Ready for some incredibly strange celebrity portraits? Akira Beard‘s ripped-from-the-sketchbook watercolors are blurry but evocative images of beloved cultural icons, from The Dude of Big Lebowski fame to Sigmund Freud to Jesus. But what really complicates the works are the artist’s often-politicized words: “If Janis Joplin were alive today, she would use a cell phone, drink lattes, look youthful in a 20 second Gap commercial, be a leading spokesperson for the anti-drug/alcohol ad campaigns, have a MySpace page with a million friends, and make pop-melodic music that sells,” Beard writes under her portrait. His Mother Teresa clutches a dollar bill, surrounded by musings on money and altruism. Then there’s the hilarious Bono picture, which we won’t ruin for you. Click through to see some of our favorite Beard paintings, then visit his Flickr page to see more of his work.
If you’ve paid much attention to film festival coverage over the past few months, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about a film called The Raid (it was later given the rather silly subtitle Redemption, though I’ll be damned if I recall anybody being redeemed in it). It screened at Toronto, Sundance, and SXSW, and it is a knockout — a powder keg of pure action, done with deadpan humor and hyperkinetic style. I saw it at an all-media screening at Sundance, and even among that jaded group, the audience literally gasped at loud at several points, and burst into applause at the end. It’s terrific cinema.
And that’s why so many people who have seen it are losing their shit over Roger Ebert’s inexplicable one-star review of the movie, which went online last night. He complains about the film’s “wall-to-wall violence,” cracks that “if I estimated the film has 10 minutes of dialogue, that would be generous,” and says that the picture is “almost brutally cynical in its approach.” This coming from a guy who gave three stars to Transformers and most of the Fast/Furious franchise.
1. Can you remember the last time that Woody Allen appeared in a movie that wasn’t his own? It’s been over a decade now. That’s why we’re excited to hear that he’ll join John Turturro in Fading Gigolo, an indie comedy which Turturro is writing and directing; they’ll play “cash-strapped best friends who decide to go into the gigolo business together and subsequently attract the suspicion of the hasidic Jewish community in which they live.” Amazing. [via Showblitz]
2. Beach House has debuted a new track called “Myth”, which will presumably be on their forthcoming album, Bloom, due out May 15th on Sub Pop. Give it a spin here.
3. Look out HBO: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is apparently in talks with “some of the largest US cable companies,” about making his streaming video service available to their customers — and in at least one case, it could happen as soon as the year’s end. [via Deadline]
4. Thanks to the $21 million it made in its opening weekend, there’s already a Project X sequel in the works. You can probably guess how we feel about this news. [via THR]
5. “John did not have an eating disorder. Sometimes he slipped and ate a bar of chocolate. His diets included vegetarian diet, macrobiotic diet and, very rarely a juice-only diet. All of the above are internationally approved health diets.” – Yoko Onodenies claims made by a new book that her husband John Lennon was bulimic.
Evidently Woody Allen isn’t quite done with the 1920s just yet. PopWatch reports that the Midnight in Paris director is adapting his 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway into a musical that will debut on the Great White Way some time next year.
Set in 1929, the comedy focuses on a struggling playwright (John Cusack) who gets financed by a wealthy mobster who has a major caveat — he wants his spectacularly untalented girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly) to be in the show. The film managed to score seven Oscar nominations and a Best Supporting Actress win for Dianne Wiest, who played the part of boozed up, fading leading lady Helen Sinclair to perfection.
Allen, who co-wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay with Douglas McGrath, says that he plans to write the book, and the score will feature existing period music (the original soundtrack included vintage recordings by Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Al Jolson, and Red Nichols & His Five Pennies). We actually think adapting this movie into a Broadway show is a brilliant idea. We’ve just got one question: Who’s going to play Cheech, the menacing bodyguard who turns out to be the most talented one of the bunch?
1. Hooray! Stephen Colbert will resume taping his show tonight after taking some time off last week to reportedly care for his 91-year-old mother. “My family and I would like to thank everyone who has offered their thoughts and prayers,” he tweeted to fans. “We are grateful and touched by your concern.” [via ArtsBeat]
2. Even though she doesn’t have any current projects to promote, Lindsay Lohan will be hosting Saturday Night Live on March 3rd; apparently she reached out to Lorne Michaels directly to book the gig, which we’re assuming is an attempt at some much-need image rehab. [via PopWatch]
3. Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds’ Training-Day-meets-Bourne action flick Safe House duked it out with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum’s sappy memory-loss romance The Vow for the top spot of the Presidents’ Day weekend box office; in fact, at this point it’s still too close to call. Meanwhile, sitting pretty in third place: Nicolas Cage’s sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which made $22 million. [via Moviefone]
4. Fans of Community and Doctor Who will be thrilled to hear that there’s really going to be an Inspector Spacetime web series; the only question is when the first webisode of the parody show within the show will air. [via io9]
5. Alexander Payne, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (The Descendants), and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) scored the major wins at last night’s Writers Guild of America Awards; view the full list of winners here.
Well, kids, it’s Valentine’s Day, and those of you who aren’t looking to go out and spend a fortune at a swanky restaurant (read: those of you who are married or in relationships that have been going long enough that you’re not trying to impress each other anymore) may very well choose to stay in for the holiday, cuddling up on the couch and enjoying a nice romantic comedy. Except, ugh, they’re all terrible.
Or so it seems, in this Heigl/Hudson/Hugh/Sarah-Jessica saturated cinematic marketplace. But believe it or not, there are some genuinely great romantic comedies out there — smart, tender, funny movies that make you laugh and warm your heart. No, seriously! We’ve not only managed to collect ten of them, but even an alternate choice or two for each. Snuggle up and enjoy after the jump.
We hope Laura Dern has a wild at heart and weird on top kind of birthday. The actress celebrates tomorrow, but we’re stealing our slice of cake a day early by taking a look at Dern’s relationship with director pal David Lynch. While the star has been busy filming Paul Thomas Anderson’s scientology-inspired drama The Master, her early career days were spent with the king of strange, Lynch. Dern’s appeared in three of the director’s films — keep in mind he’s only made 10 features since starting out in the late ’70s — and has been a unique, expansive female character in his canon, as this article from The Awl has also pointed out. It’s clear that there’s a depth to Dern’s dramatic allure Lynch greatly admires. While we hope to see the director take up with his muse once more, we thought it’d be a perfect time to celebrate a few other inspired collaborations. Click on to see some of our picks, and tell us yours, won’t you?
The good news, I suppose, is that he’s not actually playing Ferris Bueller. Still, there’s no question that the two-and-a-half minute Matthew Broderick-fronted, Todd Phillips-directed Honda CR-V Super Bowl ad that we told you about last week is positively loaded with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off references and iconography — more than two dozen of them, according to Honda’s “brand manager” (ugh), Tom Peyton. The ad went online Monday, with the predictable response pattern: snarkyrage on Twitter, hand-wringing online, and then the required contrarian “In Defense of…” piece. It’s shaping up to be the big game’s most controversial ad (at least until Sunday, when we get the full-frontal assault of “women are nags” spots, but I digress).
So why do we care so much? It’s no longer a surprise to see pop culture icons shilling for big business; hell, I’m old enough to remember the giant controversy that followed the licensing of a Beatles song for Nike ad. (That uproar seems positively quaint these days, when a commercial deal is a giant coup for musicians of all stripes.) The commotion over Broderick’s Honda ad speaks not to “selling out” in general. It’s about the selling out of this character — and not just because he didn’t condone any “–isms” (including, presumably, capitalism). It’s about our connection with Ferris Bueller, who wasn’t just a protagonist. By taking us into his confidence and guiding us through his world, Bueller made us his co-conspirator.
Last weekend, two new films opened by famous filmmakers who are, to varying degrees, getting the hell out of the film business. Haywire director Steven Soderbergh has been teasing his early retirement for months now; it’s somewhat comical, actually, the way he keeps adding in projects that he wants to do before his self-imposed exile. George Lucas, who spent decades getting Red Tails made, told The New York Timesthat he was retiring, at least from the business of making blockbuster films (maybe).
Soderbergh is 49. Lucas is 67. Making movies doesn’t have a mandatory retirement age, like fighting fires or flying planes. But should it?
