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Entries in Michael Fassbender (132)

Saturday
Jul212012

Beauty Break: #Charbender

My thanks to JA of MNPP for the best hashtag ever. Tonight, I needed some beauty in my life so I was staring at these W Magazine pictures of Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender again. If Global Warming must destroy us all, let the heat come from sexually combustible celebrity couplings instead of mankind's stupid disregard for the environment.

These two could melt ice caps. More pics and hilarious Charbender exchange after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Friday
Jul062012

Halfway 2012. Supporting Actors (Thus Far)

We're surveying the "best" of the year thus far even if the pickings are slim. Previously we covered Actress, Actor and Picture. Now, the gentlemen in the sidelines.

SUPPORTING ACTOR  January through June Releases
Surveying what we've seen so far in this particularly category is challenging. In ensemble pieces from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to To Rome With Love, there just wasn't a breakout performance that rose so far above the film's limitations that you had to praise it. Mark Ruffalo's funny Hulk and Michael Fassbender's suave killer in The Avengers and Haywire respectively came closest but were better showcases for the commanding charisma of the actors than their actual skills. So if I had to turn in a ballot RIGHT NOW (god forbid) it'd go like so... 

Explanations and Team Experience survey  if you click to continue...

Click to read more ...

Monday
Jun182012

Red Carpet Convo: Frock of (All) Ages & the Prometheus Crew

Red Carpet Convos is back!

Nathaniel:  ‪Hi Joanna! ‬We haven't talked in ages. 

Joanna:  ‪I know.  And I've had so many things to say!‬

Nathaniel: ‪Try to squeeze them all in rightnow. Since the Red Carpet Convo series has been pretty much dormant since Oscar night, we'll reboot with a prequel of sorts. We're going WAY back to the Tonys (very briefly) and the Prometheus premiere. In Internet time that's like, what, three years ago?‬ 

Joanna:  ‪In a galaxy far far away.  And are you starting me back with Prometheus because you know of my Fassbender obsession?‬

Noomi, Lisbeth, Salma, Fassy & Charlize

Nathaniel: Listen, at this point it's safe to assume that everyone has the Fassbender obsession. But I don't mind sharing.‬

Joanna:  ‪Very generous of you.  Then let's discuss my favorite accessory of the red carpet this year.  The Ginger Beard.‬

Nathaniel:  ‪It's everywhere!‬ 

Ginger Beards, Appliqué Madness & Synthetic Starlets After the Jump...

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Mar182012

Linkbender

Stale Popcorn awww. our friend Glenn held a Titanic Oscar.
Guardian fun old interview with Helena Bonham Carter from her first film The Lady Jane (1986)
The Mary Sue new Dr. Horrible Sing-Along films this summer? Maybe.
Prometheus the full second trailer. Not doing a "yes no maybe so" because we already covered this one.
Tom Shone is not looking forward to Prometheus and here's why.

ioncinema Laurence Anyways trailer (in French) and posters. I love Xavier Dolan so I'm excited for this on principle if not quite in actuality.
Telegraph Tim Robey on George Clooney's arrest.
Movie|Line takes a different approach with the 9 most handsomely stoic photos of Clooney from the Sudan event.
In Contention Christopher Plummer in Barrymore... his stage triumph is going big screen this fall.
Antagony & Ecstacy
is doing a 1930s week with fine pieces on Leo McCarey (Make Way For Tomorrow) and early horror (Island of Lost Souls) with more to come.
Deadline Scorsese & DiCaprio committed to making The Wolf of Wall Street.
Immersed in Movies has a strange bit about Krypton mythology in the upcoming Superman movie Man of Steel... but since it's about costume design we're intrigued.

My New Plaid Pants (NSFW) has been having a ton of fun wrapping up 2011 cinema with the Golden Trouser awards including "ten great gratuities of 2011 cinema" ... Michael Fassbender keeps popping up and also wins Best Actor.
Hollywood Prospectus surveys the week in celebrity gossip. Minimal commentary pointing to the ridiculous.
The Broadway Blog interviews ubiquitous out actor Denis O'Hare of stage, film and television and grills him cheekily at the end about all the hot men he works with. Who is crush worthy?

Crush-worthy….hmmmmm. I’d have to go with Jamie Bell. Mysterious."

Good choice, O'Hare.

Finally...
Check out this Snow White and the Hunstmen featurette on Costume Design. We're campaigning for 2012 Oscars so soon?

 

Will the queen's costume's alone win Collen Atwood her 10th nomination -- even before those dual armies?

All in all she's quite the haute couture sort of queen but with an aged rotting edge to her."

We like the sound of those... especially with diva Charlize Theron inside of them.

Thursday
Mar012012

Distant Relatives: Lolita and Shame

Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

We shouldn't be talking about these things. And by "these things" I don't necessarily mean sex in general. Sex is okay filtered through the acceptable narratives of or cinematic pop-cultural lexicon. The happy conquests of the charismatic man are a fine topic for a film, as are the the constant failings of the empathetic dope. The female sexual experience is okay as along as it kinda mimics the male sexual experience. Basically we're willing to watch attractive actors an actresses roll in the sheets as long as their sex lives are at their own command. We do not take well to stories of people whose sexual desires do the controlling.
 
Lolita's Humbert and Shame's Brandon are two such people. Though it seems like they have it all. They're attractive, rich, sophisticated, educated and lead lives of effortless good fortune. Brandon's good looks and success place no limits onto the conquests craved by his sex addiction. Humbert's ridiculous luck places him as the sole guardian of a pretty young girl whose already had just enough experience to alleviate him from any guilt. The only thing Humbert and Brandon lack is someone else to blame.
 
As spectators to their inevitable downward spirals, it's difficult to watch them make all the choices that lead to their sad end and then feel sorry when they get there, especially when they leave casualties in their wake. The films they inhabit don't ask us to sympathize for them with a wink of dramatic irony like A Clockwork Orange or The Godfather (both great films) do with their protagonists. Instead they ask us to observe and then try to grasp the incredibly complex realtionship we have with the power of our own desires.


 

This is such an easy source of drama that on most any evening you can find television shows about addicts and hoarders and attempted interventions. On most supermarket shelves you can find magazines with tales of celebrities suffering from addictions. Psychological damage sells. The best of these paint complex portraits of real people trying to survive in a world that demands they be at war with themselves. The worst of them gleefully invite us to shed our empathies and delight in the chaos. It's difficult to have empathy for someone like Brandon whose problem includes attracting a plethora of beautiful women that would make any man jealous. And it's even more difficult to have empathy for someone like Humbert who preys on children.
 
Add to this the fact that both films omit any context in which to place our sympathies. Shame clearly suggests that Brandon has been damaged somehow, but we never know how. The most common criticism of the film is of its lack of backstory. But I wonder if such details are relevant. Do certain backstories justify his behaivor while others don't? Or would some at least invite our sympathy more than others? It's easy for us to postpone our emotional investment in someone until we have more details. But that's not what the movie asks of us.
 
In the case of Humbert, while the novel Lolita clearly sets up his penchant for young girls, the film omits this entirely. I've often wondered how viewers in 1962, who didn't have the backstory of the book reacted when their hero began to covet the young Dolores Haze. Of course the film had little choice than to convert the story into comedy to soften the blow. But there's still a surprising amount of drama and suffering to be had among the proceedings. And comedy or drama, there's only so much you can tiptoe around the central plot of a man lusting for an adolescent.
 
Then there are the other victims of these men's desires. Brandon's severly depressd sister Sissy, who pursues her sexual needs just as nihilistically as Brandon, but has to be chided and demeaned for it. And there's Humbert's Dolores, who has little time in life to be anything other than an object of temptation. Even her mother, the comedic relief, bumbling, boisterious Charlotte doesn't deserve her fate.


 
Which leads us to the real question that both of these movies are asking, whether either of these men truly deserve their fates. It's a complicated one, and based on the way audiences have reacted to these stories, over the past few months or past few decades it's a question we're still nowhere near answering. I imagine there's more goodwill present for Fassbender's Brandon since he's not involving himself with anyone who can't give legal consent (yet I can assume that more good judgment has been unknowingly discarded as a result of Fassbender's piercing gaze than Mason's droll sophistication). Then again, Humbert gets what's coming to him. He ends up punished for his crimes. Brandon merely ends up once again at the beginning of the cycle. What goodwill does that invite?
 
Perhaps the moralities of these films are so difficult to digest because they present not a simple world of monsters and victims, but a complex one of hurt people who hurt people, where the only monsters are us, when we look the other way and demand an easier reality.