It happened at Broken Embraces and again at Up in the Air and even last night at a 10pm showing of A Single Man, all the yahoos in a packed but tiny theater put me in such a bad mood that I could barely concentrate on the film. Especially here in New York where even buying a ticket days in advance and arriving 45 minutes early may not be enough to guarantee you a good spot on opening weekend. So, everyone, here are the rules. If you can not follow them, then you have to sit in the aisle or wait for everything to come out on DVD and leave the theater for civilized folk.

• The party for whom the seat is saved must be in the theater. In this age of Fandango, you can't buy tickets for all of your friends, and then send one person early to stake out eight chairs while the rest of the party lollygags about and takes their time getting there. If you are too lazy to get to the theater early, you don't deserve a better seat than everyone who can just because you have someone foolish enough to do your dirty work. This, above all else, is the number one rule.
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• A seat with a coat or bag on it is taken. The universal sign for "this seat is being saved" is a coat and/or bag placed in the seat. Don't shout over seven people, "Is that seat taken?" if there is a coat in it, because the answer is yes, you idiot. To keep the enforcement of this rule consistent, it means your coat and/or bag does not get a seat for a movie ever. You bought one ticket, you and all your shit only gets to use one seat.
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• The only acceptable place to go is to get popcorn or use the toilet. You are not allowed to go make a phone call or wander around or do anything else crazy and, see above, the person must be in the building.
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• You can only save one seat at a time. That is the absolute limit. If there is two of you, then one must go about his business while the other saves the seat. Once he returns, switch roles. If you are with a larger group, only one party can go at a time. Five people can't all go to get movie nachos and use the toilet while one person perches over your person movie fiefdom and shouts "all the seats as far as the eye can see are taken!"
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• No, I will not move over. Sorry, but my friends and I got here before you and, due to the first-come-first-serve nature of movie houses, we get to pick where we sit. We know there are free seats around us, and we have chosen not to move. We will not pick up all of our stuff and our concessions to move over so there will be two empty spots together and you can sit next to your boyfriend. As the holders of these seats, it is our prerogative to do so. If you got here after us, then you have to deal with the seats that are left. If you don't like it, well, you should have arrived earlier.
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• No, I will not watch your stuff. If you come to the movie alone, do not drag me into saving your seat for you while you leave the theater. I am not your slave. It sucks, but you're going to have to pee and get our Twizzlers before selecting your seat. If you don't like it, then get a friend or hire an escort to go to the movies with you and one of you can save a seat—following these rules of course.
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• Don't ask me if a seat is free. If there is no body, coat, or bag in a seat, it is free. Do not ask me if it is free. If it looks empty, then it is. If you want it, it's yours. Also, just cause I'm sitting next to it, don't ask my permission to sit there. I do not own that seat. No one does. It is empty and it is a free country. If you want it, sit your fat ass down and leave us alone. We're trying to enjoy a movie.
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• When the previews start, any save is voided. The seat saving window is closed. This wouldn't have to be strictly enforced except for the Fandango bandits who are hold spots for people not even in the theater yet, while others wander about in the dark spilling popcorn and knocking over our drinks and going "Is this seat taken?" while we're trying to find out about the new Woody Allen movie.
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Thank you for listening, and see you at the movies.

[Image via Getty]

But not terribly, either. There were some scathing words, but we've begun to suspect that those have more to do with people's distaste for Allen as a person and an inability to see his films as stand-alone pictures. Mostly though, the film sounds mild and minor, with some requisite Allen ickiness and a few clunky antiquated jokes.

Angry Lou Lemnick of the New York Post finds it creaky and vaguely embarrassing:

Woody has told interviewers he wrote this script years ago for himself and updated it recently.

Yes, there is a cringeworthy gag about our new president being unable to get a cab in New York, and an even worse one about Viagra. And he tries to show he's with it by briefly throwing in a menage a trois, just like in his last film, the far funnier "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

But few under 50 are going to get his reference to Texas sniper Charles Whitman (he's the Binghamton killer of 1966). Some of the gags are even older, and only occasionally funny.

Two dudes over at Vanity Fair, Frank DiGiacomo and Bruce Handy, have differing opinions. DiGiacomo loved it, saying it's the first Allen movie he's really laughed at in a long time:

For one thing, I go to see his movies hoping to laugh my ass off, and that hasn't happened in a while-at least until I saw Whatever Works.

Whereas Handy just found the May/December romance (between Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood) straight up creepy:

Allen doesn't even bother to make the relationship between David's and Evan Rachel Woods's characters credible. Aside from her being hot, the attraction makes no sense: She's a moron and he's hateful.

Eric Kohn at indieWire also finds the David/Wood pairing frustrating:

Their "marriage" has less credibility than the plot of "Bananas": It's random, abrupt and utterly non-romantic. We never even see them kiss. "I have been patient with your phenomenal ignorance," he tells her, but the cynicism-just like their shared passion-doesn't appear to register.

In the end, though, maybe we're expecting to much from the aged Allen, who has given us so much. Maybe we can just let this be a pretty decent comedy, Jason Guerrasio at Filmmaker Magazine seems to argue:

...Allen's latest work can hardly match his earlier ones shot in his beloved city, so we won't even go there, instead he constructs an entertaining, conventional (for Allen's standards) comedy...

Fair enough. You know. Uh... heh. Whatever works.

Drew Barrymore and her on-again, off-again puppy-ish ex-boyfriend Justin Long are set to star in a romantic comedy together, this one about long distance relationships. And if by "long distance" they mean the distance between canyons, like troughs of a wave, and how far away the isolation of fame can make you feel even when you're standing right next to someone, then I'm sure they'll both really bring something to their roles. [Variety] State of Play director Kevin Macdonald will travel a long distance... back in time, to direct The Eagle of the Ninth, a Roman-times story starring Jamie "Billy Elliot" Bell and possibly Channing "Shut Your Mouth and Drop Your Trousers" Tatum. Promisingly, the logline begins as such: "a wounded Roman soldier and his loyal Celtic slave..." Hm. [Variety]

Some British lad has joined the cast of the new Twilight movie, called Staking 2: Hectic Hullabaloo. Jamie Campbell-Bower, from Sweeney Todd, will play one of the Voltrons, an Italian clan of vampyrs. [Variety] Zack Snyder's "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns" Sucker Punch has found its lead. Emily Browning, that little girl from Lemony Snicket, will play an asylum inmate who creates a violent fantasy world in her head. She's joins such acting luminaries as Abbie Cornish and Vanessa Hudgens. [Variety]

Those tangled up in the flailing New York City film industry can step back from the ledge for just a second. New York State legislature has voted to extend the lucrative tax break program that buoyed the local industry for another $350 million worth of tax credits. TV shows looking to film in New York may be deterred by the new conditions of the program, though, as the credits are not open-ended. There are also strict limitations on how much of a break each production can receive. But still. Good news. [Variety]

The still reliably-employed Lucy Lawless has landed a new gig, one that returns her to familiar ground. She'll again be working with Xena: Warrior Princess creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, this time on a series (for Starz, sigh) called Spartacus. She'll play the tough bosslady of a camp of gladiators. This comely fellow will play the title role. [Variety] Speaking of comely fellows, NBC and DirecTV have renewed their laboriously-praised joint venture Friday Night Lights for two more seasons. So more of Riggins and Hoodad and Whatshisnuts, ladies. Go team! [Variety]

The Wackness director Jonathan Levine is directing a movie for Fox Atomic about a babysitter. No, it's not some big-breasted young lady who gets horribly taunted and murdered, it's a boy who has funny things happen to him! The Sitter, which "will harken back to Adventures In Babysitting", is about a college student suspended for a semester who returns home to live with his moms. Then he has to babysit. Hilarity ensues. [THR]

MTV has ordered four more seasons of its crazy old coot of a series The Real World. This will bring the total for the 17-year-old reality thing to a haunting 26 cycles. The producers are currently filming a Cancun-set season, so where will these four new installments take place? Atlanta? Dallas/Houston? St. Louis? Orlando? Adamsville, RI? Emblem, WO? What do you think? Oh, also... four more seasons of Road Rules, too. So. [THR]

WHEREAS, Ms. Parker is the star of the Sex and the City, an overpraised television series adapted as an overhyped feature-length film for theatrical distribution later this month; and

WHEREAS, Sex and the City romantically represents contemporary New York City as a sanitized, upper-middle class shrine to culture, taste, privilege and glamor; and

WHEREAS, the real New York City is a class war waiting to happen, as exemplified by Ms. Parker's recollection to the author:

I don't know if you do this with your husband," Parker says. "But say one of us is walking down the street, I'll call him and say, 'You know, the laundromat is closed!' And he'll say, 'What?' I'll be like, 'The laundromat at 11th and West 4th Street is closed!' " and

WHEREAS, Ms. Parker's West Village walking tour is punctuated with other, similar laments, including those for the good old days of public insolvency and that "the city is so affluent, and all the colors, all the shops, the look of a street from block to block is just terribly absent of distinguishing coffee shops, bodegas. All of that stuff that made it possible to live in New York is gone ... I guess there are places in Queens that are affordable," and

WHEREAS, Ms. Parker acknowledges her calculated brand development (e.g. perfume, clothing line) within a half-dozen breaths of complaining about the media attention that reinforces it: "It makes me feel ashamed of my work. And I'm not. But I'm attached to this culture now in a way that, it's kind of vulgar. And I feel cheapened. And I feel like I'm cheapening the school, like I'm bringing dirt, like I'm bad for the neighborhood," and

WHEREAS, Ms. Parker is a confirmed nice person who, along with her nice husband Matthew Broderick, nevertheless symbolizes an urban idyll both contradictory and destructive to her self-proclaimed values, and

WHEREAS, we abhor hypocrisy among the West Village power elite and, more generally, among A-listers promoting their mass-market summer confections in major national publications,

NOW, THEREFORE, LET IT BE RESOLVED BY DEFAMER,

1. That Ms. Parker be censured for her perpetuation of Sex and the City and other utopian myths helping eviscerate New York in both the local and popular consciousness, and

2. That Ms. Parker be further censured for being the latest New Yorker to want things both ways, and

3. That this censure go forth in the form of an official editorial admonition: "Kindly shut the fuck up."

RESOLUTION PASSED this 5th day of May, 2008.

SIGNED,

DEFAMER

• Sarah Jessica Parker Would Like a Few Words With Carrie Bradshaw [NYM]