At last, "The Golden Compass" is out, and while it's getting decidedly mixed-to-meh reviews, Nicole Kidman is coming out on top! She's so untouchable! "For once, the smooth planes of her face, untroubled by visible lines, serve the character," says Mahnola Dargis. She's... life-like! "As embodied by Kidman, Mrs. Coulter is tall and composed and as cold and scary as a movie star," says Mick LaSalle. She's possibly animatronic! "A working forehead isn't required here. In fact, Kidman's resemblance to some sort of demented Barbie doll actually works in her favor," says Sara Stewart. [Photo: AP/Peter Kramer]

On "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly's latest film, "Southland Tales": "Characters are as apt to quote Marx and the New Testament as they are to recite lyrics by Jane's Addiction, whose song 'Three Days' is prominently featured. The music is as lovingly chosen as the '80s staples in 'Donnie Darko.' In a druggy fantasy sequence Mr. Timberlake's character, a disfigured war veteran, sneering and clutching a can of Budweiser, lip-syncs to the Killers' "All These Things That I've Done.' 'I heard that song and couldn't stop thinking about Iraq,' Mr. Kelly said." [NYT]

There's long been a dearth of good movies set in (and especially filmed in) poor Boston (a.k.a. "Philly On the Charles"). Except The Departed and Mystic River but both of those were by dudes from real places (New York and California, specifically). So Slate's Patrick Radden Keefe is kinda excited about this new movie from Ben "Almost From Boston" Affleck, We Own the Gone Baby Gangster Clayton. Marky Mark and Russell Crowe are in it probably? But it was filmed in the real-life Boston with real-life Bostonians! Except the Bostonians were a little too "real life" and they make Boston look bad.

"Frog King," Adam Davies' 2002 debut novel—a roman a clef about book publishing—didn't make much of a splash when it first hit bookstores. But in 2004, Intermedia optioned Bret Easton Ellis's adaptation of the book, with Asif Kapadia to direct. Now, the script is floating around town, and people are noticing the remarkable similarities a certain character in it bears to a famous recently-deposed publishing tyrant. We got our hands on a copy, and, lookie here: She's a sexually rapacious evil bitch goddess and her name is "Judith Nathan."

Two minutes or so into 'Hannah Takes The Stairs,' the little film that's had its proverbial shaggy haircut lovingly mussed by every critic under the sun, a dickish but clueless boss character announces to his employees that he's gonna "go check my email and update my blog and all that." Upon hearing this line, the entire audience of the 8 p.m. screening of the film at the IFC Center last night broke out in hearty laughter that sounded remarkably like 200 American Apparel-clad backs being self-patted simultaneously. Also, one person literally started applauding. If only I'd left then!

So we read Times token "hipster" Melena Ryzik's summing-up of the genre to which "Hannah Takes the Stairs" belongs—"Mumblecore is the latest in indie cinema. It's a movement focused on the self-absorbed minutiae of post-collegiate existence—but in a good way."—and gagged ourselves with a proverbial spoon. But then we watched the trailer for the movie and... man! Don't you hate it when something that purports to speak to your generation actually, you know, speaks to you? There should be a word for that. There probably is in German. Anyway, you could check it out tonight at IFC, if you're feeling, um, focused on the self-absorbed minutiae of post-collegiate existence or something.

The film crew for "How To Lose Friends And Alienate People" has been terrorizing New York this week. Last night, they shot what people were told were the final scenes of the movie adaptation of exiled former Vanity Fair journo Toby Young's book. Is it a spoiler if, you know, the film's based on a book? Sort of?

That Cameron Diaz flick filming over in Chelsea? Actually called "What Happens In Vegas." But this iteration of the title from the parking placards around town is nice too. If possibly invasive. Or gynecological.

Ingmar Bergman, undisputedly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, has passed away at the age of 89. The atheist child of the chaplain to the king of Sweden, by 2004 he admitted that most of his films depressed him terribly. He was married five times, divorced four, and fathered at least nine children.

Not content to let Roland Emmerich and various crazed fundamentalists do all the destroying of New York, it seems JJ Abrams, creator of "Lost" and "Felicity," has thrown his hat in the ring with a mysterious unnamed film. Previews for the flick are being shown before "Transformers" and it will open in January, 2008. (N.B. "Transformers" is, strictly speaking, the most awesome movie of our generation.) In the pirated cellphone version of the preview, I particularly enjoyed what looks like Roma Torre of NY1 bringing news of the destruction. Because that's how it's going to happen for real. One second, you're trading anal sex for an iPhone—the next, Roma Torre is bringing on the bad news and then one of the spikes from the Statue of Liberty has impaled you and your cat and pinned you both to an Ikea bookshelf so that you might count out your last empty stupid minutes together, both your glazed, soon-dull eyes reflecting only Roma and her sensible, sensible hair.

Is it any coincidence that the movie Ratatouille could, possibly, be pronounced "Ratatwee," and the film seems to have found special favor with a particular brand of anthropomorphism-loving hipster?

A new movie called Baby Mama is being filmed today in Park Slope. The description, from IMDB:

Boing Boing points out Oscartorrents, a tracker of Oscar nominee BitTorrents from the folks at The Pirate Bay. Leech all the ostensibly Oscar-worthy fare you want, then judge for yourself (voting enabled). Will Oscartorrents strike a conciliatory note with movie studios? Not exactly: "Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn't us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping." Juicy!

Just in time for Valentine's day, Maxim Online brings us The Worst Love Scenes. "Worst" in this instance can mean anything from a lack of chemistry (as demonstrated by Jennifer Lopez's topping of a submissive, semi-comatose Ben Affleck in Gigli) to utter nausea-inducement (Rosie O'Donell's Nip/Tuck scene walks away with first place). But for our money, nothing ever quite comes close to approaching the too-perfect wrongness of the runner-up, the infamous James Spader-Rosanna Arquette scar fucking scene from David Cronenberg's Crash, where a pair of black fishnets and some staple sutures are all that stands in the way of the couple's ultimate expression of their extra-orificial passion.

Jim Carrey's recent preemptive dumping of A Little Game Without Consequence had us crippled with worry that we might never again see the unemployed megastar's name on the marquee of our local theater, but today's Variety allays those admittedly hysterical fears that a couple of big-budget plug-pullings might drive the actor into an early retirement: Carrey will work again! Probably, in late 2008! As Paramount promised at the time it decided to put Ripley's Believe It Or Not on a shelf until it could figure out how much money they wanted to spend on an already expensive movie that could spiral out of financial control each time director Tim Burton decided to indulge one of the actor's requests to "try that take again, but this time, can I do it while riding on the shoulders of a twenty-foot-tall, solid gold robot? I really think that's what my performance needs here," it's revived the project, adding a writer amenable to Carrey's helpful creative input:

Armed with nothing more than a well-worn pair of Stevens Stompers, a scrappy team of background dancers, and a crazy dream that her romantic comedy set against the backdrop of competitive clogging might one day find its way onto the big screen, writer/actress Julia Fowler took to the roof of a local parking structure, where she would perform perhaps the first clog-pitch in Hollywood history. THR reminds us once again about why we love this town so much:

Facebook posted a flyer for NYU users on its web site, reading:

If you came of age concurrent to the rise of "independent" film you probably remember Adrienne Shelly. She was the muse of the early Hal Hartley pictures; she was absolutely adorable in Joel Hershman's criminally underseen Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me; she was pretty much on any soi-disant intellectual guy's top five crush list.

• If you've been a New Yorker for longer than 120 minutes, you're probably aware that there is at least one "celebrity" - and we use that term very loosely - hawking their book on any given day. Today it's Amy Sedaris. [Papermag]
  

In case you've ever considered allowing any sort of production to use your residence as a set, here's a story: Adam and Leah, a couple in Brooklyn Heights, allowed Martin Scorcese and company to occupy their ground-level apartment in a brownstone for a scene in the altogether-awesome The Departed. Their place was used as the apartment of the love interest, which gave Adam and Leah the enviable distinction of having had Leonardo DiCaprio dry hump on their property. On the downside: Adam's collection of vintage magazines had been tampered with, and his 1972 issue of Playboy went missing. The couple eventually found the mag...under the bathroom sink. You can hope all you want that it was Leo "borrowing" that Playboy, but you just know it was the pimple-faced lighting assistant who rubbed one out.