A blonde chick tries to snort some lines off of a toilet. Think again blondie!
Runtime: 1 min 1 sec
Swedish Self Cleaning Toilet Ad
December 5th, 2007That Danger of Loose Lips: Will Smith Spoils ‘I Am Legend’
December 5th, 2007Filed under: Thrillers, Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand
He wasn't born yesterday, and he's certainly not a newbie to the business, but you might start wondering about Will Smith with this latest piece of news. Reuters/Moviefone report that the popular actor made one heck of a flub on Tuesday in Tokyo -- one that "had the producer of his latest film [I Am Legend] holding his head in anguish." During a news conference in the foreign city, "Smith inadvertently revealed the plot, prompting co-producer and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to shout: 'Don't give away the ending!'" The report goes on to state that Goldman pretended to be surprised, although I'm not sure why he'd have to pretend -- a slip like that is entirely surprising.So, the press were asked to keep the ending a secret, in hopes that it wouldn't get out and spoil the film for viewers. Now let's recap some of Smith's big movies -- Independence Day, Men in Black, I, Robot... And these are only some of them. What on earth led the man to spoil a movie that relies on the anticipation of mystery? He hasn't been working wildly, and if Peter O'Toole can handle tons of roles, I'm sure Smith can handle his nicely-paced, steady work. Is he suffering from a lack of sleep? Maybe his people should send him to his room for a nice, long nap before those people who made the spoiler shirt find him!
But this also reminds me of other famous loose-lipped plot revealers -- those people who throw out the twists and endings of films either with reckless stupidity, or malicious jerkiness. Personally, I'm thinking of Rosie O'Donnell telling everyone about the twist in Fight Club. What slips do you remember?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Persepolis – Trailer
December 5th, 2007 | Persepolis - Trailer The poignant story of a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of precocious and outspoken nine year old Marjane that we see a people’s hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power - forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, she outsmarts the “social guardians” and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war, the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is palpable. As she gets older, Marjane’s boldness causes her parents to worry over her continued safety. And so, at age fourteen, they make the difficult decision to send her to school in Austria. Vulnerable and alone in a strange land, she endures the typical ordeals of a teenager. In addition, Marjane has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Over time, she gains acceptance, and even experiences love, but after high school she finds herself alone and horribly homesick. Though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society, Marjane decides to return to Iran to be close to her family. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, all the while continuing to speak out against the hypocrisy she witnesses. At age 24, she realizes that while she is deeply Iranian, she cannot live in Iran. She then makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her homeland for France, optimistic about her future, shaped indelibly by her past. Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood (Pantheon, 2003, English version) and Persepolis 2: the Story of a Return (Pantheon, 2004, English version) won widespread acclaim in France, now her home, and around the world. Now, she has co-directed, with Vincent Paronnaud, the animated film version of her memoir. The title PERSEPOLIS comes from the Persian capital founded in the 6th century BC by Darius I, later destroyed by Alexander the Great. It’s a reminder that there’s an old and grand civilization, besieged by waves of invaders but carrying on through milennia, that is much deeper and more complex than the current-day view of Iran as a monoculture of fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. “I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists,” Satrapi says. “I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten.” Directed by: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian |
Retromercial: Dream Phone
December 4th, 2007
This is a classic 90's boardgame in which girls narrow down which dreamy boy likes them.
Runtime: 30 sec
Borat Gets Another Lawsuit
December 4th, 2007Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, 20th Century Fox
Okay, how many people from Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan have not sued the production? By now, I would assume that at least half of these guys have, and even though it has been over a year since the flick has screened to audiences, disgruntled, unknowing participants are still rolling in. Reuters reports that the latest guy to complain is driving instructor Michael Psenicska. Remember the scene? According to his lawsuit, he was fooled into thinking that he was part of a "documentary about the integration of foreign people into the American way of life." He names star Sacha Baron Cohen, One America Productions, Todd Lewis, and Twentieth Century Fox in the claim.The instructor says he got $500 in cash for the lesson, and says that it was all "surreal," as Cohen drove erratically, drank, and propositioned a pedestrian for sexy time. In addition to that cash, he's asked for $400,000 in the suit, for damages and his continual emotional harm. Oh, how I love the emotions angle, especially when it's coming from a gruff guy who was freaked out by Borat's kiss greeting. I guess the thought of hundreds of thousands of dollars was enough to make him get in touch with his softer side. Can you imagine how much worse he'd be handling things if he was part of some of the other scenes? The lesson to be learned in all of this: Don't agree to any sort of media involvement if there's even the slightest possibility that you wouldn't like their spin on things.
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“I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!”
December 4th, 2007
Saw "There Will Be Blood" yesterday, on day 1 of what we refer to in-house as the Oscar-movie death march (Coppola's "Youth Without Youth" today at 2, "Charlie Wilson's War" at 7, "Sweeney Todd" tomorrow. Etc.)
Anyway, "Blood." The return of Paul ("Boogie Nights") Thomas ("Magnolia") Anderson ("Punch-Drunk Love"). The return of Daniel Day-Lewis and the second coming of Paul Dano (the mute kid from "Little Miss Sunshine") as, respectively, Capitalism and Old-Time Religion battling it out for the American soul in the early days of the 20th century. Very weird, very funny, very scary, and I wasn't sure I liked it until I couldn't get it out of my head all night.
Wesley's assigned to review this when it gets released at the end of December, and I don't want to steal his thunder. A few observations, then, rather than a full-on early take. Day-Lewis owns this movie, which makes sense, since it's an epic two and a half hour character sketch rather than a thickly plotted narrative. The performance has pieces of every self-made American monster who has walked through our movie imagination, from Charles Foster Kane to John Huston's Noah Cross in "Chinatown." (Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview even sounds like Huston.) "Blood" is a radical stylistic shift for Anderson, brooding and monomaniacal where his previous films were mannered and impassioned. The dialogue is cryptic but beautiful; the subject heading above comes from a climactic scene and is nearly operatic in its lunacy. (It even makes sense in context.) The source material, Upton Sinclair's "Oil!," seems to have been mined for its characters alone, as though Anderson had ripped them out of the book and set them walking , to see where they'd go.
I can't wait to see it again.
Lame in 2007: Torture Porn (#5)
December 4th, 2007Filed under: Horror, Celebrities and Controversy, Movie Marketing, Best/Worst
 Lame because: The "torture porn" boom-that-wasn't didn't fill 2007 with dull movie series (Hostel II, Saw IV) and lame attempts to cash in (Captivity, Turistas) that uniformly failed to deliver at the box office; it also led to even more tedious op-ed pieces and blog posts decrying the trend as yet another sign of the decline of civilization or defending it as a form of expression. I sincerely don't know which is worse; Eli Roth's inability to make a real movie, or people complaining about the movies he makes so badly. (Asked about where you can go as a direction for future artistic exploration with 'torture porn' by The New York Times, Roth's witty rejoinder was ""They say there is more than one way to skin a cat. Well, there are many ways to skin a human." Congratulations, Mr. Roth, but is it just the one trick that your pony does?) Another tedious element of talking about "torture porn" is that it reframes talking about horror films as good vs. evil, as opposed the way a reasonable person would go about framing the discussion, which is as good vs. bad. Anyone who thinks excessive violence is a modern trend in pop culture is invited to flip open a copy of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus or some of the more choice bits of the Old Testament; the high-pitched whine about 'torture porn' that came at us in stereo from the restrictive right and liberal left in 2007 is yet another droning tone in the mass-media chorus that drowns out any attempt to talk about the realities behind violence in this country -- underfunded policing and public psychiatric care, guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them, the failure of individual responsibility. It's easier to talk about violent movies as a cause of violence than it is to tackle any of the things that actually cause violence but, really, when High School Musical was at the top of the charts, did you see a lot of singing and dancing in the streets? How to turn it around: The better question is, why would you want to? Hopefully, studios will look at the dwindling return-on-investment these films represent (even if Lionsgate is threatening to run the Saw series into the ground) and realize that, hey, audiences might be interested in horror films that scare instead of disgust (The Orphanage) or are made by actual talents (the upcoming Funny Games) as opposed to hacks who only know where to get a bulk rate on fake blood and plastic sheeting.
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Where did they rank?
Starbucks: Glen
December 4th, 2007
Rock legends Survivor change the lyrics to their classic "Eye of the Tiger" to accommodate Glen.
Runtime: 1 min 1 sec
Japanese KFC Commercial
December 4th, 2007
The Japanese love KFC, and they also love ladies seductively eating the delectable fried food.
Runtime: 14 sec
The 50 Dumbest People in Hollywood?
December 4th, 2007Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Lists
The current issue of Entertainment Weekly features a cover story on "The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood." Last week, Monika commented on that list, stating that it's not as fun reading about smarties as it is reading about the dummies. Well, in response to EW, New York's Daily News ran its own list of the "Top 50 Dumbest People in Hollywood." Not surprisingly, sitting in the number one spot is Lindsay Lohan. An obvious choice since she's been the subject of more bad decisions -- at least that the media has concentrated on -- than any other celeb out there. Well, maybe Britney Spears (shockingly far down at #14) has made more. But Lohan has also made bad career decisions in addition to her bad personal-life decisions. Go ahead and sift through Cinematical's coverage of Lohan throughout the past year or two; I challenge you to find one smart idea she's had (entering rehab doesn't count).Since this is a tabloid, though, the Daily News' list is hardly about career smarts. Most of the people on the list are there because of their scandals, controversies and apparently unforgivable, ongoing problems. That is how Shia LaBeouf -- who should be on EW's list more than Ben Affleck should -- can be considered dumb, despite the fact that his public drunkenness arrest has hardly dented his career. Same goes for Russell Crowe, whose phone-throwing incident was more than two years ago. Other celebs are easily agreed with: former Oscar hopeful Courtney Love; almost-threw-it-all-away-at-the-beginning actress Vanessa Hudgens; K-Fed (only #38?). Check out the rest here.
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