<![CDATA[io9: entertainment weekly]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: entertainment weekly]]> http://io9.com/tag/entertainmentweekly http://io9.com/tag/entertainmentweekly <![CDATA[Is Robert Downey Jr. Really The Entertainer Of The Year?]]> Entertainment Weekly has named Iron Man's Robert Downey Jr. as their choice for the entertainer of 2008 - and while we may have loved Jon Favreau's metal Marvel hero movie, we're unconvinced that Downey Jr.'s necessarily the right man for the title. What about Heath Ledger, the unintentionally-entertaining Michael Bay (C'mon, "Bayhem" is definitely the word of the year), JJ Abrams, or even - considering Clone Wars and The Force Unleashed - George Lucas? Vote in our poll below, or use the comments to make the case for your write-in vote.

(Yes, I know there are two "Other"s - I am a moron. Kindly ignore the one that doesn't give you the chance to write-in your choice.)

Voting is open until 12am Tuesday morning. Vote early, vote often.

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<![CDATA[Star Trek Only Boldly Goes For 2 Hours, Thank The Great Bird Of The Galaxy]]> J.J. Abrams is leading the charge to save us from the over-extended 3 hour movies of late. His Star Trek film will only be two action-packed hours. Abrams told MTV that, “I’m sick of these two hours and forty-five minute movies. Seriously, it’s like I don’t have enough time to stay two hours and forty-five minutes. I’m exhausted just saying that twice. I can’t stand it.” And we thank you for that. The new Entertainment Weekly Star Trek issue (pictured) will be out this Friday. [MTV]

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<![CDATA[The Trouble with Entertainment Weekly's List of "Best SF Since 1983"]]> How much truly great science fiction has been created in the last 25 years? Entertainment Weekly think that they know, and have compiled a list of "The Genre's Best Since 1983" to prove it, ranking the top 25 SF movies and TV shows (because, really: books, comics or games? Not entertaining enough, apparently) and proving that, just because you work for an internationally-distributed pop-culture magazine doesn't mean that you can count.

Call me pedantic, but the main problem with EW's list isn't their choice of the best SF film of the last 25 years (Although, come on; The Matrix? Really? Every day, I become more and more convinced that I am the only person in the world who thought that that movie was an overly-special-effects-laden rip off of The Invisibles with horrendously uncharismatic lead actors doing their limited best with shitty dialogue) but that three of the entries come from 1982. EW writers! The clue is right there in the title of the piece! "The Genre's Best Since 1983," not "Oh, but we really liked ET, so that counts, right?"

Don't let that put you off going to check out the list itself, which brings its own particularly frustrating brand of enjoyment when you realize that, for every Galaxy Quest getting its day in the sun, there's a Doctor Who being placed beneath Quantum Leap. Seriously. Some people have no sense of history.

(Since writing this, EW have renamed the article "The Genre's Best Since 1982". The power of the press, or a copyeditor just realizing the mistake? You be the judge.)

[Entertainment Weekly]

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<![CDATA[Denise Huxtable Finds Life On Mars]]> Adding to the increasingly unusual cast list of the revamped US version of Life On Mars, Lisa Bonet — star of The Cosby Show, Angel Heart and... well, not that much else — has signed on to star as the 2008 girlfriend of Jason O'Mara's coma-time-traveling cop, giving him something to come back to should he choose to leave co-stars Harvey Keitel and Gretchen Mol in the early '70s, according to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. [Entertainment Weekly]

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<![CDATA[Have Superhero Movies Killed The Summer Movie Season?]]> It's the argument that quite literally some people are talking about: Are superhero movies responsible for the death of the high-quality summer blockbuster? You may be scratching your head, wondering when the last high-quality summer blockbuster wasn't a superhero movie. (First person to say Independence Day gets punched.) But Entertainment Weekly isn't afraid to take a stand against... well, what everyone wants to see these days nonetheless.

You can blame EW's Chris Nashawaty for starting the whole thing off with his essay, subtly titled "Superheroes: How They Ruined Summer Movies":

Looking back now, I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell out of love with summer movies: May 3, 2002. I ducked out of work early that afternoon to wait in line for the first screening of the first blockbuster movie of the summer. I remember looking around at the swarm of hooky-playing droolers and fanboys and knowing I was precisely where I was meant to be. I would've taken a bullet for these people. After all, we'd shared some indelible event-movie moments over the years. July 3, 1991: Opening day for Terminator 2. June 11, 1993: Jurassic Park. July 3, 1996: Independence Day. Hell, I'd even saved the ticket stubs. Now it was Spider-Man's turn.

Sitting in the darkness of the theater, beaten numb by the whining adolescent angst of Peter Parker, fighting back a yawn during his schmaltzy rain-soaked smooch with Mary Jane Watson, nearly going into diabetic shock from all of the sugar-spun F/X eye candy that honestly couldn't have looked more bogus, I felt...well, I felt really bored. At some point during those endless 121 minutes, I'd changed. And when the audience started whooping as the end credits rolled, I realized that my beloved summer movies were changing too.

Yes, he's really arguing that Spider-Man ruined the good name of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. But wait — it gets better:

Just 10 years ago, summer had real movies — the kind without genetic mutants whose tortured origin stories are shamelessly cribbed from Freud 101. In the summer of '98, you could go to a multiplex and see Out of Sight, The Truman Show, or Saving Private Ryan. And if you wanted ear-shattering bombast, there was Armageddon. Don't laugh, Michael Bay's starting to look more and more like Antonioni these days.

Apparently, someone's forgotten to tell Chris that there are actually some other movies coming out this summer besides Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk. Either that, or he thinks that Sex and The City was originally created by Stan Lee (Chris, if it helps, here's a list of what's being released this summer).

Television Without Pity's Zach Oat speaks up for sanity:

I feel for you, Chris, I really do, because you seem to have gone to see every terrible superhero movie ever made. I presume it's because of your job as a writer at EW and not out of some assumption of quality, but I'm a long-time comic book fan, and even I knew not to go see Catwoman or Ghost Rider or The Punisher in theatres... My advice? "Just walk away," as the great Humungus said in the summer of 1981. Stay away from the movies that are clearly causing you grief. Don't buy that ticket to Hellboy II (the original made $100 million globally, by the way); instead, go see Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave.

Nashawaty's essay is a strange piece (especially for Entertainment Weekly to run), and it feels like he hasn't thought through his argument, but does he have something resembling a point amongst his bitter ramblings? There are a lot of comic-book related movies this year (Besides the three mentioned above, add Hellboy II and Wanted to the list, and you could potentially throw Speed Racer on there if you squint hard enough as well). Maybe it's not "when did comic movies kill summer," but instead "how many comic movies are too many?"

Superheroes: How They Ruined Summer Movies [Entertainment Weekly]

How Chris Nashawaty Ruined My Summer [Television Without Pity]

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