Suddenly the Universe is a very cold and empty place.

• Apparently we are not a nation of people waiting for Amanda Woodward to return to Melrose Place. Heather Locklear's trip back to the series did little to ease its struggles, lifting its gruesome ratings by a mere 15 percent to a 0.8 rating in the 18 - 45 demo. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Meanwhile, just as the world was sending its mocking obituaries to the printers, guess who's having a good week? Jay Leno is up five percent this week, "matching its highest ratings in six weeks." [Hollywood Reporter]

• With two and a half months to go, the Super Bowl's ad space is almost sold out. CBS reports a 90 percent sell-out rate thus far, meaning only six slots are still available. Like everything else these days, Super Bowl ad sales are being viewed as a barometer of the nation's economic health. [Ad Age]

• A Writers Guild report of diversity among its ranks finds "little if any improvement" for the prospects of women and minority writers. Variety writes that the report "found that women scribes remain stuck at 28% of TV employment and 18% in features while the minority share has been frozen at 6% since 1999." [Variety]

• Jennifer Hudson will play Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of the ex-South African President Nelson Mandela in Winnie, a biopic to be directed by Darrell J. Roodt, maker of Cry the Beloved Country. [Variety]

• Roger Ebert may be off the airwaves, but his influence lives on, remarkably, as the online buzz king. A survey by Nielsen of which critics dominate the internet reveals that Ebert remains a goliath online, crushing all the competition combined. [thehotblog]

• Making 2012's grosses look like the change fallen under the cushions of your sofa, the video game Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 reported sales of more than $550 million in the first week of its release. The LA Times puts production costs on the game in the $40 - $50 million range (a fraction of 2012 or Avatar), putting its total budget including marketing somewhere around $200 million. Who's in the wrong business now, movie people? [LA Times]

• Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson told a reporter that, despite his PG-13 rating he had upped the violence in his upcoming film after early test screening audiences "were simply not satisfied" with the depiction of a character's death. [Hitfix]

• Nikki Finke reports that investor Carl Icahn has been snatching up MGM bonds like "A bat out of hell." [Deadline]

• The LA Times reports further on Disney's heroic decision to pull the plug on McG's attempt to America's memories of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with his remake. The paper writes that execs saw the project, scripted by novelist Michael Chabon as "too dark" and that they will take another stab at it somewhere down the line. [LA Times]

• Each year, surveying Oscar's Best Actress pool sets off a bout of hand wringing over the absence of serious parts for serious female actresses, but this year the low may actually be below the bottom of the pool. After a very short list of sure things (Meryl, Carey Mulligan in An Education and Gabourey Sidibe for Precious) the field becomes a wide open wasteland with almost no true attention getting roles leaping out. It's gotten so bad, writes the Hollywood Reporter, that "some are talking about Sandra Bullock." [Hollywood Reporter]

• As if answering the question raised by the item above...On the strength of 2012, This Is It, Angels and Demons and Terminator:Salvation Sony Pictures is having its best year at the international box office in its history with grosses currently at $1.63 billion. Fox, however, holds the international top slot this year with $1.79 billion in receipts and counting [Variety]

•Kent Alterman will be your next man to blame for why Comedy Central isn't funnier. The former New Line exec was named head of programming for the network. [Variety]

• The first plug pulled at the new Less Is Less Miramax — Richard Linklater's Liars (A To E), a romantic comedy that was to have starred Kat Dennings and Rebecca Hall. [Movieline]

• Disney has put in dry dock/beached/torpedoed/depth charged/recalled to submarine base/(insert your preferred nautical analogy here) a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea set to be helmed by McG. Cheated of his chance to ruin the submarine genre forever, the great director will instead focus his attentions on the thriller Dead Spy Running. [Variety]

• As long as there are film studios, there will be some executive who will have the bright idea to let Robin Williams star in yet another surefire failure of a comedy. Anna Faris is currently in talks to play Williams' daughter in Wedding Banned for Touchstone. [Hollywood Reporter]

• MTV has acquired the exclusive rights to air This Is It, the Michael Jackson concert rehearsal documentary. [Hollywood Reporter]

1) Up — $44.2 million
Well, Pixar continues its terrifying and complete reign of supremacy. Their 3D South American jungle adventure—about an old man who captures a little boy in his floating balloon house and dangles him in front of dangerous animals—raked in another hefty sum. Part of that was due to the higher-priced 3D tickets, which are becoming all the rage. Pretty soon you'll be seeing Michael Haneke or Wong Kar Wai making meditative weirdo foreign films that Jump. Right. At You!

2) The Hangover — $43.3 million
Once the actuals are determined, this bro-bait sleeper hit could end up going over the top and beating those two gay balloon lovebirds. Either way, it's still an astoundingly strong debut for a movie that doesn't have any stars and has a strong R rating. Will this finally make Bradley Cooper a movie star? Will director Todd Phillips ascend to the ranks of Apatow and Stiller? "No" and "Maybe", would be my guesses. Who I'm most excited for, though, are Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, two funny gents who ought to finally have some weight to throw around dusty old Hollywood. Since audiences gave the thing a can't-be-beat A CinemaScore, and as there's no direct competition on the near horizon, these drunken buffoons ought to stumble and belch their way safely through the next few weeks, unmolested.

UPDATE: Final tallies are in, and The Hangover did, in fact, beat Up this weekend, $45 million to $44.4 million. A photo finish! [Variety]

3) Land of the Lost — $19.5 million
Oh dear. Will Ferrell was back in the game with Step Brothers, but now he's right back out. Playing on almost 300 more screens than Hangover, it managed to gross less than half of that made-on-the-cheap flick's haul. Was it the bad reviews? Was it that no one could quite tell if it was a children's movie or for grownups? Was it that every gag in the commercials and trailers was gross and had to do with either blood, snot, or pee? I mean, "Matt Lauer can suck it!" was sorta funny, but that was... about it. I like Ferrell, so don't wish him failure, but this whole project always seemed a bit iffy as a bigtime summer competitor. Maybe if it came out in March or something. Then again, maybe not even then. It got a lousy C+ CinemaScore, which means no one will tell their friends to go and the thing will quickly disappear. Some call it banished to a land where things are... lost.

6) Terminator Salvation — $8.5 million
John Connor: The Yelling Chronicles finally crossed the $100 million mark! So good for them and the giganto Arnie robots and the filthy, soot-covered cherub nymph that is Anton Yelchin, and Moonwalker Bloodypants or whatever her name is, but most of all good for McG, who managed to take a great at best and decent at worst franchise and run it straight into the ash-strewn ground. Do you think he and Brett Ratner ever get together and talk about X-Men: The Last Stand and Salvation and sort of half chuckle, half weep for an hour or two, then drive off in their fancy cars to their mansions and eventually forget all about it? I'll bet they do.

9) My Life in Ruins — $3.2 million
A depressingly apt title. Poor Nia Vardalos flew so high seven years ago when her cheesy (feta!) little indie-that-could My Big Fat Joey Fatone slowly stormed the box office and, presumably, made her very very rich. But a failed TV series and a short string of guest spots later, her new sad Greek lady rehash has stumbled out of the gate with a lowly sum. Or has it? The flick's only playing on 1,164 screens, giving it a higher per-screen average than the number five film this week, the unstoppable Star Trek. So that could bode well for a slow burn, though the reviews haven't been as buoyant as they were for Big, Fat, plus there's no John Corbett. So maybe it is a fizzle. Ah well. Onto I Hate Valentine's Day, also about a sad Greek lady and... oho! John Corbett. Dynamite.

McG, director of such films as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Terminator Salvation, doing press junkets to promote the release of Terminator Salvation, was talking about Christian Bale's much-publicized freakout during filming and how movie sets can be stressful environments filled with monster egos, when he casually mentioned this little story to a reporter from The Guardian:

McG declines to comment any further than he already has, but points out that movie sound stages can be stressful places where creative battles sometimes become heated. Particularly, it seems, on his sound-stages. "I'm reintroducing the fist-fight to movie sets," he smiles. "I don't think there's been a film I've made where there hasn't been some kind of physical fight. I mean, I've been headbutted by an A-list star. Square in the head. An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated." Will he be revealing any names? "Nah, I probably shouldn't," he smiles. "But it was Bill Murray. Y'know, it's a passionate industry."

Bill Murray?!?! Bill Murray is a lot of things, but he might be the absolute last guy we'd ever expect to throw a headbutt on a director during filming. Do we see him sipping cognac and playfully flirting with younger women in hotel bars, accosting people in the middle of the night in parks, and maybe wandering into a hipster party in Brooklyn and getting stoned with the kids every now and again? Yes, totally! But do we see him as someone who headbutts people at work? No, absolutely not, which all points to one thing—-McG is probably as massive a tool as his name suggests.

More Proof That Bill Murray is Really Cool [Film Drunk]
I Was Headbutted By Bill Murray [The Guardian]

The piece by Tom Junod isn't yet online, but it can be found on newsstands (do they still exist?) by looking for a picture of Megan Fox in an overcoat. Is she becoming a private detective? Unclear. Is she 35? Also unclear. She should hire herself for that case. Anyway, the two-page puff piece, which has the half-truth of a headline "McG Is Not a Douchebag and James Cameron Is Not Jesus Christ," sets out to show how this movie is a rebirth for McG, and for the franchise, and for the character of the Terminator, and maybe also for Jesus Christ, who oh my god shares His initials with both Jim Cameron and John Connor. I don't know, the article uses the word "rebirth" about twenty times, but that's about fifty times less than it uses the word "scream."

Which leads us to the fifth reason we know that it's a scene of rebirth - the clincher.
There's a scream.
It's a big scream. It is an important and expensive Hollywood scream, in an important and expensive Hollywood movie. Indeed, in the entire history of action movies, there might not be another scream called up to express so much. It's a literal scream, in that, as McG says, "This is Marcus" - the screaming character's name - "beginning his journey."

Oh, sure, let me just check my Action Movie History Book, under the entry for Most Expressive Scream. Ah yes, here it is. "Huh?" Exactly. But it seems unreasonable for the writer to talk so much about screaming without letting us know what said screaming sounds like. Unfortunately, print is not a medium that can communicate roaring. Or is it? I scanned the article so as to show you its raw power.

Journalism! The writer then goes on to say that this scream that he was just declaring so important is actually kind of poorly done and comes off as funny not rebirth-y and then McG, who is a grown man who calls himself McG, says don't worry they are going to fix that. Perfect.

Now, McG is not an asshole. He's not a tool...But people think McG is an asshole because he's named McG.

You brought it up, not us. Whoever denied it supplied it, am I right?

"My name is such bullshit," he says. "It's a burden, but my parents never called me anything but."

McG's parents called him McG? They sound super McChill. The sour apple-flavored Ring Pop doesn't fall far from the sour apple-flavored Ring Pop tree, you know?

Shawn Levy's Date Night is going to be star-studded! Tina Fey and Steve Carell were already on board to play a married couple out on their... um... date... night. But the cast will now include Mark Wahlberg as a buff dude who hits on Fey and James Franco as a low-level crook. Also in the cast are Common, Taraji P. Henson, Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester, and Kristen Wiig. Sheesh. [Variety] Speaking of star-studded. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin will all be memorialized in TV film form by HBO. The cabler has optioned the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. A screenwriter (Charles Leavitt, who wrote Blood Diamond, cause, you know, Obama, Africa) is already attached but only one bit of casting has been announced. Sarah Palin will be played by Velma from Scooby Doo. [Variety, Ryan had some thoughts on this last night]

Fan of prancy, dancy figure skater nymphs? Good news for you then! Grand fashion fop of the skating world Johnny Weir will have his own reality series on Sundance. Be Good Johnny Weir will follow the fantasticat and his posse as they prep for the 2010 Olympics. Evidently launching a bid to become as geigh as Bravo, the net has also picked up The Day Before, about what fashion models do 36 hours before they do the world's hardest job, walking in clothes. [Variety] As if regular TV was even relevant anymore! Online audiences are growing by the bushel. Lost alone had 1.4 million unique online viewers last month. Total online video viewership was up 39% from last March. Remember the internet! [Variety]

Showtime has renewed its soft core period drama The Tudors for a fourth and final season. The series' final arc will follow King Henry Rhys Meyers and the last of his two wives, me and then me wearing a wig. We're all very excited about it. [Variety] Ugh, song of purple bummer. Vastly overrated musical Spring Awakening (gorgeous score, fairly limp everything else) might be getting the film treatment. From none other than prestigious director McG. He of the Charlie's Angels and the soon-to-be-seen SkyNet's Devils. The musical is about German teenagers fucking like a million years ago. They wear knickers. And sing pretty songs. And act very, very self-important. [THR]

Wait, I just said TV might not be relevant, right? I was wrong. Bravo, still number one in gaydom, has greenlit a new series that's like its dearly departed Project Runway, but this time stars... celebrities. Launch My Line will follow a bunch of grasping "famous" people (like Tia Mowry maybe, probably Vivica A. Fox at this point, that guy from your bus this morning, a small child [dwarf?] wearing a sailor's hat) who are trying to launch their own clothing line (think: Kathy Ireland ceiling fans). They'll get help from a professional design type. Dear lord I sort of can't wait. [THR]

Other bits: Book McMafia has been nabbed for a movie adaptation. [THR] The Daily Show has added a new correspondent. [THR] And Simon Cowell might leave American Idol. [EW]

We sat down and broke apart every little detail from the new trailer that we think is worth pointing out, including Kyle Reese's mannerisms, details on the love life between John Connor and his wife... and who may be still standing at the end. Plenty of screencaps, and spoilers, below.

Up top you've got the one and only John Connor, ladies and gentlemen: he lands his helicopter on the Terminator then shoots it in the head, just to be sure, multi-tasking is tricky, and what is that head piece? Hello Stargate.

Baby Kyle Reese is played by the adorable Anton Yelchin — and it appears he already has the Michael Biehn toothy smile down pat.

In the future, everyone drives jeeps or trucks that look like they belong in the Road Warrior, and all is as it should be.

Amazing zooming moto-terminators with what looks like a couple of side arms and the terminator red-eye problem. Check out the harvester in the background — bring it!

Looks like the humans have been forced to live underground again, with Common.

Holy hell, those are some awesome Terminators. What's with the doohickies above their heads? Can they fly? They can fly, can't they? I mean, we know that the big ones can fly, but personal flying Terminators would be amazingtastic. UPDATE: All right, maybe it is a factory.

One muddy man, who I'm assuming is Sam Worthington's character Marcus after he escaped the evil Terminator labs, I mean Bale is big, but I don't know if he's that big.

Look at all the face scars on tied-up Marcus, John Connor doesn't trust him... nor should he!

Speaking of the evil Terminator labs, it looks like the humans are getting crushed in a giant trash compactor.

With Spikes!

Check this out: someone who is presumably naked just beat the hell out of a Terminator, and is about to use the arm gun to bust his naked ass out, I'm assuming this is all part of Marcus' great escape. Update: tsunamitomi made a good point that this could also be a portal or a time travel, so feasts your minds on that.

The freeing of the humans. This is a little Oz "Brand New Day" for me.

Connor snuggles a little too close to a Terminator face.

Lovers running! Moon Bloodgood playing Blair Williams runs with her alleged lover Marcus, but why is she smiling? Bad acting, or does she know something we don't?

Wheelies! If there is a god, this is Bale.

Ack, Connor is hurt. Quick, Common and Marcus — carry him to his wife before something bad happens.

Oh crap something bad happened, slo mo screaming is never a good sign. But I will say, Bryce Dallas Howard is looking like one hot Mrs. Connor.

Oh, and SHE'S PREGNANT. What?

What is this place? A secret lab for turning people into robots, possibly? Hey, it's been suggested. And who's that guy? Are there still humans working for the Terminators?

Hydro bot wrasslin'.

Please tell me who this is. Is it John or is it Marcus? Because one of them is clearly dead, by the looks of it.

More Harvester action.

It primes you for a movie about Christian Bale yet again playing the world's most tortured action hero. Don't take our word for it, though: About halfway through, if you listen closely, you'll hear director McG behind the camera saying, "A little more brooding, a little more broo— Great, Christian. Let's do it again. How about a little more froggy voice? Think Batman, but, like, intelligible." The only thing missing is a sweeping, Tugg Speedman-style shot of Bale against the ravaged wasteland backdrop, a savior-panda strapped to his chest, a shotgun in his hand, muttering, "Maid's day off?" Next time!

• 'Terminator Salvation' Trailer [YouTube]

But wait one second—what's that huge thing at the end there? The one that looks like it's about to fold into a Ford F-350 Super Duty? It's obviously supposed to be some kind of spectacular CGI set piece, but we're getting a little too much McBay here, and not enough WASP-Brett Ratner. Bring back the T-5000 American Standard Urinalbots—the ones that sang Garbage songs and came with their own deodorant cakes. Those were way cooler, and are just begging for McG's porcelain-glossy, music video sensibilities. [ET]

The premise of Arnie's involvement is to have a fully rendered digital face of Arnie replacing the recently cast Roland Kickinger (The Younger version of Arnie). It seems the Director Mc G will in no doubt try all he can to ensure the Governator has some sort of involvement and as a result Arnold was on set providing key ADR (Voice over) for the visual effects guys to reference during post production. You have to remember, Arnold's commitments are preventing his return to the movie business and this seems the best logical way to ensure his involvement.

You may recall Christopher Lee's face being embossed on a stunt double in the Star Wars prequels?, imagine that with Arnold and you will get the picture. With ILM's best on the scene, it looks like Mc G is trying to get a head start on James Cameron's photo realistic stereoscopic camera systems.

Though we remain unconvinced that the Terminator franchise really needs a McG-helmed update, this new detail gives us hope — not because the addition of Ah-nuld can render the film less superfluous, but because the technology used to employ him might finally give the busy, reluctant Michael Cera a way to appear in the upcoming Arrested Development movie. BluthWatch '08!

[Photo Credit: X17]

• The Dark Knight Meets Mr. Freeze [Latino Review]

"I still don't know how it will play out with this one," said the star-turned-politician, who said he was given a private screening of early footage from "Terminator Salvation" by producers of the franchise reboot directed by McG. "They showed me some footage, but I don't have a feel for the movie. I didn't see enough. I wasn't sure who the Terminator was. I don't know if there is one or if he's the star or the hero. These are the things that determine the success and how the strong the movie will be."

..."There are such high standards and now there are always new standards being set for action," Schwarzenegger said. "You see that with 'Iron Man' and with the new Batman movie and that other film this summer, um, 'Wanted.' That was an excellent movie! There was this train coming down from a bridge, falling, and they're fighting inside the train car. Jesus, that is unbelievable that you can do that. To have the imagination to write it and the talent to shoot it and make it real on the screen. It's a whole new dimension."

Informed that the Wanted train car sequence didn't actually happen in real life, Schwarzenegger's jaw dropped. "Whaaaaat? And dis 'curving bullet' thing, dis is not real, too? Wait. So you are saying I am not actually pregnant? Wait until I tell Maria..."

• Schwarzenegger underwhelmed by early 'Terminator Salvation' footage [LAT]

· Les Moonves told a group of Wall Street analysts that not only did the strike fail affect the CBS Corp.'s bottom line, it also allowed them to reexamine the whole development process, revealing pilots as "vastly overrated" tools that fail to provide necessary hits. Instead, the network is now looking at a completely revamped system, in which one character archetype, an unusual profession, and a genre are plucked out of three top hats. Dina Powers: Animal Control Investigator, a thrilling series from the creators of CSI that follows the exploits of a sassy single mom who's never encountered a rabid-possum mauling she couldn't get to the bottom of, is scheduled to premiere next fall. [THR]
· Crash: The TV Seriez, coming to a Starz channel near you, has chosen a showrunner in Glen Mazzara, who pledges to extend the car-crash-as-means-of-human-connection metaphor to such other significance-laden roadside mishaps as bicycle wheelies gone wrong, skateboarding casualties, and pedestrians accidentally brushing up against one another on crowded crosswalks. [THR]

(213): Come on, who would be McG's "dream Terminator"?!

McG: [I]t's very difficult to say because it's a decidedly masculine role and I think we're living in a time where a lot of actors are very effeminate and they're sort of skinny, heroine chic and there's really a masculine component to the role. And there's guys out there like Russell Crowe and Eric Bana, bring a good physicality, they do what they do, but I don't know if they're exactly right at the end of the day. (Smiles) Josh Brolin is a very exciting actor - we'll see.

Impressively, McG manages in one response to not only out Hollywood's entire male movie star population, but to also drop the kinds of A-list names that make it clear he has no intention of squandering this casting opportunity on someone like The Rock. (Who, now that we mention it, would make the greatest Terminator, like, ever.) Still, if that telling smile preceding Brolin's name is any indication, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins would feature the most intimidating mechanical assassin yet, especially if it's outfitted with a creepy Ramona wig like the T-Chigurh model had.

• 213 Exclusive: McG talks Terminator! [the213.net]

This week's TCA press tour events have already provided us with so many memorable moments, from ABC's Steve McPherson's enthusiasm for bumping off Michelle Rodriguez to NBC's Kevin Reilly's mental coping strategies for dealing with his Idol problem to Aaron Sorkin's disdain for the opinions of the unemployed, that to add still more to the already lengthy highlight reel feels greedy. But a panel earlier today for The CW's The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search For the Next Doll, the fledgling network's attempt to empower a new generation of feminists to nurture their inner, "Don't Cha"-inspired freaks on national television, easily cracks our crowded TCA best-of list, as frustrated executive producer McG (you know him better as the visionary behind the Charlie's Angels films) eagerly debated the assembled critics on the up-with-skanks virtues of his forthcoming series. Reports the Critical Eye blog:

"Not everything is going to solve the crisis in the Middle East," he says, almost certainly not for the first time in his career. "Sometimes you want to have some fun ... and women celebrating one another being beautiful, and, frankly, being appreciated by me, has been around for a long time. Under no circumstances is it shameful. And there's even a position to take that this is, frankly, third-wave feminism. You know what I mean?"

The critics don't know what he means.

One middle-aged critic asks how lyrics like, "Don't you wish you were a freak like me?" celebrates women.

"You must understand the fundamental paradox of a gentleman of your age demo asking that very question," McG says. "I don't know if you two-way your friends on your Sidekick ... It's just saying, 'Don't you wish your girlfriend could be free and comfortable in her own skin and do her own thing like me?' That's what we're saying."

In the interest of helping to settle this generational impasse over the meaning of the word "freak," we turn to Urban Dictionary, pop culture's up-to-the-minute lexicon, which defines the term alternately as "a person who likes to do kinky shit in bed or have sex a lot" and "a girl most likely that likes to act all innocent then she has sex with you and she is real freaky or kinky, she likes to have sex alot and do weird stuff." If this non-two-way-Sidekicking relic from a demographically undesirable audience segment can't see how the unabashed, televised pursuit of freakdom celebrates women, The CW isn't the least bit interested in his viewership.

• McG vs. Critics: Aspirational or Skanks? [Critical Eye]

As for the skeptics, "it's the privilege of everyone to work in shorthand," he noted. " 'Oh, he does this, she does that. He's that guy.' I'm not known for 'Let's tell a very methodical story and make 'em cry.' I know that 'Let's get McG to do it' is not a natural place to go. But I went in, and I had a very specific take with regard to what I wanted to do with the film, and they went for it." [...]

"I'm a recovering agoraphobic," he said. "That's my identity, that's mine for my entire adult life. So don't tell me about pain and being a disposable pop throwaway. I'll ask anyone about the path they've walked and what it means to really feel alone and feel chastised and have pain and try to express that in your own artistic way. Maybe I'm successful, maybe I'm not, but it's my own personal shrug that I wanted to bring and funnel into this story." [...]

"I'm known for karate and explosions and pop color, and I'm very pleased with the tone we invented for those 'Charlie's Angels' pictures, but I wanted to go 180 degrees away from that," he said. "This isn't a sports movie. It's a movie about survival, it's about humanity and what we do when adversity comes up and smacks you in the head. There's certainly a football component, but it's just a story about how to make sense of tragedy." [...]

"I just want to let the film speak for itself," McG said. "It's funny to be known as a pop culture, high-energy guy that's always in a good mood, when I'm mentally ill. Don't act like I'm Mr. Jacuzzi and girls in bikinis and Hollywood. That's not who I am."

There you have it: While your hacky Ratners and Bays (both name-checked in the piece as "quick-cutting, narratively challenged" directors with whom he's unfairly grouped) gleefully detonate every object on set before retiring to care-free hot-tub orgies in their Hollywood Hills pleasure domes, McG's jittery edits and explosions give him no pleasure, existing only as tools to distract him from lingering too long in his dark places.

• The Full-Throttle Flash Guy Is Gone (Cue Violins) [NY Times]