After having his legacy defiled by Brett Favre's genitals it appears Deadspin founding editor Will Leitch will be writing for the Gawker Media sports site on a regular basis once again. Read More
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DFA Records' co-founder and retired LCD Soundsystem bandleader James Murphy has always exhibited a certain stripe of self-awareness that other musicians could probably take lessons from. In one of two films to feature Mr. Murphy at this year's Sundance Film Festival—the other one being the documentary about his band's final concert—he has a cameo role as a guy stuck between two obnoxious, aging hipsters in a taxi. Read More
It's such a long list! And it doesn't even include HBO, the vacuum of literature/possibly the single biggest financial backer of writing in New York City. Publishers Weekly has compiled the round-up, which includes everything from Gillian Anderson in Great Expectations to Dr. Seuss's The Lorax (which was depressing enough in picture book form, thank you very much.) Read More
At the recent New York premiere of We Need To Talk About Kevin, a scruffy looking kid with thrift store apparel and long-unattended to hair, told The Observer of the decision he’s made to never play a character he doesn’t deem “honest”. We had just seen him depict an intense psychological battle with his on screen mother, Tilda Swinton, which concluded in the most unforgiving of ways. Read More
Director Deborah Kampmeier, whose previous film was the controversial (and poorly reviewed) Hounddog, is now making a biopic of the southern writer Carson McCullers called Lonely Hunter. Jena Malone of Donnie Darko fame will play McCullers. Read More
It was with mixed feelings that The New York Observer went to a casting call for extras on Christopher Nolan's grand finale of the Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises. On the one hand: it was Saturday afternoon, and Occupy Wall Street protesters were preparing to gather near the Brooklyn Bridge in preparation for their doomed march. On the other...we really wanted to be in a Batman movie. Even if we weren't exactly what the Warner Bros. people had in mind when they put out this casting call last week:
Grant Wilfley Casting, Inc. is casting extras for the new Warner Bros. film Magnus Rex. Producers state: “Take part in the urban action adventure coming to the streets of New York City.” Shoots Oct. 29-Nov. 11, 2011 in NYC.
Seeking—Extras: male and female, 18+, all ethnicities, no experience necessary, to play law enforcement within a city besieged by crime and corruption, specific roles include Guards, Soldiers, and Police Officers, seeking physically fit athletes, people with military and/or law enforcement training/experience, weapons training, and/or martial arts training.
Open call will be held Oct. 1, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. & 2-4 p.m. at Metropolitan Pavilion, 110 W. 19th St. (btwn. Sixth & Seventh aves.), NYC. Bring photo ID (i.e. driver’s license, state ID, student ID, etc.); talent must be able to provide valid unexpired ID to fill out I-9 at time of hiring. Seeking nonunion talent at this call; SAG members who are not already registered with GWCI should also attend the open call. For more info (including time/location details for SAG registration), visit www.gwcnyc.com or call (212) 685-3168. There are no sign-up fees. Professional pay provided. SAG Background Actors Contract.
Full disclosure: We do not look like guards, soldiers, or anyone with military experience. However, logic would follow that the reason Gotham is so messed up and Arkham Asylum patients can walk out into the streets any time they damn choose is because there are a couple weaklings hiding amongst the city's finest. It's with this mental attitude that we showed up, ID in hand, to the Metropolitan Pavillion at 2 p.m.
We didn't know what to expect. A lot of brawny guys who were looking for work now that Law & Order officially doesn't need more patrolmen? A bunch of comic book geeks? Or, option number three:
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Leave the flasks at home, New York moviegoers! Last August, Gov. Cuomo passed a law that allows movie theaters with restaurants to serve booze as well, making a trip to the cinema that much more appealing. Now, AMC Theaters tells The New York Post that they are considering equipping their eight theaters in Read More
Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist. The Shining is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most number of takes of a single scene. With that type of fascist filmmaking, you know that anything left on the cutting room floor of the 1980 Stephen King film was cut for a reason.
Still, for those super-fans out there, the Dryden Theater in Rochester New York is having a special screening of the film October 22nd, "complete with a chilling coda cut from the original release."
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Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Now he has collaborated on a shark movie with Bret Easton Ellis. The main character of this one sounds like a working-class Patrick Bateman crossed with Captain Ahab: a young man who decides to take revenge on the super-rich by propelling them to a sharky doom. According Read More
The versatile and accomplished Kristin Scott Thomas works skillfully in both English and French. In Sarah’s Key she is never less than perfect doing both. It’s another in a long line of harrowing stories about the horrors of the Holocaust, but don’t let that deter you. It’s more a detective story than a depressing diary Read More
Already a Blue Plate Special at film festivals in New Zealand, Sarajevo, Seoul and São Paulo, an extremely low-budget teenage flick called The Myth of the American Sleepover is the kind of home movie that gives indie-prods a bad name. In the press notes, a photo of the young film-school graduate David Robert Mitchell, who Read More
Little, low-budget, independent films every week, every month, all year long … that’s what keeps the dying movie business from its own burial, six feet under. A Little Help, written and directed by Michael J. Weithorn, is a benign slice of life about suburban angst on Long Island. It’s not much, but thanks to the Read More
The scene at the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II at the 84th Street AMC Theater loosely resembled a themed college party gone awry. Leggy redheads wearing “Hermione-esque” school-girl outfits spilled off the curb onto 84th Street. Wand-wielding twenty-something’s sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, playing Harry Potter trivia card games. Read More
On the wobbly heels of the disastrous atheist film The Ledge comes another hopeless flop about the hypocrisy and homicidal passions of evil born-again Christians, called Salvation Boulevard. I’m not taking sides. I’m just telling you it’s a stupid farrago of aborted ideas, misguided actors, lame direction, submental writing and follow-the-dots plotting that never comes Read More
This is it, kids. Absolutely, positively the end of the Harry Potter series. I feel good about that, knowing I will never have to sit through another installment. The franchise that started 10 years ago and seems more like 10 lifetimes ago has at last written an ultimate “The End.” I’ve outgrown Lilliputian witches and Read More
