http://denver.yourhub.comThe latest blog posts in The Denver Newspaper Agency YourHub.comen-usnews@yourhub.com(c) 2009, YourHub.com5Film Rating: A The marketing people at Disney really need to get a reality check, or at least take a refresher course in their trade, because the marketing for Robert Zemeckis's take on A Christmas Carol is one of the most mishandled film campaigns I've ever seen. The trailers, which ad...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~683174.aspx11/6/2009 10:53:32 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A- If I had to single out one particular talent the Coen Brothers possess as their most valuable one, it would be their ability to end a movie perfectly. The endings to their films might not always seem perfect when seen for the first time, but closer inspection always reveals th...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~676802.aspx10/25/2009 5:19:57 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A- My thoughts on a film have rarely been so conflicted as they are for Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. Technically, this is a great movie, and I love so many things about it. But when the credits rolled, I wasn't in love with the film. In fact, I wanted to get the...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~672471.aspx10/18/2009 4:10:31 PMJonathan Lack Welcome to the fourth and final installment of the countdown of my twenty all-time favorite films! To get you up to speed, here's what I've picked so far... 20. Spider-Man 2 19. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog 18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 17. Blade Runner 16. Sweeney Todd 15...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~669803.aspx10/14/2009 4:27:21 PMJonathan Lack Welcome! Today is part 3 of the countdown of my twenty all-time favorite movies! 10. Die Hard (1988) Die Hard is the best action flick ever . There's just no getting around that fact. Sure, the movie may not be high art, but it achieves what it sets out to do perfectly. The storyl...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~669232.aspx10/13/2009 4:46:25 PMJonathan Lack Welcome! Today is part 2 of the countdown of my twenty all-time favorite movies! Yesterday the choices were... 20. Spider-Man 2 19. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog 18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 17. Blade Runner 16. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street And ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~668327.aspx10/12/2009 4:29:39 PMJonathan Lack Coming up with topics for the Monthly Ten is challenging sometimes. The obvious topic for October would be horror films, but I'm not a fan of the genre. October is special to me in other ways than just being Halloween month, though-it's the month of my birthday, it's the start of fall, I ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~667175.aspx10/11/2009 1:40:42 PMJonathan Lack Episode Rating: A+ House, M.D. has inspired me to write on multiple occasions. I posted my first article about the show back when the season four finale aired. That was a pretty weak season, but that episode redeemed the show in my eyes, and I was compelled to share my thoughts with my read...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~658182.aspx9/21/2009 9:40:08 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A- Look no further than the exclamation point in the title if you want to learn everything there is to know about Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! . That one exclamation point changes the entire idea behind the title, taking a relatively bland and uninteresting two words and...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~657653.aspx9/19/2009 5:35:23 PMJonathan Lack Welcome to the Monthly Ten! Top-Ten Lists are fun to read and to write, and depending on the subject, they allow the writer to examine film in new and different ways. Each month, I'll pick a topic and then rank the ten best entertainment-related things that fall under that topic. For my ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~655095.aspx9/10/2009 2:48:57 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A+ The first time I watched Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, I was blown away...sort of. When the credits rolled, I sat there scratching my head and thinking "What the hell did I just watch?" It's a movie that takes a long time to digest, and multiple viewings to even be...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~648895.aspx8/21/2009 11:08:11 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A Wow. Some movies leave me with lots to say, and from my fingertips flow pages upon pages of thought. But others leave me speechless, unsure of how to describe the film or what my exact thoughts on it are. District 9 belongs to the latter category, and as such, I don't expe...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~647016.aspx8/16/2009 4:39:36 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A Kids movies are at their best when they can be equally enjoyed by children and adults. But rarely does a kids film transcend that, making the adults in the audience feel like children once more. That's the mark of a true masterpiece. Legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has argua...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~646837.aspx8/14/2009 10:46:42 PMJonathan Lack Welcome to the Monthly Ten! Top-Ten Lists are fun to read and to write, and depending on the subject, they allow the writer to examine film in new and different ways. Each month, I'll pick a topic and then rank the ten best entertainment-related things that fall under that topic. We've a...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~644967.aspx8/10/2009 10:28:19 AMJonathan Lack Film Rating: B+ Judd Apatow's production team has revolutionized comedy over the last few years, producing hilarious, well-written films with strong characters and sometimes even a great message for audiences to embrace. Apatow himself has written and directed two films, The 40-Year-Old Vi...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~642998.aspx8/3/2009 7:45:12 PMJonathan Lack If you've never seen NBC's Chuck, you're missing out on one of TV's best shows. It's inspired so much love that the fans launched an unprecedented campaign to bring it back for season 3, and we succeeded! The show returns in March 2010, and in the meantime, fans are trying to keep the show ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~640720.aspx7/27/2009 9:10:02 PMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A- 500 Days of Summer is a breath of fresh air: a creative, innovative romantic comedy. I wouldn't try to sort it under a different genre. "Romantic Comedy," or even "rom-com" is certainly an accurate label for this film. In recent years, the name of the genre has struck fear i...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~640218.aspx7/25/2009 4:38:39 PMJonathan Lack One of my favorite films of the year, Coraline, has finally hit home video, available in three different versions. A standard, 1-disc DVD version, a 2-disc DVD version, and a 2-disc Blu-Ray version; the latter is the one we'll be discussing. Coraline, an excellent stop-motion animated fe...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~639397.aspx7/22/2009 9:43:32 PMJonathan Lack One of my favorite 2009 movies has finally hit Blu-Ray, but this release is special. It contains Zack Snyder's Director's Cut of the film. Do the additions make the movie better, or slow down an already long film? Do the Blu-Ray's visuals match the theatrical experience? Are the extras up to snu...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~638935.aspx7/21/2009 11:26:53 PMJonathan Lack If you've never seen NBC's Chuck, you're missing out on one of TV's best shows. It's inspired so much love that the fans launched an unprecedented campaign to bring it back for season 3, and we succeeded! The show returns in March 2010, and in the meantime, fans are trying to keep the show ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~638019.aspx7/20/2009 11:50:37 AMJonathan Lack Film Rating: A+ Though it may be hard to believe after I've just published a 30 page article on the series, there are actually people out there even more obsessive about Harry Potter than I am. Lots of them. And they are hating the new movie with a passion. But to make a great Potter ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~636595.aspx7/15/2009 11:41:16 AMJonathan Lack After the blockbuster success of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, (a film I hated with a passion), Warner Brothers started production on a film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mike Newell was given the offer to return as director, but he turned it down (somethin...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~636147.aspx7/14/2009 11:30:44 AMJonathan Lack Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was very well received, and there was a general consensus that Cuarón had nailed it, so naturally, one would assume that, for the next director, the producers would hire someone of similar talents with a similar body of work. Considering that the dark,...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~635646.aspx7/13/2009 8:14:33 AMJonathan Lack If you've never seen NBC's Chuck, you're missing out on one of TV's best shows. It's inspired so much love that the fans launched an unprecedented campaign to bring it back for season 3, and we succeeded! The show returns in March 2010, and in the meantime, fans are trying to keep the show ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~635642.aspx7/13/2009 8:10:51 AMJonathan Lack Even though I enjoyed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I never really thought a director could truly capture the magic of Rowling's world on film. Adapting the plot is one thing, but getting the same amount of vivid creativity up there on screen was another, and Columbus wasn't the g...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~635436.aspx7/12/2009 8:11:56 AMJonathan Lack In the late nineties, Warner Brothersacquired the film rights to the series, and began the process of adapting the series to celluloid. Numerous concepts and directors were considered. J.K. Rowling's personal choice for director was Terry Gilliam, but his reputation for dark, strange films didn'...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~635244.aspx7/11/2009 8:21:08 AMJonathan Lack After the dark epic that was Goblet of Fire and the brooding masterpiece Order of the Phoenix, t he next entry in the series was published two years later, on July 16 th, 2005. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is easily the most divisive of all the books. I've never heard of fan...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~634978.aspx7/10/2009 10:56:12 AMJonathan Lack Welcome to the Monthly Ten! Top-Ten Lists are fun to read and to write, and depending on the subject, they allow the writer to examine film in new and different ways. Each month, I'll pick a topic and then rank the ten best entertainment-related things that fall under that topic. Ever si...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~634974.aspx7/10/2009 10:48:14 AMJonathan Lack J.K. Rowling's first three Harry Potter books were all outstanding, fun, exciting reads that got increasingly darker as things progressed. The best of the original three was undoubtedly Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which took the series to darker levels while also examining ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~634423.aspx7/9/2009 12:03:21 AMJonathan Lack In 1997, a small British publishing agency released Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with a print run of 1000 copies; the novel's editor advised author Joanne Rowling to get a day job, as he was sure the book would not make it big. Today, that novel has grown into one of the most pro...http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~634138.aspx7/8/2009 10:51:04 AMJonathan Lack