This week we’re taking a slightly different approach.  Thinking outside the box.  Shifting the paradigm.  Gleaning the cube. Shellacking the hamster.

Welcome back to our “Then and Now” series (also called “What, This Again?”) where we compare and discuss a classic movie and one of its remakes. This week it’s the romantic comedy/thriller “Charade” and its 2002 remake “The Truth About Charlie.” Both movies have the same plot, of course: a young woman in an unhappy marriage returns to Paris to find both that her husband is dead and he was not who she thought he was. The original has Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, and Cary Grant as the leads. The remake has Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, and . . . Mark Wahlberg. Want to take a guess as to which is the better film? Well, don’t bother! Listen to us and we’ll tell you. Isn’t that easier?

Welcome to a new series here at Max, Mike; Movies! This time we’re tacking “Then and Now,” wherein we discuss a classic (or at least “old”) movie and one (or more) of its remakes and compare, contrast, convulse, confusticate and consommé the two. This week we’re talking about the classic heist movie “The Thomas Crown Affair,” filmed originally in 1968 with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway and remade in 1999 with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Two very different takes on what is essentially the same crime story, although one involves banks and one involves museums and strange Magritte jokes. Join us for this new chapter, won’t you?

I’m Ted Baxter; here now, the news.  Flawless impression, right? This is one of my Guilty Pleasures, the Will Ferrell comedy “Anchorman.”  Yes it’s juvenile and as lowbrow as you can get without being a neckbeard but it makes me laugh and the cast is amazing, as are the cameos.  Seriously, how many movies are there that have appearances by Tim Robbins, Danny Trejo, and Jack Black. Oh. Really? That many? Huh.  I had no idea.  Well, anyway, this one is a lot of dopey fun and it’s the movie that spawned a thousand memes (“Well, that escalated quickly!” “I love lamp.”) So slap on some Sex Panther, put on some jazz flute and dust off your many leather-bound books as we tackle the movie that asks the question “Why even bother trying to be classy?”