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Sarah Silverman stopped by the RS offices yesterday to treat us to an impromptu song about stopping by the RS offices. She also gave Peter Travers a rundown of what we can expect on The Sarah Silverman Program this season (an episode devoted to Sarah’s mustache, a show about the conflict that arises when she and her sister open competing Holocaust memorials), and opened up about her love of *Damages* and *Precious*, feeling manipulated by *Up*, and the types of film roles she’d like (Helena Bonham Carter in *Fight Club*) as opposed to the ones she gets offered (“You’re the bitchy girlfriend that he’s with before he realizes what love could be”). Watch the full interview now!

There’s some bad news for all you who wanted to kill time at the multiplex this weekend before the Super Bowl: In this installment of *At the Movies*, Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers says it’s a bleak, bleak week for new films. You pretty much have two new flicks entering theaters this weekend, and they’re both pretty awful.

Let’s start with From Paris With Love, which is not a foreign film about romance in France as the title suggests. Instead, it’s an action flick starring John Travolta as a spy who assassinates people in increasingly bombastic ways. The title is a take on the James Bond film From Russia With Love, but From Paris misses the mark big time. Travolta is in his full zany Taking of Pelham 123 mode once again in this film by Pierre Morel, who in 2008 directed Liam Neeson in an action film called Taken, which Travers says is far superior to this film one.

Yesterday, in my Oscar predictions blog, I feared the worst and begged the Academy not to give a spot among the 10 nominees for Best Picture to *The Blind Side*, a football family drama of more than usual puking sentimentality. So, of course, the Academy put it right in contention, along with nine rather reasonable choices (*Avatar, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up* and *Up in the Air*). Why *The Blind Side* wasn’t replaced by something serious (*The Messenger*), stylish (*Star Trek*), hilarious (*The Hangover*), romantic (*(500) Days of Summer*), innovative (*Where the Wild Things Are*), Clint-ish (*Invictus*) or just plain not brain-dead, I can’t tell you. You tell me. What movie would you put in the spot unfairly occupied by *The Blind Side*?

Peter Travers unleashes his anger at *The Blind Side*’s nomination in a special edition of “Damn You, Hollywood!”

Ten shots for Best Picture, and *The Blind Side* gets a nod? What about smaller movies, like *Moon* with Sam Rockwell — did you ever think of nominating him? Tilda Swinton in *Julia*? Abbie Cornish in *Bright Star*? How about some fresh thinking? Watch Peter Travers’ full rant above.

Plus, check out what Travers thought would get nominated for the 2010 Oscars.

Photo: Winter/Getty

On Tuesday AM, the Academy of Motion Picture Old Farts & Sciences will announce its 2010 Oscar nominations, including 10 candidates instead of the usual five for Best Picture. Here are my predictions in the major categories with some side notes on long shots and who will get royally screwed. Play along, why don’t you? And feel free to tell me where I’ve screwed up big time.

**Best Picture**

• *Avatar*

• *The Hurt Locker*

• *Up in the Air*

• *Precious*

• *Inglourious Basterds*

• *An Education*

• *District 9*

• *Up*

• *Invictus*

• *A Serious Man*

**Maybes**: *Star Trek, The Hangover, (500) Days of Summer, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Blind Side* (please gods of cinema, don’t let this happen!)

**Most Deserving But It Won’t Get In**: *The Messenger*

This weekend marks Mel Gibson’s big return to the silver screen, and Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is here to tell you his take on the vengeance flick Edge of Darkness. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Gibson — Signs in 2002 was his last major role — and the man we used to know as Mad Max, Brett Maverick and Martin Riggs doesn’t quite have those matinee-handsome looks anymore that made him a star all those years back. Still, Gibson is effective as a Boston cop who seeks revenge against those responsible for killing his daughter before his eyes.

For the dead of winter, Edge of Darkness is an “OK B-film,” Travers says, with director Martin Campbell adequately turning his epic six-hour British miniseries into a sub-two-hour revenge film. Still, the third act sort of falls off the rails as Gibson’s own policeman operates outside the law, but if you’ve really, really missed Gibson’s onscreen persona these past eight years, then you should probably go check out Edge as Mel doesn’t disappoint.

Since January is traditionally the worst month for new film releases, this week’s At the Movies is a guide to what not to see this weekend. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers’ Scum Bucket runneth over starting with The Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a hockey player whose
punishment for telling a girl that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist is a two-week community service as the fairy. Yes, it’s for kids, but that’s not a good enough excuse for how horrible this film is.

Similarly terrible is Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. In this film, the man who played Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner turns in a Lifetime-worthy performance as an eccentric doctor who helps Fraser create a cure for Pompe disease. It’s based on a true story, and while the reality of the story might be riveting, the film itself is TV movie quality.

Since January is traditionally the worst month for new film releases, this week’s At the Movies is a guide to what not to see this weekend. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers’ Scum Bucket runneth over starting with The Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a hockey player whose
punishment for telling a girl that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist is a two-week community service as the fairy. Yes, it’s for kids, but that’s not a good enough excuse for how horrible this film is.

Similarly terrible is Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. In this film, the man who played Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner turns in a Lifetime-worthy performance as an eccentric doctor who helps Fraser create a cure for Pompe disease. It’s based on a true story, and while the reality of the story might be riveting, the film itself is TV movie quality.

Can’t make it to Park City for this year’s Sundance Film Festival? Peter Travers has you covered: Follow him on Twitter this weekend for the latest updates and insights from this year’s fest.

It’s still January *At the Movies*, and even though the month is regarded as a proverbial cinematic cesspool, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers has found a pair of worthwhile films hitting theaters this weekend, including Denzel Washington’s Book of Eli. In this post-apocalyptic action film from directors the Hughes Brothers, Washington plays a ruthless killer in possession of civilization’s last Bible. The film is full of religious parables, but counter-weighted by copious amounts of ultra-violence.

Much like we saw in The Road, the apocalypse will evidently come with desaturated colors and sepia tones. Still, this is the first Hughes Brothers film in over a decade, and Denzel as always steals each scene. During Oscar season, it’s OK to look past a film like this, but in the dog days of January, Book of Eli is one of the better pictures out there. Also worth checking out: Fish Tank, a nearly great small British film about a teenager’s trials and tribulations.

The Monday box-office reports are sounding like a broken record. Yes, it’s *Avatar* again, the smash hit from James Cameron’s blue period scoring a worldwide total after just 24 days in release of $1.3 billion. That makes *Avatar* the No. 2 movie of all time at the global box-office, topped only by Cameron’s other intimate epic, *Titanic*, which topped out at $1.8 billion. Result: *Avatar* is gaining fast.

Last week, I asked you to weigh in on *Avatar*’s chances of winning the Best Picture Oscar this year, and whether you think it deserves to win. The response was heated and divided. Most of you enjoyed the movie without thinking it belonged in the Oscar time capsule.

This week *At the Movies*, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is pleased to announce that despite January’s reputation as the studios’ bad film dumping ground, there’s actually — gasp — a pair of good movies entering multiplexes this first weekend of the new decade. The first one is Daybreakers, an unconventional vampire film starring Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, who recently joined Travers for an episode of *Off the Cuff* (come back Friday to check it out!).

In Daybreakers, the year is 2019 and vampires have wiped all but five percent of humans off the face of the Earth. The problem? Not enough blood to go around. Hawke places a scientist working on a blood substitute who also has an ulterior motive: to instead turn the vampires back into humans using his formula. Dafoe is the vampire who helps him along the way and his partner in ass-kicking when the villainous vampires come looking for a fight. The script is funny, the film balls out bloody, and it’s a welcome departure from all the chick flick vampire films like New Moon that have crowded the genre.

Also out this week is Youth in Revolt, a R-rated comedy based on C.D. Payne’s book and starring twee actor Michael Cera.

Daybreakers star Willem Dafoe stopped by the Rolling Stone offices to answer Peter Travers’ burning questions this week: why is he the only vampire actor to be nominated for an Oscar? Why is he called Willem? And perhaps most importantly, why does he defend Body of Evidence? “Sometimes movies are taken and held up as whipping boys and people pile all their envy, confusion, anger, jealousy on it,” he says.

Dafoe reveals he wouldn’t want to be frozen in time (“The fact that we don’t know when it’s going to end makes life a good game”), admits playing creepies even gets to him (“*Antichrist* haunted me”) and explains how the epic death scene from Platoon went down. Watch him slap a tambourine in precious parts of his body and tangle with Travers in the latest edition of *Off the Cuff*.

Hollywood had its biggest year ever with $10.6 billion — I said billion! — in the till for 2009. And we weren’t just paying more for the price of a ticket. Admissions were up by four percent. But if we are defined as a culture by the movies that win the popular vote, you may be pulled up short by this list of the Top 10 winners of 2009. Take a look, then we’ll talk:

1 *Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen* $402 million

2 *Avatar* $352 million (and growing)

3 *Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince* $302 million

4 *Up* $293 million

5 *The Twilight Saga: New Moon* $288 million

6 *The Hangover* $277 million

7 *Star Trek* $258 million

8 *The Blind Side* $209 million

9 *Monsters Vs. Aliens* $198 million

10 *Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs* $197 million

Whoo-hoo! The last weekend of the box-office year was a record breaker ($278 million). OK, megabucks were taken in by the shoddy likes of *Sherlock Holmes* ($65 million) and *Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel* ($50 million).

But the big news is the humongous $75 million jackpot for *Avatar* in its second week, a scant drop of 2.5 percent from its debut. Most blockbusters drop 40-to-50 percent when it comes to second helpings. Translation: *Avatar 3D* is officially a word-of-mouth phenom. People talk to me of little else. The reviews have been glowing with most critics (me included) willing to overlook the film’s clunky dialogue in the face of the film’s visual astonishments.

With three days left in the decade, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers looks back at the 2000s’ worst films. We already know that There Will Be Blood was Travers’ Number One Film of the 2000s, but in a decade that featured swill like Glitter, Battleship Earth and the Transformers series — Transformers 2 was named Travers’ worst movie of 2009 — which film above all else wins the coveted award for Worst of the Decade? Will it be the suspense-less DaVinci Code? The abhorrent Gigli? Watch to find out.

Plus, Travers also hands out awards to the Worst Actors and Actresses of the decade. No spoilers, but here’s a hint: A pair of musicians take home the Worst Actress trophy, while former SNLers share the title of Worst Actor of the 2000s.

With three days left in the decade, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers looks back at the 2000s’ worst films. We already know that There Will Be Blood was Travers’ Number One Film of the 2000s, but in a decade that featured swill like Glitter, Battleship Earth and the Transformers series — Transformers 2 was named Travers’ worst movie of 2009 — which film above all else wins the coveted award for Worst of the Decade? Will it be the suspense-less DaVinci Code? The abhorrent Gigli? Watch to find out.

Plus, Travers also hands out awards to the Worst Actors and Actresses of the decade. No spoilers, but here’s a hint: A pair of musicians take home the Worst Actress trophy, while former SNLers share the title of Worst Actor of the 2000s.

Whoo-hoo! The last weekend of the box-office year was a record breaker ($278 million). OK, megabucks were taken in by the shoddy likes of *Sherlock Holmes* ($65 million) and *Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel* ($50 million).

But the big news is the humongous $75 million jackpot for *Avatar* in its second week, a scant drop of 2.5 percent from its debut. Most blockbusters drop 40-to-50 percent when it comes to second helpings. Translation: *Avatar 3D* is officially a word-of-mouth phenom. People talk to me of little else. The reviews have been glowing with most critics (me included) willing to overlook the film’s clunky dialogue in the face of the film’s visual astonishments.

*Rolling Stone* movie critic Peter Travers reaches into his Scum Bucket, filled to the brim with a year’s worth of terrible movies, to count down the five worst films of 2009. Anyone who’s been an avid viewer of this year’s *At the Movies* can likely predict which blockbuster Travers abhorred more than any other, but tune in to hear him rail against five of 2009’s most despicable cinematic travesties: 2012, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and Will Ferrell’s unfunny comedy Land of the Lost. Plus, Travers hands out his award for Worst Actresses and Actors in 2009.

But wait, there’s goodies, too: Read Travers’ list of the 10 Best Movies of 2009 here.

Christmas always brings a whole slate of new films, so let Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers be your guide this week *At the Movies*. There are three big films hitting multiplexes this Christmas weekend, and while none of them are lumps of coal, they aren’t exactly Nintendo Wiis or Tickle Me Elmos or whatever it is that the kids hope to be unwrapping on December 25th, either.

First, there’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective and Jude Law as his sidekick Watson. As always, it’s a pleasure to see Downey Jr. on the big screen. Unfortunately, director Guy Ritchie is at the reins of this film, and he dumbs down the Sherlock wit into a period piece that’s more like an action caper a la Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels than The Hound of the Baskervilles. Ritchie’s Sherlock is chaotic and noisy, but worth the price of admission thanks to RDJ and Law’s bromance.

Peter Travers only reviews one film in this week’s *At the Movies*, but that one film might dictate how we see movies in the next decade and beyond: James Cameron’s 3-D blockbuster Avatar. By now, thanks to a
marketing campaign that probably cost almost as much as the $250 million film itself, you know Avatar’s premise: A wheelchair-bound soldier, played by Sam Worthington, takes on the avatar of the blue-skinned Na’vi (the creatures who live on the alien moon of Pandora) in an effort to help infiltrate Pandora and secure a mineral the Earth requires for survival. Soon, however, Worthington’s Jake Sully finds himself falling in love with Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana, and siding with the Na’vi in their fight against humans.

Read Peter Travers’ full Avatar review here.

It’s officially Oscar season, and Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is here to tell you which hopefuls for Academy Award glory and some of that Blind Side money will be slugging it out this weekend *At the Movies*. First up, there’s Invictus, the new film by a director who is no stranger to Oscars, Clint Eastwood. The film stars Morgan Freeman as the then-newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela, who hopes to bridge the gap of apartheid by rallying behind the country’s rugby team and
its captain, played by Matt Damon. This is the role Freeman was born to play, Travers writes in his three-and-a-half star review of Invictus, and he has to be considered among the favorites for the Best Actor Oscar.

In this week’s At the Movies, we officially vault into Oscar season with a film that is sure to lock up nominations in every major category, Up in the Air, and Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is here to tell you why this is a must-see and pretty much the only film worth seeing this weekend. Directed by Juno and Thank You for Smoking’s Jason Reitman, Up in the Air features the best performance of George Clooney’s career and star-making turns from Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.
So what’s it about?

You heard right. Sandra Bullock’s *Blind Side*, in which she plays every liberal’s nightmare — a can-do Republican woman with more energy than a dozen Sarah Palins — racked up a gigantic $40.1 million for the Thanksgiving weekend. That’s only $2.4 million less than the juggernaut that is *The Twilight Saga: New Moon*, which declined nearly 70 percent in its second week while *Blind Side* went up 18 percent. Team Edward and Team Jacob are hereby put on notice: There’s a new sheriff in town and she’s not showing any signs of slowing down. Let’s hear it for Team Sandy.

You heard right. Sandra Bullock’s *Blind Side*, in which she plays every liberal’s nightmare — a can-do Republican woman with more energy than a dozen Sarah Palins — racked up a gigantic $40.1 million for the Thanksgiving weekend. That’s only $2.4 million less than the juggernaut that is *The Twilight Saga: New Moon*, which declined nearly 70 percent in its second week while *Blind Side* went up 18 percent. Team Edward and Team Jacob are hereby put on notice: There’s a new sheriff in town and she’s not showing any signs of slowing down. Let’s hear it for Team Sandy.

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

That noise you hear at the multiplex this holiday weekend is the gobbling of turkeys from *New Moon* to *Old Dogs*. To boost morale, mine and yours, I want to point to a genuinely inspiring movie event opening next month. It’s called *Invictus* (Latin for unconquered). Clint Eastwood directed it so you know the scaffolding of this tremendously exciting true story will be sturdy and artfully presented with humor, heart, rich characterization and a notable absence of bullshit. *Invictus* is about a newly elected black President struggling to unite citizens divided by racism. The name Obama never comes up — it couldn’t since the time is 1995 and the place is South Africa. The President is Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) who was voted into office the year before in the country’s first free election. The challenge facing Mandela is to find a way to make peace with the apartheid forces that put him in jail for three decades. Mandela figures that battle should take place on, of all things, the rugby field. A little background here:

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

That noise you hear at the multiplex this holiday weekend is the gobbling of turkeys from *New Moon* to *Old Dogs*. To boost morale, mine and yours, I want to point to a genuinely inspiring movie event opening next month. It’s called *Invictus* (Latin for unconquered). Clint Eastwood directed it so you know the scaffolding of this tremendously exciting true story will be sturdy and artfully presented with humor, heart, rich characterization and a notable absence of bullshit. *Invictus* is about a newly elected black President struggling to unite citizens divided by racism. The name Obama never comes up — it couldn’t since the time is 1995 and the place is South Africa. The President is Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) who was voted into office the year before in the country’s first free election. The challenge facing Mandela is to find a way to make peace with the apartheid forces that put him in jail for three decades. Mandela figures that battle should take place on, of all things, the rugby field. A little background here:

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and there’s plenty of turkeys in theaters. Thankfully, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is here to tell you what to see and what to definitely avoid this four-day weekend. For instance, why see 2012 or New Moon when you can instead opt for the latest adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Road starring Viggo Mortensen? Why see Old Dogs starring
Robin Williams and John Travolta or the silly swordplay in Ninja Assassin when you could instead save your money and spend it on Black Friday?

There is one movie that’s out this week that Travers recommends, a winning wishbone so to speak and a movie “so crazy, it’s almost endearing,” called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Directed by oddball auteur Werner Herzog and featuring one of the craziest, zaniest performances of Nicolas Cage’s crazy, zany career, like the film’s title suggests, Bad Lieutenant is about a police officer in the Big Easy who’s on the wrong side of the law.

OK, from the looks of things *New Moon* has no problems. Chapter 2 in *The Twilight Saga* took in a gigunda $140 million this weekend. That’s the third best weekend opening of all time, following *The Dark Knight* and *Spider-Man 3*. But here’s the thing: *New Moon* won approval from only 29 percent of the nation’s critics. So defend the movie all you want, but even Twi-hards know these film versions of Stephenie Meyer’s novels could be way better.

Follow all of Rolling Stone’s Twilight coverage — reviews, interviews, photos and more.

And look what’s happening to *Gossip Girl*, once the primo guilty pleasure on the tube. But once the class graduated from high school and dispersed all over Manhattan, the show lost its focus. Based on the book series of the same name by Cecily von Ziegesar, *Gossip Girl* debuted on the CW in 2007 with 3.5 million viewers. Recent episodes have sunk below the 2 million level. OMFG!

What to do? My idea is to have the Cullen family of vampires move to the Upper East Side and shake up Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) and true love Chuck Bass, a bad boy for the time capsule as played by Ed Westwick.

The original Twilight set (under the direction of Catherine Hardwick) was “full of explosive energy and excitement” that can “get a little crazy” recalls Nikki Reed. By contrast, the New Moon set was “the most calm, relaxed, reassuring set that I’ve ever been on,” she tells Peter Travers in an outtake from his Off the Cuff interview with the actress. Click above to see Reed chat about her New Moon experience, and watch her full episode here.

Follow all of Rolling Stone’s Twilight coverage — reviews, interviews, photos and more.