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Posts Tagged ‘Francis Ford Coppola’

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What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made The Rounds In Our Office

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Today at Flavorpill, we discovered that the world’s best selling beer is a brand that we’ve never even heard of. We decided that famed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was likely a serious note-taker back when he was in school. We got a glimpse of what Clueless‘s Cher and Josh would look like if they were still a happy couple 16 years later. We argued over who has the worst subway commute. We listed to James Blake and Bon Iver collaborate on “Fall Creek Boys Choir.” We were extremely envious of the incredibly dapper Lewis Lapham’s equally stylish bookshelf. We were surprised by some of the film titles that Pixar was originally considering for Toy Story (can you imagine going to see Toyz in the Hood:3?). We were transfixed by these jazz songs as animated sheet music. We were excited to hear that MTV’s official Tumblr will be “Live GIF-ing” the best VMAs moments. And finally, we decided that we like the original puppet Yoda a lot more than the new CGI Yoda — he’s got more character. What do you think?

Music

10 Incredibly Surprising Film Soundtracks

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Whether a bombastic symphonic score or a collection of pop hits, we generally know what’s in store when we settle in for a night of watching movies. Some of the most rewarding cinematic experiences, however, come from cases where our soundtrack expectations are upended. Often, this can come from an unlikely marriage of songs to image; at other times, the choice of composer might fall outside of the expected pool. What follows is a list of ten films whose soundtracks don’t behave expected — and are all the more memorable for it.

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Film

Trailer Park: Sundance Hits and Action Misses

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Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week, we’ve got ten new ones — taken as a group, a rather eclectic mix of styles and subjects indicating that the summer movie season is drawing to a close. Check ‘em all out after the jump.

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News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Today in real headlines that read like Onion headlines, Shia LaBeouf is making a documentary about Marilyn Manson. In an interview on Live with Regis and Kelly, LaBeouf he described their meeting: “He lives in West Hollywood above a liquor store. There’s no lights in the room. And there’s sort of these big metal doors and he opens the door and he’s in a big pink kimono. It’s sort of like a lair. No lights, so you have to use your cellphone to guide you around.” [via NME]

2. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, most recently known for starring as Henry VIII in The Tudors, was hospitalized this week in what may have been a suicide attempt. The actor is thought to have taken alcohol and pills. After he refused treatment, paramedics called in the police to take him to the hospital. [via Vulture]

3. Actor and anti-child sex slavery activist Ashton Kutcher has an official start date for Two and a Half Men: August 1. The new season will debut September 19 — and hopefully won’t be terrible enough to ruin Kelso for us forever. [via TV Squad]

4. Francis Ford Coppola has named his new, partially 3D, supernatural thriller Twixt and will debut portions of the film at Comic-Con on July 23. Dan Deacon, who created the score, will be on hand “to help demonstrate the viewing experience,” which we assume/hope means he’ll be performing the music live. [via Deadline]

5. The final episode of Glenn Beck‘s Fox News show aired last night, and critics didn’t exactly throw him a going-away party. David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun pretty much spoke for everyone in describing Beck’s performance as “quiet, banal and kind of pathetic.” [via The Hollywood Reporter]

Bonus link: Watch Beyoncé surprise some young fans with a dance party at a Harlem Target

Film

Old vs. New Films by Directors Who Have Seen the World Change

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There are those master filmmakers whose careers, fortunately for us, have spanned decades. What happened between Woody Allen’s 1979 Manhattan and Woody Allen’s Manhattan of the 2000′s? How far had Stanley Kubrick been able to push it since Lolita? How has unpredictable aging of the director’s beloved stars changed the way they treat their pet themes? What happened since… dum dum dummm… the Internet? Here are our favorite old-timers who have seen the world change and — willingly and unwillingly — have shown it through their films.

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Film

10 Movies That Were Better Than The Book

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[Editor's note: While your editors take the day off, Flavorwire will be counting down some of our most popular features of 2011 so far. This post originally ran on March 23rd. Enjoy your Memorial Day!] One of several slight disappointments at the box office last week was The Lincoln Lawyer, an adaptation of a Michael Connelly novel with Matthew McConaughey in the lead. We haven’t seen the film, but based on the poster, it appears to be about a lawyer who works from the hood of his car. Yeah, we’re gonna go with that. Anyway, it came in fourth for the weekend, so whoever approved McConaughey wearing a shirt in the poster is surely fired already. But the film met with warm reviews, garnering an 82% at Rotten Tomatoes and positive comparisons to the source material (even from the author himself).

Though many would consider Connelly’s books to be serviceable genre potboilers rather than fine literature, this may very well be a case where the movie is better than the book — the exception to the rule. Or is it? The notion that film adaptations of novels are always inferior to the original isn’t always borne out by the facts. Join us after a jump for a look at ten movies we think were better than the book.

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Film

10 Unconventional Movie Sequels

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The Hangover Part II opens today, part of this summer’s endless parade of sequels — though, as we mentioned yesterday, this one is less a sequel than a scene-by-scene remake, following the structural format of the original Hangover as closely as possible without literally re-enacting it in Bangkok. Presumably, director Todd Phillips was just playing it safe. Not all filmmakers make that choice — and many don’t really have that choice, due to actors and other creative personnel who aren’t contractually obligated (as the Hangover boys were) to return. After the jump, we’ll take a look at ten movie sequels that were a little bit less conventional.

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Film

The Biggest Oscar Upsets of the Past 20 Years

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At the time of this writing, Natalie Portman’s odds of winning the Academy Award for Best Actress — for her portrayal of a certifiable prima in Black Swan — are hovering somewhere between 1/11 and 1/12. In other words, Portman is so likely to win that to pry a dollar from a bookie on such an outcome, you’ll have to lay down twelve times that amount. If Annette Bening, the 13/2 favorite to upset Natalie Portman, wins Best Actress, the film will go on to double or triple its modest $20M earnings to date, and J. Todd Harris and Focus Features stand to make an unholy sum. Translation: When it comes to Oscar upsets, the stakes are incredibly high.

With that in mind, after the jump, our list of the greatest upsets of the past 20 years. Leave comment on which wins you feel were actually deserved.

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Film

Oscar’s 10 Best “Best Picture” Winners

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Film

10 Great Filmmakers Who Sold Out

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It isn’t often that you get as clear a consensus about the Super Bowl ads as there appears to have been this year. Everybody seems to pretty much be on the same page, at least according to Twitter and the media blogs: the best ad was Volkswagen’s “tiny Darth Vader” spot, and the worst was Groupon’s borderline-offensive “Save the Money” ad, in which Timothy Hutton makes light of the troubles of Tibet because hey, they can still “whip up an amazing fish curry.”

In spite of the company’s blog post noting that their ads were parodies — never a good sign, when you have to announce that — and that they would be donating matching funds to three featured charities (including the Tibet Fund), the general distaste for the campaign was swift and unanimous. The general tone-deafness of the ads was all the more befuddling when The AV Club and others noted, on Monday, that the commercials were helmed by Christopher Guest, the director/star of such brilliant “mockumentary” comedies as Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind (not to mention the granddaddy of them all, This is Spinal Tap, which he co-wrote and co-starred in).

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