We Can't Wait #5: Inherent Vice

[Editor's Note: We Can't Wait is a Team Experience series, in which we highlight our top 14 most anticipated films of 2014. Here's Amir Soltani on "Inherent Vice."]

Inherent Vice
Doc Sportello, a perennially buzzed detective in Los Angeles at the beginning of the 70s, gets himself tangled up in a mess with former lovers, low life gangsters, prostitutes, billionaire crooks, a ship called Golden Fang and a whole lotta people with really weird names.

Talent
One of America’s greatest filmmakers, Paul Thomas Anderson, is behind the camera and one of America’s greatest actors, Joaquin Phoenix, is in front of it. Cinematographer Robert Elswit is collaborating with the director again after a one-film break, as is composer Jonny Greenwood. Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Reese Witherspoon and P.T.'s partner Maya Rudolph fill out the rest of the cast list.

Maya Rudolph in "Inherent Vice"

Why We Can’t Wait
With Paul Thomas Anderson’s name attached, little else is needed to drum up excitement. In my opinion, he has directed three spotless masterpieces (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and The Master) and the rest of his filmography is as compelling as it is provocative. His is a singular and vital voice in modern American cinema. But there’s another factor at play here too: Inherent Vice is one of my favorite novels of recent years, and one of Pynchon’s most polished and coherent works. Its relatively modest scale should lend itself better to adaptation than the rest of his bibliography.

It will also be interesting to see Anderson in a more relaxed mood again. Vice has the potential to take him back to the Altman-esque structure he so successfully utilized in Boogie Nights, both because of its sprawling cast of colorful characters and its bitter humor and casual insight into the Angelenos counterculture. Few directors can get an ensemble to click as comfortably as Anderson does and it’d be a shame if he never used that gift again. If adapted faithfully, Doc Sportello is more central to the narrative than Dirk Diggler was, but there’s still plenty of meat for everyone else to chew on here. Plus, look at that cast! It’s mouthwatering. So good, in fact, that I’m willing to forgive the presence of Reese Witherspoon!

But We Do Have To Wait
Warner Brothers has the distribution rights, but we know we have to wait a while. None of Anderson’s films have been released earlier than mid-September on the calendar, and chances are this one won’t be an exception. A festival bow in Venice is likely; one in Toronto is almost inevitable.

Previously on "We Can't Wait"
06 Into the Woods
07 Snowpiercer
08 Nymphomaniac
09 Boyhood,
10 Big Eyes,
11 The Last 5 Years,
12 Gone Girl 
13 Can a Song Save Your Life 
14 Veronica Mars 
runners up  just missed the cut.

We Can't Wait #14: Veronica Mars

[Editor's Note: We Can't Wait is a Team Experience series, in which we highlight our top 14 most anticipated films of 2014. Here's Dancin' Dan on Veronica Mars.]

Veronica Mars
Kristen Bell reprises her role as the title character in this neo-noir murder mystery that picks up nine year after where Season 3 of the eponymous TV series left off.

Talent
Rob Thomas, creator of the original series is in the director's chair. Kristen Bell is joined in front of the camera by other series regulars including Jason Dohring.

Why We Can't Wait

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A Year With Kate: Little Women (1933)

Episode 4 of 52 Anne Marie is screening all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order.

In which we remember childhood fondly.

When I was 11, our school librarian told me that if you love a book enough, you have its first line burned into your brain. Being a very literal child, I immediately selected my favorite book, Little Women, and studiously memorized the first line:

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”

Later—much later than I’m comfortably willing to admit—I realized that Mrs. Krall actually meant that when you love a story, you revisit it so often that it stays with you. I think we can all agree this extends to film as well. [more...]

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Veronica Mars

I have a confession to make. I, Dancin' Dan, am one of the crazy Veronica Mars superfans who donated to the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign to fund the Veronica Mars movie. And I have followed the making of said movie very eagerly. So when the official theatrical trailer was released yesterday, I was quite excited to see both what it would look like and what the reaction from non-fans would be. So while my answer to our eternal trailer query may be obvious, I'm very curious to know what people with little to no knowledge of the TV show think. Marshmallows, come gush with me!

Y|N|MS breakdown is after the jump...

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Snow Queens who have gone before us

It’s Tim, with a little bit of animation history for y’all. Not that you’d be able to tell from the details dribbled out so far (estranged sisters, talking snowmen, reindeer acting like dogs), but the impending Disney film Frozen began its development as a dramatic musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”, a story first published in 1845. By this point, Frozen has drifted far enough from Andersen’s fairy tale that it’s probably more of an honorary adaptation than anything else, but that’s not all that unusual for Disney animated features. In the meanwhile, anyone looking to get their fix with a more authentic, faithful version of the story can look to a lengthy tradition of Snow Queen animated films, stretching back more than half a century.

From Russia to London with Sigourney-Love after the jump...

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