Our country’s leading literary authorities are getting older. Are we at peace with that? Maybe it’s too early, but there’s a general agreement that as Lewis Lapham, founding editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, and Robert Silvers, founding editor of The New York Review of Books, grow older, the torch is being passed to younger editors, like the co-editors of n+1 and Dave Eggers and The Believer. The same might be said of their illustrators, specifically, that Charles Burns’s portraits for The Believer may some day be placed on equal standing with the dearly admired illustrations by David Levine for The New York Review. Some of our favorites, after the jump, are now on display at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, alongside the Before & After drawings from Burns’s graphic novel Black Hole. … Read More
Steve Martin
Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week
Welcome to Flavorwire’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, there’s good stuff from Steve Martin, Keira Knightley, Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, Michael Caine, Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Marlon Brando, Eva Mendes, Dreama Walker, Laura Prepon, Charlton Heston, Carl Reiner, Sam Worthington, and more. Check them out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More
The 10 Best “Credit Cookies” in Movie History
Iron Man 3 is out in theaters tomorrow, and it should come as no surprise that those who are willing to sit through the end credits — and seriously, they run something like ten minutes and include more names than a small-town phone book — will be rewarded with an extra (and very funny) bonus scene. Some call these little bonuses “credit cookies,” others call them “stingers.” In Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary, Serdor Yegulalp dubs them the “Monk’s Reward,” defined thus: “A surprising final line or image, tagged on after the credits have finished rolling… so named because it usually takes monk-like devotion to sit through the credits to get to it.” The previous Marvel movies made a regular habit of including credit cookies, mostly as preparation for The Avengers, but they’re not the only movies to throw in a little something extra for those who stick around to find out who the unit accountant was. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead, but all for movies that have been out for a year or more.) … Read More
Movie Couples We Want to See Reunited
Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey have hugged out their differences and will appear at a Wayne’s World panel on April 23 at the Academy’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters. Excellent! The drama between the SNL buddies started during Meyers’ Austin Powers days. Carvey became cross after he believed Meyers stole an impersonation he’d done of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. Meyers apparently used it to create his Dr. Evil character.
Wayne and Garth will party onward, and the news inspired thoughts of other famous movie couples we’d love to see together again. Sometimes, chemistry between actors just can’t be replicated with anyone else. Here are several film pairings we want more of — some as their original characters, and several as actors reunited in different roles. This is one of those endless wish lists, so we’ve left plenty of room for you to add your picks, below. … Read More
The Best Punchlines in Film
A couple of weeks back, we perused the entirety of film history and pulled out our very favorite break-up lines — the meanest, the sharpest, and the funniest. For a follow-up, we decided to focus on the latter: selecting some of the best punchlines ever uttered in movies. By definition, a punchline isn’t just a funny bit of dialogue or an amusingly awkward moment: it’s the payoff to a setup, whether in situation or dialogue, and thus must be carefully teed up and smoothly executed. We think these 25 examples do just that, with panache. … Read More
Hilarious Notes on Modern Classics From Clueless Studio Executives
The image of non-creative types mucking about with (and screwing up) movies and television shows is nothing new — we’ve seen it in everything from Barton Fink to The Player to The Larry Sanders Show — but we got a rare opportunity to observe a real-life example of it recently, when a memorandum of notes from the suits at Tandem Productions to the makers of Blade Runner started popping up online. Those hilarious criticisms and suggestions got us wondering about other classic movies that came close to ruin thanks to studio interference. We’ll take a look at Blade Runner and several other examples after the jump. … Read More
The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Justin Timberlake
Saturday Night Live brought back beloved characters, former cast members, and some of our favorite gags. The resurrection business proved to be a lucrative one for the writers, with Timberlake in top form as host and musical guest — including a special appearance from Jay-Z during a retro-styled performance of “Suit & Tie.”
Fresh sketches didn’t fare as well for the five-time host, who sold them with gusto even when they involved a stupid “sex pig” and one too many dick jokes. The cold open with J.T. doing his best Elton John impression, singing about the wacky exploits of Hugo Chávez, made us wish the singer’s link to an Elton John biopic were a reality.
“There are so many exciting things about hosting five times,” Timberlake told us in his monologue. “You get to see old friends. You get to try new things. You get to inevitably let everyone down thanks to overly high expectations — thanks, Internet!” See if J.T.’s prediction came true in our recap. … Read More
Richard Pryor’s Most Fascinating Movie Is a 13-Minute YouTube Video
Tonight, BAMcinématek kicks off A Pryor Engagement, a two-week, 18-film tribute to the film work of the late, great comic genius Richard Pryor. The program is expansive, including his three sublime concert films, two of his pairings with Gene Wilder, his astonishing dramatic turns in Blue Collar and Lady Sings the Blues, and oddities like Some Call It Loving and Dynamite Chicken. All are presented in glorious 35mm, and all are worth seeing. But my favorite Richard Pryor movie (if you can call it that) is not part of the program; it’s not available on 35mm, or on DVD, and it runs only 13 minutes. … Read More
The Fascinating Business Cards of 20 Famous People
In today’s climate of cell phone contacts, Facebook, and LinkedIn, business cards may be becoming a thing of the past. But they can still say a lot about you. After discovering an utterly charming card used by Isaac Asimov, we were inspired to hunt for more famous peoples’ business cards, from Abraham Lincoln to Lady… Read More
The Best Spoof Movies Ever Made
The month of January (as we’ve mentioned before) does not tend to give us the most high-quality new movie releases, and this year doesn’t look any more promising than usual. This week, for example, will bring to your local multiplex A Haunted House, a parody of — wait for it — haunted house movies (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, etc.) from co-writer/star Marlon Wayans, one of the originators of the Scary Movie franchise (which will itself take on Paranormal and whatever the hell else was moderately popular recently in this fall’s Scary Movie 5). Between that series, the unwatchable works of the Wayans family, and the Friedberg/Seltzer oeuvre, these are grim days indeed for the “spoof film,” the formerly distinguished comedy subgenre targeting cinematic styles and trends with goofy humor, slapstick spirit, and a willingness to do just about anything for a laugh. In light of what they have become, it’s easy to forget how many great spoof movies there were; as a reminder, we picked our ten favorites (and ranked them even!), so check them out and let us know if you agree after the jump. … Read More
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