The good news, I suppose, is that he’s not actually playing Ferris Bueller. Still, there’s no question that the two-and-a-half minute Matthew Broderick-fronted, Todd Phillips-directed Honda CR-V Super Bowl ad that we told you about last week is positively loaded with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off references and iconography — more than two dozen of them, according to Honda’s “brand manager” (ugh), Tom Peyton. The ad went online Monday, with the predictable response pattern: snarky rage on Twitter, hand-wringing online, and then the required contrarian “In Defense of…” piece. It’s shaping up to be the big game’s most controversial ad (at least until Sunday, when we get the full-frontal assault of “women are nags” spots, but I digress).

So why do we care so much? It’s no longer a surprise to see pop culture icons shilling for big business; hell, I’m old enough to remember the giant controversy that followed the licensing of a Beatles song for Nike ad. (That uproar seems positively quaint these days, when a commercial deal is a giant coup for musicians of all stripes.) The commotion over Broderick’s Honda ad speaks not to “selling out” in general. It’s about the selling out of this character — and not just because he didn’t condone any “–isms” (including, presumably, capitalism). It’s about our connection with Ferris Bueller, who wasn’t just a protagonist. By taking us into his confidence and guiding us through his world, Bueller made us his co-conspirator.

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Last weekend, two new films opened by famous filmmakers who are, to varying degrees, getting the hell out of the film business. Haywire director Steven Soderbergh has been teasing his early retirement for months now; it’s somewhat comical, actually, the way he keeps adding in projects that he wants to do before his self-imposed exile. George Lucas, who spent decades getting Red Tails made, told The New York Times that he was retiring, at least from the business of making blockbuster films (maybe).

Soderbergh is 49. Lucas is 67. Making movies doesn’t have a mandatory retirement age, like fighting fires or flying planes. But should it?

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Quentin Tarantino may be a genius, but the dude’s got weird taste; witness, for example, his video list of the best films of the 1990s, which included the Woody Allen/Jason Biggs movie Anything Else (a flick that even Woody’s fans didn’t like, and we’re a tolerant bunch). And who knows, maybe his oddball sense of what’s good and what’s bad has led to his distinctive voice and style as a filmmaker; soaking up all those bad kung-fu movies and grindhouse epics was, no doubt, part of why he is this director he is. So, y’know, we’ve cut the guy some slack over the years for his weirdo advocacy.

You’ve got to draw a line somewhere, though. And we’re drawing it at his “Best of 2011″ list.

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Was 2011 the year of the quirky, occasionally dark comedy? That’s certainly the theme of the just-announced Writers Guild Awards nominations. Although many of them are also fairly dark, all five of the WGA’s nominees for best original screenplay are comedies: 50/50, Bridesmaids, Midnight in Paris, Win Win, and Young Adult. Dramas do take up three of the five adapted screenplay slots, but this is still a huge victory for comedies, which are notoriously overlooked for major awards. Last year, for instance, only one of the original screenplay nominees (The Kids Are All Right) was a comedy. See the full list of WGA nods after the jump.

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Ah, New Year’s Eve — that special night of the year where we put so pressure on ourselves to have a great time, have a great time, HAVE A GREAT TIME that we end up, inevitably, having a really lousy time. (Don’t pretend like it’s just me.) Part of our self-imposed pressure to enjoy ourselves on the last night of the year is, we contend, the fault of movies, which often present the evening as an occasion for joyous celebration, thoughtful reflection, and new beginnings (often with a new object of affection). But some films also recognize the nightmare of New Year’s Eve, and dramatize that. We’ve assembled a few examples of each after the jump, and humbly present ten on-screen New Year’s Eves that we find memorable — for reasons both good and bad. All will make fine New Year’s Eve viewing — and are far better than New Year’s Eve.

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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published October 7, 2011.] Cartoon creators don’t always borrow personalities from live action film and TV, but when they do, it sometimes isn’t as obvious as we’d think. Have you ever noticed that Milhouse is a flawless animated rendition of The Wonder Years’ Paul Pfeiffer? And Doug Funnie’s retired neighbor? Y’know, that Dink guy who hangs around giving Doug strange advice? He’s most certainly an homage to Home Improvement‘s Mr. Wilson, the wisest man on the other side of Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor’s fence. Check out some quirky cartoons and their live equivalents after the jump, and hit the comments to let us know the others you’ve found. They’re everywhere.

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1. Last night, The Weeknd — whose House of Balloons was one of our favorite debuts of 2011 — released his third mixtape of the year. You can download Echoes of Silence for free at his website.

2. Louis C.K.’s great online comedy special experiment has now succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: In ten days, it’s earned him more than $1 million. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon last night, C.K. said he would donate some of the proceeds to charity, use another portion to pay for the cost of the production, give away $250,000 in bonuses to his staff, and keep only $220,000 for himself. [via ArtsBeat]

3. NBC has released yet another 30 Rock preview. Watch Jack Donaghy learn something he didn’t know about Liz Lemon is this Christmas-themed clip from the season premiere.

4. Lady Gaga has a holiday gift for fans: ”On Christmas Day I will leak to you an unreleased song off Born This Way,” she tweeted. “It was recorded live, in one take, on the tour bus. Uncensored.” [via Digital Spy]

5. Never one to rest on his laurels (or, really, rest at all) Woody Allen has just released some news about his follow-up to Midnight in Paris. The movie is called Nero Fiddled, is set in Rome, and stars Allen himself — along with Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, and Greta Gerwig. Whoa. [via Splitsider]

Taking a gander at this week’s new releases, I see that the time has come for Carnage to open — a good thing, because it’s a crisp, disruptive dark comedy of manners with stellar performances from an ace ensemble (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly), and a bad thing, because it’s directed by Roman Polanksi, so now we’re going to have to talk about Roman Polanski again, which is, well, a dicey proposition. It forces us to ask the question that we had to ask when The Ghost Writer came out, and The Pianist, and Death and the Maiden, and pretty much everything he’s done since he was arrested for (and later pleaded guilty to) unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old back in 1977. It’s the same question we’ve had to ask with every Woody Allen film that’s come out since his affair with companion (and mother to his biological child) Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn — 30 years his junior — was revealed. It’s the same question we had to ask when Melancholia came out earlier this fall, after Lars von Trier’s notorious “OK, I’m a Nazi” press conference at Cannes.

That question: Can you separate the film from the filmmaker? Read More »

Realist painter Mario Soria paints pop art portraits, rendering iconic individuals with surrealistic detail. Andy Warhol, Woody Allen, and Frida Kahlo are the subject of several of the Spanish artist’s monochrome pictures that (not to be redundant here) pop with bursts of color throughout. Soria adds biographical details to each subject — as you’ll notice that Frida Kahlo’s visage is covered with falling baby carriages. The artist wasn’t able to conceive after a near-fatal bus injury where her abdomen and uterus were pierced. Do you like the way Soria treats the sides of his canvas with the same attention to detail, framing Einstein’s portrait in crushed soda cans and Andy Warhol’s with Legos? Head past the break, and let us know. Read More »

Love him or hate him (and we mostly love him around here), one can’t deny the lasting influence and importance of Woody Allen — or his astonishing productivity, knocking out a film a year as writer/director (and sometimes star) for the past, oh, forty years. The sheer volume of his output makes it less than surprising that American Masters’ new profile of the venerable filmmaker, Woody Allen: A Documentary, is a bit of an epic affair: it totals three-and-a-half hours and is running in two parts on PBS. Check out the preview and some surprising clips after the jump. Read More »