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Everything Wes Anderson’s Ever Directed, Ranked

By Jason Bailey on

Today is Wes Anderson’s birthday, with the Houston-born auteur turning 44 years old following the commercial and critical success of Moonrise Kingdom. That 2012 Oscar nominee was his seventh feature film, and between that, his shorts, and his many commercials, Anderson has put together a pretty respectable body of work. So how does it all stack up? … Read More

Film

Video Essay: “All of Woody’s Surrogates”

By Jason Bailey on

Woody Allen’s flawed but funny new film To Rome with Love opens this Friday, and while it marks his first acting appearance in one of his movies since 2006′s Scoop, he plays the role of a retired father while continuing his tradition of writing his leading man as a “Woody Allen role” — played, in this film, by Jesse Eisenberg. In his early works, Allen would occasionally engage a young actor to play himself as a child, but as he got too old to play the leading man (okay, let’s face it, after he’d gotten a little too old to play the leading man), he began putting younger actors in roles that were still distinctively Woody-esque, and which said actors played as varying degrees of imitation. We’ve assembled a montage of those actors and some of their most Allen-inspired moments; check out our latest video essay after the jump. … Read More

Partner Buzz

A Look at Wes Anderson’s Go-To Actors and ‘Moonrise Kingdom’

By Doug Levy on

Wes Anderson’s latest, Moonrise Kingdom, has had us chattering for quite a while. The offbeat coming-of-age tale set in ’60s New England is yet another modern classic from every contemporary indie-film geek’s favorite director and, unsurprisingly, it features some familiar faces from previous Anderson flicks. Like many serious moviemakers, the auteur has certain actors he keeps going back to, so we’re continuing our obsession with a look at Wes Anderson’s go-to performers — some of whom currently join “newcomers” Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, and Ed Norton on the fictional island of New Penzance in theaters across the nation. … Read More

Television

Ira Glass Is Headed to HBO with Owen Wilson and Rob Thomas

By Judy Berman on

Ira Glass, Owen Wilson, and Rob Thomas (the Veronica Mars/Party Down creator, not the Matchbox 20 guy) walk into a pitch meeting — but their project is, thankfully, no joke. Variety reports that Glass and his all-star collaborators developing another This American Life-derived series, this time for HBO. Inspired by an incredible segment… Read More

Film

Matthew Weiner of ‘Mad Men’ to Direct First Feature Film

By Judy Berman on

Readers, are you sick of hearing about Mad Men yet? Well, too bad, because today brings some irresistibly intriguing news about showrunner Matthew Weiner. He’s written and is set to direct his first feature film! And it’s a road-trip movie with a cast full of comedians! You Are Here, which will begin shooting in May,… Read More

Film

Video Essay: “And Introducing… Famous Faces in Their Film Debuts”

By Jason Bailey on

This week’s must-see DVD for film fans is Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, Alex Stapleton’s wickedly enjoyable documentary profile of Roger Corman, the B-movie master whose exploitation movies launched half the moviemakers and movie stars of the ’70s. One of the film’s highlights is Jack Nicholson’s remembrances of his first movie roles, including his debut performance in The Little Shop of Horrors (which Corman shot in all of two days). Nicholson’s story got us thinking about other stars and their first movie roles, so we put together this quick video essay with a peek at some other famous film debuts. Check out our latest video essay after the jump. … Read More

Film

Video Essay: “How to Pull the Perfect Movie Heist”

By Jason Bailey on

Tower Heist, Brett Ratner’s late-fall heist picture, is out this week on DVD, so our latest video essay takes a look at this durable genre via a step-by-step examination of how to put a big heist together — according to the movies, anyway. We grabbed pieces from over two dozen heist movies, from here and abroad, from the 1950s to the present, and put them together to show, in seven easy steps, how to pull that one big score. (Bonus points if it’s your last big one before retiring somewhere warm.)

We’ll show you how it’s done with the help of some of our favorite directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Michael Mann, John Frankenheimer, Bryan Singer, John Huston, David Mamet, Peter Yates, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jules Dassin, Sidney Lumet, John McTiernan, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz. And check out our all-star cast: Robert DeNiro, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Keitel, Val Kilmer, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Steve Buscemi, Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Liotta, Danny DeVito, Michael Madsen, Stellan Skarsgård, Tom Sizemore, Vincent Cassel, Owen Wilson, Joe Pesci, Luke Wilson, Sean Connery, Guy Pearce, George Segal, Sam Rockwell, Delroy Lindo, Seth Green, Sterling Hayden, Chris Penn, Mos Def, Lawrence Tierney, Jason Statham, Jean Reno, the Muppets, and many, many more. Find out “How to Pull the Perfect Movie Heist” after the jump. … Read More

Film

10 Actors Who Finally Broke Out of Typecasting

By Romy Oltuski on

Hollywood has a way of telling us who we are and who we should be, and there’s no one more amenable to its requests than its own biggest commodities — actors. The handful of molds are generally unchanging: the blonde bimbo, the unmarriageable brunette, the debonair gentleman, the dopey, dorky friend. Any number of people can fill these steadfast forms — Jean Harlows are replaced by Grace Kellys are replaced by Marilyn Monroes are replaced by Madonnas. But once an actor has been molded into an archetype, it’s often difficult for them to be anything else. Still, even those who get caught in the quicksand of typecasting can sometimes eventually make it out, like these pigeonholed actors, who, for better or for worse, finally played a kind of different role. … Read More

Film

10 Disappointing Movie Comedy Teams

By Jason Bailey on

Nestled among this week’s new theatrical releases is The Big Year, a rather syrupy looking Bucket List riff co-starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. Let’s be clear: we have not yet seen it. But we’re not holding out much hope for a movie that puts those three guys together and cannot find one single laugh to put in a trailer.

How could you combine three men as (granted, not always reliably) funny as these and not come up with a laugh riot? Quite easily, turns out. The recent cinema is all but littered with pictures that teamed up established comedic talents and thus sounded like sure-fire crowd pleasers, but which ended up tickling the funny bones of neither critics nor moviegoers. After the jump, we’ll run down ten comic combinations that misfired. … Read More

Film

Trailer Park: From 'The Human Centipede 2’ to 'Blowfly'

By Jason Bailey on

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. It’s rather a light week, presumably due to the holiday and/or the kickoff of the Toronto Film Festival (which serves as something of a starter’s pistol for the fall movie season), but you can check out the meager pickings after the jump. … Read More