Yesterday’s Bloggery dealt with a topic that few film blogs were addressing — yet. So, in this post I’m going to focus on something everyone has seen and is talking about today (rather than tomorrow): the Billy Bob Thornton interview on Canadian radio (and Qtv). Hopefully he won’t be too pissed off at me for highlighting comments from FILM blogs responding to something involving his MUSIC career, though I have a feeling he’s not quite as serious as he lets on. Is it just me, or does he seem like he’s about to crack up at certain points when he’s attempting to look annoyed?
This is, of course, just the latest movie star embarrassment, of which we literally have seen a bazillion this year alone (hooray for another excuse for a slideshow). The one that it most resembles is the Joaquin Phoenix Late Show interview, and that only adds to why I thought Billy Bob was feigning his ire. Nobody can be as oblivious and serious as this. He had to know that such behavior hurts the band more than his fame helps them. While I somewhat agree with his initial requests, I believe that in his case he has to sometimes let this “shit” happen and deal with it in a more productive manner.
Here is what the other blogs had to say about the incident:
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Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Scott Hicks’ Shine (1996).
1996 was a monumental year for independent film. It began with a Sundance Film Festival that, according to Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures “would go down as Ten Days That Shook the Indie World,” because of the tremendous buying frenzy that occurred, including the infamous acquisition of The Spitfire Grill by Castle Rock for $10 million. The year then transpired with a slew of popular specialty titles that boosted business at many arthouse multiplexes while also exposing them as being unsuited for large crowds (the boom in indie film attendance was something I experienced first hand, having that year begun my first career at NYC’s Angelika Film Center). And the year ended (in 14-month Hollywood terms) with an unprecedented number of specialty films receiving nominations for Academy Awards.
Most astonishing, certainly, was the fact that four of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture were specialty titles, one of which had been discovered at Sundance. The film, Shine, might not have had a chance at such an honor, however, if Miramax and Harvey Weinstein had gotten their way.
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Now that we know, courtesy of Stu at Defamer, that Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is not so much a remake as it is like a new entry into a franchise, a la the James Bond movies, we at SpoutBlog wonder what other ’90s indie favorites could be continued with similar yet “completely different” installments.
I remember back in the day thinking that Clerks should be a franchise, each film focusing on a different crappy job experience, but now that Clerks II has come and gone, that idea will likely never be realized. Of course, the concept of sequels unrelated to the original aren’t new — just look at any sequel title substituting the number 2 (or II) with the word Too. But nevertheless, here’s a few suggestions for other crazy foreign auteurs to take into consideration:
- Kids - Looking back, Larry Clark’s then-shocking debut is pretty tame. Nowadays you see teens doing worse things on commercial television. So, how about someone makes another Kids movie every decade or so to expose us to the latest generation of teenagers and how appallingly different they are from the previous generation. It would be like Apted’s Up documentaries, except it wouldn’t follow the same people.
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