Benicio Del Toro’s Werewolf Bar Mitzvah Wolfman trailer is finally here. Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, Del Toro; it seems like a gimme, but this trailer makes it look like an old-timey Wolverine to me. He doesn’t want to be transformed! He breaks through restraints! He has superstrength! A pale lady is there! Hoo-ooowl!
Remus Lupin? Oz from Buffy? Teen Wolf? Where will The Wolfman rank?
Was anybody else totally charmed by Wolfgang Puck on last night’s Top Chef premiere? The restaurateur extraordinaire was funny, smart, and dare we say…puckish? “This is like a golfball,” he cracked at one point as he chucked Laurine’s bacon doughnut across the room, leaving Tom in stitches. Throughout the episode, he delivered sharp critiques — both good and bad — with that great Teutonic accent, like Simon Cowell with a mouthful of wurst. Personally, I’d love to see him come on as a full-time replacement for the mercifully MIA Toby Young (who’s still listed as a judge on the show’s site). Head over to our full TV Watch for a recap, and then check out a few of Puck’s tastiest comments below:
“I would throw him with the steak in the fryer, too!” (said of Hector, who deep-fried his steak to give it a Latin flavor).
“Everybody has to put purées underneath everything now. It’s like people think we need the steak, and then we need some babyfood with it.”
“You cook that at home, those people will never come visit you again,” (said of Jen Z.’s losing chile relleno with seitan).
What do you think, PopWatchers? Should Puck be a permanent addition to the Top Chef team?
The moment a grateful filmgoing nation has waited for is here — the first widely available look at James Cameron’s decades-in-the-making sci-fi wonderama, Avatar. I know there will be, like, two-plus more hours when it unspools this December, so this teaser barely scratches the surface of what the movie is actually about…but I’m kind of underwhelmed. There’s a definite Attack of the Clones vibe to the creatures — which feel like beasts from the sketchbook of an insanely talented 12-year-old — and the world, while expertly realized, just doesn’t carry the charge of the New. I feel like I’ve seen the same landscape on the side of at least one stoner’s van back when I was in high school (the dude who listened to a whole lot of Rush and Yes and quoted Tolkien to score with theater chicks).
It’s entirely possible that the director who gave us The Terminator and Aliens has a whole lot more up his sleeve; all I can say is, I hope so. Where do you come down on the Avatar teaser? Impressed or depressed?
There was a time when, at the end of a bad movie, I would say, “Well, that’s an hour-and-a-half of my life I’m never getting back.” These days, however, I’m likely to bemoan, “Well, that’s two-and-a-half hours of my life I’m never getting back.” I don’t want to specifically blame anyone for the bloated state of many blockbusters. Let’s just say that if Orson Welles managed to tell the entire life story of Charles Foster Kane in two hours (and reinvent cinema while he was at it) then surely a sequel about transforming robots doesn’t need to be 25 minutes longer.
The antidote to this can be found at comedy website 5secondfilms, which is sort of a funnyordie for people who really don’t have the time to watch Will Ferrell being berated by a small child for two minutes. Every weekday there’s a new sketch which lasts, yes, just five seconds (you can view the latest example below.) Some are hilarious. Some are not. And a few are NSFW-ish. But, hey, if you don’t like what you see then at least that’s only 5 seconds of your life that you’re never going to get back.
I saw this week’s Pop Culture Club assignment, District 9, right after returning from two weeks vacation spent in a pastoral New England town with no internet and little TV. I spent most of my time reading books; the most action-packed thing I observed was the extreeeeeme hatching of sparrow eggs in a nest above our porch. So by the time I returned to New York, my senses had retracted back to circa-1983 level of sensitivity, averse to shrieking movie speakers and quick-cut, bombastic special effects. When the lights in the theater dimmed, I was immediately screamed at by a series of howlingly assaultive trailers, each one more jaggedly abrasive than the last: Halloween 2, Sorority Row, The Fourth Kind—I don’t remember which was which, because they all blurred into one screaming, flashing, mash-up of rage that I’m pretty sure wished me ill. By the time the theater ad came on telling everyone to please be quiet (to which I thought, “Practice what you preach, movie theater!”), I thought I’d made a terrible mistake by coming as I was in no mood for two hours of booming violence. READ FULL STORY »
As promised, our third quarterfinal results episode offered its share of tense match-ups. Jeffrey Ou over Bri. Mario & Jenny over Marcus Terell and the Serenades. Lawrence Beamen over…okay, we were expecting that one. Regardless of personal preference (and with one iffy exception), you have to admit that last night America selected five strong additions to the Top 20. To review:
After wasting eight minutes of our time recapping the previous night’s performances (this would be infinitely more enjoyable if introduced by Kiefer Sutherland: “Previously, on America’s Got Talent…”), Nick brought out the first two contenders: piano players Jeffrey Ou and Bri. Jeffrey, of course, had suffered a pretty major technical mishap during his performance that all but guaranteed — or so I thought — his elimination. Bri, while a little “off”, still played and sang her way through a unique and engaging version of “Pokerface”. America voted…and decided that half a song, incomplete, was enough to send Jeffrey through to the next round. Wrong choice, America! Jeffrey was screwed over by the show’s producers when he wasn’t afforded another chance to perform the night before, but what we saw from him was still inferior to Bri’s heartfelt (full) song*. Can Simon Cowell intervene again? READ FULL STORY »
Yesterday, Mandi and I were similarly intrigued by the 10 Sculptures Made of Butter from the Iowa state fair featured on Mental Floss. We agreed that butter sculptures should probably be on TV, but soon realized that our concepts of the show differed greatly. She assumed the series would be a documentary-style, real-life Best in Show, following the butter sculptors as they worked their magic before the state fair; whereas I thought it was obvious that the sculptures themselves would be the characters, perhaps a dysfunctional family (The Buttermans) who must “stick” together to avoid contact with their creepy neighbors (The Breadings and The Nighves). We leave it up to you.
PHOTO CREDIT: hedgeman‘s Flickr photostream
Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are back with a new posse of diva fashion designers as Project Runway returns – FINALLY! – to television tonight after a 10-month absence. We know the action in season 6 takes place in a new city (Los Angeles) and on a new network (Lifetime), but what else can we expect to see this evening? On the latest episode of Must List Live!, Josh Wolk and I sit down with Runway expert Missy Schwartz to get her take on the new season and new contestants. Not only that, but Tim Gunn himself shows up to tell us what’s on his Must List. (Hint: It includes a culinary delight you might not necessarily expect from the style savant.) So click on the video below to get the advance scoop on the new season, and then let us know which contestant you’ll be pulling for.
Take your seats, class: Senior writer Chris Nashawaty continues his in-depth weeklong tutorial on all things Quentin Tarantino for the latest installment of EW University. Check out our gallery of 20 Tarantino movie and movie poster faves , our Quentin Tarantino trivia quiz, and our take on the original 1978 Inglorious Bastards.
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: Playing spot the reference
Any time you sit down to watch a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, you’re not just watching that movie, but all of the movies he’s ever seen. Let’s face it, the guy has never been shy or apologetic about his movie-love. You could say that when Tarantino name-checks some arcane chop socky movie or slyly alludes to a Eurotrash cheapie, he’s giving a shout-out to the cognascenti — his fellow movie geeks — in the audience. In other words, when you watch a movie by QT, you’re actually watching two movies at the same time: the one onscreen and the one between the lines.
Some may find this pretentious and annoying. Personally, I dig it. I always walk out of a Tarantino flick or leave an interview with Tarantino with another dozen films to add to my Netflix queue. And those movies will lead me to other, even more obscure movies. It’s like the gift that keeps giving.
For example, the names of the characters in Reservoir Dogs (Mr. White, Mr. Orange, etc.) are a tip of the hat to 1974′s The Taking of Pelham 123, where Robert Shaw and his band of subway thieves used the same monickers. In Kill Bill, Daryl Hannah’s assassin character wears an eye patch and whistles a theme song when she goes to kill Uma Thurman in the hospital — the eye patch is a nod to Christina Lindberg in 1974′s Swedish revenge film They Call Her One Eye (a.k.a. Thriller: A Cruel Picture), and the theme is Bernard Herrmann’s music from 1968′s British chiller Twisted Nerve. Even the title of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is an homage to one particular character’s name in the wonderful 1973 Boston-set crime movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
