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  • SATC Makes For Better Sex In The Suburbs?

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    The Sex and the City tour now apparently includes a stop at the Manhattan sex shop The Pleasure Chest, where tourists are invited to check out a selection of Sex and the City sex toys, including The Miranda, which bears the tagline, “suitable for any power-loving woman.” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York has pictures of “consumer orgy” (tee hee) and thoughts. This, for me, is the key takeaway:

    I love hating SATC too much to stop hating it, but there might be one good thing to come from it if, in the tightly wrapped heart of the American heartland, more Christian women are having orgasms and more Christian men are discovering their own assholes.

    Much like the only other piece of SATC promo/synergy that seems capable of turning anyone on, I have a hard time finding a problem with that.

    Via Gawker.


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

  • Heath Ledger Tribute: Classy or Trashy?

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    Under discussion:

    The Dark Knight  (2008)

    The Dark KnightSo Warner Brothers is planning to work a “tribute” to the late Heath Ledger into their New York premiere of The Dark Knight next month. Reports OK! Mag (yeah, I know):

    The studio behind the Batman Begins sequel is planning a tribute to the late actor at the New York City premiere and has been working closely with the Ledger family to make it come to fruition.

    If all goes according to plan, Heath’s family will be flown in from Australia for the event and Michelle Williams, his ex and mother of their 2-year-old daughter Matilda, will walk the red carpet as well.

    So: will this amount to a trashy trotting-out of a widow to ensure maximum tabloid coverage of a tentpole from a studio that could really use a big hit to justify their recent swerve away from producing smaller films? Or is it actually a classy way of explicitly acknowledging the obvious cloud that hangs over this wannabe blockbuster? I took an informal poll via Twitter, and responses leaned towards the latter, but do use the comments to tell us what you think.


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

  • 10 More ’90s Indies to Franchise

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    Under discussion:

    Bad Lieutenant  (1992)

    King of New York  (1990)

    Roger & Me  (1989)

    Slacker  (1991)

    Tomorrow  (1972)

    Clerks  (1994)

    Kids  (1995)

    Kolya  (1996)

    Swingers  (1996)

    Sling Blade  (1996)

    The Big One  (1997)

    The Corporation  (2004)

    Super Size Me  (2004)

    Clerks II  (2006)

    Bad Lieutenant  (2009)

    Now that we know, courtesy of Stu at Defamer, that Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is not so much a remake as it is like a new entry into a franchise, a la the James Bond movies, we at SpoutBlog wonder what other ’90s indie favorites could be continued with similar yet “completely different” installments.

    I remember back in the day thinking that Clerks should be a franchise, each film focusing on a different crappy job experience, but now that Clerks II has come and gone, that idea will likely never be realized. Of course, the concept of sequels unrelated to the original aren’t new — just look at any sequel title substituting the number 2 (or II) with the word Too. But nevertheless, here’s a few suggestions for other crazy foreign auteurs to take into consideration:

    1. Kids - Looking back, Larry Clark’s then-shocking debut is pretty tame. Nowadays you see teens doing worse things on commercial television. So, how about someone makes another Kids movie every decade or so to expose us to the latest generation of teenagers and how appallingly different they are from the previous generation. It would be like Apted’s Up documentaries, except it wouldn’t follow the same people.
    2. Slacker - This is Karina’s suggestion, off the top of her head, so I’ll give her credit. She likes the idea of Linklater revisiting the concept behind his monumental indie, but having it set in other cities, a la The Real World. Unlike the premise of the next Real World, though, I’d be much more excited about a Slacker Brooklyn.
    3. Leaving Las Vegas - While we’re on the idea of transplanting locations, and because Herzog is setting his Bad Lieutenant in New Orleans rather than New York, let’s mention some films whose remakes sequels next installments could feature title changes depending on their location changes. Leaving Boston might not have the same ring to it, though. What about King of New York redone as King of St. Louis? Of course, Abel Ferrara is already turning King of New York into a franchise with Pericle il Nero, a prequel that isn’t quite a prequel (strange that he would have a problem with Herzog’s film, then).
    4. Swingers - This one is easy. Take some hot new subculture/dance craze/music scene and exploit it, so none of the original followers like it anymore and all of the new followers can be labeled posers (no, of course I’m not bitter). Swingers wasn’t the first movie to do it; Saturday Night Fever and probably a few ’50s rock ‘n’ roll movies were viewed the same way. I wonder what scene is cool with the alternative kids these days …
    5. The Big One - Following the success of Roger and Me, Michael Moore made this documentary in which he attempts to get interviews with other corporate heads. But now his films are mostly political and there’s less attention paid towards companies like General Motors and Nike. Sure, we’ve since seen some worthy substitutes, including The Corporation, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Super Size Me, but I’d like Moore to return to his hunting of the villains of capitalism and give up on his pursuit of 9/11 answers.
    6. Breaking the Waves - Surely most movie execs were shocked at how unsexy Von Trier’s film was. After all, the story of a crippled man who sends his wife out to sleep with men for his vicarious benefit sounds like an erotic, softcore, Skinamax kind of thing. So, when do we get Breaking the Waves Too, about another crippled man with a much younger, hotter wife (just FYI, I personally have always had a crush on Emily Watson)? And since it will be have to be direct-to-video will it still need to avoid the nauseating shaky cam that made so many people sick in the theater?
    7. Sling Blade - Having recently seen Robert Duvall in the 1972 film Tomorrow, I now know that Billy Bob Thornton’s “Karl Childers” is not that unique a character. For the next installment, I’d like to see Karl (well, a character like Karl) and his southern gothic story set in New York City. It would make about as much sense as Bad Lieutenant being set in NOLA.
    8. Being John Malkovich - Who hasn’t wanted a franchise in which each installment goes inside the head of a different cult-figure actor? Even if it would ruin the original just a little big, I’d love Being Jeff Goldblum or Being Christopher Walken. The latter would be enormously popular.
    9. Kolya - This Oscar-winning foreign film showed us that heartwarming tales of old, curmudgeonly Sean Connery lookalikes who learn to love the young child they’re forced to take care of are universal. But I’d like to see the same plot in other countries besides Czechoslovakia, just to be sure.
    10. Waiting for Guffman - Oh wait, Christopher Guest has been continually remaking this movie, only without association. Never mind.

    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

  • Kung Fu Dog. Clip of the Day

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    Under discussion:

    The Karate Kid  (1984)

    Karate Dog  (2004)

    Kung Fu Panda  (2008)

    Back in February, I was almost completely against Kung Fu Panda, the latest from DreamWorks Animation, which opens in theaters tomorrow. And while I’m still not too interested in seeing it, I’ve grown a little more appreciation for Jack Black than I had while writing my review of the trailer. Yeah, he actually made me laugh in that brilliant Tropic Thunder viral video made for the MTV Movie Awards.

    Plus, I have to give Kung Fu Panda credit for not being as bad as Karate Dog, a 2004 made-for-TV movie from Bob Clark (A Christmas Story) featuring a talking dog voiced by Chevy Chase and a campy villain played by Oscar-winner Jon Voight. Think it couldn’t be that bad? Check out the fight sequence above. And then check out the trailer, which exposes the ripping off of a classic WB ‘toon (One Froggy Evening) and a classic French play (Cyrano de Bergerac).

    Its worst offense, though, is its title. Talk about racism, or at least Orientalism, or simply lazy Hollywood ignorance. Despite being set in Chinatown and having a dog that practices the Chinese martial art of Kung Fu, they went with a title that refers to the Japanese martial art of Karate, which has nothing to do with the movie. But I guess it sounds like The Karate Kid, so it made sense to whomever was in charge.

    Kung Fu Panda is looking pretty good all of a sudden. Other videos that make Kung Fu Panda look better than originally thought: this Blockbuster ad; this cute clip featuring one of those confused Kung Fu/Karate Hamster toys; this Kung Fu cow from the movie Kung Pow! Enter the Fist.


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

  • Web Videos and Isabella Rossellini, Together at Last

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    It’s Internet Week in New York City! That means all my Twitter friends are going to three parties a night and texting from each about about how bored/drunk/drowning in nerdy masculinity they are. Because they keep going back night after night, I have to assume that either the NY tech community is full of self-destructive masochists (probable) or these events are actually kind of fun (naaaahhhh).

    I’m going to see what all the fuss is about tonight, as IndieGoGo, FILMMAKER Magazine and the IFC Center co-host an Internet Week event called Where Internet and Film Collide. The evening will begin with screenings of Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno shorts; one of Jamie Stuart’s short films produced during the annual New York Film Festival press screening grind; Beyond the Rave, an online series for which Lance Weiler created an interactive game; and web neo-Western The West Side, about which we’ve gushed previously. After the screenings, Stuart, Weiler, and West Side creators Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Leiberman will join Ari Kuschnir and Scott Thrift of web video studio M ss ng P eces and Christopher Barry, a digital media exec from the Sundance Channel for a panel discussion. I’ll Twitter it, I promise!


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

  • Fire Fears. Trade Roughage 06/05/08

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    • Though Universal says they’re still assessing the damage of Sunday’s fire, which destroyed a tape and film print vault/shipping and receiving center, there’s speculation that some of the prints lost may be irreplaceable. “So-called EK prints, struck from the original negatives when the negatives were new and thus irreplaceable, would be among the most valuable prints on Earth.”
    • Director Craig Gillespie is trying to cast his Lars and the Real Girl star Ryan gosling in The Dallas Buyers Club. Gosling would play a real-life AIDS patient circa 1986 who, “frustrated with the lack of available medical options and unwilling to accept a death sentence, found a lifeline using alternative drugs and created a lucrative smuggling business that made those drugs available.”
    • The guy who made “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” for The Jimmy Kimmel Show has been given a movie deal. He’ll direct the comedy Cool School for Fox.
    • The United States of Tara––a TV pilot starring Toni Collette, produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Diablo Cody––has been picked up by Showtime. Cody is expected to write about half of the 12-episode season.

    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog