BLOGS
January 2011 Archives
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!
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!
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!
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?
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.)
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.)
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!
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!
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.
Blog Categories
A Festival for the Rest...ival
20 Entries
Accidents Do Happen
46 Entries
Adventures in Fakery
77 Entries
Alien Nations
3 Entries
Animation Desensitization
79 Entries
Awards Schmawards
17 Entries
Box Office Tally
79 Entries
Burning Questions
4 Entries
Coming Soonish
9 Entries
Cool Nerds Guide
6 Entries
Cop Rick
4 Entries
Crazy In Love
2 Entries
Director? I Hardly Knew Her!
154 Entries
Disease of the Week
1 Entries
Doc Watch
1 Entries
DVDs Unwrapped
24 Entries
Footage Lost (And Found)
2 Entries
For Your Amusement (Park)
10 Entries
Foreign Relations
49 Entries
Future Tense
1 Entries
Galleries (and Other Picture Postcards)
23 Entries
Gangster's Paradise
4 Entries
Getting Dramatic
3 Entries
Girls on Film
75 Entries
Happy Anniversary
9 Entries
Hi, High School
1 Entries
Hollywood To TWoP: Hello There!
36 Entries
I Voted for GORE!
101 Entries
I Want My DVD
221 Entries
I Want My VOD
20 Entries
I've Got Two Tickets to Merchandise
33 Entries
IMDb Fun Times
6 Entries
Indie Snapshot
41 Entries
Indie, Indie, Come Back Home
38 Entries
It Came From New York
6 Entries
It Came From San Diego
14 Entries
It's a Major Award!
75 Entries
Legal Eaglese
21 Entries
Let's Blame the Media!
49 Entries
Let's Go To The Video!
29 Entries
Letterbox of Recommendations
22 Entries
Lights, Camera... Action Jackson!
177 Entries
Little TV Shows That Done Hit the Big Time
71 Entries
Martial Artistry
11 Entries
Momentous Occasions
25 Entries
More On Movies
37 Entries
Movie Merchandise
4 Entries
Musicalifornication
47 Entries
Name That Tune
2 Entries
Obituaries Without Pity
23 Entries
On the Frontlines
1 Entries
Oscars and Grouchery
11 Entries
Politicking
3 Entries
Pros and Controversy
26 Entries
Read All About It
4 Entries
Real People, Fake Movies
21 Entries
Remakes R Us
7 Entries
Reviews of Movies We Haven't Seen Yet
42 Entries
Reviews of Movies We've Actually Seen
485 Entries
Scary Monsters & Super Creeps
103 Entries
Sci-Fidelity
147 Entries
Script From the Headlines!
56 Entries
Separate but Sequel
246 Entries
Sequelitis
19 Entries
Shameless Self-Promotion
27 Entries
Sing Out, Louise
3 Entries
Sports in Our Shorts
6 Entries
Strike Watch
14 Entries
Stupid Cinematic Celebrity Sayings
34 Entries
Sundance Sundance Revolution
13 Entries
Swords and Sorcerers
2 Entries
Taste the Reading Rainbow
93 Entries
Tears in Heaven
1 Entries
The Art of the Cannes
6 Entries
The Biz
122 Entries
The Casting Conch
192 Entries
The History, Booooyyyyy!
79 Entries
The Kongs of Comedy
199 Entries
Theatre With an "R" and an "E"
11 Entries
Things to Know
1 Entries
Things We Learned
1 Entries
Time Tripping
1 Entries
Top of the
1 Entries
Top of the MWoP
5 Entries
Trailer Trashing
72 Entries
Trailers Without Pity
37 Entries
Video Games Killed the Movie Star
23 Entries
Watching Movies With Kids
4 Entries
We Call Do-Over
177 Entries
We Watches the Watchmen
33 Entries
What's Up, Documentary?
17 Entries
When Animal Movies Attack
13 Entries
YA Wasteland
3 Entries
You Got Comic Book in My Movie
249 Entries
You Know, For Kids!
132 Entries