This just in....

President Obama threatens to use Vulcan Death Grip on GOP leaders to end budget debate. Film at 11.

Red band trailer for Horrible Bosses

For weeks, I've been telling people that Horrible Bosses might turn out to be the funniest movie of the summer. And, mind you, that was before I viewed the above NSFW red-band trailer. (Hat-tip to Jeff Wells for the tip.) Now I'm even more eager to wallow in the raunch. Does this make me a bad person?

The second smartest thing Peter Bart ever did is ask me to write for Variety

And the first smartest thing, of course, was push for Francis Ford Coppola to be hired as director of The Godfather. You can read more about that in my CultureMap interview.

Today's edition of Stuff I Wouldn't Dare Make Up -- "Give us your cash, bitch!"

As William Goldman told me several years ago during the Toronto Film Festival junket for The Princess Bride: It's very hard to be a satirist at a time when the real world has loonier stuff than you would ever dare make up. To be entirely honest, even after I was alerted to this astonishingly over-the-top and beyond-the-pale campaign ad by Talking Points Memo, I thought the damn thing was a put-on, a joke, a Saturday Night Live sketch. But no. Geez, this makes the infamous "Daisy Ad" look positively subtle.

Baseball, apple pie, country music... and Captain America

Throughout my four fun-filled days in Nashville for the 2011 CMA Music Festival -- during which time, I'm happy to say, I made my very first pilgrimage to the mecca of country music, the Grand Ole Opry -- I was amused and intrigued by the various and sundry promos on display for the forthcoming Captain America movie. Was this Paramount/Marvel's way of hyping the action-adventure as a summer blockbuster as all-American as... well, country music?

Whatever the motivation, the hoopla obviously elevated the film's profile -- and even may have attracted a few new fans for the red-white-and-blue superhero.

Indeed, the hoopla may have attracted some new fanboys, too.

Opening today at a newsstand near you: Cowboys & Aliens

The Wild West will get a little wilder this summer when Cowboys & Aliens appears at theaters and drive-ins everywhere. But you don’t have to wait until the July 29 opening date to get the inside story on this eagerly awaited sci-fi adventure film. You can read my up-close and behind-the-scenes preview in the July issue of Cowboys & Indians, now on sale at fine newsstands everywhere.