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The engrossing, impressive The Roosevelts: An Intimate History peels away the story behind this complex family. Review By Matt Cummings The story of America is usually chronicled through glitzy, face-paced editing with a smattering of unknown college professors. It sometimes works (see Nazi Mega Weapons), but for the most part it's an uneven affair at best. The Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History demonstrates that the more traditional methods of creating a documentary still work, resulting in a powerful experience about the 20th Century's most beloved but complex family. History takes us through nearly 60 years of family history, starting with the irrepressible Theodore (voiced by Paul Giamatti), brought whose big energy and unwavering foresight ushered the US away from the demons of Reconstruction and into the modern manufacturing world that Alexander Hamilton desired so greatly. But he's also a champion of nature and a social worker

The Judge suffers from too much melodramatic schmaltz to earn our respect or trust. Among the questions raised during our October movie preview , one included the ensemble court drama The Judge : could Actor Robert Downey Jr. rise above his Iron Man persona and deliver a great dramatic performance, while giving its deep cast their individual moments in the sun? The answer is not the strong yes we would have hoped, with the unnecessarily long film barely having enough to keep our attention. Hothead defense attorney Hank Palmer (Downey) lives the fast life, routinely getting the charges against his high-priced clients removed. It's not until the sudden death of his mother that Hank must return to his hometown to bury her and deal with the demons from his past. There's his brother Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) whose high profile accident in their youth ruined his baseball career, and the girl Hank left behind (Vera Farminga), who now has a daughter. But it's the

Win Tickets To An Advance For THE JUDGE on October 6, 2014 at 7:30 PM in Sacramento. From Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures comes “ The Judge ,” starring Oscar® nominee Robert Downey Jr . (“Tropic Thunder,” the “Sherlock Holmes” films, the “Iron Man” franchise), Oscar® winner Robert Duvall (“Tender Mercies,” “Crazy Heart”) and Oscar® nominee Vera Farmiga (“Up in the Air,” “The Conjuring”). The film is directed by David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers”). In “The Judge,” Downey stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge ( Duvall ), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before. Starring alongside Downey, Duvall and Farmiga are Vincent D’Onofrio (TV’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), Jeremy Strong (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln”), Dax Shephard (TV’s “Parenthood”), and Oscar® winner Billy Bob Thornton

Win Tickets To An Advance For THE JUDGE on October 6, 2014 at 7:30 PM in Santa Clara. From Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures comes “ The Judge ,” starring Oscar® nominee Robert Downey Jr . (“Tropic Thunder,” the “Sherlock Holmes” films, the “Iron Man” franchise), Oscar® winner Robert Duvall (“Tender Mercies,” “Crazy Heart”) and Oscar® nominee Vera Farmiga (“Up in the Air,” “The Conjuring”). The film is directed by David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers”). In “The Judge,” Downey stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge ( Duvall ), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before. Starring alongside Downey, Duvall and Farmiga are Vincent D’Onofrio (TV’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), Jeremy Strong (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln”), Dax Shephard (TV’s “Parenthood”), and Oscar® winner Billy Bob

Win Tickets To An Advance For THE JUDGE on October 6, 2014 at 7:30 PM in Fresno. From Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures comes “ The Judge ,” starring Oscar® nominee Robert Downey Jr . (“Tropic Thunder,” the “Sherlock Holmes” films, the “Iron Man” franchise), Oscar® winner Robert Duvall (“Tender Mercies,” “Crazy Heart”) and Oscar® nominee Vera Farmiga (“Up in the Air,” “The Conjuring”). The film is directed by David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers”). In “The Judge,” Downey stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge ( Duvall ), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before. Starring alongside Downey, Duvall and Farmiga are Vincent D’Onofrio (TV’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), Jeremy Strong (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln”), Dax Shephard (TV’s “Parenthood”), and Oscar® winner Billy Bob Thornton (“S

TV Review: Fargo “Morton’s Fork” By: Brandon Wolfe Malvo on the loose is what ‘Fargo’ boils down to in its final hour. His resurgence sends a shockwave of fear through the entire town of Bemidji. Like Michael Myers in the ‘Halloween’ movies, he’s an unstoppable killing machine set loose on a small town that isn’t prepared to deal with things like him. All that’s missing is for Donald Pleasance to pop up and frantically tell Molly and Gus that evil has descended upon them. But Malvo’s return also means that old scores must be settled. While some, like the front desk clerk at the police station, are petrified that he’ll pop up out of the ether at a moment’s notice, there are others that have unfinished business with this monster that they set out to tie off. That Malvo does get taken down is not a huge surprise, I suppose. He is the show’s central villain, after all, and this is the finale. It is, however, a mild surprise that he CAN be taken down. He has seemed so otherworl

TV Review: Fargo “A Fox, a Rabbit & A Cabbage” By: Brandon Wolfe We open in a dentist’s office where the dentist is a chatty, folksy sort. He tells long-winded stories and is full of good cheer. Then we follow this good ol’ boy back to his home to learn that he’s newly engaged to an attractive, adoring wife and has a decent assemblage of friends who think the world of him. This fellow is also prone to cornily exclaiming “Aces!” as an expression of approval. It’s almost a relief when we finally see this man sitting in a dark room listening to a self-made recording of a conversation between himself and another Lester-like schlep whose life he ruined by intervention because it allows our brains to officially register that this affable tooth wrangler is indeed Lorne Malvo. Our DVRs didn’t mistakenly record some obscure movie where Billy Bob Thornton played a friendly dentist; this is still ‘Fargo’. It’s on a trip to Vegas with his new friends (one of whom is played by the great

TV Review: Fargo “The Heap” By: Brandon Wolfe The time jump has become an increasingly popular trope for television shows to play around with, and it’s not difficult to see why. It basically affords a series the opportunity for a mid-course reboot, a way to shake off the staleness and bring in the new without scrapping everything or glacially building toward eventual change. By leaping forward in time, a familiar world suddenly becomes a strange new land where all bets are off, where all your favorite characters that you know so well now require catching up on. Shows usually pull this rabbit out of their hat for a season-finale cliffhanger, as NBC’s ‘Parks and Recreation’ did recently with its three-year fast-forward. That or they will introduce a shift in time between seasons, as ‘24’ always did. But ‘Fargo’ likes to go its own way, so when it drops a full-year leap ahead into its narrative, it does so halfway through the eighth episode of the season. Way to keep us on our toes.

TV Review: Fargo “Who Shaves the Barber?” By: Brandon Wolfe With only stray exceptions ( ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ ), TV shows based on films tend to be dire prospects, inspiration-bereft cash-grabs trading on name recognition and far too beholden to their source material to walk on their own two feet. The thought process often seems to be that since a popular film has already laid the groundwork for the story and characters, all a television adaptation needs to do is plug cheaper actors into the roles and churn out slightly varying permutations of the established premise. The rare successful dips into this well, like NBC’s ‘ Hannibal ’, merely take components from the films in the service of building their own unique world around them. FX’s ‘ Fargo ’ falls into this latter category. In fact, it goes one step further. It only borrows the title, setting, humor and sensibility from its parent film, not any of its characters or events. While the characters and situations

Academy Award® winning writer/producer and Academy Award and Golden Globe® Award nominated actor Billy Bob Thornton has signed on to star in the FX limited series Fargo , an adaptation of the classic Academy Award winning feature film of the same title by Joel & Ethan Coen , it was announced today by John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and FX Productions. Production begins this fall in Canada and the series is slated to premiere next spring on FX. Thornton will play “Lorne Malvo,” a rootless, manipulative man who meets a small town insurance salesman and sets him on a path of destruction. Thornton won the Academy Award for Outstanding Screenplay for Sling Blade, for which he also was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and he was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for A Simple Plan. He has four Golden Globe acting nominations for The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Simple Plan, Bandits, and Bad Santa. A 10-episode limited series inspired by the film, FX’s Fargo will feature

Win Tickets To An Advance Screening For PARKLAND on Monday, September 30, 7pm, at AMC Metreon in San Francisco. PARKLAND  is an American historical drama film that recounts the chaotic events that occurred following John F. Kennedy's assassination. The film is written and directed by Peter Landesman, produced by Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, Bill Paxton and Exclusive Media’s Nigel Sinclair and Matt Jackson. The film is based on the book Four Days In November , by Vincent Bugliosi. Parkland premiered at the 70th Venice International Film Festival and was also screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Coinciding with the assassination's 50th anniversary year, the film will be released theatrically in the United States on October 4, 2013 The film stars James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Jackie Earle Haley, Ron Livingston, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver and Paul Giamatti . PARKLAND  weaves together the perspectives of a handful of ordinary indivi

Production is getting underway today in London on an adaptation of the Martin Amis novel London Fields . Mathew Cullen makes his feature directing debut on the adaptation of the futuristic murder mystery that Amis adapted with Roberta Hanley. Amber Heard, Billy Bob Thornton, Jim Sturgess , and Theo James are starring. Heard plays the ultimate eternal sexual femme fatale, possessed of unusual beauty and hypnotic magnetism. Mysterious and clairvoyant, she sets a plan in motion to fulfill the prophecy of her own murder. Caught up in Nicola’s plan are a terminally ill writer ( Thornton ), a lowly street hustler ( Sturgess ) and an unhappily married banker ( James ), who become intertwined in a love triangle that unfolds in the grimy underbelly of London. Samson convinces Nicola to let him document her manipulations in a book she says will be his literary masterpiece but only she knows who the tale will end and who her killer will be. The film is produced by Chris Hanley of Muse Produc

Billy Bob Thornton is heading to FX's Fargo. The Oscar winner has been tapped to play Lorne Malvo, the rootless, manipulative man who meets a small-town insurance salesman and sets him on a path of destruction, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Steve Buscemi played a similar role in the 1996 feature. The 10-episode limited series is inspired by the Coen brothers' 1996 best picture nominee and will follow an all-new "true crime" story with a new case and characters all seeped in the humor, murder and "Minnesota nice" of the original. Fargo hails from My Generation's Noah Hawley, who will pen the script as well as executive produce. Additionally, Joel and Ethan Coen, the writers, directors and producers behind the film starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy and Buscemi, are on board to exec produce alongside former network chief-turned-producer Warren Littlefield and Geyer Kosinski. Emmy winner Adam Bernstein (30 Rock) will direct the pre

Paramount Pictures has provide me had provide me with a Ultimate Puss In Boots Prize Pack to give away to one lucky fan. Just leave a comment on the Facebook post on why you love Puss In Boots . Winner will be announced on  November 19th . The film is a spinoff prequel to the Shrek series and it follows the character Puss in Boots on his adventures before his first appearance in Shrek 2 in 2004. Accompanied by his sidekicks, Humpty Dumpty and Kitty Softpaws, Puss is pitted against Jack and Jill, two murderous outlaws who discover an ancient power which threatens the world. Please Visit the official website for the film. Make sure to LIKE Puss In Boots on Facebook . We will be giving away: Puss In Boots the Video Game For The Nintendo WII www.pussinbootsvideogame.com “Step into the legendary boots and master the sword in Puss In Boots the Video Game. Coming this Fall on XBOX 360 with Kinect, PlayStation 3 Move, Nintendo Wii and DS.” Puss in Boots® & © 2011

Paramount Pictures has provide me had provide me with a Ultimate Puss In Boots Prize Pack to give away to one lucky fan. Just leave a comment on the Facebook post on why you love Puss In Boots . Winner will be announced on  November 19th . The film is a spinoff prequel to the Shrek series and it follows the character Puss in Boots on his adventures before his first appearance in Shrek 2 in 2004. Accompanied by his sidekicks, Humpty Dumpty and Kitty Softpaws, Puss is pitted against Jack and Jill, two murderous outlaws who discover an ancient power which threatens the world. Please Visit the official website for the film. Make sure to LIKE Puss In Boots on Facebook . We will be giving away: Puss In Boots the Video Game For The XBOX 360 with Kinect www.pussinbootsvideogame.com “Step into the legendary boots and master the sword in Puss In Boots the Video Game. Coming this Fall on XBOX 360 with Kinect, PlayStation 3 Move, Nintendo Wii and DS.” Puss in Boots® & ©