Actor, comedian Dan Aykroyd displays his Crystal Head Vodka, the official vodka of the Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary. (Image Credit: ABC News)

He has earned an Emmy and has been nominated for an Oscar, but Dan Aykroyd is after a different category of award these days. With 3 million of his skull-shaped bottles already sold across 32 countries, Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka has been taken gold medals at both the World Spirits competition in San Francisco and Moscow’s Prod Expo.

“If Russians don’t know their vodka, the Japanese don’t know their sushi,” he says.

The man behind “The Blues Brothers” and “Ghostbusters” is trying to “revive the vodka category” with his Newfoundland, Canada-based liquor, removing common additives like sugar and citrus oil and instead retaining sweetness with a peaches-and-cream corn mash.

“Our tasting notes are sweet, vanilla dry, crisp, with a kick of heat off the finish,” he says. “A kick of heat off the finish? I left the highway when I heard that they had given us those notes.”

Aykroyd, a friend of Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, has recently put together a special edition Crystal Head Vodka gift pack for the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary tour, boasting 14 never-before-released live Stones tracks handpicked by Mick Jagger, as well as a glass stopper.

While one might expect a beverage with brown sugar to be housed within a Rolling Stones box, the combination made perfect sense for Aykroyd. “We just thought we’ve seen a skull or two on Keith’s fingers,” Aykroyd said, also noting a Canadian connection in the Stones’ deep love for the Toronto area, where they rehearse, mix and tour quite often.

As Aykroyd, 60, explained to us how perfect the gift set is for Father’s Day, we had the chance to ask him about his career, his recent cameos and a few upcoming projects, all in the context of the vodka business, of course.

Q: You guested on “Saturday Night Live” last month, and in that episode you were serving ‘SNL’-inspired drinks as a bartender, with a row of Crystal Heads behind you.

A: That was the set designer. I didn’t even have to ask. That’s my friend Keith, of course. I know him from the early days of the show, and the set team there, and they just, without even thinking about it, they had the heads, because they knew that I was playing the bartender. So, naturally, what am I going to serve? The drink of the 5-Timers Club is Crystal Head, all of the cocktails are made there with Crystal Head. So even though I never get to wear the jacket and I never get to be pampered, I do get to supply the product and do the bar.

Q: So what is in a Vodka Gilly, besides hair?

A: The Vodka Gilly is 2 ounces of Crystal Head, grapefruit juice, a splash of soda water and two maraschino cherries, to match her eyes.

Q: So are you watching the show regularly, do you check in once in a while?

A: Does the alumnus of Villanova watch the basketball games?

Q: Do you have any players, characters, sketches that stand out to you in recent seasons?

A: Certainly, I love Judy (Grimes). I love Fred Armisen’s drummer. I love when he speaks Spanish. I love him! I love them all,  Sudeikis – master impressionist – Hader’s game show host and Vincent Price. I loved Wiig there and these new ladies are fantastic, the champagne bubbly ladies that they did. It was really spectacular work. I watch all the time. They did a thing called Maine Justice, where they’re all from Louisiana. I was in that but I got cut. And I’m really upset about it, and I’m going to demand I be in the next one.

Q: When your vodka was first made available, the timing was very close to the release of “Indiana Jones 4.”  That movie had cone-headed aliens with crystal skulls, while you’re well known for Coneheads and selling Crystal Head. As if that wasn’t enough confusion, you were also in “Temple of Doom.” What’s going on here?

A: Steven [Spielberg] and I are old friends, he hired me for “1941″ and he named the dog in Poltergeist after E. Buzz Miller, one of my characters from “Saturday Night Live,” and he put me in “Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom.” But I think I kind of asked him to be in that. He made the aliens in his movie cone-heads. I guess it paid tribute to the [F.A.] Mitchell-Hedges skull, which is referenced in the film.

I must tell you that we were developing this prior to the “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” movie. And when I heard Steven was doing this, I called a meeting with him. I went into his office because he’s the pope. I said, “Steven, we’re not trying to rip you off with this product. I’ve always loved the legend of the heads.” He said, “Me too, wait’ll you see the movie” type of thing, and he saw this and said, “Dan, this is beautiful. I would love to put this on every table at the premiere,” however they don’t do those half-a-million dollar premieres anymore. They put the money into prints and ads. I left him with a bottle, some of my wines and other stuff.

Q: Are we going to get a Cone-Crystal-Head eventually? You could fit a lot more vodka.

A: That would be spectacular. We do have a [1.75-liter] head, in this shape, and I should look into that. I guess I would have to license that from Paramount and NBC. I should look into that, sure.

Q: In December, in an interview with Esquire, you went on record saying that if the principal cast wasn’t secured in the next 3-4 months for a third “Ghostbusters,” you’ll be in Australia selling Crystal Head. You’re not in Australia right now, I’ve noticed.

A: I’ll be there in October.

Q: What’s the verdict? Has the studio stepped it up. Do they have an extension. Should fans have hope?

A: I feel re-encouraged, reinvigorated by the pages that I have seen. I know that we’re expecting half of the screenplay to be completed very soon. It should be into production by the fall and be shooting by the new year. I won’t say anything, it’s very exciting. The Higgs boson and the particle theories, gluons and mesons, that really gives us a scientific base in terms of our fictional storytelling, to open up to another dimension and have something horrible come through.

Q: You’re active on Facebook and Twitter promoting Crystal Head and answering fan questions. Are you regularly on those social networks or do folks on your team have to pin you down to sign in for updates?

A: Folks have to pin me down because, for one thing, I don’t have a laptop. I don’t have an iPhone, and I refuse to carry them because they’re immensely hackable. Not that I have any big-bad secrets but sometimes I get defense briefings from people. I have UFO stuff that I don’t want people seeing that comes to me, which I prefer to come by fax or Fedex or mail.

But they call me and give me the questions and I write all my stuff. I write 99 percent of what you see and, otherwise, it’s just press releases. There’s some … people are mean on the Internet. It’s unbelievable. It really is the devil’s gateway. It’s the bathroom wall, in its worst way. And in its best way, it’s the greatest source we can have to promote freedom and compassion and also a general feeling of mass consciousness which we’re going to need to get through the next 10 years. We are going to all have to join our hearts, join our souls, touch the universal life-source, be more considerate of each other. Or it’s just not going to work.

Q: I think, in a way, that’s being changed a little bit. YouTube and now Facebook are allowing some of the best comments to rise to the top.

A: Well, a lot of these companies operate on something called, and I know you’ve heard this term, the humiliation algorithm. You know that term?

Q: No, actually.

A: The humiliation algorithm relates to how these search engines encourage bad, and negative reports, negative searches to come to the top above positive ones. You put in a name, you can see the worst about a person. Because it’s the most profitable, because human-kind likes to see disaster. But we’ve got to turn it around, and the Internet can do it and we can do it personally, but we need a mass-consciousness experience on this planet to arrest the negative energy that’s dragging us down climatologically, mentally, spiritually, financially.

Q: Or else the slime will rise up from the streets and Carpathians will walk the earth?

A: Did you see? We were onto it, the negative energy. And now, we’re going to really put it into ninth gear, in this third one. It’s going to be very, very exciting. I’ve been more encouraged than I ever have been. It sounds real now. We’ve got a sharp new writer on it, Ivan [Reitman] is on it, Harold [Ramis] is on it, I’m on it. And if I can put the catch-net on Billy [Murray] and bring him in, it will be wonderful, if he decides to do it. There will always be a hole for him.

Q: Right, because it seemed like he read the Eisenberg-Stupnitsky “Ghostbusters 3″ script.

A: Didn’t read it.

Q: He said he at least glanced it.

A: I don’t think he read it, because, you know what? If he’d read the second draft that I completely rewrote, he would be doing the movie. If he’d read that draft. The part I wrote for him.

Q: I hope that you release that draft some day, so the rest of the world can see.

A: Ah, no point. No point.

In the new Jackie Robinson biopic, “42,” out today, one thing is clear: Transforming the American pastime of baseball took nearly superhuman courage for him and his wife, Rachel.

In 1940, at the University of California-Los Angeles, she finished her education rather than drop out of college to marry the handsome, star varsity athlete she’d fallen in love with at first sight.

“Jack and I were engaged for five years,” she said. “And we had decided we would not get married until I graduated from college and he had a job. And the j-o-b was very important.”

Image credit: Bettmann/Corbis

Of course, Jackie Robinson’s job was really the start of the Civil Rights movement. Almost 66 years ago, he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier.

CLICK: The First African-Americans in Major Pro Sports

But from the moment he and Rachel Robinson arrived for spring training in the Jim Crow South, it was a test of grace under pressure for both of them.

Despite the prejudice, she said she loved going to the ballpark.

“Oh, I loved it,” she told ABC News’ David Wright. “You couldn’t keep me away!”

She said they had a rule though. On their way home from the ballpark, they would talk about the job and its enormous challenges. But at their front door in Brooklyn, N.Y. — he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers — they left all of that outside.

“Our marriage and our love for each other were so important to us that we were not going to let it get destroyed by the tensions of the world,” Rachel Robinson said. “When we entered the house, we didn’t have to act out that anger and we wanted our home to be a haven, a place where we could recover, where we could enjoy each other. … No baseball.”

She said that surviving the abuse — with dignity — was tough for the couple but she said she had faith things could change.

WATCH:  Harrison Ford on Filming Jackie Robinson Biopic

Forty years after her husband’s death, Rachel Robinson, 90, is not just the guardian of his memory, but she has also helped many others follow in his footsteps.

At a White House screening of the movie this week, first lady Michelle Obama said Rachel Robinson had paved the way for millions of Americans in the U.S.

“She’s a woman of strength, of courage, conviction,” Obama said.

A scholarship program was founded by Rachel Robinson over 40 years ago in his name for the next generation of young minority men and women.

“We have graduated 1,400 students. … We have almost 200 in school now and they’re in 96 universities,” she said. “We use a quote of Jack’s: that a life’s not important except in the impact it has on the lives of others.”

ABC News’ David Wright contributed to this article.

The actress who filed a $1 million lawsuit against the Internet movie database IMDb for revealing her real age lost her battle in court Thursday when a federal jury in Seattle rejected her claim.

READ MORE: Actress Sues IMDb, Amazon Over Revealing Her Age

Junie Hoang, 41, sued IMDb and Amazon.com for breach of contract in 2011, alleging that the company changed her information to reveal her true birthday, and thus her true age, and thereby damaged her acting career.

“There was a film that I lost,” Hoang told ABC News.  “A friend of mine got me into the film through my headshot and resume but then when they went to my IMDb profile and saw that I was really that age, they went back and said, ‘Sorry, you’re too old.’”

The judge dismissed IMDb’s parent company, Amazon.com, as a defendant, but Hoang’s case against IMDb was brought to trial.

IMDb is a searchable database that posts photos and lists the acting credits of virtually every actor, director and producer working in Hollywood. Hoang decided to subscribe to an “industry insider” version of the database called IMDbPro. Shortly after she signed up and typed in a credit card number to pay for the monthly subscriber fee, she noticed that her real age was posted and visible for the public — and presumably any casting agent or director —  to see.

In court documents Hoang, who initially filed the lawsuit anonymously as “Jane Doe,” said she believed that both her age and her hard-to-pronounce Asian name were drawbacks in Hollywood where “youth is king.” The lawsuit said that “if one is perceived to be over-the-hill i.e. approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up and coming actress, such as the Plaintiff, to get work…”

IMDb used the information from her IMDbPro subscription, which included her credit card and billing information, real name, to conduct a public records search, where they found her real age. Hoang asked IMDbPro to remove the information and they refused.

Calling the practice “unfair, immoral and unscrupulous,” Hoang’s Seattle-based lawyers asked for $1 million in punitive damages, which the jury turned down.

“Everyone understands the importance of IMDb and everybody understands how important age is,” Hoang said after the verdict.  “It’s such a competitive business and why put another factor for someone to deny you from getting work.”

Lawyers for IMDb , who declined to comment to ABC News, argued in court that the company has a First Amendment right to publish accurate information and that Hoang could not prove she had lost any money or acting roles because of her age being revealed, according to the Associated Press.

Hoang says she plans to continue her legal fight against IMDb, as well as the broader issue of ageism in Hollywood.

“I want to keep up the fight for everyone because I know that the majority of people in the business feel the way I do,” she said.

Hoang also plans to continue acting.

The actress, who has starred in the films “Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver” and “Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors,” will next be seen in “Exotic Dancers of Houston” and “Pretty Perfect, “according to IMDb.

ABC News’ Anne-Marie Dorning and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Image credit: Courtesy Warner Bros

The new movie “42,” in theaters Friday, tells the story of baseball great Jackie Robinson, who changed the sport forever when he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947.

While Robinson’s entry into the league was unprecedented, it was far from easy, and arguably no team was harder on the new first baseman than the Philadelphia Phillies. Manager Ben Chapman, played by Alan Tudyk in the movie, was notorious for ordering his pitches to “bean” the player at bat and yelling racist remarks at him on the field.

“There’s a lot of racism in the movie and I’m the biggest racist of them all,” Tudyk told ABCNews.com. “He was the one who would stand in front of everybody and put his money where his mouth was.”

Tudyk, known for his comedic role on ABC’s “Suburgatory,” took on the villainous part without hesitation, he said, but filming scenes in which he hurls insults at Robinson was difficult.

“It ended up being hours and hours of screaming that stuff. It was awful,” Tudyk said. “It would put me in the worst mood. You would have to be in this palace of anger and hate, and just living there.”

Tudyk worked opposite Chadwick Boseman, who stars as Robinson in the biopic, and said the actor chose not to interact with him on set in order to stay in character.

“In the beginning when I first met [Boseman], he said, ‘I’m not going to talk to you,’” Tudyk recalled. “I respected his process and thought, OK, that’s fine. I think that will probably work to my advantage as well if I don’t like you, and we didn’t have a chance to become friends.”

WATCH:  Harrison Ford on Filming Jackie Robinson Biopic

After shooting a critical scene together in which Chapman’s racist remarks put Robinson’s willpower to the test, Tudyk said the two had a bonding moment.

“He came up afterwards and he apologized for distancing himself at me. He said he respected what I did, and then we went out to dinner and hung out more after that,” Tudyk recalled.

Tudyk said he was “blown away” seeing Boseman’s final performance on screen.

“Jackie Robinson is a hero and the story of his life … taught me,” Tudyk said. “People have been amazed at how recent this history is. It’s amazing at just how unfair it was and how unfair things were. It’s not that they are perfect now, but we’ve come so far.”

Elizabeth Vargas made iconic film star Harrison Ford blush during a live interview on “Good Morning America” today.

“I have a confession to make,” Vargas admitted to Ford during his interview to promote the new film “42: The True Story of an American Legend,” in which he plays Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey. “You were my very first movie crush.”

“Oh?” Ford said after clearly being caught off guard.

“In the movie ‘Witness,’ in that scene where you were dancing with Kelly McGillis to that Sam Cooke song up in the barn,” Vargas said of the 1985 thriller. “There was an article that came out a couple of years ago when people were asked to name their sexiest scene in a movie, and I thought that was my pick.”

Ford, 70,  mustered a smile and said, “Well, thank you very much.”

“Am I making you embarrassed?” Vargas asked.

“A little bit,” he humbly replied.

“Well, you’re great in that, and you’re great in this movie,” Vargas said of Ford’s legendary role playing Branch Rickey, the man who signed Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers  in 1947, officially breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier.

Vargas also addressed a few upcoming roles in which she hopes to see Ford.

“We hope we’re going to see you very soon in ‘Star Wars.’ Will you be great in that as well?” Vargas asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be average,” Ford joked.

The film “42″ will be in theaters Friday.

                                                             (Image Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Days after news broke that she’s expecting a child with fiancé Olivier Martinez, Halle Berry calls her pregnancy “the biggest surprise of my life.”

In an interview posted today on CNN.com, Berry, showing off a tiny baby bump, said, “This has been the biggest surprise of my life, to tell you the truth. Thought I was kind of past the point where this could be a reality for me. So it’s been a big surprise and the most wonderful.”

The 46-year-old actress added, “I feel fantastic.”

Berry also has a daughter, Nahla, 5, with a former boyfriend, model Gabriel Aubry.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Baby Boom

The actress said last year that her daughter, Nahla, had been hoping for a younger sibling, and the 4-year-old is finally getting her wish.

“[Nahla] says, ‘God, please bring me a bunk bed and a baby sister,’” she said last fall. “I say, ‘I can do one of those things, I know for sure. The other one, we’ve got to keep praying on.’”

TMZ reported that Berry and Martinez, 47, are expecting a baby boy, but she told CNN she did not know what she was having.

Berry recently teamed up with designer Michael Kors to fight hunger through the United Nations World Food Programme.

“Especially now, being a pregnant woman and already having a child … it’s so important what happens to the baby while they’re in utero. And the first 1,000 days is fundamental,” Berry told CNN.

Paul Beaty/AP Photo

Family, friends and fans gathered this morning at the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago for the funeral of famed movie critic Roger Ebert.

A choir singing, “God has smiled on me, he has set me free,” accompanied the solemn procession up the main aisle. The Chicago Tribune reported that Ebert’s wife, Chaz, her face covered by a black veil, walked behind the coffin toward the altar, while dozens of her husband’s relatives and close friends followed behind.

Chaz was expected to speak at the funeral as well as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

PHOTOS: Roger Ebert Through the Years

Ebert died April 4, following a 10-year battle with cancer and just a day after announcing on his blog that he was taking a “leave of presence” and “reviewing only the movies I want to review” after 46 years as a film critic.

Fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie reviewer thronged the church — more than 70 had gathered before the doors opened — in hopes of getting a seat in the back pews available to the public. The Tribune said Ebert’s closest friends and relatives were given yellow wrist bands and were seated together in the front.

Many waited in lines in the lobby of Holy Name to sign a memorial book.

FULL COVERAGE: Roger Ebert

The public will have another opportunity to pay their respects. On Thursday, a memorial will be held at the Chicago Theater, where Ebert attended years of film screenings and a star with his name is embedded in the sidewalk beneath the grand marquee.

The evening will include music from Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago, moments from Ebert’s famed TV show “At the Movies” and personal tributes from his wife of 22 years and granddaughter Raven.

The memorial is expected to draw some famous faces from Hollywood. The public is being asked to reserve seats in advance.

Sony-TriStar Pictures/AP Photo

For many, it doesn’t get better than “The Evil Dead.” The 1981 original and its two sequels are the perfect blend of blood-drenched, graphic horror and B-grade camp, giving birth to one of the most abused horror movie clichés of all time: naïve college or high school kids, alone in a cabin or other secluded area, making predictably dumb decisions that will only make their situation worse.

This new “Evil Dead” remake (which drops the definite article from the title) is produced by original “The Evil Dead” director Sam Raimi and his trilogy star, Bruce Campbell. Make no mistake, these two are extremely protective about their property, have a great relationship with the franchise’s many fans and, I fully believe, wanted to deliver the best possible “Evil Dead” remake they could. In order to do that, they put the franchise in the hands of director Fede Alvarez, which was exactly the right thing to do.

This time around, we find five friends gathered at a remote country cabin to help one of them, Mia (Jane Levy), kick her drug habit. Joining Mia is her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez); his girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore); Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), who’s angry at David for leaving town and apparently forgetting about his friends; and Olivia (Jessica Lucas), a nurse who, supposedly, will be able to administer any sort of drug should Mia need it.

Turns out, the cabin sits above a cellar once used to exorcise a demon from a young woman who was burned at the stake while surrounded by dozens of dead cats hanging from the ceiling and cast of characters who looked like they were on a break from the set of “American Horror Story.”

Thanks to the odor emanating from the basement, the friends discover the creepy subterranean dwelling, where they also find the demonic book used to dispatch of the possessed girl. Clearly, Eric hadn’t seen many horror movies, because the barbed wire wrapped around the book certainly should’ve raised a red flag. And if that wasn’t a clear enough signal to stay away, the Frankenstein-like stitching of the book cover — suggesting that the book isn’t leather-bound but perhaps human skin-bound — should’ve been another dead giveaway. But NOOOO, Eric just had to know what was in that book, and when he got it open, he just had to read the various Latin phrases inscribed below the demonic pictures covered with messages written in blood.

So far, this sticks close enough to the original movie, when the recorded messages unleashed hell, literally. Soon enough, Mia, in the throes of drug withdrawal, becomes possessed.

Putting Jane Levy (TV’s “Suburgatory”) in the role of Mia may very well be the best bit of horror movie casting since Naomi Watts in “The Ring.” This is a breakout performance for her. Her energy — whether it’s nervous, frenetic, scared — is infectious. Levy pulls you into this disgustingly gory, graphic tale and never lets you go, making you feel as though you’re experiencing everything she is. Alvarez certainly deserves credit for utilizing his young star’s prodigious talents.

While not as funny as the original “The Evil Dead,” and none of the characters are quite as memorable or iconic as Bruce Campbell’s wisecracking Ash, there’s plenty of humor in this remake, most of which can’t be repeated here. Campbell promised fans a blood bath and the team that he and Raimi assembled delivers.

Except it’s less a blood bath and more like a blood monsoon. But, if you’re paying money to see “Evil Dead,” you know what you’re getting yourself into, and you’re not going to be disappointed. While there’s room for improvement, “Evil Dead” is still a cathartic, nauseating (in a good way) crowd pleaser you’ll want to see more than once.

Three-and-a-half out of five stars.

Elle UK

Looks like Kate Hudson has put her hard-partying days behind her.

The 33-year-old actress and mother of two tells Elle’s UK edition, “I’m a lot less a rock chick and a lot more about being a good mother, a good partner.

“I’m part of a family,” the “Something Borrowed” star told the magazine, which hits newsstands today. “That’s how we were brought up, how I bring my kids up. They are very blessed to live how they do but they are aware of that.”

Hudson opened up to the magazine about her relationship with rocker Matthew Bellamy, with whom she has son Bingham, nearly two.

“It was all very old-fashioned and proper and we went on lovely dates,” the actress said of meeting Bellamy, the frontman of the British band Muse, at the Coachella music festival in 2010. “And two months later I was pregnant.”

“[I was shocked], but I also thought: ‘This is going to be interesting,’” she said.

See Other Stars Who’ve Had Babies Out of Wedlock

“I knew it would take a strong man to deal with it. You know that with a relationship, things can go either way when you have a child,” said Hudson, who is also mother to nine-year-old Ryder from her previous marriage to Black Crowes rocker Chris Robinson.

“When you get pregnant everything changes; you, your body. Everything becomes a big decision. But he was there and that was that. Now it’s three wonderful years later. Things happen for a reason.”

As for when she and Bellamy will tie the knot, Hudson said, “We will get married. I do think it’s important but we have no plans. [Ryder] wants a party. For me it’s not the legal part that is important, it’s what it means to the family.”

That’s because Hudson is the daughter of actress Goldie Hawn and her ex-husband Bill Hudson, but was raised by her mother and Hawn’s partner of 30 years, actor Kurt Russell.

“When I was a kid, my brothers and sisters and I wanted my parents to get married. We ended up with something far more powerful,” Hudson told Elle, according to People magazine. “We were all together at home, Dad gave Mum a ring and said some beautiful words. It was their own version of the ceremony and I remember it so well. It was like it was about us. The family was the glue.”

                                            (facebook.com/thehostmovie)

In “The Host,” “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer turns her attention from vampires to space aliens.  In her saccharine yet profitable imagination, a hostile alien takeover of Earth involves beings that resemble a clump of ethereal-looking spermatozoa, known simply as souls. These souls take over worlds by coexisting with the inhabitants — in our case, by using human bodies as their hosts, essentially eradicating the person that existed before the alien soul was surgically implanted.

The only difference in appearance between a human and a soul inhabiting a human body is the color of the eyes. Once a soul enters a human body, the eyes turn the most remarkable shade of blue.

The big loser here is humanity. The big winner? Planet Earth, baby! Since the alien souls took over, Earth has become a lovely place to live: The environment is pristine and everybody is supernice to one another. You don’t even need to buy anything. Everything is free! You can walk into a store the size of an Ikea, which is called — wait for it — “store,” pick out whatever you want and just walk right out.

Of course, with every alien invasion there’s going to be some kind of resistance.  Even with an alien invasion as poorly written, sanitized and never fully realized as this one.  But more on that in a moment.

Enter Saoirse Ronan’s Melanie, who’s doing her best to protect her little brother, Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and her boyfriend, Jared (Max Irons).  At one point, Melanie hurls herself out a window, preferring suicide to surrendering her body to those peaceful, angelic, ruthless souls.  Even so, although almost every bone in her body is broken, Melanie survives and her body becomes home for an alien type named Wanderer, who has fallen under the influence of another alien named Seeker, played by Diane Kruger. If you haven’t already guessed, Seeker seeks stuff, namely humans who haven’t already been co-opted by her race.

Seeker wants Wanderer to delve into Melanie’s memories to figure out where the rest of the resistance is hiding.  However, the alien souls have underestimated the human race: even though the aliens may inhabit a human body, some of those bodies retain their original, human soul which, in Melanie’s case, also speaks in a terribly cheesy voice-over.  Melanie convinces Wanderer to rebel against Seeker and help her find her Uncle Jeb (William Hurt), her boyfriend and her little brother.

If “The Host” had been written by Joe Smith of Pensacola, Fla., rather than by Stephenie Meyer, the book never would have been adapted into a screenplay, let alone made into a big-budget feature.  Somebody might want to send a memo to screenwriter/director Andrew Niccol and let him know that even films that are only halfway decent need to have something at stake. Where were the stakes here?  I know where they were supposed to be, but I was too busy alternately trying to stay awake or endure the annoying voice-over to care.  At the very least, Hurt, Ronan and Kruger deserve better than this.

One-and-a-half out of five stars.