There are a couple of literary character comparisons which are proven to sell me on a movie. One of them is the protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces.” Unfortunately, these references almost always set up standards that are impossible to meet. When the synopsis of “Small Apartments” compared its central character to the scholarly but socially incompetent butterball, Ignatius J. Reilly, I should have known it would be a stretch…
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Did you know there’s a thing called “Mustache March”? Well, there is.
Lance Armstrong wisely tapped into the hipster facial hair market by giving men an excuse to let their inner bear out and raise money for (or, rather, against) testicular cancer. Healthy balls is something that most of us can get behind (or in front of). And here at Effed by the Wind, we also love to get behind the growing and subsequent styling of facial hair.
Mustache March’s charity is the MACC, which benefits kids with cancer. This is also an inarguably deserving cause. A friend of mine has been covering the celebrity Mustache March photos on her Facebook page, but they never included this fetching photo of TV and Film actor Jason Segel. He showed us his dong in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, but it wasn’t until this that he showed us his truly masculine side. I love mustaches but I have to agree that many people can NOT pull them off without looking like rednecks or sex offenders.
Jason Segel can pull it the fuck off.
When he tweeted this photo, he captioned it, “For the ladies”. He clearly meant it as a joke and I bet he shaved it off shortly thereafter. But before he did, I hope someone told him that he nailed it. He looks like an extra in “Mary Poppins” and I mean that in the BEST possible way. Keep up the good work, Segel. Hope to see the full beard monty in Movember.
“Safety Not Guaranteed” has a lot of things going for it: Mumblecore superstar Mark Duplass (in both a producing and acting capacity), the adorably dour Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) and the prospect of time travel. Furthermore, it was shot in Seattle, which is relevant to the interests of certain movie critics who live there. How can you go wrong? Turns out you can’t. “Safety Not Guaranteed” is fantastic…
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Film festivals used to be lousy with movies like “Somebody Up There Likes Me” – Movies that were dry, quirky (without being cutesy) and borderline inaccessible. You got head-scratchers that kept you talking with your friends for hours after the screening. You got films so divisive that sometimes those conversations would turn into full-on fights. Maybe it’s because even indie filmmakers have become concerned with marketability, but they really don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Director Bob Byington doesn’t much care about marketability. What he does care about is unclear. In fact, there is a lot of ambiguity in “Somebody Up There Likes Me”. But that’s also what makes it fun…
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In his collection of essays entitled “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs,” Chuck Klosterman astutely observes that “dynamic, nonretarded Americans… all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living.” For this, he chooses to blame John Cusack. (For the sake of argument, John Cusack is interchangeable with his character in “Say Anything”.)
John Cusack is not a fairy tale prince. He’s just a really nice guy. That’s why it may seem perfectly reasonable to want to “hold out” for a John Cusack of your own. But in actuality, John Cusack is a completely unattainable romantic ideal, which has made every “dynamic, nonretarded American” believe that if they don’t have a boom box serenade, they don’t have anything. Nate Meyer puts Klosterman’s idea into practice with his carefully crafted film, “See Girl Run”, by using the mold of a Hollywood romance to show how damaging these notions are when taken too seriously…
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You might not think Sharon Stone had much in common with Kelly Osbourne, Lemmy and Paris Hilton (other than relative fame). But you’d be wrong. The thing they have in common is the Sunset Strip, the road that stretches a mile and a half through West Hollywood and has been making history for over 100 years. Every inch of it has a story. As Mickey Rourke puts it, “Your dreams will start there and they will end there.” Hans Fjellestad’s documentary, “Sunset Strip,” is a thorough history of this street of dreams and nightmares, beginning with its origins as a trade route, up to present day where ambassadors from each era converge. The film shows you a fascinating, glamorous, decadent and tragic place, filled to the brim with amazing tales. If you have even a passing interest in movies or music, you will be absolutely riveted for the full 90 minutes…
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What is it with demons and video cameras, anyway? The found footage horror movie is seriously overdone. Can we please stop? It’s not even that scary anymore.
To be fair, the director of “Lovely Molly” (Eduardo Sanchez) is the guy who started it all when he brought us “The Blair Witch Project” way back in 1999. In his latest film, he mixes home movies with video footage shot by videographers (both seen and unseen) as well as traditional narrative filming. The result feels like a “Greatest Hits” of camcorder horror. And some of those hits aren’t even all that great…
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I’m currently in the middle of the second season of “Community”. I know the world already knew how awesome this show was, but I’m just now finding out. So that’s why I’m also just finding out about the hotness that has overtaken Theo Huxtable. He reached teen idol status on “The Cosby Show”, but I hadn’t yet discovered boys when I watched that show so I didn’t really get it. When I became aware of him post-puberty, he looked like this:
Facial hair, yes. But also a tragedy atop his head. And that was what he looked like in my brain until last night when he popped up on “Community” to play Shirley’s husband. I recognized him instantly (the sweater helped), but I also saw him in a whole new light. The hotness light. It’s like a real-life movie makeover. You knew he was hot the whole time, but you needed the haircut to really see it. The internet has already done a side-by-side comparison for me.
Amazing! I really hope it works out between him and Shirley because that’s a face I wouldn’t mind seeing more of. (No spoilers, please!) How about we see more right now.
Hiiiiiiiiiii!
Aaauuuggghhhhhh…
If I taught a film studies class, I would show “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” on the first day. This is a film that is worthy of study (inasmuch as any other film is, of course). Other than an identical cast, it has very little to do with the TV show that launched the careers of Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker. Instead, they embarked on a mission to reclaim the Genre Parody Film, a concept that was tarnished by endless “Scary Movie” sequels and their hideous offspring (“Date Movie”, et al). They took the concept, pioneered by such classics as “Airplane” and “Young Frankenstein,” and added a cerebral element akin to more sophisticated industry satires like “State and Main” and “The Player.”…
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I can’t stress enough how badly I wanted to love “The Muppets.” Like many, I grew up watching “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show.” Over the years, I only found more reasons to love pretty much everything that came out of the astoundingly imaginative Jim Henson Studios. It seemed impossible not to. There was a Muppet for every personality. The positive messages of friendship, cooperation and determination were uplifting, without being saccharine. Disney bought Jim Henson Studios in 2004 and they are now attempting to reboot the franchise with “The Muppets.” This film, which marks the first time these characters have been on movie screens together in twelve years, poses the question, “Does the world still need the Muppets?” The answer is, “Yes… but not like this.”…
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