Rep. Spencer Bachus faces insider-trading investigation.
Proposal for gay marriage referendum moves forward in New Jersey.
The ultimate 2012 SXSW trailers page.
Obama plans shift in birth control fight.
A star is born (and scorned).
Click here for pictures photographer Bob Willoughby took of Audrey Hepburn from 1953-66.
The New York Giants win Super Bowl XLVI with 21-17 win over the New England Patriots.
M.I.A. upstages Madonna by flipping off the world during the Super Bowl halftime show.
And for those who only care about the ads, click here.
Ben Gazzara, the original Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway and star of numerous John Cassavetes films, passed away Friday. He was 81.
Iranian hardliners versus the Oscar.
Yesterday, the Art Directors Guild announced the winners of its 16th Annual Excellence in Production Design Awards.
And the Annie Awards spread the wealth last night.
[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
So, apparently David Lynch has added film promotion to his post-Inland Empire activities. How else to explain the certifiable smiling faces and wacko-subversive quotes in the character posters above? The marketing campaign for What to Expect When You're Expecting reads like The Stepford Wives by way of Twin Peaks—soulless, soon-to-be mommy-bots with naughty, rattle-the-picket-fence speech bubbles. It's a wonder there isn't a severed ear resting on Elizabeth Banks's sofa. Based on a self-help book, a la He's Just Not That Into You, What to Expect is a yet another indicator of just how desperate Hollywood is to peddle known brands, even if nobody has a clue about how to sell them. Barring the Lynch theory, it's pretty obvious what happened here: a photo crew got busy with the backdrops, basketballs, and airbrushing, while a "hip and young" writing team started digging through their Someecards. Put 'em together and whaddaya got? Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Bipolar posters. Continue Reading »
This Sunday, Maya Arulpragasam is going to the Super Bowl, which is like Harold Bloom going to Disney World. It's hard to imagine M.I.A. having much fun at America's premiere chauvinist orgy of consumption, and her recent interview with BBC's Radio 1 suggests she was still trying to psych herself up for the event. "If you're gonna go the Super Bowl," she told Zane Lowe, "you might as well go with America's biggest female icons." And indeed, it's somewhat gratifying to think of M.I.A., Nicki Minaj, and Madonna unleashing the hot pink stinker that is "Give Me All Your Lovin'" on the most hallowed ground of American masculinity, during a halftime show typically dedicated to the geezer-rock pantheon. Ultimately, though, not even M.I.A. can make playing the Super Bowl sound badass or defiant. Walking into the epicenter of the American media to sing and dance between millions-per-minute car commercials with two thoroughly mainstreamed pop stars can mean only one thing, and that's that you yourself must also be a pop star. Continue Reading »
Susan G. Komen for the Cure said on Friday it was retreating from a decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
Megaupload founder refused bail in New Zealand.
U.S. jobless rate falls to 8.3 percent, a three-year low.
Roseanne Barr is running for president as a Green Party candidate.
Joshua Land on David Cronenberg and the challenge of the impossible adaptation.
"Have you ever watched a dog vomit and then immediately lap it up?" That was one of the only notes I made after a demo of Madonna's new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin'," leaked last November. I can't be 100% certain where I was going with that indelible image, but it seems instructive, perfectly encapsulating the essence of Madonna's music career as she approaches the end of her third decade as a pop star. Indeed, the very title of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" tells you all you need to know about Madge's primary purpose for continuing to make music today. That might sound cynical, but for the last few years, the Queen of Pop has been peddling a brand, not necessarily art, regurgitating the same themes and images and asking us to continue to consume them, no questions asked. After all, what were songs like "4 Minutes" and "Celebration" if not commercials for Madonna Inc.? Continue Reading »
Author Damien Bona, who I met some 15 years ago right out of NYU and humbled me not long after by thanking me in the pages of Inside Oscar 2, passed away yesterday at the age of 57. He will be missed for his wit, sensitivity, and bringing sanity to the yearly Oscar chatter.
Why Viola Davis gets it right.
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky reviews HBO's Luck.
Why has Lana Del Rey's reinvention caused such a stir?
Armie Hammer is going places.
Peet Gelderblom re-cuts Brian De Palma's Raising Cain.
How the Academy Awards slant our views of movies.
What were the gayest (and straightest) Super Bowl halftime shows?
Ben Marcus urges writers to march on the enemy.
The Help cleaned up and Jean Dujardin pulled an upset at last night's Screen Actors Guild awards.
In other news of The Artist's march toward Oscar, Michel Hazanavicius beat out Fincher, Allen, Scorsese, and Payne at Saturday's DGA awards.
This year's Sundance Film Festival winners have also been announced.
A look back at the film and art career of the Eiffel Tower, a 122-year-old movie star prepping for her facelift.
Matt Zoller Seitz recaps the latest episode of HBO's Luck.
Over the weekend, Mitt Romney widened his lead over Newt Gingrich.
Tomorrow, Wikipedia is going black.
The BAFTA nominations are out.
And the American Cinema Editors have released their 2012 nominations.
Baz Luhrmann confirms that his adaptation of The Great Gatsby will be in 3D.
The lost Pasolini interview.
Cruise ship survivors share stories both harrowing and hopeful.
Todd Haynes talks the contemporary parallels of Mildred Pierce and his possible next project with Julianne Moore.
Glenn Kenny relates to Steve McQueen's Shame.
The DVDs and Blu-rays of 2011 according to Sight & Sound.
James Franco sucks cock in The Broken Tower.
Madonna reveals new album title.
Slate's Katherine Goldstein recalls sitting in the back of a car with Arianna Huffington.
For Salon, Glenn Greenwald on the application of the word "terrorism" by Iran.
Richard Brody on the cool and sober straightforwardness of David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Family intrigue shadows North Korea's secretive dynasty.
Republicans across the nation are working hard to make casting a ballot in 2012 harder than ever.
For Fandor, Alejandro Adams shares his top 9 1/2 films of 2011.
For Paste, Charles McNair's 11 favorite books of 2011.
Spanish man arrested in leak of Madonna single.
Chapter four of "Magic and Light: The Films of Steven Spielberg" by Matt Zoller Seitz, Ali Arikan, and Kevin B. Lee.
Maya Angelou's lesson about black speech.
Below, the video for Lana Del Rey's "Off to the Races":
[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, and this week brings you the worst posters of 2011. For larger images of each poster, and for articles on select posters, click on the links within.]
Dishonorable Mention
A Dangerous Method (Italian): Don't let those pretty faces fool you. While sheer actorly beauty kept the Italian one-sheet for David Cronenberg's latest out of the Top 10, it can't mask the fact that this is an absurdly lazy piece of advertising, a makeup ad masquerading as a movie poster. The French variation at least had the decency to imply what the film is about. This one simply implies studio starfucking. [Poster] [Article]
Atlas Shrugged: Or, at least, the designers did. In addtion to the Tea Party-targeted adaptation of Ayn Rand's doorstopper looking like a dated TV movie, its poster reads like a flyer a Jehovah's Witness might leave on your welcome mat, its beveled, golden, B-grade text beckoning for converts. As expected, the corner-printshop marketing couldn't save the film—a blown opportunity, and part one of a planned trilogy—from tanking. [Poster]
Burning Palms: You don't want to see Burning Palms? A multi-character L.A. drama featuring Shannen Doherty, Adrianna Barraza, a hippie-fied Lake Bell, and "five tales that will f#%! you up for life?" What about if this poster tries to sell it to you? No? Okay. [Poster]
The Golden Globes have announced their nominations and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life leads the pack with 8 nods. Kidding.
Related: Nine observations about the nominations.
Madonna inks new label deal for March album.
The films of Steven Spielberg, an introduction by Matt Zoller Seitz, Ali Arikan, and Serena Bramble.
Armond White on embargo blues.
Every film on this list that I've seen is indeed terrible.
Because 25 is too little, and 100 to gluttonous, PopMatters gives us their 75 best albums of 2011.
[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
Unwieldiness seems to follow Madonna's W.E. wherever it goes, from the Venice Film Festival, where a poor reception eventually led to multiple re-edits, to the marketing department, which in addition to releasing an exhausting trailer that loses your interest halfway through, has produced two posters that fail to amend the movie's lack of promise. The latest image is a monumental improvement over the first, whose top-to-bottom awfulness, complete with feathered headshots that look pulled from different films, is trumped only by that of the sin collage that heralded New Year's Eve. At last achieving a sense of romance, the new W.E. one-sheet repurposes a previously released still, presenting in grayscale a shot of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VIII (James D'arcy) canoodling on the beach in vintage, frowned-upon bliss. The design is reminiscent of packaging from the 1950s and '60s, perhaps for Barbie, or maybe Coppertone, making it the latest thing to strive for Mad Men chic (never mind that the flashback end of the plot takes place in the 1930s). Continue Reading »
A Facebook security flap reveals that Mark Zuckerberg likes to pose with live chickens, ostensibly before killing and cooking them. No confirmation yet if he grows his own potatoes.
SNL's Stefon has some Christmas recommendations for you.
I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday and can safely say that David Fincher's "reimaginings, compressions and reductions" work.
Yes, they could actually come up with five best moments from Madonna's big-screen career.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's latest inductees.
Fuck you, Rick Perry.
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