The Legend of Zorro - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Antonio Banderas

Prime - ( PG-13 ) Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman

Saw 2 - ( R ) Tobin Bell, John Fallon

Three…Extremes (limited) - ( R ) Byung-hun Lee

Ballets Russes (limited) - Yvonne Chouteau

Herbie: Fully Loaded - (G) Lindsay Lohan, Michael Keaton
Hit or Miss? Hit

House of Wax - ( R ) Paris Hilton, Chad Michael Murray
Hit or Miss? Miss

Doom - ( R ) The Rock

Dreamer: Inspired by a true story- (PG) Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning

Shopgirl - ( R ) Claire Danes, Steve Martin

Strangers with Candy - Amy Sedaris

Batman Begins - ( PG-13 ) Cillian Murphy, Christian Bale
Hit or Miss? Hit - Home Movie Pick of the Month

Land of the Dead - ( R )

Mad Hot Ballroom - (PG)

Miss - Jessica Alba, Lil’ Romeo, Mekhi Phifer, David Moscow, and a partridge in a pear tree

I wish this movie were Honey: captured and bottled inside a plastic bear, only to be consumed through digestive processes. No one would then be able to see the dozens of recycled shots. No one would hear the sounds of Jessica Alba’s faux Latina accent - and to make matters worse, she actually is Latina - amidst the post-first-acting-class performances. No one would even smell the DVD player fumes as it spins this crap back and forth, like a record scratching to give it that hip hop flava. Only if the DVD itself could in the process be physically scratched so it would be damaged and no longer viewable. Not that anyone in any household would ever watch this movie for a second time. The DVD is more likely to end up raising the dinner table an eighth of an inch or pile up in the corner of the garage with the endless stacks of AOL CDs.

Honey follows the story of Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba). Honey spends her days working at the local shops and bartending at clubs, but always pursuing her one love: dancing. In the opening scene, our protagonist serves drinks at a “hot” dance club, though the camera shots through the lethargic crowd make it look less like an actual dance club and more like a methadone clinic. Honey is irresistibly attractive, meaning she is someone the audience wants to bone because of her looks or stab because of her utter lack of acting talent. But, because of the PG-13 rating the bone option is not well explored. In the club, some pervert with a camera egregiously videotapes the ladies dancing, surprisingly with no retards jumping in front of the camera screaming, “hi mom” or “girls gone wild, YAY!” Honey, of course, shows us her electric moves, which, if anyone saw Timothy McVeigh’s execution, kind of looks like that.

The next day, the pervert’s video makes it to Michael Ellis (David Moscow), a big-time music video director and producer. Immediately after seeing Honey’s dancing, his mind is thinking only one thing: ‘how do I get up in that?’ Being the sly entrepreneur that he is, he hires Honey as a dancer. She shows up on the set of a music video (apparently without any dance practice or warning of the early call time) and blows away Ellis enough to make her his new star choreographer. It is a dream come true in only one day. Of course, it is just another one of Hollywood’s lies. The only days where we see dreams come true in one day are when we go to weddings and funerals.

Paralleling her neatly packaged professional career is her personal life as a hip-hop dance instructor at a community gym. After leaving the club the first night, she runs into some youths practicing their thugged out “You Got Served” dance moves in the darkened alley behind the club. She invites them to her class. Honey takes exception to the youngest of the group, Raymond (Zachary Williams), and, like every good twenty-something faux-matriarch caring for neglected children, looks after him. Raymond lives with a mother too busy being a stereotype of a poor, black mother to tend to her sons. Through Raymond, Honey connects with Raymond’s older brother, Benny (Lil’ Romeo). Benny is at that impressionable age where he could pursue his easily attainable dream of selling drugs on the corner or dancing with the woman that would give the Queer Eye Fab 5 men a chubby. But like all kids at that latency stage in life, he chooses selling drugs.

Both worlds collide when Ellis allows Honey to involve the kids in a Ginuwine music video. But, because Honey was too busy courting the barber, Chaz (Mekhi Phifer), and not succumbing to Ellis’s advances - which sound surprisingly like a whimpering frat boy who ran out of roofies the night before - the kids lose the opportunity to Honey’s skank, of a rival Katrina (Laurie Ann Gibson). Ellis, of course, is too busy text messaging his peeps on his sidekick to notice that Katrina danced like a zephyr and did not rock me like a hurricane.

Honey is out of a job, and to make matters worse, her gym floods and becomes too expensive to repair. So, Honey puts on a dance benefit concert to raise money for the repairs. Let me spare you the last half hour of this flick and ruin any chances of your interested mind voyaging to Blockbuster and renting this monstrosity: The concert is a hit and Honey saves the gym (which then becomes dedicated to her). Honey gets a job personally training Missy Elliot’s dancers, the boys are finally off the streets, Mekhi Phifer collects his paycheck, and I sit in my living room dumbfounded that I spent 94 minutes of my life watching this rotting sewage.

Bottom Line: I wish this movie were Honey: captured and bottled inside a plastic bear, only to be consumed through digestive processes.

Rating: PG-13 (for drug content and some sexual references)

Running Time: 94 min

Domino- ( R ) Keira Knightly, Lucy Liu

Don’t Come Knocking (limited) - ( R ) Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange

Nine Lives (limited) - ( R ) Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman

Where the Truth Lies (limited) - Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth

This article is a little bit of a divergence from the standard Hit or Miss Movies fare, but since Apple Computer’s new iPod video may just change the way that we acquire content, I felt that it merited a posting.

On October 12th Apple announced the long anticipated iPod Video. At the same time they also announced that episodes of LOST and Desperate Housewives, amoung others would be availible for download from the iTunes Music Store. I have previously played around with some of the video casts already availible on iTunes and immediately saw the potential of this new distribution network. I think that there may be a revolution at hand.

By now I am sure that most of you have been watching several of your favorite television shows on DVD. I personally like to wait for the DVD to come out to watch a lot of things because I often do not have the time to sit down at a specific time each week to take in a new show, nor do I have the patience to wait a week between episodes. The only problem with the approach is that there is sometimes a significant lag between the episodes being aired that the DVD becoming availible for purchase. Apple is looking to change this.

Last night I quickly downloaded the latest update to the iTunes Music Store to see that it offered. A quick click on Television shows on the front page of the music store revealed the first three episodes of this seasons LOST for $1.99 each. Since I missed the season premiere I quickly downloaded it to my computer. I have a DSL connection and the download took about 20 minutes of so.

My Impressions of what I saw:
• Video quality was better then most of what you get online, but not up to snuff with DVD quality
• No commercials
• I was able to go back in time and get an episode that I missed without waiting for a rerun of the DVD release.
• I have not been this excited since downloading an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer before it aired back in college.
• In fact in college as I had not cable or television I watched most of my shows in the form of illegal internet downloads.

In reflection on that last statement I think that we are dealing with a repeate of what has happend in the digital music world. If Apple can manage to continue to get new television content and possibly expand into a back cataloge the possibilities for this seem boundless to me.

On a final note the new iPod Video has the ability to be hooked into a dock that will allow you to view video content on a television screen. It is like a Tivo that fits in your pocket, and how cool is that.

11:14 - ( R ) Hilary Swank, Patrick Swazye, Colin Hanks

The Bridge of San Luis Rey- ( PG )

Me and You and Everyone we know - ( R )

High Tension- ( R )

Kicking and Screaming - (PG) Will Farrell

Kingdom of Heaven- ( R )

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants- ( PG ) Amber Tamblyn

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes

Good Night, and Good Luck (limited) - (PG) Robert Downey Jr., Jason Stratham

The Squid and the Whale (limited) - (R) Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney

Los Angeles Kings home opener was filled with stars. Apparently many of them were sitting in my section- which was a darn good section because it was the seats allotted to the team doctor. Celebs present included:

Mark McGrath (go Trojans! - I could have spit on him I was that close)
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Elisha Cuthbert
Rob Zombie
Jesse Metcalf (I walked by everyone but Jesse)

So if you went to the Kings game and saw some celebs - send me a comment and let me know who you spotted.