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’re recovering from the big Netflix “Streamageddon” — but, to their credit, the service did make a healthy chunk of titles newly available (or re-available) for streaming at the end of last week. Included is good stuff from Robert Downey Jr., Reese Witherspoon, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Woody Allen, John Travolta, Michael Keaton, James Woods, Uma Thurman, Joss Whedon, and Quentin Tarantino; check them out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More
Joss Whedon
Flavorwire’s Endearingly Exhaustive 2013 Summer Movie Preview
It’s the first weekend in May, so you know what that means: there’s a new Marvel movie in theaters, and the summer movie season has officially begun. It’s a tricky minefield to navigate, rife with sequels and reboots and sequels and adaptations and sequels, but Flavorwire is here to help: our summer movie guide takes you through the entire season, month by month, spotlighting the films that might be worth seeing (Might! Maybe! No promises!) and delicately averting your eyes from the certain dogs. Take a deep breath and put on your 3D glasses; here we… Read More
‘Iron Man 3,’ ‘The Avengers,’ And the Thrill of Authorial Voice in Blockbusters
Iron Man 3 opens with an arresting image — the destruction of three Iron Man suits, right in a row, bang bang bang — and a voice over from Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, a bit of business about facing your demons that quickly degenerates into gibberish. “Never mind, I’m gonna start over,” he says, and the screen fades to black, thus concluding the first of the film’s many assurances that, while it is a mega-budgeted summer tent-pole movie, it is also the work of devilishly clever writer/director Shane Black — whose previous collaboration with Downey, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, included one of the most blissfully self-aware narration tracks in all of moviedom (“Don’t worry, I saw Lord of the Rings, I’m not gonna end this like 17 times”). And that’s the key to the movie’s success: beyond all the explosions and action set pieces and 3D wizardry, you can still hear a writer with a distinctive, entertaining voice. And that’s what separates films like this from their blockbuster brethren, which too often were clearly created by a committee. … Read More
The 10 Best “Credit Cookies” in Movie History
Iron Man 3 is out in theaters tomorrow, and it should come as no surprise that those who are willing to sit through the end credits — and seriously, they run something like ten minutes and include more names than a small-town phone book — will be rewarded with an extra (and very funny) bonus scene. Some call these little bonuses “credit cookies,” others call them “stingers.” In Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary, Serdor Yegulalp dubs them the “Monk’s Reward,” defined thus: “A surprising final line or image, tagged on after the credits have finished rolling… so named because it usually takes monk-like devotion to sit through the credits to get to it.” The previous Marvel movies made a regular habit of including credit cookies, mostly as preparation for The Avengers, but they’re not the only movies to throw in a little something extra for those who stick around to find out who the unit accountant was. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead, but all for movies that have been out for a year or more.) … Read More
Celebrities Praising Celebrities: The Best Tributes From the Annual “Time 100″ List
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
10 Notorious Leaked Screenplay Scandals
Earlier this week, we told you about Xavier Macafee, the New Mexico man who was arrested on suspicion of burglary after allegedly breaking into Bryan Cranston’s car and stealing, among other things, the script to one of Breaking Bad’s final episodes. While we still don’t know if it was a coincidental act or the work of a brilliant BB superfan, this isn’t the first time a swiped script has created havoc in Hollywood. Here are ten tales of leaked screenplays, and what happened to the films… Read More
The Best and Worst Movies of SXSW 2013
Your film editor has returned from Austin, where SXSW’s robust selection of fascinating panels and workshops kept my film consumption lower than I might’ve liked. But the dozen SXSW film entries I did get to see offered up an assortment of riveting performances, inventive filmmaking, and recurring motifs; a quick round-up of the best and worst (of what I saw, at least) is after the jump. … Read More
10 Long-Awaited Cult Movie Projects We’d Like to See Kickstarted
After five years of “what ifs” and “maybes” and “we’d like tos” and various other forms and hemming and/or hawing, the feature film follow-up to the much-beloved, low-rated TV masterpiece (I do not throw that word around lightly!) Veronica Mars is finally really going to happen — thanks to a studio-approved Kickstarter campaign to raise preliminary funds that pretty much wildly exceeded anyone’s expectations. Of course, any silver cloud must have a gray lining, and the project’s tricky intermingling with the kind of Faceless Bad Corporation the platform was ostensibly created to circumvent has already prompted plenty of hand-wringing. But the project’s remarkable Kickstarter success (it reached its goal in ten hours) is a testament to the feverish nature of the show’s fans — and is, in fact, a good way for said fans to prove to the holders of rights (and purse-strings) that they’re serious about supporting the films they’re passionate about. So, could other long-desired films adopt a similar approach? After the jump, we suggest ten more cult films that could finally find their way to the big screen by following Veronica’s lead. … Read More
Syllabi for 10 Real College Pop-Culture Classes We’d Love to Take
We’ve all heard of Physics for Poets and Rocks for Jocks, but a few college classes skip the pretense of hard science altogether and get straight to the fun stuff. While these courses may not get you into medical school, they’ll leave you well-prepared for any cocktail party conversation, as long as you go to the kind of cocktail party where guests talk about Harry Potter and Joss Whedon. We’ve compiled the most compelling classes on TV, music, and even video games that colleges have to offer, including a selection of readings so you can hit the books without doing the whole midterm-and-paper… Read More
SXSW 2013: Joss Whedon on Spinning from Marvel to Shakespeare
AUSTIN, TX: Director Joss Whedon and most of the large ensemble cast for his new film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing turned up at the SXSW Film Festival for the picture’s first screening Saturday afternoon, participating in a panel discussion and Q&A that ran a full hour and touched on everything from the film’s sexiness to drinking on set to its director’s previous, sharply different gig directing a certain superhero blockbuster. … Read More
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