America will be celebrating its 241st birthday this coming Tuesday, and we’re celebrating a little early by taking a look at our favorite naked babes born on the Fourth of July! While a lot of these ladies aren’t American, it’s undeniable that there’s nothing more American than some T&A! So grab your bottle rocket and get ready to explode thanks to our Top Ten Babes Born on the Fourth of July!… read more
America will be celebrating its 241st birthday this coming Tuesday, and we’re celebrating a little early by taking a look at our favorite naked babes born on the Fourth of July! While a lot of these ladies aren’t American, it’s undeniable that there’s nothing more American than some T&A! So grab your bottle rocket and get ready to explode thanks to our Top Ten Babes Born on the Fourth of July!… read more
You might have noticed a glaring omission in this morning’s Weekend Receipts , but probably not: Even I couldn’t be bothered to remember that an Eddie Murphy movie not only opened on Friday (to catastrophically bad reviews; the Rotten Tomatoes “fresh” rating remains at a super-rare 0% ) but also concluded the weekend with a brutal $6.25 million gross &mdash making for a sixth-place finish and a $3,360-per-screen average. This would make A Thousand Words the third straight Murphy-led film to open under $7 million — quite the opposite from last fall’s reasonably successful ensemble effort Tower Heist and his voice work in the blockbuster Shrek franchise. Factor in his Oscars-hosting debacle, and you kind of have to ask yourself: Is this it for Eddie? Generally I’d try for a little more optimistic reading of the scenario; I mean, if we can devote time and space to attempting to rehabilitate Renee Zellweger’s career , then Eddie Murphy is worth at least that much effort. But this is bad , if only because the confluence of Murphy’s historic arrogance and decade-long decline in taste has produced the perfect storm of irrelevance: Older audiences who loved him in the ’80s and could admire the creative risk he took in Dreamgirls have all but given up, and he doesn’t move the needle among young audiences for whom Meet Dave , Imagine That and now A Thousand Words have proven sixth- or maybe fifth-choice moviegoing at best. There’s nowhere to go, really, but back to second-billing behind guys like Ben Stiller and even — gasp — Mike Myers, the latter of whom isn’t exactly tearing up the non- Shrek market himself. But that won’t happen. This is a guy who was going to ride the Academy Awards back to the cultural A-list, or at least let the wave elevate Tower Heist ‘s profile last November and burnish the otherwise lackluster A Thousand Words in whatever post-Oscar afterglow he could get. Obviously, for reasons both known and unknown, that didn’t transpire . There’s a bottom line here, though, that gets to the larger problem with Eddie Murphy in 2012: If Murphy had wanted to preserve the job, then he could have. He would have. Instead, on the Monday after his latest cinematic miscarriage, we’re talking about arguably the most complacent actor in Hollywood — a man perfectly happy to eat shit sandwiches and wipe his mouth with $100 bills as long as some retrograde studio boss is setting the table. And I guess that’s fine? It’s not my money (nor yours, in all likelihood, unless you run DreamWorks, in which case you have bigger problems anyway). But its diminishing returns have transcended alarm into something more approximating schadenfreude: We wish less that Murphy would get back to the business of being trailblazingly funny or edgy or adventurous than that his next, now-routine clusterfuck will be the one that finally sends him into the sunset counting his money. Not that we necessarily want the worst for Murphy. He just seeks it out for himself, and the more it compromises his legacy — extraordinary films like 48 Hours , Delirious , Trading Places , Coming to America and others pushing a quarter-century old — the more it compromises us. Watching Beverly Hills Cop should not feel bittersweet. So as much as I sincerely would love to be wrong, it looks like we’ve finally lost Eddie Murphy, movie star — a legend forsaken for Eddie Murphy, character actor, or worse yet, Eddie Murphy, king of paycheck inertia. And if we have indeed reached a point of no return, then let’s have our laments here and now and be done with it. There’s too much ambition worth experiencing and appreciating elsewhere. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Movieline is pleased to present the first installment of One-Sheet Wonder , a new column on the best, worst, weirdest and other milestones of contemporary movie-poster art. — Ed. We’re a little more than two months away from the debut of the Cannes Film Festival opener Moonrise Kingdom , Wes Anderson’s first live-action film in five years, and the promo push is on. The first trailer hit a while back, and the first poster was revealed last week. And while the trailer is an exhilarating promo clip, on first glance it’s easy to dismiss the poster. It feels minimal and rather meh overall, like a starving-artist, Bob Ross knock-off masquerading as a one-sheet (“Look at that happy little waterfall…”). But since The Life Aquatic , posters for Anderson’s films have trended to a less-is-more approach. The Darjeeling Limited , for example, focused on, essentially, a snapshot of the three leads in a moment of quiet introspection, whereas Rushmore is all about bombastic (Photoshopped) revolution. The reason for this change is Anderson’s movies, increasingly, have been sold to his fans rather than audiences at large. Not surprisingly, this began with The Royal Tenenbaums as Anderson established his unique visual style. Since then, his posters have become more conceptual and more for his acolytes. ( Fantastic Mr. Fox — aimed squarely at kids with its kooky, busy everything-but-whackbat design — is the exception.) Moonrise Kingdom is the zenith (so far) of this marketing strategy. It’s not very active, but it picks up many of Anderson’s trademarks. Sam and Suzy, the film’s leads, are in full-on Anderson mode — Sam carries a popgun and pulls his best young Bud Cort impression while Suzy is loaded down with a travel record player and Margot Tenenbaum-esque style/ennui — and their straight-on confrontation of the viewer is an Anderson trademark. And while the foreground is fairly flat, there’s a world of depth and texture in the background, a staple of Anderson’s cinematography. The poster also continues the practice (begun on Darjeeling ) of placing the credit block at the top of the poster, above the title, drawing our eye (and consideration) to an image rather than text. When you factor in the font-type similarities to the invitation script at the beginning of Tenenbaums , it could be that Anderson is finally establishing a design continuum for his ad art to complement the one in his films. Visually dazzling? Maybe not to the motion-poster (blech) crowd, but for Anderson devotees it’s exciting. It picks up on his filmmaking sensibilities like no poster before it — and it aesthetically establishes Moonrise Kingdom ’s place in Anderson’s legacy vis-à-vis the Criterion Collection. Criterion’s releases of Bottle Rocket , Rushmore , Tenenbaums , Aquatic and Darjeeling are whimsical, but they eschew studio publicity shots for a handcrafted, Andersonian representation of a scene or the essence of the film. (Criterion’s Tenenbaums and Aquatic releases had studio art slipcovers over the hand-drawn ones because they were the only official releases of the films, Buena Vista didn’t likely want to scare off the normals with childlike illustrations.) Moonrise Kingdom is the first theatrical poster for an Anderson film to similarly disregard poorly edited stills (a la Rushmore or Bottle Rocket ) for a painted distillation of what we can imply is the film’s spirit. Ultimately, it might seem this poster is selling Anderson’s sensibility more than the film, but that’s because they’re one and the same. The poster says, “Wes Anderson has a new movie coming out,” and that will either sell people on it or drive them away. Such is the plight of an auteur. Focus Features understands the audience for this film — the cinephile who genuflects at the Wes Anderson altar — and the studio absolutely reaches it with this poster. It might not be the flashiest of Anderson’s ads to date, but it’s certainly the most authentic. Dante A. Ciampaglia is a writer, editor and photographer in New York. You can find him on Twitter , Tumblr , and, occasionally, his blog .
Wondering how Paul Thomas Anderson and David Schwimmer could be forever connected? Try Upton Sinclair. In a new interview with Empire Online , Schwimmer confirmed that he has “commissioned an adaptation of The Jungle ,” Sinclair’s 1906 novel about immigration and the meat-packing industry. Fingers crossed this latest Sinclair film adaptation works as well as There Will Be Blood . [ Empire ]
When fans of Wes Anderson ‘s 1996 debut feature Bottle Rocket heard that the iconic motel used in the film was in danger of going under, they sprung into action to save it. So this July 9, devotees will gather en masse in Hillsboro, Texas for the ultimate event, hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse : a special screening of Bottle Rocket , with co-star Robert Musgrave in attendance, held at the very same motel off of I-5 where aimless crooks Dignan, Anthony, and Bob hide out in the film.
When fans of Wes Anderson ‘s 1996 debut feature Bottle Rocket heard that the iconic motel used in the film was in danger of going under, they sprung into action to save it. So this July 9, devotees will gather en masse in Hillsboro, Texas for the ultimate event, hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse : a special screening of Bottle Rocket , with co-star Robert Musgrave in attendance, held at the very same motel off of I-5 where aimless crooks Dignan, Anthony, and Bob hide out in the film.
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