imagine it won’t get even more eyes on it before season two debuts July 27, especially since it’s on the Emmy Awards short list for Best Drama Series (the full list of nominees will be out next Tuesday) and already won a Peabody.

So why did Mad Men slowly become so popular? For the uninitiated, it’s about ad men who work at the fictional Madison Avenue ad company Sterling-Cooper in 1960. When it started, it was just beautiful and clever but the characters are so deeply drawn and so well constructed, that it took a few episodes before you could start to fully appreciate it. In the first few hours, Don Draper (played phenomenally by Jon Hamm) seems like nothing more than a dashing, intelligent, and chain-smoking womanizer who may have had a slight case of PTSD. And then, someone mistakes him on the train for Dick Whitman, he nervously carries on a conversation with the person, but doesn’t mention it again. Shortly after, a man shows up in his office, claiming to be Dick Whitman’s brother. It all leads to a dark secret about Don’s past and it was one of television’s most engaging mysteries.

But the show’s magic doesn’t just lie in Don, but also in the rest of the ensemble cast. There’s Vincent Kartheiser’s constantly emasculated Pete; the sultry Joan (Christina Hendricks), who rules over the office secretaries and looks damn good doing it; Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), the newbie secretary who quickly becomes a junior copywriter and single mother; Don’s wife Betty (January Jones), who slowly starts to realize that her housewife role hurts her more than it makes her happy; the perfectly dry John Slattery as partner Roger Sterling; the quirky Betram Cooper (Robert Morse) as the Ayn Rand-obsessed, perpetually barefoot other-partner; and many, many other factors that make this show so great that will only make this run-on sentence more of a run-on.

Originally, I was going write a review and give a few links. But I found so many links about Mad Men on Google, that I’ll do a half-assed review and give you a thousand or so links, many of which I’ve already posted above. So, if you don’t believe me that the show is good, check out all these links and see for yourself.

A guide to the world of Mad Men New York.

A spot-on essay about the role of image in Mad Men.

A brief recap of season one to prepare you for season two.

A recent interview with Elisabeth Moss about the show.

A somewhat-recent profile about Jon Hamm.

USA Today’s preview of Season 2.

Rolling Stone’s preview of Season 2.

Entertainment Weekly’s preview of Season 2.

Some photos off AMC.com from Season 2.

Some publicity photos off AMC.com for Season 2.

A slideshow depicting how they created the ad campaign for Mad Men Season 2. I had a geek moment today when I saw the exact spot in Grand Central Station where the pictures for it were taken.

A very long (10 pages) article in The New York Times profiling Mad Men.

James Hibberd from The Hollywood Reporter dishes on the future of Mad Men and how the show could jump a few years every season for five seasons until it reaches 1969.

Whoever owns The Weather Channel is LOADED. NBC Universal just bought the network for $3.5 billion in cash. Of course, buying The Weather Channel is a package deal; not only do you get one of the most watched cable nets, but you also get one of the most visited Web sites, Weather.com. Think of how many people you know that check it before leaving the house, or going on a trip. It’s enough to rank it the 15th most visited site on the ‘net.

Speaking of popular Web sites, YouTube has been ordered by a court to release who watches their videos and when. The ruling comes out of a suit Viacom brought against the Web site for the copyright infringement that occurs when its programs are shown on YouTube. This article explains that the information could be as detailed as giving the IP address of who watched which video, which essentially gives the Viacom the ability to knock on your door and suing you personally, just like what happened a few years ago during the Napster/Music downloading hoopla. As everyone should know by now, nothing is private in the information age.

Aint It Cool News has some new photos up from the new Harry Potter movie, my favorite, left, depicts a very sinister-looking Malfoy.

As if the upcoming Watchmen adaptation didn’t already look cool enough, the comic’s artist Dave Gibbons chimes in on the film’s art design and how it translates in this video . Plus, you get a small glimpse at what Rorschach looks like in the film.

Also in the Cool Video department is this one, which puts you in the shoes of Stanley Kubrick on the set of The Shining. One take + lots of moving parts + Kubrick = advertising genius.

There seems to be an American Gangster sequel in the works. A salsa singer in Puerto Rico has claimed that he’s been cast as a Mexican Cop in the sequel to last year’s mob epic. As the original article points out, it’s probably a DTV sequel about another gangster that has nothing to do with Frank Lucas or Richie Roberts.

If you thought the rescue mission in Colombia last week sounded like something out of a Hollywood action movie, well, it’s about to be. Vertigo Entertainment and a Colombian TV network won the rights to the story of Ingrid Betancourt and the 14 other hostages that were rescued in an undercover operation that involved Colombian officials taking acting classes, pretending to be FARC rebels and eventually confusing the real rebels and walking away with their hostages.

Due to a busy day, I’ll have to keep today’s update short. Here’s some quick bullets of today’s news.

To strike, or not to strike. That is the question. At 12:01 tomorrow morning (Tuesday at midnight), the SAG contract with AMPTP will expire. As of yet, no strike has been authorized. SAG’s president doesn’t want it, others do. Read all about it here and here.

After he’s done with Watchmen, director Zak Snyder already has an animated feature lined up, as well as an adventure/drama set in Afghanistan, but it looks like he could be sticking around in the Middle East after that and leading the Spartans against the Persians again in a sequel to 300. Frank Miller, the author of the original graphic novel, is writing a new one upon which the film sequel will be based.

Terminator 4 (I know I never refer to it by its real name, but that name is just too stupid to type out) has gotten itself a new actress. Helena Bonham Carter will join Christian Bale in a “small but pivotal” role.

Brett Ratner has tried to dispel the rumors online that Beverly Hills Cop 4 will be PG or PG-13 so that younger audiences can rediscover the franchise. He told Latino Review: “Dont believe everything you read on the internet. Believe me, this is going to be a hard core ‘R’ Beverly Hills Cop. I start shooting next year.”

And two interesting stories about trends in entertainment came from Variety today. The average TV viewer is getting older, probably in large part because of the growing number of baby boomers, and, despite the record summer last year, rising tickets, gas and popcorn prices, this year’s box office is doing 4% better than 2007’s.

Since George Clooney already has enough gravitas, he decided to loan some to both SAG and AFTRA . In a two-page letter, the grey-haired actor declared neutrality in the AFTRA-SAG spat and laid down some “fundamental facts,” which include the importance of supporting other actors and following the models set by other unions. Read the article and letter here.

Because we want more remakes in our movie theaters, the Greek gods are coming from Mount Olympus and clashing in the cineplexes. Not so much the gods, but Perseus will be battling Medusa again in a Clash of the Titans remake helmed by Louis Leterrier. And if that weren’t enough, USA Today released this article today (try to pronounce the author’s name, I don’t even know where to start) announcing Robert Rodriguez’s next project — Red Sonja. Rose McGowan will step into Brigitte Nelson’s shoes.

A little while back, Regal announced they’d be adding a large number of 3-D screens and now Dolby Labs has set up another 350 screens in Europe, Asia and the Americas. The first movie to really have to tackle the 3-D hurdle will be Journey to the Center of the Earth. To me, it looks nostalgic but incapable of competing with other family films, like Wall-E, or the abundant comic/adventure films of the summer. On that note, Variety has an interesting article dissecting the possible success of Journey and the future of 3-D.

When Jay Leno steps down next year as host of The Tonight Show Conan O’Brien will fill his chair, but no one quite knows what Leno will do. He could move to another network and still do late night, or move to cable, or maybe do stand-up, or just retire to his famous garage and work on cars until his twilight. Check out all his possible options here .

Industry estimates put WALL-E on top of the box office this weekend, making around $50-$60 million. That would put it’s gross Ratatouille, but below most other recent Pixar films. The obvious runner-up for this weekend will be Wanted, which is expected to take in around $30 million. That would make them both relatively successful and not just commercially. Both are getting positive reviews (97% Rotten Tomatoes rating for WALL-E and 74% for Wanted); I guess that makes them critical successes as well

Could Oscar come early this year? Heath Ledger’s turn as The Joker has generated Academy Award buzz when the first trailers hit earlier this year. That movie doesn’t come out for three weeks, but Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers already put up his review — the first professional review of the film — here . In short: It’s the stuff dreams are made of.

The Hollywood Reporter has an article claiming Wall-E (for which there plenty of positive reviews online) the start of Oscar season. In the past, Brad Bird has tried unsuccessfully to lobby for his film to be a nominated for Best Picture rather than Best Animated Feature. Could Andrew Stanton and Wall-E be the first of the PIXAR films to break that barrier?

Now that she has Sex and the City behind her, Sarah Jessica Parker is going to play a single woman living in New York in The Ivy Chronicles. It’s not SATC 2.0, but a flick about a divorce who loses her job, downgrades apartments, and starts her own business.

Everyone’s favorite deportee — OK, deportee isn’t exactly fair, but I couldn’t think of what you call someone who isn’t allowed into a country for fear of being arrested for a crime committed decades ago. Anyways, Roman Polanksi has cast Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton and Pierce Brosnan in The Ghost, a remake of the Patrick Swayze classic. That’s a lie, it’s actually an adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel about a ghostwriter who finds his life in danger after filling in for a dead writer who was writing the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister

The future of To Catch a Predator is in the air after NBC settled a $105 million law suit with a woman who claimed the producers pushed police to arrest her brother after he didn’t show up for one of the show’s trademark sting operations and he killed himself. The settlement comes months after a judge said a jury could say NBC “crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.”

Tired of product placement on your favorite TV shows? Well it’s not going anywhere, if anything it’ll probably going to get worse thanks to TiVo, but the Writers Guild of America West recently talked with the FCC about the problems with product placement and how it should change. You can read a short, interesting article about it here.

The SAG-AFTRA debacle continues. A few days ago, Tom Hanks and Kevin Spacey spoke up and backed the AMPTP-AFTRA tentative agreement and now Jack Nicholson, Ben Stiller, Sandra Oh, Martin Sheen and 64 others openly protested it. Aside from ruining movies and polite conversation at dinner parties, the impending strike could change the face of San Diego Comic-Con. It turns out no actors could be there to promote their movies.

Pixar already announced the short that will appear before Wall-E this weekend a while back and now they’ve announced that a Wall-E-related short will appear on the DVD, a la Jack Jack Attack on The Incredibles DVD, called Burn-E, about a robot of the same name.

Steven Spielberg has been involved in video games before , but never quite like he will be with his new project, The 39 Clues. Spielberg’s production house DreamWorks acquired the screen rights for the title, which is billed as a “multiplatform adventure series.” It will include 10 books, collectible cards, an online game, and, of course, a movie.

Finally, in an interesting move, for the first time MTV will air political ads . The network says they’ve decided to change their policy on ads because it would “be a good fit for our audience and would compliment this year’s Choose or Lose campaign.” Considering John McCain isn’t exactly hip with the MTV crowd like Barrack Obama is (I can’t imagine McCain doing fist bumps or revealing whether he wears boxers or briefs on the network like Clinton did to compete with the Obama’s “cool” aura), it seems like, for the first time, MTV may actually have backed a candidate in a back-ended sort of way.

I’m not suggesting that they’ll only accept ads from Obama or give McCain unfair treatment, but MTV has to know how popular Obama is with its demographic and how a) more viewers will pay attention to Obama’s adds on MTV than McCain’s and b) how Obama will continue to capture that demographic and McCain will continue to rely more on the working class, middle-America non-MTV-watching old-people demographic. MTV could have done this any other election year, but it’s the year that Obama runs that they free up their restrictions. Of course, both of the candidates (or all three, if Ralph Nader is feeling crazy again) have equal opportunity to advertize on MTV, but the fact that MTV decided to allow political ads when an extremely popular candidate who would benefit more than any before from ads geared towards the youth audience runs, while the rest of Hollywood gets behind him, seems a little obvious, if you ask me.

Actors are the talk of Tinsel Town, and will continue to be until next Tuesday. This is a strange case of history repeating itself — two Hollywood guilds striking within months — made stranger by the potential strike by a third guild that already said it wouldn’t strike. Sound weird? Here’s the Cliff Notes on what’s happening.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) are rival guilds that represent actors in Hollywood. Like the Writers Guild before them, the current deal that both guilds have with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers is about to expire and both are negotiating new terms with the AMPTP. AFTRA and the AMPTP have negotiated a tentative agreement, which could be signed in the near future. SAG, on the other hand, will strike next Tuesday if they don’t find an acceptable middle ground with the AMPTP and is now calling for AFTRA members to reject the deal that union negotiated with the AMPTP.

It sounds like something out of a bad sitcom, but it’s true and a strike more devastating than the WGA stoppage could be a reality a week from today. You can read more detail about the strike and SAG and AFTRA here and here.

Two actors look to be getting work outside of Hollywood though. Seems Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger will finally team up on screen, but rather than being in a Hollywood blockbuster, it’ll be in Bollywood’s most expensive film ever.

While we’re on the subject of actors, NPR’s Fresh Air ran a series of interesting interviews last week with actors from movies that appear on the AFI’s new Top 100/ 10 Top 10 List. Faye Dunaway, Eva Marie Saint, Kirk Douglass, Tony Curtiss, Peter O’Toole and Robert Towne are all featured.

If you were intrigued by Nick Fury’s appearance at the end of Iron Man and Tony Stark’s cameo at the end of The Incredible Hulk, you can find out who all of the Avengers will be, from gods to ants, in 2010 here.

Finally, Tom Brokow will fill the moderator chair on Meet the Press, at least until the November elections.

A-list directors are traveling in time. James Mangold, director of 3:10 to Yuma, will helm The Archive. Other than that it’s about time travel, not many other details are known. Earlier this week, Spike Lee signed on to co-write and direct Time Traveler. The film is about Ron Mallett, one of the first African-Americans to get a doctorate in theoretical physics, who also laid out technical specs on how to build a time machine, as well as detailed his rags-to-recognition in his book Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.

In other Spike Lee news, the director announced at the Silverdocs festival that he could return to the New Orleans and the surrounding Mississippi Gulf region to do a follow up to his HBO miniseries When the Levees Broke. He also talked about the possibility of doing a scripted project on Hurricane Katrina, potentially with The Wire-creator David Simon.

Kevin Smith set out to make a movie about making a porno with Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but he may have actually made a porno. OK, that might be overstating the truth, but Seth Rogen told MTV the film is having trouble getting an R rating, but that it’s been deemed NC-17 by the MPAA. You can read the whole article here.

Some changes are in store for the Academy Awards next year. In the Best Original Song category, now only two songs can be nominated from a movie, which prevents repeats of what happened last year when Enchanted dominated the category. When it comes to foreign-language films, the voting process will change so that fewer films are left off the ballot, like Persepolis was last year.

And, since I haven’t had enough links to lists here on Movies Daily, here’s another one. This time, Entertainment Weekly has named the Top 100 movies since 1983. You can check out the complete list here .

It was a quiet day in Hollywood again today, but Quentin Tarantino fans will rejoice nonetheless. If his long-anticipated Inglorious Bastards is actually finally going into production, the end result won’t be one new QT film, but two, a la Kill Bill. The news comes from an interview QT did on the DVD for the original Inglorious Bastards. You can find Aint It Cool News’ story on the matter here .

And, also from AICN, more information on Louis Leterrier’s follow-up to The Incredible Hulk, Strays. It seems AICN may have sorted out the confusion over what the film is actually about (it’s a combination of what the two previous stories about the film stated) and, I’ve realized, if you announce a mid-profile project, if you release a shit load of confusing news about it, you’ll quickly turn it into a high profile project. Anyways, here’s what AICN says the movie is actually about.

Variety has a special section out today to commemorate the Dodgers’ 50th anniversary in L.A. In it, they give another list to compliment the AFI’s Ten Top 10 Genre Films: the best baseball movies. It’s a very solid list, but judge for yourself here .

Matthew Perry is again returning to television, but this time on cable. The Friends alum is teaming up with Rescue Me’s coproducer Peter Tolan to create The End of Steve. Though not much has been revealed about the new half-hour, Showtime says it’s a dark comedy that will show Perry’s range.

Finally, Brian Williams will fill in for the late Tim Russert this weekend on Meet the Press. No formal replacement has been named yet though, so don’t place any bets on Williams becoming Anderson Cooper 2.0.

No doubt capitalizing on today’s date, MTV debuted a behind-the-scenes feature on the new Friday the 13th movie. The big reveal: Jason’s mask, which, for better or worse, looks exactly the same. The video is available here .

Battlestar Galactica fans, rejoice! It seems the show’s finale next year will be an extra hour longer than before, giving 2009 a full 11 hours of BSG goodness. You can read a Chicago Tribue article about the extension here , and a E! News article about it here , which also has info about the Caprica spin off and the future of the series.

Amanda Peet is the female lead in Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic epic 2012. Not to be confused with the Seth Rogen end-of-the-world flick, Seth and Jay vs. The Apocalypse, 2012 also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Olive Platt and John Cusack as they try to survive the Mayan-predicted end of days.

Rumor has it Leonardo DiCaprio is being eyed for Captain America, along with Brad Pitt. You can also find an explanation about the whole Captain-America-in-The-Incredible-Hulk misunderstanding here.

And speaking of The Incredible Hulk, which I’ll review for you tomorrow, industry estimates have it taking in between $40 and $60 million this weekend and topping the box office. M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is predicted to make about $25 million.

Not to go out on a sad note, but political news icon Tim Russert died today at 58. He collapsed in his office earlier this afternoon and was pronounced dead at the hospital. Broadcasting & Cable ran a long piece on him here, in which friends and colleagues remembered him.