Michael Fassbender

12 Actors and Directors on Shooting Sex Scenes

This week, we learned that director Harmony Korine cast a woman who could balance “three or four Coke cans on her ass” in his debauched Spring Breakers. It also turns out that star Gucci Mane couldn’t stop smoking weed long enough to successfully perform a sex scene with her in the movie. Vulture interviewed Korine, who revealed that the rapper-actor — who plays a rival drug lord to James Franco’s Alien — fell asleep during his big sex scene. “As he is getting f*cked, I start to hear snores,” said Korine. “He had literally passed out!” It’s an amusing anecdote, but it left us wondering how actors and directors handle those moments on the big screen. Do they really enjoy them? Is it always awkward? Check out the on-screen sex confessions of film and television’s finest past the break. … Read More

Will These 10 Films Be Next Year’s Oscar Nominees?

After months of hype, after hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaigning, after endless precursor award ceremonies leading to the big night, the Oscars are over. So, what’s next? We took a look at the films slated thus far for release this fall — traditionally the time when Serious Oscar Movies are unleashed — and inventoried their Academy-friendly elements to come up with our picks for next year’s most likely… Read More

The Year in Film: 2012′s Sexiest Scenes [NSFW]

There was a remarkable disconnect happening this year between pop culture and political culture, with the former getting kinkier (the ubiquitous 50 Shades of Grey on bookshelves, the Presidential handjob-heavy Hyde Park on Hudson on movie screens) while the latter threatened to get more prurient and Victorian. Points for trying, but good luck — movies were plenty sexy this year, and after the jump, we’ve assembled ten of the year’s hottest moments. … Read More

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

1. If you haven’t seen it yet, this video of The SimpsonsMontgomery Burns endorsing Mitt Romney — because his dog Shamus prefers “Meat” Romney over “Broccoli” Obama — is pretty hilarious. [via LAT]

2. Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender playing Thomas Wolfe and his legendary editor Max Perkins in a film adaption… Read More

The Riskiest Performances in Film

Audiences at the 50th New York Film Festival will get an eyeful of Precious director Lee Daniels’ Florida noir The Paperboy tomorrow evening. The film gets a limited release this Friday. Well before its Cannes debut, the filmmaker was promising a multitude of moments in his story — about a reporter who returns to his hometown to investigate a case involving a death row inmate — featuring stars Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, and Zac Efron “getting down.” The big tease resulted in one of Nicole Kidman’s riskiest performances, which we talk more about past the break. Who else made bold moves in their career? We explore other stars’ riskiest roles, below. Let us know who you’d add to the list. … Read More

Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

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’ve got documentaries, indies, classics, and titles from Louis CK, Steven Soderbergh, Eddie Murphy, Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Parker Posey, Jane Fonda, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Alicia Silverstone, and Chris Farley; check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

10 Essential Films from ‘EW”s ‘Best Movies You’ve Never Seen’ List

Last week, Entertainment Weekly published a list of the 50 Greatest Movies You’ve Never Seen from the past two decades. Stars like Ryan Gosling, Kate Winslet, and Emily Blunt chose several of the selections. EW hasn’t ranked the list, because “ranking movies that are already underrated just seems cruel.” We can’t say we agree with all of their choices — and we wonder if the least-seen films actually predate the past 20 years — but we’ve scoured the massive listing for the essentials so you don’t have to. These are some of our favorites. Tell us what movies inspired you to update your Netflix queue, or which of the 50 films you’d have chosen instead. … Read More

See the ‘Prometheus’ Trailer Recreated Entirely Out of Paper

As we mentioned earlier today, Ridley Scott’s kinda-sorta-maybe prequel to Alien hits theaters later this week, and while we’ll all have to wait to see if the film’s any good or not (it’s currently sitting at 79% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), we’re already impressed by one of its spin-offs — a Prometheus trailer that Travis Betz spent an entire month painstakingly recreating out of paper, shot for shot. Our only constructive criticism: paper Michael Fassbender looks a bit too much like paper Charlize Theron. Regardless, click through, and prepare to be amazed by how much work must have gone in to this! … Read More

The Most Ingenious Re-Casting Decisions in Movie History

Men in Black III will roll into your local cineplex tomorrow (or tonight, probably), and while it is a film with some problems, there’s one element of it we can wholeheartedly endorse: Josh Brolin’s performance as young “Agent K,” the character played by Tommy Lee Jones in the first two MIB pictures (and part of this one). Brolin, who co-starred with Jones in No Country for Old Men and In the Valley of Elah (though they shared no scenes), not only has the older actor’s vocal inflections down cold — he also nails TLJ’s no-nonsense attitude and dry comic timing. But even more impressively, it’s not just a great impersonation; he transcends the limitations of mere impression and creates a wonderful performance, making room within the established character for his own touches. That’s a tough job to do, and not one that has been done successfully all that often. After the jump, we’ll take a look at a few other actors that pulled it off. … Read More

Ridley Scott to Direct Cormac McCarthy’s Film with Michael Fassbender in the Lead?

We recently brought you news about a screenplay that No Country for Old Men writer Cormac McCarthy surprised his agents with. The author’s first spec script is being called The Counselor, which is described as a dark legal drama set in the Southwest. The producers behind McCarthy adaptation The Road promised “sexual obsession,”… Read More