Rampart, Owen Moverman’s tough urban drama featuring Woody Harrelson as a somewhat less than principled LA police officer, goes into limited release tomorrow (following a brief Oscar-qualification run in December), and while the movie itself is pretty good, we must take some exception to its bold poster and trailer tag line: “The most corrupt cop you’ve ever seen on screen.” Well, that is a might tall claim. After the jump, we’ll run down ten previous movie cops who could give Harrelson’s Dave Brown a run for his money.
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1. Ladies and gentlemen, this just might be the funniest My Little Pony-related correction that The New York Times has ever issued. [via The Daily What]
2. Hot British actor of the moment Benedict Cumberbatch (who you might recognize from recent roles in War Horse or the BBC’s Sherlock) has come aboard JJ Abrams’ highly-anticipated Star Trek sequel as the film’s villain. [via Variety]
3. Due to issues with the script, Vulture is exclusively reporting that Matt Damon will no longer be making his directorial debut with a film about a smalltown salesman written by Dave Eggers; he is still up for starring in the movie though.
4. Following their recent separation, Zooey Deschanel has officially filed for divorce from Ben Gibbard citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their break up. [via NME]
5. Now that issues regarding rights have finally been hammered out, there’s a Jerry Garcia doc in the works from filmmaker Malcolm Leo that will prominently feature material from a conversation that the director had with The Grateful Dead frontman back in 1987, as well as never-before-seen performances and rare home movies. [via Deadline]
Bonus Buzz: Kanye West’s Bizarre Twitter Rant Is About His Insane New “Design Company”
As the year winds to a close, you’ve seen plenty of “best of 2011″ lists — and we’ve certainly contributed a few of our own to the mix. Wading through them can lead to a sense of fatigue; yes, we liked The Artist and Hugo and The Descendants and The Tree of Life just fine too, but it feels like we’re reading praise for all the same movies and performances, everywhere we look. So, late in the “best of” season, we wanted to take a moment to spotlight a few films and actors who, we feel, are getting overlooked in the year-end shuffle. Our picks are after the jump; yours (we hope) will join in the comments.
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Today at Flavorpill, this supercut of 40 TV Christmas moments reminded us that Saved by the Bell once did its very own rendition of A Christmas Carol – and Slater was Tiny Tim. We found McSweeney’s “Jingle Bells FAQ” illuminating. We thought it was very sweet that Jonathan Ames bought Bored to Death fans $1600 worth of drinks at a memorial for the show Wednesday night. We enjoyed an NSFW animated holiday card from Dan Meth, featuring appearances by both James Brown and Mike Tyson. We explored the Matt Damon Hairodox: “The more awful the hair, the better the performance.” We overanalyzed Carrie Brownstein’s candid photos from the set of Portlandia. We gawked at Hilary Duff’s festively painted baby bump. We got hungry thinking about the ten most mouth-watering moments from the Bible. We reminded you that this is your last chance to demonstrate your generosity and Flavorpill love by donating to Food Bank for New York City. (We’re competing with other NYC media companies to see who can raise the most money for this great cause, and the contest ends tomorrow.) And finally, we wished our readers a very happy holiday, whether you’re observing the birth of Christ, celebrating the Festival of Lights, or airing your Festivus grievances. We’ll be counting down the first half of our top 20 posts of the year over this weekend and will be back with new stuff on Monday.
Contrary to what some of the more curmudgeonly folks you might be reading have said, 2011 was actually a very good year for film, in which countless filmmakers either ignored the industry’s distrust of originality entirely, or found new and interesting ways to smuggle bits of revelation and surprise even into formulaic franchise pictures. You’ll see a lot of “best of the year” lists floating around that run down many of the same easy picks for the year’s best films, but since each film is an accumulation of small parts — scenes, lines, pauses, etc. — we thought it would be fun to pick out some of the little, specific moments that stayed in our movie-going memories over the course of 2011. Ours are after the jump; we hope to see yours in the comments. Read More »
Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fug Report! Each week our fashion blogger friends Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the sartorial geniuses behind Go Fug Yourself, will feature some of the most memorable looks of the week in this space. We hope you enjoy it!
This week, on Go Fug Yourself, we expressed concern about the accessories of both Jude Law and Steven Tyler. We admired Kat Graham, and talked about Carey Mulligan’s bra. We speculated about Matt Damon and were horrified by Justin Bieber. We were super horrified by Courtney Love, and wondered why on earth Fergie went out without zipping up her dress. We appreciated Rooney Mara fixing her bangs, and were pleasantly surprised by Tom Cruise. It’s a Christmas miracle!
Today at Flavorpill, we wished that we’d find a baby seal parked on our couch. We wanted most of the outfits that we spotted in the Fug Girls’ roundup of the year’s most stylish celebrities over on The Cut. We found this image of Matt Damon in an ugly Christmas sweater totally endearing. We previewed a clip from TLC’s new reality show Geek Love. We thought these breast cancer awareness ads starring Wonder Woman, She-Hulk, Storm, and Catwoman were pretty amazing. We got a little misty-eyed while watching this tribute to the film personalities who we lost this year by Turner Classic Movies. We tried to imagine being stuck on a cruise ship with R. Kelly on purpose. We wondered what the fact that there’s no new must-have toy this year might mean — other than fewer mobs. We were curious if these video game cakes taste as good as some of them look. And finally, we decided that tonight we’re going to be watching the The Star Wars Holiday Special in its entirety, complete with the original commercials and an appearance by one Beatrice Arthur. Thank you, MetaFilter.
Today at Flavorpill, we met 100 of the greatest movie villains. We loved this hilarious Thanksgiving-themed spoof on The Hunger Games from McSweeney’s. We heartily agreed with this Thanksgiving Food Pyramid. We found it incredibly endearing that Cameron Crowe made Matt Damon a really sad mixtape to help convince him to take a role in We Bought a Zoo. We couldn’t believe that Jimmy Fallon grounded Questlove for playing “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” during Michele Bachmann’s appearance on his show last night. We decided that this piece on the hushed dangers of startup depression should be required reading for anyone who works on the web. We were thrilled to see this mashup of Calvin and Hobbes and He-Man by illustrator Christopher Tupa. We were hypnotized by this video of flashing faces. We saw what The Walking Dead‘s humans would look like as zombies. And finally, we hoped that this clip is the craziest thing that we see for a long, long time, because it involves the consumption of fluorescent light bulbs.
Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. We’ve got seven new trailers this week, ranging from family-friendly zombies to haunted hotels to psycho teens; check ‘em out after the jump.
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This Friday is a day that Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and Allison Janney probably thought would never come: the release date of Margaret, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s long, long, long awaited follow-up to his 2000 debut film, the Oscar-nominated You Can Count on Me. Shot clear back in 2005 (and capturing Paquin pre-True Blood and Damon at around the time he shot The Departed), the picture has spent the last six years in a perpetual state of post-production, with most parties involved blaming the perfectionist writer/director, who has seemed unable or unwilling to settle on his contractually-guaranteed final cut.
Meanwhile, Fireflies in the Garden, the familial drama starring Ryan Reynolds and Julia Roberts, is finally getting a release as well this fall — three years after its debut at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. (Its extended delay appears to be the collateral damage of its original production company’s shutdown.) With both of those dawdling dates finally coming into view, we thought we’d take a look at a few other movies that took (or are taking) a bit longer than the standard one-to-two-year gestation period to make it to the big screen (or to your television).
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