F

Flavorwire

Star Wars

Film

The Laughable Hypocrisy of Spielberg and Lucas’ Diatribe Against Blockbusters

By Jason Bailey on

At the opening of a new media center at USC Wednesday, the men responsible for six of the 20 highest-grossing movies of all time (eight, adjusted for inflation) issued a stern warning to Hollywood about the scourge of their industry: blockbuster movies. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who have directed and/or produced Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones movies, Transformers movies, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Jaws, are concerned — very concerned — that it’s getting more and more difficult these days to make “really interesting, deeply personal” movies, because Hollywood would rather invest in big event movies with the potential to turn giant profits. Can you imagine such a thing? … Read More

  • 18

Film

10 Beloved Summer Blockbusters the Critics Got Dead Wrong

By Jason Bailey on

It’s easy to get jaded, in this season of After Earths and Hangover IIIs and Furious 6es, but let’s remember: sometimes big summer blockbusters attain that phenomenal degree of success for a reason. There’s nothing wrong with a good, old-fashioned popcorn movie, and those that do it well deserve our praise. But in researching a recent roundup of favorite summer movies, your film editor was shocked to discover how many presumably beloved modern classics were not, in fact, universally acclaimed. So, as with award winners and cult classics, it’s time for another round of “movies the critics got dead wrong.” … Read More

  • 5

Film

90 Amazing Behind-the-Scenes Photos From Your Favorite Summer Movies

By Jason Bailey on

Well, kids, summer movie season is in full swing, if you couldn’t tell from the many numerically organized titles in the weekly box office reports. And while there aren’t as many movies worth celebrating this summer as you might like, it is still the season that sees studios unveiling their big guns, and accidentally capturing the national zeitgeist on the side. You know how much Flavorwire loves to peek behind the scenes of iconic movies, so that’s what we’ve done here — gathering 90 set photos from 19 summer… Read More

  • 4

Pop Culture

7 Bitter Fandom Rivalries From Across Pop Culture

By Alison Herman on

It’s no secret that science fiction fans can get a little overexcited about their franchise of choice, but things got heated last Thursday when the local Star Wars club of Norwich, England and a delegation from the Norwich Sci Fi Club, a group of Doctor Who devotees, got into a physical altercation at the Norwich Sci-Fi and Film Convention, hosted by the Star Wars club at the University of East Anglia. Apparently, the two groups had a longstanding feud that came to blows when the Sci Fi Club decided to show up on the Star Wars group’s turf to get a signature from Gram Cole, an actor from the time-travel series that currently stars Matt Smith. Though fandom disputes don’t usually escalate to blows, this is hardly the first time otherwise peacefully geeky communities have run afoul of each other. Here are some of the most prominent fandom rivalries throughout history, from superheroes to science fiction. … Read More

  • 7

Film

The 50 Greatest Movie Villains of All Time

By Jason Bailey on

The true nature of Star Trek Into Darkness’s villain has become perhaps the Internet’s worst-kept secret, but don’t worry — you’ll not have it spoiled here. Suffice it to say that the film’s antagonist is fiercely intelligent, physically brutal, and hellbent on revenge. In other words, this is a great movie villain. But what makes a truly memorable one? Sifting through the scores of iconic movie bad guys and girls reveals that villainy comes in all shapes, sizes, and levels of intensity; ranking them against each other is a tall order, but your Flavorwire was willing to give it a… Read More

  • 8

Film

10 Mom-Approved Movie Character Crushes

By Alison Nastasi on

Try as you might, mom won’t ever let you forget that she knows what’s best for you. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, we played matchmaker and set you up with a few film characters that mom would approve of. She only wants you to be happy. We chose ten films, guesstimated who you probably have a crush on, and then selected a character from the same movie that mom would prefer you invite over for dinner sometime. Feel free to leave your own mom-approved film character crushes in the comments section. … Read More

  • 0

Film

Handwritten Screenplay Pages From Film and Television

By Jason Bailey on

“You can’t write poetry on a computer,” says Quentin Tarantino, and he can’t write his screenplays on one either — he does it old school, longhand, in a notebook, putting his words in typewritten form at the last possible second. It may make him sound like a Luddite, but he’s far from the only one; plenty of Hollywood’s most successful scribes prefer to work by hand, at least in the early stages. This week, we found out that Lawrence Kasdan wrote The Empire Strikes Back in longhand as well, and a trip down the Internet rabbit hole turned up several more popular films that were worked out by hand before they made it to the screen. … Read More

  • 0

Film

Making Movies With Statistics Isn’t Just Artistic Suicide — It Won’t Work

By Jason Bailey on

Sunday’s New York Times included a story that movie fans should find as terrifying as anything since the last 20 minutes of Silence of the Lambs. In it, writer Brooks Barnes introduces us to Vinny Bruzzese, a “chain-smoking former statistics professor” who has “started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers.” In other words, studios write Bruzzese and his company a check, and in exchange, they’re told how to make their movies as bland, homogenous, and predictable as possible. Sounds like the recipe for a golden age of moviemaking! … Read More

  • 0