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A Beginner’s Guide to Gangster Movies

By Jason Bailey on

Later this month, Warner Brothers is releasing The Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics, which gathers four of the finest films from the Golden Age of the Gangster movie in crisp, new Blu-ray editions. These days, when we think of the gangster picture, we tend to focus on modern favorites like The Godfather and GoodFellas, but those films are descended from a rich heritage of tough, smart, timely pictures from the 1930s and 1940s. As you can see from this month’s ever so helpful Beginner’s Guide, the influence of those films has resonated for decades, from Cagney and Bogart to DeNiro and Pacino. … Read More

Film

7 Other Directors Who Should Adapt ‘The Great Gatsby’

By Alison Herman on

When fans of The Great Gatsby found out that divisive filmmaker Baz Luhrmann would direct this spring’s highly anticipated adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel, reactions were mixed. Some film lovers embrace Luhrmann’s sheer excess; it worked well enough for Romeo and Juliet, so why worry about flubs like Australia? Others, however, had different aspirations for the movie that might just get leading man Leo DiCaprio his ever-evasive Oscar. So, what about the Gatsby adaptations that could have been? Read on for a short list of other directors who might have succeeded at filming one of the most acclaimed American novels of all time, from Scorsese to Spielberg. … Read More

Film

Handwritten Screenplay Pages From Film and Television

By Jason Bailey on

“You can’t write poetry on a computer,” says Quentin Tarantino, and he can’t write his screenplays on one either — he does it old school, longhand, in a notebook, putting his words in typewritten form at the last possible second. It may make him sound like a Luddite, but he’s far from the only one; plenty of Hollywood’s most successful scribes prefer to work by hand, at least in the early stages. This week, we found out that Lawrence Kasdan wrote The Empire Strikes Back in longhand as well, and a trip down the Internet rabbit hole turned up several more popular films that were worked out by hand before they made it to the screen. … Read More

Film

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of Iconic Filmmakers Directing Their Stars

By Alison Nastasi on

There’s nothing more exciting to a film lover than learning how their favorite movies were developed and executed. When we saw some fantastic behind-the-scenes photos from famous films on Every Day I Show, by way of Cinephilia and Beyond, we were blown away. The snapshots of iconic filmmakers directing their equally popular stars offers a peek at the history of cinema in the making. Head to our gallery for a look at directors in action and actors preparing their characters, collaborating on some of film’s greatest stories ever told. … Read More

Film

Artwork Inspired by the Films of Martin Scorsese

By Jason Bailey on

From Taxi Driver to Raging Bull to GoodFellas, few filmmakers have turned out as many influential movies as the great Martin Scorsese — and, come to find out, he’s also inspired plenty of artists from other disciplines. This weekend, San Francisco’s Spoke Art Gallery is presenting Scorsese: An Art Show Tribute, and since they’re honoring the quintessential New York artist, they’ve come east for the occasion. The show, running this weekend only at Chelsea’s Bold Hype Gallery, features work from over 75 painters, sculptors, and screen print artists. But if you can’t make it, don’t worry; Spoke Art has shared a few highlights from the show, including a couple of Flavorwire exclusives. Check them out after the jump. … Read More

Film

10 of the Best Suburban Angst Films

By Alison Nastasi on

“Saturday night in the suburbs, that’s when you really want blow your brains out,” Don Draper griped in last season’s Mad Men episode “Signal 30.” It’s a crisis Matthew Weiner’s characters frequently encounter, despite their privileged, cocktail-filled lifestyles. In keeping with the spirit of the show, which aired its incredibly dark two-hour Season 6 premiere last night, here are ten of the best films that fan the flames of white-picket-fence… Read More

Film

Celebrate Alec Baldwin’s 55th Birthday With His 10 Best Scenes

By Jason Bailey on

The great Alec Baldwin turns 55 years old today, and in attempting to cook up a proper tribute to him, we realized that his is a body of work less about hours than moments, less about films or shows than particular scenes. His career trajectory has been an unusual one: though he was initially pegged as a marquee leading man, he never quite found success as one. The good stuff came later, when he reinvented himself as a character actor, the kind of gunslinger who could parachute in for a supporting role, crush it in a couple of scenes, and slip out the back door. So to mark his 55 years, we’ve rounded up our ten favorite Alec Baldwin scenes, from film and television, for your consideration. … Read More

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

Awesome Vine Trailers for Modern Classic Movies

By Jason Bailey on

As you may or may not have noticed, your Flavorwire didn’t bother covering this week’s maddening, seemingly frame-by-frame unveiling of the trailer for The Wolverine, a movie we’re not all that worked up over to begin with (seriously, didn’t we already do that once?). It was bad enough when we started getting 30-second teasers for movie trailers — an item that is, when you break it down, a commercial for a commercial. But Wolverine director James Mangold went a step further, first putting out a six-second Vine “tweaser” (yep, that’s what he called it), then the teaser, then the trailer, meaning that the Vine was a commercial for a commercial for a commercial and good God make it all stop please. But one good thing did come out of it: trailer editing house Tokyo got the nutty idea of recutting the trailers for eight modern classics into six-second form and posting them on Vine. The results are oddly captivating; check them out after the jump. … Read More

Film

Director Derek Cianfrance on ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ and the Magic of Ryan Gosling

By Jason Bailey on

It’s tricky to talk to Derek Cianfrance about his new film The Place Beyond the Pines, due to a series of bold narrative turnabouts that would fall squarely into the realm of “spoilers.” I explained my hesitancy to him in a recent telephone interview. “It’s challenging for reviewers,” he grants. “You can’t just go and spend two-thirds of your review describing plot – unless you hate the movie. The reviewers that hate the movie have no problem… they’re excited to go out there and crush it for people.” I don’t hate the movie, and I don’t want to crush it for people. Suffice it to say that it starts as one thing, and then unexpectedly becomes another, and then something else entirely. That seems a safe way to put it — and for Cianfrance to explain how he arrived at the picture’s unique “triptych” structure. … Read More