Samuel L. Jackson

A note to future studio executives: don't bother opening movies on Halloween. The box office took a hit last weekend with nearly every movie in the top-five coming in with lower numbers then had been anticipated. This week that should change with the release of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which is expected to pull down huge numbers even though we don't know one person who will ever see it. Here's a handy guide to the weekends other new releases.

JCVD

What's the story: Jean-Claude Van Damme (yep) stars as "Jean-Claude Van Damme" in this meta tale about the down on his luck actor coming to grips with his own failures while also being caught up in a bank heist gone wrong. The trailer is bananas and leads us to believe that Mr. Van Damme's comeback film, which owes large debts to Dog Day Afternoon and the works of Charlie Kaufman, could be pretty awesome.  read more »

We were at the movies recently, and after the abominable trailer for The Spirit played, the girl sitting next to us turned to her friend, laughed and said, "Samuel Jackson needs to stop making movies." Perhaps Mr. Jackson would do well in hiring this mystery woman to be his agent. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he's signed on to star as Sho'Nuff in a remake of The Last Dragon, the cult 80s karate picture that was spawned from the fertile mind of Motown's Berry Gordy. For those of you not familiar with the original Dragon, Sho'Nuff was played with eye-bugging glee by the late Julius Carry,  read more »

If you thought that Hollywood had run out of films to make sequels to, have we got some news for you! M. Night Shyamalan is back and talking about writing a sequel to his $95 million dollar grossing film Unbreakable. Which we feel begs the question: Why?

According to Mr. Shyamalan, the answer to that lays with the film's many fans. The embattled director told scifiwire that: "[O]ver the years, as it just grew and grew and grew, and people were like, ‘You know, I really like that. That's actually my favorite movie, and I watch that all the time,' and on and on.  read more »

Lakeview Terrace
Running time 110 minutes
Written by David Loughery and Howard Korder
Directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace, from a screenplay by David Loughery and Howard Korder, based on the story by Mr. Loughery, explores our interracial malaise at a time when we are facing the ultimate test of our true feelings on the tangled issues involved. Not that Lakeview Terrace is predominantly concerned with how whites perceive blacks. For once, the shoe is on the other foot when a mixed-race couple, Patrick Wilson’s grocery-store-chain consultant, Chris Mattson, and his African-American wife, Kerry Washington’s Lisa, move into a secluded Southern California community right next door to Samuel Jackson’s widowed LAPD officer, Abel Turner, who has two small children.  read more »

Hamptons residents who paid up to $2,500 a plate to hang out with Gwyneth Paltrow at a benefit for the Amaryllis Farm Equine Rescue Organization at Steven Klein's Bridgehampton farm (read Daily Transom's account!) were upset when the actress refused to come out of the host's house for most of the evening. [NYDN]

Maybe she was just saving her energy? Ms. Paltrow later attended at party at Def Jam Chairman L.A. Reid's house celebrating Mariah Carey's recent marriage to Nick Cannon. Mary J. Blige, Kelly Ripa, Samuel L. Jackson and Star Jones were also there. [P6]  read more »

If trailers for the movie Jumper (no. 1), the sci-fi actioner starring Hayden Chrstensen, Rachel Bilson and Samuel L. Jackson, made you want to jump out of a window, you may want to take the week off. The movie was a resounding success, both here and throughout the country, raking in over $27 million dollars over the three-day weekend. Guess there won’t be a desperate OC reunion anytime soon.  read more »

JUMPER
RUNNING TIME 90 minutes
WRITTEN BY David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls, Simon Kinberg, Steven Gould
DIRECTED BY Doug Liman
STARRING Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane

A piece of idiotic sci-fi piffle called Jumper looks like $90 billion wasted on 90 minutes of popcorn junk. Even the butter is phony.  read more »

And it will be—those slick Super Bowl commercials looked pretty irresistible, right?  read more »

1408 is the latest product canned by the cottage industry known as Stephen King, but if you go expecting a horror movie, you’ll be disappointed.  read more »