Archive for July, 2010

Feminine Fancy

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Alasdair McLellan's feminine photos of Ashley Smith, Barbara Palvin and Lindsey Wixson for W

Alphabet

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010


Slick animated alphabet from Sofia based Pavel Pavlov.

Posted on Motionographer

The Campaign Trail

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Round up of new ads from the Fall!

On the ‘town

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

BunkerHillMonumentSmall02.jpgThe trailer for the new Ben Affleck movie, "The Town," isn't on the Web yet. The movie's scheduled to open Sept. 10. The trailer was shown before the advance screening of "Inception" last night. Jeremy Renner looks scary. Rebeca Hall, being Rebecca Hall, looks wonderful, and the whole thing goes on way too long. What makes the trailer worth noting is how at one point a character in voiceover says something to the effect, "There are 300 bank robberies attempted in the Boston area each year. Most of them are committed by people who live within a single square mile, in a place called Charlestown." Well, the AMC Loews Boston Common, where the screening was being held, is about a mile and a half from Monument Square. The theater was packed. You can imagine the response when "Charlestown" was spoken As Tip O'Neill might say, "All laughter is local." Presumably, an audience on Pandora watching a trailer for "Avatar" would have reacted much the same way.

New on DVD – July 13, 2010 – The Bounty Hunter and Chloe

Monday, July 12th, 2010
From Jennifer Aniston's latest attempt to create a film career -- otherwise known as The Bounty Hunter -- to Noah Baumbach's clever Ben Stiller comedy, Greenberg, here's our take on all that's coming out this week on DVD and Blu-ray.

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Jennifer Aniston is bounty hunter Gerard Butler's ex-wife, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- he's been hired to catch her. Let the fun -- not commence. Our very, very unimpressed critic said, "A romantic comedy is built from the relationship of its leads, and all The Bounty Hunter has to work with are blank stares."

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Sweet Hereafter director Atom Egoyan's latest tale of sexual mores and oddities stars Julianne Moore as an insecure wife who's so convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair that she hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, as a test, only to become enamored of Chloe herself. We thought that it ended as a letdown but that the film's "Hitchcockian overtones and apt pacing mark a welcome return to form for Egoyan."

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In this urbane drama from Margot at the Wedding filmmaker Noah Baumbach, Ben Stiller plays a surly misanthrope house-sitting for his much more successful brother in Los Angeles, when he enters into a curious relationship with his brother's young nanny. We thought this off-key story to be "perceptive and very beautiful."

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Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek resurfaces to star as an FBI agent who gets in way over his head in this politically tinged Taiwan-set suspense thriller that we found "directed with skill and precision."

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When California passed Proposition 8 to keep same-sex couples from getting married, the fact that the Mormon church was one of the proposition's biggest supporters riled many people, including the makers of this incensed documentary. While we appreciated the film's subject matter, some "overwrought and saccharine" passages undermined an "otherwise strongly worded piece of issue cinema."

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The ever-reliable Steve Buscemi plays a gambling junkie on a road trip to (where else?) Las Vegas in this low-budget drama. Our critic thought the cast was one of the film's strongest points (Buscemi, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, among others) but disliked the "paper-thin story" that was only "good for a quick laugh."


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Everything you need to know about this new wedding comedy (starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, and Carlos Mencia) is summed up by our critic, who asked, first, whether the film was made because somebody lost a bet, and then noted, "Never have 100 supposedly laugh-filled minutes felt more like a death in the family instead of a marriage."

Well Suited

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Camilla Akrans + Elissa Santisi & Liu Wen for Vogue China

Bits & Bytes: Andrejyny

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Bits & Bytes: The androgyny of Andrej, Carine Roitfeld's biography, Lady Gaga stylist Nicola Formichetti's fan page is up... and more.

The Swiss Refuse to Extradite Polanski and Set Him Free

Monday, July 12th, 2010

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Almost ten months ago, filmmaker Roman Polanski traveled to Switzerland for the Zurich Film Festival. Though he had been to the country many times, during this visit he was arrested and held as the country decided whether or not he'd be extradited back to the United States for his 30+ year-old crimes. As we all know, in the late '70s, Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl, and plea bargained his sentence to unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl. He spent just over a month in a psychiatric unit as his sentence, and when it seemed like the judge would treat him unfairly, he fled, kicking off a decades-long argument about his actions, his flight, and the consequences.

Switzerland, at least, has made its judgment: Roman Polanski is a free man.

Continue reading The Swiss Refuse to Extradite Polanski and Set Him Free

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Will Joaquin Phoenix Be Marvel’s New Hulk?

Monday, July 12th, 2010

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In case you missed the news, Marvel and Ed Norton lobbed a gossip grenade into geekdom on Friday night. Marvel announced, once and for all, that Norton would not be reprising his role of Bruce Banner / The Hulk in The Avengers. Norton's agent fired back to HitFix, calling Marvel's statement "purposefully misleading" but also noted that he and his client "accepted their decision with no hard feelings."

Whether those feelings are good or bad are inconsequential to the Marvel moviemaking machine. With ComicCon only a week and a half away, Marvel is racing to recast. They are hoping to have all those Avengers onstage come Saturday, July 24. The rumor mill is about to go into overdrive and we have our first name, courtesy of CHUD. Their Marvel sources report that an offer has gone out to none other than Joaquin Phoenix.

It's rumor, and it's only an offer. Phoenix could still turn them down. Nevertheless, it's a surprising choice, though I could see the actor-turned-rapper doing it. Phoenix needs a comeback big time, and he's never been entirely above big popcorn movies. He is certainly as talented as his predecessor, and looks enough like Norton and Eric Bana that many who don't follow this stuff as exhaustively as we do (and there are many!) would barely notice. But it's hard to understand why Marvel keeps flinging themselves against notoriously troubled and difficult actors. Could Phoenix really be cheaper and more malleable than Norton?

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Pure Abbey

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Hedi shoots Abbey for Vogue China