Beowulf: If you thought The Polar Express was great but would have been better with graphic violence and cartoon nudity, then here’s the flick for you, guy who only exists in Robert Zemeckis’s mind.

30 Days of Night: This film tells the terrifying tale of a small-town in Alaska that’s forced to spend a month in the dark with Josh Hartnett. Fortunately, a group of merciful vampires comes along to put them out of their misery.

The Darjeeling Limited: Easily among the top-nine best Darjeeling-centric movies of 2007.

Also out this week: Death at a Funeral, Slipstream, Goya’s Ghosts, Day Zero and The Last Emperor: Criterion Edition

Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind is both sweet and inventive, but to say that it lives up to the expectations laid down by his previous works like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would probably be going just a tad too far. The zany premise is that Mike (Mos Def) has been left in charge of the video store owned by his boss and quasi-surrogate-father (it’s unclear) Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) while he goes out of town. Upon the venerable man’s departure, Mike’s friend Jerry (Jack Black) accidentally gets himself magnetized in an incident at the adjacent power plant, and inadvertently erases all the store’s tapes, leaving the two to recreate the classic films with nothing but some elbow grease and the creative use of household objects. They dub their brand of film reinvention “Sweding” — a name Jerry comes up with on the spot, hoping to make the process sound exotic and possibly European.

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According to “sources”, mysterious though they may be, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom as the Crystal Skull is being prepped for a worldwide premiere at the celebrated Cannes Film Festival. The premiere – if it happens – will precede the film’s official release date of May 22, 2008.

If these sources are not, in fact, cruelly mucking about with our dreams, all of Indy 4’s major players, from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, to Karen Allen and Harrison Ford, will make their first Jones-related red carpet appearance since the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There will be no Nazis on the premises.

As a lifelong movie lover, the Oscars are always a special event for me. No matter how much I learn about how movies are made, no matter how many I see, and how much I discover about what goes on behind the scenes, they are always fresh and surprising. I’ve been lucky enough to maintain an innocence, a naiveté, that allows me to suspend disbelief when I’m watching a film.

This year, for the first time, I was able to be in Los Angeles for Oscar weekend. On the day before the ceremony, I saw the Kodak Theater, the ceremony’s home since 2002, and experienced firsthand the massive amount of production that goes into making the Oscar telecast such a memorable event. For someone still able to be moved by movies past and present, placing my hands inside the impressions of Cary Grant, Harold Lloyd, and Matt Damon’s hands in front of Grauman’s Theater inspired a profound connection to the history of the art form I love. I attended an annual event called “Meet the Oscars,” a small exhibit that gives the public the opportunity to be photographed holding an actual Oscar statuette - providing me with a slam dunk snapshot for my Christmas card in ten months.

I share all this not to brag, but simply to note that while watching the telecast at the home of a dear friend in LA I was still as caught up in the show as I always am. Even though I saw first-hand the amount of fakery and construction that goes into the telecast – the red carpet, the cheesy gigantic Oscars that flank the people who enter the theater, the fact that the Kodak theater anchors a mall – I suspended my disbelief without ever thinking about it. I screamed and yelled and carried on when something surprised me, I bitched and moaned when I felt the winner was less than deserving (I’m looking at you editor of The Bourne Ultimatum), and I still marvel at the sheer star-power of great actors and marvel at the mysterious skill of the writers and directors I adore.

And the show this year was as worthy of love as any in recent memory. Here are a few of the many memorable moments and innovations.

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Every year when the Academy Awards roll around, the hardworking staff of the All Movie Guide gets together to nominate and vote on its own version of the best films of the previous 12 months. We call this little ceremony the AMG Awards, our own little alternate Oscars. Winners are presented in boldface.

Best Picture
Juno
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac

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Note: Convention Coverage Update at the bottom of the post.
There’s nothing like a horror convention to get the geek juices flowing – and who better to throw one than the undisputed kings of horror publications but Fangoria, the leading source of all cinematic horror offerings. They kick off their Midwest winter convention this upcoming weekend in Chicago and the lineup looks like it should be one bloody great time. With guests that range from convention regulars Robert Englund and Kane Hodder (Freddy and Jason, respectively) to an appearance by one of the brightest upcoming directors on the market, Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday), plus two double-feature packed nights at the Windy City’s famed Music Box theater – this is one wild and wooly weekend that is sure to be worth trekking through the cold for.

Follow through the jump for the official flyer, along with links and a call back to our previous year’s coverage. Also be on the lookout for our Convention Report next week, where we fill you in on all of the wonderfully weird happenings of this year’s installment.

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Inspired by the Kung Fu Flicks series I had previously posted about and still lamenting the lack of fun choices on Detroit area movie screens, yours truly has partnered with Synapse Films and the Emagine Theaters to cook up a mondo bizarro movie series that is absolutely guaranteed to overload your cerebral cortex with some of the most outrageous cult films ever produced!

Every Thursday evening in April, Detroit area moviegoers are invited to come out to the Novi Emagine and experience the seedier side of cinema as we present a series of $7 double features featuring everything from punk rock zombies and flesh-eating schoolgirls to alien parasites, demonic heavy metal bands, debauched detectives, and gore drenched winos!

This isn’t Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse folks… this is the REAL DEAL!

The complete schedule follows the jump.

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Despite a remarkably strong year for the Oscars, the most accomplished features of 2007 displayed a pronounced surge of pessimism. Consider the cynical iconoclasm of There Will Be Blood, the dark, quasi-apocalyptic foreboding of No Country for Old Men, the ominous fatality of Atonement. For that reason, indie stalwart John Sayles’s nostalgic southern period piece Honeydripper marks a welcome exception. Though it might seem an obvious stroke for a musical drama to exude joy, Sayles counter-intuitively resists overwhelming the audience with melodic rapture. The joy here exists and thrives on a sub-musical level; it’s the raw, unfettered pleasure of veteran movie lover Sayles cutting loose and immersing himself in the rapture of his craft, of the storytelling itself that brings him a peerless high.

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