The Oliver Stone-directed Snowden — which hits theaters in December — has released its first teaser. No actual footage from the film, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, is included — just an upside down U.S. flag, which gets imprinted with “One nation, under surveillance, for liberty and justice for all” as the trailer’s climax of sorts.The story is fertile ground for Stone’s typically political (and progressive) filmmaking. Following last year’s American Sniper, it’s easy to wonder if we’re seeing the advent of a new Hollywood tradition: the annual holiday polarizing political film. Gather round kids!
Images have emerged from the deepest darkest recesses of the Smithsonian’s archives which show famous artists, prepare yourself…doing normal stuff. The collection includes Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Marcel Duchamp, all of who are not pictured as intensely engaged in finding meaning through abstract expression, but are rather doing stuff like sitting on a beach and looking moody (see link above). Princeton Press have published a book of the collection, called Artists Unframed, and it’s available now.
The viral quote in question.
Upon compiling his portfolio, author Jesse Browner discovered to his surprise that one of his sentences — featured above — had gone viral(it brings up 126,000 results on Google). The sentence is deep within his book The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down, which didn’t sell many copies. In an interesting piece in the Paris Review, Browner writes about how the whole affair made him question the very relationship between author and reader.
Relatedly, the relationship between director and viewer is usually mediated — at least until a film is released — by those who edit the trailers; such is proven, especially, by the trend of comically recutting trailers. In a more obvious mash-up than you may be used to — but nevertheless still entertaining enough to kill two minutes of time — Vulture has given Magic Mike XXL the golden era of porn makeover, replete mandatory groovy soundtrack.
The usual reaction an average person has to someone worth over four billion dollars is not to run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible, but then again Donald Trump isn’t your regular billionaire (or regular anything for that matter). The latest, in an increasingly long line, to “dump Trump,” is Cheryl Burke (Dancing with the Stars). Burke was due to co-host the upcoming Miss USA contest, but has pulled out, saying she could not “in good conscience move forward.” The show would’ve been her first major hosting gig. There’s also currently a petition for Macy’s to “dump Trump”; you’d think all these people leaving him would make Trump reconsider his bigoted views… but you’d likely be thinking incorrectly. Meanwhile, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner also seem to be dumping (but cordially!) each other. And so concludes the day of dumping.