Immortalizing Elaine Benes’ full-bodied dry heave set to music, the Time Warp, and other signature moves from pop culture, Niege Borges Alves’ posters are amusing graphical breakdowns of famous dances. We first spotted our favorite ways to cut a rug on film and television over at Design You Trust. Alves’ Dancing Plague of 1518 series is named after the strange, real-life case of dancing mania that broke out in 16th century France. Some people fervently shook it for several weeks, and a few even died. Don’t let that bring you down, though. Put a smile back on your face by heading after the jump and looking at pop culture’s signature moves.
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Artist Olaf Cuadras Ferré is a man of many hats. Not only is he an illustrator, an art director, and a graphic designer, but Ferré is also a talented poster artist, creating a series of cartoonish images inspired by classic and cult films. The simple design of the posters — featuring iconic characters, evocative typography, and a monochromatic background — is complemented by bold colors and an attention to detail in the depiction of characters’ facial expressions, clothing, and props. Check out the series, which captures the essence of such films as The Royal Tenenbaums, Pulp Fiction, and The Big Lebowski, after the jump, and keep up to date with Ferré’s projects by following his Tumblr. Read More »
Here’s a project that’s sure to divide the Quentin Tarantino faithful: YouTube’s The Crime Writer has posted a re-cut version of Pulp Fiction – all two-and-a-half hours of it — that puts the film’s events in chronological order. Of course, the structure Tarantino imposed on the movie was complex and purposeful; it heightens suspense and creates the kind of confusion that keeps viewers on their toes. But The Crime Writer’s project is thought-provoking, at the very least. As Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds points out, “It’s an interesting experiment that illustrates how editing can alter the dynamic of a film.” If you have a few free hours on your hands, watch Pulp Fiction in chronological order and let us know if it changes your perspective on the movie. Read More »
Everything Must Go, the low-key but masterful Will Ferrell comedy/drama (based on a Carver short story), hits DVD and Blu-ray today, and as with most recent releases, the disc includes a small selection of deleted scenes. More often than not, there isn’t a hell of a lot of value added by that particular bonus feature; we tend to see a lot of throwaway transition scenes, unnecessary exposition, or scenes so poorly written, directed, and/or played that the filmmakers were clearly wise to chop them. But on occasion, for reasons of pacing or time constraints, scenes are lost that are perfectly good in and of themselves — they merely don’t fit into the final version of the picture. That’s the case with Everything Must Go, which includes several charming little scenes that could easily have made the final cut.
So we decided to take a look at some of our favorite deleted scenes on DVD. A word of warning: as this is a phenomenon that only dates back to the age of the laserdisc, there is a decidedly modern bent to our rundown. While many classics were famously chopped by their studios or directors (Greed, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Sunset Blvd. leap to mind), no one saw any reason to keep those scenes around, and they’re (presumably) lost to the ages. (Maybe we’ll return to this topic at a later date.) At any rate, click through to see nine truly great deleted scenes — and one that may very well be the worst deleted scene of all time.
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Here at Flavorpill, we can’t help getting a little excited about the US Open, even though we’re not usually particularly sports-focused. However, what with all the action going on right now, we’ve been noticing just how ingrained sports are in our daily lives, even when we’re not noticing it — we hear sports metaphors daily, look out our windows to kids playing ball on the street, and even engage in some healthy activity ourselves every once in a while. To that end, we’ve collected ten great sports scenes from movies ostensibly not about sports, so we can feel inspired to incorporate our US Open mania into our lives with no guilt. Click through to watch our ten favorite sports scenes from dramas, comedies, and other non-sports-based films, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments!
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We’ve almost arrived at the present in our ongoing adventure through the greatest movie soundtracks ever, but first we need to negotiate the decade when the idea of soundtrack albums featuring a bunch of contemporary bands truly became big business: the 1990s. It was in the ’90s that the concept of “soundtrack” and “score” really diverged, with producers often using the “songs from and inspired by” caveat to create what were pretty much de facto compilation albums of songs that may or may not have actually been used in the movie in question but were still sold under its brand. Even ignoring such malarkey, there are plenty of great soundtracks to be found from the ’90s – here’s our selection for ten of the best.
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If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if The Simpsons and Pulp Fiction collided — beyond this parody episode from Season 7 — here’s your answer, complete with the film’s infamous injection scene. Jesse Jordan of Coffee and Cookies writes: “Back in ’94 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage in LA some drawings leaked out of Film Roman. I don’t know who did these, but they’re great.” Click through to check out a slideshow of his favorite sketches, and be sure to tell us in the comments if you happen to know who drew ‘em.
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Do you enjoy quoting The Big Lebowski while lounging in a bathrobe, sipping on a White Russian? Can you deliver Jules and Vincent’s “Royale with Cheese” dialogue from Pulp Fiction verbatim? Well, then we have some exciting news for you! Beginning on April 7th, New York’s Bold Hype Gallery will be hosting a three-day pop-up show featuring works from over 100 artists who have been inspired by the films of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. Click through to preview a selection of the art that will be on display.
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While peppering a movie with f-bombs is nothing new (see: Scarface and Sid and Nancy), filmmakers have become increasingly comfortable with throwing the queen mother of dirty words into their work in recent years. Above, we take a gander at the films with the highest usage. (Click here for a closer look.) Are you as surprised as we are that classics like Pulp Fiction (265 “fucks”) and The Big Lebowski (260 “fucks”) didn’t even crack the top 12?
Some of us (judging from the comment thread on our best-of-YA-fiction post, a lot of us) may have spent an obscenely large percentage of our childhoods shining flashlights under covers and making ourselves carsick in order to finish just one more chapter in our favorite paperbacks. For one of us — ahem — the flavor of the week was usually a mystery, and we’re not referring to Encyclopedia Brown. It started with Nancy Drew and soon took a turn for the British, with Dame Agatha Christie and her subversive band of old maids, foreign detectives, and quietly scheming vicars. The next phase got a little pulpier: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, wisecracks, whiskey.
Unfortunately the grand era of detective novel book design had long since passed, epitomized by the Dell Books imprint running from 1943 to 1952. During the nine year span, Dell would publish a staggering 577 books with “map backs,” an illustrated feature on the back cover that set the scene for the twisty plots within. After the jump, take a peek at some of our favorite discoveries.
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