The 12th annual Tribeca Film Festival came to a close Saturday night with a rare, special screening of The King of Comedy, perhaps the most underrated collaboration between Martin Scorsese and festival co-founder Robert DeNiro. That event ended a week and a half of premieres, screenings, and events, and while your film editor was only able to sample a fraction of the dozens of movies at this year’s TFF, all of them made an impression — for good or ill. … Read More
Paul Giamatti
10 Long-Awaited Cult Movie Projects We’d Like to See Kickstarted
After five years of “what ifs” and “maybes” and “we’d like tos” and various other forms and hemming and/or hawing, the feature film follow-up to the much-beloved, low-rated TV masterpiece (I do not throw that word around lightly!) Veronica Mars is finally really going to happen — thanks to a studio-approved Kickstarter campaign to raise preliminary funds that pretty much wildly exceeded anyone’s expectations. Of course, any silver cloud must have a gray lining, and the project’s tricky intermingling with the kind of Faceless Bad Corporation the platform was ostensibly created to circumvent has already prompted plenty of hand-wringing. But the project’s remarkable Kickstarter success (it reached its goal in ten hours) is a testament to the feverish nature of the show’s fans — and is, in fact, a good way for said fans to prove to the holders of rights (and purse-strings) that they’re serious about supporting the films they’re passionate about. So, could other long-desired films adopt a similar approach? After the jump, we suggest ten more cult films that could finally find their way to the big screen by following Veronica’s lead. … Read More
The Saddest Comedies Ever Made
As we move into Thanksgiving week, DVD players and cable networks across the land will be cuing up our favorite turkey day movie, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. One of its viewers may very well be Flavorwire favorite Emma Stone, who recently told Entertainment Weekly that Planes is the movie that made her want to be an actor — specifically, Steve Martin’s late-night motel “Chatty Cathy” tirade. Miss Stone explains, “You go from laughing hilariously at Steve Martin to your heart breaking for John Candy in that one scene, and that was, I think, the first time that I saw that you could do both.” Planes, Trains wasn’t the first movie to prove that you could “do both” — i.e., mesh the funny and the sad with equal effectiveness. But it’s one of the best, and after the jump, we’ll take a look at that and a few other very sad comedies. … Read More
10 Great Performances in Truly Terrible Movies
There was little reason to expect that a jukebox musical filled with so-bad-they’re-good ‘80s pop songs was going to be any good whatsoever, and true to prediction, Rock of Ages was one of the summer’s biggest dogs. It’s out tomorrow on DVD and Blu-ray, though, which exponentially increases the chances that one of your friends (the one who’s always wanting to go karaoke-ing, probably) is going to buy it and insist on having it on at some point in your friendship. Fear not: though Rock of Ages is an execrable film, it has (contrary to any and all expectations) a genuinely enjoyable and unexpectedly witty Tom Cruise performance buried underneath all the hairspray and Journey covers. Playing Stacee Jaxx, a rock star long removed from anything resembling reality, Cruise is totally credible and genuinely funny; there’s a good 20-minute stretch in the middle where they just turn the movie over to him, and it’s the only point in the entire running time where Rock of Ages actually works. As a thank-you to Mr. Cruise and all of those who make the unbearable ever-so-briefly watchable, we put together a list of a few of our favorite great performances in terrible movies; see if you agree with our picks after the jump. … Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. The lineup for this year’s Venice Film Festival has been announced, and among the 17 films in competition are new works from Terrence Malick (To The Wonder), Brian De Palma (Passion), and Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers). [via ArtsBeat]
2. If you didn’t grab a copy on Record Store Day, you can stream… Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. PBS has announced that Ken Burns’ next project for them will be a seven-part, fourteen-hour series called The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, and will feature voice work by Paul Giamatti (Theodore), Edward Herrmann (Franklin), and Meryl Streep (Eleanor). [via Vulture]
2. If you’re a Boss fan with a good half hour or… Read More
This Week in Trailers: ‘Ted,’ ‘Total Recall,’ ‘To Rome with Love,’ and More
Every Friday here at Flavorwire, we like to gather up the week’s new movie trailers, give them a look-see, and rank them from worst to best — while taking a guess or two about what they might tell us (or hide from us) about the movies they’re promoting. We’ve got eleven trailers for you this week, including new films from Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, and Seth McFarlane, plus Whitney Houston’s final role and Katy Perry in 3D. (Seriously.) Check ‘em all out after the jump, and share your thoughts in the comments. … Read More
10 Biopics That Actually Worked, and Why
Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar Hoover biopic J. Edgar is out on DVD today, following a fall theatrical run notable mostly for its lack of awards consideration; the film, and particularly Leonardo DiCaprio’s leading role in it, had been the object of much presumptive Oscar buzz (hitting, as it does, multiple circles in the Oscar Venn diagram: slightly villainous, based on a real person, wide range of aging, secretly gay). But the film underwhelmed, for one very simple reason: we’re just getting tired of biopics.
The biographical film portrait has been a venerable institution since the early days of cinema; Georges Méliès made a Joan of Arc biopic clear back in 1900. And while there have been scores of great ones, the tropes of the form (the birth-to-death chronology, the trials and triumphs, the romantic struggles, etc.) are so firmly established that the only biographical films that really make an impression any more, it seems, are those that buck the trends and experiment, or at least futz with the form a bit. After the jump, we’ll take a look at ten great biopics that made an impression, and float some theories as to why. … Read More
Trailer Park: Docs, Death, and Dolly
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 the joy of Elmo and Dolly to the horrors of Katherine Heigl; check ‘em out after the jump. … Read More
What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office
Today at Flavorpill, we couldn’t believe how adorable elementary school-age Kanye was. Don’t you just want to pinch his cheeks? We got inside of Sarah Palin’s head thanks to New Yorker editor Ben Greenman and the pseudo science of phrenology. We saw proof that Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino is… Read More
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