You are browsing the archive for February 2012.
After receiving over 600 entries in our Hunger Games haiku contest, it took some Katniss-strength fortitude to find one victor to take home the coveted grand prize, a pair of tickets to the March 12 Los Angeles premiere. You think choosing between Peeta and Gale is hard? Try selecting a winner from the vivid, emotional, romantic, lyrical, hilarious, and evocative poems submitted by Hunger Games diehards in our Cornucopia of words.
In order to be eligible, entries had to be original compositions in haiku form and be inspired by any part of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Many of you took the first person approach, writing as Katniss; some opted to approach it from the point of view of Peeta, Rue, or other supporting characters in the Hunger Games world.
Overall, the potency of the Hunger Games mythology and heroine Katniss Everdeen’s journey shone through. In the spirit of the Games, here are the Top 12 “candidates” (ending with the contest’s winning entry):
Nina Kuo:
Pick Peeta or Gale?
Well, I’ve always been a fan
of polyandry!
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Momin Sherazi:
Katniss, I knead you
I bread your pardon Peeta?
I said I loaf You
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Robyn:
Screw Gale and Peeta
This hellish revolution
Was all for you, Rue
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Brittany Huynh:
I threw you some bread
And now I throw you my heart
Don’t break it apart
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Samantha:
You’re the boy with bread.
And I am the girl on fire,
So do we make toast?
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Mar (we’ll let the extra syllables fly on account of the Tim Gunn reference):
Cinna is the most normal
He reminds me of Tim Gunn
Make it work, Katniss
–
Kristen…
It may not feel like it sometimes, but believe me: This is a great time to be a moviegoer. Harvey Weinstein is at the height of his powers, Titanic is finally coming out in murky 3-D, head-exploding propaganda is No. 1 at the box-office, and we’ve got a superhero flick to look forward to virtually every week from May to August. What more could you want from the film industry? What’s that? Strippers vs. werewolves, you say? Sure — that can be arranged.
To wit, today’s extraordinary news from THR: Well Go, the indie distributor that brought you such trenchant fare as Mutant Girls Squad and The Greatest American Snuff Film, has struck a deal for North American rights to an actual movie called Strippers vs. Werewolves. It is what it sounds like and will no doubt present a fine counterpoint this summer to Steven Soderbergh’s male-stripper opus Magic Mike. Earth needs a balance, folks.
Fine — strippers and werewolves and $300 budgets aren’t your thing. You’re more of a dinosaurs vs. aliens kind of person. Great! Guess what?
Move over cowboys, its dinosaurs that are going to battle aliens now. Following its launch announcement last May, Liquid Comics will release graphic novel Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens this summer based on an original story by Men In Black director Barry Sonnenfeld who worked closely on the project with comic book creator Grant Morrison (Batman, 18 Days, The Invisibles).
Morrison is writing both the graphic novel and the film screenplay for Sonnenfeld to direct while artwork for Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens is being done by Liquid Comics
…
Davy Jones, once named by Yahoo as the number 1 teen idol of all time, passed away at the age of 66 after suffering a heart attack. As a member of the Beatles-inspired musical group The Monkees, created for their eponymous television show in 1966, Jones rose to fame alongside bandmates Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz, and Michael Nesmith and subsequently embarked on a successful solo musical career of his own; let’s remember Jones with a look back at The Monkees, Jones’ acting career, and the group’s 1968 psychedelic cult film, Head.
The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”:
Jones’ singing “Girl” during his cameo on The Brady Bunch:
Jones sings “Daddy’s Song” in Head, a film that stymied then and now but remains a highlight of the Monkees legacy:
Swoon away with your own Jones remembrances below.
[via TMZ]
I won’t waste space rattling off a list of the personal and professional troubles that have plagued Lindsay Lohan’s life and career in recent years, so let’s cut to the chase: Will her Saturday Night Live hosting gig this weekend — her fourth time on the show after some admittedly hilarious prior turns — show the world that La Lohan’s ready to mount a comeback? Watch a healthy-ish-looking Lohan vaguely touch on her well-documented absence from glory in her SNL promos after the jump.
First thoughts:
- Who sent Lohan to Zooey Deschanel’s hairdresser?
- Am I the only one transfixed by the plasticized morphing of her face from the face I thought she had?
- Seriously, I know Kenan Thompson is in this bit too, but I can’t. Stop. Staring. At Lohan.
- Linds-sanity! What would Ben & Jerry put in that flavor of ice cream?
- Glimmers of the comic timing I remember seeing in Lohan long ago. Encouraging!
Anyway, I’m setting my DVR now.
Marvel’s The Avengers has the pressure of living up to years of hype resting on its shoulders, but a new trailer for the May 4 superhero pic looks promising, if not terribly complicated. Plot details, like what Loki’s up to and why? Save it for the movie. This is the chance to give every one of the Avengers their close-up. Well, except for you, Hawkeye.
Admittedly, Jeremy Renner’s archery expert — the least-well known character of the bunch, looking like the loner weirdo lurking around the popular kids at school — does get a neat falling-backwards-through-the-air-while-shooting-an-arrow moment in the trailer, so there’s that. Everyone else, though, gets to reveal a smidge of character in the span of two minutes: Nick Fury is concerned! Captain America is resentful! Tony Stark is bitchy! Black Widow is suggestive!
We already know that our heroes will bicker before they unite to fight evil, blah blah blah. It is rather touching to see Hulk leap into the air to save Iron Man from eating pavement. I’m just waiting for fans to shout about how superior Ruffalo’s Hulk is from the Ed Norton and Eric Bana versions, because guys? His Hulkface doesn’t look that much better, does it?
Verdict: Oh, who am I kidding? We’re all seeing this one, aren’t we?
Anyway, head to Apple to watch the trailer in high res.
The Avengers hits theaters on May 4.
In honor of Feb. 29, and just for fun, let’s flash back for a moment to the first horrible movie of the ’10s. Take it away, Michelle Orange: “It’s hard to care about the shabby treatment of the Irish, the Italian, or Amy Adams’s poor, spindly ankles when one’s own honor is called into question by the film’s specious, finger-wagging terms. Every time an Irishman fell off of his chair or dispensed a tediously quaint piece of folklore, every time the decrepitude of Ireland’s public works was asserted with a wink, and every time Amy Adams unloaded a shrill expectation that was met with abject humiliation, I felt a little more sorry for myself. Is this really what you think of me, Mr. Tucker? Is this what you think we all deserve? [...] This one’s a heart-sinker, fromage of the smelliest order; I am mystified by its existence.” Happy leap day!
The annals of filmmaking are filled with stories of people who managed to make movies against all odds, without money, without shooting permits, without proper professional equipment. This Is Not a Film, the 75-minute film directed by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb that made its debut at Cannes last spring and is now, thankfully, arriving in theaters Stateside, may be the ultimate achievement in stealth filmmaking, considering that Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence and has been banned by the Iranian government from making films for 20 years. And yet somehow he has made a movie that found its way first to one of the world’s major film festivals, and now to other parts of the world: This Is Not a Film is a small but extremely significant message in a bottle. That metaphor is almost literal: The picture made its way to Cannes via a USB drive — which was smuggled in a cake.
The movie covers a day in Panahi’s life as he’s waiting to hear the results of his appeal. It was shot with a digital camera (manned by Mirtahmasb, a documentary filmmaker, who is also heard asking Panahi questions off-camera) and an iPhone (wielded, slyly, by Panahi, because how much harm can a little home movie do?). Mirtahmasb’s camera captures the mundane details of Panahi’s life as he makes and takes calls on his cell phone (including one from his lawyer), answers the door for the food-delivery guy, feeds some greens to his daughter’s large, and surprisingly personable, pet iguana.
From these mundane details spring all sorts of provocative, frustrated conversations about the nature of filmmaking under a repressive regime. At one point, Panahi reveals that he’s going to tell the story of a script that he wrote before his…
