Back at this year's Sundance Film Festival, a bunch of folks were "losing it" over Jonathan Levine's The Wackness -- saying, to a certain extent, that it was the dopest flick of the fest. And that's cool. Support those films you love, right? Well, not long after the film premiered at Sundance, it was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. Wonderful! A film a lot of people loved was picked up and would hit theaters at some point later in the year. Ah, but all was not well in blogger land -- see, a few bloggers were disgusted that SPC picked it up, going so far as to send an email around trying to get other people to either join their cause and/or write about it. Their reasoning was that SPC had a poor track record when it came to promoting indie films, and were afraid The Wackness would become yet another casualty. That it would disappear in limited release ... and be eaten by a Cabbage Patch Kid, or whatever.

And so it was. Some folks agreed with their cause, while others couldn't understand why they'd be upset when, in reality, their favorite film WOULD eventually hit theaters. You can't say that about every Sundance film, or festival film for that matter, and so the simple act of being picked up for distribution is, well, kind of a big deal. After a flurry of posts from a few different blogs which attacked the deal, attacked the teaser poster and then attacked the first teaser trailer, it all seemed to fizzle out. From that point on, SPC continued to poor on the Wackness marketing: We got roughly four or five different trailers, a poster, a viral campaign, a dope website, TV spots and a slick soundtrack.

Was SPC botching it all up? Hardly ... but then came the film's box office debut this past weekend ...

"If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment."

I apologize to my colleagues and readers, because most film critics, reviewers and cinephiles have been known, at least at one point in his or her life, to call a movie "fun." I certainly am guilty of it somewhere, in some review or blog post or whatever. But I'm here to finally set the record straight, even though David Mamet clearly already informed us via the quote above, which is spoken by his wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon, in his 2000 film State and Main. A movie can not be fun, it can only be entertaining. That is, if we're merely watching it on the screen and had no involvement in its production. Actually, even if we make a film ourself, watching it afterwards should technically still be considered entertaining rather than fun.

Of course, a movie experience can be fun. I have fun at a lot of movies I attend, but not because of the movie I'm watching. Like in the case of my recent experience with The Strangers, the movie was not what was fun, not even my observance of the audience was officially fun. But for me, the ticket buying, the popcorn eating, the sitting in the dark is all fun. And the movie was entertaining, as was the crowd. I guess that the experience of watching a movie at home or on your iPod can also be fun, but still in any scenario, the actual movie itself is never fun; it's only entertaining.

"If a film fell in the multiplex, and no one was there to see it..."

Limited release: such a simple phrase, and yet two words that all but indicate to a majority of moviegoers that whatever it is they want to see may or may not escape the confines of a NY/LA run before the film in question comes to them by way of Netflix mere months later.

Meanwhile, screens upon screens across the nation are filled by the likes of the same stars and the same stories, with the same special effects and the same happy endings, leaving the smaller films, the different films, the better films to slip through the distribution cracks, as it were.

Among their number falls The Promotion, a film which we've admittedly supported ad nauseum to the oh-so-ironic tune of $365,928 on a grand total of 81 screens. It opened just this past weekend in my market, Orlando, Fla., on a single screen, for a whopping four days, with a grand total of eight showings, before being shuffled off to make room for that other Jason Bateman co-starring comedy-drama hybrid.

It was the first day of July, and the last night for the film. Having enjoyed it twice before and driven by - I don't know - a sense of romantic futility, I turned out for that final showing. Lo and behold, I wasn't alone...

Here's a stat that may or may not blow your mind: According to Box Office Mojo, Sex and the City has grossed $312 million worldwide. Yup. $312,533,654 to be exact -- for a movie based on a hit HBO show that went off the air a few years ago. Since we all know what happens when Hollywood gets a look at those kinds of numbers, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict what the future holds: plenty more TV-to-movie adaptations. We're practically guaranteed another Sex and the City flick, and earlier today Monika brought us news that the long-rumored Friends movie might be moving forward.

Honestly, why wouldn't it move forward? You're telling me Matt Leblanc, whose last credit on IMDb is Joey, is holding out for a massive paycheck? Same goes for Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, with the latter being the only one getting decent big-screen work (though, truth be told, she's about two movies away from becoming yesterday's news). The others are all showing up in bit parts, directing films that don't go anywhere and/or trying desperately to make the TV thing work again. Fact is, together they're a pot of gold. Apart and, well, we don't really care, do we?

But could a re-emergence on the big screen revive these careers? Could they somehow find a way to take the cutesy sitcom and turn it into a feature film people would actually want to see? Could Friends: The Movie make more money at the box office than Sex and the City? And should we care?

Although Will Smith plays an emotionally fragile superhero in Hancock, as a movie star he's practically invincible. By industry standards, the last genuine Smith dud was The Legend of Bagger Vance, but the actor's standing among many audiences has remained decidedly rocky. As a result, he occupies a unique corner of the Hollywood marketplace where quality and taste don't necessarily match up. Unlike, say, The Dark Knight, not many people eagerly await the latest Smith offering -- which currently has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- but they'll see it anyway. Hancock is tracking well, thanks to a poster exclusively dominated by Smith's unshaven mug, and that pretty much seals its potent box office fate. Just as Smith's slapdash onscreen persona is bullet-proof, Smith himself is steadfastly critic-proof.

Which places movie in an interesting quagmire: After pulling in waves of cash, it will probably get relegated to the void of forgettable Smith fare, where spectacles offer passing amusement before scampering off forever. Hancock, however, deserves better than a fleeting moment in the limelight and a crash landing in the bargain bin. It's part of a genre that speaks directly to the modern state of blockbuster cinema: The superhero satire.

The media is playing two pointless games of "gotcha" with Pixar's wonderful Wall-E at the moment. Eric Kohn addressed the first -- conservative critics griping about the film's "left-wing" message -- over here. The other, best articulated in this post by CHUD's Devin Faraci and this mind-boggling missive from the New York Post's Kyle Smith, but also showing up in Todd McCarthy's Variety review, is that Wall-E's supposed anti-consumerist bent is "hypocrisy" on account of it's released by Disney. I think that's a stupid and dishonest argument, and here's why.

In its latter half, Wall-E presents a vision of the future in which humanity is fat, lazy, basically immobile but for their hoverchairs, and in thrall to a mega-corporation called Buy 'N Large that tells everyone what to do, what to think, and what to buy. The rest of the film is dedicated to Wall-E, EVE, and the spaceship Axiom's human population defying the corporation and returning back to Earth to recolonize. This is disingenuous, the thinking goes, because the Disney empire bears more than a few similarities to Buy 'N Large and, in fact, cynically counts on unthinking, overweight masses, to see its movies, buy its merchandise, and ride the rides at Disney World.

What you'll notice from the folks making this argument is a coy ambiguity about who exactly is being hypocritical here. If the claim is that Disney is being hypocritical by releasing Wall-E, then that may well be right -- but it's also not surprising, newsworthy, or even worth mentioning. Is anyone really shocked that a large, profit-seeking corporation is being opportunistic and ideologically inconsistent? Where is all the outrage about Disney flicks that push the individuality and non-conformism message, when the Walt Disney Company is dependent on a herd mentality among its consumers?

As a long time fan of the original TV show, and as a grown up version of the kid who used to memorize William Johnston's paperbacks ... as a former elementary school student who went in for as many tedious "Would you believe?" jokes as the legions of film critics writing about this week's box office success ... as all of these things, I'm not expecting anything more heart-breaking this summer than Get Smart. From the under-performing villain (the usually savory Terence Stamp) to the dull direction by Peter Segal, the film was a complete tick-off.

Richard Schickel spelled out his own disappointment in the opening paragraph of his review in Time Magazine:

"A schlemiel may be, must be, grievously acted upon by the always malevolent world. But he can never be permitted to act effectively against that world. At the end of his adventures he must, somehow, triumph over the forces of darkness that surround him - but only accidentally so...In that spirit of genial fantasy, we permit out surrogate that utter self-confidence, that sublime sangfroid, with which with he cheerfully motors his way around and through disaster."

In case you don't read Entertainment Weekly and didn't see this week's double issue on "The New Classics," or you didn't see my post last week about their list of the best movies from the last 25 years, here's a sad fact: only six foreign-language films made the list. They are: Wings of Desire (#28); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (#49); The Lives of Others (#56); All About My Mother (#69); Y Tu Mamá También (#86); and In the Mood for Love (#95). OK, so 6% is not terrible for a mainstream entertainment magazine, but EW had to add insult to injury with an accompanying map labeled "Movies: Breaking Down the List," which points to a number of locations around the globe in which some of these new classics are set. The only continent on the map without any love is South America (Antarctica was not included in the visual aid).

Now, before I get into my love letter to new Latin American cinema, I have to note that no film produced in Africa made the list either. However, on the map the continent was at least given some minuscule bit of love via the filming locations for Casino Royale and Gladiator. Yet despite the fact that South America was definitely used as a location in a few of the 100 films, it's shown no respect. And on top of that, Central America isn't even included on the map. For some strange reason there's just a gap between Mexico and South America. Meanwhile, Latin America's sole representative on EW's list, Mexico's Y Tu Mamá También, is left off the map so that no location from this area of the world, from the Mexican-U.S. border to Cape Horn, receives any recognition.

To call the late George Carlin a comedian -- even an undeniably brilliant one -- would be a serious understatement. Most comedians hop up on the stage and deliver gags about sex, politics, drugs and airline food, and some of 'em are seriously funny people. But Carlin wouldn't bother with such slight efforts. This was a man who wanted to address the ills of our society (all of 'em!), but he knew that the best way to get his points across was through the powers of wit, cleverness and intelligence. Comedians (even good ones) are a dime a dozen ... but there will never be another monologue master on par with George Carlin.

Even as a kid -- long before I should have been allowed to enjoy his rants -- I knew Carlin was something special. Unlike many of his contemporaries (Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, etc.), Carlin did not see The Movie Biz as the big brass ring, one to be snatched and hoarded forever at the expense of the stand-up stage. The simple truth is, and I mean this with nothing but affection and respect, George Carlin was not much of an actor. For the most part, producers saw the man as a crotchety little supporting player: Car Wash (1976), Americathon (1979), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) represent the most that filmmakers could do with George Carlin. (He also had a small part in Barbra Streisand's The Prince of Tides, which of course I've never seen.)

Here's the set up: Folks have been a bit puzzled over the alarming rise in teen pregnancies at North Shore High School in Gloucester, Massachusetts. In the past year alone, 17 girls have tested positive for a little bun in the oven, and officials (as well as school administrators) were baffled as to why, all of a sudden, the girls in Gloucester were all sorts of knocked up. Crazy, right? And weird. I'll fully admit that to wind up with 17 girls pregnant in one high school at the same time seems a bit strange, especially when it's four times the level from the year before. Four times!

Completely baffled, officials turned to the only feasible explanation: Blame the movies. And when they looked around at popular movies within the past year -- whaddya know -- there was an Oscar winner with teen pregnancy scribbled all over it. Juno ... written by that teen pregnancy supporter Diablo Cody, and directed by a pregnant teen himself, Jason Reitman. Of course! The ridiculous rise in pregnancies had to do with Juno -- a film that made teen pregnancy look about as comfortable and enjoyable as stuffing yourself in a piece of old luggage and rolling down a mountain. There's the answer!

But should we talk to the girls? Maybe see if there's another explanation for all this? Nah. Leave it all on Juno ... after all, Fox Searchlight didn't hand out condoms outside movie theaters screening Juno (I sure as heck never got any condoms!), so, really, it's their fault for not paying closer attention. Right?

Ahem, and that's when the twist comes in ...