the day after

Guilt, Blame and Other Wreckage From the Picturehouse/WIP Crash

The eulogies are on following Thursday's twin killing of Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures by the executioners at Warner Bros. — or perhaps more accurately, by hooded, high-ranking Time Warner axeman Jeff Bewkes, to whom some today are attributing the death penalty that ended in nearly 75 lost jobs between the two mini-majors. While we still suspect that WIP's demise in cosmically linked to its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene. More »

funny games

Sadistic 'Idol' Elimination Techniques Fail To Break Spirit Of Littlest Karaoke Soldier David Archuleta

The task of turning five seconds' worth of compelling television—the announcement of the latest American Idol oustee—into an hour of Nielsen-trampling entertainment isn't an easy one. And yet they always seem up to the challenge, employing a wide variety of systematic dehumanization techniques to keep singers on their toes and viewers locked in until the very last moment. Take last night's episode, in which trembling, shaved-koala contestant David Archuleta was made to sit backstage for two full commercial breaks as his brothers and sisters stood in huddled groups on the stage. One was safe, the other at risk of being loaded onto Idol-branded freight trains and transported to a karaoke death camp somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. More »

sick flicks

Lunch is Lost, Ticket Cost Recouped After Messy 'Funny Games' Fallout

While we're mildly impressed by the $1 million take in limited release for the bourgeoisie torture-snuff opus Funny Games (especially considering the overwhelmingly negative reviews), no story speaks higher of director Michael Haneke's success than that of one Kate Johnson, who recently gave new meaning to "box-office gross" following her trip to the movies:

Finally when it was over and my "friend" looked like a deer in the headlights — I was physically sick. I demanded my money back from the box office only to have the girl laugh at me — at first. I threw up on the floor right in front of her — and it splattered.

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anticipation

'Funny Games': The Ultimate Bourgeois Nightmare Or Just Art House Torture Porn?

For those of us out there who are active moviegoers, the weekend of March 14 has been circled on our calendars for some time. While 2008 has seen a handful of worthwhile releases hit the cineplex (think Be Kind Rewind, think Charlie Bartlett), the indie-inclined viewer has had painfully few movie choices from which to choose from so far this year. However, all that changes this weekend when Neil Marshall's Doomsday, David Gordon Green's Snow Angels and Michael Haneke's Funny Games make their way to a theater near you. While all three will must sees (at least in my book), one of these flicks is drawing significant levels of pre-release controversy (if not great reviews). Specifically, Haneke's Americanized remake of his own 1997 pic Funny Games is being labeled by notoriously cranky film blogger Jeffrey Wells as being "the ugliest and most repulsive violent melodrama I've ever seen (including the thoroughly disgusting I Spit On Your Grave)" and, simultaneously, "a smart and nervy critique of sexy-violent movies ... and one of the ballsiest movies ever released by Warner Bros. in its 90 year history." Um, sign us up!

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