COLUMNS
| Date | Author | Headline | |
| 11/27/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Every year, the corporate-controlled media does its part to convince us that holiday retail sales are going to be taking a big upswing – except this time ... |
| 11/13/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | A lot of you readers have probably felt some concern that this column often seems like little more than a platform for our incendiary political views, behind the flimsy guise of a movie roundup ... |
| 11/6/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Turn off your irony detector for a sec, because we gots something to say: People who write about film sure can be some serious tools ... |
| 10/30/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Believe it or not, it’s not always easy to make these columns cohesive. Just look at the disparate ground we have to cover this week ... |
| 10/23/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We’re not in the habit of lauding multimedia corporations for their good sense and decency, but darned if the folks at Warner Bros. don’t keep racking up the Do-Bee points ... |
| 10/16/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | You’ve gotta love a sore loser. |
| 10/9/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Is there anything more damaging than an ill-considered impersonation? |
| 10/2/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Once again this week, we’re going to dispense with our normal pre-amble/ramble and get right to the handicapping ... |
| 9/25/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We’re huge fans of the 2004 comedy Mean Girls, so we were as alarmed as anybody to hear that Paramount is developing a straight-to-DVD sequel ... |
| 9/18/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | "Watch this,” we whispered to a buddy as the trailer for Sex Drive rolled ... |
| 9/11/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Everything’s a movie these days, even stuff that isn’t ... |
| 9/4/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | If you’re headed to the flicks this weekend, don’t worry too much about finding a decent seat ... |
| 8/28/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | This week marks the release of Disaster Movie, the umpteenth genre parody from the Friedberg-Seltzer house of knee-jerk larfs ... |
| 8/21/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Just this once, we’re going to skip our usual state-of-the-cinematic-art preamble and get right into the product-by-product armchair quarterbacking ... |
| 8/14/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | So the summer is nearly over – not according to that silly Gregorian calendar, but by the say-so of the movie conglomerates ... |
| 8/7/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | One of the worst things about the movie business is how little hands-on training freshman talent can get in areas that really matter ... |
| 7/31/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | It's official: Movies are still your best entertainment value. Especially if you stop counting everything else. |
| 7/24/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Don't you love it when a corporate Cyclops blinks? Marvel Films has reportedly reached a deal with director Jon Favreau for Iron Man 2, after having made some threatening noises that the sequel might be going on without him. |
| 7/17/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We know it's not our mission in this column to talk about what's on TV, but with movie-theater attendance remaining a relative stampede, something about the idea of encouraging you to stay home instead appeals to our contrarian impulses. |
| 7/10/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Talk about raising the bar. Notorious L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has claimed that Warner Bros. relied specifically on her wisdom when it decided to up the distribution of its forthcoming remake of The Women (due Sept. 12)... |
| 7/3/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | This is going to be a rough weekend if you love new movies - and we mean really love new movies, in the sense that R. Kelly loves the legal system and his own urine. |
| 6/26/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | So far, even this summer's biggest box-office hits have appealed to specific viewer demos. Iron Man got the men. Sex and the City got the women. And Kung Fu Panda got the... plushies. |
| 6/19/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | When words like "legacy" start worming their way into your everyday vocabulary, it's usually a sign you should start taking Metamucil, voting for McCain and giving every show on CBS a TiVo Season Pass. |
| 6/12/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | A mere five years ago, Hollywood's first pass at a Hulk movie sent a legion of critics scurrying to their reference shelves to look up the correct spelling of “ponderous.” |
| 6/5/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We don't say things like this every day, but we really think Oliver Stone needs to start taking some liberties. |
| 5/29/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Who says nothing is sacred anymore? Look at the uproar that resulted when the makers of the Sex and the City movie (released this week) held its premiere in London instead of New York, where its heroines famously reside. |
| 5/22/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We recently realized that this column expends an inordinate amount of ink on big-budget, major-studio releases, at the possible expense of good old-fashioned indies ... |
| 5/15/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Here's how you know you've been devoting too much energy to second-guessing the movie business: Your TV is on. |
| 5/1/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | It looks like a done deal that Brett Ratner will be remaking The Incredible Shrinking Man. And thus an already fragile world comes one step closer to Armageddon ... |
| 4/24/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Just last week, we were lamenting that some small, left-of-center pictures continue to bypass Orlando. Well, former Nixon flunky and glorified game-show host Ben Stein must have heard our kvetching ... |
| 4/17/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | You’re getting old if you remember when movies had actual release platforms. Pretty soon now, it’s going to be standard operating procedure for every picture to go simultaneously to theaters... |
| 4/10/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Yearning for a truly luxurious movie experience? A consortium of interests headed by Village Roadshow Ltd. has announced plans for a nationwide chain of “Gold Class Cinemas” that would make attendance enjoyable again ... |
| 4/3/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | You know an election year is heating up when opinion-makers start clucking their tongues about movies emboldening the worst elements of our society... |
| 3/27/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | The commercial failure of nearly every Iraq-themed movie released in 2007 has Hollywood in a tizzy ... |
| 3/20/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Fair warning: This column is now three weeks old, and that means it’s time to alienate some people. Screw Indiana Jones. Seriously. Snap out of it, folks. Take a good look at that trailer. Explain to us how it could be any more funereally paced... |
| 3/13/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | We recently heard that the Sharper Image retail chain has stopped accepting its own gift cards. The Sharpies aren’t denying the validity of the cards; they simply maintain it’s not in their best interest to honor them ... |
| 3/6/2008 | Steve Schneider | FIRST SHOT | Movies, bleedin’ movies … every new week seems to bring a fresh avalanche of the things ... |
