1991: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves

by Lynn Lee

- Locksley…I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!

-Why a spoon?

-Because it’s DULL, you twit, it’ll hurt more!”

If you remember anything about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s probably those lines.  Or, more generally, Alan Rickman’s scrumptiously hammy turn as the villain who bellows them.  Or perhaps you remember Kevin Costner’s complete failure to master anything resembling an English accent.  If you’d just as soon forget Costner ever played Robin Hood, you’re not alone: consensus opinion generally holds that Rickman was the only good thing about the movie, which received tepid reviews at the time of its release and hasn’t exactly aged into a classic. 

It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of people really liked Prince of Thieves at the time...

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The Little Twink That Could

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason on King Cobra.

Film festivals make for weird bedfellows, and so it was settling in to see King Cobra - the new true crime flick detailing the rise of gay porn star Brent Corrigan and his sordid side-wind through murder - at 9am on a Sunday morning. I literally passed people dressed up for church as I went to the movie theater. Now I could make the case that I was also set for a different sort of worship, getting on one's knees and what not, but that'd be cheap, and we wouldn't want to be cheap. (No, never.)

Certainly not while talking about a film so hilariously devoted to luxurious cheapness. Think back on the film and I bet your mind will be less flooded with memories of oiled pecs than it will be by leather couches abandoned across stretches of beige suburban carpets, shades drawn, piles of video games seemingly stacked in every corner.

Anyway I'm as shocked and surprised as any of you that King Cobra is killer. Funny, sexy, and bottomlessly absurd, a wall-fly's view of the ass-smacks of the perfectly self-involved, with solid to straight great performances all around. Garrett Clayton is the lube that sticks the film together and he slides it straight into third, juggling every ball(s) the movie can throw at him. And Christian Slater is especially lovely as the lonely and aged-out home-bound pornographer inviting the world's twinks into his living-room and falling in love with every last one - his romantic weariness in a lesser film would read only as lecherous, but Cobra wants to walk the line, and it magically manages to. 

Indeed the best thing about the film is its refusal to demonize sex - I was worried as it plowed further along into its darker places it would go where all these stories inevitably exhaustingly go, getting preachy and conservative and making us feel bad for the desires that half an hour earlier it was gleefully exploiting. I mean yes its a story about young people slipping into the sex industry and yadda yadda first-degree murder, but its characters also find strength and self-actualization and even love through their bruised but beautiful sexuality. You can take this one to the spank bank - it's ribbed for all of our pleasures.

Grade: B+

Lick It Up, Baby. Lick It Up

“F*ck me gently with a chainsaw,” it looks like Daniel Waters 1989 cult classic Heathers (starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty among others) will be getting the small-screen treatment in a new anthology series on TV Land. This reincarnation will take place in present-day and feature a modern permutation on the three central “Heathers”. One is a black lesbian, another is a gender-queer male and the third is said to resemble the beleaguered Martha Dumptruck from the original film.

This is not the first cult-classic in recent years to be adapted for television. MTV’s “Scream” (largely eclipsed by “Scream Queens” in the public consciousness) is set to begin its second season May. TV Land itself has also picked up a television adaptation of The First Wives Club set to air next year.

Adaptations of movies into television series is hardly anything new. And there’s certainly precedent of it leading to a TV series that far surpasses the film its based on. Maybe “precedent” is a strong word. One shining example would probably be a more accurate assessment. The point is, for every generation-defining “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” we get about five or six middling “Dangerous Mind” or “Clueless” level retreads (remember these TV adaptations? Yikes.)

Whatever your feelings, qualitatively about high school hierarchy satire, its iconic status is hard to deny. Make no mistake—without Heathers, there would be no Clueless, no Mean Girls, probably no “Beverly Hills: 90210” whatever that means to you in any case. It’s easily the year zero of the high school queen bee sub-genre. Entertainment Weekly even teased the story with the headline “TV Land has picked up this Mean Girls-esque ‘80s cult classic.” Heresy. No one is set to reprise their original roles, which makes sense if you’ve seen Heathers. Here’s hoping that it retains at least some of the biting, note-perfect tone of the original.

Also, Martha Dumptruck did survive the original film, so maybe her return isn't out of the question. You know you're wondering what she's up to.

Will you be watching?

Tribeca: "The Adderall Diaries" and "Hungry Hearts"

Tribeca Festival coverage. Here's Joe Reid, who you know and love from the podcast...

The Adderall Diaries
We sometimes joke around about James Franco's insane output over the last five years -- he's been in WELL OVER 30 movies since 127 Hours, with a whopping 21 of them playing film festivals. That's an average of five films a year playing in some festival or another.

For a lesser-known actor, this kind of heavy indie output might be a better idea. Throw yourself into as many projects as possible, increasing your odds that one of them will hit. Franco's already established, though. He's had his hits. What starring in so many festival indies does for him it's the opposite: it ups his odds that he'll end up in at least a few total stinkers, every year. It's gotten to the point where Franco's presence in an indie feels like the promise of disappointment.

New Franco and new Adam Driver after the jump...

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Christian's A Nympho

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JA from MNPP here. When you think of Christian Slater, what's the first thing you think of? This question assumes you're old enough to know who the hell Christian Slater is and maybe recall when he was known for things, of course. 

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I assume most people think of his "Jack Nicholson by way of James Dean" riffing in Heathers. Or maybe you're really cool and Gleaming the Cube or Pump Up the Volume hit you like a mack truck. Me, I've got brain issues - I immediately think of The Legend of Billie Jean (but then that's a film that's always near the surface of my brain, any time, anywhere).

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Anyway if Lars Von Trier has his way in a post-Nymphomaniac world you're going to think of Christian Slater in a different way - he's just cast the actor to play Charlotte Gainsbourg's father in that promises-to-be-controversial next flick of his, which will document, according to Lars, the entire sexual life of a woman, from her childhood to old age. Since I have seen a Lars Von Trier movie before, I know to be worried.

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