…exactly as deep as a DVD.

I’m talking about The Fifth Element over at Tor.com today, because it’s usually the first movie I watch every year. Mainly because I love a sci-fi hero who’s like, “Can I get more roses on my black velvet jumpsuit? I just feel like right now it’s so….subdued.”

Then I watch movies all day long on January 1 because I’m 1) a movie nerd and 2) a big lump.

Probable choices:

Strange Days, though to be fair this usually has to happen on New Year’s Eve so you can watch in real time as Ralph Fiennes shoves his tongue against Angela Basset’s tonsils. (Not even kidding! It looks like that kiss from Top Secret when Val Kilmer sticks his tongue in his own cheek and rolls it around!) Plus, you can’t watch this movie in daylight; it shines through all the plot holes.

After Fifth Element, it’s Soapdish. Why? Because it’s two things I like: peppy, and cheap. Peppy and cheap.

Then Cold Comfort Farm, aka Awesome British Actor Camp, because it’s what I were always made for.

Once it’s dark (which is what, 3pm?) it’s THE WARRIORS OH MY GOD. I have purposely not watched this movie in three months to save it up for New Year’s, and I am more excited than a sixteen-year-old waiting for a Robert Pattinson poster signing at Hot Topic.

YOU GUYS, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

The New Year is fast approaching, with all the traditions that accompany it; special dishes are being prepared, special outfits being ironed, and special movies being lined up in the DVD player to be the first movie of the year.

My first movie? The Fifth Element.

It may not be the best sci-fi movie ever made (obviously that’s Waterworld), but it has one thing that’s always nice to have at the start of the year: optimism.

A lot of sci-fi classics are dour, and rightly so—let’s face it, in another hundred years Wall-E will be filed under Documentary. But that’s a little heavy for the first day of 2009, where a little optimism comes in handy, and that’s where The Fifth Element shines.

Not that this is a Star Trek-ian parable about species rising above their base instincts. Humanity is just as frail and corruptible as ever. In the very first scene mankind loses an intergalactic custody battle, and the bottom layer of 2235 New York is a smoggy sludgepile which is probably 80% Starbucks cups. But director Luc Besson tweaks the usual Blade Runner nihilism, and instead shows a human race that has adapted to circumstances; humanity now lives in a towering New York with flying fast-food delivery and cigarettes that are 80% filter. (Studio apartment size has not changed with time.)

When Special Forces cabbie Korben Dallas gets a smash visit from unexpected alien beauty Leeloo (she’s unexpected!), the race is on to see who can have more wacky adventures before the budget runs out. Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Gary Oldman, Tricky, T’Pol’s stunt double, and a handful of old-school character actors all take a stab at it, though I think Chris Tucker wins by a length, having created one of science fiction’s most memorable—and most gleefully annoying—characters. Though sci-fi is rich in camp, it’s often painfully unintentional; it’s wonderful when a movie is in on its own joke. Tucker’s manically carefree performance steals the movie—and when Gary Oldman is in it, that’s no small task.

Since this is a science fiction movie, there’s a union-mandated bad guy (Gary Oldman, who lost the good Guy Role/Bad Guy Role coin toss that day), but the case of magic stones he’s after is a feather-light excuse to visit a world populated with hand-held manicure machines, blue Muppets, multipasses, microwaveable chicken flakes, and alien opera divas. From moment one, there’s never a doubt that Korben, Leeloo, Ruby, and Father Bilbo will set up the stones in time to save the world. And with a whole year ahead of me, that’s just what I like to see.

After a disappointing initial DVD, this cult classic has been released as a remastered special edition, available on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you want a bit of sci-fi that won’t have you sobbing your way into January 1 (I’m looking at you, Decker!), then load up The Fifth Element and let Ruby Rhod’s dulcet tones lull you into a New Year. Supergreen!

Bonus New Year’s Activity: if you’re looking for something to do on your day off of work and want to knock out a resolution, you can check out the Divine Language online; it’s only 400 words, and then you can scratch “Learn a new language” right off your list.

[This piece originally appeared on tor.com.]

Phantom of the Opera sequel in the works.

The follow-up to “Phantom,” which debuted in 1986 with Michael Crawford in the lead role, will take place a decade after the original, with the story set on Brooklyn’s Coney Island.

“It was the place,” Lloyd Webber said. “Even Freud went because it was so extraordinary … people who were freaks and oddities were drawn towards it because it was a place where they could be themselves.”

And the Phantom, who perishes at the end of the original musical, will reunite with lost love Christine. The iconic roles have yet to be cast. “We are pretty clear who our Phantom is going to be — I can’t say who,” Lloyd Webber said.

Well, check out this scoop. I already know who it is.

Christiiiiine, come out to plaaaaaaay….

You know it would be amazing! You KNOW it would. Mme. Giry would kill so many Turnbull ACs with that cane it would not even be funny.

This is going to be the best sequel of all time, except for that sequel to Les Mis where Marius and Cosette move to St. Louis and she pops out three kids and gets bored and starts taking night classes at community college trying to do something with her life, and he starts drinking because of the stress down at the plant, and then at the end Eponine shows up to promote her hugely successful self-help book “Hopeless Causes: How to Break Away When The Guy You Like Only Notices You Once You’re Riddled with Bullet Holes,” and when she sees Marius he begs her to forgive him and run away with him and she cracks up and is like, “Peace out, suckers!” and she and Gavroche jump in their convertible and drive off towards California.

…especially when the chick is out of his league.

Great lines from questionable movies, first in an ongoing and doubtless sporadic series:

“My name is Ethan. I was first in my class at Princeton, I have an IQ of 187…and it’s been suggested that Steven Hawking stole his “Brief History of Time”…from my fourth grade paper.” – Legally Blonde

This moment brought to you by the dude at the table next to me tonight.

P.S. Dude? She’s not going to call you. I know she said she would. She lied.

(Those ellipses are dramatic pauses, not excises. That actor was a genius.)

Man shot for making noise in a movie theatre.

As someone who goes to movies sometimes, and who would go more often except that people are disgusting and annoying, I want to say two things.

1. The guy got two warnings, which is more than I would give if someone was being annoying and I had a gun.

2. This is why I don’t own a gun.

(Also, it was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which makes me laugh. Stop talking! Brad Pitt’s insights are important, and EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN QUIETLY.)