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.
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. Perhaps because most of the film world (including our own Jason Bailey) has converged in Park City for Sundance, the pickings feel a bit slim, not to mention random. What unites this week’s most and least promising offerings is a whole lot of camp, from space Nazis and hotties with tails to Kirk Cameron and Nicolas Cage.
[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published August 3, 2011.] As Roger Ebert says, “It’s not what a movie is about, but how it is about it,” so who knows, maybe The Change-Up isn’t going to be an inane R-rated update of a 20-plus-years-stale narrative. (But it sure as hell looks like it.) We can’t say we’re too hopeful, though, particularly considering its numb-skulled print campaign, which high-lariously juxtaposes Jason Bateman’s miserable handling of twin infants with Ryan Reynolds’s delighted groping of twin models. They’re both in white! Which do you want — babies or babes? HAW HAW! (Indiewire’s @erickohn twit-pic’ed a piece of “subway film criticism” that nailed the issue fairly effectively.)
The movie poster is a tricky form, a very specific merging of art and commerce that must sell a product but hopefully also convey the essence of the picture in question. Occasionally, the marketers and artists responsible for them can run afoul — either in the court of public opinion, or in the boardrooms of the MPAA, who not only rate films but control their advertising. After the jump, we’ll take a look at ten movie posters that stirred up some controversy — sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
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. This week’s eleven trailers include several peeks at next summer’s blockbusters, which are presumably rolling out in front of the big holiday releases. But there are some smaller (and stranger) titles hiding in there as well; check ‘em all out after the jump. Read More »
A post Jenny Craig (sorry, Jenny) Mariah Carey paid The Rosie Show a visit yesterday. The pop diva opened her talk show appearance by arriving on a giant, suspended disco-glittery moon. This is the same woman who played her own 1995 live performance of “Fantasy” during the birth of her new twins Moroccan and Monroe so they would be born to the sound of applause. (Yes, really.) The singer’s awkward lunar landing calls to mind many celebrity talk show appearances where the stars veered off topic — sometimes avoiding it completely — and humiliated themselves in front of the world with oddball behavior and confusing conversation. Click through to revisit some seriously weird celebrity talk show moments, and let us know who you’d add to the list below. Read More »
This week Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary opens across the country. Based on an early novel by the good doctor of gonzo journalism, the role of Thompson’s stand-in, journalist “Paul Kemp,” is being played by Johnny Depp — who has, with this film, pretty much planted is flag for good on the island of “cinematic portrayals of Hunter S. Thompson.” After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at Depp’s ongoing onscreen personification of the late Thompson, and nine more actors who became the cinematic avatars for distinctive writers and filmmakers.
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 ten new trailers this week, from biopics to historical epics to documentaries to thrillers; check ‘em out after the jump.
1. In her capacity as creative director of Polaroid, Lady Gaga has designed the GL10 Instant Mobile Printer, a device that allows you to print photos from your smartphone via Bluetooth. We assume Polaroid uses the term “designed” loosely. [via NME]
2. Your daily actor/project Mad Lib: Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio are collaborating — as both executive producers and stars — on a cop drama for NBC. The working title is Blue Tilt. [via Deadline]
3. Yesterday, the Internet got all worked up over the news that Real Housewife of DC/White House party crasher Michaele Salahi had been kidnapped. The story of what actually happened is fairly complicated, but in case you have as little time for this item as we do, here’s the punchline: She ran off with Journey guitarist Neal Schon. Really. [via LA Times]
4. Roman Polanski was famously arrested in Zurich at the request of the US Justice Department back in 2009, but he will return to the city September 27 to receive the lifetime achievement award the city’s film festival had hoped to bestow upon him before he was taken into custody. [via Guardian]
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. This week, we’ve got an even dozen trailers for you, and most are for the kind of prestige pictures that the end of the summer movie season usually has us salivating for. Not to worry, though, fans of things that are awful: there’s also a new Ghost Rider. Check ‘em all out after the jump.
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. This week, we’ve got a surplus of thrillers, plus a legal drama and vibrator comedy. So, variety, eh? Check ‘em all out after the jump.
