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Ridley Scott

Pop Culture

Staff Picks: Flavorwire’s Favorite Cultural Things This Week

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Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments. … Read More

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Film

10 Directors Who Just Can’t Leave Their Damn Movies Alone

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It’s a bit of a dead day for new releases on DVD and Blu-ray — you’ve got that Robocop remake that nobody wanted, the sixth season of the diminishing-returns HBO vampire drama True Blood, and the wretch-inducing flag-waver Lone Survivor — but there’s one new Blu-ray that’ll make you cock your head and go “eh?”: the “Ultimate Cut” of Alexander, Oliver Stone’s Alexander the Great biopic that was met with mediocre reviews and box office when it was released a decade ago. In spite of that reception (or maybe because of it?) Stone keeps re-cutting the failed picture, endlessly attempting to make it work. And Stone’s not the only one; there’s a whole set of filmmakers who can’t seem to leave well enough alone. … Read More

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Film

Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Counselor’ Disappoints

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When the Coen Brothers took home a bundle of awards for their 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, including the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, the 1992 National Book Award winner found himself shot into a whole new realm of fame. By then, McCarthy was already on a professional hot streak: in April of 2007 Oprah had picked his latest novel, The Road, for her Book Club. Literature lovers had already known of McCarthy’s greatness, but now everybody knew, and everybody wanted to read him. You could hardly go anywhere without seeing somebody clutching a copy of the book the Coens had adapted, or the post-apocalyptic novel that Oprah loved so much (and would eventually be turned into a well-received 2009 film). … Read More

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Film

30 Criminally Underrated Movie Sequels

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Next week brings the Blu-ray debut of Psycho IIand Psycho III, two 1980s horror films that had the gall, the downright temerity, to follow up Hitchcock’s groundbreaking horror classic. But here’s the thing about these movies: they’re not half bad. There’s no denying that the vast majority of sequels are both unnecessary and terrible, less continuations of stories or honest entertainments than filmed deals. But it’s also unfair to paint all follow-ups with that broad brush; there are a fair number of sequels that are far better than their reputations would have you… Read More

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Film

50 Science Fiction/Fantasy Films That Everyone Should See

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Last week, Flavorwire published a list of 50 science-fiction and fantasy novels that everyone should read – an article that prompted some great discussions in the comments. Since you’re all so wonderfully geeky, we’ve decided to follow up with a list of 50 essential sci-fi/fantasy films, for those who prefer the celluloid to the… Read More

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Film

Great Movies With Embarrassingly Bad DVD Art

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You can’t judge a book by its cover, as we’ve recently discovered with not only books, but also music. That holds true with film as well — not just with movie posters, which have their own problematic elements, but when it comes time to sell you the movie in physical form. For years, DVD distributors have uglified some of our favorite movies — often even eschewing the classy and striking movie posters for Photoshopped, Frankensteined monstrosities of their own making, designed to move units at all costs. We’ve assembled some of the ugliest and most terrifying DVD images for movies we actually like — and provided their original posters as well, just so you can see how far they can fall. … Read More

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Film

10 Trailers That Were Better Than the Movie

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Plenty of people grumble about trailers not delivering the movie they promise, but only one man — New Zealander J. Congdon — got Paramount Pictures to refund the cost of his Jack Reacher ticket, because the movie didn’t include the badass cliff explosion that got him to spend money on a Tom Cruise movie in the first place. In fairness to Paramount, this kind of thing happens all the time; trailers are often cut months before the picture itself is finalized, leading to all sorts of shots, jokes, and scenes that don’t show up in the finished product. It’s all part of the tricky world of film advertising, where the goal is to lure you into the theater, and not necessarily to reflect the tone, story, or (certainly) quality of the film in question. Trailer cutting is kind of an art form unto itself, which is why we so often see trailers that get us all in a tizzy, only to wander out of the movie they’re selling in a befuddled and disappointed stupor. After the jump, we look back at ten movies that were far better in two-minute form. … Read More

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