Both patient and therapist, self-medicating director/screenwriter Jonathan Levine took the words of rap artist Ghostface Killah to heart: “If you forget where you come from, you never gonna make it where you’re going.” Thus, Levine’s sophomore feature film effort takes place in a New York City in 1994, the year he graduated from a private high school. His alter-ego, Luke Shapiro’s (Josh Peck) experience mirrors the director’s own—a convoluted world of, mostly, problems: depression; social outcast; no girlfriend; bickering, money-troubled parents (Talia Balsam, David Wohl) threatened with eviction; pot dealer--oh, wait, Levine assured audiences at Sundance and Tribeca screenings: “I never sold weed. I swear.” Sure…. With focused adverts, pic should attract twenty- and thirtysomething males seeking vicarious connection with yet another indie coming-of-age contrivance.

Terry Kinney's high-spirited heart-warmer about a family of cuckoos, based on Sherwood Kiraly's novel and subsequent script, is too labored to take flight. A slog through determined wackiness, it's apt to leave audiences cold.

After a concussion, newspaperman Cooper (Matthew Broderick) takes an enforced vacation to his rural childhood home saddled with a goldfish's memory and a Pulitzer winner's reputation. "I just edited the guy who got nominated," he confesses to teenage sweetheart Charlotte (Virginia Madsen, playing her latest in a series of strong women who find themselves shacked up with losers). At least at the old homestead, he's not the most mentally distressed. Wendell (Tom Aldredge) is in his trailer shooting at strangers and Uncle Rollie (Alan Alda) has strung a typewriter with fishing line as he's convinced the lake's carp are trying to compose poetry. Uncle Rollie's other passion is a vintage Chicago Cubs baseball card in mint condition rumored to be worth 5, maybe 6 figures—hopefully enough to keep Aunt Belle (Lois Smith) from putting him in a mental home. Before you can say "Wacky family road trip!" Rollie, Cooper, Charlotte, and Charlotte's son Dillon (Jimmy Bennett) head to a baseball card convention in Chicago where an increasingly addled Alda is determined to sell the card to the first—not highest—bidder.

Americans revel in the cult of personality. And Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson (he purchased the famous appellation for $10 from the Universal Life Church in the late 1960s), as both co-creator and carrier of the ’60s zeitgeist, embodied personality writ large. The anarchist, iconoclast, maverick, drug- and drink-induced seer of all that was most corroded and crumbling, most loathing and lethal, in American culture and its political system, finds a fresh, albeit sadly posthumous, platform in Alex Gibney’s less than definitive, but still substantial, entrée into the personal life and writings of the legendary “outlaw,” whose literary feats were often overshadowed by his outrageous antics.

The film includes clips of never-before-seen or -heard home movies and audiotapes, as well as passages from unpublished manuscripts read by Johnny Depp, who portrayed the good doctor in all his “bad craziness” in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It also benefits from a number of well-integrated interviews with Thompson’s contemporaries: Tom Wolfe, Ralph Steadman, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, Jann Wenner and Jimmy Buffet. But the doc suffers from an overuse of Fear and Loathing segments and a feel (too) good amalgam of ’60s music. But gonzo boomers who lived through the period, gonzo wannabes and the gonzo curious will fill theatrical screenings and brand the DVD an evergreen.

I want to expand, redirect and challenge some of the discussion on my earlier post about Sundance, The Nines, and the death of independent film.

For starters, many in the P2P world were all too happy to declare victory over, well, logic. (The Nines Director: Forget Sundance, Use P2P Instead). That’s incorrect on a lot of levels.

In the article, I said that leaking a copy online at the right moment would have certainly increased awareness, and might have helped sales of tickets, DVDs and paid downloads. Notice that I really am talking about sales — that antiquated notion where people pay for things. My thesis is that if you make it at least as easy to obtain something legally as illegally, a fair number of potential users are happy to pay for it.

And I said nothing approaching, “Forget Sundance.” I said that Sundance buzz is annoying and meaningless, but that doesn’t mean the festival is irrelevant. Quite the contrary. Film festivals are public events in which thousands of people come together to watch challenging, independent film. The failure of arthouse distribution for indies makes festivals even more essential, because without film festivals, most of these movies would never screen before an audience.

After preview screenings on Tuesday, Sony's Hancock easily landed in first place on Wednesday with a $17.4 million gross. Disney's WALL-E was pushed into a distant second with $6.7 million.

With Hancock, Will Smith will easily continue his run of successful July 4th opening weekends and if the superhero flick continues at the pace it's going, it could hit the $100 million mark by the end of the weekend.

WALL-E should also have a strong July 4th showing, following its successful debut last weekend. The animated adventure dropped 12% from Tuesday to Wednesday and it was not harmed too much by the emergence of Hancock like other films in the top 10 were.

Wanted in particular seems to be dropping faster than it may have without Hancock in the picture. The assassin flick fell 28% from Monday to Tuesday and then another 22% from Tuesday to Wednesday. Although, it should still post a decent showing this weekend.

After opening on five screen last weekend, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl expanded to 1,753 on Wednesday and was able to finish in 6th place. The film should find a nice little niche among young girls (and their accompanying parents) who've already seen WALL-E and are looking for something new this weekend.

WALL-E may look like the bastard child of E.T. and a backhoe, but inside he’s all Snake Pliskin from Escape from New York (1981). YouTube’s Sara Pollack on the most exciting thing to happen to short films since… well, maybe ever.

3:11 Sarah Pollack from YouTube

14:33 Wall-E vs. Escape From New York

18:23 Movies to watch

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SMART ceased manufacturing our cinema product line at the end of June 2008. We are not accepting new orders.

In the 30 years we have been offering efficient and low cost products. Recently the costs have skyrocket for parts, labor, and shipping costs. While some competitors have moved their production to Communist China or other low cost Asian countries, we have prided ourselves on “Made in America” products. We have absorbed as much of the increases as possible. It is no longer feasible to continue to offer our products without a sharp increase in price.

Several manufacturers have approached us to buy the designs, rights, and manufacturing documentation for several of our popular products. It is likely you will see these products offered by other manufacturers soon. We will publish links to their websites when negotiations are completed.

SMART will continue to offer some products that are sub-contracted to outside assembly companies in our region. We will also continue to offer warranty service for the products we have made in the past year.

For more information click here.

In response to Karina’s post from yesterday about plot songs, I feel it is necessary and timely to pay tribute today to the best plot song writer since Huey Lewis: Will Smith. From the ’80s on, Smith has provided the world with songs serving as storytelling supplements to his TV show, his movies and even other people’s movies. At times he has even prematurely released songs that could later be applied to movies for which he failed to attach an official plot song. Uh huh.

To get us started, here’s one for Hancock. It’s a song released three years ago, but it’s much more relevant now:

“Here He Comes” for Hancock