The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’ delightful mash note to the silent cinema, is looking like a sure bet for heavy recognition at this year’s Oscars, racking up three SAG Award nominations, five Independent Spirit Award nominations, and six Golden Globe nominations, in addition to awards for best film of the year from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Phoenix Film Critics Society, and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association. It’s easy to see why film critics in particular have taken to it: it evocatively tells the story of the end of the silent era as a silent movie, complete with black-and-white photography and period music (even using the traditional 1.33:1 aspect ratio).
But it’s not the first sound-era film to ape the silent style; aside from Chaplin’s final silent pictures, done well after sound had taken over, there’s Mel Brooks’ 1976 slapstick tribute Silent Movie, and Charles Lane’s 1989 indie Sidewalk Stories. What’s more, countless sound directors have used silent storytelling techniques to great effect, eschewing dialogue (and sometimes even sound effects) to work through their narrative beats via purely visual means. After the jump, we’ve assembled ten great “silent” scenes from the sound era; add your own in the comments.
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[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 10, 2011.] Earlier this summer, a shocking number of our readers flocked to read (and amend) our list of the harshest author-on-author insults in history. But you know who is even more childish, trifling, vindictive, and nasty than your favorite scribes? Your favorite filmmakers. These directors may not have quite the same precision with the written word as those rancorous authors, but when it comes to pettiness, they can’t be beat. After the jump, we’ll run down 30 of our favorite slights, slanders, and cheap shots from filmmakers both classic and contemporary; we’d love to hear yours in the comments.
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Ah, New Year’s Eve — that special night of the year where we put so pressure on ourselves to have a great time, have a great time, HAVE A GREAT TIME that we end up, inevitably, having a really lousy time. (Don’t pretend like it’s just me.) Part of our self-imposed pressure to enjoy ourselves on the last night of the year is, we contend, the fault of movies, which often present the evening as an occasion for joyous celebration, thoughtful reflection, and new beginnings (often with a new object of affection). But some films also recognize the nightmare of New Year’s Eve, and dramatize that. We’ve assembled a few examples of each after the jump, and humbly present ten on-screen New Year’s Eves that we find memorable — for reasons both good and bad. All will make fine New Year’s Eve viewing — and are far better than New Year’s Eve.
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1. Chewbacca is making a non-singing guest appearance on the Christmas episode of Glee. Why? According to Matthew Morrison, there’s “a special within the episode that’s a throwback to the Star Wars holiday special and the Judy Garland Christmas special.” [via THR]
2. Martin Scorsese has revealed that his next film project will be a long-delayed adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, a story which focuses on a group of Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan. [via Slashfilm]
3. This image of Viggo Mortensen on the cover of New York Times Magazine has us convinced that he would have made a much better Benjamin Button than Brad Pitt. [via Best Week Ever]
4. Can you picture Jason Stackhouse having a one night stand with Zooey Deschanel’s awkward New Girl character Jess? Neither can we (unless there was some V involved), but it looks like it will be happening in an upcoming episode of the show. [via Vulture]
5. It has been announced that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood will compose the score The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film that’s believed to be based on the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Given how well this creative pairing worked for There Will Be Blood, we can’t wait to hear what Greenwood comes up with. [via Collider]
Bonus Buzz: Baby Chameleons Are Adorable
There’s a terrific little movie coming out tomorrow called London Boulevard (it’s available now on demand as well), a tough British gangster flick along the lines of The Long Good Friday or Mona Lisa, starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley and directed by William Monahan, who wrote The Departed. But his stylish direction and their charismatic performances aren’t why I can’t get the picture out of my head. It’s because of the Yardbirds.
Three times in the film (the opening credits, the closing credits, and a key point in-between), Monahan fires up “Heart Full of Soul,” the marvelously moody blues-rocker from 1965. It’s a great song, but it’s so well-matched to the film that they’re now all tied up together in my head; it’s pretty safe to bet that any time I hear that song from now on (which, being a Yardbirds fan, will be more often than you’d think), there will be an image of Farrell on his jail cot to accompany it.
And that’s the power of a well-chosen music cue in film; when they’re properly matched, we’ve suddenly married them, and anytime we hear that song we see that scene, and anytime we think of that movie, we hear that song. After the jump, we present ten songs that are forever tied to the movies that showcased them (and, just to keep it fair, there’s no songs from “musicals,” and no songs that were composed specifically for the film in question). Agree, disagree, and add your own in the comments. Read More »
Whether a bombastic symphonic score or a collection of pop hits, we generally know what’s in store when we settle in for a night of watching movies. Some of the most rewarding cinematic experiences, however, come from cases where our soundtrack expectations are upended. Often, this can come from an unlikely marriage of songs to image; at other times, the choice of composer might fall outside of the expected pool. What follows is a list of ten films whose soundtracks don’t behave expected — and are all the more memorable for it.
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1. Green Day’s American Idiot musical has been optioned as a film. Dustin Lance Black (Milk) is in talks to write the screenplay, Tom Hanks is one of the producers, and Michael Mayer — who helmed the stage version — has already signed on to direct. [via Digital Spy]
2. $1 million for 30 seconds. That’s what running a commercial during the final week of The Oprah Winfrey Show in May will cost you, which is about $700,000 less than what you’d pay to run a spot during Academy Awards. [via Vulture]
3. Phil Spector’s lawyers have launched a new appeal against his 2009 murder conviction and are requesting a third trial, claiming that his original sentencing was “prejudiced by testimony from five women who claimed to be victims of gun-related incidents with the producer in the past.” He is currently serving out a 19-years-to-life-sentence. [via NME]
4. Interesting news: Joaquin Phoenix may be coming out of “retirement” to nab the role of an alcoholic disciple in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, an untitled religious drama about the founder of a Scientology-like religion (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Jeremy Renner had previously been attached to the part. [via Slashfilm]
5. Yet another track from the Beastie Boys’ long-awaited new album Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 has leaked. Listen to “Tadlock’s Glasses” here.
Bonus link: We were nominated for a Webby! Cast your vote for Flavorpill’s Weekly Dose in the Online Film & Video – Variety category.
When we first posted about this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, we objected to a couple of exclusions (seriously, you guys, if you haven’t seen Blue Valentine yet, we’re not quite sure how else to sell you on it). But, in general, the ten films nominated this year are all solid choice. And though it’s a change that some have objected to — loudly — we really do like the ballooning of the list from five nominees to ten (and lest we forget, five was only the rule from 1944 on — in the ’30s, they’d nominate up to 12 films for the Best Picture honor). Sure, it makes the list comparatively unwieldy, and adds a few minutes to the awards telecast, which can be a bit of a long haul to begin with. But it allows traditionally snubbed titles — like genre movies, smaller titles, comedies, and animated features — to get a little bit of extra recognition.
Were it not for the ten-nomination rule, we probably wouldn’t have seen Best Picture nominations for Inception, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone, 127 Hours, or The Kids are All Right, and since those are some of our favorite films of the year, we’d have been looking at a far less interesting list. The fact of the matter is, too often there are more than five really great movies in a year — or the Academy simply recognizes the wrong damn movies. If the ten-nominee rule had been in place over the last decade, for example, we might have seen Best Picture nominations for some really great films that got passed over. Take a look at just a few of them after the jump.
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Of particular note amongst this week’s new DVD and Blu-ray releases is Buried, Rodrigo Cortés’s tense, harrowing tale of a contractor, buried alive, trapped for the duration of the film in a 2’ x 7’ wood coffin. This is a risky formula for movie-making — not only must the filmmakers keep our interest in that confined space, but star Ryan Reynolds undertakes the considerable challenge of holding the audience’s attention, basically by himself, for 90+ minutes.
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We usually cringe when we hear about film adaptations of great, difficult literary authors’ books. But we were actually intrigued to learn that There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson is thinking about bringing Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Inherent Vice, to the big screen. Somehow, Anderson and Pynchon just seem right together. Hell, this just might work! And that got us thinking about other directors who seem born to adapt the work of certain writers. See who we paired up after the jump, and suggest your own matches in the comments.
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