Remember New Coke? If you do, the ’80s called and they want their jokes back. But as a reminder, in April of 1985, just over 30 years ago this week, Coca-Cola, one of the longest surviving American companies who had successfully dominated the market with a time-tested product, had decided that to stave off the …
Who knew that good marketing for a movie included ridiculous stock photos with some of the stars of the movie? It seems like the team over at Fox believe so as they have revealed a set of stock photos that feature the stars of the upcoming comedy, Unfinished Business, doing normal office poses. The cast …
Selma Written by Paul Webb Directed by Ava DuVernay UK / USA, 2014 Selma is a shining example of how to create an informative biographical drama that still packs an emotional wallop. Rather than trying to portray the entire life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, director Ava DuVernay captures the essence of King …
Tom and Anna Wright (James Franco and Kate Hudson) are a financially-struggling American couple giving UK life a try. The money from a robbery-gone-wrong ends up in their basement and they make the ill-fated decision to hold onto it, unaware that the cash will bring two separate criminal gangs and a worn police detective charging into their lives.
There is no question about the absolute elegance and cautionary observations that captures the provocative essence of the well-received 19-century costume drama Belle.
More than perhaps any other director, the work of Ernst Lubitsch has been the most noticeable influence on Wes Anderson’s style. Though the great German-American writer-director, most prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, was never quite so aesthetically bold in the look of his sets, he too was preoccupied with meticulous staging for comedy within his chosen locales, be they the titular Shop Around the Corner or the Parisian hotel of Ninotchka; The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a fictional European country, the Republic of Zubrowka, another Lubitsch trait from works like The Merry Widow and The Love Parade, though The Shop Around the Corner happens to be set in the city Anderson’s mountaintop lodging house takes its name from. He garnered the descriptor of ‘the Lubitsch touch’ thanks to the moving sincerity that always made itself evident within even his more broad comedic premises, and Anderson’s own best work is that in which a recognisable humanism always makes itself known and potent even within the stylised stiltedness through which most of his characters are written and performed.
The Lone Ranger Directed by Gore Verbinski Written by Justin Haythe & Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio USA, 2013 Sincerity is in dire need of being resurrected in modern popular culture. This is not to say that cynicism doesn’t have a place in society, or that naivete should be widely embraced by the masses. But …