If it’s good enough for Werner Herzog , Tony Scott and the reigning Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner , then by God, it’s good enough for you: “Executive Director Gregory Kallenberg announced today the inaugural Louisiana Film Prize, with a grand prize of $50,000. The Louisiana Film Prize contest and festival invites filmmakers from all over the world to create and present a short film under one condition – it must be shot in the Shreveport-Bossier area.” Good luck! Write if you get work! [ LAfilmprize.com ]
In case you missed all of the weekend’s riveting PR stunts accidental leaks, here’s all you need to know: Christina Hendricks , Olivia Munn , and one of the stars from the debauchery fest Project X got caught up in an assortment of salacious news that warns us once again against the dangers of doing sexy things in the vicinity of recording devices if you’re famous. (Unless, ahem, you’ve got a project to push.) Nude pics, Photoshopped naughtiness, and even – gasp! – a secret porn past were revealed thanks to the Internet; hit the jump to catch up as we wait for the inevitable awesome Taiwanese animated recap to drop. I’d save the best for last, but I honestly can’t decide which of the weekend’s titillating tales was tops. So we’ll start with boobs: Christina Hendricks’ boobs, to be exact. The Mad Men / Drive actress acknowledged that she’d been hacked but insisted that a nude NSFW shot included in a batch of photos posted this weekend is not her. And who are we to argue? So an actress took camera phone pictures of herself. And she, being a lady, has breasts. Revelations! Even if she is currently pimping the upcoming return of Mad Men with various other sexually-charged interviews and even if the photo’s legit, it’s just an innocent blip on the radar compared to… Olivia Munn and her alleged naughty lingerie photos hit Sunday as well, notable only because of the instances of extremely cheesy dirty talk Photoshopped onto them, ostensibly for private dissemination to an acquaintance. Named Chris… as in ex Chris Pine , perhaps? Would former G4 hostess Munn take the time to Photoshop whilst sexting? Who knows, but wouldn’t that be kind of awesomely nerdy of her if she did? While she doesn’t seem to have anything to push until this summer’s Magic Mike — and perhaps no obvious reason to leak said pics herself — Munn pleads the Hendricks ” It wasn’t me ” defense. Whatever. I don’t know how she does it. Last but certainly not least we have a bit of news that hit earlier in the weekend, on Saturday, super coincidentally-timed to give Project X the strategic viral profile it needed. That’s right folks, it’s porn . And it appears to have been performed, circa 2008, by the film’s relative newcomer Jonathan Daniel Brown (AKA JB, the sweet, chubby one). In their report, TMZ cites “sources close to Jonathan” with the scoop, probably because “makers of Project X ” or “Jonathan Daniel Brown’s publicist” or, also possibly, “The guys still trying to make money off the thing four years later” would’ve been too conspicuous; AVN, meanwhile, digs deep to conjure a very explicit interview with one of Brown’s confidantes from the film in question, an episode named Nerd Hunting in adult series entitled F*ck Team 5 . With a gem like that on his resume, how could Brown not have gotten the Project X gig? On the one hand, I feel for these individuals and the invasion of privacy they’ve suffered in and because of the limelight. On the other, the trifecta of events serves as a good reminder to Hollywood’s image-conscious up and comers. So what have we learned? 1. Keep a lock on your cell phone security. 2. When in doubt, say it wasn’t you! And 3. Porn never really goes away, does it? Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Their five-time Oscar winner The Artist may have just experienced its most lucrative weekend at the box office to date, but newly installed Legionnaire of Honor Harvey Weinstein and his Weinstein Co. minions remain firmly focused today on the Great Bully Ratings Non-troversy of 2012 . How do we know? To Twitter, where #BullyMovie is this morning’s highest-ranking (promoted, ahem) trending topic. Here’s the official shout-out from the Bully gang, carrying over last week’s ” human rights ” crusade to get the Weinstein release’s R-rating reduced to a PG-13. Wildfire petition to tell the @ MPAA to give @ bullymovie a PG-13 breaks 180,000 RT to keep the fire! bit.ly/AbQWZ1 #bullymovie — Bully Movie(@bullymovie) March 2, 2012 So how’s the response? Mostly positive, naturally, with a few contrarian opinions and hilarious misunderstandings thrown in for good measure: #BullyMovie needs to be PG13. #MiddleFingerUp to the bullies at the MPAA who rated this important film R. — Extrovert (@RamiTime) March 5, 2012 I’m curious about #BullyMovie . Does it only look at the victims?Because the bullies themselves are almost always victims of bullies as well. — Scott S Kramer (@scottskramer) March 5, 2012 If @ WeinsteinFilms cannot change the R rating to #BullyMovie then no one can. Seriously, they made “The Artist” won best picture. — Natalia Cariaga (@natajunk) March 5, 2012 Sorry guys, but this #BullyMovie isn’t going to stop bullying any more than “Roots” and “The Color Purple” stopped racism. — FTKL Images (@FTKL) March 5, 2012 #BullyMovie Mean Girls — Erica Mabrey (@adagewhentola67) March 5, 2012 #BullyMovie Precious! — Aidan DeVaughn (@adm1022) March 5, 2012 kind of a #BullyMovie The Little Rascals its the best, back in the day ! — Julian Bolton (@SupermanJr35) March 5, 2012 Harry Potter and the chamber of First Years. #bullymovie — All was well (@iManageMischief) March 5, 2012 Harvey’s secret weapon? What else? @ KhloeKardashian calls @ BULLYMOVIE trailer “heartbreaking” – WATCH THE #BULLYMOVIE TRAILER: bit.ly/znJ8C0 — Bully Movie(@bullymovie) March 5, 2012 What a grotesque fucking circus. Knowledge is power! Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
What do you get when you fold two decades’ worth of young stars — and one very confused-looking Tom Sizemore — into a cautionary tale about the perils of meth use? Try Meth Head , a swear-y, scream-y, violent and thoroughly destabilizing journey to the depths of the worst known addiction this side of Words With Friends. Your venerable guides: Lukas Haas, Wilson Cruz, Scott Patterson and a laconic Sizemore among others. It’s the feel-bad movie of 2012, coming soon to a festival near you! To wit, from a press release: Kyle Peoples never wanted to be the man he has become in his 30s, an accountant stuck in a dead end job, with a lover who is more successful than he and a family that doesn’t get him at all. So when a night of partying leads to a new family of friends and fun, Kyle sees an opportunity for escape from reality. But Kyle’s new friendship with Maia and Dusty and the trio’s love of crystal meth eventually cost Kyle his job, his companion, his home and his family. Kyle’s escape becomes his trap, the party is an illusion and the crystal is slowly killing him, physically and psychologically. When he finally bottoms out and is no longer the young man his father once boasted about with pride, Kyle must choose: life or meth. Yikes. This thing has me wanting to go to rehab. Festival premieres are forthcoming, according to the release; stay tuned to Movieline for more details as events warrant. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
What do you get when you fold two decades’ worth of young stars — and one very confused-looking Tom Sizemore — into a cautionary tale about the perils of meth use? Try Meth Head , a swear-y, scream-y, violent and thoroughly destabilizing journey to the depths of the worst known addiction this side of Words With Friends. Your venerable guides: Lukas Haas, Wilson Cruz, Scott Patterson and a laconic Sizemore among others. It’s the feel-bad movie of 2012, coming soon to a festival near you! To wit, from a press release: Kyle Peoples never wanted to be the man he has become in his 30s, an accountant stuck in a dead end job, with a lover who is more successful than he and a family that doesn’t get him at all. So when a night of partying leads to a new family of friends and fun, Kyle sees an opportunity for escape from reality. But Kyle’s new friendship with Maia and Dusty and the trio’s love of crystal meth eventually cost Kyle his job, his companion, his home and his family. Kyle’s escape becomes his trap, the party is an illusion and the crystal is slowly killing him, physically and psychologically. When he finally bottoms out and is no longer the young man his father once boasted about with pride, Kyle must choose: life or meth. Yikes. This thing has me wanting to go to rehab. Festival premieres are forthcoming, according to the release; stay tuned to Movieline for more details as events warrant. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Screw the bread : From the innovative bakery that brought you edible Uggies — and just in time for one of the more passionately anticipated opening days of the year — comes this remarkable contribution to the annals of sweets: Hunger Games cookies. Leave it to the masterminds at Eleni’s to whip up Katniss, Peeta, Gale, tracker jackers and the rest of the “Down with the Capitol” cookie set — an assortment of call-outs to the best-selling, soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture book series. I’ve never read a page of Suzanne Collins’s novels and personally continue to find Woody Harrelson’s wig a staggeringly tall barrier to film-franchise entry, but even a disinterested party can’t help but want to nibble on Jennifer Lawrence. Or Liam Hemsworth. I can’t believe I just wrote that. It’s Friday! I’m high of cold meds and self-loathing. Just stand back. Find out more at Eleni’s Web site . Read more of Movieline’s Hunger Games coverage here .
Can you believe that someone is accusing the writers of This Means War of being… lazy? “The fact remains, though, that most people don’t launch into film-studies lectures on a first date, not unless they’re in the movie business. When they do so in a romantic comedy it’s a giveaway that the screenwriter was too lazy and unimaginative to give their characters any hobbies that they don’t have themselves. It shifts the story even further away from reality.” Seriously! It’s getting bad. Someone start a human rights petition . [ The Economist via The Awl ]
The reviews are in for the Todd Phillips-produced uber-party comedy Project X , and three out of four critics agree: It is the douchiest, most mean-spirited debauch of the year. (To date, anyway; we’ll see what kind of revisionist zest Steven Spielberg and co. bring to Lincoln .) Hop aboard Movieline’s scorched-earth golf cart and let’s go for a spin… 9. “You’ve got to hand it to Warner Brothers and producer Todd Phillips: They have painstakingly engineered the perfect film for today’s attention-impaired audiences. Are you a texter? A talker? Have at it. There is no way you could make this movie stupider or more pointlessly noisy than it already is.” — Sara Stewart , NY Post 8. “It would be easy to say Project X objectifies women, if the word ‘object’ didn’t imply too much dignity.” — Keith Phipps , AV Club 7. “Although it behaves as if its closest antecedent is a John Hughes teen movie, Project X plays more like a blend of music video, College Rules-style porn, and apocalypse-gazing. It’s all hyper-sensory flash and amateur titillation, ain’t it cool party-dogging and an ecstatic taxonomy of all the different ways you can drink a beer.” — Michelle Orange , Movieline 6. ” Project X ’s title has no bearing on its premise: a teenage house party in a quiet Californian suburb that spirals out of control. Nor is it connected to the 1987 film of the same name in which Matthew Broderick rescues a band of tormented chimpanzees, unless perhaps the chimpanzees wrote it. Overall, it’s flamboyantly loathsome on every imaginable level, and a great many unimaginable ones besides.” — Robbie Collin , The Telegraph 5. “[Oliver] Cooper’s brash, bragging Costa, in particular, is the most annoying movie character since Jar Jar Binks. You’d never tire of punching him. Let’s take all prints of the film, and bury them. Don’t bother marking the spot with an X.” — Chris Hewitt , Empire 4. “How bad is it? It kicks off the proceedings with the soundtrack blaring the 2 Live Crew classic ‘Hey, We Want Some Pussy,’ and that winds up constituting the closest that it comes to both quiet dignity and quality writing. It is so bad that it deploys a running gag featuring shenanigans involving a pet dog that even Michael Vick might take offense at.” — Peter Sobczynski , eFilmCritic 3. “It is not normal adolescent rebellion depicted here: it is sociopathic insurrection. It’s an orgy of destruction that is meant to be cool. And it’s not a cautionary tale. It’s not a warning that recognizes that real-life teenaged boys can indeed be colossal idiots sometimes, and perhaps we need to work together as a society to minimize the damage they can do, like perhaps training up our sons to be responsible citizens. It’s a celebration of colossal adolescent idiocy as something we should all aspire to, and would do, if we could only be as awesomely cool as a horny 17-year-old boy.” — Maryann Johanson Flick Filosopher 2. ” Project X is classless, mean-spirited, repugnant, deplorable, off-puttingly sleazy, and thoroughly contemptible. It is also searingly depressing — there isn’t a true laugh in sight — as well as worthless on every cinematic level one could name, imagine, or dream up.” — Dustin Putman , DustinPutman.com 1. “[A] certain self-justifying, feel-good impulse compels the filmmakers to imply that, even if [the characters] do nothing further of note in their lives, they’ll always have this. Herein lies the film’s lack of point-of-view, leaving it to the viewer to decide if the import of the evening is a joke, a tragedy, an irony or a victory. Despite a couple of unconvincingly upbeat tacked-on moments at the end, Project X basically reads as nihilistic, as not believing in or standing for anything. Not even fun.” — Todd McCarthy , The Hollywood Reporter Reviews via Rotten Tomatoes . Browse more of Moveline’s Scathing Critical Response features here . Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
If the teenage hedonists of Project X want to see what’s in store for them in 40 years — and surely they don’t — they might have a look at Italian writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio’s smart and none-too-sweet little comedy The Salt of Life , in which a 60-ish retiree living in Trastevere suddenly realizes that not a single woman — not his reasonably affectionate but matter-of-fact wife, nor his flirty young next door neighbor, nor any of his various old flames and acquaintances – is interested in sleeping with him. It’s also, to my knowledge, the only movie about the love lives of sexagenarians that closes with the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man.” This is a movie that’ll play great with the blue-haired crowd, and yet I suspect touches like that will go over the heads of the oldsters. The overarching, bittersweet vibe of The Salt of Life is that you just never, ever get over it — whatever the hell it is. The Salt of Life is the follow-up to Di Gregorio’s surprise 2010 mini-hit Mid-August Lunch , in which some version of the character we meet here — a guy in late-middle age named Gianni, played by Di Gregorio himself — is forced into service cooking and otherwise waiting on his passive-aggressively demanding 90-something mother (played, with grand dame comic authority, by Valeria de Franciscis) and her equally wrinkly, chattery gal pals. Mid-August Lunch was Di Gregorio’s directorial debut. (He also wrote the screenplay for the 2008 drama Gomorrah .) And if it was the sort of movie to which you could take your mother — as well as your grandmother and your great-grandmother — it was also evidence that even safe, “nice” little movies, done right, can have a bit of the serpent’s bite in them. Di Gregorio has a light touch, but he never goes for the saccharine. Even when he stoops to making a Viagra joke — as he does in The Salt of Life — he can’t resist tipping it on its ear. And he refuses to overplay the moment — he ricochets off in another direction before you even know it. In The Salt of Life , Gianni — once again played by Di Gregorio, who has the air of a lovelorn basset hound — can’t help noticing that all his salt-and-pepper-haired buddies seem to be dallying with beautiful younger women. Almost half-heartedly, he decides he might have a go at it himself: His wife (Elisabetta Piccolomini), who seems to want him around only to make Ikea runs, probably wouldn’t care. And his daughter (played by Di Gregorio’s daughter, Teresa) has her own love life to worry about; her ex-boyfriend (Michelangelo Ciminale) is still hanging around the family apartment, and, seemingly out of a lack of anything better to do, becomes Gianni’s pal and partner in crime. In between fielding calls from his mother (de Franciscis, once again), who summons him to her home for important tasks like slapping the TV in order to get better reception, Gianni makes attempts with various younger cuties (nearly all of them, by the way, voluptuous in a way that you rarely see in American movies). He begins with his mother’s caretaker, Kristina (Kristina Cepraga), a captivating blonde goddess who eagerly tells him about a dream in which he played a significant role — as her grandfather. Then he moves on to an old acquaintance, Gabriella (played by mezzosoprano Gabriella Sborgi), who professes interest in him only to ignore him when he shows up, flowers in tow, at her house while she’s busy rehearsing. Old-flame Valeria (Valeria Cavalli) is thrilled to see him, but falls asleep on the couch before their date can ignite. And that vivacious next-door-neighbor, Aylin (Aylin Prandi), adores him but not quite in that way — she’s deeply appreciative of the way he’s always stopping by to walk her Saint Bernard, Riccardo. Di Gregorio (who also wrote the script) has set up a stock scenario for sure. But it’s what he does with it, and the way he tosses in casual but significant grace notes, that makes all the difference. Di Gregorio — who seems to be carrying the full weight of unrequited sexual desire in the cartoonishly heavy bags under his eyes — specializes in self-deprecation, especially when it comes to machismo. (And this is Italian machismo we’re talking about — not for the faint of heart.) When Gianni dons a new suit and struts past his buddies — they sit outside in their tracksuits, talking about football and women, possibly in that order — one of them remarks, “He must have a date!” only to have another retort, “He’s probably going to a christening.” He does, in fact, have a date, but the suit doesn’t help him much. Gianni’s inability to get anything started isn’t just a running gag — it’s the picture’s backbone, although Di Gregorio keeps the action and the jokes lissome and fluid, rather than locking them into a rigid formula. As actor, director and writer, he approaches the idea of ever-present longing with the suppleness of a dancer. On the surface, The Salt of Life may seem like a movie made just for old folks. The trick is that it really is about the youth that stays with you, even when your aging body is working hard to convince you otherwise. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
With his round, bearded face and gentle voice, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) is an unassuming monster — it takes a while to spot the terrible danger within him. In Justin Kurzel’s The Snowtown Murders , based on an actual series of gruesome crimes that took place in South Australia in the mid ’90s, he’s the deceptive mastermind behind a string of serial killings, the leader of a group initially, at least in their own heads, bound together by a desire to enact vigilante justice. The Snowtown Murders is the latest and bleakest in a string of Australian crime films showing flashes of virtuoso talent, and has more than a little in common with David Michôd’s 2010 hit Animal Kingdom , including a near-feral group of characters and a teenage boy whose eyes are the windows through which we see terrible things. But Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) isn’t just a witness, he’s an eventual participant, and The Snowtown Murders builds into a multipronged horror effort in which the torture and murder on-screen are matched by the psychologically convincing disintegration of a previously sympathetic protagonist. Snowtown, which is located between Adelaide and Perth, is portrayed in the film as a shabby suburb, its downtrodden ugliness in contrast to the giant sky and empty landscapes outside that the camera occasionally pulls back to appreciate. Elizabeth (Louise Harris) is dating a guy who lives across the way, and leaves her boys, including Jamie, in his care. He uses the opportunity to take photos of them in their underwear, a request to which they acquiesce with a defeated air that becomes the film’s overarching sentiment. He’s out on bail in a day. Later, another character is raped by someone in his own family: He struggles, but eventually surrenders, lying still like the runt of a litter being forced to submit, the camera observing dispassionately from a distance as it happens. The residents of Snowtown seem to have accepted victimhood as their due, which is why John’s arrival is so initially welcome — he’s willing to fight back, even if it’s against the law, and he’s charismatic and funny and able to manipulate the welling rage just underneath the benumbed expressions of his followers. John inveigles his way into Elizabeth’s life romantically, and works a different sort of seduction on Jamie, whose hunger for a father figure is almost a physical manifestation. Signs that something’s not quite right with John surface slowly — he chops up kangaroos to toss on the doorstep of Elizabeth’s pedophilic ex, and later pressures Jamie into shooting his dog as proof of his ability to stand up for himself. The Snowtown Murders internalizes the themes about dominance and survival that Animal Kingdom has to make explicit — the only way to see John’s serial killing team is as a predatory pack over which he holds complete sway, their actions motivated by self-importance, by a need to belong, by fear and, eventually, enjoyment. John initially cloaks his actions as justice, primarily against molesters of children — the neighborhood enjoys gathering around a table to smoke and drink and talk about what they’d do to anyone they caught messing with their offspring, the imagining of violence a dizzying pleasure. “It’s not fucking mean if you kick the shit out of some diseased prick,” John points out. “He fucking deserves it. It’s an Australian fucking tradition.” But the killings expand from pedophiles to anyone John deems unworthy — the obese, the drug-addicted, the weak, the unmissable, and John brings Jamie into the fold, forcing the knowledge of what’s happening onto him, certain he’ll participate. (“I’m only looking after you, mate,” he tells the boy after revealing to him that he’s murdered one of his friends.) One of the film’s best, most difficult scenes finds Jamie watching as someone is chained to the bathtub, walking away, returning to see him get tortured, and going outside to sit as kids ride by on bikes. There’s nothing physically holding him there, but he can’t and won’t intervene or run for help, and so instead he gives in, buying into the illusion of power in what’s really just more powerlessness. The intentional unpleasantness of The Snowtown Murders isn’t just due to its violence, but its harsh assessment of human nature, of how its characters’ unhappiness grows though they continue on the path they’ve chosen, too forceless to remedy the situation. The film is unflinching, but doesn’t sensationalize its content, which makes it all the more disturbing. In the blue-tinged world it portrays — wood-paneled rooms filled with cigarette smoke, decrepit couches on lawns and porches, a land of dead ends — it’s the dreadful normalizing of its crimes that’s haunting, the way they go undiscussed even as they grow and pull in everyone around, either as victim, victimizer or accomplice, helpless in the face of a soft-spoken psychopath. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
