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Annette Bening

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorwire’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, we’ve got Michelle Williams, Colin Firth, Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Olsen, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Grace Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Silverman, and Geoffrey Rush, plus Oscar winners, two terrific documentaries, a cult TV fave, and fine films from Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Film

10 Memorable Cinematic Alter Egos

By Jason Bailey on

This week Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary opens across the country. Based on an early novel by the good doctor of gonzo journalism, the role of Thompson’s stand-in, journalist “Paul Kemp,” is being played by Johnny Depp — who has, with this film, pretty much planted is flag for good on the island of “cinematic portrayals of Hunter S. Thompson.” After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at Depp’s ongoing onscreen personification of the late Thompson, and nine more actors who became the cinematic avatars for distinctive writers and filmmakers. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Caroline Stanley on

Today at Flavorpill, we discovered that blob jumping was a thing that you can set a world record in. We were glad that we in no way resemble Harry Potter, because it sounds like an incredibly annoying burden. We found it kind of strange that Annette Bening will be… Read More

Film

The Biggest Oscar Upsets of the Past 20 Years

By Lorenzo Ragionieri on

At the time of this writing, Natalie Portman’s odds of winning the Academy Award for Best Actress — for her portrayal of a certifiable prima in Black Swan — are hovering somewhere between 1/11 and 1/12. In other words, Portman is so likely to win that to pry a dollar from a bookie on such an outcome, you’ll have to lay down twelve times that amount. If Annette Bening, the 13/2 favorite to upset Natalie Portman, wins Best Actress, the film will go on to double or triple its modest $20M earnings to date, and J. Todd Harris and Focus Features stand to make an unholy sum. Translation: When it comes to Oscar upsets, the stakes are incredibly high.

With that in mind, after the jump, our list of the greatest upsets of the past 20 years. Leave comment on which wins you feel were actually deserved. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Caroline Stanley on

Today at Flavorpill, we wanted to win our own Parked Domain Girl oil painting. We enjoyed a few highlights from The Nancy Drew Cookbook, including but not limited to “Tolling Bell Tuna Rolls” and “Bungalow Mystery Salad.” We wished that we’d been at Madison Square Garden last night to catch … Read More

Film

Rate-a-Trailer: Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole

By Caroline Stanley on

There was a time when we really liked Nicole Kidman. And the trailer for Rabbit Hole, a new film from John Cameron Mitchell (he of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame) based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-winning play about a couple dealing with the loss of their young son, reminds us of why. She’s fantastic at playing tragic female characters who refuse to give in to their circumstances (think Ada Monroe in Cold Mountain, Grace Stewart in The Others, or even Virginia Woolf in The Hours… you know, up until she drowns herself). Won over by the critical praise that the film received when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Lionsgate immediately snatched it up and slapped on an Oscar season release date. What do you think? Could Annette Bening (who seemed like a shoe-in for Best Actress thanks to her performance in The Kids Are All Right) have a real challenger on her hands? … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. There’s something weird happening on Twitter this morning that will cause you to auto-retweet the problem-causing code anytime you mouse over the page. We recommend that you use mobile.twitter.com until it’s fixed. [via Boing Boing]
2. In case you missed it, Pavement played “Gold Soundz” on last night’s episode… Read More

Film

Why The Kids Are All Right Rises Above the Controversy

By Judy Berman on

There is a moment, well into The Kids Are All Right‘s gripping story of a lesbian couple and their two teenage children who go behind their moms’ backs to find their sperm donor father, that will certainly piss off some viewers. We won’t spoil it for you here, but Irin Carmon at Jezebel (who, for the record, doesn’t seem to have seen the film yet) has a post explaining why gays might be offended. Since we’ve actually seen the movie and let it process for a while, despite our own initial misgivings, we’d like to take the opportunity to convince you that sexual politics shouldn’t stop you from enjoying one of the year’s most engaging and appealing films. … Read More

Film

Rate-a-Trailer: The Kids Are All Right

By Caroline Stanley on

The Kids Are Alright, director Lisa Cholodenko‘s family dramedy which stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as the cutest married couple ever, was one of the most buzzed about films to come out of Sundance this year. Mark Ruffalo plays the once anonymous the sperm donor for their two teenagers, who have both decided that it’s time to have a real relationship with their bio dad. I feel like movies about “unconventional families” usually warrant a good eye roll, but this looks really sweet and funny — and a lot less heavy than High Art or Laurel Canyon, if you’re familiar with Cholodenko’s previous work. … Read More

Web

But World of Warcraft Won’t Make You Feel Confident [Morning Links]

By Caroline Stanley on

Book: We find it interesting how quickly authors nipped this text-to-speech thing on the Kindle 2 in the bud. Any SAG members paying attention? [Guardian]

Dance/Opera: An “opera about the history of opera as the most important genre in European culture” ends up being “banal and pretentious, not an easy combination to bring off.” But if you go to see Vita Nuova, you will get to hang out in the pretty new Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center… [NYT]

Design: “When I build on a site in nature that is totally unspoiled, it is a fight, an attack by our culture on nature.” Pritzker-winning Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn dies at 84. [Newsday] … Read More