Sort of: "Hidden from the scrutinising eyes of the [Romanian] Secret Police, Irina Margareta Nistor dubbed over 5,000 foreign films that entered the country illegally and were distributed on the black market. Her husky and high-pitched voice became the symbol of freedom and Chuck Norris, Van Damme and Bruce Lee became national heroes. Chuck Norris vs. Communism follows the story of the tapes, the collapse of communism in Romania and the advent of the new capitalist era." And surprise! The filmmakers are crowdsourcing the budget. Click through for the teaser and invest accordingly.
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"Next week I'll teach you how to live like Ryan Gosling. This will involve you getting in a time machine, going back in time, becoming more talented than you currently are, working yourself through the ranks of Hollywood, then dating Eva Mendes." Don't forget about breaking up a street fight!
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Here is a new-ish 60-second bit of viral video that I wouldn't mind installed in my living room: The first minute of every James Bond film, played on one screen divided into 22 parts. You won't be able to take your eyes off it. As a bonus, find an older, longer complement that may finish the mind-blowing job commenced by the more recent video.
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Today, of course, we know Bérénice Bejo as The Artist's irrepressible movie sensation Peppy Miller and as a contender for this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But back in 1997, she was just another young actress paying her dues in France. Which apparently led to... this.
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Here's a trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the forthcoming Timur Bekmambetov film featuring our 16th president as an axe-wielding killer of the undead. There's not much more to say that you can't derive from the super slo-mo, mega-loud hyperviolence promised herein. America's youth has got to get its history from somewhere, I guess.
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"Wes Anderson goes surprisingly well with Ja Rule," wrote Andrew Sullivan over the weekend. Perhaps? My exploded about 40 seconds in. Here, you try it -- and if you survive that, give the Anderson slo-mo supercut scored to Drake a try. No one here gets out alive! Bwwaahahaha, etc.
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On the one hand, the guy who made The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive is entitled to some kind of lifetime exemption to direct whatever he wants whenever he wants -- Duran Duran concert videos, Dior commercials, debt-ceiling riffs, pop albums, whatever. On the other hand, David Lynch may as well be the art-house Donald Trump at this point, pursuer of nominal glories bordering on the fetishistic at best and the gratuitously stupid at worst.
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I don't know who makes this stuff up, but either way, this Super Bowl spot for Volkswagen featuring a fat dog, the interspecial scalawags from Star Wars's Mos Eisley cantina, and a certain climactic cameo is A) superior to any of that 3-D Lucasian mess heading to theaters next weekend and B) just refreshing enough to flush the taste of Matthew Broderick's Honda ad from one's mouth.
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The mysterious Ferris Bueller-themed Honda commercial that I was telling you about last week has been unveiled. On the one hand, it's just Matthew Broderick and a string of references to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with the actor calling out ill to work to go frolic around town in his Honda CR-V. So technically, no legacies were harmed in the making of this TV spot. On the other hand, for a guy who's supposed to be having a day off, I don't know if I've never seen Broderick work harder in my life.
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It would be too easy to seethe and writhe with dismay about Matthew Broderick -- who'll turn the big five-O(MG I'm
old) in March -- reprising his role as everyone's favorite truant teen from the '80s, Ferris Bueller, for Honda. But factor in a 10-second teaser and a few other implications reported this morning, and the spasms of outrage might just ensue involuntarily.
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The first American trailer for the sci-fi thriller
Lockout makes eminently clear what the
hard-boiled European original elided a bit: This is as close to an
Escape From New York remake as any of us are likely to get.
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Here is a trailer for Jeff Who Lives at Home, which tells the very unusual story of sibling men-children (Jason Segel and Ed Helms) dealing with crises of various import. Epiphanies are had, edgy humor is achieved, Porsches are wrecked. Susan Sarandon cries and enjoys the cathartic eruption of office fire sprinklers. Some kids sing cheerily over the closing credits. It opens March 16. What did I miss?
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Via The Playlist, here's your chance to finally weigh in on seven minutes of the George Lucas-produced, Anthony Hemingway-directed Tuskegee Airmen biopic Red Tails. The film opens Jan. 20, but your jaw drops effective immediately.
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I'm a little late to this, but it's not as if anything else is happening beyond the fecal tsunami that is the Iowa caucuses: Find herewith the childhood home videos of comic John Ramsey and his filmmaker brother Richard, with both siblings contributing commentary over the searing indie drama. Aspiring directors, take note!
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In the new trailer for Detachment -- the latest entry in the teachers-are-big-ole-saints genre of filmmaking, Adrien Brody plays a teacher who has not spent all his life living in a gangsta’s paradise. That’s where the conflict is. He wants to help his group of troubled students, but he can barely get them to sit down, let alone listen up. The execution looks charming enough, and the movie fared well at Tribeca, so let’s indulge director (and showman) Tony Kaye’s vision and dig this new group of Freedom Writers.
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