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The Office’s John Krasinski recently disrupted the work at Rolling Stone offices to chat about his screen adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, in which he also plays a “scumbag,” as Peter Travers puts it. Watch Krasinski discuss his impending Office wedding and his real-life engagement (“I hope I’m going into a good time in my life and I don’t become a prick”) and do his best Jason Bateman impression, and don’t miss his post-*Cuff* interview where he turns the tables on Travers.

It’s all about the recession this weekend *At the Movies*, as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers falls for Michael Moore’s scathing look at Wall Street, Capitalism: A Love Story. In his documentaries, Moore has already taken on the issues of the auto industry (Roger & Me), guns (Bowling for Columbine), the Bush era (Fahrenheit 911) and health care (Sicko), but never before has
Moore hit his topic more on the head. Whether he’s stringing yellow police tape around Wall Street like it was a major crime scene or confronting those whose actions spiraled into the recession, Moore pulls no punches, all while making an entertaining film. Moore has always been a filmmaker of the people, so his cameras also focus on those who were hurt most by the recession: the lower classes. “You’ll be laughing with tears in your eyes,” Travers says of Capitalism.

From a film about the recession to a movie that it was made for about five cents, only a dozen or so cinemas around the country will be able to see another Travers-recommended film, Paranormal Activity.

Photo: Matthew Imaging/WireImage

Last night’s Emmy telecast was so dull, so soulless, so unadventurous in its choices (*Mad Men* excepted) that viewers could be forgiven for thinking the television academy had aired a repeat of last year’s snoozefest. Yes, Neil Patrick Harris made a livelier host than last year’s wooden reality show contingent. His opening parody song hit paydirt, and I smiled broadly when Harris reprised the character from his Web series, *Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog*, to skewer an Internet future in which we glue ourselves to small computer screens that freeze while a spinning wheel tells us it’s “Buffering.” But watching the “Buffering” wheel would be preferable to suffering through time-warp choices (Jon Cryer wins best supporting actor for the six-year-old sitcom *Two and a Half Men* — Really? Really), absurd snubs (Drew Barrymore and Kevin Bacon, you guys were robbed), and the umpteenth victory for *The Amazing Race*. “Upsets at every turn,” quipped Harris. I wish.

For the rare fresh choice — Toni Collette for *United States of Tara*, Cherry Jones for *24* — came dozens of echoes. Is it because TV offered no viable alternatives to the old guard? I think not. Even the trashy Golden Globes have a keen nose for newer, more vital stuff. As a call to arms, I’ve decided to hand out my own Alternative TV Awards to people and shows that Emmy didn’t even nominate.

The fall movie season gets off to a flying start as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers has not one but two films to recommend in this week’s At the Movies. Leading the way is Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, with an emphasis on the exclamation point to let audiences know that this film is both funny and shocking. The based-on-a-true-story film stars an unrecognizable Matt Damon as four-eyed biochemist Mark Whitacre, a strangely fascinating man who embezzles and defrauds the firm he’s working for, all while assisting the FBI in an investigation against the firm. The duplicity of Whitacre’s actions is just one of the threads holding this smart and funny look at the world we live in now, Travers says.

Also out this weekend is Jennifer’s Body, starring current Rolling Stone cover star Megan Fox. Sure, Hollywood is advertising this thing like it’s just another cookie-cutter bloodfest, but this movie does something that’s nearly impossible to pull off:

Jennifer’s Body star Megan Fox is on the cover of our new issue and the film’s director Diablo Cody is in Peter Travers’ hot seat. Watch her examine her own backlash (“I can see how I could be obnoxious to people … my career trajectory is so improbable that I would think, this DC is an overrated piece of shit for sure”), revealing Tweets (“I think I just saw Beyoncé’s fallopian tubes”) and how she orchestrated an all-girl led Hollywood horror film.

Read Travers’ review of Jennifer’s Body here.

Peter Travers and Rolling Stone are wild about Gossip Girl’s Dorota (Zuzanna Szadkowski in real life), so we roped the show’s Polish maid into swinging by our offices to talk about her relationship with Leighton Meester, her cool level, and where the heck she was during graduation at the end of last season. The show premiered last night, but you can only check out Szadkowski screaming out Travers in Polish right here.

Check out the rest of our Gossip Girl features:

• Sonic Youth Report In From the Set of *Gossip Girl*

• Video: Exclusive footage from the cast’s RS photo session with Terry Richardson

• Photos: On the set with Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and the Gossip Guys

• Juicy Stories from the Set
‣ The Music of *Gossip Girl*
• Peter Travers on *GG*

Photo:Everett Collection
It’s heartening to read the clearly sincere tributes to Patrick Swayze, dead at 57 after a balls-out 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer. There aren’t many actors who could suffer aggressive chemotherapy and still film 13 episodes of *The Beast*, which debuted on A&E in January. Look, *The Beast* wasn’t much of a show, and it was hard to watch Swayze’s ravaged face in the role of an undercover F.B.I. agent. But he fought his battles on his terms, not at the dictates of a medical diagnosis. I met Swayze only once. He was doing *Chicago the Musical* on Broadway, singing and dancing as shyster lawyer Billy Flynn. As ever, he was muscular poetry in motion. Backstage, he shook my hand, stared hard, and called me out on my review of *Road House*, a 1989 B movie in which he played Dalton, the bouncer at a raucous club in rural Missouri called the Double Deuce.

With absolute garbage spilling into theaters this weekend — if you were expecting actual reviews for Sorority Row and Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself we apologize — Peter Travers uses this week’s At the Movies to get you revved up for autumn with his Fall Movie Preview, spotlighting all the Oscar-bound films and the Scum Bucket-worthy debacles heading to a multiplex near you this season. The biggest directors and actors are all making a play for awards season gold or Christmas dollars, so let Travers help navigate you between the must-see films and the don’t-see flops.

The fall season is desperate for a great movie, and Paramount Pictures has gone and moved Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) to 2010. This news has Peter Travers mightily pissed. Check out his rant, above.

Strictly in dollars, the No. 1 movie for the Labor Day holiday weekend is *The Final Destination* which scored $15.4 million, making it a chart topper for the second week. We all know why — it’s the 3-D gimmick with audiences thinking maybe a horror flick won’t suck so much if it pops off the screen? Wrong, it sucks plenty. The real success story today is Quentin Tarantino’s *Inglourious Basterds*, which grabbed $15.1 million and second place. In just three weeks, the Nazi-scaping war epic in four languages (with subtitles) has managed to gross $95.2 million, inching close to breaking Tarantino’s box-record of $108 million for *Pulp Fiction*. Clearly, *Basterds* has touched a nerve with audiences, especially Christoph Waltz as S.S. Jew hunter Hans Landa.

Yesterday, Peter Travers named some of the season’s best and worst films — now check out his final word on Summer ‘09 in his Summer Movie Report Card:

• Peter Travers’ Summer Report Card: “Transformers,” “Inglorious Basterds,” “The Hangover” and more

If you’ve ever wanted to see Jason Bateman freestyle, slam Teen Wolf Too (and then redeem it!) and tell Hollywood off for hiring so many assholes, you are in luck. When the Extract star stopped by our offices to chat with Peter Travers, their conversation veered from the Arrested Development movie to his latest role as a beleaguered soul. One choice Bateman quote: “If you want to call me a whore, it’s okay.” Watch the full video, above.

Labor Day marks the official end of Summer Blockbuster Season, and ’09’s wasn’t a nightmare: this summer was the most profitable in Hollywood history, and critically speaking, the least offensive in recent history. In fact, four of the Top Five highest-grossing films were actually really good! In a special edition of At the Movies With Peter Travers, Rolling Stone’s film critic hands out his awards for the summer’s best, while banishing the summer’s worst to the Scum Bucket.

You’ll have to watch Travers’ video to find out who earns which honor, but loyal viewers will find some honorees are more obvious than others (cough, Christoph Waltz, cough). The winner of the summer’s Best Movie and Best Director might take you by surprise, however, as it sadly flew under the radar in a summer filled with teen wizards, Austrian fashion reporters, hangovers in Vegas, reboots and giant shape-shifting robots that made really annoying noises.