BBC: A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film. The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films. Fede Alvarez’s short film “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (£186). So far it has had more than 5 million views on YouTube. “I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday […]
CINEMA: The 12 Best Films Of A Dreadful Decade
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC My friends shake their heads a bit when I admit my geeky love for the format of the laserdisc. The laserdisc, with its 12” LP-sized discs, was in production between 1978 (Jaws was the first title) and the year 2000 (when Sleepy Hollow and Bringing Out the Dead being the format’s final releases), giving consumers their first chance to see movies at home digitally. The format has been discontinued for a decade now but its death coincides with the a major downturn in U.S. film that has gone unnoticed in all this “Best of the […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Writer-director Robert Siegel wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed 2008 film The Wrestler; Patton Oswalt, the stand-up comic and actor, starred in CBS’s The King of Queens and provided the voice for Remy, the main character in Pixar’s food romance Ratatouille. Now the two have collaborated on a new film — a drama, not a comedy — called Big Fan, about an obsessive 35-year-old New York Giants fan. Oswalt’s character, Paul, works as a parking-garage attendant, lives with his mom, and finds an outlet for his passion — and a minor kind of celebrity — as a frequent […]
CINEMA: The Best Films Of 2009
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The New York Times recent analysis of the 2009 box-office led them to conclude that the adult drama is dead; what audiences most wanted to see was “relatable, non-thinking comedies.” Looking down my list I can see how film critics get the reputation for championing the type of movies that are “good for you,” like bitter medicine. If this list of cinematic high points from the last twelve months is wanting in laughs perhaps these often grim perspectives on modern life stood out because they offer something other than the narcotic comfort of escape, at […]
ZACHARY QUINTO: Wild Kirk On Spock Action
Spork! An Erotic Love Story (Edited Together From The Star Trek Audio Book) from cirrocumulus on Vimeo. EL GANADOR: The audiobook of the novelization of STXI is a many-splendored thing, especially when you edit it to sound like a K/S slashfic. The credits song is “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” by Das Racist. MORE
RIP: Actress Brittany Murphy Dead At 32
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of actress Brittany Murphy. Police have been dispatched to Cedars-Sinai and to the Los Angeles home where Murphy, 32, went into cardiac arrest earlier today. Police sources emphasized that their inquiry was preliminary, adding they could not say whether it would point to any criminal conduct. [Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the house was located in West Hollywood.] L.A. city firefighters responded to a call from the home in the 1800 block of Rising Glen Road. Murphy was transported to Cedars-Sinai […]
CINEMA: Dark Ride Of The Moon
AVATAR (2009, directed by James Cameron, 162 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Avatar has been unleashed! Aided by ever-faster microchip technology James Cameron has given us a future world we’ve never seen with such clarity. With his audience goggled up for 3-D like motocross racers, Cameron’s long-gestating sci-fi fantasy zooms you through foreign jungles with hitherto unseen big-screen spectacle. For people looking to sit in a theme park ride two hours and forty-some minutes, your moment has arrived. People love roller coasters, I love roller coasters, but I don’t receive the emotional jolt from those four-story drops that […]
CINEMA: Citizen Vain
ME AND ORSON WELLES (2008, directed by Richard Linklater, 114 minutes, U.S./U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Feeling more like a “hit” than any film the towering director was ever part of, Me And Orson Welles is a breezy nostalgia piece that never feels slight, thanks to the genius of Welles that hangs over the film with a weighty spirit. Brought to life by little-known actor Christian McKay, the film captures Welles at an early career highpoint, bringing a controversial 1937 Shakespeare production to Broadway. This is Welles before headline-grabbing War of the Worlds broadcast and the convention-shattering Citizen Kane; […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With Your Host A.P. Ticker
AP Ticker’s [Scrapple News] Hiking in Iran
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For years, the name Tom Ford has been associated with fashion: He was, after all, the man credited with reviving the almost bankrupt Gucci empire, and then he started a couture label of his own. Ford has also earned plenty of attention for his provocative advertising, which often uses erotic imagery (including plenty of nudity) to sell fashion and fragrances. Now the Texas native, a onetime actor and model himself, has put his eye for design and his creative sensibilities to work in the service of silver-screen storytelling, translating a ’60s-vintage novel into an elegantly controlled, eloquently stylish […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With Your Host, A.P. Ticker
[Video: AP Ticker’s SCRAPPLE NEWS 12.9.2009]
ARTSY: Tim Burton At The MOMA
NEW YORK TIMES: Given the tremendous visual appeal of Mr. Burton’s movies, you would hope that “Tim Burton,” the Museum of Modern Art’s expansive retrospective of his noncinematic art, would be equally exciting. Alas, it is a letdown. Focused mainly on hundreds of drawings dating from his teenage years to the present and including paintings, sculptures, photographs and a smattering of short films on flat screens, it is an entertaining show and a must for film buffs and Burton fans. To see the raw material from which the movies evolved is certainly illuminating. But there is a sameness to all […]
CINEMA: Fly The Friendly Skies
MANOHLA DHARGIS: For most people there’s no joy in sucking down recycled oxygen while hurtling above the clouds. The free drinks and freshly baked cookies in business might be nice. (I wouldn’t know.) For most of us, though, air travel largely invokes the indignities of the stockyard, complete with the crowding and pushing, the endlessly long lines, hovering handlers, carefully timed feedings, a faint communal reek and underlying whiff of peril. The skies rarely seem friendly anymore, but to Ryan Bingham, the corporate assassin played by George Clooney in the laugh-infused stealth tragedy “Up in the Air,” they’re so welcoming, […]