In this five-minute video essay, filmmaker Ernie Park compares two different versions of a 1953 film: one edited for Hollywood audiences and one for Italian filmgoers. By comparing two different versions of the same footage, the video essay comes across like a think piece on how seemingly cosmetic changes can affect meaning, tone, and content in movies.
After successfully campaigning to have old school author Jane Austen appear on the UK's ten-pound bill, Caroline Criado-Perez has been swamped with death threats and rape threats on Twitter. She reports seeing "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours," describing the reaction as having "stumbled into a nest of men who coordinate attacks on women." The advocate has responded by retweeting the threats, which include promises of violent action, demeaning remarks, and plans to find her.
A frightening and violent mob swept through the normally quiet seaside community of Huntington Beach last night following a surfing competition in the area. Businesses were vandalized and looted, portable toilets overturned, and brutal fistfights waged right out in the open. It was an ugly display and a sad day for California. But more than that, it was a reminder that we must begin to seriously consider the values of our thuggish white youth.
It's hard to say which is rarer: meaty, star-making roles for trans actors or careers that cross over from reality TV to acting. Laverne Cox has both. She competed on VH1's I Want to Work for Diddy, developed/starred in that network's makeover show TRANSform Me, and now she steals scenes as Sophia on Netflix's phenomenal women's prison comedy-drama Orange is the New Black. In case you are behind, OITNB is so compulsively captivating that it feels less like a show and more like a life event: I didn't so much watch it as I felt it happening.
Welcome to Annotate This, where we gather reviews, trailers, and annotate the posters for movies coming out this week. It will help you decide what to avoid, what to see, and what to pretend to see. Click on the image above to add your comments to the mix.
Writer/director Maggie Carey’s The To Do List is so sex-positive, it borders on propaganda. At the very least, it functions as a sort of Ethical Slut 101, an instruction on the hilarity of sex and the joys of portraying exploratory women onscreen. “Let’s get to work, vagina!” says protagonist Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) when setting out on the journey. A virgin who hasn’t so much as kissed a guy in years, Brandy is determined to conquer sex during the summer before her freshman year in college. She creates a list of various acts she wants to experience – “makeout,” “fingerbang,” “dry hump,” "orgasm" – and ticks them off one by one, employing friends and coworkers as lab partners in the experiment. The Irina Dunn-quoting Brandy so clinical about the project that it drives the boys crazy. "You gave me a handjob. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?" sniffs one aspiring suitor. "No," she responds. "It’s a handjob."
British deviser of upmarket period soap operas, Julian Fellowes, has left the Abbey of Downton and put his mind to adapting a story about the trendiest star-crossed couple in literature onto the big screen like never before. It's set in the time that it was set in—so expect flouncy dresses, masks, swordplay, balconies, and probably no Hawaiian shirts or "Verona Beach" goofin'.
Cate Blanchett is genius at demonstrating a veneer of icy sophistication slowly cracking. You can see glimpses in her eyes, her jittery jaw, her wringing hands, in the birdlike suspension of shaky limbs held akimbo. In Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen's latest film, her character Jasmine is a woman in the midst of a nervous collapse. Her real-estate swindler ex was imprisoned for stealing millions, and as a result, she's been torn from her Park Avenue penthouse. She’s holding on by a Chanel suit string, subsisting solely on Stoli, with a constant blur of mascara smudging her lower eyelid.
I could hardly believe how easy director Brian De Palma was to talk to when I spoke to him in advance of the release of his 29th feature film, Passion (out on VOD August 1 and in select theaters August 30). He was generous with his time and refeshing with his candor. He was relaxed, open to critique, and surprisingly humble for someone who's directed bonafide classics (Carrie, The Untouchables and Scarface) and cult favorites (Body Double, Dressed To Kill, Femme Fatale), alike. He was willing to discuss subjects that might make other directors bristle—the possibility of unintentional comedy in his work, or the idea that his films are "camp." He even came come close to admitting that at 72, he's most likely peaked as a director.
A debate is raging here at Gawker Media: Should we, as a suite of web sites, maintain (with one exception) our current adherence to the grand American newspapering tradition of Headlines that Capitalize the First Letter of Each Significant Word? Or should we crumble before the creeping Europeanization of our culture and adopt the global norm of headlines that, casually, Capitalize only the first letter? What say you?
Hollywood has a thing for hiring adults to play teens despite the fact that those adults could barely pass for someone their own age, much less someone half that.
The other 2013 Elizabeth Taylor biopic aired on British TV last night. Burton & Taylor featured Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter in the title roles, focused on the twice-divorced couple's reunion on Broadway in 1983's revival of Private Lives, and received generally positive, if unenthusiastic, reviews. That's way more than the widely mocked Lindsay Lohan vehicle, Liz & Dick, which aired earlier this year on Lifetime, could claim.
Kanye "Little Mac" West has finally unveiled the official "Black Skinhead" on his website. Aside from a few added transitions of CGI dobermans snarling and some removed CG-eyes that peered out of the periphery, it is the exact same video that leaked earlier this month. That leak prompted a string of tweets from the now-Twitter terse West, who moaned, "Me and Nick Knight have been working on this video for 5 months and for creatives it's heartbreaking when something like this happens."
Welcome to Annotate This, where we gather reviews, trailers, and annotate the posters for movies coming out this week. It will help you decide what to avoid, what to see, and what to pretend to see. Click on the image above to add your comments to the mix. Guess what? The heat wave has ostensibly made movie reviews super grumpy and also creative with their reviews!
Andrew Bujalski's new movie takes place in the early 1980s, set at an annual convention in which programmers are working to develop a computer chess program that could win over a human chess master—an early battle of artificial intelligence versus the human spirit. Regardless of your interest in chess, computer or otherwise, Computer Chess is hilarious and marvelously entertaining.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite recently told the New York Times that she approached her documentary Blackfish as a journalist with an open mind. The resulting film, which is about killer whales in captivity (specifically at SeaWorld and focusing on the 32-year-old orca Tilikum, who's killed three people), is nonetheless damning enough that it reads like animal liberation propaganda. We hear numerous testimonials from former SeaWorld trainers on the negative effects of keeping these giant, sensitive creatures penned. We see hidden-camera footage of SeaWorld guides feeding park guests incorrect information about orcas' lifespans and fins — the dorsal fins of captive killer routinely collapse, or flop to the side, which is rare in the wild. We see footage of brutal whale-on-human attacks. We hear nothing from SeaWorld itself.
A&E's Intervention, the reality show about addiction-cum-vehicle for some of the most extreme human behavior ever shown on television, ended with last night's episode. It was its 194th. A&E announced the cancelation in May, and while the network didn't specific exactly why, it's clear that the 8-year-old show has been eclipsed in ratings by newer A&E franchises. Last week's new Intervention episode nabbed 1.35 million viewers, while a Duck Dynasty rerun that aired Wednesday night did 1.56 million viewers.
Gawker has obtained audio of an alleged Kanye West erratically justifying his interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards ("Because I wrote my ['Run This Town'] verse in two days, Taylor Swift cannot beat Beyoncé"), ranting about not being asked to perform at the ceremony over Pink, and claiming that his mother, Donda West, "died for this fame shit."
