Movie Releases, 8/4

Will Ferrell returns to Anchorman mode in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, after tons of wasteful projects like Kicking & Screaming and Bewitched. In this, he's a good ol' boy NASCAR driver. I liked Anchorman OK, thought it would be a lot funnier, but the trailers for this are promising. I'm looking for a big opening weekend for this one after several comedy releases in the past few weeks have bombed.

The dilution of animated releases continues this weekend with Barnyard. The third week in a row for digital animation, this one comes from Paramount, meaning every major studio has come out with a CG cartoon this year except for Universal, who went traditional with Curious George earlier in the year. This one echoes Chicken Run a bit.

Then, we get a bit dark. In The Night Listener, Robin Williams plays a radio host with relationship problems who begins to speak to his biggest fan, a boy, on the telephone. Um...creepy. And since this is the movies, the boy isn't what he seems, either. Williams being creepy in movies like Insomnia, Death to Smoochy, and especially One Hour Photo (all from 2002) is usually a death knell for entertainment, although those movies have their fans.

And here's another horror movie that has all sorts of buzz going for it. The Descent looks a little like last year's The Cave, but hopefully it's nowhere near half as shitty. I'm hearing all the same things I heard about the beginning of the year's Hostel, like it's a genre-buster. I'll be cautious. Anyway, same deal as The Cave, a bunch of spelunkers start getting picked off by previously undiscovered meanies below.