Popdose: Movie cornucopia this Thanksgiving

And on the flipside: Not just DVD reviews of the sequel Angels & Demons and the Criterion release of the excellent Gomorrah, but a countdown of the Top 100 films of the decade, as compiled by our editors. What's on top? Hint, it's not Precious, but the precious...

Popdose: Movie misery this Thanksgiving

This is the dreariest turkey day selection of movies ever--partly because they're lame (a sequel to the so-so teenpic Twilight doesn't get my blood pumping) but mostly because they're so goddamned depressing--Precious (pictured), The Road, etc. Try not to kill yourself after reading this piece.

Popdose: Downhill Racer on DVD

Robert Redford on skis, in Michael Ritchie's debut feature. Does the Criterion disc cross the finish line?

Popdose: Wings of Desire on DVD

Wim Wenders' 1987 hit Wings of Desire has been reissued as a Criterion Collection title, just in time to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of one of its principal locations, the Berlin Wall. Is it a transporting experience?

My own Wall fall story: I was living in Hong Kong when the momentous event occured. I was about to rent a new apartment. The prior tenant of the place (which had a glorious little view of the harbor) was a German woman who was returning to the country in tremendous haste--so fast, she asked me to please take all her furniture. I offered her some money but she said, no, it was OK, I was doing her a favor by letting her leave all the stuff behind. And off she went. The German people got their freedom, and I got free Ikea furniture that I owned for years.

The new Prisoner

I'm hoping against hope that the reimagined Prisoner, which starts up on Sunday as a six-hour event, won't be too bad. AMC will always have a black mark in my book for trashing its movie programming but someone there must know something given the quality of Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Though I own the Patrick McGoohan original on DVD I haven't really spent much time with the show since I gobbled it up on PBS years ago. But I've certainly read about it since then, not least in Video Watchdog magazine, and I remember it fondly. It was one of those shows that helped me grow up, to look at the world differently.

Not so, says the new No. 2, Ian McKellen. In a New York Times piece, the actor more or less calls the original, well, No. 2. “I thought it was camp, frivolous, something without substance, an entertainment without any weight or bottom to it,” he said. “I thought McGoohan was tremendous. He was terribly good at playing enigmatic, clearly angst-ridden and suffering, edgy and sexy too. It was all designed to intrigue and delight. But what was under the surface? Was there something?” Mr. McKellen added that he “wouldn’t have wanted to play the original, because it would just be playing a caricature, an idea, a symbol.”

But symbols have great power--more than too easily caricatured "reality," which is what I fear this soapier-looking redo, replete with backstory and the actor who played Christ, will amount to. McKellen's a smart guy, and a good blogger, and his emergence as a bankable character actor has been most welcome. (Then again, it seems that all British actors have to do is wait for the offers to come in from across the pond, as they do eventually.) He knows the value of publicity by going a negative; I'm sure Prisoner and TV chat rooms have lit up with his comments. But we'll soon see if he lives up to his hype and shows us what's under the surface.

Mad Men and dinosaurs

In the grip of last night's third season finale of Mad Men, I had a dream. I dreamed that the show was excellent--and that I was really happy that there was only scene with dinosaurs. My gripe with the show had been that there was too much focus on dinosaurs, and I was pleased that--finally!--the producers had gotten it down to just one scene. I recall Don Draper and a T-rex hanging out together in a Jurassic Park setting.

What was going on here? Perhaps my sleeping self had somehow wired Mad Men and Primeval. Or maybe I was reacting to the notion that the modes of behavior in the show are extinct (or, like birds, have simply evolved). Perhaps I was nostalgic for a time in my own life when the idea of a workplace as a substitute family was appealing--does anyone think that way now? (Don's Manhattan family, dysfunctional as it is, is a lot more fun than the one collapsing on him upstate.)

Don't know. But I teared up at Don and Peggy's big scene. Television--dramatic art--at its finest. This show, at least, is far from an ice age in quality.

Popdose: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Is it worth you staring back? Read my mind.