“Rudy”, “The Longest Yard”, “Friday Night Lights”—cinema has a library full of collegiate and prison football films worth a spin. But, for some reason, Hollywood just cannot make a decent, realistic, grind-it-out pro-football movie. “Any Given Sunday”? Please. Even though the movies have yet to capture the heady excitement of the Super Bowl on film (and the fact that ... Read More »
Perhaps you remember yesterday when we noted that Chinese officials of Wulingyan National Park had renamed one of the famous peaks in that Hunan-province natural reserve after the “Hallelujah Mountains” in “Avatar”, a movie that apparently used the unique landscape to create their CGI environment. Well not so fast now. Seems that officials speaking through the State’s Xinhua news agency ... Read More »
Miramax, the once-pugnacious arthouse Hollywood indie studio that fought and clawed its way into mainstream success, quietly closes today after 31 years of bringing the great vistas of the world to American moviegoers. It’s been a long, slow death for the firm that, under the direction of the uncompromising, often combative Weinstein brothers, went from a small distributor, to ... Read More »
Back when “Avatar” was just a gleam in James Cameron’s eye, a photographer took some shots of China’s “Southern Sky Column” (above, right), a series of finger-like mountain peaks in Zhangjiajie in the country’s southern Hunan province. Somehow, the story goes, pictures of this natural wonder and UNESCO World Heritage site made their way to the director, who recycled ... Read More »
As we learned from Gadling, TripAdvisor, San Francisco’s Hertiage Marina Hotel has beat out the competition to land at the top of the “Dirtiest Hotel In America” list for 2010. A user-generated honor, TripAdvisor offers the review of one former guest: “This hotel is like in a horrible horror movie! The bed was a nightmare. It smelled like urine ... Read More »
Ah, Sundance — that wonderful time of year when indie movie producers scuttle around in parkas trying to sell their latest products and third of Los Angeles descends on the comparatively innocent town of Park City, Utah, for 10 days of screenings, swag, and snow. Festivities kicked off last night, but for those there and those soon to arrive, there ... Read More »
In film, a medium where commerce meets creativity like no other, there’s a yawning chasm between the hack directors who churn out the latest studio fodder on time and on budget, and the auteurs who stand by their personal visions come hell, high water, or test audiences. The decision to stick by your guns or bow to studio pressure can ... Read More »
It was one of those “I want to go to there” moments — Werner Herzog, perhaps the most mavericky maverick director ever, was convening a one-time-only “Rogue Film School”. It was almost as much as a surprise as the news that the director of “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” and “Grizzly Man” would also be the director of “Bad Lieutenant: ... Read More »
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