This week showcased an unusual nexus between the Memorial Day blockbuster weekend and the close of the Cannes Film Festival. So, naturally, it makes sense that there would be a certain level of inactivity. But if you thought that, you don’t know The Playlist.
–Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Todd Field. Alexander Payne. Jonathan Glazer. Cameron Crowe. Our Edward Davis asks, where did they go? Hopefully to the local WaWa. We’re hungry.
-Funny story: The Playlist gets kickbacks anytime we mention “The Tree of Life.” So with ‘Tree of Life’ seeing a release this week, we decided to discuss a number of factoids about ‘Tree of Life,’ while also revealing the more experimental edge to ‘Tree of Life’ director Terrence Malick’s next non-‘Tree of Life’ film, tentatively-titled “The Burial” (though not officially, as it can still be called “The Tree of Life 2”).
-The untitled “Kill Bin Laden” project from Kathryn Bigelow just picked up steam as Columbia Pictures has come aboard as domestic distributor. With plans to shoot this summer, the involvement of lead Joel Edgerton remains in doubt, but Columbia is marching full steam ahead with a planned late 2012 release, just in time for awards consideration and for it to become a hot-button-election topic.
-Upstart distributor Relativity is starting to throw its weight around Hollywood. They had a June 29, 2012 release date for their untitled Snow White picture until Universal swept in, announcing “Snow White and the Huntsman” as a June 1st release. Never fear: Relativity bumped their project up to March 16th, beating the competing project to the screen while simultaneously chopping into their audience by giving the Nicholas Sparks adaptation “Safe Haven” a June 1st berth. The original shuffle led to Judd Apatow’s tentatively-titled Universal project “This Is Forty” landing on December 21st, but now Relativity is also earmarking that date for WWIII thriller “Hunter Killer.” In other news, why are there competing live action Snow White movies?
-If you weren’t impressed by “Sucker Punch” in theaters (woah, a whole lotta hands shot up on that one), perhaps you’ll like the DVD cut? The year’s biggest difference between theatrical and DVD edits again belongs to a Zack Snyder film, with “Sucker Punch” sporting 18 more minutes of footage, nudging the rating back to R-territory and including some of the controversially excised musical sequences. While there was debate over the film’s quality in the comments section, few directly contradicted our Kevin Jagernauth’s assertion that it was the year’s worst movie.
-While the rumor may have been debunked, we took a brief detour into the early ’90s, where legend has it, Kurt Cobain was offered a role in “Pulp Fiction.” Or maybe not. Who cares? Print the legend.
-Initial reactions for “X-Men: First Class” surfaced and what was most surprising was that the picture was being met with near-universal acclaim. Of course, the early viewers mostly came from the geek crowd rather than the serious critic audience, but claims of ‘First Class’ being Fox’s best comic book adaptation aren’t necessarily a notion to ignore. Catch further reactions here. We’re prepared to walk into the film with an open mind, but we’re not prepared to stop making fun of the hokey ad campaign. For more X-Men, you can read what director Matthew Vaughn has planned for a prospective sequel here.
-There are two factors notorious for gaining an extra click by curious Internet readers. One is an NSFW tag. Another is a photo of Robert Pattinson. We opted for the latter with our first peek at RPATZZ in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” which reveals (spoiler) that, at one point, Pattinson’s character rides a taxi.
With all this chatter about films, we asked: are we watching the wrong medium? Oliver Lyttleton took time to analyze whether the chasm was shrinking between cinema and television (or, as he puts it, “architecture” and “music”). Meanwhile, the staff put together a feature asking what exactly were the brightest lights in the medium of television that you may not be watching. Finally, we found a way to give Ron Swanson a home on The Playlist.
