Tag Archives: awards-campaign

Exclusive: Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Mondo’s 25th Anniversary Princess Bride Poster

A collectible poster debut from the boutique art purveyors over at Mondo is always an event, but this Valentine’s Day Mondo and the Alamo Drafthouse have something in store so special it’s almost… inconceivable ! In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Rob Reiner’s 1987 fantasy classic The Princess Bride , the good folks at the Drafthouse have created a line of Princess Bride -themed wines (“The Bottle of Wits”) to coincide with a series of V-Day Princess Bride Quote-Along Feast events and a new illustrated commemorative poster by artist Drew Millward , which goes on sale today. Get the exclusive first look at Millward’s poster design after the jump! [Ed.: According to Mondo the Princess Bride posters have indeed been printed with the incorrect year and will be sold as planned, warts and all. ] Even 25 years after its debut, The Princess Bride , adapted from William Goldman’s book of the same name, has sustained its place among the best-loved American romances and comedies; you’d be hard pressed to find a self-respecting film lover these days who can’t conjure one of countless iconic lines from Reiner’s film. (See Movieline’s account of LACMA and Film Independent’s magical Princess Bride live-read for further evidence.) So it’s kind of perfect that the Drafthouse will host the Princess Bride Quote-Along Feast events this week at its six theaters in Austin and Houston on Feb. 14, in San Antonio on Feb. 15, and in Winchester, Va. on Feb. 16. What better way is there to spend Valentine’s Day than feasting on seared R.O.U.S. (“NY strip rubbed with telecherry peppercorn, mustard seed and espresso roasted medium rare in a pool of port demi, roast enoki mushrooms with mushroom risotto and grilled rapini”) and MLTs (for which “the mutton is shaved paper thin”) and toasting to “Twue Wuv” along with Westley, Buttercup and little Fred Savage? Millward’s whimsical Mondo poster (on sale at the Austin Quote-Along locations, printed in a limited run of 145) brings together the film’s most iconic elements (the six-fingered man! The R.O.U.Ses!) and its central heroes, from Cary Elwes’ The Man in Black to Robin Wright’s Princess Buttercup, the bouffant-coiffed Spaniard Inigo Montoya, Andre the Giant’s gentle Fezzik and Wallace Shawn’s evil Vizzini, who was last seen laughing maniacally while sloshing a goblet of wine. Speaking of wine… Inconceivable Cab and As You Wish White are the two varietals of Princess Bride wine available for order online ($28) at http://princessbridewine.com and at the Drafthouse locations starting today. The pairing of The Princess Bride with its own wine is an inspired concept that came from a brainstorming session by Drafthouse CEO Tim League and Co.: “At the end of last year, we were thinking about ideas to do something really fun with our wine list at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. To solve that challenge, a group of us got together after work, opened a bottle (a time-honored Alamo tradition) and started to brainstorm our favorite movie scenes involving wine. Quickly The Princess Bride rose to the top. The Princess Bride is one of our all-time favorite films. It stands beside The Big Lebowski as a movie that I will ALWAYS watch and thoroughly enjoy revisiting when it comes on TV. The ‘Battle of Wits’ sequence between Cary Elwes and Wallace Shawn easily stands toe-to-toe with ‘the Sideways Spit Bucket’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs Chianti slurp’ as wine’s shining moment in film. We contacted the rights-holders and proposed a partnership to launch the product at the Alamo, and they were just as excited as we were. We are thrilled with the collectible bottle that Helms Workshop produced for us and think that fans of the movie will love it too. Although we can’t print it on the label because of legal reasons, we also promise each bottle to most likely be iocane free.” Get more info at the Alamo Drafthouse website .

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Exclusive: Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Mondo’s 25th Anniversary Princess Bride Poster

Consider Uggie, Day 78: Artist Wonder Dog Claims Top Golden Collar Award

Surely no one saw this coming: Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier and Artist wonder dog on whose behalf the Consider Uggie awards campaign has surged ever onward for nearly three months now , won the top prize Monday at the inaugural Golden Collar Awards. That’s really all I have to say about that, deferring instead to Uggie’s trainer Omar Von Muller, who put the purpose of the whole phenomenon in perspective while accepting the trophy with his winning pooch: Von Muller said the award was “overwhelming” adding: “He has been my buddy forever and is a great performer and great family member.” He also thanked award organizers DogNewsDaily.com saying: “This is very important for all the trainers in the movie industry, because we have never been recognized before, and people just don’t understand that it takes hundreds and even thousands of hours to train a dog.” Exactly . Respect! [ BBC ; photo via WireImage]

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Consider Uggie, Day 78: Artist Wonder Dog Claims Top Golden Collar Award

Consider Uggie, Day 78: Artist Wonder Dog Claims Top Golden Collar Award

Surely no one saw this coming: Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier and Artist wonder dog on whose behalf the Consider Uggie awards campaign has surged ever onward for nearly three months now , won the top prize Monday at the inaugural Golden Collar Awards. That’s really all I have to say about that, deferring instead to Uggie’s trainer Omar Von Muller, who put the purpose of the whole phenomenon in perspective while accepting the trophy with his winning pooch: Von Muller said the award was “overwhelming” adding: “He has been my buddy forever and is a great performer and great family member.” He also thanked award organizers DogNewsDaily.com saying: “This is very important for all the trainers in the movie industry, because we have never been recognized before, and people just don’t understand that it takes hundreds and even thousands of hours to train a dog.” Exactly . Respect! [ BBC ; photo via WireImage]

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Consider Uggie, Day 78: Artist Wonder Dog Claims Top Golden Collar Award

REVIEW: Don’t Go in the Woods — Unless You’re Up for Something Cheap, Cheerful and Seemingly Unfinished

If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that you can lead teenagers to a big red sign that reads “DON’T GO IN THE WOODS,” but you can’t make them not go in the woods anyway. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio nods to this and other slasher clichés in Don’t Go in the Woods , his feature directing debut — that is, when he’s not nodding to clichés native to the musical and the old “star is born” storyline. All that nodding gives a new definition to the term “genre-friendly,” and if a film could get by on its cheap and cheerful vibe alone, this one certainly would. Unfortunately, outside of the proxy satisfaction it will give those who are dying to see the grim reaper let loose on the set of a very special episode of Glee , the pleasures of Don’t Go in the Woods can’t quite compensate for its straggly bits. Casting five unknown musicians to play the band at the center of the film was logical enough: Slasher actors are not known for their Juilliard pedigrees, so prioritizing their musical skill makes sense. The story has the band decamping into the woods to try and write that elusive hit record without the usual distractions (D’Onofrio’s pointed removal of one of them, the cell phone, seems to channel the modern horror director’s frustration with those little plot spoilers). And the songs they do come up with are tuneful in a strangled yet twinkly, Fleet Foxes kind of way. Musician and director Sam Bisbee (who took home a 2010 Oscar for The New Tenant , a short film he worked on with D’Onofrio) wrote all of the music, and the boys’ performances are high points, in part because if they’re singing it means no one on-screen is attempting to act. Well, no one but the psychotically focused group leader Nick (Matt Sbeglia). Nick has disproportionately big blue eyes and a hipster cloche of dark hair, and during his numbers he usually strays from the campfire to emote in private. Nick rides the rest of the guys — played by Casey Smith, Soomin Lee, Nick Thorpe and Jorgen Jorgensen — like they’re pack mules, and at least one reason why they might put up with it emerges. Their camping spot is the same one Nick used to visit with a now-deceased brother (actually, it was shot on D’Onofrio’s Woodstock, N.Y., property), though presumably the forest’s resident Sledgehammer Guy was not a problem back in those less gruesome times. Did I mention Sledgehammer Guy? Oh, he’s around. He just makes noises that everyone shrugs off for a while, but when the band’s groupie crew shows up to join the party (and make Nick popping mad, naturally), Sledgehammer Guy gets cracking. The kill sequences are quick and not very scary — more like pulling weeds than serial murder — and though some of the ladies get to warble out a few evocatively shot bars before they’re beaned to death, most of the jam sessions are directed like stand-alone videos. A story about the clash of creative and destructive drives set in the wilderness and starring a bunch of scruffy but ambitious kids has big themes and genre toys to play with. Though obviously aware of the potential and prepared to really go for it, D’Onofrio came up with something that feels unfinished — an interesting harmony that needs a better bridge. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .

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REVIEW: Don’t Go in the Woods — Unless You’re Up for Something Cheap, Cheerful and Seemingly Unfinished

Margaret Comeback Adds L.A. Engagement; Awards Crusade Next?

The enduring saga of Margaret — three years in the making, six years in the editing, one week in the theatrical showing, and finally rescued from oblivion by a cabal of devotees best known by their #TeamMargaret brand — presses on this week with news that Kenneth Lonergan’s embattled epic is finally returning to theaters in Los Angeles. Great! But perhaps just as interesting as how this complements the film’s ongoing revival in New York City is how it shores up a better-late-than-never awards campaign by distributor Fox Searchlight. Karina Longworth, who chose Margaret as her favorite film of 2011 (a distinction not too far from critic Alison Willmore’s own here at Movieline ), reports via LA Weekly that Cinefamily will launch a new engagement of the film starting Friday. The run starts at one week but could be extended based on demand — an option exercised three times now by the proprietors of New York’s Cinema Village , where tomorrow Margaret enters its fourth week on the comeback trail. The grassroots effort to get Margaret not only seen but outwardly acclaimed represents one of the season’s more inspired awards crusades, and one with which Searchlight is now playing along. Well, sort of, anyway: Speaking with Longworth, a studio publicist confirmed previous reports that Margaret screeners have been distributed Academy-wide — for what that’s worth, particularly with Oscar nomination ballots due Friday by 5 p.m. and the publicist denying that Searchlight’s “strategy” for the film had changed. But really, does the awards noise even matter in light of fans willfully prying a troubled mainstream film out from under a stubborn distributor’s heavy haunches? This is something to celebrate! Do them and their efforts proud and go see this thing, already. [ LA Weekly ]

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Margaret Comeback Adds L.A. Engagement; Awards Crusade Next?