Movieline hit the red carpet at Saturday's Spirit Awards, where Exit Through the Gift Shop took home Best Documentary, with one guiding mission: Find out who Banksy really is! But just in case we couldn't get to the bottom of that enigma, we had a backup mission: Find out what he'd look like if he came to an awards show incognito! Hit the jump to watch the results of Movieline's investigation into The Banksy Identity, as aided by a few celebrity informants.
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I'll just make this short because it's been a long week and, honestly, I don't have the words for it anyway. Let it suffice to say that when our country's most famous self-immolating politician is mashed up with our most famous self-immolating TV and film star, there's something unquestionably mesmerizing. Orrrrr it's just the sulphur getting to me. You make the call.
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You'll remember that Community star and Movieline pal Donald Glover enjoys rapping about his genitals. We're thrilled by that kind of behavior at Movieline and applaud his new video for "Freaks and Geeks," in which he storms about a warehouse and compares his thang to carrots and other fun objects. Enjoy.
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James Franco and Anne Hathaway (and the ABC promo department) have done well in creating a sense of guarded optimism about the job the pair will do hosting the Oscars on Sunday night. Which is why you should think twice before watching the latest promo for the show. No, it's not romantic and beautiful, like the 19 seconds of the Grease parody that James Franco sent out to Twitter on Wednesday; it's awkward and cringe-worthy. Unless the idea of seeing Anne Hathaway-as-Madonna-as-Evita singing "Rump Shaker" is your idea of a party. Then, watch away! Popping and locking at your desk is optional.
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Michael Kahn isn't exactly what you'd call a household name, but you could easily argue he's the driving force behind the householding of Steven Spielberg's name. After all, as Spielberg's longtime editor, Kahn has cut two dozen movies with a collective box-office gross of nearly $3.5 billion, winning three Oscars -- one more than the director himself has -- along the way. At last weekend's American Cinema Editors awards, he was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement honor. Read on to see his greatest hits in seven minutes flat.
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So I'm in the middle of this project about James Franco and Twitter, a tech-culture marriage proving increasingly curious by the hour. And the next thing I know, there's the man himself, dancing with his Oscar co-host Anne Hathaway in what one can only presume is a tribute to Grease set to be performed at the Academy Awards.
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Whoa! Forget the flying actors in Spiderman: Turn off the Dark! It looks like Danny Boyle put together a play where characters literally morph into other characters, complete with Jacob's Ladder-style strobe motion! Oh wait, this is just a marketing video. Still, while this "trailer" for Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein probably doesn't visually reflect the final product (though God help us all if it does), it showcases an aspect even more indispensable to theatre than spectacle: The performances.
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Imagine that you are the young, beautiful relatives of two celebrities -- one, a co-host of this year's Academy Awards; the other, an actual Oscar winner -- and you have some down time on your hands. What do you do? If you're these two up-and-coming stars, you rent a red convertible, take some cues from Breathless and shoot a music video for the pop song "Go Outside" by the Cults. Take a look ahead.
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Earlier this month, Oscar joke writer Bruce Vilanch revealed that a planned bit involving Cher, host James Franco dressed as Cher, and the Burlesque song "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," was scratched from the telecast because the Golden Globe-winning track wasn't nominated. Turns out Vilanch might not have been exaggerating. Franco posted a recording of himself warbling through "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" on his must-read Twitter page late Monday evening, writing: "They pulled this from the Oscar show. Damn it." Click ahead to listen, but heed this advice: Earmuffs. He's not very good.
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It seems like Sofia Coppola's combination of hipster-chic and art house sensibilities should actually lend themselves well to commercials. For example, slap a car logo at the end of the first shot of Somewhere and voila: A singular, eye-catching and slightly subversive car commercial! Alas, this new, Dior ad follows in the steps of her previous one in that there's not much here besides pretty people looking pretty while spending time in a pretty place. Here, Natalie Portman and Alden Ehrenreich (Tetro) play seductive games while drenched in warm light. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg croon in the background. Needless to say, It will likely alienate Coppola's detractors even more, but die-hard fans of Coppola or Portman's back should find plenty to love.
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NBA All-Star Weekend took Hollywood by storm in more ways than one, introducing Kobe Bryant as the latest athlete to turn actor. Well, sorta: The Kobe-starring short film The Black Mamba, directed by Robert Rodriguez, is a meta, self-aware bit of Nike product placement that envisions Bryant as a grindhouse-style action hero who must contend with the likes of Danny Trejo, Bruce Willis, and Kanye West to defend... a pair of shoes. Watch it after the jump.
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"It was one of the most magical times ever," recalls Anthony Kiedis of the 1980s Los Angeles punk scene that gave birth to bands like his Red Hot Chili Peppers amidst a haze of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But for indie rock icon Bob Forrest, lead singer of the post-punk band Thelonious Monster, the freely available substances that liberated the scene also sent him into a spiraling drug dependency that ruined his career. After years of battling his demons, Forrest became a renowned drug counselor helping others, and his struggle formed the basis of the documentary Bob and the Monster.
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Maybe James Franco is a little more worried about co-hosting this year's Oscars than he originally led on. In a new video, the actor frantically (well, this is as frantic as anyone has ever seen James Franco) seeks hosting pointers from Pineapple Express scribe -- and Producers Guild Awards host -- Judd Apatow. Naturally, this advice covers the perennial appropriateness of cunnilingus jokes at black tie events. You're going to want to see this for yourself.
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Perhaps in response to all those people left stymied by Hereafter's Oscar nomination for visual effects (especially when Tron: Legacy got shut out of the category, poor thing), Warner Bros. have released a shot-by-shot reel showing how VFX supervisor Michael Owens and Scanline VFX put together that nine-minute opening tsunami sequence. And when you see how the live-action parts came together combining CG, green screen, water tanks, and on-location photography -- well, "Oscar-nominated Hereafter" doesn't sound so silly anymore.
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