Go see this documentary at the New Orleans Film Festival.
Category Archives: Film
Today’s Heathen Pronouncement
You have wasted your weekend until and unless you have watched Fight For Your RIght Revisited. Now. Make time. Starring Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, Seth Rogan, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and John C. Reilly as the Beasties, and hilarious cameos a-plenty.
About 30 minutes.
Oh, deer.
Dear Hunger Games Partisans
Hate Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss? Ursula Le Guin had it worse back when the Sci Fi channel literally whitewashed her entire Earthsea cast.
Sadly, it isn’t possible for BOTH films to win the Oscar
Were you, gentle Heathen, aware of the following upcoming films?
- Bonne and Clyde vs. Dracula, which we presume carries sufficient information in its title;
and
- Rubber, about a homicidal, telekinetic tire — created, one assumes, as the result of a drunken and reductive bet about the relative merits and silliness of certain early-80s Stephen King novels.
We await Blu-Ray editions, whereupon we’ll host screenings.
Getting Angry, Baby?
Liz Taylor shuffled off this mortal coil today. Here’s a little reminder of her at the height of her power, with her long-term collaborator Mr Burton:
In a bit of odd synchronicity, Mrs Heathen’s birthday delight to me this year is two tickets to see Steppenwolf’s production of this play at the Albee festival in DC.
Attention People Who Buy Me Birthday Presents
The extended edition of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is available for pre-order at Amazon.
You wear too much eye makeup.
Your Monday morning treat
Sigourney Weaver went on Graham Norton, and the discussion wandered to Alien and that horrific and iconic scene wherein John Hurt meets his grisly end. They speak briefly of the effects involved — it came out i 1979, so it’s all puppets and angles with no computer help — and Norton comments that they’ve set up a side stage for a re-enactment.
Madcap hilarity does, of course, ensue:
When late night tv was more interesting
Granted, nothing else was on in 1978, but have you ever seen something quite so delightfully odd on Leno?
Via the equally awesome vintage-pic blog ThisIsNotPorn.
The next great hit in British gangster films is here
ZOMG HAWESOME.
This may be the best action scene in the history of cinema, from the Indian film Enthiran:
“I am now, George. I always have been.”
Eric Stoltz and Penelope Ann Miller in Our Town, ca. 1989, shot at Lincoln Center from a production that won a Drama Desk award for Best Revival.
You always thought this show as corny. Watch this now, and tell me that again.
(Hat tip to @LolaJRS over on the Twitters.)
You should go watch this
There are two parts so far. It’s really, really well done.
Nobody Knows Who You Are
Ok, true believers, check out this cache of Electric Company Spider-Man skits, some of which feature Morgan Freeman.
Watch a few. I didn’t remember them being quite this trippy.
I don’t care if they win. They’re my Oscar picks.
I’m very, very pleased to see Winter’s Bone get the Oscar noms it deserves, for Picture as well as Actress (for teen lead Jennifer Lawrence, soon to be seen as Mystique in the upcoming X-Men prequel) and Supporting Actor for Heathen-fave John Hawkes (of “Deadwood” fame).
Seriously, see this film.
Joe Mathelete FTW
The Most Perplexingly Meta Acting Career in Hollywood — or, in other words, Sheeeeeeiiiiit.
Dept. of Excellent Short Action Films
You Have Three Minutes. N.B. that Gleeks may recognize the Asian lead.
Hey, Mrs Heathen, your boyfriend’s in another supernatural action movie
As someone said yesterday, “Paul Bettany sure likes paychecks.” Looks terrible. And oddly delightful. As IO9 notes, it can’t be worse than Legion.
Having just seen the Coen True Grit, I Have This To Say About the 1969 Original
Wayne is a pansy and Glenn Cambell is an embarrassment to American film. Coen Uber Alles.
Bridges gives a career performance, and if Hailee Steinfeld isn’t nominated it’ll be a crime. Damon is almost unrecognizable, which is a serious compliment for Mr Bourne.
Our New Favorite Obsessive Blog
The Suits of James Bond. Face it: with the exception of the early Moore films, Britain’s favorite secret agent has been a sartorial model for the ages, and the resurgence of trim suits in the wake of Mad Men has made pretty much every bit of kit worn by Connery’s version of the superspy as current in 2010 as it was in the 60s.
Me, I’d love to have that Goldfinger suit. To start. To say nothing of the fabulous Brioni suits the Brosnan-era Bond favored.
In which Gibson predicts reality. Again.
JWZ has a great summary of the iamamiwhoiam art project. Check it out:
At the beginning of the year, these weird, short, high-production-value videos began appearing on Youtube with no explanation of what they were or who made them, straight out of Pattern Recognition. They featured a heavily distorted woman licking trees and doing other bizarre things in the woods with music that sounded like The Knife or Fever Ray. Cult following ensued. The videos got longer, revealing more of the singer and the songs.
Then in November they posted a short video saying, “We need one volunteer, call this number”!
The next six videos posted show their volunteer getting on a plane to Sweden, arriving at a hotel, and being silently fucked with by faceless weirdos, eventually getting a supporting role in their “live concert”.
He concludes:
This project is absolutely the best, weirdest thing that the internets have brought us in years.
I agree. He’s got a playlist up of the videos; if you have a bit of time, check it out.
That’s just wrong
Wrong, but also brilliantly done.
Think of it as a Coen/Tarantino take on the end of Yogi Bear — and by “end,” I mean the part where Booboo kills him.
(Widely linked, but it was MAD who made me finally look.)
Why was I not informed?
I was completely unaware that the small films Scotland, PA (2001, starring Maura Tierney) and Men of Respect (1990, with John Turturro!) were both actually adaptations of Macbeth. Must see both.
Must SEE.
A Woman, A Gun, and A Noodle Shop is Chinese director Zhang (“Hero”, “House of Flying Daggers”) Yimou’s remake of Blood Simple.
I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.
Leslie Nielsen, dead at 84.
And now, for Mrs Heathen:
30 Awesome Disaster Movie Money Shots, including the one from Knowing that basically closes the book on disaster movie casualty inflation.
And now it’s time for TEASE THE ENGLISH
Hey, don’t you want to watch the Harry Potter cast try to affect an American accent?
Oh, Hollywood. Do you ever STOP sucking?
They’re really remaking Buffy without Joss.
IO9 has his reaction, which is characteristically funny and classy while also bringing the snark.
WB’s release says some ridiculous things, like
“There is an active fan base eagerly awaiting this character’s return to the big screen. We’re thrilled to team up with Doug and Roy on a re-imagining of Buffy and the world she inhabits. Details of the film are being kept under wraps, but I can say while this is not your high school Buffy, she’ll be just as witty, tough, and sexy as we all remember her to be.”
Uh, no. What made her witty and fun was Whedon and his team, not the simple idea of a teen vampire hunter. Compare and contrast the original film (which Whedon wrote, but was not otherwise involved in) and the hit TV show (which was Whedon’s through and through); it’s obvious what made the television version a hit and the movie a “cult fave” at best, and it’s equally obvious that there’s no chance a Whedon-free reboot will be anywhere nearly as charming. It’s a transparent cash-in move that could very well fall flat on its face, given how loyal the Buffy fan base is to Whedon.
Wow! Something funny on College Humor!
Io9 points us to a pretty funny online short theorizing what “The Social Network” might’ve been like had it been directed by, say, Wes Anderson, or Michael Bay, or Guillermo del Toro.
High marks for “brilliance” and “creepiness”
This Tumblr is made entirely of iconic film scenes rendered as animated GIFs.
The stuff dreams are made of
Julie Taymor’s done a film of the Tempest, with Helen Mirren as Prospero.
George Lucas Still Hates You
Apparently, a 3D re-release of the original trilogy is in the works. Christ.
Dept. of Amazing Television
And when I saw “amazing,” I mean “holy crap, it’s amazing something that unremittingly shitty can exist.”
After giving up on the Texans, I started browing the Tivo guide. On Syfy, we have the following on offer:
- 2:00 PM – Cyclops
- “A corrupt emperor forces a soldier to fight a single-eyed giant in a gladiatorial arena.” Starring Eric Roberts, of course.
- 4:00 PM – Yeti
- “A legendary beast terrorizes members of a college football team after their plane crashes in the snowy Himalayas.” Really? We can’t get anyone to play Hawaii because they’re too far away, and somehow you’ve got a college football team in goddamn *Tibet*? I mean, I’m all about suspension of disbelief — I love Doctor Who, for crying out loud — but this is a bridge too far.
- 6:00 PM – Ogre
- “Young hikers travel to a small village where an ogre requires an annual human sacrifice.” Obligatory washed-up star: John “Was He Bo Or Luke?” Schneider. Rumors of Mel Gibson in the eponymous role are sadly just that.
- 8:00 PM – Madrake
- “Adventurers on a jungle expedition encounter a half-plant, half-animal creature out for blood.” At least this time the victims knew what they were getting into, unless they were the sorts of yuppie “adventurers” who pay through the nose to bag Tibetan peaks by getting short-roped to a sherpa. As for half-plant, half-animal creatures, the less said of Christine O’Donnell, the better. Perhaps the Mandrake’s murderous ire was aroused by too much adventurer onanism?
- 10:00 PM – Abominable
- “A disabled man tries to warn others about a legendary beast roaming the California mountains.” Sigh. At this point, we’re safe to assume they’re not even trying.
Maybe your job isn’t so bad
I mean, it’s not like you’re climbing 1700 feet in the air without safety gear, right? They do clip in to rest and when they get to the top, but the climb is exposed. Fun fact: If they fell from the top of the 1700-foot tower, they’d fall for more than 10 seconds before hitting the ground.
(Better fullscreen. Rob’s the one that finally got me to watch.)
Things that shouldn’t be true, but are
It’s totally possible for the freakin’ Coens to make a movie with Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, and freakin’ George Clooney, and still have it be an unwatchable mess.
Honestly, this brand of farce — in which terrible things happen to lots of miserable people, and which the Coens clearly love — doesn’t need to be done again after Fargo. And the brothers do much strong work when they undertake more meaty fare, such as their previous high point and the recent adaptation of No Country for Old Men, both of which remind us more of their neo noir debut than broad, grotesque messes like Burn After Reading and Intolerable Cruelty. I have no fear about their upcoming project, but I really hope they stop beating this particular farcical horse in the future.
I am: Cautiously Optimistic
Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman may be bringing Stephen King’s Dark Tower to TV and film in an unprecedented cross-medium project.
Given the breadth of the story, an approach like this is really the only way it could be done without killing it, and long-form King has worked before — but The Stand is a skinny pulp novel compared to the Dark Tower.
This seems like sage advice.
Don’t make old-timey Omar kill your ass.
(Still of the inimitable Michael K. Williams from the upcoming Boardwalk Empire.)
Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know
The delightful 1999 film The Iron Giant was actually an adaptation of The Iron Man, an illustrated novel published by the poet Ted Hughes in 1968, and previously reworked as a rock opera by Pete Townshend in 1989.
Hughes, of course, is perhaps more famous for being Sylvia Plath’s widower; it’s said that The Iron Man was partially written for his children in the wake of her 1963 suicide.
I can’t tell if this is awful or awesome
Age of the Dragons is, I shit you not, a medieval, landlocked dragon-hunting adaptation of “Moby Dick” starring Danny Glover.
Star Wars Uncut is complete!
The fan-sourced compilation of very short Vimeo clips can be viewed here. Don’t skip the “top 50 scenes.”
In another world, all these films were awesome
IO9 gives us alternate universe sci-fi film posters, and they are BRILLIANT.
Today’s Good News, Bad News Situation
They’re making H. P. Lovecraft‘s “At The Mountains of Madness” into a film.
Good news: Guillermo del Toro is directing, which sounds like a great fit.
Bad news: James Cameron will produce, which I fear will drastically compromise the whole thing into a rote, by the numbers piece of crap on which they nevertheless spend a fortune.
I’m posting this at the end of the workday
This entry into 5-Second Films is just the first of many you’ll watch. After all, at only 5 seconds each, you can afford to watch several…
I’m sort of shocked I didn’t see it myself
The Oatmeal points out that Aliens and Avatar are the same movie.
Ladies and Gentleheathen…
…I give you Sharktopus. God save Roger Corman.
Undercover Karaoke
Funny Or Die isn’t always funny, but that’s kind of clear in the name, right? Anyway, this is one of those times. Precis: What would happen if a famous singer put on a disguise and sand their own songs at karaoke? Jewel finds out. It sounds hokey, but it’s sort of delightful.
“That’ll be Colonel K”
MeFi noticed Danger Mouse not long ago; at happens, there are many episodes on YouTube.
The Return of Mustafah
There’s another Old Spice commercial. It, too, is one continuous take essentially devoid of CGI trickery.
As good a test as any, we reckon
The new mayor of Reykjavik is building a coaltion to govern, but refused to include anyone who has not seen all five seasons of the Wire.