We asked Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary to nom a great villains movie -- and they picked two! THE THREE [AND FOUR] MUSKETEERS with Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee & Michael York.
(Now for a sequel starring us)
I hate that I'm even weighing in on this, but Carrie Fisher passed away 9 months before Chris Terrio and JJ were hired to write STAR WARS.
Do they....not think we can fact check nonsense about being forced to scrap scenes they wrote for Leia and Rose?
Step 1: Get obsessed with a Hollywood house that was home to 10,000 aspiring actresses.
Step 2: Sell a book about it to a super-cool editor.
Step 3: Share all the amazing stories you've discovered....in 2022 after you write the thing.
Gulp. AWAY WE GO!
Vidiots!
The most incredible video rental store in LA!
Is reopening as a video store and *movie theater* with food and booze on the east side!!!
BEST NEWS EVER
My first piece in the New York Times is on a moment that fascinates me: SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE and the indie revolution that didn't play out the way anyone wanted.
Now the excuses are getting hilarious.
ILM must have gotten mad, so the as-of-today update is they didn't.... watch the old outtakes before they used those exact lines in the script?
The excuse I buy belongs to
@adamegypt
TROS had such a thin concept of Rey and Rose's personalities -- "Sweet! Spunky!" -- that it saw them as redundant.
As in, if both female characters were on the ship, the script couldn't imagine more than both cooing, "Poor abused droid!"
@adamegypt
(Which, of course, ignores Rose's real character purpose of bringing democracy and economics into the galaxy, but it's already clear that TROS doesn't care about that.)
Absolutely. In the pre-McQuarrie days, he'd coldcall young talents after seeing their first or second film and say, "Write me something." That's how he wound up in MAGNOLIA.
This is βQuentin Tarantinoβs Feature Presentation,β a new three-part podcast miniseries with Quentin Tarantino and host
@TheAmyNicholson
. Follow along as the two talk about the director's life and five films heβs programmed at the New Beverly Cinema:
The first episode of QUENTIN TARANTINO'S FEATURE PRESENTATION is out!
Quentin and I start talking about the surrealistic 1967 thriller POINT BLANK....and wind up talking about RESERVOIR DOGS, and his own fear that he might not be a good director.
What strength. What an awful loss for his family and friends and the rest of us who only knew him onscreen.
His performance in GET ON UP is an all-timer, the kind that makes you swear to see everything he'd go on to do. Grateful for what he made. Wish he'd had decades more.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is perfect. And its ideas about frustration and sacrifice and loss and coming together to make a better, more just world are even more perfect at the end of 2020.
(Did NOT sink in before that Mr. Gower's son died in the flu pandemic.)
Trump says he had a meeting about Iran and the Middle East with lots of good-looking generals: "Like from a movie. Better looking than Tom Cruise, and stronger."
Ever wonder what it was like to see the original
#HalloweenMovie
during its original run? YouTube user Kyle J. Wood recorded audio during a screening at a Hollywood Boulevard theater in 1979, one year after the film opened and synced up with remastered video!
In 1978, George Lucas invited Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan to his assistantβs home in Los Angeles to pitch a new name for adventure.
βIndiana Smith,β Lucas said. βVery Americana square.β
Sighed Spielberg, βI hate this, but go ahead.β
Can't say I'm angry or even surprised that a certain LA paper hasn't said a word about the citywide loss of a man who also won it a Pulitzer. That they're asleep at the wheel just confirms (again) that it isn't the voice of Los Angeles.
Wait, I'm gonna take a leap and guess that Jr. hasn't seen RAT FILM, which is an indictment of racist redlining policies that have led to generations of social inequality.
Elijah Cummings has done such a wonderful job representing Baltimore that people made a documentary about its Rat (aka vermin) problem.
Wonderful Democrat leadership.
Rat Film' highlights Baltimore's rat warfare, urban planning failures - Baltimore Sun
In the early days of 2017, Biden/Harris was my dream ticket.
Since then, I fell in love with Elizabeth Warren (and future pres AOC) and moved even further to the left.
But that's not everyone's journey (yet) and I can back this combo full-hearted. (While pushing them for more)
Happy 100th birthday to the movie zombie!
Here they lurch in the 1919 French flick, J'ACCUSE. Director Abel Gance cast real WWI soldiers to play dead WWI soldiers who demand that their country look death in the face. (Months later, most of the performers died at Verdun.)
New podcast!
On Oct 1st, I'm launching an 8-episode miniseries with
@TheRinger
on HALLOWEEN. I've been talking to serial killer experts, child psychologists, small town tour guides, horror rappers & of course John Carpenter and Jamie Lee.
Trailer here!
Guys.
@paulscheer
talks about bad movies. I talk about maaaaybe important movies. Together, we're gonna talk about the *best* movies -- the AFI Top 100! -- on our new podcast UNSPOOLED!
So stoked please clobber me in the head with a film reel.
How do you shoot a scene that's thrilling, sexy, dangerous, or awful -- while making sure the actors feel safe?
Here's how four of this year's most intimate scenes were filmed.
As shocked as anyone that I dug the hell out of DUNE.
Denis Villeneuve rarely makes films that feel human. (ARRIVAL excepted.)
Here, that's a bonus. He's confident creating an alien land with its own cultures and rhythms. I sank into his Arrakis.
Can't wait to see it again.
UNDER THE SILVER LAKE is so much fun. Feels like a side eye to people who hated IT FOLLOWS' last act -- a mockery of literal-minded, no-fun, pop culture obsessives.
I mean, I hated IT FOLLOWS' last act. But I'll take the hit.
Somehow, PREY is my first Predator movie and....I think I'll just stop here because no way could the others be as gripping and gorgeous, or as whittled down to sharp, pure adventure cinema.
Hello! Meet my new podcast miniseries: ZOOM.
It's a fun, short, curiosity-driven series on the science and history behind the movies -- here's a trailer!
Ep 1 is on aliens. Ep 2 is on horses.
ZOOM gonna drop randomly all year, so subscribe!
The two most important alt-weeklies died this year, yet I still believe in the readers and the writers and the NEED.
What I don't believe in: corporations and hero billionaires. Like the papers' original founders, we gotta figure out how to do this ourselves.
Nothing makes me want to scream-sob more than HALLOWEEN UNMASKED coming to an end. Our final episode is alllllll about the new film (with mild spoilers -- be warned!)