Hey, guess what: 2012 is like, four days away. Exciting, eh? Well, aside from that whole Mayan calendar/end of the world business. And that there’s going to be a Presidential campaign all damned year, and the economy’s still in the toilet, and Community is on a “hiatus”… On second thought, 2012 is already looking pretty terrible, and it hasn’t even started yet.
No, wait! There will be new movies! Many, many new movies. And don’t kid yourself: plenty of them are going to be terrible (I mean, there’s a Battleship movie coming out, for God’s sake). But some of them look awesome! So in the spirit of cautious optimism, join us after the jump for a look at ten 2012 releases that we’re genuinely looking forward to.
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There are an abundance of reasons to put “see Moneyball” on your weekend to-do list: First film since Capote from director Bennett Miller; Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillan adapting a Michael Lewis book; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, and Chris Pratt (aka Andy Dwyer) in supporting roles; the baby blues of one William Bradley Pitt. And then there is our old friend Jonah Hill, who has taken the opportunity here to make the leap we’ve come to expect from any comedic performer of note: the transition to “serious acting.”
Now from the looks of the trailer, it doesn’t appear that Hill is exactly doing Hamlet — Moneyball is a fast, witty, seriocomic drama, allowing Hill some comedic opportunities within a larger and more serious context. That is one way to go; there are others. After the jump, join us for a look at the strategies that Hill’s predecessors adopted in making their move towards drama, and how they fared.
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A 2011 Oscar winner, another nominee, an acclaimed director, and the writer/star of one of TV’s most delightfully subversive comedies couldn’t convince audiences to see Your Highness, which opened last weekend to odious reviews and bad box office. What went wrong? Well, it is certainly possible that the target audience for a stoner parody of sword-and-sorcery movies was a little too narrow to justify a $50 million budget. Or it could just be the execution; “Like members of some post-Dadaist collective,” Time’s Richard Corliss notes, “the filmmakers have dedicated themselves to memorializing every first, wrong impulse that popped into their heads, while ruthlessly excising any vestige of wit or narrative niceties as being too linear, dude.” Whatever the reason, it certainly seems like yet another strange choice for Natalie Portman, whose first release after her Oscar nomination was a dopey, formulaic “friends with benefits” sex comedy. (As for James Franco, we’ve given up on guessing his motives for doing anything.)
Putting together a filmography is always a crap shoot for actors; the process of assembling a major studio production involves so many variables, from studio interference to directorial whims to budgetary concerns to a million other little things that sometimes you just can’t know what the final product will be. But in some cases, you just can’t imagine what a seemingly intelligent, acclaimed actor saw on the page, and how he ever imagined it could be a good movie — and we’re not talking about early on, when a hungry actor takes any role available. We’re talking post-fame, sometimes post-Oscar. After the jump, we’ll take a look at some of our favorite actors, and some of their most absolutely inexplicable choices.
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Sesame Street has a long history of celebrity guests, some kid-friendly and some… less so. Take, for example, this week’s cameo by Katy Perry, whose cleavage was front and center during her sketch with Elmo. Though the version of “Hot ‘n’ Cold” she sang was less risque than the original, it still seemed odd to put one of MTV’s video vixens into a children’s show. Which got us thinking about the most inappropriate, questionable, and flat-out bizarre guests who have been on Sesame Street over the years. Check out our list, after the jump.
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We’re a little bit sensitive about our beloved music icons. So when it comes time to make a biopic and Hollywood studios cast A-list actors to fill their glittery shoes, we’re likely to get defensive about their choices. For instance, a recently announced film about Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia has us hoping for lots of tie-dye, illicit substances, and trippy cinematography — but we won’t allow ourselves to get excited about it until we know who’s playing the hippie hero himself. Our trepidation about the Garcia film got us thinking about notable musician biopic casting decisions of the past. Check out the five best and worst after the jump.
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1. We didn’t see this one coming: it’s the James Cameron vs. Glenn Beck smackdown. All because Beck thinks that Cameron is the anti-Christ. [via ArtsBeat]
2. Zach Braff has announced on his Facebook page that the new Scrubs is dead, but ABC isn’t commenting. [via E!]
3. Blame it on the alcohol: Jamie Foxx is writing a modernized film adaptation of Laverne and Shirley that will be directed by Gary Marshall and could possibly star Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel. [via Vulture]
4. The Ricky Gervais Show — an animated series based on Gervais’ podcasts with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington — has been renewed for a second season by HBO. [via THR]
5. Don’t expect a David Hockney anti-smoking PSA anytime soon: “I have smoked for 52 years and I’m still here working away very ambitiously.” [via Independent]
Bonus link: Marisa Meltzer’s favorite concert footage by female artists
1. Vampire Weekend, Julian Casablancas, and Beck will feature on Hear To Help, an upcoming Haiti benefit album from Filter Magazine and American Eagle. [via NME]
2. The Last Goodbye, a rock musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet featuring the songs of Jeff Buckley (including “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” and “Eternal Life”), will premiere during the 2010-11 season. Fun fact: It’s the first show authorized by the musician’s estate since his death in 1997. [via Variety]
3. Watch clips from New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer‘s new reality show on The CW, High Society. [via Gawker]
4. There are seven(!) plays and musicals about gay life opening in New York in the next several weeks — and what’s exciting is they’re more about love than politics. [via NYT]
5. Among the celebrities still willing to talk to Jay Leno when he steals back The Tonight Show on March 1: Sarah Palin, Lindsey Vonn, and the cast of Jersey Shore. [via ArtsBeat]
Bonus link of humiliation: Tufts University admission videos on YouTube
The 52nd annual Grammy Awards came and went last night and, as usual, music’s “biggest night” was pretty tame. Unlike the MTV Video Music Awards, the Grammys are when we’re supposed to take music seriously. Madonna can’t kiss Britney on stage or writhe around seductively in a wedding dress. Diana Ross can’t grab ‘Lil Kim’s boob. Kanye West definitely can’t interrupt Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech.
So while the Grammys are sort of like the nerdy older sister of music awards shows, we did notice a theme running through many of the evening’s theatrical performances: Blame it on Glee if you want, but musicals are suddenly cool again — and it’s clear most of the artists who performed last night were inspired by some of the Great White Way’s best. Here, we list our fave five performances from the Grammys and the big, brash musical numbers that may have inspired them.
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Today at Flavorpill, we visited Jay-Z’s “Stash Spot.” We heard what Jamie Foxx had to say about Roman Polanski, namely, “If it had been my daughter who was barely a teenager — my daughter is 15 — Roman Polanski would be missing … period.” We discovered ten similarities between Grand Theft Auto and Inherent Vice. We wondered which male castmember gets killed off of Heroes. (Don’t roll your eyes. We’re still watching.) We found out that Tyra Banks is rolling in it. We wanted to design a Flavorpill flag. We got really excited for The House of the Devil. And finally, we learned which bands will be playing the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. We find that way more exciting than the sports part.
Despite a relatively good US run, things have turned out a bit odd for the kids flick Monsters vs Aliens. To begin with, the Dreamworks film didn’t play so well overseas, bringing in just $177.1M in foreign markets, as opposed to the studio’s Madagascar which pulled in $339.1M overseas. Equally odd is the decision to release the film on DVD on the rather inauspicious September 29, well ahead of the Christmas-time boom. Read More »
