Jeremy Clymer is a freelance writer and stand-up comic who lives, works, and keeps it real in the Midwestern state of Michigan, USA. No, not that part of Michigan. The other part.
Sorry, non-lovers, it looks like you're out of luck in Jim Jarmusch's new film, Only Lovers Left Alive. Still, take solace in the fact that those lovers left alive are living in the ruins of Detroit, which is hardly living at all. Really, you're better off dead. Or at the very least undead.
Can we just all agree that the 1970s were a terrible time for hair? Yes? Good, let's move on then. We've seen a few trailers for David O. Russell's American Hustle by this point, but you may have been saying to yourself, "These trailers are so long! How are they going to promote this thing on television, where ad space is at a premium?" Well, that pressing question has been answered with the debut of the movie's first TV spot, featuring Bradley Cooper with bad hair, Jeremy Renner with bad hair, and Christian Bale with WOW, HOLY COW, some really bad hair. Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence are in it too, but they're mostly still adorable.
We're getting pretty close to the end of this season of Boardwalk Empire and, true to form, things are really starting to heat up. Everything that has been slowly building over the course of the season is now coming to a head: Nucky's business dealings in Florida, Chalky's feud with Dr. Narcisse, the fallout from Willie Thompson's brief stint at college, and the team up between Capone and Van Alden in Chicago. The only subplot that wasn't touched this episode was Gillian Darmody's, and let's be frank: it was not missed.
The Day of the Doctor is getting closer, and the BBC has given us another trailer for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. This time, unlike the teaser trailer we saw a few weeks back, we actually get to see some footage from the special itself. At only 40 seconds long it's not exactly a spoilerfest, but here's what we can glean from it:
The image above is causing all sorts of buzz on the ol' Internet today after Stephen Amell, the actor who plays Arrow in The CW series of the same name, posted it to his Facebook wall. Was he sending fans a message or just playing with them? Either way, the question has been raised: Will Amell be appearing in the bound-to-eventually-get-made Justice League movie?
Good news for fans of auteur theory: According to Bong Joon-Ho, the director of Snowpiercer, his original cut of the film is testing better for American audiences than producer Harvey Weinstein's version with 20 minutes missing. That kind of ruins Weinstein's argument that American audiences just wouldn't get the film without his giving it a good butchering first, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like that has resolved matters.
So far the film adaptation of the Orson Scott Card novel Ender's Game has not exactly been a huge commercial success. It grossed under $28 million domestically in its opening weekend which, while enough to put it at the top of the charts, is still only a fraction of its $110 million budget. It's certainly not a given, then, that the movie will get a sequel, but this is the Internet, so let's talk about one anyway.
Showtime has a problem. The problem is this: on a long enough timeline, all of its shows start to suck. It happened with Weeds. It happened with Dexter. And now it's starting to happen with Homeland. It's arguably Showtime's most critically beloved series to date, and its rapid deterioration should be a wake-up call for the network.
Last week's episode of Boardwalk Empire was Chalky White's show. This week is all about Van Alden. After being on the back burner for a while, his subplot is finally front and center, and the results are about as fantastic as you'd expect them to be. Van Alden, after all, is a violently unbalanced fellow, and actor Michael Shannon is so great in the role that it's hard not to feel just a little giddy whenever he shows up.