F

Flavorwire

Ben Affleck

Television

The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Ben Affleck

By Alison Nastasi on

It was an emotional season finale with several regular cast members making their exit — or close to it if the rumors are true. Seth Meyers is slated to take over hosting duties for NBC’s Late Night, but will remain on board at least through the fall. Bill Hader said a tearful goodbye last night after eight years on the show. We’re thankful the eps were Hader-heavy. The closing shot of him doling out bear hugs was sweet. Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis are “probably” taking their leave. One man, however, dominated the night: Kanye West. … Read More

Film

The Problem With Terrence Malick’s Beautiful ‘To the Wonder’

By Jason Bailey on

Terrence Malick tries to do something really interesting in his new picture To the Wonder, and to his credit, he almost pulls it off. He’s telling the story of an intense personal relationship (from nearly the beginning to the bitter end), but only on the downbeats — it’s done not via dialogue and other conventional means, but in pauses and reactions and aftermath. We don’t see, for example, a confession of infidelity, but the fallout of that confession; we’re shown a character’s moment alone after being left, but spared the scene where the revelation is made. To the Wonder may contain less person-to-person dialogue than any “talkie” I’ve ever seen. The question is whether that’s the right method for telling this story. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Indie Flicks to See in April

By Jason Bailey on

Spring is upon us, dear readers, so it’s your last chance to enjoy some light entertainment before the summer onslaught of giant explosions and endless sequels. (What’s that? G.I. Joe 2 came out last weekend? Let’s pretend like it didn’t happen.) As is our wont on the first of the month, we’ve rounded up April’s independent films of note: those we’ve seen and recommended, and those we can’t wait to get a look at. Join us after the jump for a sampling of this month’s art house goodies. … Read More

Film

Memo to Peter Bart of ‘Variety’: Don’t Tell Jon Stewart Not to Make a Movie

By Jason Bailey on

Memo To: Peter Bart
From: Jason Bailey

Hope you don’t mind me adopting the format of your incoherent and inexplicable “Memo to Jon Stewart” from the March 26 issue of Variety, but it seems another round of what you call, rather politely, “unsolicited advice” might be in order. You see, Mr. Bart, there’s a whole lot to unpack in your piece, which begs Mr. Stewart to abandon his three-month sabbatical from The Daily Show, during which he will write and direct his first feature film. It’s full of oddball assumptions, boxed-in thinking, and smug condescension. But first, and most distressingly, it’s just plain wrong about basic film history. … Read More

Film

Meet One of the Lucky Film Students Who Presented This Year’s Oscars

By Alison Herman on

Movie stars aren’t the only ones who help hand out Academy Awards: each year, they’re joined by a cast of presenters who help distribute the statuettes to winners. Previously, these presenters have been gorgeous, skinny model types, but the producers of this year’s show wanted to switch it up: they asked aspiring film students around the country to submit a 30-second video clip explaining how they would contribute to the future of film, then selected six winners from over 1,000 entries. In an interview with the AP, co-producer Neil Meron explained, “This tradition of the buxom babe that comes out and brings the trophy to the presenter to give to the winner seemed to be very antiquated and kind of sexist, too… Why can’t we have people who actually care about film and are the future of film be the trophy presenters?” Flavorwire reached out to contest winner and Oscar presenter Jennifer Brofer, a Marine Corps vet who currently studies at the University of Texas at Austin, to ask about her work and what it was like to take part in the biggest award ceremony of  the year. … Read More

Film

The Embarrassing Early Films of Oscar-Winning Directors

By Jason Bailey on

Argo, Ben Affleck’s third feature film, is looking more and more like a lock for the Best Picture prize at Sunday’s Oscars, and even if the man himself didn’t get a Best Director nomination, it’s still a remarkable culmination of one of the most fascinating second acts in Hollywood. The actor-turned-director seemed shockingly confident and assured in his first feature, 2007’s marvelous Gone Baby Gone, but as The Playlist reminded us this week, his first film (pre-Good Will Hunting, even) was a 1993 short inventively titled I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Ηung Ηer on a Μeathook & Νow I Have a Three-Picture Deal with Disney. It is, as is often the case with these things, not very good, and (to his credit) Affleck is the first one to admit it: “It’s horrible. It’s atrocious. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I’m not proud of it. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise.” But Affleck can take comfort in the fact that he’s not the only filmmaker with a cinematic skeleton in his closet: we found eight auteurs who rose to the Best Director Oscar from rather humble cinematic beginnings. … Read More

Film

‘Argo’ and Other Forgivably False “True Story” Films

By Jason Bailey on

Argo, Ben Affleck’s true story of American hostage extraction by way of Hollywood fakery, hits DVD and Blu-ray today on its way to a possible Best Picture prize at Sunday night’s Oscars. But as with its fellow nominees Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, Argo has been the object of some concern over historical accuracy, culminating in yesterday’s proclamation by Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir that “Argo doesn’t deserve the Oscar” because it “uses its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological.” While Affleck’s film is certainly not our favorite of the Best Picture nominees, we’d have a hard time arguing that a film’s fast/loose play with the facts should be a disqualifying factor. In fact, plenty of pictures we’ve been rather fond of weren’t exactly slavish to historical accuracy; we’ll take a look at Argo and its “true-ish story” brethren after the jump. … Read More

Film

The 2012 Oscar Nominees: Your Shocks, Surprises, and Snubs

By Jason Bailey on

If there’s one thing you hear a lot in the run-up to the Academy Award nominations, it’s that they’re predictable — that the industry’s “Oscar bait” films are clearly labeled and marketed as such. So maybe it’s just because there was such an embarrassment of cinematic riches in 2012 that there were so many genuine surprises and shocking snubs when Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announced the Academy Award nominees yesterday… Read More

Film

The Year In Film: 2012's Best Movie Moments

By Jason Bailey on

As the inevitable “Year’s Best Films” lists pour forth (and ours will join them soon enough) — that while a great movie is an accumulation of first-rate writing, directing, and performance, plenty of films that didn’t make that final cut did offer us the pleasure of a perfect scene. Here, we present our carefully cultivated picks for ten of the best moments from this year’s… Read More

Film

Is This the Year of the Studio “Oscar Movie”?

By Jason Bailey on

As a general rule, we try to steer clear of “Oscar blogging” this far ahead of the game — it’s a subset of online film writing that too often amounts to announcing that any fall release that generates a fair amount of early-screening praise is suddenly an awards contender that is totally, unexpectedly changing the game. It’s become a pretty silly ritual that we all go through every fall, particularly as more moviegoers and writers come to realize that the Oscars are an essentially meaningless horserace that seldom if ever genuinely reflects what is actually the best of the current cinema.

But gauging trends among the fall prestige pictures — the best foot that Hollywood puts forward every year — can be valuable; it gives us an opportunity to read the tea leaves a bit, to see what studios are hoping to accomplish, and what they would at least like our perception of them to be. And that’s maybe why this year’s Oscar pre-nomination race has become so interesting: because it’s so dominated by big studio releases. … Read More