Linky Brown

Vulture "How to Hug a Puppy" by Tom Hardy
Cinema Blend one man Disney Princess meets real world musical... after the ever after part
Pajiba best performances from SXSW films 

CHUD Veronica Mars and the invention of "pay to pay for play" 
i09 producers "notes" on Blade Runner... which they hated 
NPR on real life Ginger & Rosas in the 60s  
Empire on the latest big project director shuffle - Ang Lee considering a Spielberg drop and Tom Hooper looking at the Sacha Baron Cohen Freddie Mercury biopic
Coming Soon star portraits from the final day of The Wolverine production. Hugh Jackman and the ladies
Guardian the writer of the fake Haneke twitter account on Michael Haneke

Finally, if you're in Gotham, you should know that PAM GRIER, Jackie Brown and Foxy Brown herself, is getting the weekend festival treatment at the Walter Reade right now. She'll be appearing tonight for an interview before the screening of Jackie Brown (coming up on "Hit Me") and also making a midnight appearance at Scream Blacula, Scream. On Sunday she gets a full hour interview with film clips. Tickets are still available for some of the shows. And if you haven't seen any of her 70s blacksploitation movies, you owe it to yourself to see at least one.

Lump of Coal, Anyone? Cinematic Shame (Pt 1)

YEAR IN REVIEW

I plan to get all joyously positive from Christmas Eve through January 9th as I share my take on the Best of the Film Year That Was. But I make no promise about my mood come January 10th...  That's the fateful morning when 6,000 Academy voters play puppet master and yank my fragile psyche about with abandon. But until then... And before the Year End Best of hits, we purge.

MOST "OVERRATED" ANYTHING

I know that people quibble with this word and wish it dead and buried. But that's only because they take it far too seriously. It's a silly adjective but silly is fun. One should always take things for what they're worth. No matter who is using the word "overrated" it only ever means:

Other people are under the mistaken impression that this thing I think is merely okay is really great! They are quite wrong."

Unsatisfying performances, miscasting, bad moves in good films and more after the jump...

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Review: "Lawless"

The article originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

A terrible performance... or a great one? You decide.

Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) doesn't believe the tall tales about the outlaw Bondurant Boys especially the ones about Forrest (Tom Hardy). Local Virginia legend has it that Forrest can't be killed, that he's immortal.  "Have you ever seen what a tommy gun does to 'immortal'?" Rakes sneers in a (successful) effort to terrorize the town's Forrest-fearing men into submission. Rakes then beats the youngest Bondurant brother Jack (Shia Labeouf) into a blubbering pulp. But, as it turns out, the Bondurant brothers are resilient enough to inspire tall tales. Forrest and his brothers make their living as moonshiners in this Depression-era Western and with Prohibition empowering organized crime, everyone is looking to be the top boss. The brothers value their autonomy but the guns are out and if an actual crime lord (Gary Oldman's "Floyd Banner") don't get them, then the even more crooked law enforcement (Pearce's Deputy) just might.

Such is the bloody conflict of John Hillcoat's Lawless, based on the historical novel "The Wettest County in the World" which was written by a grandson of the Bondurants (all childless during the movie) suggesting straightaway that at least one of them is going to make it out of the movie alive. Not that the film is shy about spoilers given its heavy handed foreshadowing and the past-tense narration. (You gotta Live to Tell).

MORE AFTER THE JUMP...

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Belated Review: "The Dark Knight Rises"

Though it's normally best to get straight to the point with reviews The Dark Knight Rises (hereafter refered to as TDKR) presents something of a quandary. How do you jump right in to speaking about this particular film when Christopher Nolan's last Batman film has so long ceased being "just a movie". So we begin with a three part preface... 

What?!? Nolan can blow seven reels of a non-origin Batman film before Bruce suits up and you object to me blathering on for three paragraphs before I review the movie? Double standards!

First, I believe that Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as Catwoman is one of the greatest performances of the 1990s, the very definition of what an actor can do when they understand their auteur's vision, get the heightened play of specific entertainment genres, and are capable of imaginative stylization. It pissed me right off that people tried to pretend that no one before Heath Ledger had ever delivered Oscar worthy work within the comic book genre. So Batman Returns is my favorite Batman movie (yes, I know it has flaws. Shut up) and I entered the movie naturally resistant to Anne Hathaway's Catwoman.

Second, I saw the movie alone on Saturday, the morning after it opened. I failed to convince any of my friends to go with me and wasted my second ticket. To my great shame even though I think it's stupid to let fear change your routines (I was on a plane exactly a week after 9/11 as scheduled) I did briefly find myself thinking about where the exits were* against my will and flinched at the frequent gun battles in the movie. When I returned from the movie a friend snarkily asked me "So was is worth risking your life?" and I wanted to punch him. In a non violent way. See, every movie is worth risking your life for because movies are totally safe. Movies do not kill people, people do. People with access to firearms especially which is a lot of people given our nation's embarrassingly pro-tragedy gun laws.

*I'm super happy to report that I've been to the movies twice after this and never once thought of this.

This is a LOT of baggage to take into a movie already. I get that. And then there's the small matter of my teflon resistance to understanding the genius of Chris Nolan and residual frustration with fanboy culture that demands that I do. I was discussing the push and pull between mandated blockbuster movie culture and blogging demands last week with Rob, a reader, on facebook who paid me the nicest compliment:

I like the balance you strike. Sorta: this is here, can't ignore it, we're all gonna see it, Christian Bale is gonna sound funny, and we move on.

Rob nailed it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hee. And we move on... finally, to the [spoiler heavy] review. 

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Twins: Band of Marshall-Green-Hardy Brothers

twins daily @ 2:22 PM during Gemini

Rising star Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) --  who we were recently talking about since he's about to play Tennessee Williams --  is pictured left... or is it right? He has a twin brother named Taylor (who is not an actor) also pictured to your left... or right. They are not actually identical but fraternal according to Logan but they coulda fooled me.

To make things more confusing (and more delightful for the internets) people keep mistaking Logan for another rising star Tom Hardy (Bronson, Inception, This Means War). Hardy does not share DNA with the Marshall-Green twins having been born to totally different parents on a different continent 10 months apart. 

And yet...

 

To make things more confusing⁴...

• Tom and Logan both made their screen debut in Band of Brothers (2001). Tom played a Brit and Logan a German.... but still. How weird is that as coincidences go? 
• Tom & Logan seem to have similar taste in (changing) hair affectations.
• Tom (Lawless) & Logan (Prometheus) are both currently co-starring with Guy Pearce (albeit in separate movies).
• Tom came to the recent Prometheus premiere which Logan also naturally attended being one of its stars. Unfortunately the internet has (at this writing) denied us pictures of the two twin-like actors standing in each other's general vicinity. Damn you internets!

Over the course of the past four years Tom Hardy's career has been going supernova whilst Logan Marshall-Green has been sexing up Marisa Tomei. So it's kind of a draw.

Marisa & Logan, who aren't photographed much together, in 2010

Maybe Logan and Taylor and Tom should have all played "Number 14" together in Battlestar Galactica instead of wasting time with sci-fi pictures like Prometheus (Logan) and Star Trek: Nemesis (Hardy). Or maybe Marisa and Logan should've replaced Reese & Chris Pine and co-starred with Hardy in a better sexier smarter version of This Means War or maybe th--- okay, okay. I'll stop now. But the point being: The Film Experience ♥ twins.

P.S. I have not yet seen Prometheus but I'll rectify the situation tomorrow and we'll discuss.