January 2011 Archives

I Want My DVD: Tuesday, January 18, 2011

by Zach Oat January 18, 2011 5:58 AM
I Want My DVD: Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Most of the movies coming out today are about criminals who are in jail or criminals who refuse to be taken alive. Plenty of belated gift ideas for paroled Uncle Pete!

The Movies Without Pity Awards: Last Chance for Round 1!

Tomorrow, the second round of voting begins for the Movies Without Pity Awards... which means that today is your last chance to vote in all of the Round 1 categories! Which was the Best Drama of 2010? The Worst Drama? The Best and Worst Supporting Actress? The Most Overrated and Underrated Movies? The Movie with the Most Ridiculous Premise? The One you were Most Ashamed to See? The Best Cameo? Best Ensemble? Best Effects? It's a virtual clearinghouse of discontinued voting categories! Everything must go!

And don't forget to vote on Facebook, as well, where there are totally different categories in which to cast your vote! Like "Most Misogynistic Chick Flick" and "Pretentious Documentary You Actually Liked"! Those categories update daily, so check back often. Fresh categories will be available on the TWoP site tomorrow and every Monday, and the ultimate winners will be announced February 18. A day that will live in infamy!

Vote for the Movies Without Pity Awards right here and download our free Facebook app here!

68th Annual Golden Globes: Join Us for the TWoP Liveblog!

Excited to find out which films the foreign press will call the best comedy and drama of 2010? Who they'll pick as Best Director? Whether they'll actually give any awards to The Tourist? Then join Mindy and me as we live-blog the entire night, from Ricky Gervais' liquid courage-fueled monologue to the final, rushed moments of desperation and disappointment. We'll also be keeping a running tally of all the winners, as well as creating galleries of the best moments and fashions later that night! The fun starts at 8 o'clock on the East Coast, 7:00 Central Time, 6:00 in the mountains and 5:00 out West on NBC, and you can get all the links on the TWoP homepage. See you there!

Not a voting member of the foreign press? Vote for the Movies Without Pity Awards right here and download our free Facebook app here!

The Movies Without Pity Awards: 15 Seconds of Fame

In 1999, Judi Dench shocked the world by winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love, despite only appearing in the film for five minutes. In a perfect world, she would have been nominated for Best Cameo, and won that category handily, but awards-show technology was not sufficiently advanced at that point to create a category solely for performances of 15 minutes or less. Cut to 2011, and the first-annual Movies Without Pity Awards: We now have the technology!

The Green Hornet: A Kick-Ass Dumb and Dumber for the Superhero Set

You've got to hand it to Seth Rogen: the guy wanted to make a superhero movie, so he found a hero nobody was doing anything with, one that he could conceivably play, and he wrote a script (with collaborator Evan Goldberg) that successfully hybridized the Green Hornet's atypical origin story with a slacker buddy comedy. When his director and co-star backed out, he found another director and another co-star, and the end result, the 3-D, Michel Gondry-directed, visually stunning Green Hornet, is unlike any superhero movie I've seen. It manages to take Rogen's idiotic, confrontational comedy shtick and make it a seamless part of the story of a hero's rise. Because what kind of idiot puts on a mask and goes out looking for a fight?

The Dilemma: Proof That Not Everything Has a Lighter Side

Has Vince Vaughn been forbidden from making dramas? The man hasn't starred in a non-comedy film since 2001, so someone, somewhere has decided that they aren't for him. And it's too bad, because Vaughn used to play psychos and FBI agents, and he's still capable of looking devastated and broken, which he does frequently in The Dilemma, a drama film masquerading as a comedy. The film half-heartedly tries to live up to that lie throughout, but it's difficult in a movie that's entirely about betrayal and stress and addiction. The jokes, such as they are, seem to be there solely to buoy up the downer of a plot, which would have been much better served by a movie that wholeheartedly embraced the sadness. (Note to studios: When Kevin James is in your movie and he doesn't do a single pratfall, you've got a drama on your hands.)

Black Swan vs. Center Stage: A Side-By-Side Comparison

In preparation for this Sunday's Golden Globes extravaganza, I finally got around to watching Black Swan a few nights ago. And while I was struck by how engrossing and visually stunning the movie is, I was also struck by how much it reminded me of another fine film about the plight of dancers: 2000's Center Stage, starring Zoe Saldana and Peter Gallagher. It may sound crazy, but really, it's a lot like Center Stage, if Center Stage grew up and then battled hardcore mental illness. Don't believe me? I've put forth the thematic similarities below. (Warning: Contains spoilers.)

 The Movies Without Pity Awards: The Only Way to Vote for Your Shame

We've all been there. We've all stood in line at the theater to buy a ticket for a movie we have no plans of telling people we saw. Maybe we were going with a friend who has bad taste. Maybe we still had fond memories of the star when she was in another movie. Maybe we owed Nicholas Sparks money. Whatever the reason, we went and saw a movie we were ashamed to see. Well, it's time to hide behind your anonymity and tell the world which movie shamed you the most in 2010, in our first annual Movies Without Pity Awards!

The Movies Without Pity Awards: Rewarding Realism, Punishing Whimsy

What's with all of the movies this year with utterly unbelievable story lines? A hockey player becomes a tooth fairy? A ballerina becomes a swan? A hot tub becomes a time machine? Please. If these directors and writers can't keep their movies firmly grounded in the realm of realism, then we're gonna stop seeing them. Next thing you know, they'll be saying that people live in our computers, and Ryan Reynolds is a space cop. It's time we punished these filmmakers for subjecting us to their flights of fancy in our first-annual Movies Without Pity Awards!

Schwarzenegger Remakes We'd Rather See Than Total Recall

Remake Total Recall? Blasphemy. Granted, Paul Verhoeven's 1990 re-imagining of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" wasn't exactly faithful to the source material, but then, neither was Blade Runner, and both are masterpieces in their own way. With Colin Farrell stepping into the lead role in the film, which will take place entirely on Earth, they might as well change the name entirely, and leave Recall's legacy untainted. Or, better yet, remake these other Arnold Schwarzenegger films that could stand to be updated for the new century.

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