Garfield as Spider-Man, Incest in “Black Swan,” 3-D “Battleship Potemkin” and Other Links
– I might be the only person who thinks that image of Garfield as Spider-Man, courtesy of /Film, is funny. Including the guy who made it.
– More on the photo that ruled the blogosphere last evening:
– Cinematical compares Andrew Garfield’s costume to Tobey Maguire’s
– JoBlo.com and Badass Digest look close up at Spidey’s wrists as proof that this version faithfully uses artificial web-shooters
– EW’s Jeff Jensen speculates that this isn’t even the official superhero costume
– The Playlist’s Kevin Jagernauth guesses the ten items in Peter Parker’s knapsack, including the soundtrack to “(500) Days of Summer” and the script to “The Dark Knight Rises.” Another great reason to follow The Playlist on Twitter
– Even better than the parody image above is this Photoshop of Donald Glover as Spidey
– In “Black Swan,” is Nina (Natalie Portman) being molested by her mother (Barbara Hershey) off screen? /Film’s David Chen outlines his theory that an incest tragedy is lurking in the background. Part of his argument:
Now my friends swear up and down that they never saw the mom in the sex scene, but I swear up and down that she was indeed the last version of the person on top Nina and the one the camera spends the least time on. My theory then is that, coming home, still high from rolling, Nina’s mom accosts her in her state and has sex with her. However because of her state, Nina is more responsive than usual because she is imagining that she is with Lily (it is later revealed that Lily never came home with Nina). That’s why the shot of the mom on top of Nina is one of the mom smiling before she continues oral sex with Nina.
Among the problems with the theory is the fact that Hershey’s face never does appear in the lesbian sex scene, as you can see in the video here.
– Here’s an “Inception” parody starring the boys from “Jackass,” made for tonight’s Critic’s Choice Awards:
– In his latest tie-in to the PDF publication of “Planet Hong Kong,” this one concerning the history/state of the HK film industry, David Bordwell comments on “The Green Hornet”:
I take comfort in learning just last weekend what terminated Stephen Chow’s directorship of The Green Hornet. According to one report he proposed to plant a microchip in the hero’s brain and have Kato control him with a joystick. In an Entertainment Weekly article not online, director Michel Gondry claims that Chow’s plans were too far out. “Really, really crazy ideas that you would not dare bring to a studio. AIDS was involved. Plastic boobs were involved too.” That Gondry, one of Hollywood’s approved Wild Things, can find something Chow proposed over the top gives you hope.
– Responding to Den of Geek’s recent list of characters who were supposed to die but didn’t, Cinematical’s Jacob Hall lists characters who did die but could have been spared. For each, he imagines how their respective films would ahve continued with them alive. Regarding the trio of deaths between “Aliens” and “Alien 3”:
Hicks, Newt and Bishop survive the crash and assist Ripley and the inmates as they take down the alien creature. Ripley’s role as a mother is reinforced, a romance with Hicks steadily grows and the themes of family and teamwork that James Cameron established in the previous film are allowed to flourish.
As much as I’ve always been annoyed with the killing off of these characters, I understand at least the need to kill Newt (Carrie Henn was no longer a little girl). And the fact that these are Ripley’s films, and only she holds them together. Anyway, I disagree with anyone who completely dismisses there being any good in “Alien: Resurrection.”
– Hey, “Real Genius” was right. You can actually pop popcorn with lasers:
– Dan Hopper suggests the following movie-related “Top Chef” episode titles after this week’s “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat”:
– Are You Cookin’ To Me?
– Show Me The Foody!
– I Know It Was You, Colicchio, You Broke My Beef Heart
– Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates, Also Scallops
– It Doesn’t Take Much To See That The Problems Of Three Little People Don’t Amount To A Hill Of Delicious Beans In This Crazy World
– Romy Shiller defends “Sex and the City 2” as NOT the worst movie of 2010. An excerpt of her reading of the sequel at Live for Films:
The film also deals with the over-looked issue of silencing women. Miranda is constantly silenced by her boss; Carrie has tape put over her mouth by the New Yorker. In a more subtly way Charlotte does not express her true feelings because of the ideology around marriage and motherhood. Samantha is arrested for expressing her sexuality.
They are in a place, Abu Dhabi, that expects female restraint on all levels and the women wear a body-veil. The blatant contrast is Samantha’s unrestraint and sexualized body-wear. In a parody, some of the native women are shown to wear the latest fashions beneath the veil. Fashion is a key element of the series.
I think that there is more going on in this film than meets the eye.
– Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir sells the mainstream moviegoer on the re-release of “Battleship Potemkin” by calling it “first and foremost an action drama”:
For better or worse, this film’s true revolutionary legacy is not art cinema but Hollywood; it’s got a lot more in common with Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” than it does with Andrei Tarkovsky. […] And anybody who thinks that either Eisenstein or Selznick would be horrified by contemporary Hollywood is kidding themselves. If 3-D had been feasible in 1925, I guarantee that baby carriage would be whizzing off the screen right at your head.
– This is what happens when a douchey dude inserts himself into the ending of “The Neverending Story.” You can stop it as soon as you’re annoyed, but then you might miss the guy riding a giant tri-boob.
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