Now that we know that screenwriter Diablo Cody (of Juno and Young Adult fame) is officially turning our beloved ’80s teen series Sweet Valley High into a musical movie, we’re getting a little excited. Yes, we’re ready for this movie to be the worst/best/most depressing/campiest thing ever. Yes, we can’t wait. So we couldn’t help but speculate as to who might slip into the roles of Enid, Lila, and the famous pair of blonde bombshells known as the Wakefield sisters, especially since the musicality of the project limits the field of young actors and actresses quite a bit. Click through to see who we’d cast for the musical film, and let us know if you agree or disagree with our choices in the comments!
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Hold on to your childhoods, 20- and 30-somethings, because they’re in Diablo Cody’s hands now. In case you haven’t heard, the Juno and Young Adult screenwriter’s next foray into adolescence will be a big-screen adaptation of Francine Pascal’s middle school-staple Sweet Valley High novels. But that’s not all — last night at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, Cody told MTV News that the movie will be a musical. “There’s original songs being written for it right now, which is the most exciting development,” she said. “They’re amazing. They’re being written by these Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning songwriters from Broadway who are the best.” The team behind the music is Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, the writers of Broadway’s acclaimed Next to Normal. So, it’s official: the Sweet Valley High movie will either be wonderful or terrible. Either way, it’s a camp classic in the making, and we plan to be there opening night.
Young Adult, the dark comedy starring Charlize Theron that re-teams Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, went into wide release last weekend (after hitting a few screens the weekend before), and now that it’s out, we’re again in the odd position of wanting to talk explicitly about the film’s ending — specifically about its closing scenes, which are (for our money) where Young Adult stops being a good movie and becomes a great one. Of course, not everyone sees movies within the first three days, so we’ll wait to get into this further until after the jump — where you’ll find some thoughts on the closing scenes from us, and from director Jason Reitman. So, y’know, duly noted, spoiler warnings, etc., etc. Read More »
In retrospect, last week’s gift guide for movie geeks was seriously lacking in one important element: it needs more Criterion. The Criterion Collection, as you presumably well know, is the preeminent home video label for film nerds, lavishing their second-to-none skills of restoration and supplementation on titles both well-known and obscure. So yes, a week-late addendum: if you’re shopping for cinephiles, a title or two from the Criterion Collection should do the trick.
Alas, which titles? At 600+ films (and growing monthly), sifting through the collection is a daunting task. Thankfully, the label is more than happy to help out; one of the most enjoyable time-killers on their site is their section of Top 10s, in which film fans from across the spectrum — directors, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, comedians, critics, etc. — select their ten favorite Criterion titles, often with concise mini-reviews for each. After the jump, in a bit of meta list construction, we’ve picked out ten of our favorite folks from that page, and a few of their recommendations as well. Read More »
For over two years now, Diablo Cody has been involved in a big-screen adaptation of Francine Pascal’s beloved Sweet Valley High series. And just as we were about to give up hope of it ever happening, Cody has given indieWIRE a promising update: “That is moving forward,” Cody told the site. “It’s closer to reality than ever but I can’t freely talk about it.” Along with revealing that it’s “inexorably linked” to her forthcoming film, Young Adult, she said, “I want [Sweet Valley High] to be wonderfully nostalgic… I want it to be to the ’80s what American Graffiti was to the [early] ’60s. I want it to be looking back on a really cool time and enjoying yourself and I want it to be glamorous and colorful and bubblegum and a feast for the senses.” We don’t think we could possibly be more excited, frankly — we loved the books as kids because they were an outlandish fantasy, and Cody is clearly on the same page. At the very least, the movie has to be better than Pascal’s own critically savaged SVH update, Sweet Valley Confidential. [via The Hairpin]
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 six new trailers this week, and — for the first time in the feature’s history — they all look varying degrees of worthwhile. Check ‘em out after the jump.
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Today at Flavorpill, we were obsessed with the YA fiction-inspired poster for Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s latest film collaboration, Young Adult. We wished that we could be as popular on Facebook as Jesus is. We lost ourselves in New York Magazine’s “Encyclopedia of 9/11.” We wondered what Shepard Fairey did to make Copenhagen taggers hate him so much (you know, other than being a “Yankee hipster”). We were happy not to have been present at the world’s largest water balloon fight. We couldn’t decide which was harder to believe: the fact that Wilson Phillips is a getting a reality show or Beetlejuice is getting a sequel. We were surprised to hear that Anderson Cooper’s first guests on his new show will be Amy Winehouse’s family. We met the little boat who could. We got an advance look at Futurama’s season finale — which features three different animated styles. We listened to “The Burroughs Of Carbs,” a clip from Patton Oswalt’s new comedy album, Finest Hour. We visited the remains of an old Soviet shuttle. And finally, we watched Emma Watson’s new perfume ad, and it made us feel sad inside.
1. It turns out that Justin Timberlake now has a minor stake in MySpace thanks to that $35 million deal that went down yesterday. From his official statement: “Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there’s a natural social component to entertainment. I’m excited to help revitalize Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community.” [via THR]
2. Diablo Cody will make her directing debut with Lamb of God, a comedy that’s based on a screenplay that she wrote about a conservative woman who loses her religion after a plane crash and decides to live the life of a sinner in Las Vegas, only to rediscover her faith. [via Deadline]
3. Remember Puck from The Real World? Of course you do, he was horrible! The LA Times reports that he remains in police custody after being arrested and charged in a domestic violence case earlier this week. Unfortunately, this is not the reality star’s first brush with the law; he has previously been charged with both battery and a DUI.
4. A new monthly comic book based on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones is due out in September from Bantam. The title will be illustrated by Tommy Patterson and scripted by Daniel Abraham (The Long Price Quartet). [via The Beat]
5. It now sounds like the long-awaited Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration Watch the Throne won’t be released on July 4th, as had previously been rumored. Even though the album has been completed, a source reports that Kanye still needs to add “his last little pizazz.” [via Vulture]
Bonus link: Rock Stars and their Mustaches
Today at Flavorpill, we got our Hipster Hitler fix. We wanted to buy a foam printer for the office. We bookmarked Faces Of The Last Season of Oprah — a new screencap blog that promises to be epic. We found it highly suspicious that Lady Gaga is issuing gag orders following yesterday’s report that she Single White Female-d the late Lina Morgana’s “image, style, and persona.” We wished The Golden Girls a happy 25th anniversary. We watched pop culture worlds collide as Diablo Cody interviewed Coach Taylor. We wondered if the “Already Been Chewed Burger” comes with a side of chewed up fries. We downloaded Das Racist’s new mixtape, Sit Down, Man. And finally, Jim Henson taught us how to make a Muppet out of common household items. So that’s what we’ll be doing tonight.
1. Arcade Fire and Spike Jonze worked on a short film accompaniment to The Suburbs: “It’s like a science-fiction B-movie companion piece for the record.” [via Pitchfork]
2. There’s a 3D Justin Bieber biopic in the works that will be directed by Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, the same man who helmed An Inconvenient Truth. Oh, and it gets better: Bieber will be playing himself. And it comes out on Valentine’s Day, 2011. [via Deadline]
3. Paul McCartney wants Ryan Murphy to use the Beatles’ songs on Glee — so badly, that he sent him a mixtape with some suggested tracks. [via Vulture]
4. Jason Reitman and Charlize Theron are in talks to direct and star in Young Adult, a Diablo Cody film about “a thirtysomething, divorced, young-adult fiction writer in Minneapolis who returns to her hometown to chase the ex-boyfriend, who’s now married with a kid, that got away.” [via THR]
5. Would you spend $200,000 on this 7-year-old’s paintings? [via Gawker]
Bonus link: Mental Floss’ 50 Amazing Facts for Our 50th Issue
