Image Credit: Image provided by Glass Eye Pix
Halloween is creeping up on us like a zombie making its way towards the villain and/or hero’s funny best friend in the third act of a horror movie. And to help whet our appetites for the season of scares, indie film company Glass Eye Pix (The House of the Devil, Wendy And Lucy) has confirmed the details for a series of live events at which its second slate of ghoulish Tales From Beyond The Pale audio plays is set to be taped.
Image Credit: Keith Bernstein
SPOILER ALERT! If you’ve read Lisa Schwarzbaum’s review of Trouble With the Curve, you know she found it a tad predictable. And she’s right: We knew the nice kid was a big league pitcher in the making from the moment he threw those peanuts to the totally unlikable hot-shot hitter being scouted for the Braves by Clint Eastwood’s Gus. We knew Mickey (Amy Adams), Gus’ lawyer daughter who was along for the ride because her father’s eyesight is going, would eventually fall for Justin Timberlake’s Johnny, a pitcher once recruited by Gus who blew out his arm when he was traded to the Red Sox and then became a scout for them. We knew even though Gus told the Braves — and Johnny – not to select the hot-shot because he couldn’t hit a curve ball, the Sox would believe Johnny and pass on him and the Braves wouldn’t believe Gus and take him. We knew Johnny would get fired and end his budding romance with Mickey, thinking that she and Gus had planned to steal the No. 1 pick all along. We knew Mickey would, in the end, bring the nice kid for a tryout with the Braves and he’d strike out the hot-shot. We knew Mickey would quit her job at the boys’ club law firm that wouldn’t make her partner and become a sports agent — and get back together with Johnny (who’d be waiting by his car like he was Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, because what thirtysomething woman wouldn’t want that?). READ FULL STORY »
The announcement of Heineken’s partnership with the new James Bond movie Skyfall was met with mixed emotions: It’s a beer, but, it helped finance the movie. Let the debate begin again as Daniel Craig’s first commercial as Bond begins airing Friday. It involves a train, a protegé, and Bond Girl Berenice Marlohe. Watch it below. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Phil Bray
So, you’ve spent your weekend watching, dissecting, and violently debating Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. But what now?
The feted filmmaker has yet to confirm his next project, although he has begun the process of adapting Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice into a movie. But since that’s far from concrete, P.T. Anderson’s next subject is still very much up in the air.
So PopWatch has some suggestions!
Since we’ve already divined the ingredients to what makes an Anderson feature go, we figured we’d offer up some ideas for his next one. Keeping in mind that the director has a soft spot for compelling huckster-hustlers propagating some sort of American dream/scam/movement, we came up with a few topics or figures that we think would serve as great backdrops for his next movie:
Image Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Google wants to make playing “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” easier.
The search engine has launched a new tool known as the Bacon number. By typing in any actor’s name followed by the words “Bacon number,” Google will tell you the degree of separation between that actor and Mr. Bacon.
This tool stems from the party game, which tests movie buffs’ cinematic knowledge by challenging them to find the shortest way to connect any random actor to Bacon. With the new Google tool, you’ll never lose the game again! Well, that’s no fun. Who wants to play a game no one can lose?
That’s why we’ve decided to reverse the rules. Using the Bacon number tool, we challenge you to find the largest degree of separation between Kevin Bacon and a famous person of your choosing. Be warned: this is surprisingly hard. For example, you’d think Kim Kardashian would have a high Bacon number, but there’s actually only a two degree separation between the two. (Thanks, Denise Richards.) Here’s what we found: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Anthony Hunt
Warning: If you’re planning on talking your way through Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 2: This Is Really It, stay away from Prince Charles Cinema in London. Slashfilm.com reports that the theater is employing a new strategy to deal with chatterboxes: Ninjas.
The volunteer ninjas are ordinary cinephiles who volunteer — in exchange for free movies — to guard the theater against wayward viewers.
It isn’t every day I get a severed foot in the mail. Not since I moved out of New Jersey, anyway. (Only joking! I’ve never lived in New Jersey.) Anyhoo, yesterday I did receive a highly realistic but allegedly edible lower extremity to promote the release this Friday of Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth entry in the hugely successful zombie franchise which stars Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Sienna Guillory, Boris Kodjoe, and Colin Salmon, amongst others.
Now, I could have taste-tested the said food myself. But, being a generous fellow, I thought I would gift it to our hardworking interns and let them report back. You can read their assessments — and view a selection of comical, fake foot-eating pics — below.
Image Credit: MM
Lana Del Rey released her first studio album in January, but she also has a passion for film. In a new interview with the Australian edition of Vogue (Via NME), Del Rey reveals that screenwriting is her “happy place,” adding that she’d like to “branch out into film work and stay there.”
Del Rey didn’t provide any details about this script, which she says she is working on now, but we thought we’d brainstorm a few for her.
1. A “stiff, distant and weird” sophomore must overcome her stutter to face off against her high school’s mean girls clique in a talent competition. She finds her voice (and love?) with a mysterious stranger in blue jeans and a white shirt only to learn that he is dying of cancer. Oh, and the mean girls perform “Jingle Bell Rock.” Obviously.
American auteur director Stanley Kubrick, who helmed such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket, is legendary among cinephiles for his unique, obsessively symmetrical imagery. And now, a fan has paid homage to the late icon’s visual style with a new supercut on Vimeo. The title, “Kubrick: One-Point Perspective,” refers to the graphic terminology for a vanishing point that directly faces the viewer. One-point perspective, normally applied to painting and architecture, is a technique with which Kubrick was intimately familiar: he worked for years as a photographer for Look magazine before transitioning to filmmaking, and he famously modeled shots from the period piece Barry Lyndon on 18th-century paintings by artists like William Hogarth. The video sets a series of clips from Kubrick films to a rousing version of “Lux Aeterna” (best known to movie fans as the theme song from Darren Aaronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream), which captures the drama and intensity of many of the scenes depicted. Watch it below.
Image Credit: BLOG
Who could force you to eat all your lunches in the bathroom? Regina George? Darla Marks?
In honor of back-to-school season, PopWatch got to thinking about some of our favorite high school mean girls from the movies. The character is a mainstay in films depicting high school life, and if you’ve spent your teenage years inside an education building of any kind, chances are that at one point or another, you’ve felt personally victimized by Regina George — or at least your school’s equivalent.
Does Rachel McAdams’ star-making turn get your vote, or do you prefer Kim Walker in Heathers? Of course we can’t forget the incestuous, totally NSFW cruelty of Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions or the sickly-sweet exterior of Mandy Moore’s character in the religious satire Saved!. And there are plenty more 17-year-olds that we’re totally afraid of (a bucket of pig’s blood comes to mind!)
Check out the videos below to jog your memory on our nominations for the worst, and then vote in the poll. We’ve never seen so many people we wanted to get hit by a bus.
