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What IMDb’s Top 10 Stars of the Last 10 Years Says About Us

By Alison Nastasi on

Movie mavens IMDb have revealed their top ten most-viewed/searched-for stars, movies, TV shows, and anticipated in-production titles over the past decade. The lists celebrates ten years of the company’s industry database IMDb Pro and offers some surprising — and not so shocking — looks at trends centering on our film tastes. The Dark Knight Rises grabbed a number one spot as most-anticipated project, which shouldn’t be news to you, but the number two film of the past ten years — Donnie Darko — was a bit of a surprise.

We zeroed in on the top stars list and provided some subliminal insight into where movie audiences’ minds must have been for the last decade. Give us your explanations below after you check out the list past the break. … Read More

Film

Open Thread: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and the Hollywood Hype Machine

By Jason Bailey on

Let’s put this right out front: nobody’s looking forward to The Dark Knight Rises more than we are. It led off our list of 2012′s most anticipated movies; we sing the praises of every new teaser they put out in our weekly “Trailer Park” roundups. This is a movie we’re really, really looking forward to. But you have to draw a line somewhere, and we think this might be it.

According to Variety, tickets are now available for the first, midnight IMAX screenings of The Dark Knight Rises — that’s right, six full months in advance. So if you’re one hundred percent certain that you won’t have anywhere to be at 12:01am on the night of Thursday, July 19th, you can hop on over to Fandango (here’s the link for my fellow New Yorkers — that IMAX screen at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 is a peach), plop down your $20, and have yourself a ticket right now. You might wanna choose the “print at kiosk” option, though, because the chances of misplacing the “print at home” ticket within the next six months are pretty high. Borderline astronomical, we’d say.

Oh wait, you can’t. The midnight screening six months from now is already sold out.

So, seriously, how out of control is the Hollywood Hype Machine these days? … Read More

Partner Buzz

Our Pop-Culture Picks for a Special Series of What-If? Scenarios

By Doug Levy on

This holiday season, Patrón Tequila came up with a great way to give something to your friends without emptying your wallet. With the “If” Tag app, you can select from a variety of hypothetical scenarios (such as, “If aliens invade, zombies attack, or the robots rise up, you’d be the John Connor to my Kyle Reese), and then select a friend who gets the honor of being your first choice for the gig. You can add a personal message, and then post the whole award right to your friend’s Facebook wall. We were having so much fun with it, in fact, that we decided to take it one step further and pick our top celebrity choices for a number of the “If” scenarios. Click through to see who came out on top for our editors, and why each pop-culture pick made the grade. And if you want to play too, just choose a scenario yourself and tell us who you want in on it in the comments. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Celebrated journalist, lifelong contrarian, and staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens has died from complications of esophageal cancer at the age of 62. “I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive,” he wrote in his recent memoir Hitch-22, “and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing… Read More

Film

Iconic Movie Roles Impossible to Remake

By Alison Nastasi on

There’s been talk about a possible updating of Mary Harron’s American Psycho — based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis — for some time now. Word has arrived that Lionsgate is actually pushing forward with a remake of the twisted classic. The studio has brought on screenwriting unknown Noble Jones to update the story about yuppie psychotic, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), who slaughters his way through the 1980s. The studio will be hard-pressed to find another actor that can fill Bale’s (very expensive) shoes for the now famous role that became the symbol of cultural narcissism, materialism, and greed. Bale’s performance embodies everything Ellis set forth in his novel so perfectly, we think it will be impossible to top. What other iconic movie roles can never be remade? Click through to check out our picks, and leave yours in the comments below. … Read More

Film

Two New Terrence Malick Films on the Way

By Alison Nastasi on

The filmmaker notorious for his meticulous and slow-moving filmography now has four movies in the making, with two recently announced titles both starring Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett. Tree of Life director Terrence Malick is currently working on IMAX documentary Voyage of Time — which will undoubtedly be some major cosmic eye candy… Read More

Film

Trailer Park: Sex, Screams, and Sequels

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. We’ve got seven new trailers this week, mostly of the artsie-indie breed, though there’s a couple of genre picks in there as well. Check ‘em out after the jump. … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. According to TMZ, Charlie Sheen’s people are in “deep negotiations” with a major network (we’re guessing it’s probably Fox) for a new sitcom that’s being written specifically for him and could air as early as next January. There aren’t many other details, but we’ll go ahead and guess that Chuck Lorre is… Read More

Film

10 Crush-Killing Film Roles, from Willy Wonka to Aileen Wuornos

By Judy Berman on

We’ve been excited about Hesher ever since we first heard about the film, which debuted at Sundance last year. So we’re definitely planning to see it when it makes its theatrical debut this weekend. But despite our anticipation, we do have one worry: that we’ll never be able to look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt the same way again. You see, he plays Hesher‘s title character, a greasy, ratty-haired, tattooed metal guy with bad teeth and penchant for farting. Thankfully, Gordon-Levitt is hardly the first actor to sacrifice beauty or likability for a good role. After the jump, we recall ten more roles that killed our crushes, on everyone from Charlize Theron to Christian Bale. … 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 saw the first official image from the Cartoon Network’s Thundercats reboot, which is set to debut later this year. We were intrigued by a rumor that Christian Bale is up for the part of Roland in Ron Howard’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. We almost… Read More