Big 6: BOYZ N THE HOOD at 20, David Lynch’s nightclub, more
Boyz n the Hood, 20 Years Later: The Making of a Movie That Did Race Right The film was Boyz n the Hood. Press coverage of violence attributed to its opening made it controversial, while rave reviews made it one of the most critically acclaimed of the year. Later, the Motion Picture Academy nominated Singleton for writing and directing Oscars, making him not only the youngest filmmaker nominated for directing but also the first African American. The film is now considered one of the centerpieces of modern black cinema for its realistic portrayal of life in the inner city. Boyz n the Hood also introduced a national conversation about inner-city gang violence, a subject that until then had been mostly a local urban issue. Read the full Atlantic article Inside David Lynch’s Paris nightclub This is Lynch’s answer to Warhol’s Factory, the existentialists’...
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BIG 6: High-tech Hitchcock?, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, Remakes, more
Where would Alfred Hitchcock be with today’s technology? A very Hitchcockian device, mistaken identity. It sets the entire plot in motion. But Hitch couldn’t have made that movie today. Not set in 2011, at least, because what successful businessman leaves the office without his 4G smartphone? Read the full LAT article Midnight In Paris Star Corey Stoll Attributes Film’s Success To ‘Pleasant’ And ‘Uplifting’ Appeal “It’s that world, people really relate to, that sort of fantasy,” he continued. “It’s also uplifting. It’s pretty rare to see a movie that’s uplifting in an un-saccharine way. It’s a pleasant hour and a half to spend, I think people respond to it and I think that people are missing that real escape.” Read the full MTV Movies Blog Scrapbooking Big-Screen Memories A movie theater can be a magical place, a portal; in the cold, quiet...
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BIG 6: DON’T BE AFRAID’s Madison, Helen Mirren, Mermaids, more
Meet Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark‘s young star, Bailee Madison “Something my mom and I have always said to each other is: ‘We’re not here for interviews. We’re not here to get your picture taken,’ ” the soon-to-be sixth-grader said. “ ‘We’re here to make a difference, and this is our opportunity to.’ ” Read the full LAT article Helen Mirren on The Debt, Getting Played by Jessica Chastain, and Everyone’s Ongoing Obsession With Her Body First off, it was difficult for John Madden to quite find an actress who could be the young me. It’s hard enough finding one person who is right for a role, let alone finding two people! And then he found Jessica Chastain, who not only shares certain characteristics [with me] but who looks like me. Read the full NY Mag article Mermaids: The New...
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Big 6: Realism in CONTAGION, Women Directors, more
Contagion: A Virus Movie Determined to Get Real “It’s an ultrarealistic film about a pandemic, and that’s the key phrase,” the film’s director, Steven Soderbergh, said. “We were looking for something that was unsettling because of the banality of the transmission. In a weird way, the less you trump it up, the more unsettling it becomes.” Read the full NYT article Oscarwatch: Can Women Directors Break Through? This year, several female directors are already making their mark, and there are still others yet to come. Madonna and Angelina Jolie will both be bringing films to audiences. Can you imagine someone taking that sentence seriously ten years ago? The times, they are a-changing, even if they change a-slowly. Read the full Awards Daily post Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Rock Hudson, Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor The problem, then, was that when Rock Hudson...
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Big 6: COMMUNITY appeal, Ken Jacobs 3D, Tim Burton, more
Tonight’s Community: The most insanely self-referential 22 minutes in sitcom history. Outside of ongoing jokes about the school’s academic haplessness, the show isn’t about education, and I don’t read it as a stand-in for America. Rather, the show is about itself in particular and TV in general, but again with a sort of blank aimlessness that often produces a vortex of jokes about some marginal bit of pop culture, like the rock group Barenaked Ladies, who are debated at length in the context of whether they are worthy of being debated about at all. Read the full Slate article 3D Experiments From Ken Jacobs Hollywood might do well to learn from Ken Jacobs, who can boast more than 40 years of provocative, demanding and transformative explorations of various permutations of 3-D, putting the primitive, in-your-face assaults of Hollywood to shame. Read...
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Big 6: Brad Pitt on MONEYBALL, THE HOBBIT’s Bilbo, more
Brad’s Pitch: Why an A-list actor was willing to go to bat for Moneyball… For Pitt, Moneyball also evoked “films about process,” particularly the seventies movies he loved. “I thought of The Conversation: How do you tap a phone? Or Thief, with Jimmy Caan: How do you crack a safe?” Pitt says. “And I saw in it a guy who had an obsessive quality like Popeye Doyle,” from The French Connection. Read the full NY Mag article ‘The Hobbit’: Peter Jackson and the one true Bilbo Baggins Jackson added: “I can’t imagine anyone else doing Bilbo, which is one of the reasons, really, we signed [Martin Freeman] up even with having the ‘Sherlock’ break — normally on a movie you wouldn’t want to do that with the schedule,” Jackson said. “But we literally couldn’t figure out any other actor and we...
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