TVSquad

The folks at our sister site Cinematical are working hard to give you news and reviews of the best -- and worst -- the silver screen has to offer. Here are some of their musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:

• Land of the Lost, the new Will Ferrell movie, opened in theaters this weekend. I'm kind of undecided about whether or not I want to see it, but Cinematical's interview with director Brad Silberling is pretty interesting.
• The Summer of '91: Truth or Dare, Boyz n the Hood, Thelma & Louise, and Point Break. It was a good time. Relive it with Cinematical.
• Although I'm not so sure about John Krasinski's beard in this film, I do like the idea of he and Maya Rudolph playing a couple. Plus, Away We Go is directed by Sam Mendes, who helmed American Beauty. I'm so there.
• In honor of this weekend's release of The Hangover, Cinematical Seven looks at Wicked Hangovers on Film.
• Wow. This is probably the greatest wedding invitation in the history of the world. Cinematical gets away with posting this by calling it a "short film," so I'm totally going to link to it too. The video is four minutes long, but it's amazing.

Almost Famous and The Piano actress Anna Paquin has signed on to the lead role in a new series for HBO from Alan Ball. That name should ring a bell for all fans of Six Feet Under (Ball also wrote American Beauty).

This time around, Ball is diving into the world of vampires. His new series, appropriately called True Blood, is based on the "Southern Vampire" series of novels by Charlaine Harris. In the story, vampires don't have to kill humans for their blood because the Japanese were kind enough to invent a synthetic blood that does the trick. Paquin will play a non-vampire waitress who hooks up with a vampire.

Paquin is also appearing in an HBO mini-series about the displacement of Native Americans, called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

(S32E08) I must preface this post by saying that I know virtually nothing about Annette Bening. She is married to Warren Beatty, she was in American Beauty, and... that's about it. So, if this episode was packed with Bening film references and I failed to catch them, I apologize.

Bening had a really strong performance. All her characters were totally solid and natural (I mean, as natural as they could be). However, she had a really tough time with the cue cards. It wasn't like her eyes darted from side to side... she just full-on stared at the cue cards most of the time. That always annoys me a little bit about hosts, but perhaps it's just a personal annoyance and not particularly fair towards Bening. After all, it's not like something a film star should be used to, right?

The writing was very funny at some points, but the rest of the episode was only "okay". Hey, they can't all be winners.