Flixens: Movies, DVDs, TV, comic books and pop culture for women. The boys shouldn't have all the fun.

Hello from BEYOND THE GRAAAAVEEEE!!!!

Hi everyone, Nina Kincaid here, your research librarian extraordinaire, with what I hope is some disappointing news for everyone.

I have decided to shut down operations at Flixens.com for the time being.  Things started out well enough, and we enjoyed some early support from some very loyal readers (for which I am eternally grateful), but since the late summer we became short-staffed and have been unable to maintain the level of quality on the site that I feel is necessary to continue.

That's it.  Short and sweet.

Ian Fleming's licensed-to-kill superspy James Bond is back in both his first and his latest adventure in Casino Royale, the reboot of the venerable film franchise that shows no sign of mellowing with age.

It seems as if each time a new Bond film comes out, the nay-sayers reiterate how Bond has become an anachronism and that his adventures have become old hat.  Daniel Craig's debut as 007 will be the main reason that people go to see the movie, I'm sure.  I'm happy to report that Craig fills out the tuxedo quite nicely, thank you, dare I say even delivering the best Bond since Sean Connery?  At least, I think he's closer to Fleming's original character than Pierce Brosnan and certainly Roger Moore... rougher than either but smoother than Timothy Dalton.

The plot of the film is relatively straight-forward and uncharacteristically low-key.  After earning his 00-status and his licence to kill (after fulfilling the 2-kill prerequisite which we've all seen in the trailer, James Bond is assigned his first mission, which takes him to Madagascar to capture a bomb-making terrorist, played by real-life "freerunner" Sebastien Foucan.  Simply put, freerunning is the art of running as fast as you can, avoiding all obstacles in your path as gracefully as possible, and Foucan is the inventor of the sport.  His talents are put to incredible use in the film's first big action sequence (there are only three).  I've never seen anyone move quite like Foucan before, and the sequence is both thrilling and mesmerizing.

Bond sort of blunders the mission and earns the disdain of M, played once again by Dame Judi Dench.  Trying to set things right, James teams up with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), one of Her Majesty's Treasury agents and eventually gets involved in a game of high-stakes poker in Montenegro with Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson), a global money-launderer to various terrorist organizations who just so happens to be gambling with his clients' money.  James' hopes to beat Le Chiffre at his own game in order to leave the villain no safe purchase in the world except with MI6's interrogators.

If you are familiar with the story, then you will know there are some twists along the way, but nothing you won't see coming down Fleet Street.

For the most part, the film succeeds in its mission.  As I said, Craig makes a great Bond, the locales are gorgeous and places we will never see otherwise, the stunts are physical (Craig may be the most bloodied and bruised Bond yet), and the story is interesting.

The film falls apart in its final act, which suffers from "LOTR Multiple Ending Syndrome" and just about grinds to a halt before the 3rd and final action piece.  At 144 minutes, it's about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, and could have used some judicious editing to keep the momentum going.

Long-time fans may be upset to see Texas Hold 'Em being played instead of Baccarat, or by the absence of Q and his gadgets and Miss Moneypenny, or by the jumbled timeline of Bond's first mission with the M who replaced a previous M, but it is nice to see Bond back in his Aston Martin again (sorry BMW), and there are some nice moments related to previous Bond traditions, i.e. his response to "Shaken or stirred?" is perfect.

Oh, and it's a Columbia Picture, so get ready for the Sony product placements that we've all come to know and despise.  The film is loaded with them, although I was honestly surprised that the PS3 wasn't a major plot point.  There may be hope for Sony yet.

It's been a while since we had a Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix update... but Warner Bros. has released the teaser poster for the upcoming fifth film in the film franchise based on J.K. Rowling's wizarding hero.

The poster features Ralph Fiennes as none other than the insidious Lord Voldemort warning us that "you will lose everything."

Hoping to entice people to go see the animated penguin 2D 3D film, Warner Bros. will debut the OOTP trailer before Happy Feet tomorrow (Nov. 17).

Nothing showcases the downfall of modern society better than November sweeps week, especially on the Fox network.

According to CNN, Fox will air a two-part interview with wife-throat-slasher and waiter-murderer O.J. Simpson entitled If I Did It, Here's How it Happened on November 27 and 29.  I'm sure the Brown family and the Goldman family already have it on their holiday TiVo schedule... right after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

The interview is conducted by trash-publisher Judith Regan, who has proven herself to be a nightmarish, greedy, opportunistic harpy in the past, and solidifies her place in the Despicable Hall of Fame as she promotes Simpson's new book If I Did It, published by her company, ReganBooks and just happens to be owned by News Corporation, parent company of Fox.

And I just promoted it by reporting on this story.

Damn you Judith Regan!  Damn you all to Hell!!

It's been quite a while since we had an update on the trials and tribulations of Shia LaBeouf.  May 4th, to be exact.  Long-time readers of this site will know that I have a special plase in my heart for that cutie.  But today is a new day and we have news that young Master Shia has signed on to Transformers 2 and 3.

Now, now... don't get all excited.  These trilogy deals are pretty standard these days.  What's interesting though is that Shia seems to think that the Transformers feature film will be his ticket on the Lord of the Rings Gravy Train.  In an interview with About.com, Shia compared his work on Bobby with his work on Transformers:

Again, that’s exactly what that is. If anyone tells you they do that for the art value, that’s bulls**t. It’s f**king painful. To go from Emilio Estevez to Michael Bay is like walking out of, you know, like in a hammock in the sky, hanging out drinking Pina Coladas with Jesus and then getting smacked in the face and thrown in the devil’s s**pile and having to make a movie. I swear to God.

Huh wha??  He goes on....

I was thinking about quitting this industry. And Michael Bay will tell you that. He’s so hard on his actors, and not in the way that Emilio might be, in that he’ll push you to be something better. Mike is just f**king a hard a**.

OMG, what a whiny, foul-mouthed little wimp!  How could I have been so wrong?

Look, the four, five months of pain I went through might buy my mom a house and that’s forever, so I’m all right. People go to f**king war, it’s not like I have a hard job. I’m an actor. It’s not the worst thing. We’re sitting at a pool, I didn’t pay for those shoes, I didn’t pay for this. It’s not a bad life, and for a guy that didn’t have s**t going on. There’s certain pains; it’s a tradeoff like anything. There’s things you don’t want to do in your industry... You get lost in a f**king weird depression, man... I barely made it out of that movie. I was going to a heart specialist; I was having anxiety attacks, losing my mind. And you know, you’re doing physical s**t all day. It’s tough, man. And even Mike at the end, he was like, ‘Look, I know I’m hard on you but you’ll never get this again. If you can go through this with me, you can do anything.’ Sort of like the whole, ‘If you can live in New York you can live anywhere,” type thing. Whatever doesn’t kill you.

Yeah, yeah... whatever, pansy-boy.  I am SO done with you.  Oh yeah, and the thing about LOTR...

You don’t get bigger than $250 million robots blowing up the world. I don’t plan on making any other – I mean, I’m going to do Transformers 2 and 3 so that will be my Lord of the Rings.... Yeah, I’m gonna do it. That will be my Lord of the Rings and then I’ll just make indies the rest of my time, for a long time. Elijah [Wood’s] straight. Elijah can do whatever he wants. Why? Because he’s in one of the biggest, the top five grossers ever. People in China know who he is and people in Iceland know who he is. He can do whatever he wants. That’s my whole thing is I’ve got to get to the point where people in Iceland will go see Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. That’s what I’m trying to do... It’s a tough deal but again, it was tough to go from the kid thing to the adult thing. That was the toughest jump you can do in this business.

Sheesh... he sounds like Drew Barrymore coming off her E.T. gig.  Who would have known?  You know what?  He's not even THAT cute...

The 3-disc Deluxe, Extended Edition of Peter Jackson's King Kong hits the DVD streets tomorrow, featuring a commentary  track with director Peter Jackson and co-writer Philippa Boyens, 13 minutes of additional, completed footage, 38 minutes of deleted scenes, the 8-part documentary "Re-Creating the Eighth Wonder: The Making of King Kong", "A Night in Vaudeville" featurette, pre-viz animatics, electronic versions of the 1996 and 2005 versions of the script, bloopers, design galleries, and more (including a cool Kong statue depending on which version you buy).

You may remember my original review of the film, which I enjoyed, despite its flaws.  I'll be the first to admit, it's very hard for me to be completely objective about a Kong film.  Remember, I'm the kind of girl who can sit at home and watch a double-feature of King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes in all their man-in-suit glory and actually enjoy them.

But I'm curious to know how many of you are planning on buying the new double-dip.  Jackson's film was overly long, by most accounts, so do we really need 13 more minutes of additional footage (plus over a half-hour of deleted scenes)?

Put me in the "Yes" column, I guess.  I've been dying to see the "raft" sequence ever since it was cut out of the original release, only to find its way back onto the new DVD.  Plus, as complete as the Production Diaries were, they weren't nearly as complete as the behind-the-scenes features on the Lord of the Rings extended editions.  THIS is the edition I've been waiting for.

I can't help it.  I am weak.