Where have people been saying it's bad?

I think you are forgetting a little gem I like to forget called:
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

Since when does Lucy Liu pick good movies? She's only in two good movies: Payback and Kill Bill. Everything else will be forgotten in a scrapheap in 20 year's time.

Also:

Now Playing at the Ritz

* Babel
* Blood Diamond
* Casino Royale
* The Children of Men
* The Curse of the Golden Flower
* The Departed
* Dreamgirls
* The Good German
* The Good Shepherd
* The History Boys
* The Holiday
* Miss Potter
* Notes On A Scandal
* The Painted Veil
* Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer
* Pursuit of Happyness
* The Queen
* Rocky Balboa
* Volver
* We Are Marshall

I know not a lot of those are new, but that's a mighty fine collection of films there.

Children of Men looks to be a good film, I might see it tomorrow.

Codename: The Cleaner looks to be the black version of Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.

Funny how the only selling point of that movie Thr3e is:

"From X-Men Producer Ralph Winter"

I hate it when movies use Producers or "from the makers of" as the selling points.

> When it premiered at Sundance last year, audience and critics alike trashed it to all hell.

> New Line kept on delaying the release of the film as they didn't know what to do with it and they wanted to give it a real small release before sending it right to DVD (similar to the release of Havoc, but just that Alpha Dog would've actually made it's way to some theaters -- somewhere around 250-500 screens once all was said and done).

> The film's director got pissed off at New Line for the way they were treating the film and he got New Line to give the rights up to Universal who will be releasing the flick next week on around 1,200 screens.

Rule of thumb in Hollywood is, if a studio doesn't know what to do with a movie, it sucks or it's impossible to market. Usually the former, unless you're the Weinsteins.

If you're the Weinsteins, then you'll take your movie, change the ending, cut out tons of random scenes, reshoot some parts, add a partially new beginning, re-dub all the "fucks" with "freakin"s so you can get a PG-13, then when you advertise the movie you will show all the deleted footage from the previews because it looks really good and enticing. Then when it hits DVD you restore it all in the true "Unrated" form, which you will advertise as being the "version too shocking for theaters".

The director posts on IMDB and just said that he met with Universal last week and they upped it to 1,500 screens because the awareness for the film is higher than expected.

As soon as I saw the ":" in the title of "Code Name.." I thought of that...

January is horrible for movies that debut during the month. However, many of the Oscar hopefuls do expand during this same time, so it's okay. The first 2007 film I'll likely watch is The Hills Have Eyes 2, which I believe releases in March.

It was scheduled for March 3rd (or 2nd, whichever was a Friday), but was just pulled because that date is too full apparently with other films. I don't know if it has a new release date.

So what year is the official release date for CHILDREN OF MEN and PAN'S LABYRINTH? They are showing up on a lot of year end top 10 lists, but as far as awards go, are they eligible for 2006, or 2007?

I saw a screening of FREEDOM WRITERS in 2006, but I guess it is officially a 2007 film (my first?). It had a somewhat cheesy storyline, as one could expect, but the actors who played the kids were very effective. I'd say despite everything, there were 4 or 5 misty-eyed moments that were very moving.

They are 2006 films. Both had the usual limited release. Children of Men was out on Christmas. Pan's Labyrinth was out on 12/29.