Your typical holiday card features a quaint photograph of some family’s kids in matching outfits or a childless couple’s dog in a silly set of reindeer antlers. It’s not the kind of thing you feel inspired to keep around the apartment long after the tree has been chucked. But there are some more visually daring cards out there that could function as mini works of art. We’re not suggesting you frame them, rather, send them! It’s not too late.
Find 10 of our favorites after the jump.
The holiday party season is upon us, and thus we want to provide our readers with some advice about the proper way to behave at a company shindig. No one is better equipped to help with this than our friends at The Foggy Monocle, a website devoted to recounting the aftermath of a drunken night’s cavorting. Coming up after the jump, tales of woe and merriment from Erik Dane and James Jung, along with five rules we should all follow this holiday season.
Everyone’s favorite obsessive complusive former detective Adrian Monk (played by the exemplary Tony Shalhoub) is delivering his farewell tonight, and longtime fans of the show will finally be able to make sense of the series-long mystery surrounding wife Trudy‘s death. Series creator Andy Breckman spoke with the Huffington Post about the final episode of his Emmy Award-winning show, and his answers were decidedly forthright as teaser interviews go. (Note: He plans on watching it tonight at home with his wife. Maybe his eldest daughter will stop by.) After the jump, read what Breckman had to say about tonight’s series conclusion.
If you’re as obsessed with analyzing the weekend box office results as we are, you’ve probably played the Hollywood Stock Exchange. It’s fun, but frankly we could never get over one glaring problem: it didn’t make us any real money. What was the point? According to Roger Friedman, that might be changing soon. He says that Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick is in the process of making this Hollywood Stock Exchange a reality.
If this gets approved, you’ll be able to bet real money on movies, movie stars, movie genres, production companies and more. To help prep you to make the big bucks, we review the top five riskiest starbonds after the jump. Keep in mind we determined this based off of the ratio of money paid to the actor for a film, versus how much the film grossed. Only movies within the last five years were counted.
The phenomenal success of the first Iron Man film meant moviegoers were going to get another chance to see Robert Downey Jr.’s reformed Tony Stark character. But there were some major transformations in order before they could start filming the sequel, and the buzz behind the scenes has been almost as interesting as Iron Man itself. There have been reports about a feud between Scarlett Johansson and Gwyneth Paltrow. Don Cheadle replaced an unhappy Terrence Howard as Stark’s sidekick, James Rhodes (War Machine), and Mickey Rourke landed the role of an energy whip-wielding villain known as Whiplash.
Check out the film stills as we explain every development and more after the jump.
After yesterday’s announcement that next season would be Oprah’s last, the media world was engorged with Oprah debate this morning. Was she really going to quit daytime TV? Or was she simply going to bring the syndicated show over to her newly-launched OWN network? More importantly, who was going to replace her after a 25-year run? Rather than ponder the unanswerable, we thought: why not just make her the word prompt for our latest installment of Flickr Found Photo Fridays?
Friday afternoon just got a whole lot more interesting online. Comics giant Warren Ellis is giving his fans their yearly chance to send him their self-portraits which he’ll post to his website for the next 24 hours. We’ll let him explain why: “I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.”
It’s a perfect storm of strange, and some excellent desktop people watching. After the jump, we show you some of our favorites.
No one has any money these days. So what are potential web stars to do when they have to eat ramen for a month to afford a Mac, and then there’s nothing left over for software? Get creative. There’s a ton of free software out there to streamline your website development and marketing onto a simple platform. Sometimes the hardest part is finding it.
After the jump, we’ve rounded up 10 free applications for your solipsistic meanderings on the web.
Werewolves are making a comeback, and it’s not just because of Jacob’s New Moon biceps. According to Bob Powers over at the Huffington Post, “the plight of the werewolf reflects the American economic mood at the current moment.” He goes on to imply that the saturation of all things vampire in the 00′s was the result of our supposedly thriving economy. Conversely, werewolves have to make do; they must “expend time and money to build a restraint system and fortify a safe room to keep from getting loose.”
Sound familiar? In response to Powers’s proclamation, after the jump we present five werewolves that exemplify the struggling Americans we have become.
Viewers of the Crazy Heart trailer can’t help but compare it to The Wrestler. First-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay (adapted from Thomas Cobb’s book of the same name) features the same archetypal down-on-his-luck protagonist, a hard-living country singer named Bad Blade (Jeff Bridges). Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a reporter who helps the drunken codger get his life back together. Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell costar.
The score for the movie is written by T-Bone Burnett, the producer best known for the O Brother Where Art Thou and Big Lebowski soundtracks, as well as the critically acclaimed Raising Sand album from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Burnett has his hands all over the picture; he co-produced and co-wrote much of the material. The poster and stills were released yesterday, and today we have the trailer. Check it out after the jump.
“ I watched Lost from the pilot ep to the finale and thought it ended perfectly. Loved it... ” posted on Watch Damon Lindelof Answer Questions About 'LOST' Finale in Great Video Interview on
“ There is obviously a bundle to realize about this. I believe you made some nice points in... ” posted on Extremely Silly Photos of Extremely Serious Writers on
“ I'll add a new one that's stuck in my head, from Goon - "I think I nailed him." ” posted on 15 of the Most Memorable Final Lines in Film on
“ Well, I like it ! If you need more information at :http://www.sobeautifulbag.com/ ” posted on Enter to Win a Custom Tote Bag from Bushmills and ACL on
“ What is this list? A popularity contest or a politically correct listing of what we are meant to... ” posted on The 10 Best Classical Composers Ever (According to the New York Times, That Is) on
