Sean Durkin’s directorial debut Martha Marcy May Marlene — a dramatic thriller which tells the story of a woman (Lizzie Olsen) who escapes from a cult in the Catskills and attempts to reconnect with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy) — was one of the buzziest films to come out of Sundance this year, and garnered him a Best Director award. Now those of us who didn’t make it out to Utah can finally see why. Olsen is gut wrenching as broken, confused Martha, who is haunted by flashbacks of her time in Upstate New York; John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone) gives a chilling turn as the cult’s Charles Manson-esque leader. Click through to watch the trailer, and let us know in the comments if you plan on checking this one out.
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As we’ve all heard, the folks over at HBO have closed a deal to turn Jennifer Egan’s recent Pulitzer prize-winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad into an HBO series. No word on what exactly that will mean yet, however – the book spans so many generations and expands in so many directions that they’re going to have a tough time pinning it down to just a series. Or maybe they won’t – that’s the magic of television. After all, Egan has mentioned that she thought about The Sopranos while writing the book, so maybe there’s hope yet. As long as they figure out how to show that Power Point chapter. Regardless, the whole thing has got us thinking about the actors we’d pick to play our beloved characters from Egan’s masterpiece, but since the book spans so many characters at different points in their lives, we thought we’d just pick one of our favorite sections — the safari chapter — and cast that one. If you haven’t read the novel yet and want to play along at home, this chapter is actually available online — it was also published as a standalone short story in The New Yorker. Yep, it’s that good. Click though to see who we’d pick to play some of our favorite characters from A Visit From the Goon Squad, and let us know your own picks in the comments!
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Today at Flavorpill, we spied some meatballs our gym teacher would have approved of, courtesy of London-based photographer David Sykes. We took a tour of Kyp Malone’s Greenpoint apartment. We discovered one of the best Phoenix remixes of the year, from Devendra Banhart. We wrote Grandmom a letter. We tried to imagine a conversation between Rivers Cuomo and Lil Wayne. We wished newlyweds Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy all the best (you say home-wrecker, we say Angela Chase). We imagined getting spit on by an angry Lady Sovereign. We dug this pretty hand-painted film from the 19th century. And finally, we decided it was time to go home and walk our invisible dog. They’re apparently all the rage in Brooklyn.
