Salon.com > Movies http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Pick of the week: Haunting, gorgeous “Oslo, August 31st” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/#comments Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926333 "Oslo, August 31st" is, as the title suggests, an evocation of one day in the Norwegian capital, as experienced by a troubled young man who's facing the end of summer and the end of his youth. It's a marvelously constructed personal journey, both wrenching and bittersweet, whose emotional ripple effects stay with you for days and weeks afterward. While much of international art cinema can seem overly talky or conceptually alien to American viewers, this second feature film from Norwegian director Joachim Trier is a dynamic, even breathtaking visual experience without much dialogue or any philosophical heavy lifting, following the bony, handsome, exceedingly vulnerable Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) through coffee shops, nightclubs and bodies of water, en route to an ambiguous final destination.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/feed/ 5 “Moonrise Kingdom”: Wes Anderson’s mid-’60s love story http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/moonrise_kingdom_wes_andersons_mid_60s_love_story/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/moonrise_kingdom_wes_andersons_mid_60s_love_story/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 19:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926159 All the details of Wes Anderson's rapturous and hilarious mid-1960s New England summer romance "Moonrise Kingdom," taken one at a time, are plausible. Indeed they are more than plausible; they're perfect, from the fitted uniforms and yellow canvas tents of the troop of "Khaki Scouts" headed by cigarette-smoking Edward Norton to the achingly picturesque island home where the brood of children belonging to Bill Murray and Frances McDormand sit around listening to the Leonard Bernstein recording of "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra." (I'm not going to bother questioning whether that record existed in 1965; some production intern probably spent half a day tracking down its history.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/moonrise_kingdom_wes_andersons_mid_60s_love_story/feed/ 11 Movie assailant punches a kid, becomes a folk hero http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/movie_assailant_punches_a_kid_becomes_a_folk_hero/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/movie_assailant_punches_a_kid_becomes_a_folk_hero/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 15:59:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12925954 It's a general rule of thumb that a grown man doesn't get a lot of support for knocking out a 10-year-old child's teeth. But Yong Hyun Kim has won himself a few fans lately for doing just that.

Back on April 11, the 21-year-old Washington state man settled in with his girlfriend to enjoy "Titanic" in 3D -- right in front of a boy known only in police documents as KJJ. What ensued led to a night in jail and a charge of second-degree assault.

According to the Associated Press, the boy, who was at the theater with three friends and his mother, says "they were watching the movie and talking when Kim told them to be quiet." KJJ maintains that they settled down, but when he later whispered something to a companion, Kim "jumped over the seat, threw an iced drink at them and punched KJJ in the face." He says Kim told him something like, "You know what, I paid a lot of money to see this movie."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/movie_assailant_punches_a_kid_becomes_a_folk_hero/feed/ 135 “The Intouchables”: Racial comedy, French style http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/the_intouchables_racial_comedy_french_style/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/the_intouchables_racial_comedy_french_style/#comments Tue, 22 May 2012 20:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12925419 Here's a startling news item: "The Intouchables," a lively if largely predictable Parisian comedy about a wealthy quadriplegic and his ne'er-do-well immigrant caretaker, has become the biggest international success in the history of French cinema. Indeed, according to some sources -- and these things are notoriously difficult to measure on a global and historical scale -- "The Intouchables" is now the biggest non-Anglophone film of all time, with a worldwide gross approaching $300 million.

But beyond the business headlines, what's really fascinating about "The Intouchables" is the way it exposes the gulf in racial attitudes between France and the United States, along with another gulf that's just as wide, the one that has film critics and cinephiles on one side and popular audiences on the other. Viewers in numerous countries have eagerly devoured this feel-good fable about two men of different races and classes who forge an improbable friendship (dubbed by some wags "Driving Monsieur Daisy"). While the audience for foreign-language film is inherently limited in America, there's no reason to believe it won't do well here also. At the same time, heated transatlantic debate has erupted over whether "The Intouchables" traffics in offensive racial stereotypes, with Variety critic Jay Weissberg writing an uncharacteristically angry review that accused the film of "Uncle Tom racism" and compared the Senegalese caretaker character to a "performing monkey."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/the_intouchables_racial_comedy_french_style/feed/ 8 Male grooming: The movie http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/male_grooming_the_movie/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/male_grooming_the_movie/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 23:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12923136 American men are bewildered about their place in the cosmos, or so we have been told repeatedly over the last 20 years. They don't know whether to thread their eyebrows or wield a welding torch, and end up trying to do both at once (which is inadvisable). As comedian Adam Carolla laments in a scene from Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Mansome," the old-time certainties of gender identity have melted away: Women are flying fighter jets and men work at the hair salon; there are no longer "chick jobs and guy jobs."

I get that Carolla is just cracking wise, from inside the bubble of his own lame version of post-rockabilly guy-shtick -- he is interviewed inside a garage, with what looks like an orange Camaro behind him in the middle distance -- and that if you brought up the fact that those old-time "chick jobs" paid 40 to 80 percent less than "guy jobs," he'd get all irritated with you for being a drag. He's still an idiot, though, even if he's an idiot in quotation marks. That's kind of the problem with "Mansome," which tries to tackle the enormous subject of contemporary male vanity as an assemblage of whimsical anecdotes, which are often entertaining in themselves but studiously avoid any semblance of intelligent analysis or historical understanding.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/male_grooming_the_movie/feed/ 6 Maggie Gyllenhaal on sexual liberation http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/maggie_gyllenhaal_on_sexual_liberation/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/maggie_gyllenhaal_on_sexual_liberation/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 13:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12922227 When I met Maggie Gyllenhaal about six weeks ago, she was enormously and gloriously pregnant, stretching out on a sofa with her shoes off and feet up in a Manhattan office building. (Since that time, Gyllenhaal and husband Peter Sarsgaard have welcomed their second daughter, Gloria Ray, to the world.) We were there to talk about "Hysteria," the charming, lightweight feminist farce from director Tanya Wexler that explores a key event in the history of female sexuality: the invention of the vibrator by Mortimer Granville, a Victorian doctor who was seeking to cure the mysterious "female malady" that lends the movie its title.

While I wouldn't assume there's a vast amount of historical and social accuracy to "Hysteria," it's a lot of fun, and could definitely provide a viable moviegoing alternative for adult women eager to move on from "Iron Man" and "Captain America." Gyllenhaal's character, the crusading feminist and social worker Charlotte Dalrymple, who becomes the comic and romantic foil to Hugh Dancy's stuffy, stammering Granville, might be described as a supporting character who takes over the movie. Charlotte effectively becomes the modern viewer's window into the world of "Hysteria," insisting as a matter of course that women indeed enjoy sexual pleasure (but are often plagued with partners who don't know how to deliver it) and espousing then-outrageous views about women's right to vote, go to college, work outside the home and so on.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/maggie_gyllenhaal_on_sexual_liberation/feed/ 4 Pick of the week: A class-war thriller from Putin’s Russia http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/pick_of_the_week_a_class_war_thriller_from_putins_russia/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/pick_of_the_week_a_class_war_thriller_from_putins_russia/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12922332 As readers of Chekhov and Gogol and Dostoyevsky are well aware, the pervasive melancholy of Russian culture long predates the Soviet era, and there was no reason to believe that the end of communism would lift the gloom. Some Western reviewers have described "Elena," the mesmerizing new family drama from the brilliant Russian filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev, as an updated film noir. That may be a workable shorthand, in that "Elena" is about an ordinary person who persuades herself to commit a terrible crime, with uncertain consequences. But it attaches the movie to the wrong heritage and the wrong set of expectations. "Elena" is a moral drama, all right, but one pitched in a dark and ambiguous Russian register reminiscent of a 19th-century short story or a fairy tale, with no clear lesson delivered at the end.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/pick_of_the_week_a_class_war_thriller_from_putins_russia/feed/ 0 “Battleship”: Dumbest military spectacle ever? http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/battleship_dumbest_military_spectacle_ever/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/battleship_dumbest_military_spectacle_ever/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921672 One of the great marketing constants of contemporary Hollywood is the idea of appealing to the 11-year-old boy within every moviegoer (whatever gender that person may manifest on the surface). Almost every American movie released during the summer season has that squirmy pre-adolescent id in view, and about two-thirds of the movies made the rest of the year. But what about a movie as baffling and incoherent and flat-out stupid as "Battleship" -- an alien-invasion adventure by way of a Hasbro game, or maybe the other way round -- a movie that would make your inner 11-year-old stomp out of the theater in disgust?

It's undoubtedly gilding the lily to claim that "Battleship" is the dumbest movie I've ever seen -- for all that I front as someone who only likes Turkish films where people stare at the landscape without talking, I've seen a lot of dumb movies -- but it's definitely up there. Over and above its extraordinary, mind-melting level of stupidity, "Battleship" (which is directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg, of "Hancock" and "Friday Night Lights," and written by action-flick brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber) is also extremely weird. Its shameless and nonsensical combination of ingredients finally won me over, after a fashion, when I realized that its gung-ho Navy-recruitment propaganda and retrograde gender politics shouldn't be taken any more seriously than the ZZ Top, AC/DC and Billy Squier songs on the soundtrack. The only point of the whole exercise is to make small boys whoop and holler.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/battleship_dumbest_military_spectacle_ever/feed/ 43 Sacha Baron Cohen’s dark political farce http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921015 What exactly is Sacha Baron Cohen up to? This question, stupid as it may appear on the surface, has intrigued me ever since "Da Ali G Show" began airing in the United States. It's a stupid question because Baron Cohen is a comedian; as "edgy" or "controversial" as his topics and material may sometimes be, his job is to make people laugh. But most comedians don't try to get laughs by interviewing Pat Buchanan or Boutros Boutros-Ghali ("Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali," as Ali G introduced him) under false pretenses, or by leading a group of unsuspecting Arizona nightclubbers in a rousing chorus of "Throw the Jew Down the Well."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/feed/ 85 American influx at Cannes http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000 http://http://www.dev12.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/ CANNES, France (AP) — Despite the mood in Europe, don't expect any austerity at the Cannes Film Festival, the annual Cote d'Azur extravaganza where glamour is wrapped in world cinema fervor and gauzy Mediterranean sunshine.

Except for the Oscars, it's the flashiest red carpet in the world, a ruby staircase flanked by tuxedoed photographers — and a world away from financial turmoil.

Yet Cannes, the 65th edition of which starts Wednesday, fetes its directors as much as it does its stars. This year, there are plenty of both: esteemed international filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Haneke to big-name talent like Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman.

Among the 22 films in competition, there's a particularly large American contingent, starting with the opening night film, Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom." The movie about adolescent love on the run brings a few new actors (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton) into Anderson's carefully orchestrated world.

Later, there's David Cronenberg's Don DeLillo adaptation "Cosmopolis," starring Robert Pattinson, and Walter Salles' ("The Motorcycle Diaries") anticipated adaptation of Jack Kerouac's beloved "On the Road." That film, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, stars Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund, but has attracted more attention for its supporting roles, including Pattinson's "Twilight" co-star Kristen Stewart as Dean Moriarty's girlfriend.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/feed/ 3 Whitewashing, a history http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913742 All I have to say is that whitewashing has been going on since as long as Hollywood has existed -- it's a tradition -- and rather than non-white people complaining about it, they should embrace it. It will make going to the movies so much easier and more fun. But there are just a few things you need to understand.

First, stop watching movies as ethnic people and start watching them as white people. There's nothing that white people like more than seeing other white people in movies and on television. When you go to the movies with your ethnic "judgment" eyes, you miss my point. Watch as a white person, and suddenly your outrage turns to understanding and laughter.

Take a minute to walk to your limousine in my Gucci shoes, and you'll realize that I'm just trying to make people smile. Mickey Rooney with buckteeth and a crazy accent in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"? It's so much funnier than finding a real Chinese actor just talking like himself. Then you'd have to get a screenwriter to actually write genuinely funny lines for that character. You get so much more comedy bang with buckteeth and a funny accent. I mean, it made me laugh. Many people, including myself, were also convinced that Charlton Heston truly was a Mexican/Native American/Egyptian/Ape who talked to God. And I think I convinced a lot of Asians that Genghis Khan really did look like John Wayne back in the '60s. "Short Circuit" was one of my biggest hit movies and I was completely convinced that Fisher Stevens was Indian. Who knew he was a Jewish guy from New York? That accent was spot on!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/feed/ 93 New Yorker profile? No, thanks http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919099 Last year, The New Yorker ran a long, flattering profile of the director Andrew Stanton, the Pixar veteran who was engaged at the time in reshoots for the troubled "John Carter." The article, by Tad Friend, noted some of the studio’s concerns about the initial cut of the film, which was Stanton’s debut in live action, but for the most part, its tone was highly positive, portraying Stanton as nothing less than Pixar’s resident storyteller: “Among all the top talent here,” an executive is quoted as saying, “Andrew is the one with a genius for story structure.”

Six months later, "John Carter" became one of the costliest flops in Hollywood history, and while the film may have its redeeming qualities, story structure isn’t among them. Read in retrospect, the Stanton profile now seems laden with irony, and it isn’t alone: A striking number of recent New Yorker features on movie directors and actors have been followed by embarrassing setbacks for the artists in question, usually involving the very projects that the articles are extolling.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/feed/ 31 Child acting’s new golden age http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919070 "Never work with children or animals" is an old W.C. Fields chestnut that, for a while in the '90s and '00s, everyone outside of children's entertainment seemed to be holding sacred. Child actors were off on their own in a parallel entertainment universe created by Disney and Nickelodeon, while adults held down the fort in dramas and reality shows. There were some notable exceptions, like Haley Joel Osment and Christina Ricci, but by and large, children were almost entirely absent from grown-up entertainment.

Things are very different today. Kid-targeted movies filled with teenage actors like "The Hunger Games" and the "Harry Potter" franchise have found a huge adult audience, while actors like 15-year-old Chloë Moretz (who stars in the new movie "Hick," opening this week) and the Fanning sisters are given prominent roles in serious dramas. On TV, children have become a regular part of many casts, from sitcoms ("The Middle," "Modern Family") to dramas ("Shameless," 'The Walking Dead"). Child actors, once a sign of cheesiness and unprofessional conduct, have become integral to the success of a large number of critically respected and commercially successful entertainment properties. And not only that, many of these child actors have gotten really, really good.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/feed/ 31 Global horror takes a new “Road” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 20:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919256 Is there any country on earth -- at least any country with its own cinema tradition -- that doesn't produce its own homegrown horror films, spiced up with a little local gruesomeness? Every time I write about horror, I get at least a couple of letters from people who see the cruelty, bloodlust, misogyny and so forth found in many such movies as a symptom of contemporary culture's descent into depravity and brutality. On one hand, I always want to leave room for divergent tastes and opinions, but on the other -- that's just not true. The appetite for gore and terror that finds its modern expression in horror movies is nothing new: Check out the uproarious Brothers Grimm tale "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering," in which an entire family is destroyed in a pointless orgy of violence. You can certainly argue that you find horror movies repellent, or that they reflect deeply unpleasant aspects of human nature -- but you don't get to blame any of that on Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. (Seriously, I've heard that argument.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/feed/ 3 Pick of the week: Childhood adventure from a Japanese master http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12918567 "I Wish" is an old-fashioned kind of movie about a subject that might sound, at first, both worn-out and a little retrograde: the dislocating and disorienting effects of a family breakup. It's also a movie whose principal actors and characters are children, that tries to view the world from a child's point of view -- and that's an enterprise so perilous, so prone to easy gags, cheap tears and nauseating sentimentality, that hardly anyone ever gets it right. But "I Wish" is a wonderful adventure film that's no less thrilling for its modest scale, and a film whose emotional power and intelligence sneak up on you. Thoroughly accessible and rewarding, it might finally mark the mainstream breakthrough (relatively speaking) of Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of the finest living Japanese directors. I should add that "I Wish" is that rarest of fauna in the international art-house market, a genuine family movie that will charm both adults and children, albeit for somewhat different reasons. If your kids have the patience for a picture with subtitles where nothing explodes, don't hesitate to bring them. (There's no sex or violence.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/feed/ 6 Johnny Depp’s delirious “Dark Shadows” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12917547 Early in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows," Victoria Winters, the proper-looking aspiring governess played by lovely young Australian actress Bella Heathcote, arrives at the gates of Collinwood, a decaying family mansion in rural Maine. (She's gotten there by riding Amtrak, while we listen to "Nights in White Satin," which is somehow exactly right.) Vicky, whose real name is something else entirely, has always been a strange girl who sees things, and who is dramatically out of step with the pot-smoking, rock 'n' roll youth culture of today (and by today I mean 1972). A strange force has drawn her hither! Could it be the bizarre charisma of the undead monstrosity who (as we already know) lies entombed and enchained, almost beneath her feet? As the door to Collinwood creaks open revealing the idiot caretaker (Jackie Earle Haley, who is priceless), we glimpse a powerful, almost Proustian totem leaning against the front porch: A Schwinn kids' bicycle, with a banana seat. I had already suspected I was going to love "Dark Shadows," even before that moment. But that's when I knew it for sure.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/feed/ 40 Bobcat Goldthwait: Let’s kill all the mean people! http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 23:40:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12916971 Bobcat Goldthwait is something like the id underbelly of Michael Moore, with every pretense of journalistic objectivity and reasonableness stripped away. While Moore has a background as a reporter and editor, Goldthwait has always been an entertainer, who began doing stand-up comedy as a teenager in the late 1970s. Both guys present as rumpled, middle-aged heartland Americans with blue-collar roots -- Goldthwait is from Syracuse, N.Y., where his dad was a sheet-metal worker -- who are angry about the debasement of political life and public dialogue in their beloved country.

But I feel pretty confident that even Moore would not make a movie about a laid-off worker who hits the road with a runaway teenage girl and goes on a killing spree aimed at right-wing talk-show hosts, obnoxious reality-TV subjects and people who talk on the phone in movie theaters. "God Bless America" is Goldthwait's fourth film as a writer-director -- I'm going clear back to "Shakes the Clown" in 1991, often described as the "'Citizen Kane' of alcoholic-clown movies" -- and it's definitely his most coherent and most consistently hilarious, perhaps because its canvas is so large and the world it depicts so insane. It plays a little like "Network" mixed with Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" mixed with "Natural Born Killers," and in the very first scene its main character, the depressed, divorced and soon-to-be unemployed Frank (Joel Murray), does something completely unforgivable.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/feed/ 22 Breaking down “The Avengers’” box office take http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12916346 Ten years ago, "Spider-Man"shocked the industry by grossing more than $100 million in a single weekend. Five years ago, "Spider-Man 3" broke the $150 million weekend barrier. This weekend, "The Avengers" has blown through the $200 million barrier, delivering a record opening weekend of $207.1 million in high style. Yes, the number is beyond huge, besting "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II" by $38 million. But the total weekend number only tells part of the story. Arguably as important as the massive three-day figure is the manner in which it was earned.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/feed/ 15 Kate Hudson’s cancer horror show http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 18:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12914370 Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn a sad loss. A luminous, unique presence who ably graced our lives and then was snuffed out far too early. A moment of silence, please, for Kate Hudson's career.

It seems like only yesterday we were beguiled by the lively, bohemian Penny Lane in "Almost Famous." But it's been a painful decade since, as I know many of you gathered here can bear witness. Those of you who steadfastly supported Hudson over the years, who paid good money for "Bride Wars," for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," for "Raising Helen," "You Me & Dupree," "Fool's Gold," "My Best Friend's Girl," "Alex and Emma," "Le Divorce," and "Something Borrowed" -- you know what I'm talking about. You're heroes for sticking around this long. That's why it's both tragic and necessary to come to the end of our journey now, to let her go off to a better place. The D-list. It's called "A Little Bit of Heaven."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/feed/ 21 “The Avengers” and Hollywood’s gender wars http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 23:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913831 I don't think I'm breaking any news if I tell you that "The Avengers," Joss Whedon's ensemble action-adventure that unites an entire posse of Marvel Comics superheroes, will be far and away this weekend's No. 1 film at the box office. (In fact, "Avengers" is already the eighth-highest grossing film of 2012, with more than $260 million in global revenue before its North American release.) Or that a large majority of those ticket buyers will be teenage boys and young men. Like most summer "tent-pole" productions -- those designed to support franchises, and ensure the financial future of major studios -- "The Avengers" is aimed squarely at guys under 35, long the demographic, psychological and economic bulwark of the movie industry. In the weeks ahead, we'll see a whole bunch more male-centric, big-budget releases: "Battleship," "The Dictator," "Men in Black III," "Prometheus," "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises," potentially the biggest of all.

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