Rampart, Owen Moverman’s tough urban drama featuring Woody Harrelson as a somewhat less than principled LA police officer, goes into limited release tomorrow (following a brief Oscar-qualification run in December), and while the movie itself is pretty good, we must take some exception to its bold poster and trailer tag line: “The most corrupt cop you’ve ever seen on screen.” Well, that is a might tall claim. After the jump, we’ll run down ten previous movie cops who could give Harrelson’s Dave Brown a run for his money.
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Evolving from a small, experimental community into a widely used network with some of the best content on the web, Tumblr has quickly proven its worth. For the film lover, there is a vast array of high quality content ranging from behind the scenes thoughts on the moviemaking process, to cinematic art and gorgeous film stills, and creatively curated takes on favorite celluloid moments. We’ve compiled a list of a few essential Tumblrs that cineastes should thoroughly enjoy. See what insightful, inspiring, and fun blogs we’ve shared after the jump, and tell us about your favorite Tumblrs below.
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Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington teams with one-time Green Lantern Ryan Reynolds in this week’s Safe House, the latest of Washington’s midrange action movies. His recent output has been so heavy on popcorn flicks like Unstoppable and The Book of Eli that it’s easy to forget his wide range and occasional risky projects, so we decided to make Mr. Washington the subject of a video essay, spotlighting some of his more interesting (and less widely-acclaimed) films and performances. Watch it after the jump.
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Barbed wit, saucy humor, mindf*ckery galore, and ravishing costuming and production design — we can only be talking about one film: Dangerous Liaisons. James Acheson’s elegantly crafted ensembles won the Best Costume Oscar and were a perfect complement to the film’s seductive games and drawing-room antics.
The 1988 movie hits Blu-ray today, and considering everyone’s revived obsession with all things lavishly costumed — Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, and Downton Abbey to name a few — the timing couldn’t be more perfect. We wanted to focus our lens on the movie world, and highlight other dramas that wrap us up in their elaborate attire and swirling emotions. Head past the break to check out our picks for some of the best costume dramas on film, and share yours below.
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Folded in among today’s DVD releases, presumably overlooked amid your Twilight sequels and Harold and Kumar 3D yuletides and “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays!” screeds, is one of 2011′s best films: The Sunset Limited, written by Cormac McCarthy, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, starring Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Wait, you might be thinking. (You might be!) What a fine pedigree! What an excellent cast! I would have gone to see that! Did it not play at my local art house or multiplex? No, hypothetical reader, it did not. It was made for HBO, and since Sunset Limited, based on McCarthy’s play, is primarily a two-handed conversation piece about race, class, mortality, and despair, it’s probably not surprising that it found a home on a pay cable network rather than at a Hollywood studio. But this is nothing new; dialogue and intellect-driven efforts like this migrated to television long ago, as studios lost interest in telling small stories.
Since they started airing in the mid-1960s, TV movies have taken risks — either on subject matter or on rising young talent. The results weren’t always commendable; there’s a reason that the phrase “made-for-TV movie” calls up images of Tori Spelling cowering on Lifetime, or broadcast networks airing simultaneous dramatizations of the lurid Amy Fisher story. But between the networks and cable, we’ve seen an assortment of genuinely beguiling television movies; we’ve gathered ten of our favorites after the jump, with plenty of room for yours in the comments. (And, just to keep it simple, we’ve steered clear of miniseries, documentaries, and films like The Believer that were intended for theatrical release but premiered on television instead).
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Chris Marker’s haunting, fractured memory tale La Jetée is getting a Criterion Blu-ray release tomorrow (along with experimental essay Sans Soleil). Dubbed “one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made … ” Marker’s 1962 black and white film is composed almost entirely of still photographs, using voice-over narration to tell the 28 minute-long tale about a man held prisoner after World War III who traverses time, sees the future, and uncovers the secrets of his past.
The film’s themes are palpable in modern science fiction, where the exploration of time travel as an agent of self-discovery, use of looped narrative and multiperiod storytelling, experimental filmmaking, dystopian themes, and more have been carried into the present. Just look at Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, which is directly inspired by Marker’s film.
With that in mind, we wanted to celebrate a few other influential sci-fi movies that have made their mark on filmmakers and cinemagoers throughout history. Check out our picks below, and share yours in the comments section.
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We know that many of you have spent the entire day yawning at your desk, struggling to keep your heavy eyes open and bravely refusing to give in to your hangover. This is the problem with having the Super Bowl on a school er, work night. Anyway, that’s why we want to apologize ahead of time for showing you this short HD film by Simon Christen, a San Francisco-based photographer who spent a year shooting time-lapse footage of the waves of fog that envelop the city each night. It’s basically a soothing visual lullaby, and the fact that it’s set to one of Nick Cave’s lush instrumentals from The Assassination of Jesse James soundtrack is just icing on the cake. Sweet dreams everyone!
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Screenwriter Max Landis, son of famous director John Landis, had his first film, Chronicle, hit theaters yesterday. To coincide with that momentous event, Landis also chose that day to release his much-anticipated short film entitled The Death and Return of Superman (a mildly-clever marketing move, we admit). Described as a “somewhat-mostly-accurate educational parody film,” with nods to the “drunk history” short film trend, the film features Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore, Simon Pegg, Ron Howard, Chris Hardwick and more, and is an irreverent, sometimes hilarious, sometimes obnoxious look at DC Comics’ decision to kill and then resurrect Superman in 1992. Click through to watch the video, and let us know if it makes you more or less likely to go see Chronicle in the comments.
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In 1943, at Alfred Hitchcock’s request, John Steinbeck wrote a novella expressly to serve as the basis for Hitchcock’s new film, Lifeboat. As with any adaptation, Hitchcock and his screenwriters adapted the text to serve his purposes, and in 1944, Steinbeck watched the finished film — but was completely mortified and offended by what he saw. In his estimation, and in the letter he subsequently wrote to the studio, which we first saw over at Letters of Note, Hitchcock had turned his well-crafted black character into a parodic “stock comedy Negro” and did not want these “strange, sly obliquities” to be revealed to the public under his name. Click through to read, and — especially if you’ve seen the film — let us know what you think in the comments!
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If you’re like us, then you’ve probably been curious if and how Honda managed to get the rights to use one of pop culture’s most beloved characters in its much-discussed (including by us!) Super Bowl ad. As Brooks Barnes at Media Decoder points out, while the plot of the spot closely mirrors that of the 1986 comedy, and even includes a few of Ferris Bueller’s signature lines, it “seems intended as a parody, which would seemingly allow Honda to avoid paying a usage fee to Paramount.”
Oddly enough both RPA, Honda’s ad agency, and Paramount are refusing to comment on the matter, but according to an anonymous studio executive, the company did in fact license the concept to the carmaker. Which leaves us with even more questions! How much do you think Ferris Bueller was worth? Do you think that this means there’s a possibility that we’ll be seeing a followup? If so, do you think there’s any chance that the guy who played Cameron Frye is available? We always found him so much more relatable. [via Pop Culture Brain]
