Gatsby Trailer
Trailer for The Great Gatsby. Certainly looks pretty (except for two bizarrely cheap-looking CGI car shots; also, 3D?!?), but I just don’t see how this book translates into a good movie. God knows the last attempt was a total disaster.
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/L7F9nq
Kickstart a Bret Easton Ellis Movie
Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader are raising funds for their next film, The Canyons, on Kickstarter. I’m in for $25, which gets me a DVD, some posters and I get to vote on casting choices! But there are some crazy incentives if you’ve got the cash.
$10,000 — Receive a moneyclip that was autographed by Robert De Niro and given to Paul on the set of Taxi Driver. http://bit.ly/IJWoMe — Paul Schrader’s shooting script at the end of filming. — Dinner with Paul — Canyons set visit in Los Angeles (appear as extra if desired) — Handwritten thank you letter and on set photo from Bret and Paul, along with a shout out in the Making of the Canyons video. — You will also receive everything in the above Paul Schrader package.
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/It9wjW
Plastic Galaxy
Teaser trailer for Plastic Galaxy.
Plastic Galaxy is a documentary that explores the groundbreaking and breathtaking world of Star Wars toys. Through interviews with former Kenner employees, experts, authors, and collectors, it looks at the toys’ history, their influence, and the fond and fervent feelings they elicit today.
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/IErcrB
Something From Nothing
Trailer for Ice-T’s documentary Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap. (Though the title on the YouTube page says Ice Cube, which is kind of funny.) [via]
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/IhAFVK
Film Criticism and Limited Cultural Discourse
What starts as a get-off-my-lawn-and-turn-down-your-loud-music complaint against the current state of film criticism actually ends up making some pretty notable points about how shallow the web is making us.
When a site’s goal is to satisfy the great sucking maw of the Internet with a constant feed of new items, sourced or unsourced, nothing is around long enough to make an impact. When perpetual turnover is the norm, the shallow, silly, and irrelevant rule.
[…]
In many ways, the Web has been a disaster for democracy.
[…]
The rigorous division of websites into narrow interests, the attempts of Amazon and Netflix to steer your next purchase based on what you’ve already bought, the ability of Web users to never encounter anything outside of their established political or cultural preferences, and the way technology enables advertisers to identify each potential market and direct advertising to it, all represent the triumph of cultural segregation that is the negation of democracy.
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/HksMRJ
Worst Films
AV Club’s worst movies of 2011.
The rehearsal version of the Karate Kid. It’s kind of like watching a fan version of the movie, except with all of the actual actors. Bizarre.
(Source: youtube.com)
The crew of Star Trek: TNG watches Star Wars: A New Hope.
(Source: youtube.com)
Casino > GoodFellas
Something I’ve always believed but was afraid to say out loud: Casino is a better movie than GoodFellas. [via]
Here is where a sturdy Scorsese theme is drawn out beautifully: the confounding nature of women. Stone is so dangerous. She’s a Stratocaster of sex. Blondes like Ginger have existed on the edge of sex and violence since their knee socks days. She possesses that white trash quality, straight out of Van Nuys, that scrambles the brains of second-generation boys raised by Catholic immigrant mamas. Ginger is more forceful than Ace. She bucks wildly and goes berserk at every attempt he makes to domesticate her. Unlike the other characters in Casino, or GoodFellas, Ginger never gets a voiceover. We are never cued into her motives. Even in GoodFellas, Karen (Lorraine Bracco) explains why a nice Jewish girl like herself gets her crank turned by a criminal who pistols whips sexual rivals. Ginger’s female hustler code, however, remains immediate and unknown; she is constantly mystifying the men around her. We only get to see Ace’s need and love for her turn into a suffocating paranoia. This sort of romantic pain that Ace suffers over again (something Henry Hill never experiences, as his world is replete with trashy, coke-addled girlfriends) creates a loneliness and frustration that De Niro does so well. When he finally unleashes on Ginger, Stone matches it, with glorious ferocity, it’s hard to look directly into her eyes. She’s like the sun—the performance in Casino is her best.
Trailer for Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters.
(Source: vimeo.com)
Trailer for Vinylmania, which you can help out on Kickstarter.
(Source: youtube.com)
Why the original Star Wars is still the best Star Wars.
People hang out a lot in A New Hope. Luke and C-3PO get to know each other in a glorified tool shed; Luke and Ben bond in the latter’s hut; space chess and early Jedi training occur simultaneously as our plucky band travels from one spot of adventure to the next. We understand these individuals because Lucas had the courage to simply show them together, during their downtime. Viewed in relation to the rest of the franchise—especially the prequels—New Hope’s restraint seems radical.
John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe.
(Source: youtube.com)
Trailer for The Other F Word.
Trailer for Limelight. More info here.
Limelight arrives at a time when interest in electronic dance music is at a peak in America — “The New Rave Generation,” as the cover story of the current issue of Spin puts it, referring to acts like Skrillex, Deadmau5 and Afrojack, who thrill teenagers just diving into the music and send longstanding electronic-dance fans into fits that make LCD Soundsystem’s lampoon of cred-mongering, “Losing My Edge,” sound like a Protestant hymn. And like the current giant wave (this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival, which took place in Las Vegas in May, outstripped Coachella’s ticket sales this year, according to Spin), the Limelight-era rave scene was a decisive break with dance music’s neater past.
