If you've spent much time reading movie news on the internet this past year, there is no way that you could have avoided hearing about Precious, the sleeper hit that seemed to come out of nowhere, and has dumped tons of Oscar buzz on stars Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, and Mariah Carey.
When my wife and I discovered that our in-production kid #2 was, in fact, going to be kids #2 and #3... a lot changed quickly. Our house suddenly became too small. Our car suddenly became inadequate to the task of hauling around our unnatural number of children. Our plans for a neat and orderly future suddenly went up in flames. And - perhaps most important, surpassing even the knowledge that "the twins" was no longer going to be an acceptable metaphor for breasts - every movie we'd ever seen about twins suddenly became a training ground for the years to come.
I'm going to tell you a secret and then immediately after this post is published you'll probably never hear from me again because I'll be whisked away to a secret location and killed or be forced to undergo extensive plastic surgery and a total identity change. Kurt and I are the same person, much in the same way Janet and LaToya and Michael Jackson were the same person, just with different hats. Kurt and I go to see the same movies because we are one and the same. Then we have differing opinions on said movies just to mess with you.
I'm pretty sure this is true. Or maybe the trailers that I saw before The Men Who Stare at Goats got to me.
It seems many of Hollywood's recent movie hits are remakes and/or ripped from our childhoods, which I know is nothing new, but I kinda want them to back off my beloved memories a wee bit, yanno?
Confession: I wish Where The Wild Things Are had remained a classic book. (Which yes, it still is, but the movie is so scary I won't take my 5 year old son to see it. It really should have remained a book where a child could fill in the blanks with his imagination. I never imagined any chicken's arm getting ripped off, did you?)
Now I'm hearing rumblings about bring the beloved Berenstain Bears to the big screen. My Berenstain Bears. *sob*
Well, not really, but in a viral promotion video for a short film collaboration between the two, Jonze answers the eternal question that Rick James reportedly posed to Charlie Murphy one night, long ago, in the China Club. That question, of course, being, "What did the five fingers say to the face?"
Before Harry Potter took over the world, there was a small, made-for-TV movie based on a series of children's books called The Worst Witch. It featured some well-known British actors (Diana Rigg and the fabulous Tim Curry) and a young, up-and-coming actress named Fairuza Balk. HBO started playing it throughout October in the mid-to-late 80s and it was an instant favorite of mine.
As an extension of MamaPop's ongoing effort to bring you the best in wholesome, family-friendly fun, we'd like to offer you the following list of some of our favorite murderous psychopaths. Some you may know, some you may not... but all of them deserve a very dark, twisted and frightening part of your life.
By Michael Roe
54 years ago, today, Rebel Without a Cause was released, a film since deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. It was James Dean’s second film (and his second-to-last), and the movie that made the young man an icon.
Here's some input I didn't really need: Steve Carr, the d-bag responsible for Paul Blart: Mall Cop, has been signed by Dimension Films to direct a remake of Short Circuit, the 1986 sci-fi-lite flick in which a robot out-acted Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy, which is almost an impressive feat.
If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it's the creators of the Internet Movie Database. Can you imagine how many arguments have been settled because of that site? And would you believe that it's been around 19 years as of this past Saturday?
A rough day. Disappointment. Some shouting. Going too far. Slamming doors. Desperate escape from life. Sometimes, it's really hard to face how alike childhood and adulthood are.
When I was a boy, my parents would sometimes send me, usually late at night, down the hill behind our small farmhouse to close the chicken coop. Fucking foxes would eat the chickens, other, less carnivorous animals would eat the eggs. So, there's my 9-10 year old self, flashlight in hand and a silent scream in my throat. Legs tense, ready to bolt at the fist sign of the Boogieman or Frankenstein Monster or the crazy, toothless guy that sold firewood around the area. It was commonly know that he ate children. That didn't stop us from pelting his old beat up truck with snowballs in the winter though. Everyone knows that child-eaters fear a well packed snowball. It's their Kryptonite.
In a stunning piece of news that might've slipped beneath your usually impeccable radar, it's October. I'm not even kidding — you could look it up. In even more stunning news, the end of October means Hallowe'en, a night of trick-or-treating fun and stupid-ass parents who like to pretend they're stuffed scarecrows sitting in a chair next to the front steps until some cute little kid comes along and suddenly they jump up and scream bloody terrifying murder and scare the living bejeezus out of some sweet boy or girl who's been waiting all year to go out as a fairy princess or Superman. I fucking hate those parents.
What were we talking about? Oh, right... Hallowe'en, October... blah blah blah. More pertinently, October is the month where all right-thinking Americans (and the occasional right-thinking Canadian) choose to celebrate the dimming of the day and the fleeting popular embrace of ghosts, witches, demonic were-creatures and other critters not usually welcomed into genteel society by engaging in the time-honored tradition of watching lots and lots of horror movies. Why? Because, unlike children, we can make the conscious choice to be scared — because we understand and experience it as entertainment, as 90 minutes of escapist fun that frees us from the dreary bonds of our day-to-day and provides us with the vicarious thrill of gambling with our lives.
Because I am a frazzled working mom, I'm often way behind on seeing movies with smaller releases. This obviously applies to documentaries since I'm not in a huge release market and these things tend to fly through theaters anyway.
Thankfully, Netflix (and other such services) exist, so I'm able to catch up on some of the awesome stuff that I miss. Most recently, I rented and adored two documentaries that are about subjects so very micro that they're almost ridiculous: Helvetica (the font) and Donkey Kong.
In a word: no. Or at least, probably not, but from the looks of the first five minutes of Disney's upcoming The Princess and the Frog - the movie that's being called its "first black princess" movie - it seems that Disney might come out okay on this one. Sure, it's just five minutes - which leaves somewhere in the area of 75 to 90 minutes for Disney to trip-up with some dodgy racial sterotypes - and we are, after all, still talking princess movie - but these are a pretty good five minutes.
Watch them after the jump:
Can you see Edward Cullen - I mean Robert Pattinson - cast as Prince Harry? Me neither, but it might happen.
Peter Kosminsky is working on casting his new movie called "The Spare" about Prince Harry's life.
There is nothing like a bio-pic of a 25 year old that hasn't actually done anything yet. It sounds fascinating.
Also considered for the role:
*Disclaimer:* This article describes sexual violence that may be triggering to some readers.
Now let's say you're Whoopi Goldberg. Well, then I guess your answer is something like, "it wasn't 'rape-rape.'" Interesting.
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