This week's video review takes a look at the big screen version of Sex and the City. Does it maintain the spirit of the hit HBO show? Is it worth its two and a half hour run time? Most importantly, does it deserve your cinema dollars this weekend? Click above for the full conversation between Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers and special guest Aubree Lennon, a longtime fan of the show who lends some feminine perspective.
• Review: Sex and the City (2.5 stars)
Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]
[Video: Jennifer Hsu]
This just in and boy am I depressed about it: There will be a Beverly Hills Cop IV. The success of Indy 4, 19 years after Indy 3, has opened up a can of worms, proving that it's never too late for greedy grubs to chow down hard on Hollywood's leading endangered species: originality. Yes, my friends, 14 years after Beverly Hillls Cop III, Eddie Murphy will again star as Detroit detective Axel Foley, playing a fish out of water in Tinsel Town. WTF? I mean I liked the first Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 as much as the next guy. Murphy damn near exploded on screen. A young Turk on the Detroit force, Murphy's Axel horned in on Beverly Hills police turf to nose out the killer of his buddy. The movie had heart as well as laughs. The BH cops, dressed like bank tellers with manners to match ("Please put your hands up, Sir"), made a great foil for Murphy's big-city cool. And director Martin Brest, before Meet Joe Black and Gigli helped kill his career, gave the movie a genuine sense of style. And then what?
Suddenly, whatever Indy 4 grossed or what DVDs come out today seem not to matter in light of the passing yesterday of the gifted director and actor Sydney Pollack, one of true gents in a movie industry notable for the absence of what Sydney had—humor, warmth and a non-showy way of letting his talent out. Sure, he won an Oscar for directing Out of Africa, and his 1982 Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman in a dress deserved that year's Best Picture golden boy way more than the solemn, self-important winner, Gandhi. But the open secret about Sydney Pollack was that he was the go-to guy in Hollywood for a filmmaker in a bind. Pollack and his Mirage Enterprises producing partner Anthony Minghella—both dead from cancer within two months of each other—were always there to help other directors realize their vision.
It doesn’t suck! It doesn’t soar! It’s ordinary!
On a dragass DVD week dominated by the drab and preachy The Great Debaters, the painfully unfunny Mad Money and the totally unwatchable Untraceable, Indy comes to the rescue. With the fourth installment—Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—just nine days away from your local multiplex, the DVD gods have picked an ideal time to re-release the first three Indy chapters in spanking new editions. Director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas have done intros for each movie, there are new bonus features not included on the 2003 DVD package, and the images jump off the screen with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound to goose them. But the big question before the May 22nd opening of Indy 4, is how to rank the first three. To refresh your memory:
Holy bad box office! Chim-Chim the chimp has a right to go bonkers. OK, no one really expected Speed Racer to beat Iron Man, still selling like $50 million worth of platinum in its second week. But to see the brainchild of Andy and Larry Wachowski in a photo finish for second with romcom crap like What Happens in Vegas is just effing depressing. Look, I felt Speed Racer couldn't find the human touch that would make its visual pyrotechnics stick. Even Chim-Chim, who hangs with Speed's younger brother Spritle, mugs way beyond the call of chimp duty. But the Wachowskis are real filmmakers. Watching them, even when they fail (see the conclusion of The Matrix trilogy), is far more edifying an experience than enduring Cameron Diaz shrieking at Ashton Kutcher for two enervating hours. So why did Speed Racer hit the wall? The know-it-alls give these reasons:
This just in for cineastes. Check out the nominations for the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, with prizes for the best in cinema to be doled out live on June 1st, hosted by the Love Guru himself, Mike Myers. There Will Be Blood Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis can go drink his milkshake. Not a nod for his film, or his role-of-a-lifetime performance. He was crowded out of the Best Actor category by stiff competition from Michael Cera in Juno and Shia LeBeouf in Transformers. Maybe next year, Danny Boy. 
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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