Michelle Williams is already getting Oscar buzz for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, which opens in theaters this Wednesday. “She channels every facet of the legend’s persona — her seductiveness, her neuroses, her candle-in-the-wind vulnerability and sometimes breathtaking naïveté — while keeping her feet planted firmly on the ground,” writes Rene Rodriguez at the Miami Herald. “Williams makes Monroe simultaneously seem larger than life and heartbreakingly human.” Even critics less impressed with the film as a whole — like Ronnie Scheib at Variety or David Rooney at Hollywood Reporter — seem enamored of her performance.
But Williams is just one of many actors who have portrayed iconic stars — some to universal acclaim, and others to widespread derision. Click through as we examine some of the most noteworthy examples. Read More »
Last night, Will Ferrell was the 14th funny person to receive the prestigious Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor award. He follows in the footsteps of giants like George Carlin, Tina Fey, and Steve Martin. Audiences enjoyed a retrospective of his career, as well as tributes from a comedian all-star cast, but it was Ferrell’s acceptance speech that won everyone over with his trademark deadpan style. When the Anchorman actor thanked his wife Viveca Paulin for her support, he of course added, “We have a wonderful life together but I do have to say … sometimes you get a little lippy. You’ve got a big mouth and you like to run it.” Who else brought the funny during speech time? Click through for a look back at ten hilarious speeches.
Read More »
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 eight new trailers this week, running the gamut from a big-budget superhero all-star tentpole to indies about cross-dressing and prostitution. Check ‘em out after the jump.
Read More »
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 »
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 »
Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fug Report! Each week our fashion blogger friends Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the sartorial geniuses behind Go Fug Yourself, will feature some of their favorite looks of the week in this space. We hope you enjoy it!
This week on Go Fug Yourself, we took a walk down memory lane to revisit the past and current hotness of Ralph Fiennes. We wondered what was up with Robert Pattinson’s new, weird, haircut. We gazed longingly (?) at Robert Downey, Jr. — even if he is wearing something that looks like a test pattern. We checked in with Jennifer Aniston, and found her wearing seriously weird shoes. We talked about Christina Hendricks’ boobs (what else?) on the cover of Lucky. And, finally, we put J. Lo to work — look, she’s going through a divorce. She needs to keep busy.
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. This week, we’ve got new films from Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, and Guy Ritchie — but don’t get too excited, there’s a new Adam Sandler movie too. Check ‘em all out after the jump.
Read More »
It’s been all over the news that 30-year-old Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, the Baltimore resident who played a character of the same name on The Wire, has been arrested in a large-scale drug raid similar to the kind carried out on the show. Pearson, whose legal troubles predated the show, apparently slipped back into her old habits when the show went off the air. This seems to be the latest in a perhaps not-so-strange tendency for the lives of actors to be in some way affected by their art, whether for good or for ill. Sure, we know lots of actors fall in love with each other on set, but what about actors that are inspired to more interesting ends? Click through for our list of actors whose lives have mirrored those of their own characters.
Read More »
1. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark finally has a new ending! According to ArtsBeat, “The new finale includes a freshly conceived flying sequence where the character Peter Parker/Spider-Man is airborne, flying around the Foxwoods Theater in a triumphant manner, according to a member of the production team. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because the producers did not want details of the finale given away.”
2. Still need proof that the British version is better? MTV is worried that upcoming episodes of Skins may violate federal child pornography statutes, and as a result, executives have ordered the show’s producers to make changes to tone down some of the most explicit content. [via NYT]
3. Andrew W.K. is hosting a “party” at 4chan. The live Q&A on the site is scheduled for February 13 at 7 pm. [via NYO]
4. Robert Downey Jr. has dropped out of Oz, the Great and Powerful, Disney’s upcoming prequel to The Wizard of Oz that Sam Raimi is set to direct. The studio is in discussions with Johnny Depp to replace him. [via Heat Vision]
5. Will Smith wants to do a remake of Annie with Willow Smith in the starring role. The Karate Kid reboot made more than $350 million worldwide; we bet this one will perform even better given the fact that Jay-Z is in talks to work on the music for the film. [via Variety]
Bonus link: Winona Ryder Finally Agrees To Sleep With Generation X
One of our favorite underrated movies is Wonder Boys, director Curtis Hanson’s film version of Michael Chabon’s terrific novel. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s heartwarming, and it’s got a livewire Robert Downey Jr., an understated Michael Douglas, a pre-Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, a pre-Xenu Katie Holmes, and Frances McDormand (who requires no qualifications) — and, on top of all of that, Bob Dylan’s Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed.” Yep, Wonder Boys is pretty much a perfect movie — except for one flaw.
Read More »
