Fifteen years ago I was planning my nights around episodes of "Mystery Science Theater," programming math cheats into my graphing calculator and filming "60 Minutes"-style interviews with Cobra Commander. I was also madly in love with director Roland Emmerich's "Stargate," the German filmmaker's bold sci-fi experiment in 1994 that foreshadowed his big-budget juggernaut "Independence Day" only two years later. "Stargate" is now bowing on Blu-ray as a "15th Anniversary Edition," and it's one of a handful of notable releases during an otherwise forgettable DVD week.

"Stargate" finds Kurt Russell as a suicidal, no-nonsense military officer tasked to lead a group of battle-hardened veterans -- and soft-skinned ninny scientist James Spader -- through a newly discovered wormhole to an unknown destination. The other side winds up being a sandy desert planet whose native inhabitants have kept their human slaves in bondage under the guise of ancient Egypt. It was a wholly original concept, driven forward by personality-heavy stars, amazing location photography and Emmerich's strong sense for the fantastical. The film would eventually launch a number of successful television spin-offs, although sadly no follow-up film (although one was originally planned). Read more...

“You’re being too nice!” Woody Allen would tell Larry David on the New York set of their upcoming comedy, “Whatever Works” (July 19). Sure, David’s suicidal physicist Boris Yellnikoff was calling friends and foes alike “cretins” and “inch worms” and “sub-mental baton twirlers.” But the director wanted his leading man to really lay into his fellow actors, whether it was a pre-teen girl he was teaching chess to or the naive runaway—Melodie St. Ann Celestine, played by Evan Rachel Wood—who shows up at his door needing a place to crash.

“At first it was odd because I never use those words,” David told MTV News. “It felt strange when they first came out of my mouth. But then I got very used to it and now I’m calling people ‘inch worms’ all the time!”

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FROM MTV.COM: "Whatever Works" isn't a good Woody Allen movie, even by latter-day standards. It is, however, a surprisingly offensive Woody Allen movie, inviting us, as it does, to sneer at benighted Southerners, idiot Christians, stupid kids and their hard-rock music — anything, in short, that wouldn't pass muster among the preening Big Apple sophisticates of whom the director is a longtime laureate.

Allen wrote the script more than 30 years ago, when he was making such incomparable films as "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan." Back then, his nebbish hostility had the fresh zing of underdog humor. Now he's wealthy and celebrated and 73 years old, and that youthful comic stance, transported into the present, just seems crabby and sour. And while casting Larry David as the film's lead character might sound like a masterstroke, it turns out to be an insurmountable problem. In his HBO series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," David is an inspired improviser (and, in half-hour doses, an entertaining small-screen presence). He's not really an actor, though, and so here, confined to Allen's scripted dialogue, he seems wooden — you wait for him to bust out and soar, but he can't. He's just an amplifier for the director's vintage misanthropy, and he grinds you down.

Continue reading 'Whatever Works': Grumposaurus Rex, By Kurt Loder

Today on Twitter, Jon Favreau and Russell Brand both dropped some notes about films that they're currently making, while Fred Durst and Larry King mentioned some movies that they've been excited about recently.

Durst isn't the only one excited about "Iron Man 2," though. Favreau showed he has a sense of humor about the tightened security surrounding his movie's production and detail leaks with a little re-tweeted -- or RT'ed, to use the Twitter vernacular -- picture humor. All that and more today in your Twitter-Wood feed for Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Read more...

The 2003 indie flick “Thirteen” launched formidable careers for three of Hollywood’s current hottest commodities: Catherine Hardwicke, Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood. Half a decade later, Reed and Hardwicke reunited to launch the “Twilight” series on the big screen. But what about the third member of their troubled-teen triad?

This week, we checked in with the 21-year-old Wood to discuss her upcoming Woody Allen movie “Whatever Works,’ and couldn’t help but ask whether she recalled any “Twilight” talk from all those years ago. Read more...

He’s one of the most legendary filmmakers of all time. His status as a Hollywood personality is unrivaled. His talents have given audiences a new, wholly original film virtually every single year since 1969.

So, how do two young actors relate to Woody Allen? For starters, they look to “Whatever Works.”

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