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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, there’s a ton of new and catalog titles streaming on Netflix — great flicks from Harrison Ford, Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, Ewan McGregor, Adam Scott, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, and Leos Carax, plus two of last year’s best documentaries. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Film

Exclusive Supercut: Gary Oldman Loses His Shit

By Jason Bailey on

The great Gary Oldman, one of our very favorite actors, turns 55 years old today, and while there’s much to celebrate about the actor — his tremendous range, his chameleonic physical versatility, the ease with which he juggles small and large films, the flawlessness of his American accent — we have to say that our favorite thing about him is the skill and intensity with which he goes insane onscreen. It happens fairly reliably across his filmography, and it’s always worth waiting for, so in celebration of Mr. Oldman’s birthday, we assembled a few of our favorite instances of the actor going bananas. Check it out after the jump. … Read More

Film

Hilarious Notes on Modern Classics From Clueless Studio Executives

By Jason Bailey on

The image of non-creative types mucking about with (and screwing up) movies and television shows is nothing new — we’ve seen it in everything from Barton Fink to The Player to The Larry Sanders Show — but we got a rare opportunity to observe a real-life example of it recently, when a memorandum of notes from the suits at Tandem Productions to the makers of Blade Runner started popping up online. Those hilarious criticisms and suggestions got us wondering about other classic movies that came close to ruin thanks to studio interference. We’ll take a look at Blade Runner and several other examples after the jump. … Read More

Celebrity

Celebrities and the Countries From Which They’ve Been Banned

By Jennifer Lewis on

Once upon a time, two of your doting Flavorpill staffers were banned from a “ruin pub” in Hungary. The whole debacle was a bit of a silly misunderstanding, but hey — at least we weren’t banned from the entire country, eh? The same can’t be said for the following celebrities, who have somehow landed themselves on a handful of nations’ naughty lists. We’ve got everyone from drug addicts to human rights activists to drug rights activists. Check ‘em out after the jump, and hit the comments to tell us your thoughts and dreams. … Read More

Celebrity

Photos of 32 Famous Actors and Their Doubles

By Jennifer Lewis on

[Editor's note: In celebration of the holidays, we're spending the next two Tuesdays by counting down the top 12 Flavorwire features of 2012. This post, at #11, was originally published July 6th.] If you’re anything like us, you often find yourself struggling to catch tiny glimpses of stunt doubles’ faces in action movies. There’s no way Tom Cruise is capable of all those impossible missions in Mission: Impossible, right? Thanks to a post on good ol’ Reddit, we were recently graced with 17 fascinating photos of actors side-by-side with their stunt doubles. Some look exactly alike, while others — er, we’ll let you judge stuntman Will Arnett’s hairline and stuntwoman Jennifer Lopez’s gender for yourself. We did a bit of digging to bring you even more photos of actors with their stunt doubles and stand ins, so check ‘em out after the jump, and hit the comments to let us know who wins and loses the lookalike contest. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Judy Berman on

1. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Elliott Carter passed away yesterday in Manhattan. He was 103 years old. In an obituary, The New York Times writes that his music “could seem harmonically brash and melodically sharp-edged on the first hearing, but it often yielded drama and lyricism on better acquaintance.”

2. Sources say that… Read More

Film

Revealing Behind-the-Scenes Photos from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’

By Emily Temple on

For most of us, Raiders of the Lost Ark was a childhood staple of adventure and movie magic as only the tag team of Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas could create it. But while the melting head of a Nazi agent once terrified and fascinated us, we’re no longer quite as impressed with the visual effects, except for their abundant early-80s charm. That said, we’re still tickled over these behind-the-scenes photos dug up by Retronaut, which feature Harrison Ford moodily taking direction, cast and crew hanging out on set, and that famous golden idol looking a little less golden. It’s as close as we can get to getting the gang back together. After the jump, see a few of our favorite shots, and head on over to Retronaut to see even more. … Read More

Film

10 Movie Franchises That Lost Their Lead — And What Happened

By Jason Bailey on

If you felt a slight gust from the west yesterday, it may have been the folks at Universal Pictures letting out a sigh of relief; The Bourne Legacy, the newest (and Bourne-less) entry in their venerable franchise put up respectable numbers over the weekend, selling $40 million of tickets to a picture that was, from the outset, a bit of dicey proposition. Its success got us thinking about other film series that lost their lead actors, and whether those franchises succeeded or failed in their absence; we collect and analyze the data for you after the jump. … Read More

Film

10 Surprising Box Office Bombs Starring A-List Actors

By Jason Bailey on

Next week, The Dark Knight Rises will hit theaters, and holy cow, even we’re tired of talking about how excited we are. But if you can’t wait until next week to get your Christian Bale fix, may we recommend this week’s new DVD release The Flowers of War? What’s that, you haven’t heard of it? Well, no wonder; it only made it to 30 theaters during its very limited release last January, and took in a paltry $311K. (Don’t fear for Bale and director Zhang Yimou — it grossed $93 million in China.) It just goes to show — movie stardom isn’t certain, and even the biggest names in the business can make a picture that comes and goes with nary a ripple. Bale is far from the only one to have a movie sink without a trace in spite of his fame; after the jump, we’ve assembled (in descending order of gross, with the invaluable help of Box Office Mojo) a list of ten big movie stars, and their films that barely made a peep. … Read More

Celebrity

10 Celebrities Who Might Be Real-Life Superheroes

By Jennifer Lewis on

Forget teacup poodles and ripped denim vests — there’s a new fad in Hollywood, and it’s much more exciting than any old-fashioned accessory. These days, it seems like everyone wants a piece of the superhero pie. Although, after all this Avengers hoopla, can you really blame them? Upon hearing that Jennifer Lawrence has been dubbed a “hero” after helping an unconscious stranger, we were inspired to round up some more celebrities who just might be superheroes. Check ‘em out after the jump, and feel free to suggest some appropriate superhero alter egos in the comments — because, well, we can’t kick the idea that Ryan Gosling’s superhero persona should resemble an actual gosling, or perhaps our favorite Gosselin, and neither of those things are very intimidating. … Read More