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43 Great Tina Fey Quotes for Her 43rd Birthday

By Jason Bailey and Chloe Pantazi on

One of Flavorwire’s favorite people, Tina Fey, turns 43 years old today, so we’re marking the occasion in the best way we know how — by rounding up some of the funniest witticisms and best advice from the brilliant and funny writer/comedienne. We’ve got one for every year, so click through for her thoughts on working motherhood, celebrity, homophobia, strip clubs, and Mark Wahlberg’s… Read More

Film

15 Great Filmmakers to Follow on Twitter

By Jason Bailey on

Film fans on Twitter have known for a few weeks now that Steven Soderbergh has what he calls “sort of a shadow name” where he’s “posted a few things” on the social networking site; over the past 24 hours, that feed got a lot busier, as Soderbergh (under the unverified handle @bitchuation) started tweeting a novella. Semi-anonymous or not (and even if confining his tweets to novellas and absurd observations), Soderbergh joins a growing body of terrific filmmakers using the medium for film conversation, self-promotion, and peeks behind the curtain. Flavorwire rounded up some favorites back in 2010, but three years is an eternity in Twitter time, so here are a few more recommendations to add to your “following” list. … Read More

Web

Is will.i.am’s ‘#willpower’ the Death Knell for the Hashtag?

By Tom Hawking on

There should be a law that adoption by the ghastly will.i.am immediately signals the absolute official end of a phenomenon’s cultural credibility. As such, it’s interesting in a mildly queasy way that he’s chosen to bless his fourth solo album — working title: Black Einstein — with the oh-so-hip moniker #willpower. And, just in case you didn’t get the fact that he’s down with the Internet kidz, its lead single is called “#thatPower.” Oh yes, dear readers, will.i.am is all about the hashtag. … Read More

Celebrity

Celebrities as Media Critics: How Grimes and Jay-Z Are Dictating Their Own Mythology

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re a Grimes fan, you’ve probably already read her fantastic Tumblr post about how she’s tired of the way she’s portrayed in the media. If not, it’s definitely worth a look, because it’s basically everything we love about Claire Boucher — it’s articulate, intelligent, and heartfelt. Given her ambivalence about her Tumblr posts being reported as news, it’s not clear how she’ll feel about the response to the post, which is being reported everywhere. Still, it’s a pretty fine example of how today’s celebrities — for want of a better word — are using their Internet presences to push back in a meaningful manner at how they’re portrayed in the media. … Read More

Film

Awesome Vine Trailers for Modern Classic Movies

By Jason Bailey on

As you may or may not have noticed, your Flavorwire didn’t bother covering this week’s maddening, seemingly frame-by-frame unveiling of the trailer for The Wolverine, a movie we’re not all that worked up over to begin with (seriously, didn’t we already do that once?). It was bad enough when we started getting 30-second teasers for movie trailers — an item that is, when you break it down, a commercial for a commercial. But Wolverine director James Mangold went a step further, first putting out a six-second Vine “tweaser” (yep, that’s what he called it), then the teaser, then the trailer, meaning that the Vine was a commercial for a commercial for a commercial and good God make it all stop please. But one good thing did come out of it: trailer editing house Tokyo got the nutty idea of recutting the trailers for eight modern classics into six-second form and posting them on Vine. The results are oddly captivating; check them out after the jump. … Read More

Books

The Funniest Twitter Reactions to Elizabeth Wurtzel’s ‘New York’ Magazine Piece

By Emily Temple on

Yesterday evening, New York Magazine’s The Cut published an essay by Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and a lot of pretty controversial articles over the years, entitled “Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts Her One Night Stand of a Life.” It’s a rather rambling and entitled affair, though not completely without its moments, we’d say. Twitter, by and large, hates it. In case you’re not following along, we’ve collected the funniest responses to Wurtzel’s piece (as of this morning) after the jump — check them out below, and let us know whether you agree, and what you thought of the article in the comments. … Read More

Pop Culture

Bret Easton Ellis' Worst Tweets of 2012

By Emily Temple on

It’s year’s end, which means we’re doing a lot of roundups of our cultural touchstones from 2012. But not all roundups have to be of the things we liked, right? Enter American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, whose Twitter feed, as much as we hate to admit it, definitely ranked on our cultural radar this year. To be honest, a lot of what he says is truly hilarious, he recommends good books (he’s been on about Skippy Dies recently, which we also loved), and we actually find his insistence that Magic Mike was the best movie of 2012 kind of refreshing. But at this point, he’s much more famous for the pretty awful things he says than he is for the clever ones. And he can be an enormous jerk. Remember when he said bullying victims should “man up“? Or how about the time he compared watching Glee to stepping into a puddle of HIV? Or the time he celebrated J.D. Salinger’s death? Well, he’s only stepped up his game this year. After the jump, we present BEE’s most offensive, most left-field, and flat-out worst tweets of 2012. Feel free to argue with us in the comments. … Read More

Books

21 Famous Authors Write 140-Character Novels

By Emily Temple on

We’ve all been lectured about the simplistic perfection of Ernest Hemingway’s six-word short story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”), but would it be possible to write a bite-sized novel the same way? This week, The Guardian asked 21 authors to try their hands at “Twitter fiction” — an entire “novel” in 140 characters.… Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we found out what silicone rugs look like. We indulged in a few animals acting like sharks. We met the first Russian pig in space. We discovered a four-hour video memoir of Mr. Rogers. We noticed the Gathering of The Juggalos attendees… Read More

Film

Is Ai Weiwei’s Twitter More Important Than His Art?

By Marina Galperina on

“Twitter is the most important medium of our time,” Ai Weiwei proclaims in Alison Klayman’s new documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and he demonstrates this repeatedly over the course of the next 91 minutes. He is China’s most famous contemporary artist, the most displeasing to its authorities, and the most accessible to the international public, both through his art and… on Twitter.

When Ai Weiwei infamously disappeared in 2011, the documentary, which Klayman first began work on as a favor to a friend, was already completed. Only the final portion of the film, edited after the fact, includes the 80 days Ai Weiwei spent under the arrest at an undisclosed location in solitary confinement, his convoluted, demonstratively suspect investigation, and the censorship and surveillance forced upon him after his eventual release — most importantly, Ai’s compulsory Twitter self-censorship… for a second there. … Read More