Smug Film has obtained an exclusive transcript of a phone call between Josh Pais and his agent, made moments after Pais watched the trailer for Foxcatcher, and boy is it juicy! See for yourself:
Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Josh Pais Fires Agent After Watching Trailer For ‘Foxcatcher’
The internet is split on the new crossguard lightsaber shown in the Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens trailer, which features two mini-sabers on its hilt. Some have derided it for its impracticality, while others see it as just plain cool. But what does George Lucas think? We sat down with him to discuss this very topic:
Jennifer Lawrence, renowned thespian and overnight self-portraiture sensation.
In what contemporary scholars are calling one of the largest disseminations of heretofore unseen art in recent years, dozens of examples of self-portrait photography by notables in the entertainment industry have been uncovered by renegade art archivists and released free to the art-appreciating public through the internet.
Continue reading Self-Portraits Of Notables Unearthed By Renegade Art Archivists
In his review of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Armond White opens by declaring that “Neo-noir must be the worst movie genre. It’s an excuse for juvenile filmmakers to pretend cynicism while their imbecile audiences pretend sophistication.”
I can certainly see where he’s coming from. I haven’t seen A Dame to Kill For yet, but I have seen more than enough attempts at neo-noirs that think all there is to the genre is a femme fatale and an anti-hero in a trenchcoat. I’m talking about mediocre, flailing films like Max Payne—or worse, the attempts to bring noir to hip, younger settings like Assassination of a High School President and Lucky Number Slevin. They’re movies that look at the classics of the genre, fall in love with the aesthetic, but have no idea why or how that aesthetic works as it does. As Armond so aptly points out, Sin City and its ilk are all “pretending that it still means something to call a sexy woman ‘dame.’”
Frank (2014)
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson
Written by Jon Ronson & Peter Straughan
95 min.
Spoiler-free.
Sometimes all you need to see is a still from a movie and you know it’s worth watching. That’s how I felt about Frank—the imagery looked so unique that I knew I’d have to give it a shot. I mean come on, Michael Fassbender running around in a papier-mâché head making off-kilter electronic music? Say no more, I’m there.
Funny enough, the concept is not actually unique to the film. The giant mask frontman character is actually based off musician and comedian Chris Sievey, aka Frank Sidebottom, cult hero of 1980s Britain. Frank Sidebottom’s weird brand of humor seems to have inspired many—there’ evens a statue of him in his hometown of Timperley– not to mention the film’s co-writer, Jon Ronson, who was part of Sidebottom’s band for a time.