Time magazine released its annual “Time 100” this week — a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The list is, as usual, light on shock; it pretty much features the political figures, artists, athletes, and philanthropists you’d expect. What makes the feature compelling is the deployment of similarly well-known folks to write testimonials about the influential people they admire. Since we love hearing about the actors our favorite actors love, it warms our hearts to read, for example, Jon Hamm’s fan letter to his fellow AMC star Bryan Cranston. “Over the past five seasons,” Hamm writes, “I’ve marveled at Bryan’s ability to turn Breaking Bad’s Walter White from a feckless, terrified father and husband to a ruthless, terrifying father, husband and crime lord. The transformation is mesmerizing. The performance is fearless. Bryan is that good.” These stunt tributes don’t always work (particularly in the political realm — the only thing we want to read less than Sarah Palin’s tribute to Glenn Beck is Ted Nugent’s tribute to Sarah Palin), but when they do, they’re a joy to read. See our favorite celeb-penned tributes from the past five years of “Time 100″ below. … Read More
Colin Firth
Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week
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
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. If you haven’t seen it yet, this video of The Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns endorsing Mitt Romney — because his dog Shamus prefers “Meat” Romney over “Broccoli” Obama — is pretty hilarious. [via LAT]
2. Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender playing Thomas Wolfe and his legendary editor Max Perkins in a film adaption… Read More
Watch a Trailer for Coen Brothers-Scripted ‘Gambit’
You’d think that making (mostly) perfect films on an almost-yearly basis would leave Joel and Ethan Coen little time to script other people’s movies. And yet, here is a trailer for Gambit, a remake of the 1966 Michael Caine/Shirley MacLaine comedy of the same name, which was given to the Coens to write way back in 2003 and attached to several directors — including Alexander Payne and Robert Altman – at various times. The man who finally ended up making the film is Michael Hoffman, whose unusual career has included such films as Soapdish, Restoration, The Emperor’s Club, and most recently 2009′s The Last Station. His version stars Colin Firth as an art curator plotting to dupe his horrible boss (Alan Rickman) into buying a faux Monet, with the help of a cowgirl played by Cameron Diaz. The delightful Cloris Leachman, Tom Courtenay, and Stanley Tucci round out the cast.
Judging by the trailer, the wit and playfulness with which the Coens approach comedy made it into Hoffman’s version. The wackiness factor is high, Firth is endearingly disheveled, Diaz’s accent is appropriately campy, Tucci is doing his artiste thing, and Rickman is briefly naked (in a SFW kind of way). Even if we might have preferred to see the Coens behind the camera, we’ll go along for this ride. Let us know if you agree. … Read More
Rupert Everett to Direct Oscar Wilde Biopic
Rupert Everett clearly has a thing for Oscar Wilde. He’s starred in two movies adapted from the fin-de-siècle author’s works, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, and has been active in the restoration of his tomb. Now, Variety is reporting the news from Cannes that he’s directing and starring in… Read More
10 Movie Remakes We’re Actually Looking Forward To
Good news for Coen Brothers fans (and really, if you’re not one, we’re not quite sure what to do with you): their long-circulating script for Gambit, a remake of the 1966 British caper, goes before the cameras this May, with freshly Oscared Colin Firth in the leading role, Cameron Diaz as his leading lady, and Soapdish director Michael Hoffman at the helm. While we’d be a tiny bit more excited if the Coens were directing it themselves, this is still good news — especially because their True Grit was that rarest of beasts, a remake that respected (and, in our eyes anyway, topped) the original.
It’s no secret that Hollywood has gone remake crazy; along with endless sequels and mindless 3-D, the film business’s insistence on remaking any movie made before 1990 that turned more than a five dollar profit is perhaps its most irritating quality. But lest we forget, The Maltese Falcon was a remake; so were The Thing, The Departed, and Scarface. So, in the interest of putting a positive spin on remake-mania, we took a look at the dozens of remakes in the pipeline and found ten that we’re genuinely excited about. Check them out after the jump. … Read More
Mobsters and Drug Dealers: Life Imitating Art
It’s been all over the news that 30-year-old Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, the Baltimore resident who played a character of the same name on The Wire, has been arrested in a large-scale drug raid similar to the kind carried out on the show. Pearson, whose legal troubles predated the show, apparently slipped back into her old habits when the show went off the air. This seems to be the latest in a perhaps not-so-strange tendency for the lives of actors to be in some way affected by their art, whether for good or for ill. Sure, we know lots of actors fall in love with each other on set, but what about actors that are inspired to more interesting ends? Click through for our list of actors whose lives have mirrored those of their own characters. … Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. Hollywood actress and legendary pinup girl Jane Russell — who managed to make sprawling on a bale of hay look sexy in her 1943 film debut, The Outlaws — died yesterday at the age of 89. She was a favorite of Howard Hughes, who infamously designed a special “cantilever” bra that would expose… Read More
WTF of the Day: A Censored Version of The King’s Speech
According to our friends at Vulture, Harvey Weinstein is playing around with the not-so-brilliant idea of releasing a PG-13 version of The King’s Speech. Now that it’s everyone’s favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars, we understand that a more kid-friendly rating makes financial sense in theory — but how many teens… Read More
10 Ways Not to Win an Oscar
This week, all anyone can talk about is the Academy Awards and, namely, who’s going to win them. The folks at The Daily Beast have even gone so far as to put together a handy guide for actors looking to win an Oscar. And while we find that as interesting as the next crabby film elitist, we’re even more fascinated by the misfits — the actors, directors and movies that never seem to get their due at these frustratingly middlebrow awards. That’s why we’ve compiled a guide of our own. After the jump, we list 10 ways not to win an Oscar. … Read More
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