I haven't had many reviews go up in the past few weeks, but that was just the way the release schedule works out; I'm going to have plenty in the coming two weekends. And this weekend I'm also headed to San Diego for Comic-Con, the annual mega-convention for geeky movie fans. So you'll be getting hopefully a load of coverage from that soon, too.

For now, just some minor stuff. At TheCinemaSource we had a ton of coverage go up for Hairspray this weekend, and of it, I contributed the Christopher Walken spotlight, which you can read here. I also designed all the banners and the Exclusive Hairspray Page myself. To any regular visitor of Stranded in Manhattan, you know I'm a freak about redesigning the site constantly (often just for the sake of re-designing it), so this satiated my appetite for the moment. Below are smaller versions of the designs (obviously, just go to TheCinemaSource.com for the real things:

It's only a little bit after midnight and I've finally finished posting all the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix coverage that we're doing on TheCinemaSource.com. That includes my review (plus another review, actually), and interviews with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, all better known as Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Emma Watson's is a bit epic because the girl talks a lot, Radcliffe's is almost as long since most of the questions were directed towards him, and Grint's is the shortest because he barely said a word. (And no, this time I sadly didn't get to actually meet them. I was working from the sound file.) But they're all cool and they all seem like genuinely nice kids.

The movie's great, by the way, and that's mainly because the corresponding book is the best of the series. A handful of people would disagree with that, but there's so many brilliant moments and plotlines, and the characters develop so well, that I loved it. And while the acting from the teenagers is the best yet (and the girl who plays Luna Lovegood is p-e-r-f-e-c-t), the film is a bit shaky in terms of impact and clarity. Again, read my full review to see what I mean.

That's a quote from the title character in Joshua, which opened in limited release today. It's about an evil kid and stars the always-cool Sam Rockwell as the father. However, I wholeheartedly agree with little Josh's statement: I didn't love him or the movie. Check out my full review at TheCinemaSource for the lowdown.

Uber-director Michael Bay (Armageddon, Bad Boys, etc.) has built a career out of directing projects produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, but he also has a friend in Steven Spielberg. It was Spielberg himself who sent Bay the script for The Island and told him it should be his next project.

Well, that was a few summers ago and we know that didn't turn out well. The movie tanked. (It was because there were no bankable stars; the project itself was fine, but I digress.) Spielberg, I imagines, felt pretty bad about it, so once he realized that a Transformers adaptation was just itching to be made, he went to Bay. And knowing Bay would turn it into the crazy-amounts-of-explosions bombast that Bay was known for, Spielberg pitched it to him in the most Spielbergian way possible: "It's about a boy who gets his first car."

Bay eventually warmed to the idea, and long story short, Tuesday marked the official opening of the Transformers movie. And the result? From what I've heard, it's a very Spielberg story (i.e. young male protagonist in the middle of a sci-fi epic), only instead of Spielberg's skill and polish, we get Michael Bay's explosions and messiness: we lose track of the kid's story halfway through, product placement is used to a ridiculous degree, etc. In other words, we get exactly what everybody expected.

Which of course means the film will make all sorts of money. There are worse things in the world. We've got plenty of Transformers content up at TheCinemaSource (we actually have an exclusive page that links to everything, check it out), but as for my own stuff, I'm responsible for the spotlights for stars Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese Gibson.

So check them out. And yeah, that was three paragraphs leading up to me plugging my own work. But I like to imagine that you all enjoyed the anecdote. Either that, or you're rolling your eyes because I'm judging a film I haven't even seen. By the way, what does everybody think of Shia LaBeouf? I kind of like the kid.